Supernova, page 14
A hesitation was followed by Oscar whispering to Ruby, “That’s a no, right?”
“Excuse me,” said Adrian, hopping down from the desk. He shoved his way through the crowd, toward where all five Council members were climbing the newly built stairway to the mezzanine.
“Dad!”
The Captain tensed, and his expression was mildly crumpled as he faced Adrian. “I’m sorry. We didn’t have—”
“Capital punishment? Really?” Adrian gaped at each of the Council members in turn.
“And why not?” roared Blacklight. “Do you have any idea how many thousands of people died at the hands of Ace Anarchy and his minions? It’s about time we started fighting fire with fire. You show no mercy, you deserve no mercy.”
“And how many people has Nightmare killed?” said Adrian. “Other than the Detonator, that is.”
“You might recall that she tried to kill me,” said Hugh.
Adrian felt his face start to burn. “I haven’t forgotten,” he said lowly. “But she also saved Max.”
His fathers both drew back in surprise.
Simon was the first to recover. “Saved Max? She threw a spear at him!”
Adrian vehemently shook his head. He could feel himself edging dangerously close to revealing his own secrets—his dads still didn’t know he was able to get close to Max, they didn’t know about his tattoos—but he couldn’t let Nova continue to take the blame, not for this. “Genissa stabbed him. By accident, while he was invisible. It was Nova … Nightmare who tried to help him. She helped him take Genissa’s power so he could stanch the bleeding.”
Hugh took a step toward Adrian. “That’s not what Genissa told us.”
“I know. But it’s the truth. Talk to Max.”
“And how do you know this?” asked Simon.
Adrian gulped. “It’s a long story,” he said, not trying to hide the fact that he was dodging the question. “But if it’s true, then maybe we owe her something. Besides, we’re still the good guys, aren’t we? We don’t execute people.”
“Exactly,” said Thunderbird, the feathers on her wings ruffled. Adrian realized that she was not in agreement on this, and both Tsunami and even the Dread Warden had misgivings written on their faces.
“There are politics in play here that you don’t understand,” said Hugh, but the fury from before was missing from his voice. “The media and our detractors are trying to divide us at every opportunity. Everything we do is being criticized and questioned. How can we run a city, much less an entire world, if we’re busy dealing with every trivial bit of bureaucratic nonsense that comes up?” He ran a hand through his hair. “This solves two problems at once—it pacifies Genissa and her team, and it shows the world that we will act against our enemies swiftly and effectively. We need that right now. And”—he looked around, meeting everyone’s gazes—“we need to be united in this decision.”
“And why’s that, exactly?” said Adrian, feeling venom in his throat. “Do we not want the world to know this is actually a dictatorship?”
Hurt flashed through Hugh’s eyes.
Guilt surged through Adrian, but he refused to let it show. He waited for the rebuttal, the argument, but instead, his dad simply shook his head. “This decision doesn’t involve you,” he said, before turning and walking away. The rest of the Council followed but for Simon, who set a hand on Adrian’s shoulder.
Before he could say whatever half-assed comforting thing he was planning, Adrian shook off the hand and stomped back down the stairs. Blood was rushing through his veins, hot and drumming at the surface of his skin. He was ready for a fight. Wanting one. Or maybe just wanting someone to yell at, needing an excuse to explode. Just once.
But who did he have left to fight?
Nightmare, once thought to be his greatest enemy, was already in prison.
And in a few short weeks, she would be dead.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
NOVA QUICKLY FELL into the routine of Cragmoor Penitentiary. In the morning, at what exact time she couldn’t say, the prison cells were lowered to the ground floor and, one by one, the bars were opened and the guards on duty shouted at the prisoners to come out of their cells and get in line. They were always shouting, even though Nova had only witnessed the inmates being perfectly compliant. She wondered why no one ever lost their voice.
They were then marched out of the cell block and into what they called the sanitation room, where they were given ninety seconds to shower under cold water and sixty seconds to brush their teeth and comb their hair in front of a trough of sinks. Once a week they were given freshly laundered jumpsuits.
They then had twenty minutes to “stretch their legs” in the yard, though most of the inmates stayed in groups by the wall to avoid the mud. It was almost always raining—a cold, misty drizzle—and even when it wasn’t, the wind cut through their jumpsuits like daggers. Nova didn’t speak with anyone, not only because the guards were always watching and she had the distinct impression that conversation on the yard was discouraged, but also because, when she did dare to approach another prisoner, they always gave her a scornful look and turned their back on her. It hadn’t taken many rejections before Nova decided she was better off keeping to herself anyway. She didn’t know where the universal contempt for her originated, whether it was because they thought she might actually have Renegade loyalties, or because they knew she was a villain who had failed to bring down their enemies, and she wasn’t sure she cared to find out.
She was getting used to being alone.
After the brief recreation time, they were served their only meal of the day inside a cafeteria where the narrow tables and stools were all bolted to the floor, and the kitchen was kept behind a stone wall, with only a narrow slot through which they could slide out trays of food.
The quality of the food was exactly what Nova had expected. Which was to say, not much worse than what she’d consumed in the subway tunnels most of her life. Most days the meal consisted of a roll of hard bread, an unrecognizable vegetable cooked down to mush, a baked potato, and fish. Nova didn’t know what kind of fish, but she guessed it was whatever the cooks could get for cheap. On Sundays, if the prisoner had gone the week without trouble, they were also allowed a sliver of cheese.
Then they were sent back to their cells, roughly two hours after they’d been released, to pass the rest of the day in quiet isolation until lights-out. A few prisoners who had been there long enough to earn some amount of trust were sent to work in the laundry or the kitchen. At first this had seemed like extra punishment, but it didn’t take long for Nova to recognize that the long hours of solitude were far worse.
For the first time in her life, Nova’s inability to sleep felt far more like a curse than a gift. What she wouldn’t have given to spend eight fewer hours every night alone with her spinning thoughts.
And so the days passed by, monotonous and unbearably dull.
Every day, Nova hoped to see some sign of Ace, but he was never in the yard and never in the cafeteria. She assumed he was in solitary confinement, but when she tried to ask one of the other prisoners, the woman looked at her like she was speaking another language and said simply, “Ace Anarchy is dead.”
Nova hoped this meant that Ace’s capture and confinement were only being kept from the prisoners, not that he had come here … and already died.
She couldn’t bear that. Not after everything.
With her sanity barely intact, she thought it would be best not to ask anyone else, even if that was only a sign of pathetic self-preservation. She simply couldn’t handle any more loss.
On the seventeenth day of her imprisonment, Nova stood at the trough of sinks, her mouth full of baking soda and suds as she brushed her teeth, trying to be as thorough as she could in the time allotted. The muscles in her back where the tracker had been embedded had finally stopped aching.
She was doing her best to appreciate these small things when, for the first time since she’d arrived, there was a disturbance in the routine. The warden stepped into the sanitation room and was speaking quietly with one of the guards.
It was so unusual to break from the pattern that all the inmates froze.
Then the guard’s attention cut to her, meeting Nova’s gaze in the long, dingy mirror.
Nova bent forward and spat. She quickly rinsed her mouth, and the toothbrush was plucked from her hand a second later by the same guard who always took it, because, evidently, a toothbrush was a potential weapon.
For good reason, she supposed. She could definitely do some harm with one if she wanted to.
As she was standing up, her attention caught on a face in the mirror. Not her face and not the prisoner beside her.
Her gut lurched. Narcissa. She was still behind the glass, watching Nova with an unsettling intensity. She raised a finger to her lips and gave a quick shake of her head.
Then she was gone.
Nova stood blinking at her own startled expression, wondering whether she’d imagined it. Why would Narcissa show herself to Nova here, now? And what did she mean by shushing her like that? What did she think Nova was going to say?
“Seven-nine-two!” barked the guard.
Nova startled and faced him, glaring. “Nova,” she said through her teeth. “My name is Nova.”
Beside the guard, the warden gave her an appraising look. “You have a visitor … Seven-nine-two.”
The rest of the inmates studied her, which was more attention than she’d received since the day she arrived. She wondered what the rumors would be. She wondered what it meant to have a visitor in this place. Would they be jealous of her, or were visitors a sign of trouble?
She used the sleeve of her jumpsuit to dry her mouth and, hair still damp from the shower, stepped toward the warden. The guards met her halfway and clamped the familiar cuffs around her hands.
Nova’s thoughts were still churning from Narcissa’s appearance, and it wasn’t until they were halfway across the yard, heading toward a building she hadn’t yet been inside, that it occurred to her that her visitor might be Adrian.
Suddenly, her lungs were struggling to hold air.
Her palms began to sweat inside the hard-shelled gloves.
She hoped it would be Adrian.
And, equally, she hoped it wouldn’t be him.
Because how could she face him? How could she look him in the eye and lie again? Lie more than she already had? Lie in the face of so many truths?
She thought of Narcissa. The finger to her lips. The shake of her head.
The timing was too coincidental—she must have known about Nova’s visitor. What had she been trying to tell Nova? To stay quiet? To keep her secrets, even now?
Her thoughts swam. If that was the case, Narcissa needn’t have bothered. Nova had determined from the moment she’d been arrested—no, from the moment she’d decided to enter the trials and join the Renegades—that she would never admit to her deceit. She would give them nothing that could be used against her or the Anarchists.
As far as Nova was concerned, she was still Nova Jean McLain, and all she had ever wanted to be was a Renegade.
She knew the lies would come as easily as they always had. She could face Captain Chromium without blinking. She could even stare down her own teammates—Oscar, Ruby, even Danna, despite all she’d done to her—and she could insist on her innocence with trembling lip and pleading eyes. She would shake their resolve, even if she couldn’t destroy it entirely.
At least until she knew what they had against her.
But if it was Adrian …
Please don’t let it be Adrian.
And yet—
Please, please let it be Adrian. Let me see him one more time.
The guards led her to a room on which a circular metal platform stood with a hard-edged chair bolted to its center. An open chasm had been left all around the platform, save only for the narrow plank connecting it to the barred doorway, to keep the prisoners away from the shiny black walls on either side.
Other than Nova and her guards, the room was empty.
The chair appeared wholly uninviting, not only because of the cold metal, but also because of the braces on the arms and the chains around the legs.
She didn’t struggle as the guards shoved her into it. They bound her ankles to the chair legs and attached the metal cocoons around her hands to the armrests. Her fingers had just enough room to wriggle inside their confines.
It felt a little bit like being led to her doom, and she wondered whether the visitor thing had been a ruse. Maybe this was where it would happen—already, so soon. It was easy enough to imagine someone appearing in a white lab coat and sticking a syringe full of Agent N into her arm.
The guards disappeared behind her, where she could not see them past the tall back of the chair.
Directly ahead of her, on the other side of the chasm, was a glossy black wall. The base of it disappeared beneath her platform, so she had no idea how far the drop was. There was nothing remarkable about the wall, other than how very sheer and smooth it was. Unscalable, or at least, that was the effect. Not that there would be much point to scaling it. The ceiling, thirty feet overhead, held nothing but a few rows of sickly fluorescent lights.
Then there was a click and the wall before her was no longer just a wall. A portion in front of her, ten feet tall and stretching between the walls of the chamber, lit up, revealing that it was, in fact, a window.
Nova was staring directly into the face of Adrian Everhart.
She shivered, overcome with the mix of relief and dread that surged through her.
She could tell, in the first moment of their eyes connecting, that he had been able to see her from the moment she’d been brought into this room and had time to steel himself. His face was neutral and cold, in a way that didn’t fit him at all.
But behind the lenses of his glasses, his eyes revealed what his unyielding features did not.
Disbelief. Hurt. Betrayal.
Hatred.
Nova felt her chin tremble—but it wasn’t the act she’d planned. “Adrian…,” she whispered.
His only reaction was a brief tightening of his jaw.
There were two more people on the other side of the glass. Adrian’s dads, Captain Chromium and the Dread Warden. The three of them together, all wearing their traditional Renegade garb—black cape, blue armor, and that despicable red R stitched onto Adrian’s uniform—made for an intimidating team. But fear was nowhere near the top of Nova’s swirling emotions.
The Dread Warden started to speak, and it startled Nova to realize that she couldn’t hear them. Instinct prompted her to lean forward as much as she could in the grasp of the chair, but it made no difference.
Adrian tore his gaze from her and nodded. He spoke. Nova tried to read his lips, but it was no use. Captain Chromium placed a hand on Adrian’s shoulder, but it was brief. He gestured toward the back of the room.
Adrian nodded again. Spoke again. Looked briefly at both his fathers. Their features were serious, but kind.
Then the two Council members left, and Adrian was alone inside the room.
Nova’s heart thundered, but it might as well have been chained up, too, for how tight her chest felt.
“Adrian?” she said, the name coming out as barely more than a breath.
He flinched, confirming that he could hear her.
His Adam’s apple bobbed as he reached for a pedestal beside him and pressed a button on a remote.
Nova heard a click, and the chamber became full with both of their silences.
Their eyes bore into each other’s, and she didn’t know if he was waiting for her to say something, or was trying to build up the courage to speak first.
Before she realized it, she was crying. Tears pooled in her vision and quickly began to slide down her cheeks. She gasped at the sensation of the two warm trails making their way to her jaw, and she wanted to rub them away, but couldn’t move. Nova sniffed loudly, hoping she could inhale the tears back into her body, but it was too late.
Adrian moved closer to the window, and he had given up trying to be emotionless. The hurt was written plainly now: in the tension across his brow, in the tightness of his jaw, in the squint of his deep brown eyes against the threat of his own tears.
“How could you do this?” Adrian said, his tone vicious and sharp. The sound of such unbridled anger surprised the tears into a temporary cease-fire.
Nova gaped at him, jaw hanging open, and found that she had no response to give.
Her mind was blank. Empty of everything but the sound of Adrian’s disgust.
She remembered everything. Every lie. Every betrayal. The weight of the gun in her hands as she prepared to kill Captain Chromium. Her elation when she reclaimed the helmet. The sight of Danna’s butterfly beating against the sides of the mason jar.
Nova gathered herself as one last tear crept down, tracing the path of those before it, and said—with so much conviction that she almost could have believed it herself—“Adrian, I’m innocent.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
ADRIAN’S SCOFF was so loud and unexpected that it only served to bolster Nova’s defiance. She could convince him of her innocence. She had to.
He opened his mouth to speak but Nova pressed on, letting real desperation color her tone. “I mean it, Adrian. I don’t know what’s going on, but I’m not Nightmare!”
“Danna saw you!” he yelled. “She followed you to those ruins … that cathedral. She led us to Ace Anarchy, and she would have led us to you, too, if you hadn’t…” He hesitated, warring with a brief uncertainty. “If you hadn’t done whatever you did to her to keep her from re-forming!”
Nova studied him, her mind racing, devouring and dissecting every word.
Danna had seen her go to the cathedral ruins … but not the house?
And they didn’t know about keeping the butterfly in a jar, which had to mean Nova was right. That butterfly’s memories had been lost when Nova killed it. That butterfly at least—the only one that would have seen Nova and the other Anarchists at the house—couldn’t incriminate her.
