Renegades (Renegades #1)(17)
Author: Marissa Meyer
Leroy’s lips lifted in a subtle smile. “Have you ever considered trying out?”
She laughed. “What, to be a Renegade?”
“They don’t know who you are, what you look like.” He turned the flame of a burner to low and set a glass jar on top. “You would make a promising spy.”
“Except there’s no way I could pretend to respect those righteous, arrogant, pretentious … heroes long enough to learn anything useful.”
Leroy shrugged. “You could, if you wanted to.”
“Not to mention getting through their background check,” she continued. “Not just anyone gets to join their clique, you know. You really think they’d let in a girl with the last name Artino?”
He waved a hand at her. “Minor obstacles. It’s easy enough to get forged paperwork in this city. Are we villains or not?”
“You’ve given this some thought.”
He glanced up. “Only since they started promoting the trials again. Ace always used to say that knowledge is power, and he was right. Unfortunately, these days the Renegades have all the knowledge and the power.”
Nova picked up her near-empty mug and stood. “In that case, sending me to the trials would be a perfect plan. If only I had a death wish.”
“Give yourself more credit, little nightmare,” said Leroy. “I know I do.”
Nova grunted. “I’ll think about it,” she said, shoving open the door. “And don’t call me that.”
Leroy only smiled.
CHAPTER SEVEN
ADRIAN TOSSED HIS FEET onto the coffee table, a bowl of cereal cradled in his lap. It was his standard fare when his dads worked late, which happened more often than not, and after the day they’d had, he didn’t expect them home anytime soon.
Grabbing the remote, he turned on the late-night news. Shaky footage of the parade appeared on the TV screen—a video of the Puppeteer’s harlequin balloon drifting through the streets of downtown Gatlon while crowds screamed and stampeded to try to get away. The voice from an off-screen reporter was quoting the statistics. The numbers had grown since he heard them that afternoon and now they were saying there were sixty-eight casualties, with fifty-one civilians still receiving treatment at Gatlon City Hospital and two Renegades, including Council member Tamaya Rae, being treated for injuries at Renegade Headquarters. Luckily, there were no fatalities. The perpetrator, Anarchist Winston Pratt, known to most as the Puppeteer, was in custody …
Adrian turned his gaze away from the footage and settled his hand on the sketchbook beside him. He opened the cover and used his thumb to flip through the pages until he found his most recent batch of drawings, those he’d doodled hastily as soon as he got home, while the idea was still fresh.
Crunching his way through a mouthful of cereal, he lifted the sketchbook to eye level, inspecting the drawings.
Concepts for a new tattoo.
He hadn’t planned on giving himself any more, but then, he’d thought every tattoo would be the final one, and less than two months into this experiment he already had three inked into his skin.
But he’d learned a lot about his abilities up on those rooftops, facing off against Nightmare. Or, he’d learned a lot about the Sentinel’s abilities.
There was potential there. Great potential—he knew it. The armor had worked precisely how he’d hoped it would, offering both flexibility and protection, even if Nightmare had managed to find a vulnerability in the suit.
And the springs on his feet had worked like a charm. The first time he’d launched himself from street level up to a ledge three stories high, he’d felt almost as if he’d taken flight.
But the fire … the fire was problematic.
It had seemed like a great idea when he’d done it. Had, in fact, been the first tattoo he’d given himself, before he’d even known for sure that it would work. Before he could be certain that the gift of his drawings could transfer into a permanent tattoo and imbue his body with a brand-new, entirely real superpower.
Everyone wanted fire manipulation. It was a classic, and it came with so many applications, from lighting birthday candles to torching an entire warehouse stocked with illegal narcotics.
Not that he’d ever stumbled across such a warehouse, but if he did, he liked knowing he could do something about it.
But fire was also unpredictable. It was a force of nature—wild and erratic.
What Adrian needed was something clean and orderly. Something that could be systematically aimed and fired, even by him, who was admittedly not the best shot in the Renegades. He needed something that would be a lot less likely to strike one of his own teammates.
His first thought had been some sort of gun appendage built into the armor, but then he’d remembered a girl who had come to be trained at headquarters a few years back—a prodigy who could shoot narrow beams of energy out of a node in the center of her forehead, hitting any target with percussive force. People had mostly referred to them as lasers, but that’s not what they were. Adrian wasn’t actually sure what they were, but he did know that they hit with enough force to stun an opponent and sometimes even knock them unconscious, without leaving any of the evidence a bullet might have left. No shell, no casing, no open wound.
It was perfect.
The trick was for him to figure out how to incorporate such an ability into the Sentinel’s armor … and what sort of tattoo would convey such a power. He often found it ironic that he could make absolutely anything come to life when he drew it, if only he could first convince himself that it would make sense in reality. He had to be strategic. Practical.
Springs on the soles of his feet. A swirl of flame on his forearm. A zipper on his sternum that could be opened to release the armored suit.
And now, a laser diode, of sorts. A long, narrow cylinder, this time on his right forearm, that would emerge on the Sentinel’s gauntlet, already charged and ready to fire …
He set down the sketchbook and crunched through another spoonful of cereal.
“… and yes, the Puppeteer was caught in the end, but I just don’t think it’s acceptable that so many bystanders were harmed before he was stopped.”
Adrian’s eyes skipped back to the television, where two men and two women, all finely coiffed, were sitting around a table inside the news studio.
“Exactly!” said one of the men, leaning over the table and pointing an accusatory finger toward the woman who had spoken, even though he seemed to be in agreement with her. “It’s not acceptable. This was a heavily attended public event. Where was the security? And why did it take the Council so long to respond to this threat? It’s their job to protect us, but today they seemed more concerned with bad publicity than they did with stopping this madman.”
“Now, in the Council’s defense,” said the second man, raising both hands in a calming gesture, “we do have witness reports telling us that within the first few minutes of the attack, Captain Chromium managed to rescue seven young children from the Puppeteer’s control, while the rest of the Council and a number of off-duty Renegades ushered literally hundreds of civilians to safety inside nearby buildings and parking garages.” He lifted a silencing hand as the other man tried to interrupt. “And this aligns with what the Council has been telling us from the day the Renegades became an official entity—that they will always focus on protecting innocent lives first, and engaging in an attack second. They followed their protocols today, and I have to admire them for it. It couldn’t have been easy, especially when the Puppeteer was making himself such an obvious target.”
Adrian lifted the bowl to his mouth, slurping at the pink-tinged milk.
“Yes,” said one of the women, “but how many injuries could have been prevented if they’d just stopped him?”
The man shrugged. “And what if one of those civilians they took to safety had ended up dead? We’ll never know.”
“What we do know,” said the first woman, “is that—casualties aside—Winston Pratt probably would not have been captured today at all if it wasn’t for that would-be assassin tossing him out of his own balloon. Can we please talk about the elephant in the room here?” She spread her arms wide, her face contorted in disbelief. “Nightmare! Who is she? Where did she come from? We don’t know the first thing about her, except she almost assassinated Captain Chromium today, she took down Thunderbird, and she eluded a Renegade patrol unit in a one-on-three fight. Isn’t anyone concerned about this?”
“I am,” said the man beside her. “But what concerns me even more than this solo attack—if it was a solo attack—is that, for all we know, this could be a sign that more prodigies are going to start coming out of the woodwork, bent on destruction and mayhem all over again. It shows that the Renegades may not have the city under control like they want us to think they do. That new, villainous prodigies are still going under the radar. And if that’s the case, I’d like to hear from the Council about what they plan on doing about these threats.”