Vicious

“The moments that define lives aren’t always obvious. They don’t always scream LEDGE, and nine times out of ten there’s no rope to duck under, no line to cross, no blood pact, no official letter on fancy paper. […] Between one sip and the next, Victor made the biggest mistake of his life, and it was made of nothing more than one line. Three small words. ‘I’ll go first.’”

Victor decides to attempt becoming an EO. Through the narration, Schwab explores the idea that people are not always aware of big moments when they are happening. In hindsight, these moments may become obvious, but by then, it’s too late to do anything to change them. This specific moment is the biggest mistake of Victor’s life because it triggers his time in prison, Eli’s becoming a murderer, and his all-consuming vendetta.

“He shouldn’t have washed the amphetamines down with whiskey, shouldn’t have done anything to dull the nerves and senses, to ease the process, but he’d been nervous...afraid. Now he was going numb, and that scared him more than pain because it meant he might just...fade.”

These lines of Victor’s thoughts come during his overdose attempt at becoming an EO. Trying to dull his fear with alcohol shows he isn’t committed to death yet. His fear of numbness more than pain foreshadows how he becomes an EO (through pain). It is also ironic because once he has his power, he often dulls his pain until he can feel nothing.

“He wanted to be the proof. Without it, this was Eli’s monster, and he was merely the wall off which Eli bounced his ideas. With it, he was the monster, essential, inextricable from Eli’s theories.”

This passage also comes from Victor’s first attempt at becoming an EO. One moment, Victor believes he made the biggest mistake of his life, and the next, he is determined to see the process through to completion, because to do otherwise would make him less than Eli. This section also foreshadows how Victor and Eli become essential parts of each other’s lives, right up until their final confrontation.

“ExtraOrdinary. The word that started—ruined, changed—everything.”

Here, Victor contemplates the many effects a single word can have on a life. “ExtraOrdinary” started everything because, had Eli not proposed the topic for his thesis, he and Victor likely never would have conducted their experiment. “Ruined” and “changed” come together, possibly signifying that Victor isn’t sure if the change is completely bad. While he spent time in prison and Eli murdered Eos, Victor partly changed for the better as a result of becoming an EO.

“Killing something was easy. Bringing it back to life took more than measurement and medicine. It was like cooking, not baking. Baking took a sense of order. Cooking took a flair, a little art, a little luck. This kind of cooking took a lot of luck.”

Here, Victor touches on the important distinction between killing and resurrecting. Destruction is relatively simple. It doesn’t require planning or finesse. Resurrection is complex and presents far more unknowns. Victor doesn’t directly compare killing to baking, but this is how Eli later approaches his murders—methodically and with a sense of taking the right steps in the proper order.

“When the sidewalk began to tip, he threw the switch back. Pain blinked out. He gave himself a moment to breathe, to regain himself, and straightened in the pool of light. He felt nothing. And right now, nothing felt amazing. Nothing felt heavenly.”

These lines come after Victor’s successful attempt to become an EO. Here, he has a rudimentary idea of how his power works—he can flip a switch to turn pain on or off. The fine control he exhibits later shows how special abilities have a learning curve like anything else. Victor embraces feeling nothing, which foreshadows how he keeps his sense of touch turned off.

“That’s what Sydney was giving these people. A second chance.

Her fingers hovered over the dead man’s chest for a moment as she wondered if he deserved a second chance, then chided herself.

Who was she to judge or decide or grant or deny?”

Here, Sydney grapples over the idea of a person having power over another’s existence. She isn’t sure if she should give second chances to just anyone, but it also seems unfair to only let “good” people have another chance at life, especially since she has no way of knowing who is good or bad. These thoughts are in direct contrast to Eli’s thoughts. Where Sydney feels uncomfortable deciding who lives or dies, Eli’s entire purpose in life revolves around deciding that EOs do not deserve to live.

“Perhaps he should feel responsible for unleashing a monster on the world, for the bodies that monster left in his wake—after all, he made Eli what he was, he urged him to test his theory, he brought him back from the dead, he took away Angie—but as he stared down into the faces of the dead, all he felt was a kind of quiet joy, a vindication. He’d been right about Eli all along. Eli could preach all he liked about Victor being a devil in stolen skin, but the proof of Eli’s own evil was spread across the counter, on display.”

This passage from Victor’s thoughts questions where responsibility originates. Victor wonders if he is responsible for Eli’s victims because he brought about the events that allowed Eli to become an EO. While Victor might have some responsibility, Eli ultimately made the choice to commit murder.

“‘Sure am,’ said Eli, flashing his best college-kid grin. ‘I’m Nicholas.’ Eli had always liked the name. Nicholas and Frederick and Peter, those were the ones he found himself using the most. They were important names, the kind held by rulers, conquerors, kings.”

Here, Eli uses an alias to endear himself to one of his victims before killing her. Though he cycles through different identities, he comes back to names like the ones given here because they make him feel powerful.

“Victor had never been good, or sweet—he’d always had a sharp edge; Eli had been drawn to the metallic glint of it—but he’d never been this. A murderer. A monster. After all, he’d killed Angie. […] The one who’d made him feel better, saner, kept him afloat when his mind began to sink. Was that it, then? Was Angie the missing thing? Wouldn’t it be lovely to make the gap another person instead of a part of himself? But no, that wasn’t it. Angie had helped, she’d always helped, but he’d felt the hole before she died, felt it even before he died.”

These lines from Eli’s thoughts come shortly after he gains his EO powers and before he takes up his quest to eliminate EOs, and passage shows the mindset Eli uses to convince himself of his own righteousness. Eli also struggles here to reconcile his missing sensation with his doubts about his own worth prior to his death, revealing his underlying insecurity.

“There are times when the marvels of scientific advancement expedite our processes, making our lives easier. […] And then there are times when a screwdriver and a bit of elbow grease are all that’s necessary to get the job done.”

This passage comes while Eli breaks into his thesis professor’s office and speaks to the difference between computers and people. Computers are machines created by man, and they can be destroyed just as easily. Eli applies this same idea to EOs—perhaps they have special powers, but they can be easily destroyed.

“Trauma. The word haunted him through his police questioning and his academic meetings all the way to the school-sanctioned single apartment they’d moved him into. Trauma. The word that had helped him crack the code, helped him pinpoint the origins of EOs. Trauma became a kind of hall pass. If only they knew how much trauma he had sustained.”

Schwab uses Eli’s situation to comment on the effects and meaning of trauma. Like many other words throughout the book, trauma can mean different things to different people at different times. The school believes Eli suffered trauma through being attacked by Victor and the death of his professor. In terms of trauma, these events pale in comparison to Eli’s death. Trauma as a hall pass shows how words start to lose meaning after a while. Schwab suggests that the word trauma is devalued by overuse, making life more difficult for those who truly experience traumatic events.

“Eli didn’t enjoy killing. He did quite like the moment after. The glorious quiet that filled the air as his broken bones healed and his torn skin closed, and he knew that God approved. But the killing itself was messier than he anticipated. And he didn’t like the term. Killing. What about removal? Removal was a better word. It made the targets sound less like humans, which they weren’t really...semantics.”

This passage from Eli’s thoughts shows why Eli continues to kill, even though he dislikes the process. Eli craves validation and gets it the only way he can. By saying “removal” in place of “kill,” Eli dehumanizes EOs, which allows him to keep a clear conscience.

“Eli didn’t know, when he dialed the number, if calling Stell was actually a good idea, or if it only seemed like one because it came from Serena. Now that he was talking to the detective, he realized that it wasn’t a good idea at all. That it was, in fact, a very bad idea.”

Here, we see Serena’s power at work. When Serena tells Eli to call the detective, he believes it is a good idea. After Eli completes the action to fulfill Serena’s influence, he resumes his thoughts from before—that involving Stell is a bad idea. Serena poses the greatest threat to Eli, as she manipulates him through his mind, rather than threatens his regenerating body.

“His murders, his removals, weren’t like golf or porn or poker, some stereotypically male hobby that he didn’t want to share. They were rituals, sacrosanct. Part of his covenant. Not only that, but the deaths were a culmination of days, sometimes weeks, of research and reconnaissance and patience. They belonged to him. The planning and the execution and the quiet after were his.”

These lines from Eli’s thoughts come when Serena asks to accompany him on a kill. Eli rejects the notion because the moment belongs to him. He doesn’t want to share it, and he doesn’t want it interrupted in any way by Serena’s power. Eli’s desire to keep a part of himself secret stems from the desire to be different and special.

“Victor found that, by inflicting a subtle amount of pain on those in a determined radius, he could induce a subconscious aversion to his presence.”

Victor expounds on the many and various applications of pain. By using his low level of pain, he keeps others from noticing him because they feel discomfort in his presence. As a result, Victor achieves a type of invisibility, at odds with his previous desire for acclaim and notoriety.

“The difference between Victor and Eli, he suspected, wasn’t their opinion on EOs. It was their reaction to them. Eli seemed intent to slaughter them, but Victor didn’t see why a useful skill should be destroyed, just because of its origin. EOs were weapons, yes, but weapons with minds and wills and bodies, things that could be bent and twisted and broken and used.”

Victor recognizes the difference between himself and Eli through their views on EOs. Both men see EOs as different from humans, but where Eli labels them abominations, Victor calls them tools—if tools that also have thoughts, wills, and emotions. Victor has no problem with using an EO’s ability if it suits him. Both Victor and Eli dehumanize EOs to a degree.

“With mere hours until his midnight meeting, he knew there was no time or place for building trust or loyalty, but perhaps these could be supplanted by need. And need, Victor had learned, could be as powerful as any emotional bond.”

These lines illustrate how Victor gets Dominic Rusher on his side—by fulfilling Dominic’s need to be free of pain. As Eli uses Serena to further his cause, so Victor conscripts Dominic. Unlike Eli, Victor does not delude himself about the ethical nature of his motives.

“There were some people you had to stay away from, people who poisoned everything in reach. Then there were people you wanted to stick with, the ones with silver tongues and golden touches. And then, there were people you stood beside, because it meant you weren’t in their way.”

Mitch doesn’t yet know about Victor’s power, but he senses Victor is dangerous. Mitch’s loyalty to Victor is defined by fear more than friendship, contrasting with Sydney, who grows to genuinely care for Victor. Mitch, older and more jaded, engages in relationships strategically—just like Victor and Eli. 

“When they walked, the world rippled thickly around them, the air viscous. It pressed in on them, weighed them down. When they reached the door to the bar, it resisted Dominic’s pull before finally—slowly—giving way. Inside, the photo world continued. People caught mid-drink, mid-pool-shot, mid-kiss, mid-fight, and mid-a-dozen-other-things; all stuck between one breath and the next. And all the sound caught, too, so that the space filled with a horrible, heavy quiet.”

Here, Victor experiences Dominic’s gift. While Victor can reduce his ability to feel to nothing, Dominic’s power negates that ability. Victor feels the air pressing in on him in a way he’s never experienced. Schwab emphasizes the sensation to show Victor’s discomfort at having his constant awareness of living beings around him replaced by a new physical sensation.

“I felt torn apart. I was. Anyway. They brought me back but they couldn’t seem to pull me through, not all the way. I spent weeks in a coma. All that time, I could feel the world. I could hear it. Swore I could see it, too, but it was like everything was far away. Murky. And I couldn’t reach out, couldn’t touch any of it. And then I woke up, and everything was so sharp and bright and full of pain again, and all I wanted was to find that place, that dull, quiet place. And then I did.”

Dominic rusher delivers this speech to Victor when describing how his EO ability works. His description shows the core tenants of rebirth syndrome as defined in Chapter 42. Prior to his death, Dominic was a soldier and accustomed to stressful situations. After being reborn and finding his way back to the real world, Dominic found the lights and noise to be too much. He sought to redefine himself, which led to him traveling through shadows and avoiding intense situations.

“He shouldn’t have killed Mitch Turner. He knew that. But it wasn’t as though the man were innocent, not truly. Eli had seen the police records. Turner had sinned. And those who ally themselves with monsters are little better than monsters themselves. Still, he had felt no silence, no moment of peace following the act, and Eli’s chest tightened at being denied the calm, the assurance that he had not strayed.”

When Eli kills an EO, he experiences a moment of peace, which he believes is God showing approval. After shooting Mitch, Eli feels no such moment. Eli cannot justify Mitch’s death, and the absence of peace is Eli’s way of experiencing guilt, even though he doesn’t recognize the emotion.

“‘And Ulysses stopped up his ears against the siren’s song,’ recited Victor, pulling the plugs from his own ears as Serena collapsed to the dirt lot, ‘for it was death.’”

Here, Victor alludes to the short story “The Silence of the Sirens” by Franz Kafka (1931), a new perspective on Ulysses confrontation with the sirens. In the Odyssey (source text for “The Silence of the Sirens”), the sirens are creatures who lured sailors to their deaths by singing so beautifully that the men forgot to steer so their ships crashed on the rocks. Originally, Ulysses kept his ears unblocked and lashed himself to the ship while his men blocked their ears with wax and journeyed past the siren island without stopping. In Kafka’s version, Ulysses stops his ears against the siren song, and Victor references from this version of events because, with her ability, Serena could order Victor to kill himself, and he would.