Archenemies

by Marissa Meyer

  Leroy puffed his chest. “Uncalled for, Honey Harper.”

  “Queen Bee,” said Honey, her voice hardening. “And the car is fine, but there was a time when it was the envy of the gangs. When we had jewels and champagne and power … and now we’re scurrying through a parking garage in the dead of night, afraid to show our faces in public. And all because of the Renegades.”

  Nova spun the bracelet on her wrist. “I’m well aware of that, Honey. They took everything from me, too.”

  “That’s right. They did.” Honey lowered the glasses to the tip of her nose, her smoky gaze burning into Nova. “They can offer you notoriety and a fancy pair of boots. They might even give you pretty gems like that bauble on your wrist.”

  Nova’s heart lurched and her hand automatically clapped over the hidden star.

  Honey chuckled. “I noticed it when you were trying on dresses earlier. You think I could have missed it?”

  “It’s nothing,” said Nova.

  “I don’t care what it is. My point, Nova, is that the Renegades can offer you a lot, but they can never offer you revenge.”

  “Your Majesty,” said Leroy, with more than a tinge of irony, “have you forgotten that all of this is Nightmare’s doing? Her reconnaissance, her plan. She’s risking her life for this mission.”

  Honey smiled sweetly. “I haven’t forgotten, Cyanide. I just want to ensure that she doesn’t forget, either.”

  “I won’t,” said Nova through gritted teeth.

  “Good.” Honey cupped Nova’s cheek in one hand, and it took all her willpower not to recoil from the touch. “Make us proud.” Pulling her hand away, she tucked Nova’s wristband into her dress and sauntered away into the night.

  Nova swallowed, hard. Though the star on her wrist was weightless, she felt its presence like a ball and chain.

  Leroy scrutinized her. “Nova, are you—”

  “Fine,” she spat. Without looking at him, she yanked open the door to the car. “I’m ready. Let’s bring them down.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  LEROY PULLED INTO A SPACE in an empty parking garage one block from headquarters. They had hardly spoken for the duration of the ride.

  “Pop the trunk,” said Nova, relieved to stumble out of the passenger door.

  “When did you become so bossy?” Leroy teased. “This little group doesn’t need two Queen Bees, you know.”

  Nova said nothing. She wasn’t in the mood for teasing.

  Her shoes echoed on the concrete as she rounded the back of the sports car. In the shadows, she saw a familiar black jacket, her beloved weaponry belt, and on top of the pile—a metal mask, curved to the shape of her face.

  Reaching behind her neck, she pulled down the zipper on the dress. She wriggled out of it, then stepped into her dark pants and pulled on the tank top and jacket, the mask, and finally the gloves that she had designed herself. It was always a little disconcerting putting them on and cutting off the most convenient source of her power—if she ran into trouble, she would want her fingers free—but she would need the gloves tonight.

  The clothes felt confining compared to the Renegade uniform she’d gotten used to, but once the ensemble was complete, Nova felt … strong. Powerful. Almost invincible.

  No more convoluted loyalties. No more uncertain agendas. No more secrets, no more lies.

  She was an Anarchist—a villain, if that’s what it made her.

  She was Nightmare.

  She slammed the trunk shut. “Give me one hour,” she called to Leroy. “Drive around until then, just in case we were followed.”

  “Do you think I’m an amateur?” Cyanide smirked, one elbow hanging out of the window. “I’ll be here.”

  Nova waited until he sped away, tires squealing through the garage. She tugged down her sleeve to make sure the star was covered again, and then she ran.

  She stayed in the shadows and the stairwells, checking around every corner, confirming that the streets were clear, the alleys empty. Soon she was standing outside a little-used back entrance to Renegade Headquarters, where deliveries were made and foreign dignitaries were brought inside when they were worried the tourists and journalists would make too much fuss over them. There was a security camera two stories up, but it was angled at the doorway—the building’s most vulnerable entrance.

  Nova would not be going in through any doors.

  She lurked beside a dumpster long enough to be sure no one had seen her approach, then tilted her head up and assessed the climb. The sides of the building were smooth, but there were enough ledges around the windows that she would have footholds when necessary.

  It would be difficult to scale, but nothing she couldn’t handle.

  She pressed the switch on the back of the gloves, sending a jolt of electricity through the material. Suction cups emerged on her palms and fingertips. Nova reached overhead and pressed her hand against the building’s side. The gloves took her weight and she started to climb.

  As she passed the third story, the fourth, the tenth, the buildings around her began to drop away. She scanned their rooftops and water towers and began to feel exposed, but she knew, logically, that she had little to worry about. The funny thing about living in a city full of skyscrapers was that no one ever looked up.

  Besides, the sense of vulnerability was something she’d begun to get used to. Nova had been paranoid from the moment she’d stepped foot into the arena for the Renegade trials. She had been painfully aware of the narrow ledge she was teetering on from the start.

  There was a part of her—possibly a big part—that felt more relieved than anxious as she reached the twenty-sixth floor, the first of many that remained unused, and only one floor up from the security offices. No matter what happened here tonight, she would no longer have to lie.

  Planting her feet on a windowsill and securing her hand against the exterior wall, Nova reached for the window breaker hooked over her belt. She fit the cylinder into the bottom corner of the window and pressed the lever, releasing the spring-loaded spike.

  The window shattered. Tiny bits of glass rained across the sill and toward the street, sounding like wind chimes as it clinked onto the concrete below. Nova used the breaker to brush away the remaining sharp edges and ducked inside.

  The floor was as empty now as it had been when she’d scoped it out earlier that day after inspecting the blueprints she’d taken from Adrian’s house. There were no cameras installed here. No sensors. No alarms.

  She jogged to the stairwell and slipped down to the twenty-fifth floor. The door opened on a plain beige hallway that was roped off just outside the stairwell, with a sign that read SECURITY PERSONNEL ONLY BEYOND THIS POINT.

  Nova stepped over the rope and crept down the hall. It was lined with closed doors and ID tag scanners. She didn’t slow when she heard footsteps coming from the next hallway, though she was surprised when an unfamiliar woman turned the corner. Rather than the gray Renegade uniform, she was wearing a smart navy suit with an ID tag clipped to the breast pocket.

  An administrator, Nova guessed. Not a prodigy.

  The woman froze when she saw Nova, her eyes widening.

  Nova ripped off one of the gloves and leaped for her. The woman sucked in a breath, but her scream never came. The second Nova’s fingers touched the woman’s neck, her power rushed through her. With a strangled moan, the woman slumped forward into Nova’s arms.

  Nova deposited her in an alcove beneath a drinking fountain and snagged the ID tag.

  She moved faster now, almost running until she came to the room that had been labeled as the security center on the blueprints. She held the woman’s tag against the scanner and it blinked green. Nova turned the handle and pushed open the door.

  She was greeted by a wall of monitors showing a hundred different views of headquarters, and two empty chairs.

  Nova stepped into the room.

  Something whipped out from behind the door, stabbing her in the thigh. Nova cried out as the barb
ripped out of her, leaving a gash in her pants. She buckled to one knee, feeling like her leg had just had a bite taken out of it. Within seconds the flesh around the wound started to burn, as a trail of blood dribbled to the floor.

  “Are you messing with me?”

  She looked up. Standing over her, Stingray slammed the door shut, his face twisted in disgust.

  “You give Sketch and his loser friends all that trouble, and this is all you’ve got? I saw you on the cameras the second you stepped into the stairwell.” He gestured toward the bank of screens. “What a waste. Thought you were supposed to be some hotshot villain.” Sneering, he crouched at her side. “At least we’ve got a few minutes to kill before that paralysis wears off. Might as well see who we’ve got here.”

  He reached for her mask. Nova ground her teeth, resisting the urge to pull away as his clammy fingers dug beneath the sides of the metal.

  His fingertips brushed her jawline, and that was all she needed. Skin touching skin.

  Realization spread over Stingray’s face. The amateur mistake he’d just made. Then he tipped onto his side with a heavy thump.

  With him unconscious, Nova returned her attention to her wound. She pressed one palm over it and her hand pulled away damp with blood.

  Injured and in pain, yes, but she wasn’t paralyzed like Stingray believed.

  She rubbed the blood off on the side of her pants and dug a hasty bandage and some healing salve from the kit at her belt, securing it tight around her leg. She could feel the warm press of the Vitality Charm trapped between her jacket and her sternum.

  Poison, disease, and evidently venom like Stingray’s too. The Renegades had been fools to stash the medallion away in their vault, without any appreciation. It was just one more example of their arrogance.

  With the wound attended to, she turned her attention to the screens.

  She spotted Frostbite guarding the main entrance, and Aftershock patrolling the back half of the ground floor. It took longer to find Gargoyle, but finally she spotted him making his rounds near the laboratories on the mezzanine level.

  None of them appeared concerned, which was a relief. Stingray must have been confident enough in his ability to take down Nightmare. He hadn’t bothered to alert the rest of his team.

  Removing his wristband, Nova stuffed it into her belt, then stepped over Stingray’s sleeping body. Nova approached the controls. She had studied the installation paperwork at length, the coding, the backup software, the fail safes, the alarms. She had planned for various scenarios until her eyes crossed.

  In the end, it took just under eight minutes to disable the cameras throughout the building. She shut them all down, sending the system into dead air.

  Eight minutes felt like an eternity, but with the security down, her job would be made a lot easier.

  Adrenaline was coursing fast through her veins as she left the security room. She barely gave a passing glance to the sleeping woman beneath the drinking fountain. No one had come for her.

  The building was mostly empty, but this woman was a reminder that not everyone had chosen to go to the gala that night. There could be more surprises.

  She needed to be cautious. Stingray had been cocky and it cost him. Nova wouldn’t make the same mistake.

  She arrived at the elevators, but hesitated. Changing her mind, she headed back for the stairwell. Her leg groaned, but she fought through the pain. She focused on counting floors. She kept her mind on the job ahead.

  She paused when she reached the artifacts department, just long enough to check how her bandages were holding up. A spot of blood had seeped through the wrappings, but the burning sensation around the wound had faded to a dull throb.

  She opened the door.

  A familiar scene greeted her. The two desks inside the reception area, one sterile and neat, the other cluttered with Snapshot’s knickknacks. The lights were out, the floor silent and deserted. Nova marched through the filing room and used Stingray’s wristband to unlock the door to the vault. The only sounds were her own footsteps thudding on the floor as she passed among the dimly lit shelves.

  She went to prodigy weapons first and claimed the so-called Silver Spear. The Captain’s own pike, the one he had used to try to destroy the helmet. Tried, and failed. She hefted it from its shelf—eight feet long and cool in her hand. It felt strong and sturdy, but not too heavy. It was perfect, actually. Elegant. Sharp. Superbly balanced.

  She propped it against her shoulder and made her way to the restricted area.

  Standing at the end of the aisle, she could see the chromium cube on its shelf, looking exactly as it always did. Shiny, solid, and faintly mocking. Lost in the shadows and the clutter of other random relics. Like the object it contained was hardly worth noting.

  Setting her jaw, Nova shuffled the pike from hand to hand. Someday, this weapon would probably live inside a museum, she thought, where people could contemplate the tool they believed had destroyed Ace Anarchy’s helmet. They would talk about the good deeds that Captain Chromium had done. How he lifted society from the despair it had fallen into. How he had defeated the most destructive supervillain of all time. People would talk about the first Renegades and how they had been brave enough to fight for a world they believed in, and that … that was …

  Nova winced, shaking the thought from her head.

  Those first Renegades, including Captain Chromium, might have helped a lot of people, but they hadn’t helped her.

  “Get out of my head,” she growled, her fist tightening around the javelin.

  On the other end of the aisle, Callum stepped out of the shadows. He was wearing the same wrinkled clothes he always wore. She had wondered, passingly, why he wasn’t at the gala. Maybe there would simply be too many ungrateful people loitering around for him to stand it.

  He seemed more thoughtful than afraid as he took in Nova, with her dark hood and metal mask and the chromium pole in her grip.

  “Nightmare,” he said, scanning the shelves. “What are you here for?” He sounded honestly curious. Nova could practically see his mind working, trying to determine which of the hundreds of objects here would be most appealing to an Anarchist who was supposed to be dead. He started to come closer to her, scanning the shelves, until his focus landed on the chromium box and he paused. “It’s the helmet, isn’t it?”

  Nova angled the point of the javelin toward him. “You can’t stop me,” she said, taking a step closer. He did not move back. “Don’t try to be a hero.”

  His gaze dropped to the pike. Then he came closer to her, putting himself between Nova and the chromium box.

  Snarling, Nova marched forward, until the point was only inches from his abdomen. “Move.”

  A muscle in his cheek twitched, and a memory flashed through Nova’s mind. The world laid out before her. The ocean glittering beneath a vibrant sky. A city pulsing with life. A thousand little miracles, and more occurring every day. A million little things to wonder at. And Callum had showed her that. Callum had—

  A guttural cry was torn from Nova’s throat. She spun the pike around and lunged forward, knocking the butt end into Callum’s chest. He grunted and fell to the floor. “Great skies,” he gasped. “What was that for?”

  “Stay out of my head.”

  Callum lifted himself onto his elbows. He looked like he wanted to laugh, but he didn’t. “I didn’t do anything.” Then his brow tightened in confusion. “Wait … you know who I am? What I can do?”

  Nova glowered. “I know my enemies.”

  He sat up a little taller, rubbing his chest where she had struck him. “Listen.”

  And she wanted to listen. She really wanted to listen. To hear what he would say. What wisdom he could impart from the ridiculous way he saw the world. Because she liked the way he saw the world. She wanted to see it that way too. Somewhere deep inside, she wanted to believe that there might be a way for all the world—Renegades and Anarchists, prodigies and civilians—to coexist inside some sort of ha
rmonious equilibrium. No war, no power struggles. No heroes, no villains.

  But Callum’s outlook was flawed. It would only work if everyone saw the world the way he did.

  And the painful truth was that no one saw the world the way he did.

  “No,” she said, startling him.

  “No?”

  “No. I won’t listen. It’s too late for that.”

  Tucking the pike behind her, she bent over and pressed her fingertips to his brow. Callum didn’t flinch, but the flash of disappointment stung just as much.

  Once he’d fallen asleep, Nova shook out her hand to rid herself of the sensation of unleashing her power. It felt different this time, using it against someone who she couldn’t quite see as her enemy despite what she’d said. Even Adrian, for as much as he filled her with yearning, had always still been the enemy.

  Squaring her shoulders, she stepped over Callum’s body and propped the pike against the shelf. She reached for the cube. As her hand neared it, the bracelet warmed against her skin. Pursing her lips, Nova rolled back the hem of her sleeve. The star was glowing brighter than it had all day—almost blindingly bright, sending deep shadows dancing over the shelves. She half expected it to explode, or maybe disappear, like it had when she had first tried to grab it out of the statue’s outstretched hands. But when it did nothing more than pulse warmly for a few seconds, she turned her attention back to the box.

  Inhaling, she lifted the cube and turned it from side to side, inspecting it from every angle. Each side was identical to the others, with no apparent markings or weaknesses.

  She set the cube on the floor and picked up the pike again. She took a step back and prepared herself for what she was about to do, though she didn’t have any idea what was going to happen. She’d imagined this moment a hundred times since the Captain had made that offhand remark at dinner.

  Or I could make a sledgehammer to take to it, if I was feeling destructive.

  She had hoped that once she was here, holding the pike and standing over the box, the next step would seem obvious. But all she had was a distant hope that this would work.