Phobia made a disgusted sound.
Honey wiggled her fingers at him. “Don’t worry, darling. I’m sure we can find one with a cemetery.”
“We’re not leaving Ace,” said Nova.
Honey sighed. “It’s time to consider other options.”
“Honey has a point,” murmured Leroy. “I hate to admit it, but…” He gestured at the blueprint. “This isn’t giving us enough to even concoct a plan, much less execute one.”
“We’re not leaving Ace,” Nova repeated, harsher this time. “He wouldn’t leave us.”
The others shared uncertain looks and Nova bristled. “Well, he wouldn’t leave me. And besides. Even if…” She swallowed the lump in her throat. “Even if we can’t get to Ace in time, that doesn’t mean we’ve lost. He had a vision, and that vision lives on inside us. The hold the Renegades have over this city is weakening every day, as people are becoming aware of their failures and their hypocrisy. Whatever happens with Ace, we need to keep fighting for the world he believed in!”
Nova shut her mouth as tears began to pool in her vision. Feeling infuriatingly melodramatic, she turned her face away, but there were still words left unsaid. Still a deep loathing that burned in her chest.
It wasn’t just about Ace’s hope for the world—for the freedom and autonomy he felt all prodigies deserved. The right to not be hunted down and killed for what they were, but also the right to use their powers however they wanted, without fear of persecution, even from other prodigies like the Renegades. That was a part of it—it had always been a part of why she fought at Ace’s side.
But the deeper reason she hated the Renegades, and had always hated them, was because they had not come to her rescue when she needed them most. They had sworn to protect her family, and they had failed. Her parents were dead. Her little sister, Evie, was dead. Nova would be dead, too, if she hadn’t used her powers to put the assassin to sleep. Ace had found her standing over his unconscious body, trying, but unable, to pull the trigger on her family’s killer.
All because of the Renegades and their empty promises.
She would not forgive it. And she would not let it happen to anyone else. People believed that the Renegades could save them, but they were wrong. The Renegades made mistakes. They broke their promises. They lied.
And they could not be left to rule the world unchecked.
“All right,” Honey said, once their mutual silence had stretched thin. “We’ll try it your way, little Nightmare.” She tipped her chin toward the blueprint. “But we all know your secrets won’t last much longer. We should probably have a contingency plan in place, for when you’re discovered.”
Leroy nodded. “I’ve been thinking that, too. If Nova is found out, we’ll need to leave this house and destroy as much evidence as possible that we were ever here. And as it so happens, I’ve been working on just the thing. A cocktail of chemicals that, when combined, will decimate nearly everything they touch. It would at least keep the Renegades from combing through our stuff once we’re gone.”
“Fine,” said Nova. “If necessary, we’ll take what we need, destroy everything else, and go into hiding.”
A loud thump from the second floor drew their attention to the water-stained ceiling. Nova’s body tensed and she felt the rest of her companions go still, except for Phobia, who dissolved into a cloud of inky black smoke and swirled like a hurricane toward the staircase.
Grabbing the nearest weapon—a rather dull knife from the kitchen drawer—Nova charged after him with Leroy and Honey close behind. But when she reached the bedroom that she and Honey shared, she saw only Phobia awaiting her amid the bees and wasps. Honey’s creatures were always coming and going through the small window, which was left cracked open to allow them freedom, even when torrential rains soaked the rotting windowsill, as happened more and more as autumn tipped toward winter.
Phobia’s cloaked presence felt like a black hole in the center of the room. He was facing Honey’s vanity, one skeletal hand idly spinning the blade of his scythe.
Nova’s feet paused on the matted carpet. Honey and Leroy crowded beside her.
Nothing on the vanity appeared to have been disturbed, though it was difficult to tell, as the mess of makeup and costume jewelry was generally disheveled. Among them was a mason jar, its lid newly cluttered with bobby pins and a single rhinestone earring. Inside was the monarch butterfly, currently hanging upside down from the lid. Traces of dust from its wings were streaked along the inside of the jar from its attempts to get free, and four yellow wasps were picking their way around the lid, trying to get at the tasty snack inside.
But it wasn’t the butterfly or Honey’s trinkets that held Nova’s attention. It was the mirror, glinting their stunned expressions back at them. Written upon its surface, in black marker and all caps, were the words:
BRING ME THE HELMET
QB’S ROOM—BLACKMIRE
48 HOURS
OR EVERYONE WILL KNOW
WHO YOU REALLY ARE
Nova had barely begun to digest the threat when Leroy moved past her and stuck his head out through the window, scanning the yard and alleyway behind the house. However, even if the perpetrator was out there, lurking in the shadows, Nova doubted Leroy would be able to see them in the darkness.
She read through the words again. She knew that so many Renegades, Adrian among them, had been closing in on her secret for months now. Had one of them finally figured her out? But most Renegades would take the information straight to the Council. She doubted many of them would have the guts to blackmail her for Ace’s helmet, even if it was one of the most powerful objects of all time.
Who could it be?
“Well,” said Honey, “with Ace gone, it’s not like we have much use for the helmet as it is.”
Nova scowled at Honey’s reflection, cut through with the scrawled words. “We’re not giving up the helmet. I risked too much to get it. Besides, we are going to find a way to free Ace, and when we do, he’ll need the helmet to get his strength back. I’m not going to watch him waste away to nothing because we gave up the one thing that could restore him.”
“I agree,” said Leroy, apparently not having seen anything, or anyone, out the window. “But I don’t think we should take this as an idle threat. Someone knows your identity, Nova. Not just that—they know where you are. Where we all are.”
Nova crossed her arms. “Yeah, but they’re a coward, whoever it is. To leave a threatening message and not dare face me in person. Who does that?”
“Cowards can sometimes be the most dangerous of all,” said Phobia.
“Phobia’s right,” said Leroy. “We can’t ignore this.”
Nova glanced at his face, scarred and disfigured, and thought of the teenage bullies who had dumped acids on him after chemistry class. Cowards, the lot of them. But still dangerous.
Nevertheless, she wasn’t about to relinquish the helmet to someone who didn’t have the nerve to fight for it themselves, and she didn’t have time to be running errands and making deliveries for anonymous stalkers, either.
But she needed more time to figure out how to free Ace from that prison.
Her wall of lies might be ready to collapse on its own, but she wasn’t about to let someone take a wrecking ball to it now.
The threat on the glass blurred before her.
48 HOURS
OR EVERYONE WILL KNOW
CHAPTER FIVE
ADRIAN WAS CONTEMPLATING invisibility. As superpowers go, it was one with infinite uses, particularly when one spent a great deal of time sneaking and spying, as he tended to do these days. His dad Simon—the Dread Warden—could turn invisible. So could Max, having absorbed some of Simon’s ability when he was a baby, although he could only go invisible for short periods of time. There was one Renegade who had trained in Gatlon City a number of years ago who was always invisible, which Adrian had found slightly disconcerting when they’d been around. (To this day, he still wasn’t sure of their gender, and their alias, the Wraith, didn’t offer any clues.) But they had been sent to a syndicate across the ocean and Adrian hadn’t given much thought to them or their power since.
He was giving it plenty of thought now.
Because of all the powers he had given himself using tattoos inked into his body, none of them offered much in the way of stealth. Quite the opposite—the armor that burst forth from the zipper tattooed over his sternum was big and bulky, shiny and reflective. It made him feel invincible when he wore it, but also very, very visible.
He couldn’t quite picture the sort of tattoo that might allow for full invisibility, though. He figured such a tattoo would have to cover him nearly from head to toe to be effective, but maybe he needed to think outside the box. Maybe he just needed inspiration.
He wondered if Nova would have some ideas, except she didn’t know about the Sentinel or the tattoos and he wasn’t sure how to go about telling her, or even if he wanted to, especially given the outward loathing she demonstrated for his vigilante alter ego.
But standing on a ledge outside a hospital window, five stories in the air, in broad daylight in his heavy, glinting armor, he decided it was time to start considering other means of sneaking in to see Max. And invisibility would have made it so much easier.
Plastered against the building’s side, he angled a small handheld mirror toward the window, following the movements of a nurse as she checked Max’s vital signs and noted information onto a tablet. She adjusted something on an IV drip beside the bed, smoothed the blanket across his thin shoulders, signed her initials on a sheet of paper by the door.
Finally she left, leaving the door barely cracked behind her.
The moment she was gone, Adrian crouched and dug his gloved fingertips beneath the window. It opened as easily and silently as it had the last two times.
He stepped inside, cringing at the loud thump of his boots. He pressed a finger to the breastplate, retracting the armor into the pocket beneath his skin. On much quieter feet now, he crossed the room and shut the door the rest of the way. There was no lock, but the movements of the nurses were kept to a tight schedule, and by now he was familiar enough with their methods to know that no one would be back to check on Max for a couple of hours.