An icon at the bottom of the report indicated a folder of pictures taken from the crime scene. Nova shuddered. She had been saved from seeing the bodies of her family all those years ago, and she would not look at them now. But to know they were out there … that such photos existed, mere clicks away, made her sick to her stomach.
With her heart feeling as though it were being squeezed in a clamp, Nova forced herself to click on the link to open the full report.
A small window popped into the center of the screen.
RESTRICTED ACCESS. ENTER PASSCODE:
Nova stared at those words for a long time, in turns furious that something so personal to her could be kept confidential, but also in part relieved.
She knew what had happened to her family. She knew that the cowards in the Roaches had hired a hitman to kill them because her dad had refused to keep making weapons for them. She knew the Renegades hadn’t been there to stop it, even after they’d promised to protect David’s family, and neither had they been the ones to track down the gang and ensure justice was served. No—it was Ace who had destroyed them all in retaliation.
She stared at those words—RESTRICTED ACCESS—and felt new resentment smoldering inside her. The Renegades knew her family was being threatened. Captain Chromium knew they might be targeted, and yet he had failed to save them. He was too late. Could it be that the full report was confidential because he recognized his own ineptness? Was he so embarrassed to have failed to save this family that he would hide it from the world?
It was easy to believe. He hadn’t protected them. He hadn’t saved them. He’d only recorded their deaths, entering the information like notes on a ledger.
But people believed he was the world’s greatest superhero. A hit like that to his reputation would be inconceivable to all the fools who idolized him.
With a shudder, Nova closed the summary report. She squeezed her eyes shut, pushing her chair back from the desk.
It was good she had found this, she told herself. It was a reminder of how the Council had betrayed her family’s trust. How they had not been there when they were needed most.
They were not superheroes. They were frauds, and this whole system that was meant to protect and serve was nothing more than a failed social experiment. She could see now that many Renegades had good intentions—Adrian was proof enough—but it didn’t change the fact that their society was not being run by strong, competent leaders, but by dictators who had put themselves in this position of power without cause, and now had no idea what to do with it.
The people would be better off on their own.
The world would be better off without them.
Nova waited for the tight knot in her gut to start to unravel, and peeled open her eyes. She was facing the window again, and her gaze immediately shifted toward Max’s quarantine.
Her brow furrowed.
She rose from her chair and stepped closer to the window, trying to make sense of what she was seeing. A light was still on, but not the full overhead lights that had been on before. It was dimmer now, pale gold shimmering off the glass facades of his tiny skyscrapers.
And they were … floating.
Nova rubbed her eyes and looked again.
The same image greeted her. Not every building of the model city, but perhaps a few dozen of them, their glass spires hovering above the ground, bobbing like buoys on a calm lake. As she watched, larger bits of the city began to rise up too. Like a hundred shimmering missiles launching slowly into the air.
At their center sat Max, cross-legged and levitating.
Levitating.
“He’s telekinetic,” she whispered, but saying the words aloud did not make them any less surprising. Because … he shouldn’t be telekinetic. She had seen his profile, when she found the directory. She struggled to recall what it had said—something that had been made intentionally vague, she recalled, because she’d been annoyed at the time that she didn’t know what it meant.
Stooping over her desk, she minimized the weapons database and tracked down the Renegade directory again. After a quick search, she found him.
Max Everhart. Alias: The Bandit. Ability: Absorption.
Absorption. That’s right, she remembered it now, and how very frustrating it was that it meant nothing at all. Absorption of what? It offered no explanation for the quarantine or why people seemed to think he was dangerous.
But this …
She looked again. More of the buildings had risen up now, along with every miniature tree from City Park and the entire Sentry Bridge.
This, people might think was dangerous. Not because telekinesis was terribly rare, but because most telekinetics could only manage to move one or two objects at a time. Not dozens and certainly not while keeping themselves aloft as well. That sort of focus and mental aptitude had only been recorded in a handful of prodigies, so far as Nova knew.