She licked her lips. Flexed her fingers once around the knife handle, then tucked it into her waistband, ignoring how the ice burned against her skin.
She braced herself—again.
The Gargoyle stampeded.
Nova stampeded back. Racing headlong, straight for her opponent.
A moment before they collided, Nova sprang upward. She landed with both feet on Gargoyle’s shoulders and used the momentum to launch herself at one of the pillars that stood just within the circle. Her arms and legs locked around the pole and she started to shimmy upward.
Below, she heard Gargoyle’s taunting, thick voice, saying something about the little girl running away, but she didn’t much care what he thought she was doing.
Reaching the top of the pillar, she took the frozen knife handle from against her back and swung it at the strings that held the long paper banner over the field. The edge was still sharp, and the strings snapped with one clean cut. Her end of the banner fluttered to the ground.
Something splintered beneath her. The column shuddered. Nova glanced down as Gargoyle aimed a second punch at the column, driving a deep crack along the wooden beam.
The column started to creak and tip toward the center of the ring.
Nova dived off, rolling as she hit the ground. She snatched up the end of the banner and bounded back to her feet. Spinning to face her opponent, she lifted the blade and threw it end over end. It spun through the air in a perfect arc, right for Gargoyle’s chest.
He blocked it with his forearm. What was left of the knife shattered into a hundred tiny shards of ice.
His laugh boomed through the arena, mimicked by the thousands of strangers in the stands.
“What’s your plan now?” Gargoyle said. “Strangle me with a strip of butcher paper?”
Nova scowled. She wanted him enraged, not amused. She needed him to charge at her—with feeling, this time. Instead, Gargoyle turned back to the crowd and started riling them up some more, barking jokes about the wittle girl who lost her wittle knife.
Nova glanced around, searching for something else she could use.
Her eye caught on Adrian Everhart.
He was standing behind his team’s table, both hands planted on the tablecloth, his fingers drumming anxiously as he watched the duel. He met her gaze with an intensity that had been lacking at the parade.
Her pulse skipped.
Licking her lips, she scanned the random assortment of objects scattered across his table.
She pointed. “That.”
Adrian glanced down, lifting his hands as if he thought they might be concealing something.
“The cannon!”
Uncertain, Adrian picked up the small cannon figurine.
Wrapping her forearm up in the banner and hoping with everything inside her it would be strong enough to hold her weight, Nova started to run.
Gargoyle turned back, curious, as Nova made a full turn around the ring, then kicked off and pulled herself a few feet higher on the banner. The Gargoyle ducked as she neared him, but she wasn’t going for an attack. Instead, Nova stomped both feet down hard on his shoulder and used the leverage to swing herself outward from the ring. “Now!”
Adrian lobbed the miniature cannon at her as Nova swung past their table. She caught it in her free hand, then slid down the banner and somersaulted back into the ring.
Gargoyle’s laughter boomed through the arena. “What does that thing shoot—marbles? Oh, I’m terrified! Please don’t hurt me!”
The crowd hollered in response.
Crouching near the center of the ring, the banner clutched in one fist and the cannon in the other, Nova grinned. “If you’re so brave, why don’t you come a little closer and find out?”
Gargoyle shook his head, smirking. “Careful what you ask for.”
Then he was running at her again.
Nova jogged backward on the balls of her feet, the banner fluttering at her side.
At the last moment, she tossed the cannon between them. It rolled into Gargoyle’s path, directly beneath one of his large feet. He stepped on it and the wheels shot out from beneath him, sending him off-balance. He yelped. One hand swiped toward Nova as he stumbled and she darted out of his reach. Spinning to the side, she lifted the banner overhead.
Gargoyle struck the paper like a flailing bull and Nova leaped up onto his back, wrapping the paper around his head to blind him. The other half of the banner was torn from the second column and Gargoyle tripped and fell, the momentum from his own charge sending him rolling onto his side. He landed in a heap, inches from the edge of the ring while his massive hands pawed at the paper blindfold.
Nova sprang up onto the mountain of his chest and grabbed one of his hands. It came away from his face holding a ball of scrunched paper. Confused and disoriented, his one revealed eye glared up at her as she used all her body weight to force his hand down onto the fake grass at his side.
The horn blared.
Gargoyle jerked his hand away as if the grass had burned him. He sat up, throwing Nova off him. She landed with a grunt on her side, well outside of the ring, but she didn’t care. She was already laughing as she peered up at the giant who was staring in dismay at the implant of his own hand in the grass.
“Rock paper scissors,” she said, hauling herself to her feet and brushing off her pants. “Paper beats rock.”
She strolled past him, ignoring Frostbite and her team and instead focusing on Adrian Everhart. The boy from the parade. The one who had fixed her bracelet.
He held her eyes as she approached and the way he looked at her made her victory feel newly, inexplicably real. It wasn’t entirely a look of shock, though there was a bit of that. But there was something dumbfounded and impressed and proud there, too, and it made her heart swell.
She’d been challenged by a Renegade—at trials—and she’d won.
But before she reached the table, she was attacked from both sides. Two sets of arms wrapped around her and someone squealed in her ear.
Instinctively, Nova dropped to the ground, grabbed their ankles, and yanked upward.
The two Renegades hit the ground hard. The boy groaned pitifully. The girl gaped up at the arena ceiling, mouth shuddering open and closed as she struggled to find her breath again.
Nova snarled, recognizing Smokescreen and Red Assassin. She didn’t have any weaponry to defend herself against them, but she spotted the ruby gem attached to Red Assassin’s wrist and reached for it, considering a dozen different ways she could use it to her advantage—
“Whoa, whoa, whoa!”
Nova’s hand stilled. She lifted her head. Adrian Everhart leaped over the table and approached her with hands raised, a fine-tipped marker tucked between his fingers.
“They’re with me—us,” he said, even as his concern was giving way again to that slightly baffled, slightly endearing grin. “They’re on your team.”
Blinking, Nova glanced down again. Red Assassin managed to sit up, while Smokescreen grunted, “Pleased to meet you.”
“I think,” gasped Red Assassin, eyeing Nova in wonder, “we’ll get along just fine.”
Nova gulped.
“See? They’re fine. You’re fine. Everybody’s fine,” said Adrian.
“Gargoyle is not fine,” said Smokescreen, rubbing his hip.
“Not concerned about Gargoyle.” Uncapping his marker, Adrian crouched down so he was eye level with Nova and, without bothering to ask permission, started to draw something onto her shirt, right over her racing heart. She flinched at the unexpected touch, but if he noticed, he pretended not to.
When he had finished, he capped the marker and stood.
Nova peered down at the gleaming red pin on her chest. That familiar, iconic, hateful R.
“I’m Adrian,” he said, holding out a hand. A Renegade. Holding out a hand—to her.
Bracing herself, Nova took it and allowed him to pull her to her feet. His grip was firm, but his expression was warm and kind, his
dark eyes focused on her from behind those thick-framed glasses. The chaos of the arena grew dim and distant. The whole world seemed to shrink to this tiny pocket of space, where Nova could feel only the press of his palm, unafraid of the touch of her skin. Where she could see only that friendly, unreserved grin. Where she could hear, not the chants and cheers of the crowd, but only his voice, his words.
“Welcome to the Renegades.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
ADRIAN AWOKE EARLY, all sense of tiredness wiped away the moment he opened his eyes. He didn’t normally consider himself a morning person, but as he sat up in bed he felt charged with energy. Like the day ahead was brimming with potential.
Not just because of the trials. Not just because they had a new teammate starting today—someone who he was pretty sure every other team on that field had regretted rejecting the moment she defeated Gargoyle.
But more than that, they had a new lead in the Nightmare case.
The night before he’d overheard his dads talking about the gun that Ruby had taken during the rooftop fight. Their investigations department had traced it to a guns dealer who had bought and sold a lot of weaponry during the Age of Anarchy, a man named Gene Cronin who went by the alias the Librarian. Not a particularly original name, as he had, in fact, operated a public library during the Age of Anarchy, and still did.
Adrian was sure they’d be assigning someone to investigate Cronin soon, maybe even today, and he was determined that he and his team get the mission. After all, they had a new team member. A prodigy who never slept. It was a surveillance dream come true.
In some uncanny way, it felt almost foreordained.
On top of that, he’d finally perfected the concept for his new tattoo and the Sentinel’s new power, and—Adrian checked the communicator band on his wrist and saw that it wasn’t even five o’clock yet—with more than three hours still before he had to leave for headquarters, he even had time to give himself the tattoo that morning.
He headed upstairs to make a pot of coffee, even though he didn’t feel that he really needed it, and to check that his dads were still sleeping. He paused in the foyer, listening to the creaks of the house. Everything was still and dark.
They weren’t exactly morning people, either.
Ten minutes later, he returned to his converted basement, coffee mug in hand. The basement was divided into two rooms—the first housed his bed, a sofa, a bookshelf overflowing with old sketchbooks and comics, and a small TV with an assortment of video games. The second room he considered his art studio, even though calling it that made it seem much cooler than it really was. Mostly it was just an easel, a cheap plywood desk, and a floor covered in drop cloths splattered with years-old paint.
Everything he needed was already in the bottom drawer of the desk. He sat down in the rolling office chair and began arranging his supplies.
Rubbing alcohol and cotton balls. Bandages. The jar of tattoo ink he’d purchased from an incense-filled shop on the edges of the Henbane District, where it had been shelved between a potted money tree and a hookah pipe.
He laid his right arm across the desk, palm up, and used his opposite fingers to measure how long he would make the cylinder. Three inches, maybe four, midway between his wrist and elbow. At one end he would include a scope symbol, for targeting. Clean, simple, effective.
It was all in the intention, anyway. He had gotten the zipper to work, so this one should be easy. He had been extremely intentional with the zipper, making sure that he had sketched out the exact armored suit he wanted, down to every tiny detail, never allowing his focus to waver as he inked the tattoo into his skin.
Intention. He’d learned at a young age that it mattered far more than anything else where his ability was concerned. Not skill. Not execution. Intention.
If the zipper could hide away an entire armored bodysuit, then surely this cylinder could produce a steady stream of percussive energy beams.
Easy.
Adrian dipped a cotton ball in the rubbing alcohol and cleansed the skin over his forearm. After it had dried, he drew the symbol with a blue ink pen. It was a slower process than the first tattoos had been, having to sketch it out with his nondominant hand this time; but once he was finished, it still looked precisely how he wanted it to.
He had been so nervous that first time, that first tattoo. His brain had constantly supplied him with any number of practical warnings about needle-transmitted diseases, not to mention the pain that he knew would come with self-tattooing. Despite all the wounds and injuries that came as a result of being a Renegade, he still wasn’t on board for pain when it was, strictly speaking, unnecessary.
But he’d worked up the courage, first testing out his tattooing skills on the skin of a grapefruit before working up the nerve to do it on himself.
The flame had been first. Though it was small, it had taken more than an hour to complete.
Next had been the springs on the soles of his feet, and those had hurt. But he gritted his teeth and bore it, and the first time he’d launched himself two stories into the air, he knew it had been worthwhile.
It wasn’t until after the success of the springs that he’d had the idea for the Sentinel. It was inspired by a fictional character he’d created when he was eleven, back when he’d had the dream of someday drawing comics for a living, which at the time was somehow more interesting to him than being a Renegade. He’d completed three full issues of a comic that he titled Rebel Z, one he’d never shown to anyone else. In the story, twenty-six homeless street kids were kidnapped and forced to become science experiments for a madman. The first twenty-five all died as a result of the experiments, but the last boy, known only as Z, became a superhero newly imbued with a number of awe-inspiring superpowers. In the second issue, he obtained an armored suit. In the third issue, he started calling himself the Sentinel, and he became a vigilante set on destroying the madman and anyone who had helped him take advantage of so many innocent kids.
After that, Adrian got bored with the story and stopped making the comics. He never did get to watch Z exact his revenge, but he did find himself thinking about the character again and again, even as the years passed. A vigilante with a mission, an alter ego, and unstoppable power. A superhero in every sense of the word.
When he’d had the idea for the zipper tattoo, the temptation had been impossible to resist. He hadn’t considered straying from the Renegades’ codes at the time. If anything, he’d been excited to tell his dads and his friends about the Sentinel, once he knew it worked. He had intended to reveal himself after the parade.
But then the parade happened. Danna got hurt. Nightmare got away. And suddenly he could see the appeal of keeping a secret identity, well … secret.
It wouldn’t be forever. Once he was sure he could control all the Sentinel’s powers, then he would reveal himself. Or, perhaps he would wait until after he’d found and arrested Nightmare. Or until he uncovered her connection to his mother’s killer and brought them to justice too.
Just like Rebel Z—once his mission was complete, he would reveal himself. Until then, the Sentinel had work to do.
Adrian laid out his tools, filling a shallow dish with black ink and lighting a candle. He swiped a new alcohol-dipped cotton ball over his skin one more time, fading the blue ink slightly, then dabbed it dry with a clean towel.
Finally he sterilized the needle—an everyday needle he’d found in a forgotten sewing box in a cabinet in the laundry room—running the point back and forth through the flame.
Adrian flexed his forearm, dipped the needle into the ink, and set to work.
The first stick was always the worst. That moment when he wondered, yet again, if it was a really bad idea to be doing this.
But the doubts faded faster every time.
He soon fell into a steady rhythm. Hunkered over the desk, watching his fingers progress along the blue lines. Needle in, needle out. Pausing only occasionally to wipe away tiny beads of blood with a clean rag. A thous
and tiny punctures into his flesh as seconds and minutes ticked into hours. At one point he heard the telltale creaks of the overhead floorboards announcing that someone was moving around the kitchen upstairs, but he ignored it. His dads always left him alone when he was down in his room and, besides, they probably thought he was still sleeping.
When he was done, Adrian set down the needle, stretched out his neck with a few satisfying pops, then held out his arm to admire his work. Sore and shining and permanent.
He stashed the implements back in the drawer, then headed up to the bathroom on the main floor to wash and bandage the skin. He had just finished the wrapping and pulled on a long-sleeve shirt when he heard Simon calling him.
“Yeah?” he asked, walking into the kitchen.
Simon was standing over a skillet that hissed with bacon, while Hugh leaned over the bar sorting through a large stack of mail.
“I thought I heard you awake,” said Simon, nodding toward a plate overflowing with cantaloupe, strawberries, and scones. “Have some breakfast.”
Adrian stared at it. “Really?”
“Really,” said Simon, giving him a stern look, though Adrian knew it was just because he felt guilty that the idea of a homemade breakfast was worthy of suspicion. “We’re starting a new family tradition. Breakfast together once a week. Now get some bacon and sit down.”
Adrian suppressed a smile and did as he was told. Hugh and Simon liked to start new family traditions every few months, and over the years had cycled through everything from Friday board-game nights to summer picnics at the park to a short stint in which they agreed to all go jogging together at six a.m. every morning, which had lasted exactly one day. Adrian knew it was their way of trying, as though after all these years his dads still weren’t convinced that the three of them really were a family.
So Adrian, who loved his dads, the men who had taken him in without a second thought after his mother died, accepted four slices of bacon and sat down at the bar. “Does this new family tradition come with fresh-squeezed orange juice?”
Renegades Page 17
