OF THEIR GROUP, Leroy was the only one who had ever learned how to drive. It wasn’t necessary for most people in the city, who could walk to just about anywhere they really needed to go, and plenty of people still made their living carting others from place to place, especially after the collapse of the public transportation system.
Still, though Leroy claimed to have gotten a legitimate driver’s license before the Age of Anarchy started, Nova sometimes wondered if he just said that to imbue his passengers with a sense of confidence; in which case, it didn’t really work. Perhaps it was partly due to the fact that he sat so low in the driver’s seat she didn’t think it was possible he could see clearly over the dashboard, or perhaps it was because Leroy’s pleasant, toad-like smile never faded when he was driving, no matter how many people honked or cursed as they passed, no matter what mystery item thumped beneath the wheels, no matter how many pedestrians screamed and lurched out of their path.
“Where does this woman live, anyway?” she asked, glancing at Leroy from the passenger seat of his yellow sports car, a vehicle he claimed had been highly desirable back when he’d stolen it. (According to Leroy, it had belonged to a lawyer who had famously defended a man who had beaten a prodigy nearly to death. The lawyer had gotten the man off with nothing but a steep fine and some community service to answer for his crime. So stealing his car was as much a matter of justice as greed.)
Thirty years and exactly zero car washes later, the car more resembled an overripened banana than anything remotely desirable, at least to Nova’s eye. Rust was creeping around all its edges, there were countless dents and paint scratches on the exterior doors, and the ripped upholstery carried the distinct aroma of mildew.
“By the marina,” said Leroy, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel.
Nova scanned the buildings they passed. They’d left downtown and were making their way through the industrial district, where warehouses and storage yards had once been full of shipping crates ready to be loaded onto cargo ships or distributed to the rest of the country by endless trains and semitrucks. Though international trade was gradually returning to the city, most of these buildings were still deserted, home only to rats and squatters who, for whatever reason, weren’t eligible for Council-sanctioned housing. That, or they preferred to make their own choices about where and how to live their lives, whatever the cost.
Through gaps in the warehouses and defunct factories she caught glimpses of Harrow Bay, sparsely lit by a handful of boats on the water. Her eyes traveled to the horizon which blended almost seamlessly with the black sky. Though they were still in the city, the light pollution was dimmed out here enough that she could see a scattered sprinkling of stars and she found herself scanning for constellations she recognized. The Fallen Warrior. The Great Cypress. The Hunter and the Stag.
As a child, Nova had been fascinated by the stars. She would make up entire stories about the celestial beings represented in those constellations. Back then she’d even convinced herself that all prodigies, like herself and her dad and Uncle Ace, had in fact been born of the stars, and that’s how they’d gotten their superpowers. She’d never figured out exactly how that had come to be, but it had seemed to make perfect sense in her youthful logic.
She wasn’t sure what was more amazing—her childhood theory on how prodigies came to be, or the truth. That each of those stars was its own sun, thousands of light-years away. That to look at a star was to look back in time, to an age in which there were no prodigies at all.
Leroy turned a corner and the car passed over a series of train tracks before tipping down a long, steep hill toward the marina.
“How do you know this woman again?” asked Nova.
“Oh, I don’t, not really. But then—how much do we really know anyone? Can we say with absolute certainty that we even truly know ourselves?”
Nova rolled her eyes. “And again. How do you know her?”
Leroy grinned and jerked the wheel to one side. Nova stiffened and glanced out the window, but couldn’t see whatever it was he was swerving around. A second later, he had righted the car in his lane. “She was a member of the Ghouls,” he said, citing one of the villain gangs who had risen to power during the Age of Anarchy, one that had formed an alliance of sorts with the Anarchists. “I used to trade her disappearing inks for false documentation. Still do, when it’s needed.”
“She’s a prodigy, then.”
Leroy hummed his confirmation.
“Any powers I should know about?” Even when meeting a supposed ally, Nova liked to be prepared.
“Psychometry. Nothing dangerous.”
Psychometry. The ability to see into an object’s past.
“Well,” Leroy added with a chuckle, “nothing dangerous so long as you don’t get crushed beneath all her stuff. You’ll see when we get there. She told me once that it’s difficult to give things up, once you know what they’ve been through.”
“I’m not afraid of stuff,” said Nova, “as long as we can trust her.”
“Oh, I didn’t say that,” said Leroy. “But outside of family, she’s as close to trustworthy as we’re going to get. And”—he sighed—“I don’t believe we have any other choice.”
Nova settled deeper into the seat, staring at the weathered boathouses that blurred past.
Her mind settled on that one ephemeral word.
Family.
She had had a family once. Mom. Papà. Evie. When they were taken from her, she believed she’d lost everything. So much of her childhood was lost in a haze of pain and loss, mourning and anger, betrayal and a sadness so raw there were entire days in which she couldn’t summon the energy to eat, or even cry. Entire nights in which shadows terrorized her, becoming murderers and monsters.
There had been but one source of light in those first months. The only real family she had left.
Uncle Ace.
He had held her close so she couldn’t see the bodies of her family as he took her away from the apartment, stopping only to grab the unfinished bracelet her father had been working on. He hadn’t let her go until they arrived at the cathedral, what he and the Anarchists had called home in those days. It was the largest church in the city, which Ace had claimed long before Nova was born. At first, she found it haunting and eerie, with the lofted ceilings that echoed every footstep, the bell tower that had long ago fallen to silence and cobwebs, the paintings of dead saints that watched her pass with condemning eyes.
But Ace had done his best to make it feel like a home to her. She did not recall him talking very much, but he always seemed to be near when she needed a stable presence. Sometimes he held her hand or rubbed her back while she sobbed into his shoulder. Sometimes he would use his powers to distract her from her sorrow, making playful puppets out of the figures and statues that lined the sanctuary and chapel walls. And when her curiosity overcame her misery, he showed her every hidden alcove of the cathedral. The tombs beneath its foundation, full of bones and history. The massive organ where she was free to pound at the keys to her heart’s content, filling the vast space with chilling chords that perfectly fit her mood. He had taken her to the belfry and let her tug on the ropes to make the smaller bells chime, then showed her how he could move the massive central bell with his thoughts. Their music had pealed across the rooftops of the surrounding city blocks.
The pain did not go away, but when Ace was there, it seemed to lessen, little by little.
Then, one day, he told her the truth of what had happened to her family.
Nova had been inspecting some reliquaries she’d found in one of the smaller chapels when Ace found her and sat her down on a worn wooden bench. He told her that one of the villain gangs—the Roaches—had demanded that her father craft them a collection of weapons using his gift. They had threatened David’s wife and daughters if he didn’t meet their expectations.
When her papà began to fall behind on their requests, he went to the Renegades and begged for protection. Captain Chromium himself had promised that no harm would come to him or his family, but only so long as he stopped making weapons for their enemies.
And so her dad did stop. And the Roaches, in retaliation, sent a hitman after him and his family.
Only, the Renegades hadn’t kept their word. Captain Chromium hadn’t kept his word. They were not there to protect David’s family when they needed their protection the most.
When Ace finished telling this story, he handed Nova a cup of cold milk and two vanilla wafer cookies taken from plastic packaging that crinkled deafeningly loud. Nova, six years old and so small her feet didn’t touch the stone floor as she sat on the bench, ate the cookies and drank the milk without comment. She remembered not crying. She remembered that in that moment, she had not felt sad.
She had felt only anger.
Blinding, breathless rage.
As he stood up to leave so she could come to terms with the truth of her family’s deaths, Ace had said simply, practically—“The Roaches were forty-seven members strong. Last night, I killed them all.”
That was the one and only time they spoke of her family’s deaths. What was done was done. The gang had killed Nova’s family. Ace had killed the gang. Justice was served.
Except for the Renegades, who had failed to keep their promise.
Two months after that, Nova’s life was overturned again.
On the Day of Triumph, Nova had been told to stay in the tombs. She sat in the darkness, listening to the screams and thunder of the battle, feeling the rumble and crash of the earth and walls around her. It went on for hours. Ages.
Honey found her first. Or her bees did, and they led Honey to her. They escaped into a secret passageway, small and damp, smelling of soil and musty air, lit only by the small flashlight Nova had brought with her into the tombs. Honey’s distress kept Nova from talking for a long time, but when the passage finally spilled them into an abandoned subway station, Nova dared to ask what had happened.
She received only three words in reply.
The Renegades won.
* * *
“HERE WE ARE.”
Nova jolted from her thoughts. Goose bumps had erupted across her skin as her memory repeated that day.
She sat up straighter and peered through the windshield. Leroy had parked on the shoulder of a quiet, narrow road just off the shore of Harrow Bay. Rocky outcroppings and foaming waves caught the light of a hesitant moon, and she could see a handful of docks stretching into the water. Most of them were bare, but a few had small fishing boats moored alongside them, their sides thunking hollowly against the pier.
She turned in her seat. To her right was a tall cliff studded with scraggly plants that clung desperately to its side and a burial ground of white driftwood at its base. Behind them, the dark road curved inland and disappeared.
No houses. No apartments. No warehouses. No buildings at all.
“Charming,” she said.
Leroy killed the engine. He was turned away from her, gazing out toward the water. “I don’t much care for the ocean,” he said solemnly. “Seeing it always fills me with regret.”
“Regret?” Nova studied the choppy waves. “Why?”
“Because if I had learned to sail, then I could leave this place. In a boat, one could go anywhere.”
“You have a car,” said Nova, glancing sideways at him. “You could drive away if you wanted to.”
“It’s not the same.” Leroy turned—not to face her, but to stare at his own crooked fingers on the steering wheel. “There’s not a civilized place in this whole world where I wouldn’t be recognized, and the others too. Our reputations would precede us wherever we went. So long as anarchy is synonymous with chaos and despair, the Anarchists will always be synonymous with villains.” He cocked his head to the side and this time he did look at her, though it was so dark in the car she could only catch faint spots of moonlight reflected in his eyes. “But not you, Nightmare. No one knows who you are. You could leave us, you know. You could go anywhere.”
She scoffed. “Where would I go?”
“Anywhere you like. That’s the beauty of freedom.”
He smiled, but it was a sad look, one full of that regret he’d mentioned.
Nova swallowed. Freedom.
She knew he was right. The thought had, in fact, crossed her mind a thousand times. No one knew what Nova Artino looked like, or even that she was still alive. No one knew that she had been raised by the Anarchists. No one knew that she was Nightmare.
“What are you saying?”
“We are here because you say you want to infiltrate the Renegades, so someday we might destroy them,” said Leroy. “And no one would be happier than I to see that come to fruition. But I cannot in good conscience go through with this without giving you an alternative. After tonight, you will have a new name, a new identity. You could leave Gatlon City. Or … you could stay. Get a job and an apartment. Start a real life, like everyone else is trying to do. You would have plenty of company if you made that choice.”
Nova shifted in the seat, crossing her arms over her chest. “And what? Leave you guys to defeat the Renegades without me? In your dreams.”
Leroy shook his head. “There will be no defeating them without you and what you might be able to learn. What you might be able to change.” His voice quieted. “I have little hope of ever seeing the freedom we once fought for. Killed for. But you did not choose this life, Nova. Not like we did. You could still choose differently.”
Jaw clenching, Nova stared at one of the boats. Swaying back and forth, a ceaseless, steady rocking.
“The Anarchists are my family,” she said. “The only family I have left. I won’t be free until you are. I won’t rest until the Renegades are punished. For how they treat you. For how they betrayed my family. For what they did to Ace.”
Leroy fixed her with a studious look. “And if revenge does not bring you joy?”
“It’s not joy I’m looking for.”
Reaching around the steering column, Leroy switched off the headlights and pulled the key from the ignition. “Then let’s see if we can’t find what you are looking for.”