THE ARENA WAS ALREADY THUNDERING with chants and stomping feet, and the trials hadn’t even started yet. Adrian stood leaning against the wall just inside the opening that led out onto the field, looking around as the bleachers filled with people. The crowd was full of bright red signs handed out at the entrance, one side printed with HERO, the other—ZERO.
That was part of the fun, he supposed, for the non-prodigies who came to watch the trials. Though the decision of who was accepted into the Renegades was ultimately up to the teams themselves, the crowd could pretend to have a say by holding up their signs when each contestant went onto the field.
He had never liked trial days. This was the fourth annual and it still gave him a sense of unease in his stomach. There was just something so ridiculous about it all—that the future of a prodigy could be decided based on a few questions and a thirty-second demonstration of their power. Could that really be all it took to decide whether or not someone was fit to be a hero? Capable of fighting for justice, defending the weak, protecting the city? He seriously doubted it, and what’s more, he suspected that if he’d been forced to enter through the trials, he might not have made it.
Adrian had become a Renegade practically by default. He was the son of Lady Indomitable, and since her death he’d been raised by Captain Chromium and the Dread Warden. No one would have dared object to him being given a uniform, and because of that, he was given plenty of opportunities to prove himself and his abilities. Bringing his artwork to life had turned out to be damned useful time and again.
But useful wasn’t always what mattered at the trials. Not to the spectators, at least. They wanted to be dazzled and bewildered and maybe even a little frightened. They wanted explosions and earthquakes, and Adrian’s power would have left the crowd unsatisfied.
Unless he’d drawn a hand grenade.
Actually, a hand grenade would have been kind of awesome.
Nevertheless, he hadn’t been made to compete for a place in the Renegades, so he would never know whether he would have been chosen or not.
These days, it didn’t really matter what anyone thought of his powers, not since he’d altered his own ability by giving himself the tattoos. He was no longer just Sketch, a Renegade and an artist.
He was the Sentinel, with more powers than had ever resided in one being before, at least as far as he knew. He was like no prodigy anyone had ever encountered. He had been transformed.
It felt strange to be wearing his Renegade uniform again after being in the Sentinel’s armored suit—the form-fitting fabric suddenly made him feel vulnerable. He kept sliding his finger between the shirt collar and his throat, trying to give himself more space to breathe.
“Happy trial day, woo-woo!”
Adrian turned to see Oscar ambling down the cinder-block corridor. He punched his cane a few times in the air before propping it against the floor again. “Bring on the newbies, for I am ready to pass judgment.”
Ruby wasn’t far behind him, bouncing on the balls of her feet. “How’s it looking out there?” she asked, coming to stand beside Adrian. Her eyes widened. “Great skies, that’s a lot of people.” Her bloodstone dangled from her wrist, resting against her thigh as she surveyed the jam-packed arena. Then her attention moved down to the tables stationed around the field. There were close to forty of them, each draped with a red cloth. All patrol units were expected to attend the trials—at least, those who weren’t on active duty that night—where they would sit at the tables and watch hopeful prodigies try to impress them and ultimately decide their fate. “Are there really that many patrol teams these days?” Ruby added. “There weren’t half this many when I tried out. It doesn’t feel this crowded when we’re at headquarters.”
“Not often they get us all in one room together,” said Adrian. “I’m not sure how many are actively looking for new members, though.” His eyes traveled up to the platform that hung over the far end of the field. The Council members, including his dads, were already seated, chatting amicably and occasionally pausing to smile for a camera. Even Thunderbird was there. The healers had given her permission to come, so long as she didn’t do anything stupid, like try to fly. “I know the Council is hoping to bring on some new talent today, too, so we’ll see how many they pick out.”
Ruby shook her head, looking a little dazed by all the commotion. “Can you imagine trying out under these conditions? It’s so much pressure.”
“You both got picked from trials,” said Adrian. “It wasn’t a lot of pressure then?”
“Oh, it was,” said Ruby, with a nervous laugh. “I was terrified.”
“Not me.” Oscar grinned. “But I knew I’d get picked up. Who wouldn’t want this on their team?” He lifted a palm and a puff of bluish smoke morphed into a vicious dragon. It flew off into the bleachers to a bout of squeals from the audience. “Seriously? There are endless practical uses for that trick.”
“Seriously,” said Ruby, with a sage nod. “Endless.”
“That’s funny,” said Adrian. “I seem to recall you being challenged by … what? Nine different teams, all at once?”
“Yes!” said Oscar, beaming with the memory. “And did they come to regret that or what? That was a shining moment for me. Come to think of it, I may actually have peaked on that day. I think my life has been downhill ever since.”
Ruby laughed. “Do you remember the look on Mia Hagner’s face when you defeated Steamroller? That was the best.”
Oscar leaned his head against Ruby’s shoulder, his eyes sparkling. “Please go on. Tell me everything you remember, in complete, excruciating detail.”
Ruby rested her head against his. “I would, except you covered the whole field with fog so none of us actually got to see anything.”
Oscar’s squinted one eye. “Oh yeah. But trust me—it was a sound whupping.”
Adrian shook his head, watching as the stands filled with onlookers, some of whom had started doing the wave. He clearly remembered the trials of all three of his teammates, though he hadn’t been a team leader at the time. Danna had been accepted without question during her trial—being able to disperse into a swarm of butterflies made her quick, conveniently camouflaged, and a star when it came to hiding and sneaking into places where others couldn’t easily get to.
But Oscar and Ruby had both been challenged, which meant that while one team had seen their potential, other teams had questioned if they deserved a place among the Renegades. They’d each had to prove themselves in one-on-one combat against a member of a challenging team.
Oscar could have wowed the audience with an entire flock of smoke dragons and an army of vapor knights to destroy them, and someone still would have questioned if a kid with a bone disease that kept him tethered to a cane could possibly become a hero in Gatlon City. But he had surprised everyone by taking out Steamroller, a prodigy known for mowing down anyone and anything in his path. Oscar had cast a thick fog over the field, blinding Steamroller, then tricked him into chasing after him until he was only a couple of feet inside the ring. Finally, he had barraged him with a series of darts made of thick black smoke. Steamroller had choked and gagged and stumbled out of the ring—and Smokescreen joined the Renegades.
Ruby, too, had been underestimated. Though she’d been practicing martial arts for years before then, her actual ability—that when she bled, her blood crystallized into ruby-like gems—was seen as belonging more on the black market than in a life of law enforcement. She’d faced off against Guillotine, who thought she’d been handed an easy victory when she slashed open Ruby’s forearm during her first attack. Less than a minute later, though, Ruby responded in force, her arm and hand suddenly covered in red stalagmites as sharp as daggers. Guillotine suffered more than a few wounds of her own before conceding the battle.
“I’m going up for some food,” said Oscar. “What do you guys want? Pretzels? Hot dog?”
“Cotton candy,” said Ruby. “The one with both the blue and the pink mixed together.”
“On it. Sketch?”
“I’m good,” said Adrian.
“I’ll bring you some popcorn. Don’t let anything exciting happen without me.” He winked and retreated into the corridor.
“No promises,” Ruby sang after him. Then her eyes brightened as she pointed up to the stands. “Oh, look! Someone made you a sign!”
Startled, Adrian followed her gesture and spotted a woman holding up a handmade sign that read EVERHART = MY HERO 4-EVER!
“I’m pretty sure that’s referring to my dad.”
Ruby deflated. “You don’t know that.” She cocked her head to the side, as if seeing the sign from a different angle might change it. “Yeah, you’re probably right. But we can pretend someone made you a sign?”
“I’m really okay with it,” said Adrian, frowning at the crowd. He couldn’t wait for this to be over. He wasn’t nervous, exactly. More … embarrassed, in a way. To be participating in a tradition he wasn’t sure he approved of.
They were supposed to encourage every prodigy … no, every human to be as heroic as possible. How was publicly rejecting anyone going to further that goal?
Besides, it wasn’t just the contestants who were being judged today, it was the Renegades too. The public wanted to see the prodigy crusaders who were charged with protecting their city, with protecting them. They wanted to know they were in good hands.
And, okay, they also wanted an afternoon of free entertainment.
It all felt like an absurd way to handle their recruitment. Didn’t anyone have better things to be doing?
“How’s Danna?” Adrian asked, his eyes catching on another homemade sign in the bleachers that read, YOU LIGHT ME UP, BLACKLIGHT!!!
“Sad she can’t be here,” said Ruby. “She hates being cooped up.”
“So would I,” said Adrian.
Ruby suddenly tensed beside him. Adrian followed her glower. Genissa Clark, aka Frostbite, was making her way down the tunnel, surrounded by the rest of her team. They didn’t cast Adrian or Ruby a single glance as they headed onto the field, even though the teams were supposed to wait to be announced before heading to their tables.
“I hope our table is far away from hers,” Ruby muttered, crossing her arms.
Adrian’s lip twitched, remembering now that Genissa was the one who had challenged Ruby’s acceptance into the Renegades two years ago. He could understand her resentment.
Not that he cared much for Genissa or any of her teammates. He hadn’t before, and seeing how they behaved toward the Anarchists hadn’t sparked any great affection, either. Not that he held much sympathy for the Anarchists, but for Frostbite and the others to act like such power-drunk bullies was unacceptable under the code that Renegades were sworn to live by. Plus, seeing those destroyed beehives, even if they did belong to an enemy, had made Adrian’s nose curl in disgust.
The villains’ poor life choices weren’t exactly the bees’ fault, after all.
Even though he hadn’t learned anything about Nightmare or found any evidence he could use to incriminate the rest of the Anarchists, he was glad he’d decided to go into the tunnels that night. Word had quickly spread throughout headquarters that the Sentinel had made a reappearance, claiming to have been sent by the Council themselves. When the Council adamantly refused the claim, and it became clear that the Sentinel had been lying, the humiliation heaped on Genissa and her team was almost palpable.
Adrian had tricked them into abandoning their mission. He had made them look like fools, and he couldn’t help but feel a tinge of smugness every time he thought of it.
The downside, however, was that the mystery of the Sentinel was growing daily. Who was he? Where did he come from? Could he actually be a secret project undertaken by research and development, or was he somehow involved with Nightmare or the Anarchists—an enemy meant to confuse them all?
What had started out as an investigation into Nightmare was quickly becoming an investigation into him, and that made him uneasy.
The other teams began dispersing across the field, too, some looking up questioningly at the Council, unsure if they were supposed to wait or not, but the Council was busy talking to one another and not paying the field much attention. The circle of tables started to fill up. The onlookers in the stands squealed, excited fans trying to catch the attention of their favorite heroes.
“Here we go!” called Oscar, appearing from the crowd in the corridor. His free hand was carrying a tray loaded with food and drinks waiter-style over his head. “Two-tone cotton candy for the lady, popcorn for my man, please help yourselves to some garlic fries or choco-crunchies, but do not touch my smoothie or I won’t hesitate to kill you and everyone you’ve ever loved.”
Ruby snagged the bag of cotton candy from the top of the pile. “Oscar, can I have a sip of your smoothie?”
Oscar fixed a cold look on her for three, four seconds, then wilted. “Yeah, all right.”
Jigging in place, Ruby took the smoothie from the tray. Oscar’s eyes followed the straw into her mouth, his Adam’s apple bobbing.
Adrian rolled his eyes, sneaking a handful of popcorn.
On the Council’s platform, Blacklight approached the microphone and held his arms open to the crowd. “Welcome to the fourth annual Renegade trials!”
The crowd cheered. The stands were full of fluttering signs, screaming fans, stomping feet.
Adrian suspected this had not been the intention when the Renegades had first risen up all those years ago. Back then, anyone who was willing to stand up and fight against the villain gangs was a hero. You didn’t need a special pin or a title to do it. You didn’t need anyone’s approval.
Now, they weren’t so much vigilantes as celebrities. Celebrities who had an important job to do, but celebrities nonetheless. And they were becoming so political, influenced not by the needs of the people, but by what would garner the most public support. What would make them more interesting.
He knew the Council was only trying to hold the city together, still trying to solidify their tenuous control. He knew it hadn’t been easy for them. They had all been in their twenties when they defeated Ace Anarchy—except Blacklight, who had been barely nineteen at the time. They had been heroes and crime fighters for years, but none of them had planned on becoming leaders and lawmakers.
They had done their best. They had built a new city on the bones of an old one, working tirelessly to heal the wounds the villain gangs had left on their society. Order and justice had come first—some sort of legal system, with the Renegades themselves both the creators and defenders of the new order. But that had been only the beginning.
The people told them they needed food, so the Renegades cleared away entire city blocks of rubble and debris to make room for community gardens and agriculture.
The people needed shelter, so they repaired countless abandoned buildings to make them habitable and safe.
The people needed education for their children, so they allocated funding for teachers and supplies and selected community centers where regular classes could take place.
The people needed security and representation, so they set up the Renegade call center and weekly appointments with the Council for citizens who wished to share their grievances.
The people needed livelihoods, so the Council fought to bring manufacturing and construction work into the city, establishing new trade deals with countries that had been cut off for decades.
When there was no funding to keep society moving forward, the Council exchanged the one resource they did have—superheroes and superpowers. In some ways, Renegades had become a commodity, one of the most valuable commodities the world over. Though prodigies came from all over the world to be trained and indoctrinated in Gatlon City, once they were a part of the ever-growing syndicate, they might be sent overseas to assist with hurricanes and floods, fight wars, vanquish crime rings, or help with extracting natural resources from the earth. Foreign governments, many of which had suffered themselves from the rise of villains and Anarchist copycat gangs, were willing to pay handsomely for the Renegades’ services, and that wealth had trickled back into the city, just enough to keep them moving forward.
The relationships had come with a side benefit too. In a short time, the Renegades had become a multinational corporation, with embassies scattered across the globe. The result was that more and more young prodigies aspired to become one of the world’s greatest heroes and would make the pilgrimage to the annual trials in hopes of being accepted into their fold.
So the Renegades grew stronger, and so did the city, and so did the Council. They had accomplished much in a decade. They had much to be proud of.
And yet, with all this fanfare, all the hoopla and ceremony, Adrian couldn’t help feeling like they’d lost sight of the entire point. They were forgetting what they were.
Not celebrities. Not politicians.
Heroes.
“Would all patrol units please come onto the field,” said Blacklight.
The teams who had opted to stay in the corridor filed forward. Adrian found their table almost directly across from the gate where prodigy contestants would enter the field. He sat in the middle, with Ruby and Oscar on either side of him. Oscar scattered his array of snacks before them, and if he or Ruby cared that they were the only team snacking on fries and candy, they didn’t show it.
Ruby grabbed the small tablet that sat on the table and began reading through the instructions on how to accept or reject a contestant, and the important responsibility each team carried to make choices that would strengthen the Renegades as a whole.
After the initial burst of enthusiasm from the crowd had quieted, Blacklight explained the rules. Each contestant would be called out, one at a time, to answer questions from the team captains and perform a demonstration of their powers. Team captains could accept or reject the candidate, and the Council would have an opportunity to accept anyone who was not claimed by a team. If two or more teams wanted the same prodigy hopeful, that prodigy could choose which team to join.
“And at any time,” Blacklight went on, “should a team disagree with the selection from one of their contemporaries, they may challenge an acceptance. In this event, the prodigy hopeful must go head-to-head against a member of the challenging team, and must win their duel in order to join the Renegades.”
The crowd hollered. This was what they were hoping for. Not an easy selection process, but one full of twists and challenges and duels.
It wasn’t about finding new heroes to protect the people, Adrian thought. It was about the spectacle.
But the rules weren’t up to him.
“And now,” said Blacklight, lifting a fist into the air, “let the trials begin!”
Jets of light exploded from his hand—beams of red and gray bursting into fireworks over the arena.
The crowd roared.
Adrian took out his marker and doodled a miniature cannon onto the tablecloth, its fuse already lit. It was no bigger than his hand, but let off a startling bang as it released a torrent of confetti and smoke. The recoil pushed the cannon back on its wheel carriage and Adrian barely caught it as it rolled off the table’s edge. Ruby and Oscar clapped, but some of the Renegades at the next table cast them annoyed looks.
“A kazoo,” whispered Oscar. “Make me a kazoo.”
“Oh—I want cymbals,” said Ruby. “The cute little finger ones?”
Adrian set the cannon down and kept doodling as Blacklight went on, “Please welcome our first contestant of the evening, trying out for his third year in a row … Dan Reynolds, aka … The Crane!”
“I think I remember this guy,” said Ruby. “The origami one, right?”
It was indeed the origami one. A college-aged guy who could fold paper into intricately shaped creatures, and then make them move or flutter under his command. Unfortunately, the creatures weren’t sentient, which severely limited their usefulness.
The crowd booed and held up almost exclusively the ZERO sides of their cards. Soon, Dan Reynolds was rejected for the third time.
“Poor guy,” said Ruby. “That’s rough.”
“He should go into street performance,” said Oscar. “Tourists would pay mad money for those little turtles.” He gestured at a handful of colorful paper turtles that Dan had made, currently making their way slowly, slowly across the field. He blew his kazoo in sympathy.
The next contestant, who called herself Babble, could speak any language instantaneously.
“Cool,” whispered Ruby. “I wish I could do that.”
Oscar leaned forward. “You bleed weaponized crystals.”
“Yeah, but speaking all languages, without having to study them? Think how useful that would be.”
None of the teams took Babble, but after a short discussion, the Council decided to bring her into the Renegade family anyway.
The crowd seemed neither excited nor disappointed. Perhaps they understood the practicality of the decision.
“Okay,” said Oscar, rubbing his hands together, “a good one’s coming up. I can feel it.” He paused, before adding, “By the way, are we hoping to find someone today?”
“No,” Ruby said quickly. “We’re a great team just as we are. Right, Sketch?”
Adrian blinked, his fingers stalling on the illustration of a small gong. “Absolutely,” he said. “We’re a great team just as we are. But … who knows? Maybe someone will surprise us.”