Supernova, page 17
Max scoffed. “What about prodigy patients? Nurses? Visiting family members? And also—why are we going up? I thought the idea was to leave the hospital.”
“I have a plan. And look, I know you’ve been surrounded by prodigies your whole life, but they aren’t all that common outside of headquarters. The chances of us running into any more is really low. Trust me, okay?”
Max scowled, but didn’t argue as the elevator arrived and the doors parted.
A nurse started to step out, and Max froze, standing straighter.
“Mr. Everhart? What are you doing here? What’s—” She noticed the cage in Max’s hands, but Turbo had fallen asleep again and maybe she assumed it was one of those plastic dinosaurs from the machine. Without waiting for an answer, she narrowed her eyes and reached forward, taking Max by the elbow and steering him back toward the hall. “I know you’re probably getting restless lying in that bed all day, but we can’t just have you wandering around the halls without supervision. You understand that, right?” She cast a disapproving frown at Adrian. “I’m sure your friend will understand. Now, come on, I’ll walk you … both…”
Her voice slurred. Her attention was still on Adrian as her eyelids began to droop. Her foot skidded forward another half of a step, and then she started to fall face-first toward the linoleum.
Adrian narrowly caught her, scooping her beneath the armpits as her forehead crashed into his chest.
He gaped at Max, then down at the kid’s skinny, pale arms, the insides of his elbows mottled with bruises new and old.
He knew immediately what had happened. Judging from Max’s expression, they both did.
“I didn’t think you got any power from Nightmare.”
“I didn’t, either,” said Max. “I panicked just now. I didn’t really think about it—it just happened. But … but Nightmare didn’t seem affected by me at all when she…” He trailed off, eyes widening. “Oh.”
“Oh?”
“The quarantine. I must have gotten it when Nova came into the quarantine.”
Adrian swallowed hard. Right. Of course. The night that Nightmare stole the helmet wasn’t the first time she’d crossed paths with Max.
It was just one more piece of evidence against her, and though one more reminder of who and what she was shouldn’t have hurt, it still did.
He thought again of the tattoo he was planning and imagined putting another stone on the wall around his heart.
“Anyway, good job,” said Adrian.
The elevator door started to close and Adrian stopped it with his foot. It opened again with a chime. Spotting an empty gurney against a wall, Adrian lifted the nurse onto it. “I doubt you got much of Nightmare’s power, so she probably won’t be out for long. Come on.”
They got in the elevator just as an obnoxious buzzing started to come from the doors, alerting them that the doors were closing this time, whether they liked it or not.
“I’d go invisible again if I were you.”
Max winked out of view as Adrian hit the button for the top floor.
Seconds later, they stepped out into a serene waiting room, the smell of talcum powder wafting toward them and the sounds of a crying baby drifting from a nearby hallway.
“No,” Max said emphatically, tugging on Adrian’s sleeve. “The maternity ward? Are you nuts? I don’t care what you say, there could definitely be a prodigy mom here—or what if there’s a baby! I can’t—”
“Would you relax?” Adrian whispered back at him, earning an odd look from the nurse sitting behind a reception desk. He smiled and surreptitiously took hold of Max’s hospital gown, dragging him forward. “Hi there,” he said, leaning his free elbow on the counter beside a visitor check-in sheet. “Is there a way to get up to the roof from this floor?”
Her already-suspicious countenance darkened more. “The roof isn’t open to the public,” she said, as if this should have gone without saying.
“Oh, I know,” he said with a mild chuckle. “I’m Adrian Everhart. My dads are Hugh Everhart and Simon Westwood?”
He was met with instant recognition. Her mouth formed a surprised O.
“Right,” he continued. “And, as I’m sure you know, my brother, Max, is a patient here and, well, the other Council members are going to be stopping by periodically to check on how things are going. We’re all pretty much one big happy superhero family down there at headquarters, and everyone’s really worried about the kid.”
A snort came in the direction Max was standing.
“So,” Adrian persisted, “Tamaya—er, Thunderbird—is going to be stopping by anytime now so I can give her a full report on Max’s condition, and you know Thunderbird, always flying around the rooftops. Never uses the main entrance. It’s kind of a superhero thing. I mean, if I had wings—”
Max jabbed Adrian hard in the side and Adrian stifled a grunt. “Which is to say … how do we get to the roof from here?”
The nurse led them to a plain door and punched a code into a keypad while Adrian assured her that a Captain Chromium autograph would be no problem. He made a mental note to actually follow through on that promise as he and Max bolted up the steps and pushed their way out onto the hospital roof.
Wind buffeted them from the east. From way up here, Adrian could see the Sentry Bridge, Merchant Tower … even the parking garage where he and Nova had staked out surveillance on the hospital when they’d been trying to stop Hawthorn and her gang.
He passed over the helicopter landing pad on the center of the roof, heading for the north wall.
Max, visible now, came to stand beside him, scanning the city rooftops—the water towers, the fire escapes, the windows glinting in the late-afternoon sun. “Did you order a helicopter for us?”
Adrian chuckled wryly. “Nothing that glamorous.”
“Then what are we doing on the roof?”
“You wanted to avoid being near prodigies as much as possible, right? Well, like you said, on the streets, you never know who you might pass. But up here, the sky is ours.”
Max took a step back, hands held up. “Oooh, no. I realize that you had to carry me like a sack of potatoes when you brought me here, and that’s embarrassing enough. You are not becoming my general mode of transportation. Thanks, but no thanks.”
“You were half dead. There’s nothing embarrassing about that.”
“Yeah, well, we’ll see how you feel the next time you almost die and I have to carry you halfway across town.”
“Sounds relaxing. Look, I’m not carrying you anywhere. You don’t need me to. Here, let me hold Turbo so you can focus.”
“Focus on what?” said Max, even as he handed over the little cage.
“Just watch.” Inspecting the closest structure, a squat office building just across the street, Adrian cradled the cage in his arm and crouched. He felt the spring tattoos activate on the soles of his feet. He leaped.
Air whooshed past his ears, and for the briefest of moments, he felt like he was flying.
He struck the next roof, crouching with one hand on the gritty concrete.
Awake again, the velociraptor scratched unhappily at the bars of his confinement, trying to escape. Adrian ignored him. Brushing his fingers off on his pants, he turned back to Max.
The kid looked mystified. Spreading his arms, he yelled across the chasm, “I didn’t get that much of your power! I can’t do what you do!”
“I know,” said Adrian. “But you can do what Ace Anarchy can do.”
Max’s arms fell. He drew back, confused.
“You have telekinesis,” Adrian reminded him. “I know you can levitate. Which means you can fly.”
Max’s jaw worked mutely for a moment, then he shook his head. “I’ve never done anything more than float a few feet in the air.”
Adrian shrugged. “It’s the same thing.”
“Yeah, except for the twenty-story fall!”
“If you fall, I’ll catch you.”
Max surveyed the street below, his brows knitted together. He started to rub his arms. He wasn’t dressed for the cold weather, much less the intense winds coming off the bay.
“You can do this. You’re the Bandit. You’re a Renegade.”
Shutting his eyes, Max spread his hands, palm up. His feet left the edge of the building, until he was hovering a foot above the rooftop.
A smile stretched across Adrian’s face. Like Ace Anarchy’s ability, Max’s control over telekinesis usually applied only to inanimate objects—not humans or animals. The one exception was to himself. Adrian had known for a while now that Max was capable of levitation, but it was different to see it with his own eyes.
“That’s it,” Adrian muttered to himself, not wanting to distract him.
An alarm rang out from somewhere inside the hospital.
Max gasped and dropped back to the ground.
“Come on! Now or never!” shouted Adrian.
Max seemed immobilized, frozen by indecision.
Then, to Adrian’s horror, he shook his head and started walking back toward the stairwell. Back to the safety of his hospital room. Back to the numbing security of the quarantine.
“Max!”
Then Max turned again and started to run. This time, he didn’t hesitate. He launched himself from the edge of the rooftop, arms extended.
Adrian’s breath caught and he braced himself, prepared to jump forward and catch his brother at the first sign of danger.
But it wasn’t necessary.
Proud laughter tumbled from Adrian’s mouth, at the same time Max whooped with joy.
Adrian had been right. The Bandit could fly.
CHAPTER TWENTY
THE PRISON CAFETERIA was eerily silent, as usual. Nothing but sniffles as noses dripped from being out in the freezing wind and the click of plastic cutlery on plastic trays. Nova stood at the back of the line, envying how the pant legs of the jumpsuit in front of her actually fit the wearer. She kept having to roll hers up.
The line shuffled forward.
She shuffled with it.
Her attention switched to the nearest table, where a couple of inmates sat beside each other on the same side, facing the back wall of the cafeteria. To further discourage talking, all seats were on one side of the tables, so all inmates faced the same direction as they ate. Nova eyed their trays, though she wasn’t sure why she bothered. She had the menu memorized by now. Roll. Mystery vegetable. Potato. Fish. It must not have been Sunday, because she didn’t see anyone with a coveted slice of cheese.
An odd gesture caught her attention. One of the seated inmates tapped the handle of her fork twice against the side of the tray before scooping up some vegetables. A second later, the prisoner beside her used the tines of his fork to scrape against his tray’s corner.
Nova didn’t know what it meant, but she was sure they were communicating.
Someone grunted behind her, and realizing that the line had moved, she shuffled forward and claimed her own tray.
She sat at her usual place, between the usual peers who, as usual, did not try to speak to her. She scrutinized the room with renewed interest, though. Now that she’d noticed the sly exchange, she started to see more signs of it. At least, what she thought might be a secret language between the inmates. Some gestures were so subtle—a scratch on the nose, a scrape of a shoe, a spoon swirled counterclockwise over the table—that a lot of it could have been coincidental.
But she was sure that a lot of it wasn’t. The inmates had found ways to speak to each other, after all.
She wondered how long she would have to be here before she started to understand it.
“You know the Puppeteer?”
The question was asked so quietly, Nova almost thought she’d imagined it.
She glanced to the side, at a bald man whose skin and eyes were both neon yellow. Between that and the bold stripes of the jumpsuit, it was hard to look at him without squinting.
For his part, he kept his attention resolutely on his food.
Nova dug her fork into the fish, flaking it apart. Just before popping it in her mouth, she muttered simply, “Yeah.”
For a long while her neighbor was silent, and she thought that might be the end of the conversation.
But then—“He all right?”
She paused with a chunk of roll half demolished in her mouth. Was Winston all right?
After swallowing, she answered, “Don’t know. Haven’t seen him in a while.” She considered telling him that Winston had been neutralized. That the Renegades had stripped him of his powers. But she didn’t know if the inmates here knew about Agent N, and she didn’t think she could explain it in muttered half sentences.
Her neighbor kept on scooping food into his mouth.
Nova slowed down her own pace. Usually she ate quickly, so as to gulp down as much of the food as possible without actually tasting it. But it was so nice to speak with someone, to have any human interaction, that she was already dreading when it would end.
“They came for him weeks ago,” the man finally said. “Figured he’d be back by now.”
Nova thought about that. Where had they taken Winston after he’d been neutralized? She supposed it made sense that they wouldn’t send him back to Cragmoor—he wasn’t a prodigy anymore. Had he been shipped off to that civilian prison upstate? Or a mental health facility? Or was he still at Renegade Headquarters, being subjected to yet more experiments that he hadn’t volunteered for?
“He said you fed him to the heroes,” the man continued.
It took Nova a moment to realize he was talking about the parade, when she had thrown Winston out of his own hot-air balloon, allowing him to be captured by the Renegades while she saved herself. Her stomach twinged with guilt, and not for the first time.
But when she dared to cast a sideways glance at the stranger, she saw that he was smiling. “Said you never give up. Said that’s what he liked about you.” His eyes slid sideways, meeting hers. They were so bright, it was a little bit like staring into twin suns.
Nova’s shoulders drooped. He had been atrocious, Winston. As the Puppeteer, he had done awful things, things that even the other Anarchists were wary of. And yet she couldn’t help the warmth that flooded through her to think of Winston in this cold, brutal place, saying kind things about her, even after what she’d done to him.
A hand suddenly grabbed the back of Nova’s head, forcing her face away from the neighbor. “Eyes forward!” the guard barked. “No talking!”
She crushed her teeth. There was a moment when she knew the guard’s hand was touching just enough of her scalp that she could have driven her power into him. She was almost angry enough to do it, too.
But she resisted. She said nothing, didn’t even glare at the guard’s back as he walked away. Her knuckles were white as she gripped her spoon, but she wouldn’t lash out. She wouldn’t give them the satisfaction of getting to punish her for it.
Nova put her fury into her jaw, gnashing her way through another chunk of bread.
She sensed the change more than heard it. The room was quiet enough as it was, and yet, suddenly, the silence was palpable. The chewing, the scrape of cutlery—it was almost as if even the breathing stopped.
Nova raised her head.
The warden was making his way to the back of the room, so that all of the seated inmates would be facing him. He wore a gray suit, identical to the one he’d worn every time she’d seen him.
“Listen up, everyone,” barked the warden. “I have an announcement to make and I don’t intend to explain this more than once.” Coming to a stop at the room’s center, he frowned at the inmates, then faced one of the guards. “We’re missing one.”
“He’s being brought in from solitary now,” the guard answered.
The warden exhaled, exasperated, but he didn’t have to wait long. Moments later, a door opened near the corner of the room, a door Nova had only ever seen closed.
And there was Ace.
He was flanked by two guards, being led slowly into the cafeteria.
Nova stiffened. He was almost unrecognizable. Ace had faded even more since she’d last seen him and no longer resembled himself at all. His skin sagged from his cheekbones. His eyes were deep in their sockets, the skin around them practically translucent. His feet dragged as if he could barely walk and it was clear that he was in pain with every stumbling step.
And yet—the other prisoners did recognize him. At least, many of them seemed to. She could tell not just by their awestruck silence, but by the way those nearest him gave an almost imperceptible nod as he was dragged past, showing their respect for the man who had once led so many of them into a revolution.
The guards, on the other hand, stood at attention with their hands on their weapons or their fingers outstretched, preparing to call on their powers if needed. They were on edge with Ace in the room, watching him like one would watch a tiger who may or may not have been strong enough to break its leash.
Their fear was unwarranted. Couldn’t they see that? Ace was sick. He was dying.
The guards led him around the bank of tables toward a solitary table set apart from the others. He was only a few tables away from her when Ace’s eyes suddenly flickered with recognition. His gaze met Nova’s and went wide. His foot skidded to a stop, startling the guards beside him.
He gaped at her, and Nova could see the realization crashing through him. She was captured. She was a prisoner, just like he was. Sorrow creased his brow, and Nova felt her own hopelessness well up inside her all over again.
She wanted to apologize—for failing him, again. She wanted to tell him how much she still loved him. That she hadn’t given up.
Ace started to cough. Not a polite cough spurred on by the frigid weather, but a rough, hacking cough that soon had him bent over and struggling to stand. Nova gasped and rose from her seat, but the little plastic fork was suddenly ripped from her hand. In one motion, it flipped over and the brittle tines pressed into her sleeve, holding it against the table. She scowled and grabbed the fork. The handle snapped in two, leaving the tines still driven through the fabric.
