It took Nova a moment to realize he was talking to her. She jerked upright. “Yeah. Great. Sounds like fun.”
Callum pointed at Adrian. “You know, I should probably check that you’ve been given clearance, but … bah, who am I kidding? Of course you can see it. Come on back.” He waved his arm.
Adrian flashed an excited grin at Nova and started to follow.
“Hey, wait,” she said, jumping from her chair. “Can I come too, or…?”
Callum laughed. “This girl! Her curiosity is insatiable!”
Taking that as a yes, Nova flipped over a BE RIGHT BACK sign on the desk and darted after them. Callum weaved through the front section of the warehouse, giving Adrian much the same orientation he’d given her on her first day, until they arrived at a freestanding room near the back corner, with walls that didn’t quite stretch all the way to the ceiling.
Callum thrust open the door. “All right, you two have fun. I’ll let Snapshot know you’re back here.”
Nova hovered beside Adrian in the doorway, her jaw dropping. She half expected to be overcome with sadness to see all of her things and the belongings of her family, now in the hands of the Renegades—unappreciated and unloved.
But instead, she felt overwhelmed.
And a little relieved.
The chances of Adrian finding anything amid this clutter were slim.
Squaring his shoulders, Adrian angled his body to fit between two towering shelves and squeezed into the room. “He wasn’t kidding, was he?”
Nova followed after him. It was as if the Renegades had filled cart after cart with all the random things they had found down in the tunnels and just … dumped it here, without care or ceremony. Though, as her eyes adjusted to the chaos, she began to notice at least some half-hearted attempts at organization. She spotted Honey’s beloved wardrobe against one wall, piled over with her sequined dresses and silk scarves, but also Leroy’s bathrobe, and a trash bag from which Nova’s own street clothes were bursting through. Other accessories—jewelry, shoes, and the like, almost all Honey’s—were strewn across a cart nearby. The furniture was mostly lumped into a teetering stack in the middle, including Leroy’s beloved moth-eaten armchair. Practical household items were grouped erratically across a series of shelves, from electric teakettles to can openers and even a broom, though Nova couldn’t recall anyone ever using a broom down in the tunnels.
Wait, no, there had been that time when she’d seen Ingrid chasing a rat with one …
Adrian weaved through the narrow pathway, and Nova saw what had caught his attention. A bright-colored play tent, crumpled beneath a long table. “Looks like there’s some Puppeteer stuff over here,” Adrian said, crouching to dig through the rumpled nylon fabric.
“Great,” said Nova, unable to muster even a hint of enthusiasm. The smell of the subway was all around her, and she hated being reminded of it after so many weeks of life aboveground. Though there were things that had been taken from her that day that she would like to have back, she had to admit that she wasn’t sad to have left their underground prison.
Sad to leave Ace behind, yes, but not sad to be gone.
“I’ve been doing some research on the Anarchists lately,” said Adrian. He found a plastic toy kitchenette behind the tents and started yanking open its mildew-covered cupboards. “Did you know Winston Pratt’s dad was a toymaker?”
Nova blinked at the back of his head. “No,” she said, and it was the truth. She knew little about Winston or who he had been before he was the Puppeteer.
“I don’t know this for sure, but something tells me this puppet he wants might have been made by his dad. Makes sense it would be something he’s attached to, right?”
Nova didn’t respond. She had spied a desk tucked behind a series of shelves.
Her desk.
“Couldn’t find anything about his origin story, though,” Adrian continued. “Or Phobia’s. Actually couldn’t find anything about Phobia.”
Nova pushed aside a rack hung with more of Honey’s dresses, making her way to the desk. “That’s odd,” she said half-heartedly, though, in truth, she knew hardly anything about Phobia either. With a power like his, so immersed in humanity’s greatest terrors, she wasn’t sure she wanted to know his origin. She did know there were times when Phobia seemed halfway normal. Like there could be just a regular guy under that cloak—quiet and solitary, with an odd sense of humor and subtle ambition.
Who had he been before? How had he become this?
If Phobia had ever given up these secrets, she didn’t know about it.
“But there’s lots out there on Honey Harper,” said Adrian with a chuckle. Nova glanced over to see him digging through a cardboard box labeled, simply, JUNK FOOD. “She grew up on a farm about fifty miles south of here. Claims that when she was twelve years old she stepped on a hornet’s nest. The stings sent her into anaphylactic shock and she passed out. When she woke up hours later, she was swollen up like a balloon.”
“Wait—she said this?” asked Nova.
“Uh-huh. It was in a newspaper interview, back near the start of the Anarchist revolution.”
Nova frowned. It was difficult to imagine Honey ever admitting to being swollen up like a balloon.
“But,” Adrian continued, “she survived, obviously, and she found the hive’s queen crushed under her shoe. After that, the whole hive was under her control.” He looked up at Nova. “Now, that’s an origin story.”
“Why are they always so traumatic?” she murmured. She reached the desk and pulled open the top drawer. Her heart surged. A set of screwdrivers greeted her, rolling around in the drawer. They were her first tools, scavenged by Ace when she was just four years old. She stroked one of the handles lovingly, not having realized she’d missed them until that moment.
“Cyanide has a sad story, too,” said Adrian.
Nova bit the inside of her cheek. She had heard Leroy tell his story before. A victim of bullying in high school, he had been accosted by some of his peers after a chemistry lab. Things got out of hand and soon they started to attack him—not just with their fists, but by dousing him with random chemicals and acids, too.
Although, when Leroy told the story, he liked to jump ahead to the part where he cornered his lab partner in a restroom and ensured his face would be forever even more hideously scarred than Leroy’s own. Nova remembered Leroy chuckling about it, but she hadn’t thought it was funny, not for either of them.
“Sometimes,” said Adrian, his voice sounding hollow, “it’s impossible for me to fathom why anyone would ever have joined Ace Anarchy. Why would anyone do such horrible things like the Anarchists did?”
Nova’s jaw clenched.
“But then I hear the stories and … I don’t know. Sometimes you can see how it makes sense, you know?”
Gathering the screwdrivers in her hand, Nova turned to face Adrian, checking that he was preoccupied before tucking them into a pouch on her belt. “Any luck?”
“No puppet, but … do you know what these are?” Adrian held up a shoe box full of jagged metal disks.
Nova’s eyes widened.
Adrian didn’t wait for her to answer. “Nightmare’s throwing stars. Heat-tracking, I think … or maybe motion-detecting? I don’t know, but they have caused us a world of trouble. Vicious little weapons.” He lifted one from the box, turning it over to inspect it from both sides. “I always wondered how they worked. We should probably take these up to research and development.”
“I’ll do it,” she said quickly. “That’s part of my job here, you know. Sorting through things … figuring out what could be useful … making sure it gets to the right people. I’ll run it over to them after my shift today.”
Adrian put the throwing star back into the box and slid it up onto a table.
Nova exhaled. “At least we don’t have to worry about her anymore, right? The other Anarchists are scary enough, but I sure am glad Nightmare’s been taken care of.”
�
�I suppose…,” Adrian said.
Nova frowned at him. “What do you mean, you suppose?”
He shrugged. “We haven’t really proven that she’s dead.”
Goose bumps raced down her arms. “What?”
Adrian started pawing through a trunk, mostly filled with cheap magic tricks and plastic party favors. “They never found a body, or … any evidence at all that she was killed.”
“Because she was obliterated,” said Nova, more forceful than she’d intended to be. “The Detonator’s bomb destroyed her. No wonder there was nothing left!”
“Maybe. I mean, it definitely caused a lot of damage, but … shouldn’t there have been something? Body parts? Blood?”
Nova gawked at him. All this time, all these weeks, she’d felt sure about this one thing, at least. This one thing that had actually gone right. She had faked her own death. The Renegades believed that Nightmare was gone. They had called off the investigation. It was one less thing for her to worry about, and she’d embraced it heartily.
And Adrian didn’t believe it?
“But … but no one could have survived that explosion.”
“You did.”
She froze.
“You were in the fun house when the bomb hit.”
“I … I was on the opposite side of the fun house,” she whispered. “And I was protected by a giant metal cylinder.”
Adrian’s lips tilted upward again, but she could tell he was humoring her. “I know. You’re probably right. She’s probably dead. I just … wonder about it, sometimes.”
“Well, don’t.”
He chuckled, but quickly became serious again. Sliding the cardboard box beneath the table, he stood. “You know, we never talked about what happened that day.”
Nova’s pulse jumped, and just like that, she was back in the neglected corner of Cosmopolis Park, and Adrian was telling her how worried he’d been when he thought she was dead, and he was stepping closer, and her breaths were coming quicker—
“Do you want to talk about it?” His eyes were on her, unsure.
Heat climbed her neck and blossomed across her cheeks. Did she want to talk about it?
No, not really.
She wanted to pretend like it hadn’t happened. She wanted to start over.
She wanted him to try to kiss her again, because this time, she wouldn’t run away.
“I … I’m sorry,” she said, wetting her lips. “I think I just … I just got scared.”
It was true. It was still true. She was scared. Scared that she felt this way for Adrian Everhart, a Renegade. Scared that she couldn’t quite escape it, no matter how many times she reminded herself that he was the enemy.
Scared that even now, she knew that she wasn’t trying to get close to him only because Ace had suggested it. If anything, that was just a convenient excuse to do exactly what she’d wanted to do all along.
“Of course you were scared,” he said. “I was terrified.”
“You were?”
“But you were braver than I was. I completely froze up, and you…” He trailed off.
Nova stared at him, perplexed. She was brave? He froze up?
“But still, even if the Detonator was a monster, I know it couldn’t have been easy. You killed someone, and—” He lifted both hands like he was trying to calm her, but Nova wasn’t upset. She was baffled. “You did what you had to do, but it couldn’t have been easy, and … I just … if you want to talk about it, you can talk to me.”
“About … killing the Detonator,” she said, as her thoughts reshuffled and fell back into place.
Here she was, dwelling on an almost-kiss, and Adrian wanted to talk about the time she’d killed someone.
“I’m sorry,” Adrian said. “Maybe I shouldn’t have said anything. I just thought—”
“No, it’s fine. I mean … I was offered trauma counseling, if I wanted it, but I don’t really feel like I need it.” And she wasn’t about to spill her innermost thoughts to a Renegade psychiatrist, even if she did need it. “The thing is, killing the Detonator wasn’t hard.” She exhaled, and wanted to move closer to Adrian, but there was so much stuff between them. So much baggage. Her entire past life laid out at their feet, and she couldn’t bring herself to wade through it. “It wasn’t hard at all. She was hurting all those people, and she would have hurt so many more.” Her palms were becoming damp, but she forced herself to hold Adrian’s gaze and tell him the truth, what she had known even then was the truth. “She would have hurt you.”
Surprise warmed his features. “Nova…”
She turned away, her heart fluttering with the way he was looking at her.
Then—“Nova.”
She glanced up again, and Adrian was suddenly grinning. He pointed to something behind her.
Nova peered up. Her shoulders fell.
Winston’s puppet, Hettie, was perched on the topmost shelf over Nova’s old desk, its wooden legs dangling over the side, its sad eyes watching them as though it had been listening in on the whole conversation and found it severely disheartening.
She bit back a groan. “Brilliant.”
* * *
AFTER ADRIAN RETRIEVED the doll, they made their way back through the warehouse and found Snapshot talking to Callum in the section devoted to artifacts with healing properties.
“It should clearly go in defense,” Callum was saying, holding up a thick black pendant attached to a slender chain.
“I disagree,” said Snapshot, punching something into a handheld label maker. “It belongs here, with the other healing objects.”
“It doesn’t heal,” Callum said.
“It protects from disease,” said Snapshot.
“Yeah, it protects you from getting sick, but it won’t do anything if you’re already sick. It’s preventative. It’s a defensive measure. Defense.”
“Excuse me?” said Adrian, drawing their attention.
Callum opened his arms wide. “Nova, tell her! Vitality Charm, healing or defense?” He held up the necklace. The large round pendant swung from the chain. It appeared old—ancient even—with a rudimentary symbol impressed into what might have been iron, showing an open palm with a serpent curled up inside it.
Nova shook her head. “Sorry, Callum. Never heard of it.”
His shoulders sank. “Okay, well … mostly it’s used to protect against poison and disease, but there was also one account of it fending off a strength-draining attack from a prodigy.”
“Cool,” said Adrian. “Can I see?”
Callum handed the pendant to him. “They’ve had it in healing for years, but that doesn’t make sense.”
“Fine, Callum, fine,” said Snapshot, pressing a label onto the edge of a shelf. “Shelve it wherever you want. Hello, Adrian—I heard you were going through the Anarchist room. Did you find what you were looking for?”
“As a matter of fact…” Adrian held up the puppet. “Can I get it cleared to be taken out?”
She set down the label maker and took the puppet from him. She brought her cat-eye glasses down from her head and inspected the doll from every angle. After a long, quiet moment, she handed Hettie back to Adrian. “Just a puppet,” she confirmed. “Nothing extraordinary about it. You have my permission to take it from the warehouse. Callum, maybe you can make a note in the database?”
“Great, thanks,” said Adrian. He went to return the medallion to Callum, but hesitated. He looked closer at the design, his brow creasing.
Nova inched closer, trying to see what had caught his interest, but it was just a big, ugly pendant so far as she could tell. Albeit one that could protect from disease. She wondered to what extent. The common cold? The plague? Everything in between? And why wasn’t it at the hospital, rather than gathering dust in here?
“Actually, is this available to be checked out too?” asked Adrian.
“Sure,” said Callum. “But once you bring it back”—he cut a sharp look at Snapshot—“I’m putting it in defense.”
She shooed them away. “Just make sure you fill out the form, Mr. Everhart,” she said. “Nova can help you with that.”
Nova smiled tightly. “Right this way.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
WINSTON PRATT HELD the puppet in both hands, peering into its sad face with apparent indifference. Adrian had not known what to expect when he brought the doll to him. The counselor had insisted on being there, pointing out that objects that were significant and sentimental to a patient could result in strong outbursts of emotion—positive and negative. So Adrian had been prepared for delighted squeals, or wretched sobs. But had not been prepared for total apathy.
Even confusion, as Winston tilted his head from side to side. He seemed to be inspecting the doll’s face, but for what, Adrian couldn’t begin to guess.
“Well?” Adrian said finally, his patience reaching its end. The counselor shot him a disgruntled look, which he ignored. “That is Hettie, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” said Winston Pratt. “This is Hettie.” He rubbed the pad of his thumb across the black teardrop on the puppet’s cheek, as if trying to scrub the paint away. It didn’t work. Holding the doll in both hands, he lifted it to eye level and whispered, “You did this to me.”
Adrian cast a glance at the counselor. She looked worried, like she was ready to step in and divert Winston’s attention to more cheerful subjects at the first sign of trouble. Clearing her throat, she took a subtle step forward. “What did Hettie do to you, Mr. Pratt?”
Winston looked up, startled, as if he’d forgotten they were there. Then his lip curled in annoyance. “Hettie is a puppet,” he said, shaking the doll so that the wooden head bobbed back and forth. “It can’t do anything it isn’t made to do.”
The counselor blinked. “Yes,” she said slowly, “but you said—”
“It’s what he symbolizes,” Winston said. His indifference vanished, and suddenly, his face was carved with emotion. His brow creased, his eyes burned. His breaths turned ragged. “It’s what he did!” With a scream, he pulled back his arm and threw the puppet. It clacked hollowly against the wall and fell to the floor, its limbs splayed at odd angles.
Archenemies Page 15