Vicious (Villains, #1)

by V.E. Schwab

Life—the way it really is—is a battle not between Bad and Good, but between Bad and Worse. —Joseph Brodsky

“Perhaps … it is … in … our … best interest to … to surrender … to give up … rather than waste … words.”

“You’ve got too much time, Vic.” “You must make time for that which matters,” he recited, “for that which defines you: your passion, your progress, your pen. Take it up, and write your own story.” Eli looked at him for a long moment, brow crinkling. “That’s awful.” “It’s from the introduction,” said Victor. “Don’t worry, I blacked it out.”

Look like someone need to find an editor

All Eli had to do was smile. All Victor had to do was lie. Both proved frighteningly effective.

“What are you thinking of, Victor?” He flashed a small, dangerous smile. “I’m thinking about what a lovely night it is.”

You have a character, name Victor, to do an experiment. This sure isn't going to end well that for sure

“Try to look at it like this. In comic books there are two ways a hero is made. Nature and nurture. You have Superman, who was born the way he was, and Spider-Man, who was made that way. You with me?”

I wish V.E. schwab goes more in depth with their ideas, like this one for example because this has so much promise

There was so much of it that the wiper blades did nothing to clear it away, only managed to move it around on the windows, but neither Mitch nor Victor complained. After all, the car was stolen. And obviously stolen well; they’d been driving it without incident for almost a week, ever since they swiped it from a rest stop a few miles from the prison.

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. They aren’t always protracted, heavy with meaning. 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.”

Each time Victor blinked it got harder to open his eyes again. And then, for a moment, fear crackled through him. Fear of dying. Fear of Eli. Fear of everything that could happen. Fear of nothing happening. It was so sudden and so strong. But soon the numbness ate that, too.

Pain and dark, which became pain and color, and then pain and glaring hospital lights.

Now, just as then, he ordered his body and mind to still, to calm. And now, just as then, when he closed his eyes and searched for silence, a word rose up to meet him, a reminder of why he couldn’t afford to break, a challenge, a name.

Victor had shut the music off, the heavy beat echoing in his head until he realized it was his heart.

I know this feeling(everyday with my mom and her seizure) of seeing someone you care about in depress and feeling helplessnes of not being able to help them.

Eli, who believed in God and had a monster inside just like Victor, but knew how to hide it better.

Now Victor blinked, eyes sliding from the window and Mitch’s ghostly reflection to the fake wood floor.

I want to believe that there’s more. That we could be more. Hell, we could be heroes.

Hate was too simple a word. He and Eli were bonded, by blood and death and science. They were alike, more so now than ever. And he had missed Eli.

Eli was like a thorn beneath Victor’s skin, and it hurt. He could turn off every nerve in his body, but Victor couldn’t do a damned thing about the twinge he felt when he thought of Cardale.

The worst part of going numb was that it took away everything but this, the smothering need to hurt, to break, to kill, pouring over him like a thick blanket of syrup until he panicked and brought the physical sensations back.

He was an outsider by choice, a good enough mimic to charm his way into social circles when he wanted, but more often than not he preferred to stand apart and watch, and most of the school seemed content to let him.

Without warning, pain tore up her arm and through her small body, crashing over her in a wave. It was worse than drowning, worse than being shot, worse than anything she had ever felt. It was like every one of her nerves was shattering, and Sydney did the only thing she could. She screamed.

i sure do love it when people get creative when it comes to super powers, that you don't see. Which is why I love about My Hero Academia or Super Powered.

The calm troubled him; the fact that the physical absence of pain could elicit such a mental absence of panic was at once unnerving and rather fascinating.

The absence of pain led to an absence of fear, and the absence of fear led to a disregard for consequence.

Sydney had barely grown at all, actually. Less than an inch in the year since the accident. It wasn’t just her height, either. Sydney’s nails, her hair, everything about her crept forward. Slowly. Like melting ice.

this kind of like the side effects of having these "super powers"

There was something dangerous about Eli, about the calm way he smiled and the lazy way he moved. He leaned on the arm of the chair he’d been sitting in.

She felt like Alice in Wonderland. Like the soda must have had a little drink me tag and now the room was shrinking, or she was growing, or either way there wasn’t enough space. Enough air. Or had it been the cake that made Alice grow? She didn’t know …

She didn’t see what she did as raising the dead, not really. They weren’t zombies, as far as she could tell—she didn’t have prolonged exposure to her subjects, aside from the hamster, and she wasn’t sure how a zombie hamster’s behavior would differ from that of a normal one—and it didn’t matter what they’d died of. The man under the sheet in the hospital hall had apparently suffered a heart attack. The woman in the morgue had already had her organs removed. But when Sydney touched them, they didn’t just come back, they revived. They were okay. Alive.

Booo for no zombie army

In that moment, Sydney felt no surprise, no shock. It was the first thing Eli had done that seemed right to her. Genuine. Fitting. She wasn’t afraid to die, she didn’t think. After all, she’d done it once. But that didn’t mean she was ready. Sadness and confusion coiled in her, not toward him, but toward her sister.

He had never believed in fate, in destiny. Those things lurked too close to divinity for Victor’s taste, higher powers and the dispensation of agency. No, he chose to see the world in terms of probability, acknowledging the role of chance while taking control wherever it was possible. But even he had to admit that if there was a Fate, it was smiling on him. The newspaper, the girl, the city.

The thorn dug deep beneath his skin. So close. How badly he wanted to walk out into the streets and shout his old friend’s name until he came out. It would be so easy.

his favorite being “out of the ruins of our self-made jails…”—he had seen the perfect opportunity to spell out a simple but effective “We … ruin … all … we touch.”

He once accused me of being a devil wearing Victor’s skin.” “He called me unnatural,” said Sydney softly. “Said my power went against nature. Against God.” “Charming, isn’t he?”

“Where the hell did that dog come from?” asked Mitch. “I get to keep him,” said Sydney. “Is that blood?” “I shot him,” said Victor, searching through his papers. “Why would you do that?” asked Mitch, closing the laptop. “Because he was dying.” “Then why isn’t he dead?” “Because Sydney brought him back.” Mitch turned to consider the small blond girl in the middle of their hotel living room. “Excuse me?” Her eyes went to the floor. “Victor named him Dol,” she said. “It’s a measurement of pain,” explained Victor. “Well, that’s morbidly appropriate,” said Mitch. “Can we get back to the part where Sydney resurrected him? And what do you mean you’re going to send Eli a message?”

Eli said it best. He called EOs shadows, shaped like the people who made them but gray inside. Serena felt it. From the moment she woke up in the hospital, she felt as if something colorful and bright and vital was missing. Eli went on to say it was her soul; he claimed he was different and Serena let him think that because the only other option was to tell him otherwise, and then he’d believe it.

Caution tape surrounded him in streamers of yellow, too bright against the dull winter dawn. Red and blue lights dotted the icy ground and every time he looked at them, he ended up spending minutes trying to blink the colors away.

Eli’s thesis was waived, in light of the trauma. 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. They didn’t.

“EOs are unnatural.” “You said that already.” “My best friend became one, and I saw the change. Like a devil had climbed into his skin. He killed my girlfriend, and then he tried to kill me.” He bit into his tongue and managed to stem the flow of words. Was it her eyes, or her voice that was compelling him? “So you go around blaming every other EO you can find,” said Serena. “Punishing them in his place?”