As far as Nova was concerned, she was still Nova Jean McLain, and all she had ever wanted to be was a Renegade.
She knew the lies would come as easily as they always had. She could face Captain Chromium without blinking. She could even stare down her own teammates—Oscar, Ruby, even Danna, despite all she’d done to her—and she could insist on her innocence with trembling lip and pleading eyes. She would shake their resolve, even if she couldn’t destroy it entirely.
At least until she knew what they had against her.
But if it was Adrian …
Please don’t let it be Adrian.
And yet—
Please, please let it be Adrian. Let me see him one more time.
The guards led her to a room on which a circular metal platform stood with a hard-edged chair bolted to its center. An open chasm had been left all around the platform, save only for the narrow plank connecting it to the barred doorway, to keep the prisoners away from the shiny black walls on either side.
Other than Nova and her guards, the room was empty.
The chair appeared wholly uninviting, not only because of the cold metal, but also because of the braces on the arms and the chains around the legs.
She didn’t struggle as the guards shoved her into it. They bound her ankles to the chair legs and attached the metal cocoons around her hands to the armrests. Her fingers had just enough room to wriggle inside their confines.
It felt a little bit like being led to her doom, and she wondered whether the visitor thing had been a ruse. Maybe this was where it would happen—already, so soon. It was easy enough to imagine someone appearing in a white lab coat and sticking a syringe full of Agent N into her arm.
The guards disappeared behind her, where she could not see them past the tall back of the chair.
Directly ahead of her, on the other side of the chasm, was a glossy black wall. The base of it disappeared beneath her platform, so she had no idea how far the drop was. There was nothing remarkable about the wall, other than how very sheer and smooth it was. Unscalable, or at least, that was the effect. Not that there would be much point to scaling it. The ceiling, thirty feet overhead, held nothing but a few rows of sickly fluorescent lights.
Then there was a click and the wall before her was no longer just a wall. A portion in front of her, ten feet tall and stretching between the walls of the chamber, lit up, revealing that it was, in fact, a window.
Nova was staring directly into the face of Adrian Everhart.
She shivered, overcome with the mix of relief and dread that surged through her.
She could tell, in the first moment of their eyes connecting, that he had been able to see her from the moment she’d been brought into this room and had time to steel himself. His face was neutral and cold, in a way that didn’t fit him at all.
But behind the lenses of his glasses, his eyes revealed what his unyielding features did not.
Disbelief. Hurt. Betrayal.
Hatred.
Nova felt her chin tremble—but it wasn’t the act she’d planned. “Adrian…,” she whispered.
His only reaction was a brief tightening of his jaw.
There were two more people on the other side of the glass. Adrian’s dads, Captain Chromium and the Dread Warden. The three of them together, all wearing their traditional Renegade garb—black cape, blue armor, and that despicable red R stitched onto Adrian’s uniform—made for an intimidating team. But fear was nowhere near the top of Nova’s swirling emotions.
The Dread Warden started to speak, and it startled Nova to realize that she couldn’t hear them. Instinct prompted her to lean forward as much as she could in the grasp of the chair, but it made no difference.
Adrian tore his gaze from her and nodded. He spoke. Nova tried to read his lips, but it was no use. Captain Chromium placed a hand on Adrian’s shoulder, but it was brief. He gestured toward the back of the room.
Adrian nodded again. Spoke again. Looked briefly at both his fathers. Their features were serious, but kind.
Then the two Council members left, and Adrian was alone inside the room.
Nova’s heart thundered, but it might as well have been chained up, too, for how tight her chest felt.
“Adrian?” she said, the name coming out as barely more than a breath.
He flinched, confirming that he could hear her.
His Adam’s apple bobbed as he reached for a pedestal beside him and pressed a button on a remote.
Nova heard a click, and the chamber became full with both of their silences.
Their eyes bore into each other’s, and she didn’t know if he was waiting for her to say something, or was trying to build up the courage to speak first.
Before she realized it, she was crying. Tears pooled in her vision and quickly began to slide down her cheeks. She gasped at the sensation of the two warm trails making their way to her jaw, and she wanted to rub them away, but couldn’t move. Nova sniffed loudly, hoping she could inhale the tears back into her body, but it was too late.
Adrian moved closer to the window, and he had given up trying to be emotionless. The hurt was written plainly now: in the tension across his brow, in the tightness of his jaw, in the squint of his deep brown eyes against the threat of his own tears.
“How could you do this?” Adrian said, his tone vicious and sharp. The sound of such unbridled anger surprised the tears into a temporary cease-fire.
Nova gaped at him, jaw hanging open, and found that she had no response to give.
Her mind was blank. Empty of everything but the sound of Adrian’s disgust.
She remembered everything. Every lie. Every betrayal. The weight of the gun in her hands as she prepared to kill Captain Chromium. Her elation when she reclaimed the helmet. The sight of Danna’s butterfly beating against the sides of the mason jar.
Nova gathered herself as one last tear crept down, tracing the path of those before it, and said—with so much conviction that she almost could have believed it herself—“Adrian, I’m innocent.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
ADRIAN’S SCOFF was so loud and unexpected that it only served to bolster Nova’s defiance. She could convince him of her innocence. She had to.
He opened his mouth to speak but Nova pressed on, letting real desperation color her tone. “I mean it, Adrian. I don’t know what’s going on, but I’m not Nightmare!”
“Danna saw you!” he yelled. “She followed you to those ruins … that cathedral. She led us to Ace Anarchy, and she would have led us to you, too, if you hadn’t…” He hesitated, warring with a brief uncertainty. “If you hadn’t done whatever you did to her to keep her from re-forming!”
Nova studied him, her mind racing, devouring and dissecting every word.
Danna had seen her go to the cathedral ruins … but not the house?
And they didn’t know about keeping the butterfly in a jar, which had to mean Nova was right. That butterfly’s memories had been lost when Nova killed it. That butterfly at least—the only one that would have seen Nova and the other Anarchists at the house—couldn’t incriminate her.
She swallowed. She could work with that.
She hoped.
“I don’t know what Danna thinks she saw,” she said, “but it wasn’t me. I don’t know if I’m being framed, or what, but—”
“Oh, please, Nova,” Adrian said. “The inventions? The access to the artifacts department? Knowing about Max and Agent N? I can’t believe we didn’t figure it out before. Is Nova even your real name?”
“Of course it’s my real name! But I’m not Nightmare! I’m not an Anarchist. Adrian, you know me!”
He grimaced. “Yeah. That’s what I thought, too.”
“Please, just tell me what Danna told you, and I can—”
“You can what? Lie some more? Come up with more outlandish stories about your uncle and his beekeeping? Or how about when you were so worried that your uncle wasn’t feeling well, you had to leave the gala, conveniently right before Nightmare breaks into headquarters. Or what about how your entire house was destroyed right when we were coming to arrest you! Are you going to tell me that was a coincidence, too?”
“I was designing a new weapon,” said Nova, who had had a lot of time to concoct this particular explanation. “I was working with some new chemicals, trying to build an explosive that I thought the patrols could use. But it got out of control and … well, you saw. But think about it, Adrian! If I knew you were coming to arrest me, why would I have stayed? Why wouldn’t I have run when I had the chance?”
“Because you needed to destroy evidence,” said Adrian. “It all makes sense. The only thing that doesn’t make sense is…”
He hesitated, and Nova’s pulse jumped. She waited, sure his next words would have something to do with him, with them, but his eyes were burning into her again, quickly dousing any such hope.
She shook her head. “You’re searching for evidence that isn’t there. Maybe … maybe there are some coincidences, but I swear, I’m not—”
“Just drop it, Nova.”
“But, Adrian—”
“Drop it.”
She pursed her lips together.
Adrian lifted his glasses, pinching the bridge of his nose. “I’m not here for your lies and excuses … I’m not even here for a confession. I just…” He dropped his hands to his sides. “I need answers. Please, Nova. If you ever … If any of it was real, then please … just tell me … who killed my mom?”
She blinked.
Opened her mouth, but found no words.
If any of it was real …
It had been real, she wanted to tell him. It had been more real to her than he could ever know.
But this? His mom? The murder?
She had no answers for him.
“I don’t know,” she whispered.
His hands balled into fists.
“Adrian, I know you don’t believe me right now, but I truly have no idea who killed Lady Indomitable. If I knew, I would have told you a long time ago, but I’m not—”