“It would explain a lot.”
“Yeah. It would.”
“So … you think Adrian could be right?”
Callum opened his mouth, but hesitated. Where she had sensed certainty before, she could sense it faltering now. A fault of his own optimism. His belief in humanity.
She realized that Callum didn’t want her to be Nightmare. He was searching for a reason to doubt his own suspicions.
It was the crack she needed to find.
“Callum?” she said again. “Do you think she could be a spy?”
“I think it’s possible, yeah.”
She let herself appear worried. “Then it should be easy to figure out who it is, right?” She gestured toward the front reception area. “We can go through the rental history. Figure out who might have shown interest in those mist-missiles. We could go over some of the security tapes. Whoever she is, she must have left a path. Some clues we can follow. Ruby suggested she could be a recent recruit, but I think it’s more likely to be a civilian. Someone who’s pretending she doesn’t have superpowers at all.”
“She’s short,” said Callum.
Nova’s words, whatever rambling thing she was going to say next, evaporated on her tongue. “Excuse me?”
Callum was close to Adrian’s height himself, and Nova had never sensed how much he looked down on her, literally, until that moment. But that wasn’t unusual. Practically everyone was taller than her. “She’s short,” he repeated. “Like you.”
Her mouth opened. Closed. She tried again. “That’s … good information. That will help narrow it down. I’ll see if we can get more details out of Genissa Clark and her team, too. Compare notes. Um … was there anything else you noticed about Nightmare? Anything that could help us … pinpoint her…?”
He stared at her. Really stared.
And she could feel the words hanging between them. It’s you, it’s you, it has to be you.
But it was eclipsed with doubt, and then a self-conscious grin. “I don’t know. It was pretty dark and … it all happened really fast. Plus, you know, she has the mask.”
“Of course. But if you think of something…”
“I’ll let you know,” he said. “I’ll definitely let you know.”
“Okay. Great. And I’ll mention the height thing to Adrian. I think they keep pretty good health records on all the patrol units, and those might include measurements, so we can start there. Thanks, Callum. That’s helpful.”
She started to walk away, the sheet of paper crinkling between her fingers.
But just before slipping out the door, she paused and turned back. Her expression softened. “You know, I really am glad you’re okay.”
* * *
On the uppermost floor of Renegade Headquarters, standing beneath a massive blown-glass chandelier, beside an enormous painting that captured the falsified death of Ace Anarchy, Nova handed the memo to Prism, the personal receptionist to the Council. Rainbow-colored lights danced over the desk, reflected off Prism’s crystal fingers, as she unfolded the paper and read through the note.
She frowned. Not suspicious, but confused. “Snapshot wants you to take the forgery down to the artifacts department?”
“She’s worried that having it on public display right now will create unnecessary drama,” Nova explained. “Given the theft of the real helmet, people are going to become curious about the forgery. Some might feel that the Council’s been lying to them all this time, telling them the helmet was destroyed.” Because they had, Nova added silently to herself. “Snapshot feels it would be prudent to keep the forgery out of the public eye until the real helmet has been recovered … or until the Council has had time to decide the best course of action.”
Prism considered this for no more than three seconds before she shrugged. “All right, go ahead, then. The case is unlocked.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
NOVA WAS EAGER to put this charade behind her. As soon as she left headquarters with the fake helmet tucked into a plain tote bag, she marched straight for Blackmire Station, one of the defunct stations on the old Gatlon City subway line. She and the Anarchists had lived down there for years following the Day of Triumph, and Nova hadn’t realized quite how much she hated it inside the dank, stifling tunnels until after they’d been chased out by Renegades and forced to seek sanctuary inside the decrepit row house on Wallowridge instead.
Though they hadn’t left by choice, and they never would have left Ace by himself if they could have helped it, she couldn’t deny that the housing situation was an improvement. She wasn’t enthusiastic about going back down there now, but the blackmailer’s instructions could only mean one thing.
QB’S ROOM—BLACKMIRE
Queen Bee’s room, Blackmire station.
Honey, who was known as Queen Bee to most of society, had transformed an old maintenance closet off the main line into her private quarters. It wasn’t cozy—nothing in the tunnels could be described as cozy—but she had done it up as nice as she could, draping scarves on the walls and bringing in a vintage shaded lamp that cast a pleasant glow over the concrete walls. And there had been her hives. Everywhere, hives, and the constant thrum of the bees who had flown agitatedly up to the surface in search of nectar and pollen every day, only to dutifully, if crankily, return to their queen as the sun was setting.
Nova was on edge as she made her way through the tunnel, the path lit by the beam of her flashlight. Her Renegade-issued boots clopped against the train rails. Rats squeaked, their eyes flashing in the light before they scurried into their holes. Familiar aromas accosted her. The musty air. The rank odor of standing water. The faint scent of decades-old urine. It was met with new smells, too. Sulfur and smoke and the acidic tang of Cyanide’s poisons, lingering from the day the Renegades had attacked them.
Beyond the smell of war, and the fact that all their belongings had been confiscated by the Renegades, not much had changed.
Her nerves were tingling as she reached Honey’s room. The heavy iron door was parted, but only shadows spilled forth from it.
Nova reached for her shock-wave gun, half expecting a trap. It wouldn’t be a surprise if the blackmailer accosted her the moment she stepped into the room, because that’s just the sort of thing a nameless villain would do. Her finger slipped over the trigger as she kicked the door open and shone the flashlight into the room.
Empty.
Not only of the blackmailer, but also empty of Honey’s things.
Which was unsettling, if not unexpected. Nova knew that all of the belongings the Anarchists couldn’t take with them had been packed up and taken to Renegade Headquarters, and were at this moment sitting in a temporary storage room at the back of the artifacts department, waiting to be sorted through. She had seen Honey’s dresses there, boxes of jewelry, even the pretty vintage lamp.
The only thing the Renegades had left behind was an old dresser, on which sat a mirror with a chip in one corner and paint peeling off its trim work. The drawers were all missing and it was pulled a few feet away from the wall, no doubt so the Renegades could get behind it in their search for clues and evidence to be held against the Anarchists. They must have figured the dresser itself would be too much work to take back up all those steps. Nova wasn’t sure how Honey had managed to get it down here in the first place.