THEY SET UP inside an abandoned fourth-floor office across the street from Cloven Cross Library. The space held remnants of squatters coming and going over the past decades—layers of graffiti and drifts of garbage in the corners. Scavengers had picked every ounce of scrap metal clean, including the doorknobs and the wires in the walls. An old makeshift desk of plywood sat in one corner beneath a layer of dust, and some of the cubicle walls still stood, smelling like mildew and punctured with staples and nail holes and scraps of posters long ago ripped away. On one of the walls Nova noticed a thirty-year-old calendar, still stuck on July, showing a faded photo of some far-off coastal town, where all the sun-bleached buildings were painted in shades of coral and peach. Nova could imagine some bored office drone dreaming about traveling there someday, a place as different from Gatlon City as they could possibly get.
The Renegades had prepared for the evening by bringing a large soft blanket that Adrian spread out over the filthy carpet as soon as they settled into the space. Ruby laid down some pillows for comfort before promptly throwing herself down on top of them. Oscar opened a cooler and offered everyone a soda and some pretzels, which Nova declined.
She paced to the windows and looked out onto the library across the street. It was just past eleven o’clock and the library had been closed for hours, indicated by a plain sign hanging from a string on the front doors. The entire two-story building was pitch-black inside, and though there were old light sconces hung beside the entryway, they seemed to have burned out long ago, leaving only a solitary street lamp by the sidewalk to cast a dreary amber glow over the front facade.
It was a dignified building. The exterior was all massive brownstone, and the windows were framed in dark oak and accented with prominent keystones. The doors in the entryway were flanked by double entasis columns supporting a bold triangular pediment, the words PUBLIC LIBRARY long ago engraved into the stone.
Despite how its imposing facade had weathered over the years, there were clear signs that it was not strictly maintained, from a rash of invasive ivy taking over the west wall to great patches of shingles missing from the roof. Cracked windows left unfixed and garden beds around its foundation that had once been home to tidy boxwoods now gone wild with weeds.
From their lookout, Nova could see partway down the alley that separated the library from a discount-ticket movie theater, where a row of dumpsters and trash cans disappeared into shadows. There were two small doors along that wall of the library, neither as formal as the main entryway, but both still trimmed in ornate stone moldings. The effect was lessened, though, by the iron bars that someone had outfitted over both doors at some point in the last hundred and fifty years. One door could have been an emergency exit, Nova guessed. The other, perhaps, a back entryway for staff or a place for deliveries.
There was no activity in the alley. There was no activity anywhere. Even the ticket booth of the movie theater was dark.
Ingrid and the Librarian had had more than twenty-four hours to prepare for the Renegades’ visit. That should have been plenty of time for him to cancel any illegitimate business dealings and make sure nothing incriminating was left lying around.
“What do you think?” said Adrian, appearing at her side.
Nova kept her attention on the street below. “What exactly are we looking for?”
“Villains,” Oscar said. “Doing villainous things.”
Nova sent him an unimpressed look.
“Anything that could be qualified as suspicious activity,” said Adrian, pulling her gaze toward him. He returned the look with a shrug. “I figured, if this is a cover for illegal weapon sales, or anything else, then all of that activity would happen through the back doors, right? And it probably wouldn’t happen during normal business hours.” His frown deepened. “I don’t think, anyway.” He nodded toward the alley. “If we see someone coming or going, especially if we recognize them, or if they leave with something that looks like it could be weapons, then we’ll tail them and see what we can find out.”
Nova smothered the start of a smile. Twice she had come here with Ingrid to offer trades for equipment they needed, and both times it had been in the middle of the day and they had entered through the front doors, like any other patron. Gene Cronin had a system set up for his side business—a handful of specific books tucked in among the stacks that acted as a code word to the receptionist when brought up to the desk together. It was a discreet way to indicate they weren’t there for reading material.
But if the Renegades wanted to believe that all illicit activity happened through back doors under the cover of nightfall, so be it.
“So we’re just going to watch those doors all night?” she asked.
“Pretty much.” He grimaced. “I figured we’d go in shifts. I thought you could go last, since you’ll be the least likely to fall asleep.”
Least likely. Like it still might be a possibility.
Nova stepped away from the window. Adrian nodded at Oscar, who took his place as the first lookout.
“Is the Librarian a villain?” asked Oscar, staring across the street. “I mean, like, with superpowers? Or is he just a bad guy?”
“He’s a prodigy,” said Adrian, “but I’m not sure exactly what he does. Nothing violent, I don’t think.”
“Knowledge retention,” said Nova. The others turned to look at her and she started. “Is … what I’ve heard,” she added lamely. “I think that’s why they call him the Librarian. Not just because he, you know, runs a library, but supposedly he remembers everything he reads, word for word. Forever.”
“Makes sense,” said Ruby, opening a bag of candy.
Allowing herself to relax once the attention of the group moved away from her, Nova sat cross-legged and stared at the pile of snacks they’d brought. Red licorice ropes, jelly beans, peanut butter cookies, and an assortment of canned energy shots.
“This is the first time you’ve all done this, isn’t it?”
“What do you mean?” said Ruby, grabbing a handful of jelly beans, picking out the purple ones and dumping them back in the bag, before throwing the rest into her mouth at once.
Nova gestured at the spread. “This is a sugar crash waiting to happen. Didn’t anyone think to bring … I don’t know, carrots? Or some nuts or beef jerky … or you know, something with nutrients?”
Ruby blinked at her, then looked blankly at Oscar. Neither spoke.
“I could run to the store,” said Adrian. “There’s a corner store three blocks away. If you need something…”
Realizing that he was looking at her, Nova shook her head. “It won’t matter to me, but…” She waved her hand through the air. “Never mind. Don’t worry about it. I’ll take over whenever the rest of you pass out, which I’m betting will be sooner than later.”
“Shows what you know,” said Oscar. He was leaning against the window frame, tapping the end of his cane against the floor. “I’ve got the stamina of a triathlete.”
Nova’s eyebrow lifted.
“He didn’t mean it that way,” muttered Adrian.
“Didn’t I?” said Oscar, with a suggestive glance in his direction.
Adrian snapped his fingers at him. “Eyes on the window.”
Nova glanced from Oscar to Ruby. It was the first time she’d seen them in civilian clothing—he in a checkered-blue dress shirt, the sleeves rolled to his elbows, and she in a T-shirt with the SUPER SCOUTS logo scrolled across the chest, a fan-comic from overseas that was immensely popular, but that Nova had never actually read. As Red Assassin, her black-and-white hair was always pulled back high on her head, but tonight it was down in loose pigtails that made her look adorably harmless. What was most striking, though, was the thick white bandage wrapped around her upper arm, disappearing beneath her sleeve. Nova wondered if Ruby had been injured during their fight at the parade, though Nova was sure she hadn’t wounded her.
Adrian, too, was dressed casually, almost exactly as he had been at the parade. Red sneakers. Blue jeans. A dark long-sleeved T-shirt. There was nothing particularly fashionable about the outfit, but it fit him well, hanging in just the right way to suggest toned muscles underneath.
She looked away quickly, annoyed that the thought had occurred to her.
“We brought games,” said Ruby, when the silence tipped toward uncomfortable. She riffled through a backpack and pulled out a deck of cards and a box of dominoes. The tiles inside clacked noisily as she set it down on the blanket. “Anyone?”
When a quiet lack of enthusiasm greeted her, she shrugged and grabbed the deck of cards instead. “Fine. I’ll play solitaire.”
Nova watched her lay out a row of cards. “So. This is the life of a superhero.” She glanced up at Adrian. “No wonder everyone wants to be one of you.”
He met her look with a smile and lowered himself onto the other corner of the blanket. “Everyone wants to be one of us,” he corrected. “And yes. We are living the dream.”
“Okay,” said Oscar, propping one foot up on the windowsill. Without looking back, he lifted his hand in the shape of a pistol and shot an arrow of white smoke in Nova’s direction. It struck her chest and dispersed. “Origin story. Go.”
“Excuse me?” she said, waving away the remnants of odorless smoke that wafted toward the ceiling.
“You know,” he said, glancing back. “When someone decides to write the highly dramatized comic-book version of the story of Insomnia, where will it start?”
“He wants to know where you got your power,” said Ruby, slapping down a new card.
“Was it the result of some personal trauma?” said Oscar. “Or human experimentation or alien abduction?”
“Oscar,” said Adrian, warning, and Oscar turned his attention back to the window.
“Just making small talk,” he said. “We should know more about her than just her ability to turn an ink pen into a receptacle for blow darts.”
“We know she can clean the floor with the likes of Gargoyle,” said Ruby.
“And that she can give sass to Blacklight in the middle of an arena full of screaming fans,” added Adrian. He grinned at Nova, who looked away.
“Fine, I’ll go first,” said Oscar, and though she couldn’t see his face, Nova had the impression that this was where he’d wanted to take the conversation from the start.
“By all means,” she said, leaning back on her palms. “Origin story. Go.”
Oscar inhaled a long breath before proclaiming, quite dramatically, “I died in a fire when I was five years old.”
When he said nothing else, Nova glanced at Adrian to see if there was a joke she’d missed, but Adrian merely nodded.
“So…,” started Nova, “you’re a smoke-controlling zombie?”
She saw Oscar’s grin in the reflection of the window. “That would be awesome. But no. I’m not dead anymore, obviously.”
“Obviously,” agreed Nova.
“As the story goes,” he said, “my mom was down in the basement of our apartment building doing laundry when one of our neighbors fell asleep and her cat knocked over a candle she’d left burning. The whole place went up in flames in—I don’t know—minutes. I was in my bedroom and I heard people screaming, and then I saw the smoke, but I was petrified, and besides, I’m not exactly fast, right?” He shook his cane. “So by the time I got the courage to try to get out of the apartment, the fire was coming up the stairs and I didn’t know what to do. So I just froze in the hallway, watching the smoke until it was so thick I could hardly see, and couldn’t breathe. I passed out, and that’s how the Renegades found me.”
“The Renegades?” said Nova.
“Who else? Tsunami, to be specific. She’s the one who put out the fire, then she handed me off to Thunderbird who flew me over to the hospital, but they didn’t have much hope I’d make it. I didn’t have a pulse by that point. But while they were all mourning the death of this kid, I was having a dream.” His voice darkened, taking on an air of importance. “I dreamed that I was standing on top of our apartment building and I was breathing in—this long, long breath that went on and on. It was such a deep breath that it pulled all the smoke right out of the air and into my lungs. Finally, I stopped breathing in, looked up at the sky, and exhaled. And that’s when I woke up.”
“In the hospital?” said Nova. “Or the morgue?”
“The hospital. It had only been about ten minutes since they’d brought me there—plenty of time to declare me legally dead, but still. My mom was there, too, and she saw me exhale, and this big cloud of smoke came out of my mouth.” Oscar puckered his lips and blew. A gray cloud burst across the surface of the window. “And here we are.”
Nova cocked her head. “So … your power. It doesn’t have anything to do with…” She gestured at the cane, and though Oscar wasn’t looking at her, he tapped the cane against the floor a few times in acknowledgment.
“Nope,” he said. “This I was born with. I mean, not the cane. But my bones don’t grow like a normal person’s. Some rare bone disease.” He grinned back at Nova. “Probably the best thing that ever happened to me, though, right? Just think—if I’d been faster, I might have gotten out of that apartment building just fine, and I’d be stuck with all the other spry, non-prodigy suckers out there.”
“Right,” said Nova. “Not dying of carbon monoxide poisoning when you were five years old would have been awful.”
“See?” Oscar looked pointedly at Adrian. “She gets it.”
Adrian rolled his eyes.
“And when you tried out for the Renegades…,” started Nova, leaning forward. “Nobody thought this was … a problem?” She nodded to the cane.
Oscar snorted with pride. “Sure they did. To date, I hold the record for most challenged contestant at the trials. And yet, here I am.” He gestured at Ruby. “She was challenged during her tryout too. In fact, it’s sort of becoming a theme around here.”
“Let me guess,” said Nova, cupping her chin in her palm and inspecting the top of Ruby’s bleached hair as she bent over her cards. “Your origin is that … you stumbled across a cache of ancient magical artifacts in a dusty antique shop somewhere, including a ruby hook and dagger, which imparted you with mystical fighting abilities from some long-forgotten culture.”
Ruby laughed. “Um, no, but that might be what I start telling people. It’s certainly less traumatic than the truth.”
“Oh?”
Ruby turned over the last card, checked that she had nowhere to place it, and started gathering them all back up into her palm. “Before society collapsed, my grandmother was a well-respected jeweler. She’d been running this shop in Queen’s Row for forty years when the Anarchists took over, and it was one of the first places that got raided after all the credit cards stopped working and everyone was panicking and thought we’d go back to bartering for gold and jewels. You know, before they realized that food, water, and guns were the actual valuables in a world like that. After a few days of looting, everything was gone, except what my grandma had stashed in her safe. So she took out every gem and diamond she had left and started hiding them where she didn’t think they’d be found, including a bunch in secret places around our house.”
“You lived together?” asked Nova.
“Oh yeah, she’s lived with us since before I was born. Grandma, me, my parents, and my brothers.”
“You have brothers?” said Nova.
“Two of them,” said Ruby, fixing a look on her. “But it’s not really relevant to this story.”
“Sorry.”
“So anyway, she hid these priceless gems all over the house—in little holes in the walls, secret compartments in our dressers, things like that. And they all sat there for twenty-plus years while my family tried to figure out how to survive, and eventually my brothers and I were born, and side note—yes, we all have really annoying gem-themed names, thanks Grandma. Well, one night we were playing hide-and-seek and I hid behind the grate on our fireplace and happened to find this little bag full of rubies that had been tucked up inside the chimney. I’d heard about the jewelry store and the raids and everything and didn’t really know what to do with them, so I just put them back. Until a few months later … Do you know how, not long before the Day of Triumph, some of the villain gangs started figuring out how to make trades internationally and that’s when gold started to become valuable again? Well, my grandma was one of the first people they turned to. One night our house got raided by villains looking for anything that might have been missed before.”
“Which villains?” said Nova, having asked the question before she realized she was about to. “What gang?”
“The Jackals,” said Ruby, shuddering. “I’ll never forget those creepy masks.”
Nova pressed her lips together. She’d seen photos of the Jackals taken before the Day of Triumph. They had been one of the few villain gangs to wear a cohesive uniform—all black clothes with signature masks painted to look like the animals they’d been named for.
She wasn’t sure why she felt disappointed, but Nova realized that a part of her had been expecting Ruby to say that her family had been assaulted by the Roaches, the same gang that had sent the hitman after Nova’s family. The gang Ace had slaughtered in retaliation. They had been one of the largest and most powerful gangs in Gatlon City, so it wouldn’t have surprised her if they’d been the tormenters of Ruby’s family. Some said they even got their name from the Renegades themselves, when one of the early vigilantes complained that no matter how many of those villains they stamped out, they could never seem to get rid of them all.
There had been a tiny, faint wish that she and Ruby might share this mutual, long-dead enemy.
She curled her knees against her chest, digging her fingertips into her legs.
What a stupid thing to wish for.
“We didn’t have much by that point, as most everything valuable had been bartered off,” said Ruby, “but they started tearing the house apart anyway. While they were busy threatening my dad, I ran upstairs to the fireplace and took out the rubies—which in hindsight is probably the stupidest thing I could have done, because they might not have even found them up there, but I was four, so what did I know? And then…” She inhaled, as if this were the painful part to talk about it. “I dumped them into my mouth and I swallowed them.”
“Of course you did,” said Nova.
“In one fell swoop.” Ruby cupped one hand and mimed throwing a handful of rubies into her mouth and swallowing, not unlike how she’d gobbled down the jelly beans earlier. “I’m not really sure what possessed me to do it, other than how I just couldn’t stomach the idea of the Jackals walking away with anything more than they’d already taken. The trouble was, one of the Jackals saw me do it. He grabbed me and started demanding that I cough them up. Or, vomit them up, I guess. But I wouldn’t do it. So…” For the first time since the start of her story, Ruby’s face darkened with anger. “He stabbed me.”
Nova’s eyes widened.
“Once in my arm,” said Ruby, glancing down at her bandaged arm. “Twice in my chest. Once right here.” She pointed at a spot near her stomach. “I knew he was going to kill me. But then … well, here.” She unclipped the end of the bandage and began to unwrap it from her arm, uncovering her flesh just enough that Nova could see a deep and, apparently, very recent wound. It began to bleed as soon as the bandage was removed, the red blood dripping down into the crease of her elbow, trickling toward her fingers.
Until …
Nova’s lips parted and she leaned closer, mesmerized, as the blood began to harden into sharp, symmetrical formations that jutted upward from the wound.
“I didn’t know what was happening,” said Ruby, “but I started to fight back. I ripped off the Jackal’s mask and stabbed him in the eye.”
Nova’s jaw dropped even more.
“Which sounds really brave in hindsight,” added Ruby, “but all I remember is how terrified I was. It was more instinct than anything else. But it worked—the Jackals ran off after that and they never came back.”
Ruby swiped her other hand across the gash, snapping the crystals off at their base with a quiet crack. She tossed them into the corner, where they shattered amid the piles of paper and debris.
“I’ve bled rubies ever since. They’ll form on new wounds for a little while, but those tend to heal pretty fast. Whereas the places where he stabbed me…” She started to wrap the bandage around her arm again, securing it tight. “They never stop bleeding. They never healed.”
Nova stared at the glistening gems on the floor, then back at Ruby. “What about the alias?” she asked. “Smokescreen and Sketch make perfect sense, and I get the Red part, but … Assassin?”
Ruby’s whole face brightened. “Actually, my brothers came up with it. It was kind of an inside joke. We used to pretend we were superheroes when we were kids—like everyone does, right?”
Nova didn’t answer.
“So they made up names for all of us. Jade was the Green Machine, Sterling was the Silver Snake, and I became Red Assassin.”
Nova looked at the stone dangling from Ruby’s wrist. She could still distinctly recall the feel of her ruby dagger pressed against her throat. “So … you’ve never…?”
“What? Killed someone?” Ruby guffawed. “Not so far.” Then she grew suddenly serious. “I mean, I would kill someone. If I had to.”
“But it’s always a last resort,” added Adrian.
“Correct me if I’m wrong,” said Nova, knowing she wasn’t, “but didn’t Renegades used to kill people all the time? Back during the Age of Anarchy, there were always stories about them taking out members of the villain gangs.”
“New rules,” said Adrian, “new regulations. We’re always supposed to bring them in to custody as peacefully as we can, and avoid unnecessary violence whenever possible.”
Nova gaped at him. It felt so … so silly, in comparison to what she had been taught all her life. The strong over the weak. An eye for an eye. If someone wronged you or yours, then you did what you had to do to ensure it didn’t happen again.
Which often meant killing the one who had wronged you.
Every one of the Anarchists had countless deaths on their hands. She could remember nights when they sat around talking about their most brutal kills. Bragging about them. Laughing about them. When they’d developed the plan for Nova to take out Captain Chromium, Leroy had joked about throwing her a party afterward, to commemorate her first kill.
Her first.
Because they all assumed there would be more to follow. Even Nova had assumed it.
So why did the thought suddenly make her uneasy? Because she’d failed the mission? Or was it something else?
“Hey, guys,” said Oscar, pressing a hand against the window. “The back door’s open.”
They all sprang to their feet—even Nova, and for a moment she forgot that the last thing she wanted them to witness was suspicious activity happening in that alleyway. But when they’d all clustered around Oscar, they saw that it was only a girl taking out a garbage sack and throwing it onto a pile beside the nearest dumpster.
Nova recognized Narcissa, Gene Cronin’s granddaughter, but none of the others seemed to know who she was.
Narcissa let the dumpster lid slam shut and brushed her hands off on her pants before retreating back into the library.
Oscar grumbled. “False alarm.”
“Should we go through their garbage?” said Ruby. “Do you think they’re throwing away any incriminating evidence?”
Adrian frowned thoughtfully. “Maybe, but let’s see what tonight turns up first.”
Nova peered at him from the corner of her eye. Is that where he would place the false evidence?
“My turn,” said Ruby, nudging Oscar on the shoulder while Nova and Adrian returned to the blanket. “I’m bored.”
“Oh yeah, because this is exciting stuff,” he said, but relinquished his place at the window without argument. Lying down, he stretched out onto the pillows.
“How about you?” said Nova, turning to Adrian. “Were you challenged at the trials?”
“Nope.”
“Adrian didn’t have to try out,” said Oscar, kicking Adrian in the shin. “Cheater.”
“Oh right,” said Nova. “Because of…” She hesitated over the right words. His family? His dads? His adoptive relations, who just happened to be the most influential prodigies in the city, perhaps the whole world?
“It’s not like they bent any rules for me or anything,” said Adrian. At some point he had pulled out his fine-tip marker and he was fidgeting with it now, twisting the cap back and forth. “But I was hanging out around headquarters since they first started renovations. By the time someone thought to start hosting trials to bring in new talent, I was already … you know. A part of the team. Obviously, I would have tried out, if anyone had asked me to.”
He scowled at Oscar, and something about his defensiveness made Nova relax.
“I know you would have,” said Oscar. “And you would have kicked ass.”
“Thank you,” said Adrian, scratching his temple with the pen. “I mean, I could have drawn a hand grenade. Come on.”
“No one’s doubting you,” Oscar insisted.
“And what’s your origin story?” said Nova. “I’m guessing that marker doesn’t contain magical ink?”
Adrian’s quiet smile returned as he glanced down at the marker. “No magic. Sadly, no thrilling near-death experiences or villainous jewelry heists, either.” He sighed heavily, as though he’d been dreading this moment, though a hint of a smile remained. “Like twenty-eight percent of today’s prodigies, I was born with my power. At least, I think I was. It manifested pretty much the first time I was handed a crayon.”
“Manifested how?” said Nova.
He shrugged. “I started to scribble, and those scribbles started to come to life and squiggle around the apartment like little primary-colored worms that my mom was always trying to sweep up. Now, things got really interesting when I was … maybe two or three? My power works by intention more than anything, so back then, I was still just scribbling random lines, but in my head I was drawing dinosaurs and aliens. So then the house became overrun with tiny little squiggle lines that believed they were dinosaurs and aliens and were always trying to chomp down on people’s toes when they were walking around. Which is about the time Mom thought it would be a good idea to hire an ex–art teacher who lived a couple streets away to start giving me drawing lessons.”
Oscar snorted loudly. “Notice how he complained about the lack of excitement in his story, but then it turns out there were actual meat-eating dinosaurs in it? You’re such a one-upper, Sketch.”
“It was a harrowing tale,” agreed Nova. She was grinning, though her thoughts were roiling in the back of her head. Adrian had mentioned his mom, and now she found herself comparing his face to pictures she’d seen of Lady Indomitable—the sixth and final of the original Renegades. The resemblance was clear. Nova could picture her effervescent smile easily, a smile that rivaled the Captain’s in brightness and charm, and one Adrian had clearly inherited.
His mother had been a Renegade, too. Would probably be on the Council today, if she were—
Nova’s heart squeezed.
If she were still alive.
She racked her brain, trying to recall what had happened to the superhero, but all she knew was that she had died a long time ago. Nova had never really cared that much. One less Renegade to worry about. But now she found herself succumbing to curiosity, wanting to know what had happened to her, but not knowing how to ask.
“No more stalling, Insomnia,” said Adrian, yanking her attention back. “It’s your turn.”
“Oh.” Shaking her head, Nova flipped her hand through the air, like the story was so dull it was hardly worth mentioning. In fact, she had been born with her power—what she thought of as her real power, the ability to put people to sleep. She had a vague memory of her mom once joking about how hard it had been to breastfeed Nova as a baby because she kept dozing off every time Nova nursed.
But the power they knew about, the fact that Nova never slept … that had come later. When, for weeks, every time she shut her eyes, gunshots rang in her ears.
Bang.
Bang.
Bang.
“It happened when I was six,” she said, picking at bits of fuzz on the blanket. “I just … stopped sleeping.”
“But you could sleep before then?” said Ruby, her gaze on the library.
“Sure. Not as much as most kids. But … some.”
“Could you still, though? If you wanted to?” said Oscar. “Or is it impossible for you to sleep anymore?”
Nova shook her head. “I don’t know. It’s been a long time since I wanted to.”
“What happened when you were six?” asked Adrian.
She met his gaze, and the memory was right there. The dark closet. Evie’s crying. The man’s remorseless stare.
“I had a dream,” she said. “I dreamed there were these tiny little squiggly dinosaurs that kept trying to bite my toes and when I woke up, I thought, that’s it. Never again.”
Oscar and Ruby laughed, but Adrian’s gaze only softened. “What a nightmare.”
She shivered.
“Your parents must be saints,” said Oscar, pulling her attention toward him. “To put up with a kid that never slept? I hope you were good at entertaining yourself.”
His words struck her in the chest. She flinched, and Oscar blanched, his eyes widening in horror. “I’m sorry. I forgot.”
The unexpected apology caught Nova off guard, and the sting of his words was quickly replaced with suspicion. Did they know? How did they know?
“Your papers mentioned, um…” Oscar rubbed the back of his neck.
Adrian cleared his throat. “You live with your uncle now, right?”
Nova’s gut clenched again, even though she knew Adrian’s question had been well intentioned. An attempt to draw all their thoughts away from the single explanatory line they must have read when they reviewed her fake papers. Both parents were killed by an unknown villain gang during the Age of Anarchy. Currently resides with Peter McLain, paternal uncle.
“Uh, yeah,” she stammered. “He took me in after…” She swallowed. “They died a long time ago.”
“How old were you?” Ruby asked, her voice soft, though her attempts to be calming only made Nova’s hackles rise.
She fixed her gaze on Ruby. “Six.”
From the corner of her eye she saw Adrian tilt his head curiously.
Six when her parents died. Six when she stopped sleeping.
How had this edged so treacherously close to the truth?
Without looking at him, Nova pulled herself to her feet. “I’m going to go scout out the roof. We might have a better view of the alley from up there.”
Ruby and Oscar traded looks and she could tell they wanted to stop her. Or maybe apologize, though the words didn’t come, and Nova was glad for it.
She didn’t want an apology, or pity, or sympathy, or even kindness. She didn’t need those things from anyone, least of all a bunch of Renegades.