NIGHTMARE’S BULLET HAD NOT HIT the Detonator, but rather, had struck one of two drooping marionettes that hung inside the theater, marking it right between its eyes. Though Nightmare hadn’t hit either the Detonator or Adrian himself, he had a feeling she’d hit the exact target she’d been aiming for.
Whatever message she wanted to send, though, left him baffled.
“You have a lot of nerve showing your face here,” said Nightmare, her voice low and muffled behind the mask.
Adrian felt his forearms tingling, as if the tattoos themselves were preparing themselves for a fight, though he still found himself reaching for his marker—habitually or instinctively, he wasn’t sure. But when he lifted his gaze back to Nightmare, she appeared to be staring at the Detonator, not him.
“What?” said the Detonator, bobbing her crossed leg up and down. She wore the same outfit she had at the library, though Adrian saw that she had bandages wrapped around her upper arm where Nova had shot her as she tried to run. “I’m not allowed to stop and say hello to a dear friend?”
“You,” Nightmare said, with a growl in her tone, “cost me a valuable connection when you went after the Librarian, and all the goods he’d stockpiled. Do you know how much work I put in to trading with him? How long it took me to cultivate that relationship? All for nothing, thanks to you.”
Adrian took a step back, moving out of the path between them. When neither paid him any notice, he stepped back again, then again.
“Blame me all you want for your sorry misfortunes,” said the Detonator with a one-shouldered shrug. “But let’s not forget that you started this all when you decided to go after Captain Chromium. The head honcho himself. If you hadn’t been so careless, the Renegades wouldn’t be after us at all, now would they? They wouldn’t have gotten your gun. They wouldn’t have traced it back to the Librarian, and it would be business as usual, now wouldn’t it?”
“Except they didn’t attack us after the parade, did they? They took the Puppeteer and they let the rest of the Anarchists off the hook. It wasn’t until you got lazy and impatient—when you decided to take a risk you shouldn’t have. You know what I think?” Nightmare raised the gun again. “I think the Anarchists will be better off without you.”
She fired again and the Detonator cried out and fell backward off the lip of the small wooden stage, disappearing into the tiny theater.
Adrian dived behind a rotting canoe, a leftover, he assumed, from the tunnel of love.
Nightmare kept shooting, letting off four more bullets until the revolver clicked over, spent.
When Adrian lifted his head, he saw that the front of the wooden theater was peppered with holes and splintered wood. The marionettes were swaying on their strings and there was a splatter of something dark against the backdrop, but he couldn’t tell if it was blood or dirt.
Nightmare holstered her gun and leaped from the roof, landing cat-like on the ground where Adrian had stood moments before. She hesitated, staring at the theater. Adrian couldn’t see her face around the drape of the hood, but he sensed her waiting, bracing herself. His tranquilizer gun was still in her other hand.
Clenching his jaw, he uncapped his marker as quietly as he could and drew himself a new gun against the side of the canoe. It was a hasty drawing, made messy by years of dirt crusted onto the wood, but he was glad to be armed again when it was finished. He sketched out a handful of extra darts and stuffed them into his pocket.
He had just finished when he heard the melodic clunking of hollow wood. Looking up, he saw the Detonator pulling herself up, shoving the marionettes out of the way. She collapsed over the ledge of the theater booth. When she looked up, her face was contorted in pain, her eyes seething with fury.
She hauled herself up onto the ledge, then tumbled gracelessly down to the other side.
The entire front of her shirt was covered in blood. More was dripping down her midriff and coating the bands around her arms.
Her nostrils flared as she forced herself up onto shaky legs. She cursed, then spat into the dirt between her and Nightmare.
She stumbled forward. One shaky, plodding step.
Blue sparks began to crackle at her fingertips.
Nightmare shifted back, stepping up onto the bottom step of the fun house.
“Ace never should have taken you in,” said the Detonator. The sparks began to converge into something no bigger than a tennis ball at first, but growing fast. “You might have had potential once, but now? You’re nothing but a disappointment.”
She took another step forward, then groaned, dropping hard to one knee.
Adrian brought up the gun, resting his hands on the edge of the canoe. He aimed first at the Detonator, then at Nightmare. He wasn’t sure what to do. They were fighting each other. They might kill each other.
The Detonator, he suspected, wouldn’t last long with those wounds.
But he still needed Nightmare alive.
Gritting his teeth, he targeted the Detonator again. The bomb hovering over her palm was as big as her head now, and still growing.
His eyes narrowed. Even at the library, he had never seen her compose an explosive device of that size. She was smiling now, a crazed, gleeful smile.
Adrian squeezed the trigger.
The dart disappeared into the grasses behind her. He cursed.
The Detonator laughed. “Now, you just wait your turn over there, sweetheart. I’ll get to you next.” The explosive was bigger than a basketball, glowing in bright, swirling blue.
“Ingrid?” said Nightmare, and the slight quiver to her voice brought Adrian’s attention back to her, even as he hurried to load another dart. “What are you doing?”
Adrian hesitated. There was something familiar about her in that moment. Something that gnawed at him. Had she ever, for a moment, appeared vulnerable when he had fought her before? He didn’t think so.
“If I’m going to die,” said the Detonator, “it’s not going to be alone.”
Nightmare shifted—an almost imperceptible change. Her stance widened. Her head tilted down. Her shoulders tensed as she turned, ready to launch herself off the stairs and away from the fun house.
The Detonator hurled the bomb at her.
Nightmare was a moment too late.
The explosion knocked Adrian onto his back. A flash blinded him, washing out the sky overhead, leaving him trying to blink the shadowy stars from his eyes. His head rang. His whole body vibrated from the impact. The world smelled of smoke and dust.
Coughing, he rolled onto his side and took off his glasses, rubbing the lenses on his uniform to wipe away the dirt. He was still plagued with sparklers in his gaze when he put them back on and pushed himself up to his elbows. The canoe had been turned over onto its side, and he wondered how much it had protected him from the surge of shrapnel and flying rubble.
Half of the fun house was gone.
Broken floorboards and a few of the interior rooms were left exposed, including the metal slide and the hall of mirrors, which was now littered with broken glass. Wooden beams and siding and roof shingles were scattered across the ground in all directions. The pitched roof was toppling inward, ready to cave onto the mound of smoking wood and plaster beneath.
The Detonator had fallen forward onto her stomach. Her hair and clothing had turned chalky gray from all the dust, and the blood from her wounds was clumping in the dirt around her. She was not moving.
Adrian searched for any sign of Nightmare, who had been standing in the very spot where the great mountain of debris was smoldering. She could have been buried beneath, or, more likely, she could have been blown apart by the explosion.
Shaking, Adrian got back to his feet and tucked the gun into the back of his pants. He stared at the exposed insides of the fun house. A few small fires were scattered throughout the wreckage, sending plumes of black smoke toward the darkening sky. Somewhere inside he could hear the jack-in-the-box laughing.
His heart started to pound erratically. “Nova…”
His disbelief was quickly overcome with denial, and he lifted his wrist. “Nova—Insomnia, where are you? Report.” Stumbling around the canoe, he picked his way through the remains of the building, searching the corners of its crumbling skeleton. “Nova!”
He was trying to navigate the destroyed outer wall when his eye caught on something shining beneath a fallen window shutter. He kicked the shutter out of the way, stooped, and picked up the slim, molded piece of steel.
Nightmare’s face mask.
Turning it over, he saw that one side of it was streaked with blood.
A tittering laugh made his skin prickle. Adrian tossed the mask aside and turned to see the Detonator on her hands and knees, still chortling. She spat, then sat back on her heels and wiped the dirt from her mouth.
She was drenched in blood.
He stared at her, stunned. He wasn’t surprised that she would survive the explosion. From what he’d seen at the library, she appeared to be immune to the blasts of her own bombs. But she had been shot so many times, she had lost so much blood …
How was she still alive? And … laughing?
With a delirious grin, the Detonator climbed to her feet. She seemed to wobble for a moment, but then she shook out her matted hair and her stance solidified. “I don’t know who’s more gullible,” she said, rolling her shoulders. “Nightmare … or you.”
Adrian was too distracted for her taunting. He found his attention constantly shifting around the park, hoping to see some sign of Nova.
The Detonator clapped her hands together, knocking off some of the dust. “That was fun, wasn’t it? That little spat of ours. It was all staged for your benefit, you know, so I hope you were entertained.”
He frowned. His pulse was beginning to race again, his instincts humming with warnings—but also curiosity.
“You see?” said the Detonator, swiping her fingers through the caked blood on her abdomen. “Fake blood. She was firing blanks. You know, Queen Bee thinks she’s the only savvy actress around, but I think I’ve proved otherwise.”
Adrian shook his head. “What are you talking about?”
“Don’t you see? We planned this all, to make you think that we were both dead. So you would stop looking for us. Get it now?”
He stared at her.
“I know, I know. You’re thinking … so why is Nightmare actually dead, then? And why am I giving up our villainous plan now, when we almost got away with it?” She staggered forward, and though she didn’t seem to be in pain, she wasn’t moving as gracefully as normal, either. Adrian wondered if creating a bomb that size had drained her. “It’s too bad, really. I liked Nightmare. Always have. She was a lot like me in a lot of ways—always willing to do what had to be done. But I could see the writing on the wall. It was only a matter of time before she betrayed us, betrayed all of us. And I couldn’t have that. So … she had to go. Problem solved.”
Adrian was still frowning, still confused. “Is this…,” he started, dismayed, “a villain speech?”
Ingrid laughed. “Maybe so. It’s horrible to go through all this plotting and have no one around to appreciate it. Besides, you’ll be dead soon, too, so it’s not really going to matter.”
Adrian reached for the gun, but he had barely gotten his fingers around the handle when a glowing blue marble smashed into the ground at his feet, blowing a small crater into the earth and knocking him onto a pile of splintered siding and wooden studs. A sharp pain tore through his tricep and he cried out, tearing his arm away from the nail that was sticking up through one of old trim boards.
Hissing, he scrambled to sit up.
The Detonator sauntered closer, gathering more power around her hands. “It’s time to finish what we started at the library.”
Adrian snarled and clenched his fist, drawing on the power of the cylindrical tattoo on his forearm. Within seconds, his arm from fingers to elbow had begun to glow molten white.
The Detonator paused.
Before Adrian was entirely sure this would work without being in the Sentinel’s armor, a long metal cylinder emerged from his skin. He fired, striking the villain in the chest with a single bolt of blinding energy. She was blown back, smacking hard into the puppet theater. The mannequins trembled and clacked together.
The cylinder retreated into his flesh and Adrian clambered to his feet, trying to find purchase on the shifting piles of wreckage beneath him. He staggered forward, retrieving his gun.
The Detonator coughed and placed a hand over her chest, where the beam had hit her. Her breathing was raspy and labored as she met his eyes.
“Fine. Let’s finish what we started at the library,” said Adrian. “No—actually, let’s finish what started ten years ago.” He came to stand half a dozen feet away from her and raised the gun, confident that even he could hit her from this distance. “Nightmare knew who killed my mother, and you just took that one lead away from me. But you’re an Anarchist, so maybe you have some answers too.”
In response, she began to laugh again. Dazed and maniacal. “The Sentinel,” she gasped. “You’re the Sentinel. Oh, that’s rich.”
His eyebrow began to twitch. “Who killed Lady Indomitable?”
Her cackle turned to a wheeze as she studied him. “You’re going to threaten me into submission with … what? A tranquilizer? Life imprisonment?” She smirked. “I seem to recall you were eager to negotiate with the Librarian. Don’t I get the same treatment?”
He held her gaze, considering, trying to discern if she really had the information he wanted, or if this was just her trying to play him again.
And even if she did know, could he really bargain with her, after everything?
“No,” he said. “The Renegades are done negotiating with Anarchists.”
Stepping forward, he dug the handcuffs from his pocket and yanked the Detonator’s wrists forward, binding them together. He could just see the amused twinge enter her eye when he pulled out his marker and began to draw lines crisscrossing her hands.
“What are you doing?”
Rather than answering, he finished his work, then pulled the chains from her skin, securing her hands and fingers tight enough that she would be unable to produce any more explosives.
She peered up at him, her lip curling. “And how do you plan on keeping me silent about your little secret?”
“I don’t,” he said. “The Sentinel’s mission was to find Nightmare. With her dead, it no longer matters who knows the truth.”
He didn’t entirely mean it—his secret had turned out to be more complicated than he would have imagined when he’d first concocted the idea. But he wouldn’t allow this Anarchist to lord the knowledge over him. He wouldn’t allow her to have any power over him at all.
“Adrian!”
He looked up as the sound of wingbeats thrummed in the air. Thunderbird dropped out of the sky, a lightning bolt crackling in one fist. She eyed the Detonator with surprise. “Your message said you found Nightmare!”
“I did,” said Adrian. “She’s dead. And … Nova…” He turned back to the fun house again, or what was left of it, as more chunks of material broke off and crashed down to the rubble below.
It had been ages since he’d seen her. He wanted there to be some explanation … maybe she’d gone for help. Maybe the effects of being near Max had finally caught up to her and she’d fallen asleep in some safe, secure alcove somewhere.
But he knew it was desperation talking.
“Oh, Nova,” said the Detonator, dragging his attention back to her. “I already dealt with her.”
He tensed, unwilling to believe her. She was only taunting him, only trying to get a reaction. But that haughty look … that careless smirk …
Adrian roared and threw himself at her, seeing nothing but livid flashes as those words repeated in his head. I already dealt with her.
Thunderbird caught him by the arm and slowed him down just long enough for another, infinitely stronger arm to clamp around Adrian’s chest and haul him backward. He fought to free himself, but was spun around. Two hands clapped onto his shoulders and he found himself staring into his dad’s eyes. Captain Chromium’s eyes.
“Adrian!” he yelled, scanning him up and down. “What happened? Are you all right?”
“No!” he yelled back, because shouldn’t it have been obvious? Had he not heard what she just said?
But he knew his frantic, furious thoughts weren’t really what his dad was asking about. Hugh Everhart pulled one hand away, looking down at his fingers wet with blood. Adrian had already forgotten about the scratch from the nail. It was nothing. Nothing. Not when Nova … when Nova was …
Where is Nova?
He yanked himself away and spun in circles, seeing Evander as he shot a series of white lights into the air, brightening the field surrounding the fun house. Then he spotted Kasumi and, a moment later, Simon, too, shifting into visibility. The Council. The whole Council was there. Was it for Nightmare … or for him?
Then, too, he spotted Ruby and Oscar and Danna, running through the abandoned park, calling his name.
“Mercy mine,” said the Detonator. “What an all-star show this turned out to be. It’s so very nice of you all to join us.” Though she was slumped against the wooden theater, her arms latched securely on top of her stomach, she was still grinning as she peered around at all the new arrivals. “Why, this has worked out even better than I expected. All five Council members.” She clicked her tongue. “What will people say once they realize that you were right here? You were so close … and you still couldn’t save them?”
“What is she talking about?” said Hugh.
Adrian shook his head, frowning. “I don’t know. This was all a setup—she killed Nightmare, something about how she thought Nightmare would betray the Anarchists. And she tried to kill me. But I don’t—”
A distant explosion rumbled the ground beneath their feet. They all turned to see a plume of black smoke erupting from the amusement park on the other side of the fence.
Oscar and the others froze and turned. They were the closest to the explosion, and they hesitated for only a moment before Danna burst into a swarm of butterflies and soared back toward the fence, Ruby and Oscar chasing after her as screams spread through the park.
Adrian stumbled forward a few steps, blinking in disbelief. The sun had set. The carnival was alight with twinkling lights and flashes of colors from the rides and booths, and it was almost impossible to tell at first, but as he stared he could detect a faint blue haze emanating from the whole carnival. Dozens—maybe hundreds—of small blue spheres blending in with the cacophony of twinkling lightbulbs. Even as he watched, they continued to brighten, their vibrant sapphire glow gradually overwhelming the multicolored hues of the park.
But … she was here. The Detonator was here, she was captured, she was bound. How could she …
His thoughts trailed off, answering themselves.
She had done it at the library too. She had set a bomb against the basement wall and detonated it from the other side of the room, with nothing but a snap of her fingers. She didn’t just make bombs to be tossed around and used up like hand grenades. She could be much sneakier, much more calculating than that. The Detonator. It was right there in her alias.
Adrian looked at her confined hands, his gut sinking in horror.
The snap had been for show.
She could detonate those bombs with nothing but her thoughts.
Tsunami sprinted off toward the park while Thunderbird took to the sky, soaring in the direction of the explosion. A second later, another blast shook the earth and, in the distance, the pillar that held the giant swings toppled over mid-rotation. It spun out like a top, launching hapless riders into the fence and across the pavement.
The Detonator was laughing again, staring up at the sky, dazed and content. “By tomorrow morning, they are going to hate you…,” she sang.
Another explosion destroyed a leg of track on the rollercoaster. Thunderbird changed direction, rushing to get to the coaster before the riders plummeted off the edge.
And that faint blue haze grew brighter.
Bombs, everywhere he looked.
What if she set them all off at once?
Adrian clenched his fists and felt a surge of power rush into his forearm again. But the energy beam had been designed to stun, not to kill. And the only way to stop her, to be sure the rest of those bombs would never be detonated, was—
A gunshot rang across the grass. The Detonator’s head snapped back, hitting the boards of the theater.
The world seemed to still, hovering in a space without time. Then the Detonator slumped down. Adrian released his breath and watched her topple onto her side, leaving a smear of blood on the wood.
Real blood.
Adrian flexed his fingers, dissipating the building energy, and peered into the shadows of the fun house.
Nova pushed aside a blockade of wood scraps and crawled out of the rotating cylinder that had crashed down from the second floor and landed not far from the exit doors—or where the exit doors had once stood. She was holding a handgun. Her hair and skin and the iconic gray bodysuit were caked with dust.
“I found this,” she stammered, shaking the gun a little. “In a … a duffel bag.” She sounded worried, as if anyone would care that she’d stolen the gun that had stopped the Detonator.
Breathless, Adrian glanced back out toward the park. Thunderbird was at the crest of the rollercoaster, holding back the train of carts only a few feet from the gap in the tracks.
The rest of the carnival was in pandemonium, with civilians screaming and running in all directions, though he could imagine Danna and the others had reached the sites of the first two explosions by now.
Clouds of smoke were still swelling over the park, but the blue glow was gone. The rest of the spheres had extinguished, evaporating back into the atmosphere.
“All right, everyone,” said Simon, always the first to snap out of his shock. “Let’s get as many patrol units as we can here, pronto, to help with the injured and start getting this place cleaned up.”
Adrian ignored the order, turning back to Nova. His entire body was trembling with relief. “Nova…”
She stood amid the debris and tried to shake some of the filth from her hair. Then she looked at him and stumbled down the steps—tripping on a fallen beam. Adrian leaped forward, catching her before she collapsed into the wreckage. It was, he thought, a reasonable jump, even if he had used the springs on his feet a tiny bit.
But if anyone noticed, he wouldn’t care.
“You were in there the whole time? Great skies, Nova, do you know how worried I was?”
She dropped the gun and sagged into him. Her expression was dumbfounded. “I pulled the trigger,” she murmured.
Captain Chromium barged his way toward them, clearing a path in the rubble. “You thought faster than any of us. For all the times I went up against the Detonator during the Age of Anarchy, I never knew she could pull a stunt like that. By the time I realized how to stop it, I suspect a lot more people would have been hurt.”
Nova peered up at the Captain and swallowed.
“Nova?” said Adrian.
She switched her attention at him.
“I’m going to be chivalrous right now and carry you to safety.”
Her expression softened. “Okay,” she breathed.
“Really? You’re not going to fight me on that?”
Her only response was to slump into his arms.
Adrian set his cheek against the top of her head, briefly enjoying the closeness of her, the knowledge that she was okay. That they were both okay. Then he bent down and lifted her into his arms.
“You know,” said Evander, casting orbs of white light in Adrian’s path so he could see clearly as night settled over the park, “this is proof that not every prodigy deserves their powers. It’s because of villains like her that we need Agent N.”
Nova pressed a hand against Adrian’s chest, swiveling her body to peer at Blacklight. “Agent N? Is that what you call the Sentinel?”
“The Sentinel?” Evander smiled secretively and shook his head. “No, no. It’s not a person. It’s more like an antidote. And once it’s ready…” He crossed his arms and glared at the Detonator’s body. “The world will become a much safer place.”
Nova shifted again and Adrian sensed her trying to squirm out of his hold, but he tightened his arms in response. “Nova, what’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” she said quickly. “I just want to know what he means.”
“What he means is confidential,” said Simon, sending a warning look at Evander, who returned an exaggerated roll of his eyes.
“Oh, honestly, they’ll all know soon enough.”
“It isn’t ready,” said Simon. He looked apologetically at Nova.
“Fine,” said Evander. “Just suffice to say that we will never have to worry about these villains ever again. Pretty soon, all prodigies will be Renegades … or their powers won’t be tolerated at all.”
Nova cocked her head. “What are you—”
“No, that’s enough,” Hugh interrupted. “Simon is right. It’s still confidential. And besides … you all look like you could use some rest.” He fixed a stern look on Nova. “That goes for you, too, Insomnia.”
The drone of vehicles drew their attention toward the fence, and Adrian saw squads of media vehicles rushing past the delivery gate of the carnival. Journalists began to pile out.
The remaining members of the Council released a collective groan.
“I’ll fend off the reporters,” said Hugh. “Let’s get something to cover the Detonator before they get any photos of the body. Adrian, Nova, you head back to HQ, get some medical attention. You can give us your report tomorrow.”
Nodding, Adrian began striding in the opposite direction, away from the media vans, but they had barely cleared the graveyard of roller coaster carts when Nova stopped him and scrambled out of his arms.
“This Agent N,” she said, startling him. “Do you know what it is?”
He blinked at her. His mind was still exhausted, still trying to compute everything that had happened.
“No,” he said slowly.
Nova crossed her arms and glared at him.
Adrian sighed. “I’ve heard them mention it a few times. I know it has something to do with Max … something to do with all those tests they run on him. But that’s it. That’s all I know. I swear.” He reached for her hand. “Nova, are you all right? Were you hurt at all?”
She looked down at their hands, and after a moment, Adrian did as well. Though he’d spent the first half of that afternoon trying to work up the courage to hold her hand, this was the first time he actually had.
When she didn’t move away, he inched closer to her and dared to take her other hand too.
“I thought you were dead,” he said, saying the words that he’d refused to admit in his own mind. But he realized now that it was true. Beneath the denial and the refusal, he’d thought she was dead.
Nova licked her lips, drawing his gaze toward them.
“You never answered my question,” he said.
“What question?”
“If I asked you on a real date, would you say yes?”
She seemed to tense. Her fingers tightened around his. “Are you asking?”
Adrian hesitated. She was watching him closely, her blue eyes curious, but also nervous.
Nervous.
Somehow, seeing his own uncertainty mirrored back at him helped to ease the anxiety knotted inside his chest. He tugged her closer, until their toes were nearly touching. She didn’t resist. She didn’t look away.
“I’m asking,” he said.
Rather than wait for an answer, he craned his head and closed his eyes.
Nova stepped back, jerking her hands away.
Adrian’s eyes snapped open.
Even from the faint light coming from the carnival, he could see that her cheeks had gone red. She wasn’t looking at him anymore, but staring back toward the fun house. “My uncle will probably be watching the news,” she stammered. “He’ll be worried. I … I should get home.”
Before Adrian could venture a response or offer to walk her back, she turned, scaled the nearest fence in half a heartbeat, and was gone.