NOVA GASPED AND PULLED BACK, peering over the edge of the train car.
The tracks were on fire.
No—it was a column of flame shooting out from the shadows. In seconds it had burned through the channel of ice between Ingrid and Frostbite.
Frostbite cursed and drew back, spinning toward the tunnel as heavy footsteps clanged off the walls.
Nova’s jaw dropped as he came into view, his armored suit somehow more ominous emerging from the darkness than it had been beneath the sunshine on the city’s rooftops.
The Sentinel.
“Much as I would love to see each of these villains behind bars,” he said, his voice steady and low, “something tells me the Council wouldn’t approve of your methods for arresting them.”
“And who are you?” Frostbite said, curling her fist and forming another long shard of ice. “The Council’s lapdog?”
“That’s funny,” said the Sentinel, without humor, “I’ve often thought the same of you.”
Nova relaxed her hold on the gun. She could see her suspicions mirrored on Frostbite’s face. His words suggested that he knew her, and not in a generic has-seen-her-in-the-papers sort of way.
“We are here on official Renegade business,” said Frostbite. “If you try to stop us, we’ll be plenty happy to arrest you too.”
A gauntlet of orange-tipped flames began to lick around the Sentinel’s left hand. “You’re not the only one on official Renegade business. The difference is that I take my orders direct from the Council itself.”
Nova scooted forward, not wanting to miss a word. She found herself staring at the chest plate of his armor. Was it a trick of the dim lighting in the tunnels, or the angle from the top of the train car? From here, it appeared that the gash in his shoulder armor was gone.
Her frown deepened. She’d stabbed him, right between the shoulder and the breastplate, yet she couldn’t see any sign of damage there. No blood dried onto the suit’s exterior. He wasn’t even acting wounded. Perhaps a little stiff in some of his movements, but not nearly as incapacitated as he should have been after a wound like that.
It was yet one more mystery about the so-called Sentinel, and one more shred of evidence that he was not a normal Renegade. That he was something new. A soldier? An assassin? A weapon created by the Council, to be used for missions too nefarious to be assigned to a typical superhero?
“Direct from the Council?” said Frostbite, barking a laugh. “Do you think I’m an idiot? No one at headquarters has even heard of you. You’re an impostor. And that”—she lifted the shard of ice over her shoulder—“makes you an enemy.”
“Or it means you’re too low on the pay scale to be told everything we’ve been working on,” said the Sentinel.
Frostbite seemed to hesitate, and Nova could see a tinge of doubt creep into her face.
“Whereas I,” continued the Sentinel, “know that you were sent here for two reasons: to determine whether or not any other member of the Anarchists were involved with the Puppeteer’s attack, and to find out their connection to Nightmare.” He tilted his head, and Nova had the impression he was glancing at Ingrid, who was still encapsulated in ice from the neck down. Her teeth were chattering. “I take it you haven’t learned much.”
Frostbite’s nostrils flared.
The Sentinel suddenly sprang upward, smashing down on the platform feet away from Frostbite. She stumbled back a step but quickly regained her balance. Behind her, Gargoyle, Aftershock, and Stingray all stood, defensive and ready to attack, though no one had moved. It was clear that the Sentinel’s claim to be there on the Council’s orders had given them all pause.
“Release the Detonator,” he said, opening his fist. The flames extinguished. “Then you and your team are free to leave. I am taking over this investigation.”
Frostbite let out a disbelieving laugh. She twirled the ice shard once, but then let her arm fall, planting the shard like a walking stick into the cracked concrete. “If the Council wants to call us off, they can tell us themselves.”
“They did,” said the Sentinel. “Too bad the reception down here is so horrible. You could have saved yourself this embarrassment.”
Frostbite only looked more suspicious, but Stingray and Aftershock glanced down at the identical black bands that snaked around their wrists. Nova bit her lip. She had often wondered about the bracelets that Renegade patrol units wore. Were they some sort of communication device?
“As it is,” continued the Sentinel, “I’ll refrain from informing your superiors about the many, many codes you’ve broken tonight. But not if you waste any more of my time.”
Fingers drumming against her shard of ice, Frostbite shifted her gaze from the visor to the red R imprinted on the Sentinel’s chest. Her face turned sour, but no less haughty. “Fine,” she spat. “There’s nothing more to be learned here anyway.” She tossed the ice shard to the side. It shattered against a wall.
Striding past the Sentinel, she gestured for her team to follow her.
“Release the Detonator,” called the Sentinel.
“Release her yourself,” she retorted. “And if she repays you by blowing a hole in that fancy suit, don’t come crying to me about it.”
Nova watched the Sentinel as the four Renegades disappeared into the tunnel that would lead them back to the surface. She desperately wished she could see his face—to know if he was relieved or angry, annoyed or grateful. But she could read nothing in his posture, which was the picture of comic-book heroism. Tall and stoic, shoulders peeled back, hands clenched at his sides.
Slowly, he shifted his head to look at Ingrid and let out a frustrated huff. He seemed to consider his options for a long, irritating moment, before he finally stretched his hand out and released a thin, steady stream of flames toward the block of ice. He aimed for the thickest parts around her feet, letting it slowly melt away.
Nova’s mind reeled. She couldn’t help but feel just the tiniest bit grateful that he had come when he had, but still, despite his obvious dislike of Frostbite and her crew, she wasn’t naïve enough to think that he had suddenly become an ally.
He was a Renegade, and one working for the Council. A top-secret project that the rest of the organization was unaware of.
Something told her they might have just traded one threat for an even bigger one.
When enough ice had melted away, he pulled his arm back, extinguishing the flame. With a pained groan, Ingrid forced one knee to break through the thin layer that remained. A sheet of ice crashed onto the tracks and she fell forward, landing on her hands and knees, shivering. When she could sit back on her heels, she started to rub her hands together, trying to return warmth to her extremities.
The Sentinel said nothing, watching her, motionless. Nova had the distinct impression that he was debating about something, and every now and then she would see a halfhearted flame sputter between his clenched fingers, like he was contemplating lighting a fire to warm Ingrid.
But he never did.
Instead, when the chattering of her teeth had quieted enough that it seemed she would be able to speak, the Sentinel paced to the edge of the platform. “I’m here for Nightmare,” he said. “Where is she?”
Ingrid fixed him with a look of utter contempt. “Nightmare who?”
“Yea tall?” said the Sentinel, holding his hand at a level that was surely a mockery of her actual height. “Black hood? Tried to kill Captain Chromium today?”
Ingrid flexed her fingers, testing the blue sparks she could draw from the air, before forcing herself back to her feet. Nova could tell she was weak, though she was trying hard to hide it. “Oh, that Nightmare.” She shrugged. “Haven’t seen her.”
The Sentinel’s voice darkened. “Perhaps you know where I can find her.”
Behind the Sentinel, Leroy groaned and rolled onto his side. The Sentinel spun around, flames bursting from his palm, but he seemed to relax when he spotted Leroy struggling to sit up.
Leroy coughed into his elbow, then peered up into the Sentinel’s mask. “She isn’t one of us.” His words were as evenly paced as if he were giving directions to City Park. “We have no affiliation with the girl who calls herself Nightmare, therefore, we cannot possibly tell you where to find her.”
The Sentinel strode toward him, his steps measured and intimidating. “Then explain to me, Cyanide,” he said, crouching so he was almost eye level with Leroy, “how one of your signature poisons came to be in the projectile she used to try to assassinate the Captain.”
“One of my poisons?” said Leroy. “Truly? What a coincidence.”
The Sentinel grasped Leroy by his jaw, turning his face upward. Nova’s fingers curled, recognizing how the tactic was so similar to the way he’d tried to intimidate her atop the rooftop.
Top-secret, high-tech Renegade experiment or not, he was still nothing but a mindless bully. Just another brainwashed minion for the Council.
“You can’t expect me to believe you aren’t connected with her,” he growled.
“I don’t care what you may or may not believe,” countered Leroy. He had begun to sweat—his blackened skin glistening. “As for my poison being found in her projectile, well … I’ve been selling practical poisons in this city for decades.” He smiled, revealing chipped and missing teeth. There was an aura of pride in the look. He might have been bragging about being a world-renowned tulip grower. “From pharmaceuticals to ridding one’s home of vermin, there are a thousand reasons one might have had one of my poisons, and not all of those reasons are nefarious or illegal. Have you considered that perhaps this Nightmare, whoever she is, might have purchased that concoction from one of my distributors?”
This, Nova knew, was all true. The poisons that Leroy made were, by and large, legitimate and useful. His side business remained the primary source of income for the Anarchists. A boon when it was getting harder and harder to scavenge or steal even basic necessities in this post-Council world, which was something Frostbite and her goons had undoubtedly known when they decided to go after their food supply.
“This wasn’t a mere pesticide,” the Sentinel growled.
“And how am I to know that? All you said was that it was one of my signature poisons, which hardly narrows it down.”
“Okay, Cyanide, try one of your signature poisons intended to—” The Sentinel pulled up short, interrupted by a quiet hissing sound. He recoiled, pulling back the hand that had been gripping Leroy’s face.
Nova clamped a hand over her mouth to stifle a giggle. Even without being able to see the Sentinel’s expression, his disbelief was written clearly into his body language. His arm fully extended, his head pulled back as if trying to escape from his own limb, where the fingers of his right gauntlet were coated with a sticky, dark substance that had just oozed from Leroy’s pores and was now eating away at the glove’s metal surface.
Climbing to his feet, Leroy tightened the belt of his robe and tucked his hands into his pockets. “You were saying?”
“He was saying,” said Honey, trying to shake off her lingering paralysis as she leaned against one of the fallen shelves, “that he has as much evidence of criminal activity as that irritating ice girl did. Which is to say, none at all.” She pulled one of the curlers from her hair and began rewrapping the blonde lock around it.
“You’re right,” said the Sentinel. “We don’t have any evidence … yet. But I know you were involved with the attack today. I know the Anarchists want to see the Renegades destroyed.”
“Of course we wish to see them destroyed,” came Phobia’s haunting voice, like a boom of thunder echoing from every corner of the tunnels. The Sentinel spun around, searching the darkened tunnels. “But wanting something is not a crime, not even under their laws.”
The shadows behind the Sentinel solidified and Phobia stepped out as if from nowhere, gripping the scythe in both hands. “We have tolerated this invasion of our home for long enough.”
“I concur,” said Leroy. “If the Council believes we are in violation of our agreement, let them make these accusations themselves. Until then, we demand to be given the privacy we were promised.”
Small flames began to crackle around the Sentinel’s clenched hands. “You have been given privacy only so long as you adhere to the Council’s laws. When we have reason to believe otherwise, it is within our rights to investigate. Today, an Anarchist was arrested for terrorism and assault. Today, an Anarchist concoction was found to be involved in an attempted murder.”
“And if that were enough to arrest us all,” said Ingrid, who was on her feet again, arms crossed defiantly over her chest, “we’d all be in custody right now.”
“But we aren’t, are we?” said Honey. Standing, she gave a lithe stretch, reaching both arms overhead. “So you can waste your time all you want threatening us, but I am going to go comfort my poor, bereft children.”
She cast one tremulous look at the wrecked beehives, then lifted her chin and began picking her way, barefoot, through the broken bottles and toppled provisions.
She had not taken two steps when the Sentinel leaped, landing directly in front of her. Honey reeled back, her breath hitching, her head tilting back to stare into the visor of the daunting figure.
Honey’s flash of surprise disappeared and she set her jaw, planting her hands on her hips. The look was a reminder why she called herself the Queen Bee. Even in a negligee and curlers, even with her venomous insects having been sent away, she maintained a regal spirit. At least, in the face of opposition, she did. Nova couldn’t help but notice how very different she looked now from her utter hopelessness mere hours before. Perhaps Honey only thrived when she had something to fight against.
Perhaps they all did.
“One more thing before you go,” said the Sentinel, his voice a thunderous rumble from inside the helmet.
Nova tensed, gripping the gun at her side as she waited for him to reach out and wrap his fingers around Honey’s throat or jaw, as he had done to her and Leroy. Nova began running through her options again. The dart wouldn’t do anything against that armor, but perhaps she could use it to create some sort of diversion …
She was not the only one who was preparing for an attack. Leroy had pulled a capsule from his robe pocket, one she knew contained a powerful acid. Ingrid opened her palms, forming a new sphere of crackling blue energy between them. Phobia’s entire form started to grow, his body stretching upward, wrapping himself in shadows so thick it was hard to tell where he ended and the darkness began. Even the buzz of bees had returned, growing louder as they spilled back out from the tunnel, a writhing, furious swarm that hovered ominously overhead.
The world stilled, but for those bees. The Sentinel seemed to hesitate, the blank facade of his visor making him seem more like a statue than a human being. More like a robot than a hero.
His fingers twitched and Nova wondered if he really thought that suit could protect him from all of them at once. She doubted that armor would withstand even one of the Detonator’s bombs.
Part of her hoped they were about to find out.
But rather than grab Honey or lash out with another pillar of flame, the Sentinel stooped and grabbed hold of one of the metal shelving units. He heaved it upward, slamming it back into place against the wall. Turning, he grabbed the second unit and, with one hand, set it to right as well.
Nova’s brow furrowed.
“No matter what any of you have done with your lives since the Day of Triumph,” he said, “you are all enemies of the Council and the Renegades. But right now, the only enemy I care about is Nightmare.”
He turned and faced the train car Nova was lying on. She ducked down against the roof as the Sentinel sauntered in her direction and jumped onto the tracks. He passed by Ingrid without glancing at her or her sizzling bomb.
“When you see Nightmare,” he said, grabbing the remains of the concrete bridge that Aftershock had brought crashing to the ground, “tell her that the next time she goes after the Council, I’ll be there, waiting to destroy her. And I won’t wait for the Council’s permission to do it.”
He heaved the bridge against the side of the platform, clearing the tracks. He did not turn back to see how his message had been received, just continued on, stomping into the black opening of the tunnel. Soon the darkness swallowed him, and the steady ringing of his footsteps faded into silence.
It took a long time for the tension to disperse. Eventually, Honey sent the bees buzzing back toward their solitary alcove. Eventually, Ingrid released the crackling energy and Leroy tucked the acid bomb back into his pocket and Phobia sank back to his normal stature.
Then Ingrid lifted her hands to either side of her head and made a face at the tunnel where the Sentinel had gone.
“To be weak,” Phobia rasped. “To be helpless.”
Ingrid cast him a sideways look. “Excuse me?”
“That is his deepest fear,” said Phobia, idly twirling the scythe blade overhead. “To be, in essence, without power.”
Honey huffed. “How fitting for a self-righteous Renegade.”
“Perhaps,” said Phobia, the hood of his cloak swaying with a slow nod. “And yet, a difficult fear to exploit against one who has been given so very much of it.”
“Are his abilities products of the armor?” Leroy mused, taking out a handkerchief that had been tucked against his chest and dabbing his slick face with it. “It would be beneficial to know if he represents a new evolution in prodigy strengths, or if his powers are the result of experimentation or engineering.”
“And whether or not they can be replicated,” said Ingrid, suspicion making her lip curl.
Phobia did not have an answer.
Releasing a slow breath, Nova rolled onto her back. Long ago, someone had spray-painted graffiti on the ceiling here and she found herself staring up into an ugly demonic face, its tongue lolling out.
They were right. If the Sentinel was a creation of the Council, who was to say there wouldn’t be more coming? That thought led to a host of concerns. If they could give someone superstrength, super-agility, and even the ability to make and control fire … who knew what else they could do?
One Sentinel she could handle. But an entire army of them? It would leave the Anarchists, well … powerless.
She shifted and felt something crunch against her hip. Reaching into her pocket, she wrapped her hand around a piece of crumpled paper.
“We should have killed him,” Ingrid said, and Nova heard the thuds and shuffles as they started to put their supplies back in order upon the shelves. “We should have killed them all.”
“And live the rest of our lives behind bars?” Leroy clicked his tongue. “That would be a shortsighted attempt at vengeance.”
“At least it would avenge my poor darlings,” said Honey.
“Nothing has changed,” said Phobia. “The Council is our enemy. The Renegades will fall easily once they are gone.”
Nova unfolded the paper in her hands. It was the flyer she’d been handed at the parade, advertising the Renegade trials. At the top was scrawled, in bold letters: DO YOU HAVE WHAT IT TAKES?
Jaw twitching, she started to shred the paper to pieces.
Phobia was wrong. Things had changed that day. Thanks to Winston’s attack and her own botched assassination attempt, the Renegades would be on higher alert than ever.
And now they had the Sentinel to contend with.
Where twenty-four hours ago she had felt optimistic about their chances, now it felt as though any hope of someday reclaiming a real life for themselves was evaporating before her eyes. The existence of the Sentinel was proof that they didn’t know enough about their enemies, while the Renegades knew so much about them. Where they lived. The extent of their abilities.
But they didn’t know about her.
And if that was the only advantage she had, then she was going to use it.