Home > Renegades (Renegades #1)(14)

Renegades (Renegades #1)(14)
Author: Marissa Meyer

 
Simon looked up at the wall of screens, flashing between images of the Puppeteer, Nightmare waving from the basket of the hot-air balloon, and, every once in a while, the Sentinel.
 
Hugh followed Simon’s gaze, frowning at the image of the armored prodigy. “Speaking of investigations, what do we know about him?”
 
Though they were surrounded by reporters, assistants, and patrol teams, no one answered.
 
Adrian scratched his chest, where the zipper tattoo was hidden, where the Sentinel was tucked safely away. “My team saw him when they were facing off against Nightmare. The Sentinel was after her too.”
 
Hugh glanced at him. “Did they see him use any abilities?”
 
“I … think so. Yeah.” He swallowed. “Oscar thought maybe he’s a product out of research and development?”
 
“Would be news to me,” Simon muttered. “I’ll talk to Oscar and Ruby, see what we can figure out.” A sudden clarity entered his eyes. “I heard about Danna. Is she all right?”
 
Adrian stiffened. He could still feel the warmth of his own fire. Could still see those butterflies blackening and disintegrating before his eyes. “The healers say she will be.”
 
Simon squeezed Adrian’s shoulder, and he knew it was meant to be fatherly and comforting, but something about it made him feel worse. Not only about Danna, but also because he had already decided he couldn’t tell them that he was the Sentinel. Not yet.
 
Hugh turned away, facing the crowd. “Listen up,” he said, in that deep, heroic voice that could have made an earthworm stand at attention. “If anyone knows anything about this prodigy who calls himself the Sentinel, bring that information to the Council. As far as we know, he isn’t one of us…” He paused, his steely-blue eyes cutting across the room, just in case anyone wanted to step forward and confess right then that, by golly, it was me all along! Avoiding his father’s gaze, Adrian glanced up at Max, who was watching them from the quarantine.
 
Hugh continued. “But he is using our symbol and our name. I want to know his motives. If he’s an enemy, I want to know who he’s working with. If he’s an ally … I want to know why he’s not working with us.”
 
He turned to Adrian and flashed his signature Captain Chromium smile, the one that, even after all these years, still made Adrian feel like he was looking at a picture on a cereal box. “Who knows? Maybe he’ll be at the trials.”
 
“Mr. Everhart, Mr. Westwood.” A woman in a white lab coat and sneakers made her way across the lobby, carrying a clipboard. “May I have a moment? We’ve finished our preliminary tests on the chemical solution that was inside that projectile dart.”
 
Hugh and Simon joined her and started heading back in the direction she’d come from. Adrian followed, pretending he’d been invited, as the rest of the crowd dispersed.
 
“We don’t have a run yet on the physical casing of the projectile,” said the woman, flipping a page on her clipboard. “But the solution was nearly identical to poisons that have been traced to Cyanide in the past.”
 
“Cyanide,” said Hugh. “Leroy Flinn?”
 
The woman nodded.
 
“An Anarchist,” said Adrian.
 
They paused and turned back, and all three seemed surprised that he was still there.
 
Sighing, Hugh turned back to the technician. “Nothing on the gun yet?”
 
She started to shake her head, but hesitated. “This isn’t confirmed, but it carried manufacturing marks similar to some we’ve apprehended from nonaffiliated criminals. Black market, if I had to guess.”
 
“Could be a new dealer in the city,” said Hugh, stroking his chin.
 
“Or an old dealer,” added Simon, “getting back into the business.”
 
“Who cares where the gun came from?” said Adrian. “Cyanide made the poison and we know he’s an Anarchist. Between him and the Puppeteer, that’s got to be who Nightmare is working for. Or … with.”
 
Simon shoved the edges of his cape back from his shoulders. “The Anarchists have been inactive for nine years. More likely the girl’s just some prodigy miscreant trying to make a name for herself on the streets.”
 
“You don’t know that,” said Adrian. “And what does it matter? They attacked us today—the Puppeteer and Nightmare both. That has to be enough cause to go after the Anarchists, even under the code authority.”
 
“It isn’t enough to confirm that Nightmare really is one of them.” Hugh smiled then, and there was something so warm and kind about it that Adrian bristled, like his dad was trying to comfort him after a rough day at softball practice. “But maybe you’re right. We’ll send someone to investigate the Anarchists. Ask a few questions, see what they can find out.”
 
Adrian’s left eyelid began to twitch. “Why not send me? Us? Oscar and Ruby were on the ground today—they know more about Nightmare than anyone at this point. Let my team go.”
 
“Your team is excellent at patrol work,” said Simon, “but you’re not investigators. We’ll find someone with more experience to handle it.”
 
Adrian massaged his brow. “I don’t think … I just wonder if another team is going to take this as seriously as they should. Nightmare showed herself to be a real threat today, and if the Anarchists were involved, then we have to stop thinking of them as harmless tunnel rats. Even without Ace, they’re still villains. We can’t be sure what they’re capable of.”
 
Hugh laughed. “You forget who you’re talking to, Sketch,” he said, using Adrian’s Renegade name, and Adrian couldn’t tell if it was endearing or insulting. “Let the Anarchists try to reclaim power of the city. They would never stand a chance—with or without this Nightmare. We are still superheroes, you know.”
 
They turned and followed the woman into the elevator bank, and already Adrian could hear them moving on to other topics of Council business—how they would reassure the people after today’s attacks, and what to do about Winston Pratt, and how best to track down this alleged black-market weapons distributor.
 
Adrian watched them go, his arms crossed tightly over his chest. He couldn’t help but feel that Hugh Everhart was mistaken. They weren’t superheroes anymore—not in the way they used to be. It wasn’t because they were getting older or because they hadn’t been out on the field so much since they’d assembled the Council and left most of the crime fighting to the younger recruits. It was because they had rules now. Rules that they themselves had created, but that kept their hands tied nonetheless.
 
The solution seemed so simple to him, so obvious. They knew where the Anarchists lived. Renegade teams raided their stronghold every few months to make sure they weren’t harboring illegal weaponry or building bombs or concocting fatal poisons exactly like the one found in that dart. All they had to do was go there and demand that Nightmare be handed over.
 
Instead they were going to send in some team who would … do what? Ask a few inane questions, then politely apologize for taking up their time?
 
The Puppeteer and Cyanide were both Anarchists who had been loyal to Ace from the start. The odds that Winston Pratt had been working alone today struck Adrian as unlikely, and the idea that Nightmare’s usage of his balloon and the fact that her dart had Cyanide’s poison in it might be coincidences seemed naïve.
 
If the Anarchists were growing active again, recruiting new members, plotting against the Council, this might be their best opportunity to stop them, before they were allowed to get out of control.
 
Because they could not get out of control. Not again. Nine years had passed, yet the world still bore too many scars from the rule of Ace Anarchy.
 
Adrian wasn’t sure they would be able to recover a second time.
 
CHAPTER SIX
 
THE BALLOON HAD CRASHED into an apartment building just south of Bracken Way. Nova jumped from the basket before it hit the pavement and disappeared into the shadows of a connecting street. Knowing the Renegades would be tracking the balloon and searching for her, she forced her legs to carry her almost two miles through back alleys and empty courtyards before she finally collapsed behind a laundromat and a restaurant that advertised both teriyaki and cheeseburgers. She lay on the concrete, staring up through the grates of the fire escape, through the clotheslines strung with underpants and towels, at the faintest glimpse of sky between the brick facades. Grit dug into her back and every muscle ached, but it felt good to remove the hood and face mask. To breathe in the air, even if it smelled of old grease and garlic and, occasionally, a whiff of wet dog.
 
Only when a real wet dog came sniffing around her head did she shove its nose away, peel herself off the pavement, and start to make her way back home.
 
Back to the shadows and squalor of everyday life.
 
She walked for more than an hour before she made it to one of the defunct subway entrances that connected to the network of tunnels the Anarchists had seized after the Renegades’ victory had sent them into hiding. For the last eight years the Council had been saying they were going to get the subway system up and running again, but as far as Nova could tell, there’d been exactly zero progress made. She had serious doubts it would happen anytime soon.
   
Most Popular
» Magical Midlife Meeting (Leveling Up #5)
» Magical Midlife Love (Leveling Up #4)
» The ​Crown of Gilded Bones (Blood and Ash
» Lover Unveiled (Black Dagger Brotherhood #1
» A Warm Heart in Winter (Black Dagger Brothe
» Meant to Be Immortal (Argeneau #32)
» Shadowed Steel (Heirs of Chicagoland #3)
» Wicked Hour (Heirs of Chicagoland #2)
» Wild Hunger (Heirs of Chicagoland #1)
» The Bromance Book Club (Bromance Book Club
» Crazy Stupid Bromance (Bromance Book Club #
» Undercover Bromance (Bromance Book Club #2)
fantasy.readsbookonline.com Copyright 2016 - 2024