A man stood on the landing—stubble on his chin and light hair pulled into a sleek tail. He wore a heavy jacket, though it wasn’t cold outside.
He was holding a gun.
His indifferent gaze darted to Nova and she shrank back, but his attention slid back to her father as if he hadn’t even seen her.
“It’s a misunderstanding,” said Papà. He had put himself between the man and Nova’s mom. “Let me talk to him. I’m sure I can explain—”
“There’s been no misunderstanding,” the man said. His voice was low and cold. “You have betrayed his trust, Mr. Artino. He does not like that.”
“Please,” said her mom. “The children are here. Please, have mercy.”
He cocked his head, his eyes shifting between them.
Fear tightened in Nova’s stomach.
“Let me talk to him,” Papà repeated. “We haven’t done anything. I’m loyal, I swear. I always have been. And my family … please, don’t hurt my family.”
There was a moment in which it looked like the man might smile, but then it passed. “My orders were quite clear. It is not my job to ask questions … or to have mercy.”
Her father took a step back. “Tala, get the girls. Go.”
“David…,” her mother whimpered, moving toward the door.
She had barely gone a step when the stranger lifted his arm.
A gunshot.
Nova gasped. Blood arced across the door, a few drops scattering across her brow. She stared, unable to move. Papà screamed and grabbed his wife. He turned her over in his arms. He was trembling while her mom wheezed and choked.
“No survivors,” the man said in his even, quiet voice. “Those were my orders, Mr. Artino. You only have yourself to blame for this.”
Nova’s father caught sight of her on the other side of the door. His eyes widened, full of panic. “Nova. Ru—”
Another gunshot.
This time Nova screamed. Her father collapsed over her mom’s body, so close she could have reached out and touched them both.
She turned and stumbled into the apartment. Past the kitchen, into her bedroom. She slammed the door shut and thrust open her closet. Climbed over the books and tools and boxes that littered the floor. She yanked the door shut and crouched down in the corner, gasping for breath, the vision of her parents burned into her thoughts every time she shut her eyes. Too late she thought that she should have gone for the fire escape. Too late.
Too late she remembered—
Evie.
She’d left Evie out there.
She’d left Evie.
A shuddering gasp was met with a horrified cry, though she tried to swallow both of them back. Her hand fell on the closet door and she tried to gauge how fast she could get out to the living room and back, if there was any chance of snatching the baby up without being seen …
The front door creaked, paralyzing her.
She pulled her hand back against her mouth.
Maybe he wouldn’t notice Evie. Maybe she would go on sleeping.
She listened to slow, heavy footsteps. Squealing floorboards.
Nova was shaking so hard she worried the noise of her clattering bones would give her away. She also knew it wouldn’t matter.
It was a small apartment, and there was nowhere for her to run.
“The Renegades will come,” she whispered, her voice little more than a breath in the darkness. The words came unbidden into her head, but they were there all the same. Something solid. Something to cling to.
Bang.
Her mother’s blood on the door.
She whimpered. “The Renegades will come…”
A truth, inspired by countless news stories heard on the radio. A certainty, patched together from the words of gossiping neighbors.
They always came.
Bang.
Her father’s body crumpling in the hall.
Nova squeezed her eyes shut as hot tears spilled down her cheeks. “The Renegades … the Renegades will come.”
Evie’s shrill cry started up in the main room.
Nova’s eyes snapped open. A sob scratched at the inside of her throat, and she could no longer say the words out loud.
Please, please let them come …
A third gunshot.
The air caught in Nova’s lungs.
Her world stilled. Her mind went blank.
She sank into the mess at the bottom of the closet.
Evie had stopped crying.
Evie had stopped.
Distantly, she heard the man moving through the apartment, checking the cabinets and behind the doors. Slow. Methodical.
By the time he found her, Nova had stopped shaking. She couldn’t feel anything anymore. Couldn’t think. The words still echoed in her head, having lost all meaning.
The Renegades … the Renegades will come …
Doused in the stark lights from her bedroom, Nova lifted her eyes. The man stood over her. There was blood on his shirt. Later, she would remember how there had been no regret, no apology, no remorse.
Nothing at all as he lifted the gun.
The metal pressed against her forehead, where her mother’s blood had cooled.
Nova reached up and grabbed his wrist, unleashing her power with more force than she ever had.
The man’s jaw slackened. His eyes dulled and rolled up into his head. He fell backward, landing with a resounding thud on her bedroom floor, crushing her dollhouse beneath his weight. The whole building seemed to shake from his fall.
Seconds later, deep, peaceful breathing filled the apartment.
Nova’s lungs contracted again. Air moved through her throat, shuddering. In. And out.
She forced herself to stand and rub the tears and snot from her face.
She picked up the gun, though it felt awkward and heavy in her hand, and slipped her finger over the trigger.
She took a step closer, one hand gripping the doorframe as she left the sanctuary of the closet. She wasn’t sure where she should aim. His head. His chest. His stomach.
She settled on his heart. Got so close to him she could feel his shirt brushing against her bare toes.
Bang. Her mother was dead.
Bang. Her father.
Bang. Evie …
The Renegades had not come.
They weren’t going to come.
“Pull the trigger,” she whispered into the empty room. “Pull the trigger, Nova.”
But she didn’t.
“Pull the trigger.”
She couldn’t.
Minutes, maybe hours later, her uncle found her. She was still standing over the stranger’s sleeping form, ordering herself to pull the trigger. Hearing those gunshots over and over every time she dared to close her eyes.
“Nova?” A plastic bag dropped to the floor, taking a plastic medicine bottle with it. Nova startled and turned the gun on him.
Uncle Alec didn’t even flinch as he crouched before her. He was dressed as he always was—the black-and-gold uniform, his dark eyes barely visible through the copper-toned helmet that disguised most of his face. “Nova.… Your parents.… Your sister.…” He looked down and reached for the gun. Nova didn’t resist as he took it from her. His attention turned to the man. “I’d always thought you might be one of us, but your father wouldn’t tell me what it was you could do.…”
He met Nova’s eyes again. Pity and, perhaps, admiration.
With that look, Nova fell apart, throwing herself into his arms. “Uncle Alec,” she wailed, sobbing into his chest. “He shot them … he … he killed…”
He picked her up, cradling her against his chest. “I know,” he murmured into her hair. “I know, sweet, dangerous child. But you’re safe now. I’ll protect you.”
She barely heard him over the noise in her head. The tumult pressing against the inside of her skull. Bang-bang-bang.
“But you can’t call me Alec anymore, not out there. All right, my little nightmare?” He smoothed her hair. The
handle of the gun bumped against her ear. “To the rest of the world, I’m Ace. You understand? Uncle Ace.”
But she wasn’t listening. And maybe he knew that.
In the midst of her cries, he squeezed her tight, aimed the gun at the sleeping man, and fired.
CHAPTER ONE
TEN YEARS LATER
THE STREETS OF DOWNTOWN GATLON were overflowing with fake superheroes.
Kids ran amok in orange capes, screeching and waving Blacklight-branded sparklers over their heads, or shooting one another with Tsunami-themed squirt guns. Grown men had squeezed themselves into blue leggings and painted shoulder pads to look like the Captain’s armor, and now sat clinking glasses together inside the roped-off beer gardens that dotted the main street. Gender-swapping was a big thing this year, too, with countless women having shown up in risqué versions of the Dread Warden’s signature bodysuit, and plenty of men having strapped cheap replicas of Thunderbird’s black-feathered wings to their backs.
Oh, how Nova despised the Renegade Parade.
The street vendors weren’t any better, hawking everything from cheesy light-up wands to tiny plush versions of the famous Renegade quintet. Even the food trucks were celebrating the day’s theme, with Captain Chromium funnel cakes and Tsunami fish’n’chips baskets and one sign advertising DREAD WARDEN’S FAVORITE POPCORN CHICKEN—GET SOME NOW BEFORE IT DISAPPEARS!
If Nova had had an appetite to start with, she was sure she would have lost it by now.
A great cheer rose up through the crowd and the noise of a marching band broke through the din. Trumpets and drums and the steady thumping of hundreds of synchronized musicians moved through the street. The music grew louder, bearing down on them now. Cannons blasted overhead, dousing the crowd with confetti. The children went nuts. The adults weren’t much better.
Nova shook her head, mildly disappointed in humanity. She stood at the back of the crowd, unable to see much of the actual parade, which was fine by her. Arms crossed defensively over her chest. Fingers drumming an impatient rhythm against her elbow. Already it felt like she’d been standing there for an eternity.
The cheering turned suddenly to loud, exuberant boos, which could only mean one thing. The first floats had come into view.
It was tradition for the villain floats to go first, to really get the crowd riled up, and to remind everyone what it was they were celebrating. Today was the ninth anniversary of the Battle for Gatlon, when the Renegades had taken on the Anarchists and the other villain gangs in a bloody fight that had ended with dozens of deaths on both sides.
The Renegades had won, of course. Ace’s revolutionaries were defeated and the few villains who didn’t perish that day either crawled away into hiding or left the city entirely.
And Ace …
Ace Anarchy was dead. Destroyed in the explosion that leveled half of the cathedral he had made his home.
That day officially marked the end of the Age of Anarchy, and the start of the Council’s rule.
They called it the Day of Triumph.
Nova looked up to see an enormous balloon, spanning nearly the width of the street as it floated between the high-rises. It was a cartoon-like replica of the Atomic Brain, who had been one of Ace’s closest allies before the Renegades had killed him nearly fifteen years ago. Nova hadn’t known him personally, but she still felt a spark of resentment to see the balloon’s treatment of him—the bloated head and grotesquely disfigured face.
The crowd laughed and laughed.
The tiny transmitter crackled inside her ear.
“And so it begins,” came Ingrid’s voice, wry and unamused.
“Let them laugh,” Phobia responded. “They won’t be laughing for much longer. Nightmare, are you in position?”
“Roger,” Nova said, careful to move her lips as little as possible, though she doubted anyone in the crowd was paying attention to her. “Just need to know which rooftop you want me on.”
“The Council hasn’t left the warehouse yet,” said Phobia. “I will alert you once they do.”
Nova glanced across the street, to the second-level window of an office building, where she could barely see Ingrid—or the Detonator, as the public knew her—peering out through the blinds.
The booing of the crowd started up again, more enthusiastic than before. Over the heads of the spectators, Nova caught glimpses of an elaborate parade float. On it was a miniature-scale version of the Gatlon skyline and standing among the buildings were actors wearing over-stylized costumes meant to resemble some of the most well-known members of Ace’s gang. Nova recognized Rat and Brimstone, both killed at the hands of Renegades, but before she could be offended on their behalf, she spotted a dark figure near the top of the float. A surprised laugh escaped her, easing some of the anxiety that had been building all morning.
“Phobia,” she said, “did you know they were going to put you on the villain floats this year?”
A hiss came back to her through the ear piece. “We are not here to admire the parade, Nightmare.”
“Don’t worry. You look good up there,” she said, eyeing the actor. He had donned a long black cloak and was carrying an enormous plastic scythe with a bunch of rubber snakes glued to the handle. But when he opened his cloak, rather than being consumed by shadows, the actor revealed a pale, skinny physique wearing nothing but lime green swimming briefs.
The crowd went berserk. Even Nova’s cheek twitched. “They may have taken a few liberties.”
“I think I like it better,” said Ingrid with a snort, watching the parade from the window.
“It certainly inspires terror,” agreed Nova.
Phobia said nothing.
“Is that…?” started Ingrid. “Oh my holy bomb squad, they have a Queen Bee this year.”
Nova looked again. At first the actress was concealed on the other side of the cityscape, but then she moved into view and Nova’s eyebrows shot upward. The woman’s blonde wig was twice the size of her head and her sequined black-and-yellow dress could not have been any gaudier as it sparkled in the afternoon sunlight. She had black mascara running down her cheeks and was embracing a large stuffed bumblebee to her bosom, wailing about the unfair treatment of her little honey makers.
“Wow,” said Nova. “That’s actually not a bad impersonation.”
“I can’t wait to tell Honey,” said Ingrid. “We should be recording this.”
Nova’s eyes darted around the crowd for what might have been the thousandth time. Standing still made her edgy. She was wired for movement. “Are you offended they don’t have a Detonator?” she asked.
There was a long pause before Ingrid said, “Well, I am now.”
Nova turned back to the parade. She stood on her tiptoes, trying to make out if any of their other comrades were among the costumes, when a loud crash startled the crowd. The top of the tallest building on the float—a replica of Merchant Tower—had just blown upward, and a new figure was emerging, laughing madly as he raised his hands toward the sky.
Nova clamped her jaw shut, the moment’s amusement doused beneath a rush of fury.
The Ace Anarchy costume was the closest to reality—the familiar black-and-gold suit, the bold, iconic helmet.
The audience’s surprise passed quickly. For many, this was the highlight of the parade, even more of a draw than seeing their beloved Council.
Within seconds, people had started to reach for the rotten fruits and wilted cabbages they’d brought with them for just this purpose. They started pummeling the villain float, shouting obscenities and mocking the villains on board. The actors took it with remarkable resilience, ducking down behind the buildings and screeching in feigned horror. The Ace Anarchy impersonator took the brunt of the attack, but he never dropped character—shaking his fist and calling the children at the front of the crowd stinking rascals and little nightmares, before he finally ducked down into the hollow building and pulled the top back over himself, setting up the surprise for the next street of onlook
ers.
Nova swallowed, feeling the knot in her stomach loosen only once the villain float had passed.
My little nightmare …
He had called her that, too, all those years ago.
The floats were followed by a band of acrobats and a Thunderbird balloon gliding overhead. Nova spotted a banner being propped up on tall poles, advertising the upcoming Renegade trials.
BOLD. VALIANT. JUST. DO YOU HAVE WHAT IT TAKES TO BE A HERO?
She faked a loud gagging sound, and an elderly woman nearby gave her a sour look.
A body crashed into her and Nova stumbled backward, her hands instinctively landing on the kid’s shoulders and righting her before she fell onto the pavement.
“Watch it,” said Nova.
The girl looked up—a domino mask over her eyes making her look like a smaller, scrawnier, girlier version of the Dread Warden.
“What was that, Nightmare?” Ingrid said into her ear. Nova ignored her.
The girl pulled away with a muttered sorry, then turned and wove her way back into the teeming crowd.
Nova adjusted her shirt and was just about to turn back to the parade when she saw the kid crash into someone else. Only, rather than set her right as Nova had done, the stranger stooped low, grabbed the girl’s ankle, and turned her upside down in one swift motion.
Nova gaped as the stranger hauled the girl, screaming and swatting his chest, back in Nova’s direction. He was roughly her age, but much taller, with dark skin, close-cut hair, and thick-framed eyeglasses. The way he strolled through the crowd made it seem more like he was carrying one of those cheesy Captain Chromium plush dolls rather than a ferocious, flailing child.
He stopped in front of Nova, a patient smile on his face.
“Give it back,” he said.
“Put me down!” the girl yelled. “Let me go!”
Nova looked from the boy to the child, then took a quick scan of the nearby crowd. Far too many people were watching them. Watching her.
That wasn’t good.
“What are you doing?” she said, turning back to the boy. “Put her down.”
His smile became even more serene and Nova’s heart stammered. Not just because he had one of those easy smiles that made other girls swoon, but because there was something unsettlingly familiar about him, and Nova immediately began racking her brain to figure out where she knew him from, and whether or not he was a threat.
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