Renegades (Renegades #1)(20)
Author: Marissa Meyer
Then there was Aftershock, a stocky man with a dark goatee who must have been the cause of the earthquakes. Beside him stood Stingray, a lanky, beady-eyed boy who moved with as much creepy, slithering grace as the animal he took his alias from, a sleek barbed tail trailing behind him. Last was the giant. Gargoyle, who seemed to be permanently hunched from always having to stoop to fit into places, and whose limbs could shift from human flesh to solid stone in an instant.
“Well,” said Frostbite, planting her hands on her hips, “it looks like they’re all too cowardly to come say hello.” She nodded at Aftershock and Gargoyle. “Search the tunnels and see if you can’t draw them out of hiding.”
While the two Renegades lumbered down opposite tunnels—Aftershock passing an arm’s distance from Nova’s hiding spot—Stingray began picking through the scattered supplies.
“Pickled okra?” he said with a sneer, picking up a glass mason jar. “Sounds disgusting.” Turning, he threw the jar at the wall, where a mosaic of small tiles spelled out the name of the street above. The glass shattered, spilling more vinegar and green vegetables across the platform.
Nova’s grip tightened on the gun.
“And Fruity Rings?” said Frostbite, kicking a box of breakfast cereal that was already crushed on one corner. “I haven’t eaten this junk since I was four. It’s really better given to the rats.” Stalking to the edge of the platform, she picked up the box, opened it, and dumped the chunks of colorful cereal onto the tracks.
That box had actually been Winston’s—it was his favorite kind of cereal—so it would be no great loss to the rest of them. Still, the waste of it made Nova’s jaw clench. Anyone who remembered the Age of Anarchy at all knew that wastefulness was an unforgivable crime, no matter which side of the battle they fell on.
On the opposite side of the train car, a door clunked open. Frostbite and Stingray spun toward the car. Nova ducked back into the shadows, listening to the sounds of Leroy’s footsteps as he paced down the steps and onto the tracks. She caught a glimpse of Frostbite’s disgusted look as she took in Leroy, with his scars and discolored skin.
As Leroy passed into Nova’s line of vision, she saw that he was wearing his worn bathrobe over tattered sweatpants and slippers. His feet crunched through the pile of cereal as he made his way to the steps beside the platform.
“Oops,” Frostbite said in a saccharine voice. “Did we wake you?”
“Oh no,” said Leroy, coming to stand a dozen paces from the Renegades. “We were expecting you, after what happened today. It is nice to see you still living up to expectations. Although…” He sighed heavily and gestured toward the fallen shelves and the mess that took up a quarter of the platform. “I question the point of all this.”
Frostbite’s face turned swiftly from arrogant to enraged. She closed the distance to Leroy, a long shard of crystalline ice forming in her fist. “The point is to remind you freaks that anything you have, whether it’s food or water or even this pathetic little hovel in these cockroach-infested tunnels, is because we allow it.” She lifted the shard, tucking the point beneath Leroy’s chin and forcing him to lift his face. “And if we decide you don’t deserve such charity, then we can take it away.”
“Charity?” said Leroy, his voice even despite the ice digging into his jaw. “The Renegades have given us nothing. Everything we have has been bought and paid for—or fairly scavenged, just like everyone else.”
“Scavenged,” said Stingray. Turning his head, he hacked up a glob of spit and sent it onto the platform. “We wouldn’t all still be scavenging for goods if it weren’t for your lot, now would we?”
Leroy lifted an eyebrow—or the muscle where an eyebrow would have been, but had been burned off ages ago. “If it wasn’t for our lot, then the boy with the barbed tail almost certainly would have been slaughtered at birth, his remains stuffed into a jar of formaldehyde for further examination.”
Stingray’s face contorted with anger, but Leroy went on, “Your Council has had domain over this city for almost ten years. If they haven’t managed to restore your economy, perhaps you should ask them what’s taking so long, rather than wasting your time blaming us.”
Frostbite dragged the ice shard to the side, leaving a thin cut beneath Cyanide’s chin. He flinched, but only slightly.
“Maybe if the Council wasn’t having to defend the people of this city from mindless attacks, they could focus on cleaning up the mess that villains like you made of this world.”
“Maybe,” said Leroy, “with so many prodigies brainwashed by their tutelage, they could stand to update their security measures.”
The ground rumbled again and Aftershock appeared at the entrance to one of the tunnels, each step he took sending mild quakes into the earth. “Nothing down that way but a bunch of moldy books.” Planting one hand on the ledge of the platform, he vaulted himself up to stand beside Stingray.
“You must not have looked very hard,” came a dry voice. Aftershock spun to see a dark form emerging from the tunnel he’d just left—Phobia’s pitch-black cloak forming as if made from the shadows themselves, the blade of his long scythe catching on the dim overhead lights. No loungewear for him, of course. Of their whole group, he was the only one Nova never saw outside of his uniform—the hooded cloak, the mask of shadows, the scythe that arced over his head. Also unlike Ingrid and Honey, Winston and Leroy, Phobia was the only member of the Anarchists whose given name remained a mystery. Sometimes Nova wondered if he had been born so terrifying from the start that his horrified parents had settled on Phobia even back then.
“They really are pathetically unobservant.”
Nova glanced up, to where Ingrid was sitting on the narrow pedestrian bridge that crossed over the tracks to the opposite platform, her long legs dangling through the rails.
“I’ve been up here this whole time and not once did they think to look up. Honestly, it’s amazing this city is functional at all with you people in charge.”
Frostbite snarled. “Get her down.”
Aftershock lifted one knee and stomped—hard. A fissure opened in the concrete, arcing toward the staircase. The ground split apart beneath the steps, a gap opening in the earth. The stairs slumped downward. The bridge tilted sharply. Ingrid leaped to her feet moments before the bolts holding the metal rails pulled free and the bridge careened to one side—half of it sinking into the chasm that Aftershock had made, the rest crashing down onto the tracks. Ingrid jumped clear of the bridge at the last moment, diving into a roll and coming to a crouch not far from Leroy’s train car.
“That’s better,” Frostbite said breezily, one hip jutting to the side.
Sparks flashed in Nova’s eyes. Taking a step back, she lifted the rifle, turning the barrel toward Aftershock. But no sooner had she found him in the sights than a figure moved between them.
She lowered the gun. Ingrid stood between her and the Renegade, her back to Nova. She reached back with one hand, sweeping her fingers in Nova’s direction.
Nova glared, annoyed at being shooed away like a pestering child.
She would have been even more annoyed, though, if a part of her didn’t know that Ingrid was right. It would be careless to give herself away, and what was she going to do with this gun and a handful of darts? Without any poison, an offensive attack would serve only as a minor annoyance.
“I recommend caution,” said Phobia, his raspy voice as patient as ever. “These are old tunnels with old foundations. You wouldn’t want us all to be buried alive, would you?” He spun his scythe overhead. “I wouldn’t mind so much, but I doubt that was your intention when you came to interrupt our repose.”
With Ingrid still blocking her view, Nova sank back between the wall and train car. She reached the metal rungs on the side of the car and, gripping the gun in one hand, scampered to the top. She stretched out on her stomach, inching forward until she could see the platform below.
“I think what Phobia’s saying,” said Ingrid, blue sparks flickering at her fingertips, “is that sometimes showing off can have negative effects.”
Frostbite smirked. “I wouldn’t know.”
Screams of hysteria echoed up from the far tunnel. Nova planted one hand on the rooftop of the car, craning her head upward. At first Honey’s wails were indistinct cries of panic, but as they grew nearer, they began to merge into desperate words.
“Put them back! Put them back! You don’t know what you’re doing!”
Moments later, Gargoyle lumbered out from the overhang of the tunnel, his arms cradling close to two dozen bee hives of various sizes and states of completion. The swarms of angry drones were buzzing all around him, creating a black writhing mass that engulfed his torso, but he had turned his entire body to stone and their vicious stings appeared to have no effect.
Honey came marching after him, dressed in a pale pink negligee, her hair rolled in curlers. “You have no idea the work that goes into those, you giant chunk of rubble!”