But it wasn’t the butterfly or Honey’s trinkets that held Nova’s attention. It was the mirror, glinting their stunned expressions back at them. Written upon its surface, in black marker and all caps, were the words:
BRING ME THE HELMET
QB’S ROOM—BLACKMIRE
48 HOURS
OR EVERYONE WILL KNOW
WHO YOU REALLY ARE
Nova had barely begun to digest the threat when Leroy moved past her and stuck his head out through the window, scanning the yard and alleyway behind the house. However, even if the perpetrator was out there, lurking in the shadows, Nova doubted Leroy would be able to see them in the darkness.
She read through the words again. She knew that so many Renegades, Adrian among them, had been closing in on her secret for months now. Had one of them finally figured her out? But most Renegades would take the information straight to the Council. She doubted many of them would have the guts to blackmail her for Ace’s helmet, even if it was one of the most powerful objects of all time.
Who could it be?
“Well,” said Honey, “with Ace gone, it’s not like we have much use for the helmet as it is.”
Nova scowled at Honey’s reflection, cut through with the scrawled words. “We’re not giving up the helmet. I risked too much to get it. Besides, we are going to find a way to free Ace, and when we do, he’ll need the helmet to get his strength back. I’m not going to watch him waste away to nothing because we gave up the one thing that could restore him.”
“I agree,” said Leroy, apparently not having seen anything, or anyone, out the window. “But I don’t think we should take this as an idle threat. Someone knows your identity, Nova. Not just that—they know where you are. Where we all are.”
Nova crossed her arms. “Yeah, but they’re a coward, whoever it is. To leave a threatening message and not dare face me in person. Who does that?”
“Cowards can sometimes be the most dangerous of all,” said Phobia.
“Phobia’s right,” said Leroy. “We can’t ignore this.”
Nova glanced at his face, scarred and disfigured, and thought of the teenage bullies who had dumped acids on him after chemistry class. Cowards, the lot of them. But still dangerous.
Nevertheless, she wasn’t about to relinquish the helmet to someone who didn’t have the nerve to fight for it themselves, and she didn’t have time to be running errands and making deliveries for anonymous stalkers, either.
But she needed more time to figure out how to free Ace from that prison.
Her wall of lies might be ready to collapse on its own, but she wasn’t about to let someone take a wrecking ball to it now.
The threat on the glass blurred before her.
48 HOURS
OR EVERYONE WILL KNOW
CHAPTER FIVE
ADRIAN WAS CONTEMPLATING invisibility. As superpowers go, it was one with infinite uses, particularly when one spent a great deal of time sneaking and spying, as he tended to do these days. His dad Simon—the Dread Warden—could turn invisible. So could Max, having absorbed some of Simon’s ability when he was a baby, although he could only go invisible for short periods of time. There was one Renegade who had trained in Gatlon City a number of years ago who was always invisible, which Adrian had found slightly disconcerting when they’d been around. (To this day, he still wasn’t sure of their gender, and their alias, the Wraith, didn’t offer any clues.) But they had been sent to a syndicate across the ocean and Adrian hadn’t given much thought to them or their power since.
He was giving it plenty of thought now.
Because of all the powers he had given himself using tattoos inked into his body, none of them offered much in the way of stealth. Quite the opposite—the armor that burst forth from the zipper tattooed over his sternum was big and bulky, shiny and reflective. It made him feel invincible when he wore it, but also very, very visible.
He couldn’t quite picture the sort of tattoo that might allow for full invisibility, though. He figured such a tattoo would have to cover him nearly from head to toe to be effective, but maybe he needed to think outside the box. Maybe he just needed inspiration.
He wondered if Nova would have some ideas, except she didn’t know about the Sentinel or the tattoos and he wasn’t sure how to go about telling her, or even if he wanted to, especially given the outward loathing she demonstrated for his vigilante alter ego.
But standing on a ledge outside a hospital window, five stories in the air, in broad daylight in his heavy, glinting armor, he decided it was time to start considering other means of sneaking in to see Max. And invisibility would have made it so much easier.
Plastered against the building’s side, he angled a small handheld mirror toward the window, following the movements of a nurse as she checked Max’s vital signs and noted information onto a tablet. She adjusted something on an IV drip beside the bed, smoothed the blanket across his thin shoulders, signed her initials on a sheet of paper by the door.
Finally she left, leaving the door barely cracked behind her.
The moment she was gone, Adrian crouched and dug his gloved fingertips beneath the window. It opened as easily and silently as it had the last two times.
He stepped inside, cringing at the loud thump of his boots. He pressed a finger to the breastplate, retracting the armor into the pocket beneath his skin. On much quieter feet now, he crossed the room and shut the door the rest of the way. There was no lock, but the movements of the nurses were kept to a tight schedule, and by now he was familiar enough with their methods to know that no one would be back to check on Max for a couple of hours.
And, sadly, the kid couldn’t expect many visitors. Having been quarantined inside Renegade HQ for most of his life, he had no friends or acquaintances beyond the Renegades, and there were only two Renegades who could be near Max without him absorbing their powers into himself.
Captain Chromium was one. He was invincible to everything, even the Bandit.
And Adrian was the other—though no one other than Max knew about it.
After he’d discovered the Vitality Charm and what it could do, Adrian had been inspired to design a tattoo that could offer the same measures of protection, even against a power like Max’s. And it had worked. He could finally be near his little brother without a glass barrier dividing them.
But until he found a way to explain the tattoos to everyone, especially his dads, he had to keep even this tattoo a secret. And now that the Vitality Charm was missing, he couldn’t use that as a foil for visiting the kid.
But there was no way he could stay away completely.
He just had to be careful about it.
With the door shut and the blinds closed, he stepped to the side of the bed and peered down at his little brother. At least, he thought of Max as his brother, and he’d thought of him that way since the first day he’d met the kid. His dads had rescued Max as a baby, after his biological parents—members of the Roaches—had tried to throw him into a river. Max had probably already absorbed their powers by that point, and no doubt the rest of the gang would have threatened expulsion if they didn’t get rid of the little bandit before he did any more damage. To a lot of prodigy parents, Max would have been seen as a threat long before he was seen as a child worth loving. For months after, Max had lived with a civilian foster family who cared for him until Hugh and Simon could figure out what to do. From the start, Hugh had felt it was important for him to be kept close, not just because he was a prodigy who deserved to be surrounded by other prodigies, but also because to have him out on his own could make him either a target for the villains or a weapon that they could someday use against the Renegades.