Nova pointed a finger toward his nose. “My science trumps your magic. You’ll see.”
“I can’t wait,” said Adrian.
“The technicians have syringes.”
She glanced toward Max, who had made his way over so he was standing just on the other side of the glass.
“Lots of them,” he added, and Nova couldn’t keep her eyes from darting to the bruises on the inside of his arms.
“Right,” she said. “That’ll work. I bet they have rolls of tubing lying around somewhere too. Maybe Adrian and I can go in and … talk to them? See if they’ll let us borrow some stuff?” And look around while we’re there …
But Adrian shook his head. “Even I don’t have clearance to go inside those labs. But I bet if Max made them a list, they’d bring it to him.”
Nova’s shoulders sank, but only briefly as she saw another opening. Her brow furrowed as she turned back to Max. “They try really hard to keep you happy in here, don’t they?”
Just like that, she saw his enthusiasm deflate, and Nova had the distinct impression that he tried to forget that he was trapped in there as much as possible.
“Sorry,” she said. “It’s just … what are they doing to you? What are all the blood samples for?”
Max looked down at the needle wounds in his arm, stretching the skin to inspect them, as if this was the first time he’d paid them much attention. “Blood samples, tissue samples, bone-marrow samples…”
“Exactly,” said Nova.
But when Max looked up, it wasn’t at her, but at Adrian, his expression slightly pleading. For his part, Adrian’s smile had disappeared, overshadowed by a furrowed brow and tight lips.
“Oh, right,” said Nova. “I don’t have the clearance for that information.”
“It’s really important, what they’re doing,” said Max, and Nova wondered if he was trying to convince her, or himself. “They think they’re on the verge of a breakthrough, even. It’s going to change prodigy relations forever.”
“Prodigy relations?”
Max flushed. “That’s what they keep saying.”
“What does that mean?”
Adrian cleared his throat.
Nova glared at him. “Top secret?”
He opened his palms apologetically. “We don’t make the rules.”
No, she thought wryly. Your family does.
But she tried to smile as if she understood. “Am I allowed to ask where your parents are?”
“They’re dead,” said Max, without a beat of hesitation or an ounce of sorrow.
“Oh,” stammered Nova. “I’m … I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be,” said Max. “They threw me off Sentry Bridge when I was two weeks old.”
Nova’s heart jolted and she stared, speechless, as Max casually stooped and shuffled around a few of the glass boats tied to the docks at his feet.
“They were afraid of prodigies?” she breathed, thinking of what Adrian had said about the prodigy children who were so often abandoned by their superstitious parents.
But Max shook his head. “They were prodigies. Villains. Members of the Roaches.”
The Roaches. The same gang that had ordered the death of her family.
“But then … why?”
Max glanced up at Adrian and again she could see the hesitation as the conversation crept too close to confidential territory. She followed the look and saw that Adrian’s shoulders were tense, his jaw clenched, his anger toward two villains who would so heartlessly murder their own child quickly surfacing.
“I was dangerous to them,” said Max, speaking slowly. “And the rest of the gang too. They knew they’d be better off without me.”
“How did you survive?”
“Captain Chromium and the Dread Warden saw it happen. The Captain dived in and rescued me, while the Dread Warden went after them. They got away, but … I figure they probably died in the Battle for Gatlon.”
Nova’s fists clenched. “They would have been dead before then.”
Max looked up, surprised, and she felt Adrian’s head swivel toward her, too, and immediately her brain started scouring for truths and lies and she found herself picking through her words as tentatively as Max had been. Perhaps, she thought, it was unfair to begrudge him his secrets when she was constantly tiptoeing around her own.
“All the Roaches were killed a few months before the battle. The whole gang was slaughtered.” She glanced at Adrian. “Didn’t the Renegades know that?”