She shook her head. “We can fight. We’ll have the advantage of a familiar field. Maybe … maybe this is our best chance to really strike out at them. We can lure them down here and then—”
“We have already considered this,” said Leroy, with a heavy sigh. “We have plans to slow them down. Diversions that will help us get out safely, before they can follow us. But it will not be enough. There are too many of them. We cannot win. We must leave.”
She stared at him, aghast. He made it sound so simple. They would just leave.
But it wasn’t that simple, and they all knew it.
Leroy’s stern face slipped into something almost sorrowful. “I know,” he whispered. “It won’t be forever.” He pointed his chin toward the door. “Now go, gather your things.”
Clenching her jaw, Nova turned and ran. She did as she was told, because that seemed easiest. She pulled her duffel bag from beneath the bed and took a moment to contemplate what she truly needed.
Nightmare’s hooded jacket and face mask. Her throwing stars and the netting bazooka. A few changes of clothes.
She looked around, but found that she had little attachment to anything else in this abandoned train car. What really mattered to her?
The bracelet her father had made, and the safety of the Anarchists. Her family.
Slinging the duffel bag over one shoulder, she jumped down from the train car. Across the way, her eye landed on an old advertisement hung on the tunnel’s wall. It was promoting a book—a thriller from some bestselling author Nova had never heard of—though the protective plastic over the poster had long ago been tagged with graffiti. The bright splotches of paint continued into the tunnel’s shadows.
She let her bag fall with a loud thud onto the tracks. She stepped up to the poster, dug her fingers around the edges, and yanked.
A narrow, cobwebbed passage disappeared into blackness. The air inside was stale and damp, and that smell brought the memories surging back. The tunnel had seemed bigger then, when she and Honey had run from the cathedral tombs, eventually landing inside the subway tunnels. It was tall enough for even Ingrid to stand up in, but so skinny that the others had been forced to go sideways through parts of it.
Nova knew that Ingrid had set off a bomb on the other end, right beneath the cathedral’s nave, preventing anyone else from finding the tunnel and following them.
This was not an escape.
But …
She had taken a single step inside when she heard an unfamiliar yell.
Her pulse skipped.
Nova pulled her foot out and slammed the poster shut, checking that all signs of the tunnel were disguised, before grabbing the bag again and running toward the screams.
She found the others gathered in front of the tiled mural for Blackmire Station, standing on the platform where Winston had set up his circus tents. Honey was giggling madly, her eyes glazed as she bent over the tracks, watching the tunnel. Leroy was crouched a few feet away, fidgeting with what looked like a hand grenade, while Ingrid and Phobia hovered near the staircase that led back toward the surface. It was an exit none of them ever used, given that the entrance at the top had long ago been enclosed with sheets of steel.
“They’re here?” she asked.
“Oh yes, they’re here,” said Honey, tittering. “And they’ve just learned how very painful a sting from the red-jacketed needle wasp can be.” She glanced at Nova, smirking. “Some say it feels like a molten hot knitting needle being plunged into your flesh.” She laughed again. “And I just let loose the whole hive.” She giddily clapped her hands. “Oh, it feels so good to be doing something, finally. Even if that something is running away.”
“What’s our plan, exactly?” said Nova.
“You and Honey should start heading up to the surface,” said Leroy. “Ingrid will bring down this next section of tunnels, then come up and open a path out of Blackmire Station for us to get through. While she’s doing that, I will be filling this chamber with a cocktail of poisonous vapors. And…” He glanced at Phobia’s still, dark cloak. “Phobia will act as our last defense—ready to force back anyone who makes it to the stairs.”
“What do you want me to do?”
Leroy glanced at her. “We want you to survive,” he said slowly, “so you might someday destroy them.”
Ingrid snorted.
Nova looked away.
“Here we go, Nova darling,” said Honey, grabbing Nova’s arm and dragging her toward the stairs. Though Nova’s muscles were still sore from the exertion at the library that day, she was propelled forward with a mix of adrenaline and an instinct for survival, knowing that if the Renegades discovered her, she would see only the inside of a prison cell for the rest of her life.