Supernova, p.39
Supernova, page 39
Phobia was a villain. An Anarchist responsible for countless deaths, including Adrian’s own mother’s.
Nova reached for him, but he whipped his head away and she froze.
“It’s impossible,” he said again, more viciously this time. “My creations don’t last this long. They die. They … fade away, after a few weeks, maybe months. But not years.” He shook his head. “There’s no way I created Phobia.”
“Adrian…,” Nova started again, her fingers twitching, as if she wanted to comfort him. But how could she?
They were enemies.
That much was perfectly clear. “If that’s true, then how do you explain the drawings? The timing of it all, the similarities…”
“Coincidence,” he spat.
Nova rocked back on her heels, and he could tell that she wanted to believe him, but didn’t.
He snarled, his voice rising. “I didn’t make that monster, Nova! Do you really think I’d be capable of that?”
After a hesitation, she slowly shook her head. “No,” she whispered. “But … I’m not sure I believe in coincidences anymore, either.”
The clatter of Honey’s shoes reverberated through the chapel again, and she appeared in the doorway a moment later.
“I know that probably wasn’t enough time to come to terms with this dreadful new information,” she said, smiling sweetly at Adrian. “The good news is, you’ll soon be put out of your misery.” She beamed at Nova. “Ace wants us in the bell tower.”
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
NOVA SEEMED SENSITIVE to the ragged wounds on Adrian’s forearms, but Queen Bee showed no qualms about grabbing his bare arms as they hauled Adrian to his feet.
“What’s happening in the bell tower?” he asked.
“Only your doom,” Honey said with a giggle.
Adrian glowered at her. “Is that a dressy occasion? Because someone sort of destroyed my shirt.”
“Believe me, that’s the least of your worries,” said Honey, patting him on the shoulder.
Nova took a handgun from her belt, and though she didn’t aim it at him, the threat was implied.
Adrian shook his head at her, still reeling from the absurd suggestion that he might have created Phobia. “You’re not going to shoot me.”
Nova gave him a look, and it was so hollow and unfamiliar that Adrian immediately wanted to take the words back.
At least she was looking at him, though, and with something more than just pity over his supposed creation. He held the gaze until she was forced to turn away.
Despite everything, it remained impossible for him to imagine Nova shooting him. He had been wrong about her, in so many ways. But this, his mind refused to compromise on.
Nova was not going to kill him. This much, he had to believe.
But would she stand by and do nothing once the other Anarchists decided he’d served his usefulness? That, he couldn’t be so sure about.
It was very likely that he was going to die in this cathedral. Maybe it would be Ace Anarchy himself who did the honors. Or even Phobia.
Phobia. His mother’s murderer. An abomination, maybe, but not one that Adrian had anything to do with. He was sure of that.
Wasn’t he?
He couldn’t fend off a sting of doubt. Honey and Nova had been persuasive, and the drawings did look like the villain … but Phobia had been tormenting Renegades for years. Probably Adrian’s art had been inspired by the villain, on a subconscious level. It didn’t prove anything. Besides, nothing he’d made had ever lived half as long before. Why would Phobia be different?
He shuddered at the very implication—that if Nova was right, he had created his mother’s killer.
But it wasn’t true. It couldn’t be true.
He tightened his jaw and tried to convince himself that this was just a mind game they were playing with him. Something to distract him. To leave him disheartened and hopeless. That’s all this was.
Nova and Queen Bee took him down a corridor of watchful statues and past the main altar, then into the north transept. Queen Bee carried the lantern, which offered them enough light to see by, if not enough to fully illuminate the shadowed corners. Nova pulled open a heavy wood door and cocked her head, indicating for Adrian to go first.
He found himself trudging up a marble staircase that wrapped the walls of a large square tower. He could hear the Renegades from here, their attacks drumming against the erected barrier. Though the leaded windows were too narrow to escape through, he kept searching the world beyond them for any sign of what was happening outside. But all he could see were glimpses of the dome and the darkness that filled it. The Renegades hadn’t breached it yet.
They passed two stories and then ducked through another narrower door into the top half of the tower. The steps changed from marble to wood. They had reached a place where visitors and worshipers would not have entered, where only bell ringers might once have trod.
The staircase seemed to spiral into eternity, disappearing into shadows overhead. The windows were still Gothic style—leaded glass surrounded by stone moldings—but otherwise, this section of the tower was simple and utilitarian. Undecorated walls and supportive wooden beams crosshatched between the rickety stairs.
Adrian climbed. The wood beneath his bare feet was worn to velvet smoothness and he was grateful that Honey hadn’t started her mutilations with his feet, otherwise this trek would have been torturous. They rounded a corner to another flight of steps and he took the chance to glance back at Nova. She bristled and jabbed the barrel of the gun into his back.
At the top of a particularly steep, narrow section of the staircase, they came to a solid wooden platform overhead. Nova reached past Adrian to push up the trapdoor, doing everything in her power to avoid touching him as she did.
The door fell back with a thud and a cloud of dust rained down through the opening. Adrian angled his face away, coughing.
“Heroes first,” cooed Honey Harper.
It was awkward to climb the last of the tiny steps without being able to use his hands for balance, but Adrian managed to do it without falling on his face. He found himself in the belfry, where two enormous bells hung in the center of the tower, along with a series of smaller bells suspended in the openings around the exterior walls. The windows here had no glass, allowing the bells’ music to ring outward over the surrounding neighborhood.
Back when there had been a surrounding neighborhood.
Up here, the sounds of war were more pronounced, each strike on the enormous shield reverberating through the floorboards at their feet. Explosions. Grinding and chopping. A steady clanging that battered against the dome again and again. Adrian couldn’t help but wonder what sort of damage the Renegades could have done if they hadn’t suffered so many casualties at the arena. As it was, he was proud to hear them putting up such a ferocious fight.
He was led to a window where one of the smaller bells was hung a few feet overhead, where he could view the dead, faded wastelands. Ace’s barrier rose up a couple of hundred feet ahead of them, blocking out the city. Blocking out the sky.
To his surprise, Queen Bee extinguished the lantern. Though it wasn’t pitch-black, it was dark enough that, for a moment, Adrian could barely see the Anarchists’ outlines. Then Nova lit a few of her micro-flares and tossed them out the window. Some landed on the pitched roof of the cathedral below, a couple on the wide arcade that ran along the northern side of the church. A few more fell into the barren land beyond. Though they succeeded in pushing away some of the darkest shadows, their faint light only served to make the atmosphere even more menacing.
Realizing that Nova’s attention was on the front of the cathedral, Adrian followed the look and saw figures emerging onto the roofs of the two western towers that framed the grand cathedral entrance. His blood cooled to see Phobia among them.
Ace Anarchy himself appeared, recognizable by the helmet that seemed to have its own faint glow. The villain lifted his arms dramatically, and Adrian felt both Nova and Queen Bee tense beside him.
The collection of debris that had been forged together to build the dome began to rattle. Rivulets of dust streamed down.
Straight ahead, directly facing the cathedral’s western facade, a slim shard of light appeared unexpectedly from the base of the barrier. Not sunlight, but something blinding white and artificial, as if there were a giant spotlight trained on the barrier. Like massive doors opening, the wall peeled back on either side of the breach. Metal and wood and stone grated against one another, folding inward until an arched tunnel had opened between the wasteland and the world beyond. Adrian squinted against the unexpected onslaught of light, a swath cutting its way straight through to the main entryway of the church.
For a moment, all fell still. Adrian wondered what the Renegades would do with this open invitation, one that could only be a trap.
As soon as the pathway had been cleared, the assault on the dome’s exterior ceased. A heady silence filled the space. Adrian felt the hair standing up on his arms, apprehension hanging in the air with an electric charge.
They waited. In the stillness, he could hear Nova’s breathing. Though she was right beside him, she seemed to be taking care not to touch him and, strangely enough, he translated this as a sign that she still cared for him. He had a heightened awareness of her proximity, and he couldn’t help believing that if she felt nothing for him, then she wouldn’t be taking such care to avoid an occasional brush of skin.
He stopped himself before his thoughts could travel much further down that path, because it raised a series of uncomfortable questions about his own feelings, questions he wasn’t prepared to face. Not when Nova was wearing a black hooded jacket and holding a gun to his side.
Funny, he thought, how he’d been so ready to write off their relationship as nothing more than a game to her back when she’d been arrested, but now he found himself resisting the idea. Maybe, after having gone through those doubts once already, his heart was refusing to go through them again. Maybe denial was easier.
His dangerous thoughts were interrupted by a cruel chuckle from Honey Harper.
“Jackpot,” she whispered.
A figure had appeared in the opening. A single silhouette, and one that Adrian recognized immediately. Broad shoulders, accented by armored pads. Muscled arms and legs in skintight Lycra. Hair glinting gold in the light, not a lock out of place.
Captain Chromium entered, his head high as he stepped through the tunnel into the wasteland. He carried a long chromium chain in one hand and the Silver Spear in the other, every bit the superhero who had first risen to power in the Age of Anarchy.
As soon as he crossed the threshold of Ace’s barrier, the wall rumbled and closed up tight behind him. An enraged cry could be heard from the Renegades left behind on the other side, and Captain Chromium paused. When he realized he was alone, he squared his shoulders and faced the cathedral, taking in Ace Anarchy and the villains gathered on the front towers.
He stopped halfway across the wasteland and plunged the end of the pike into the ground. He looked ready to destroy the Anarchists single-handedly, and Adrian almost believed he could do it.
“Hello again, dear friend,” said Ace, his voice echoing in the vast chamber. “Are you missing something? Or … someone?”
If the taunting had an effect on the Captain, it was impossible to tell. He kept his gaze locked on Ace Anarchy, cool and unflustered. “We’ve had this fight too many times already, Alec,” he said. The silence, combined with the enclosed dome, made for an echo that carried his voice all the way to the top of the bell tower. “Are we really going to have it again?”
“Oh, I hope so,” said Ace. “I have plans for a different outcome this time.”
“You know you can’t defeat me.”
Ace laughed. “It is refreshing to see that your arrogance has not changed in all this time. Let’s remember, last time we stood here, you only bested me with the help of a baby.”
Adrian shivered at the mention of Max.
“This is pointless,” said Captain Chromium. “You know you can’t kill me. What are you hoping to accomplish here?”
“Well, to start,” said Ace, “I’ve long harbored fantasies of chaining you to a tank and watching you sink to the bottom of the ocean, never to be heard from again.”
“All so you can have control over a city that doesn’t want you?”
“I’ll be satisfied with revenge at this point. Revenge for ten years of being powerless, while you ran around belittling who we are and what we are capable of. Your trials have turned prodigies into a sideshow, and the way you pander to the media is disgusting. You care more for your own reputation, for the citizens’ approval, than for taking care of your own. And maybe that was going well for a while. You were idolized. You were adored. But how has it been working out for you lately?”
“My job is to make this world safer for everyone, civilians and prodigies,” said the Captain. “Which would be a lot easier if we weren’t always having to defend ourselves from villains like you!”
“Those civilians treated as like abominations!” Ace roared. “Don’t you remember what it was like before I decided it was time for things to change? They hunted us! They tortured us! They murdered innocent babies, all in fear of what they might become! And they will turn on us again if we don’t keep them in their place.”
“What place is that? Should we just enslave them for our own purposes, then?”
“Why not?” said Ace. “You know it’s what they would have done to us if they’d been able to manage it.”
The Captain shook his head. “With you in power, all anyone knew was fear. I’ve worked too hard to clean up your messes. I won’t let you do this again!”
Ace scoffed. “I’ll admit, I did make some mistakes, but I’ve learned from them. It isn’t enough to destroy the existing world order. You must destroy it—and then rebuild the world to fit your vision.”
“No, Alec. We have been given a gift. We should use these gifts to better society, not just to stoke our own egos. Not just to put ourselves on pedestals.”
Ace chuckled in amusement. “How trite, coming from you. I have never known a time when you didn’t put yourself on a pedestal. Besides … you’re wrong, my old friend. We have no obligation to use our powers to help the people of this world, not after what they did to us. Our only obligation is to ourselves. And once prodigies are no longer governed by fear or arbitrary codes, they will recognize their place. We will soon be in a second Age of Anarchy, but this time we will not be villains. We will be gods!”
The Captain shook his head. “You’re delusional, Alec. You can’t defeat me.”
“I don’t have to defeat you, my old friend. You are going to defeat yourself. Soon, you will know what it means to feel powerless, just how you left me all those years ago. Cyanide, if you’ll do the honors?”
Cyanide reached into an inside pocket of his trench coat. Captain Chromium tensed, eyes narrowing. The villain pulled something small from the pocket and held it up.
Adrian leaned forward. “Is that a flask?”
Queen Bee shushed him.
The flask was lifted from his grip and sent drifting toward the Captain below. Hugh snarled and braced himself, angling the pike toward the flask as it came to hover an arm’s length in front of his face.
“My chief chemist has distilled a particularly potent batch of the substance you call Agent N,” said Ace. “We wanted to try a little experiment, to see if you are, in fact, invincible to your own poison. All you have to do … is drink it.”
“Why would I do that?”
“Because if you don’t,” Ace said slowly, “we’re going to kill your son.”
This, too, brought no reaction from the Captain, who had probably been expecting it. His voice remained steady, if also cut through with a new edge. “For all I know, he’s already dead.”
“You think I would waste a perfectly good hostage?” Ace swept an arm toward the bell tower. “Behold. Safe and sound.”
Queen Bee reignited the oil lantern, filling the belfry with its subtle, steady light and drawing his dad’s attention up to them. Relief brightened the Captain’s face.
“I’m fine!” Adrian yelled. “Don’t worry about me!”
He was surprised at how confident he sounded.
Beside him, Nova lifted the gun so his dad could see it, holding it against Adrian’s temple.
Adrian turned his head to look at her, not shying away even as the cool barrel pressed into his forehead. “You’re not fooling me with that.”
She ignored him, her focus on the scene below.
Ace chuckled. “As you can see, he’s very much not fine. Which leaves you with a decision to make. Sacrifice him to protect your own powers, or sacrifice yourself and save the boy you raised from childhood, who has already suffered so much in his young life. It is a difficult choice. Let us see how much you truly care for your greater good.”
Hugh scrutinized the side of the bell tower and the roof of the cathedral, and Adrian could imagine him trying to plot out another option. A way to be the hero, as he always was.
“Don’t waste our time,” said Ace. The flask bobbed in the air. “This deal comes with an expiration. Besides … it may not even affect you. Your invincibility may yet hold. How will we know if we don’t try?”
“Don’t!” Adrian yelled. “Don’t do—”
Queen Bee grabbed his head and slammed it against the stone window frame. He grunted and fell to one knee, his head ringing like the bell above. The blow throbbed through his skull and into his teeth.
She held him down with his head bent over the windowsill.
Adrian was about to lift his chin again, prepared to show Honey and Nova, Ace and his dad, just how defiant he could be, when he heard a click and felt the gun pressing against his scalp.
He released a dry laugh. “Come on, Nova.”
“Stop talking,” she growled.
