Renegades (Renegades #1)(15)
Author: Marissa Meyer
She squeezed past the plywood board and slipped inside.
Darkness engulfed her as she made her way down the stairs. Only when she reached the first landing and turned to face the second did she take the small flashlight from her belt and flick it on. The light danced over familiar scrawls of graffiti and signs advertising books long out of print and stage shows that hadn’t toured in Gatlon in more than thirty years.
The subway system had fallen with the government, back at the start of Ace’s revolution, and the tunnels had become a refuge for those seeking solace from the upheaval above. They offered shelter and anonymity, at least, and that wasn’t nothing. Now the abandoned tunnels belonged to the Anarchists, at least this corner of the labyrinth, with its broken-down train cars, trash-littered tracks, and a darkness that seemed to permeate the very walls.
They weren’t exactly in hiding—the Renegades knew where to find them. But years ago, after the Battle for Gatlon, Leroy had offered a truce to the Council. That’s what he called it. A truce. Though Ingrid said it had been little better than groveling. Still, the Council had accepted his terms. The few surviving Anarchists would be permitted this tiny bit of autonomy, this pathetic little life underground, so long as they never again used their abilities against the Renegades or the people.
Nova wasn’t sure what had possessed the Council to accept the offer, when they could easily have rounded them up and put them in prison that day. Maybe whatever sense of righteousness driving them had faded as soon as they watched Captain Chromium emerge from the ruins of the cathedral with Ace Anarchy’s helmet on his pike. Maybe they pitied the Anarchists who had lost everything so suddenly—the battle, their leader, their home.
Or perhaps they simply figured that, without Ace, the Anarchists were no longer a threat.
The Renegades still visited them on occasion—raiding the tunnels to ensure they weren’t harboring illegal weaponry or “causing trouble,” but otherwise, they were more or less left alone.
Nova wondered how long that would last now, after Winston’s debacle at the parade. If it had just been her, the Renegades might never have traced the assault back to their group. She could have been working alone for all they knew. Of course, once Phobia and Ingrid had announced themselves, they would have given the Anarchists away, but by that point the Council would have been dead and it wouldn’t have mattered.
But the Council wasn’t dead, and while Nightmare’s alliances might still be a mystery, the Puppeteer’s involvement would lead the Renegades straight to them.
She shouldn’t have gotten into that balloon. That choice was just one more piece of evidence linking them together.
If it hadn’t been for that new guy … the Sentinel … things might have ended very differently.
Nova hit the bottom level of the subway station and made her way across the platform. Rats scuttered nearby as she jumped down to the tracks and headed into the tunnel. She sent the beam of her flashlight over the walls until she found the switch that she’d helped Ingrid install a few years ago. With a flick, a string of dim bulbs brightened and flickered along the ceiling, guiding her home.
Nova clicked off the flashlight and tossed it into her bag, which felt fifty pounds heavier than it had that morning. Her arms burned from exertion. Every muscle in her body was making itself known—each one sore and tired and voicing its complaints.
A few hundred feet down the tunnel, she found Ingrid on their central platform, loading crates of food and supplies into a rusty shopping cart.
Nova dropped the duffel bag on the rails. Ingrid spun around, eyes wide, but relaxed when she spotted Nova.
“You left me there,” said Nova, fisting a hand on her hip.
Ingrid flurried a hand toward her and turned back to their shelves, grabbing packs of sardines and cans of chili. “Help me load these up, will you?”
“Like you helped me?”
Groaning, Ingrid turned back and fixed a scowl on Nova. She was still wearing her Detonator uniform—tall boots, slim khaki pants, a blue cropped top, and those metallic blue armbands that spiraled across her dark brown skin, from shoulders to wrists. The only difference from her usual tough villainess look was that she’d tied back her coiled black hair beneath a rhinestone headband, no doubt stolen from Honey.
“Time to build a bridge and get over it, Nightmare,” said Ingrid. “You knew the risks of this mission, you knew there’d be no rescue attempts if things went haywire. But, look … you’re fine, I’m fine, Phobia’s”—she gave an exaggerated eye roll—“I don’t know, hosting a séance or something, the creepy deadbeat, but whatever, he’s fine, too. We’re all fine.”
“Winston’s not fine.”
“Winston deserves what he got. To stage an attack like that, right in the middle of downtown! He almost got us all killed. He’s the one you should be mad at right now.”
Nova’s lip curled. She was mad at Winston, too, but it was overshadowed by her guilt, knowing he was caught in part because of her.
“And now we have more pressing things to deal with than that cretin,” said Ingrid, “so stop sulking and take this cart down to the storeroom under the yellow line.” She started throwing goods into the cart again.
Nova hopped up onto the platform and tossed the duffel bag on top of the goods. “You think there will be a raid tonight?”
“Bet on it. The Renegades will be looking for trouble.” She set a few boxes of instant rice on the bottom rack of the cart. “There. They could light up the tunnels, but at least we won’t starve.”
A faint wailing reverberated off the walls. Nova turned her head. “Honey?”
Ingrid huffed. “Been like that since we got back. Not sure what she’s got to be so upset about. Maybe a drone died. I don’t know. Ignore her. Here, I’ll help you lower the cart down to the tracks.” She nudged the cart toward the edge of the platform, its tired, uneven wheels squealing in their ears. “I swear, there are days when I wonder what I’m still doing here with you has-beens. Honey’s a lost cause. Leroy’s killed off one too many brain cells with all those chemicals he’s always sniffing at. And Phobia—he gets weirder by the day, have you noticed that?” She hopped down onto the tracks and held up the front of the cart as Nova eased it toward her.
“Maybe,” said Nova, once the cart was secured below, “you stay here for me.”
Ingrid guffawed. “Oh, sweetie. You took a shot at the Captain himself today.” She clicked her tongue but, for the first time since Nova had come across her on the platform, her eyes did take on a hint of warmth. “You might just be the craziest of us all.”
“It was your idea.”
“Exactly.”
By the time Nova had dropped off the cart of supplies in the storehouse beneath the yellow line, which was overrun with cockroaches and usually went ignored during the Renegades’ visits, her arms were vibrating from pushing the cart’s wheels over the bumpy tracks. She was glad to finally make it to her own abandoned train car and drop off the duffel bag.
She took a moment to prepare a cup of tea with a small electric kettle. It was one of the rituals that regulated her days. Though the tea never put her to sleep or even seemed to do much to calm her mind, like it was supposed to, it still signaled to her body that the day was over and nighttime was about to begin. It gave her a suggestion of normalcy—something as simple and comforting as a bedtime routine, even if she skipped over the going-to-bed part.
With the mug in one hand, she headed back into the tunnels.
Honey’s wails grew louder as Nova approached her utility room, the crying offset only by the buzzing of her hives.
“Honey?” Nova said, nudging open the heavy steel door with her shoulder.
Honey Harper, the infamous Queen Bee, was in one of her moods. She had dolled herself up like she did when things got really bad, with thick, sparkling black eyeliner and blonde curls teased into a gravity-defying bob. She was in a slinky dress that cascaded over her generous curves as she stood in front of a full-length mirror, alternating between admiring herself appreciatively and sobbing into her hands.
She would have been a picture-perfect reflection of a long-ago movie starlet, all dramatic and flashy, bordering on the ridiculous … except for the bees.
Besides the room’s sparse furniture—a messy bed, vanity, antique wardrobe—every spare inch of space was taken up with hives and nests and the little creatures whose cumulative buzzing could be louder than a chainsaw. Sweet, chubby bumblebees and efficient, hardworking honeybees and hornets and wasps and yellow jackets, some as big as Nova’s thumb. Though they came and went from the tunnels, there were always thousands of them in here, working, building, producing. A few dozen were crawling along Honey’s dress and skin, and Nova could see that two had gotten caught in the sticky, hair-sprayed strands of her hair.
Nova had once pointed out to Honey that, scientifically speaking, hornets and wasps weren’t bees at all, and how was it that she could have dominion over them if her power was supposed to be all about bees. But Honey had just smiled and pet her cheek, murmuring, “It’s good to be queen.”