Everything ached, but it was his shoulder that hurt the worst. Throbbing and burning and sticky with blood.
He couldn’t believe she had actually stabbed him. He wasn’t sure why it was so surprising, except … that just wasn’t how prodigies fought. They fought with superpowers and extraordinary skills, but that had been a plain old dirty attack.
He would have to remember for next time. Nightmare didn’t follow the same rules as the rest of them.
But then, he supposed, neither did he. Not anymore. Not when he was the Sentinel.
He managed to sit up. Though it was still daylight, the sky was darkening and the shadows from the next building had eclipsed the rooftop. He must have been unconscious for five or six hours. He was lucky she’d knocked him out up here, where it was unlikely anyone would find him. Though it was clear he’d been undisturbed, it made him uncomfortable to think of himself lying prone and vulnerable for such a long time.
Prone and vulnerable and useless.
Why hadn’t Oscar come looking for him?
No—that was a stupid question. Why would he have? Oscar didn’t know Adrian was beneath the Sentinel’s armor, and besides … Danna had been injured, and maybe Ruby too. Oscar had other matters to deal with. They would have gone straight back to headquarters. Were probably there still.
Adrian checked to be sure no one was peering down from any nearby windows, then pressed his fingers into the center of the suit’s chest piece.
The armor clunked and hissed, folding in on itself like origami, rolling inward along his limbs until the suit was no bigger than a crushed aluminum can. He tucked it into the skin over his sternum and pulled up the zipper tattoo he had inked there more than a month ago.
He started to button the front of his shirt, but his shoulder screamed at him to stop. He looked down. His shirt had a gash through the fabric, and though the compression of the suit seemed to have slowed the bleeding, one glance told him he had lost a lot of blood. His entire side was damp, the fabric of his shirt nearly black where the blood had congealed. He wondered if that was why his brain seemed to be struggling to function or if it was a result of being knocked out by Nightmare.
Perhaps it was a combination of both.
He cursed her every way he could think of as he peeled the fabric away from his skin, then cursed himself as he pulled the shirt over his head.
That girl had a bunch of low-tech gadgets and a power that only worked through skin-to-skin contact. How had she beaten him?
He grimaced, recognizing his own pathetic attempts to defend his pride. But who was he kidding? He had underestimated an opponent who should not have been underestimated. She was strong. She was clever. And most of the low-tech gadgets he’d seen her use were actually pretty impressive.
Shaking his head, he started to laugh, wryly at first, but it quickly grew with real humor, even if it was at his own expense.
So much for being the city’s next great superhero.
“Next time,” he whispered to himself. A promise.
He would keep training. He would get better. And there would be a next time.
Pulling the marker from the back pocket of his jeans, he sketched a water faucet on the rooftop’s concrete ledge and pulled the drawing into three dimensions. With a twist of the knob, cool water gushed forward.
He used the clean half of his shirt as a rag to wipe away as much of his blood as he could. The injury didn’t look quite so devastating once it was clean. His heart was still beating and his arm was working, so she couldn’t have hit anything too important.
After close inspection of the wound, he placed the tip of the marker against his skin and drew a series of stitches, gathering the skin together. Once he was finished, he capped the marker and tucked it away, turned off the water, then sat tracking his thumb around the tattoo on his left forearm. A spiral of flame in bold black ink, its edges fading away into his own dark skin.
Fire manipulation. Perhaps it wasn’t rare, but it still remained one of the most coveted powers among prodigies. Between that and the armored suit and the springs he’d inked into the soles of his feet, he’d been confident he could do anything, stop anyone.
But Nightmare had barely bat an eye.
Not just that. She’d mocked him.
With a groan, he climbed to his feet and rallied the courage to look down onto the street where the parade had passed that morning. The celebration had been replaced with a sullen quiet as cleanup crews swept away the confetti and the food wrappers along with the broken glass and destroyed parade floats and looted merchandise left behind from the Puppeteer’s attack.