Supernova, page 12
A female guard stood by while she changed, instructing her to put all her belongings in a bin that appeared in a small slot in the wall. It didn’t matter. They could burn her clothes and fancy Renegade-issued boots for all she cared. The one thing that mattered had already been taken.
Well, the one thing besides her freedom. Her family. Her future.
She ground her teeth, chastising herself for thinking it. She hadn’t even been there a day. Hadn’t even seen her cell. It was too soon to be giving up.
She was just stepping into the jumpsuit when something punctured her in the back, right between her spine and left shoulder blade. She cried out and spun around. The guard was holding a device that looked a bit like Nova’s homemade stun gun.
“What was that?” Nova yelled, reaching for the burning spot on her back. She felt something hard embedded into her skin.
“Tracker,” said the guard in a bored voice, setting the gun to the side. “Prisoners used to try and escape. Now, we almost welcome it. They don’t get far with those, and it can liven things up around here for a day or two.”
Nova shoved her arms through the sleeves and did up the buttons. “You could have warned me.”
“Oh? And you would have just stood still and said, ‘Thank you, ma’am,’ when I was done? You’d be the first.”
Cuffed again, with the same guards flanking either side, Nova was finally led through the muddy yard and into the cell block. Since Ace had been captured, she had spent a lot of time trying to imagine what it must be like inside Cragmoor Penitentiary, and now she tried to be amused that, after everything, she was being given a VIP tour. She knew the exterior shell of the original building had been relatively untouched, but the interior had been demolished and reconfigured a number of times since they had started housing prodigies. She knew that the prison was constantly being altered and remodeled to contain new superpowers and the many complications they afforded their captors.
But nothing she had read had given much indication as to what the interior of the prison was actually like, and she had pictured tiers of jail cells stretching the length of the building, linked by narrow walkways and high rails.
The reality was nothing like that.
Walking into the cell block, she was greeted by a vast open space stretching from one stone wall to the next. Until her gaze traveled up, to where the ceiling was reinforced with steel beams nearly five stories overhead. The cells, each one a single solitary box, were suspended from the beams by thick cables.
There was a narrow walkway, but rather than connecting the cells, it lined the perimeter of the wall around them, where the guards could make their rounds and keep watch on the inmates.
If there were prisoners inside the suspended cells, she couldn’t see them from below. The place was silent as death, a silence made more complete by the wind howling against the outside walls, and then their footsteps.
Cell numbers were stenciled with spray paint onto the stone wall, and they paused in front of B-26. Her guard nodded toward a room on the second level, surrounded by black tinted glass. A second later, the grating noise of gears echoed around them, and one of the cells began to descend. Nova watched its slow approach, a part of her wishing that it would just fall and crush her and end this whole ordeal before it even started. Again, she cursed herself for feeling so hopeless. She was an Anarchist. She was Ace Anarchy’s niece. She was never hopeless.
But it was hard to convince herself of that now, when the cell hit the floor with a clang and she found herself scanning an enclosure a third the size of her bedroom at the house on Wallowridge, and even that had felt cramped.
One of the guards nudged her in the back. Her lips tightened and she thought about asking if they were going to let her keep the pretty new handcuffs. But her mouth was dry and her heart wasn’t in it.
What did a few pounds of chains matter at this point?
The chains clanked as she stepped into the cell. Dark. Cold. Devoid of comfort. It felt a little bit like stepping back into the subway tunnels, but this time, there would be no reprieve from the endless gloom.
Her feet crossed the threshold, and a set of bars slid shut behind her with a reverberating thud. She turned and took in the horizontal metal grate, probably iron. Then a second series of bars, these vertical, slammed down over the first. She gulped. Carbon fiber, she guessed, probably an extra precaution for any inmates who could manipulate metal. Then she heard a hum and saw a faint flicker of red light along the edges of the cell. Her eyebrows lifted. Lasers, too?
Sweet rot.
It seemed hilarious, all of a sudden, that Nova had dreamed of breaking into this place. She’d not only dreamed of rescuing Ace from here, she’d actually thought she could succeed. She hadn’t known how, but failure hadn’t seemed like an option.
Now she realized how useless all her plotting had been.
They were never going to rescue Ace.
Just like no one was ever going to rescue her.
As soon as the cell was secured, an internal device on her chains clinked and the cuffs fell from her wrists, landing in a pile at her feet.
The noise of cogs and gears echoed around her and the cell began to rise upward. The guards dropped away below and all she could see beyond the bars was the cell block’s exterior wall. Thick stone and mortar.
Though she knew that there were other cells suspended in the air only a few feet away from her own, it made no difference that they were there, or whether or not they were occupied.
She was alone.
She had only ever felt truly alone one time in her life—in the moments that followed the murders of her parents and Evie. After she put their killer to sleep, she had stood over his unconscious body, gripping the gun still hot from his own hand, ordering herself to kill him. Kill him. Kill him. She had been alone then, and she had known it. No family. No one to take care of her. No one to help her be brave. No one to help her through this.
Until Ace had come and she had remembered—no, she wasn’t alone. She still had family. She still had Uncle Ace, and it was all she had, and she had grasped on to that small piece of comfort as tightly as her trembling little fists could.
Now Nova surveyed her cell. Gray walls, made of what material she couldn’t guess, but something told her it might be chromium. There was a sleeping pad as thick as a pencil in one corner. A washbasin against the wall, and a toilet with a small holding tank in the corner. It was so cramped that her feet would be on the mattress pad as she did her business.
Not knowing what else to do, Nova sat down on the mat and tried to think of all the choices she had made that had brought her here. All the mistakes. The failures.
She had tried to assassinate Captain Chromium. She was an Anarchist and a villain. Not long ago, she would have assumed the punishment would be life imprisonment, but she still recalled what the Captain had said the morning after her attack on headquarters. Soon, the Renegades would be revealing Agent N to the public, and part of their grand presentation would include the “public neutralization of all prodigies who have been heretofore convicted of villainous behavior.” Surely, at this point, that would include her, too.
She knew the Renegades had been testing Agent N on Cragmoor inmates, at their our discretion. No judge or jury had approved the permanent removal of their powers. The Renegades had no need of such antiquated practices—they did what served them best. Who cared what happened to a few criminals, anyway? Who cared if they were treated like nothing but disposable lab rats?
Her emotions were a jumble of anger and resentment that clouded what might otherwise have been sorrow.
Nova realized, in the midst of her self-pitying musings, that the fingers of her right hand had wrapped around her left wrist, gripping so tight that the tips of her left fingers were beginning to tingle from lack of circulation. Swallowing, she lowered her head and released her stranglehold. Her skin carried a ring of white where she’d been holding it, thicker than the faint tan line that depicted where the bracelet had sat against her skin for nearly her entire life.
It felt like someone had chopped off a limb, to be without the bracelet. And the star, too, though she’d had it for far less time. Still, the star felt like something she had made. Something she had dreamed into existence. With Adrian’s help, perhaps, but that didn’t change the intense feeling of ownership she had over it. The way it had secured itself, perfectly fit, to the empty prongs of the bracelet had seemed to confirm that it was hers. She hadn’t fully realized what a comfort its steady pulsing light had brought her these past weeks, while the rest of her life had been driven into further and further turmoil.
Now they were gone. The bracelet. The star. She hated to think of them in the hands of the Renegades, being examined and inspected. Probably Callum would end up with it at some point. He would write up a description for the database. He and Snapshot would argue over how it should be classified—jewelry, historical artifact, mysterious extraterrestrial matter?
Would they know that the star had been complicit in destroying the chromium box that had once protected Ace’s helmet? She shuddered to remember when, in a burst of rage, she had hurled the chromium spear at the box, and in the moment that spear left her hand, the star had let out a wave of light that blinded her, transforming the spear into what seemed like a shard of pure energy.
The next thing she knew, the indestructible box lay at her feet in pieces, and the helmet was free.
It was a mystery that she had only had time to contemplate in the quietest, stillest moments of the past weeks—which had been few and far between. Now, trapped inside her own indestructible box, she found it comforting to have a mystery to contemplate instead of her own crimes and betrayals.
A dream. A star. A painted mural brought to life. Threads of golden energy in the air. The helmet. Her father. The chromium spear. Dozens of artifacts that glowed faintly copper.
They all seemed connected, but how? What did it mean?
Ghosts of her family floated through her thoughts. The smile lines around her father’s eyes. Her mother’s gentle hands. Evie’s dimpled cheeks. And for once, thinking of them didn’t make her want to storm through the streets of Gatlon City and tear apart the first so-called superhero she saw.
For once, thinking of them made her nothing but sad.
She had failed them all.
Groaning, she buried her head in her arms, that one word an echo inside her skull.
Failure. Failure. Failure.
She had failed her family. Ace. The other Anarchists.
Even … Adrian.
Always at the surface of her thoughts, Adrian.
This time, for the first time in so long, she couldn’t even dredge up the memory of his open grin. Or the sensation of his kisses. Or the way his hand held his marker when he drew. Or how he had touched her wrist when they met at the parade. Or—
All that was gone, buried beneath an avalanche of heartache.
Now when she thought of Adrian, she thought only of the way he had looked at her, with the betrayal and disgust and loathing that she had feared for these many months.
She hadn’t realized it until that very moment, but it was all too clear now.
She was living her worst nightmare.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“NOTHING,” ADRIAN MUTTERED to himself, scanning the digital report. “Nothing found in the remains of 9416 Wallowridge can conclusively confirm that any known villains with or without Anarchist affiliations, including alias: Nightmare, recently or otherwise visited or occupied the home.” He glanced up at his teammates. “Then it goes on to list everything they did find, which is mostly random stuff that could have been buried under the foundation decades ago. A couple glass bottles, hairpins, leftover wiring. Et cetera, et cetera.”
“Doesn’t mean anything,” said Oscar. “The house was burnt to a crisp. Of course they didn’t find anything—there was nothing left to find.”
Adrian nodded, but he couldn’t shake his disappointment. He believed Danna. He did. There was no denying that in some twisted way, it made sense that Nova was Nightmare, much as he hated to admit it. There were just too many coincidences.
Still. Hard evidence would have gone a long way toward pacifying his lingering doubts. What if they were wrong? What if Danna was mistaken?
But it was only wishful thinking. A burning desire to not be the Renegade who had been smitten by one of their worst enemies. A desperate need for Nova to not be the liar, the spy, the villain she’d suddenly become.
“Do they know what caused the explosion?” said Ruby, peering over Adrian’s arm at the screen. They were in the training room in the sublevels beneath headquarters, waiting for another mandatory session on Agent N to begin. But judging from the looks being passed their way from the other teams who were gathered around the mats and firing ranges, no one was talking about Agent N.
Adrian did his best to ignore his fellow superheroes, some with expressions full of pity, others haughtiness and scorn. As if they were immune to being duped like he had been, ignoring the fact that Nova McLain had duped them all.
“They’ve found a number of trace chemical compounds that are almost certainly responsible, but exactly what they are or how they combusted is still under investigation.” Adrian scrolled through the document.
“Nova would definitely be capable of creating a bomb,” said Oscar.
“Yeah, I know,” said Adrian, his brow furrowed. He wasn’t sure he had stopped frowning since the moment Nova had been taken into custody. “And unusual chemicals are the trademark of Cyanide’s work, too. They could have had this planned for a long time.”
“Just waiting for us to figure out that she’s a villain,” Ruby said with a sigh.
Adrian didn’t respond. It was as though he kept willfully forgetting the truth.
She’s a villain.
Ruby gasped, startling him. “Danna!”
He and Oscar both turned to see Danna coming down one of the narrow staircases from the catwalk above. She waved at them. Though there were dark circles under her eyes, she still looked worlds better than she had when she’d first retaken her human form. Color had returned to her cheeks and her dreadlocks had been arranged in a loose knot at the nape of her neck. She looked like the old Danna, fierce and confident and ready to get down to business.
“How are you feeling?” said Ruby when she reached them.
Danna stretched her hands gleefully overhead. “Awesome,” she said, without a hint of sarcasm. “You have no idea how good it feels to have fingers again.”
“So there were no serious injuries?” asked Adrian.
“Nope. I was mostly dehydrated, and being in swarm mode for so long made my symptoms wonky, but nothing a good night’s sleep couldn’t fix.”
“I heard Thunderbird saying you might be given some leave,” said Ruby. “They don’t want to force you back into the field before you’re ready.”
Danna snorted. “Yeah, she cornered me this morning to talk about it. Something about unfair labor practices and violations of human rights … I don’t know, I think they’re all in a tizzy over these complaints from Genissa Clark. But there’s no way I’m going to sit back now when we’re so close to finding the rest of the Anarchists. I want to be a part of this.”
“But what if you have to transform again?” said Ruby.
“So?”
“So … are you ready for that? So soon after…”
In a blink, Danna dissolved, her body replaced with hundreds of fluttering wings. They raced in a circle around the training hall, drawing attention from the other waiting patrol units. After a full lap of the space, the butterflies cycloned and Danna re-formed.
“I’m not afraid of my superpower,” she said, arms folded.
Ruby beamed and threw her arms around Danna’s neck. “Good. Because this team isn’t the same without you.” But as soon as she said it, her smile faded and she pulled away, just a bit, casting a nervous glance at Adrian.
He knew she was thinking about Nova. Though she hadn’t been a part of their team for nearly as long as Danna had, it still felt like the team wasn’t the same without her, either.
But there was no use thinking of that. She had never really been a part of the team at all.
“So?” said Danna, casting her attention between them. “Did they find anything at the house?”
Adrian shook his head and told her about the report. The remains from the fire had provided no evidence that could definitively connect Nova and Nightmare, or indicate where the other Anarchists might be hiding. With Ace Anarchy and Nightmare in custody, the Puppeteer neutralized, and the Detonator dead, that left three known Anarchists still at large: Cyanide, Queen Bee, and Phobia. The Renegades had had scouts posted near the cathedral since the day Ace Anarchy had been captured in hopes that one of his minions might make their way back to the site, and they were conducting routine checks of the subway tunnels throughout the city, but so far there had been no trace of the missing villains.
“Is it possible they left town?” said Oscar. “Like, after Ace was captured, maybe they decided enough is enough?”
“It’s too early to determine that,” said Adrian. “And if they didn’t up and leave after being down in those tunnels all these years, I doubt they’d run away now.”
“Unless they finally ran out of options?” said Ruby. “I mean, Queen Bee, Cyanide, and Phobia. None of them are exactly masters of disguise. You would think if they were wandering around the city, someone, somewhere, would have noticed them.”
“There are a lot of abandoned buildings in this city,” said Adrian. “There are a lot of places to hide.”
Danna grunted and gestured at the report on Adrian’s screen. “Which means they could be anywhere, and none of this is going to give us any leads.”
“Yeah, but right now, it’s the best we’ve got.” Adrian’s voice lowered. “Unless Ace Anarchy or Nightmare give us something to work with.”
