Nova stared, horror and denial creeping into her thoughts. “I don’t understand.”
“Well, after the Battle for Gatlon,” said Callum, leaning his elbow on the shelf as he prepared to go into another history spiel, “the Council tried to destroy the helmet, but were unsuccessful. So to keep it from falling into the wrong hands again, Captain Chromium made an indestructible chromium box to hold the helmet for the rest of time. And here she lies. Protected. Secure. Completely inaccessible.” He patted the cube again. “And I get it. I mean, it caused so much destruction and that kind of power shouldn’t be made available to anyone, you know? But at the same time, the historian in me is a little sad that such an important relic is going to sit here, unable to be seen or studied, forever.”
Nova’s mouth went dry as she stepped closer to the box.
There should have been some fanfare here. A spotlight streaming onto the shelf. A set of ropes keeping onlookers at bay. A pedestal. But there was nothing. Just a dusty box on a dusty shelf.
Why hadn’t the Dread Warden told her this when he’d said the helmet hadn’t been destroyed, when he said it was here, in the artifacts department?
No one is ever going to use that helmet to torment the people of this city again.
His words carried new meaning now. Nova had imagined a coded safe, a security system requiring retina scans and fingerprints, even armed guards keeping watch over the helmet.
She had never imagined this.
Imprisoned in a chromium cube. Forever.
She felt a light tug at her wrist. Her bracelet was straining against her skin, as if being pulled toward the box and the helmet inside.
Nova lifted her hand. The bracelet pulled harder, until the thin filigree dug into her skin. The empty prongs that had never received the gemstone they were intended to hold stretched outward toward the trapped helmet.
“Huh,” said Callum. “Never seen that before.”
Nova dropped her arm and took a hasty step back.
Callum’s attention stayed on her wrist. “What’s that bracelet made out of?”
“I don’t know.” She clapped a hand over the bracelet to hide it from view. It was the truth. She didn’t know what the material was. As far as she was aware, it didn’t have a name, and she wasn’t about to tell Callum that it was made from solidified bands of ethereal energy only her father had been able to access.
Just like she wasn’t about to tell him that it was made from the same stuff the helmet was.
“Copper, maybe?” said Callum, scratching his ear. “Can copper be magnetized? I’ll have to look it up. Anyway.” He swirled his hand toward the box again. “There you have it. The helmet that almost destroyed the world. Ready to head back?”
Callum led her out of the vault, chatting the whole time, though Nova didn’t hear a word. She ignored the awe-inspiring objects they passed. She barely felt the mask digging into her back.
What was she going to tell Ace? What would she say to the other Anarchists? Ever since they’d learned that the helmet hadn’t been destroyed, they’d been hinging their hopes on getting it back. On giving Ace back his strength, his power.
What were they going to do now?
There had to be some way to get inside that box. Captain Chromium wouldn’t have made it impossible to access the helmet. What if the Renegades needed it someday?
She couldn’t walk up to the Captain and ask him about it, but … she did know of one other person who might have an idea.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
BLACKMIRE STATION. The defunct entrance to the abandoned subway had a hole in it the size of a small car, strung across with yellow caution tape. The sidewalk was littered with rubble from the explosion and there were still visible scorch marks on the wall. This was where the Anarchists made their escape when the Renegades had gone after them, after the Detonator’s attack at the library had made it clear that their group wasn’t as dormant as they seemed. Though regular patrols had been set up to search the tunnels and monitor various access points, in case any of the villains tried to return to their sanctuary, there had been no sign of them. Other than Nightmare and the Detonator, of course.
The last time Adrian had gone into the tunnels, determined to find out what their connection to Nightmare was, he was wearing the Sentinel’s armor. Even now, Adrian’s fingers twitched, itching to unbutton the top of his shirt and peel open the zipper tattoo that would transform him into the vigilante. He craved the security that armor would afford him. But he ignored the urge, knowing it was little more than paranoia, and maybe a bit of habit.
The tunnels were abandoned. Wherever Cyanide, Queen Bee, and Phobia had gone, they had not been reckless enough to come back here.
He crouched in front of a DO NOT ENTER sign that had long ago been spray-painted over with a warning to anyone who might not know who was lurking down those stairs.
A circle drawn around an acid-green A.
Adrian took out his marker and drew himself a flashlight.
He stepped over the tape and flashed the beam of light over the graffitied walls and the bolts sticking up from the concrete where a turnstile had once been. The stairs beyond faded into blackness.
He listened, but if there were noises inside the subway, they were buried beneath the sounds of the city.
But there wouldn’t be any noises, he told himself, other than the rats. There were no more villains down here. No more Anarchists.
He crept down the stairs, his sneakers thudding, the beam from his flashlight darting over old concert posters, broken wall tiles, and more graffiti, so much graffiti.
He passed a mezzanine with two offshoots—one set of stairs heading to the northbound rails, the other to the south. His wristband chimed quietly as he descended toward the lower platform, probably the last alert he would get before he lost reception so far underground. He ignored the sound, as he’d been doing ever since Hawthorn threw him into the river and Max pointed out that maybe, just maybe, this was the time to let the Sentinel go. The chime wasn’t the notification he got when he was receiving a message from his teammates or a patrol assignment from the call center. Rather, it was the alarm he’d set for himself, to be notified when one of the other patrol squads was being called for an emergency situation.
Years ago, as part of an effort to ensure the safety of their recruits, it was decided that all dispatches to patrol units could be accessed in real time by all active Renegades, and that the movements of on-duty patrols could be tracked and monitored. The information was made available to any Renegade who wanted it, though they were usually kept so busy with their respective jobs that Adrian didn’t know of anyone who actually took advantage of the information. Except for himself, and then, only since becoming the Sentinel.
It was part of how he had managed to be so effective. Whenever he heard that a patrol unit was being sent to handle a particularly high-profile crime, he only had to log in to the system to see where they were being sent. If there was a chase happening, he could easily follow their movements through the city. With the spring tattoos on the bottoms of his feet, Adrian could move faster than most Renegades, excepting only those with flight or superspeed powers. That advantage alone often allowed him to reach the scene of the crime and deal with the perpetrators before the assigned Renegades showed up.
Over the last week, he’d considered turning off the notifications every time the wristband chimed at him. He was caught in a constant battle with himself. The almost irresistible yearning to involve himself in the situations, to prove both his value and his good intentions. But on the other hand, he knew it was safer to let people go on believing the Sentinel was dead, especially with the reveal of Agent N. The Sentinel was a wanted man, and he knew that once patrols were equipped with the neutralizing agent, few of them would hesitate to use it on him.
Unable to fully resist the temptation, Adrian glanced at the most recent notification, just to make sure no one was being murdered or something. But no—a patrol unit had been summoned to deal with a car theft. Definitely something his peers could handle.
He sent the alert away and silenced all other incoming notifications.
Pausing at the base of the stairs, he shone the flashlight over the walls. There was an empty vessel where a fire extinguisher had once been, and an ancient pay phone with the receiver missing at the end of its curled cord. The platform itself was littered with the bodies of dead wasps, a few stray candy wrappers, and a handful of silhouettes drawn in red chalk and labeled with official Renegade signage.
He stepped closer and scanned the nearest signs: EXHIBIT 19: PUPPETEER TENT (1/3). EXHIBIT 20: MISC. PUPPETEER BELONGINGS. EXHIBIT 21: SHELL CASING—POISON RELEASE DEVICE.
None of the objects mentioned were there anymore, only the chalk outlines and the signage to indicate what had been there before the Renegades’ investigative teams and cleanup crew confiscated it all.
Adrian’s frown deepened. He should have guessed that all of the Anarchists’ belongings would have been removed from the tunnels by now. For some reason, he’d expected that only weapons or things that indicated criminal activity would have been taken back to headquarters, but clearly he was wrong. It seemed that nothing had been overlooked.
Pacing to the edge of the platform, he peered down onto the tracks, turning his head each way as they disappeared into the tunnels. More signage. More chalk lines. And here, more evidence of the battle that had occurred. One tunnel was partially caved in as a result of the Detonator’s bombs. More dead wasps were strewn across the tracks.
Adrian knew a lot of the Renegades who had been involved in that fight. Some of them he’d known almost his whole life. They’d been lucky that no one died, but there were countless injuries, from broken bones and severe burns to lungs and throats that had been scraped raw from Cyanide’s poisons. Even now, Adrian could detect the tangy smell of chemicals hanging in the musty air.
The healers had worked overtime for weeks afterward.
And in the end, the Anarchists had gotten away. It was the proverbial salt in their extensive wounds.
Adrian sighed. He wasn’t going to find Winston Pratt’s puppet down here. He would have to talk to the cleanup crew, maybe call in a favor with the sort-and-tag team. He hoped they hadn’t already shipped a bunch of the Anarchists’ stuff to the junkyard. That wouldn’t be any fun to wade through.