They turned and followed the woman into the elevator bank, and already Adrian could hear them moving on to other topics of Council business—how they would reassure the people after today’s attacks, and what to do about Winston Pratt, and how best to track down this alleged black-market weapons distributor.
Adrian watched them go, his arms crossed tightly over his chest. He couldn’t help but feel that Hugh Everhart was mistaken. They weren’t superheroes anymore—not in the way they used to be. It wasn’t because they were getting older or because they hadn’t been out on the field so much since they’d assembled the Council and left most of the crime fighting to the younger recruits. It was because they had rules now. Rules that they themselves had created, but that kept their hands tied nonetheless.
The solution seemed so simple to him, so obvious. They knew where the Anarchists lived. Renegade teams raided their stronghold every few months to make sure they weren’t harboring illegal weaponry or building bombs or concocting fatal poisons exactly like the one found in that dart. All they had to do was go there and demand that Nightmare be handed over.
Instead they were going to send in some team who would … do what? Ask a few inane questions, then politely apologize for taking up their time?
The Puppeteer and Cyanide were both Anarchists who had been loyal to Ace from the start. The odds that Winston Pratt had been working alone today struck Adrian as unlikely, and the idea that Nightmare’s usage of his balloon and the fact that her dart had Cyanide’s poison in it might be coincidences seemed na?ve.
If the Anarchists were growing active again, recruiting new members, plotting against the Council, this might be their best opportunity to stop them, before they were allowed to get out of control.
Because they could not get out of control. Not again. Nine years had passed, yet the world still bore too many scars from the rule of Ace Anarchy.
Adrian wasn’t sure they would be able to recover a second time.
CHAPTER SIX
THE BALLOON HAD CRASHED into an apartment building just south of Bracken Way. Nova jumped from the basket before it hit the pavement and disappeared into the shadows of a connecting street. Knowing the Renegades would be tracking the balloon and searching for her, she forced her legs to carry her almost two miles through back alleys and empty courtyards before she finally collapsed behind a laundromat and a restaurant that advertised both teriyaki and cheeseburgers. She lay on the concrete, staring up through the grates of the fire escape, through the clotheslines strung with underpants and towels, at the faintest glimpse of sky between the brick facades. Grit dug into her back and every muscle ached, but it felt good to remove the hood and face mask. To breathe in the air, even if it smelled of old grease and garlic and, occasionally, a whiff of wet dog.
Only when a real wet dog came sniffing around her head did she shove its nose away, peel herself off the pavement, and start to make her way back home.
Back to the shadows and squalor of everyday life.
She walked for more than an hour before she made it to one of the defunct subway entrances that connected to the network of tunnels the Anarchists had seized after the Renegades’ victory had sent them into hiding. For the last eight years the Council had been saying they were going to get the subway system up and running again, but as far as Nova could tell, there’d been exactly zero progress made. She had serious doubts it would happen anytime soon.
She squeezed past the plywood board and slipped inside.
Darkness engulfed her as she made her way down the stairs. Only when she reached the first landing and turned to face the second did she take the small flashlight from her belt and flick it on. The light danced over familiar scrawls of graffiti and signs advertising books long out of print and stage shows that hadn’t toured in Gatlon in more than thirty years.
The subway system had fallen with the government, back at the start of Ace’s revolution, and the tunnels had become a refuge for those seeking solace from the upheaval above. They offered shelter and anonymity, at least, and that wasn’t nothing. Now the abandoned tunnels belonged to the Anarchists, at least this corner of the labyrinth, with its broken-down train cars, trash-littered tracks, and a darkness that seemed to permeate the very walls.
They weren’t exactly in hiding—the Renegades knew where to find them. But years ago, after the Battle for Gatlon, Leroy had offered a truce to the Council. That’s what he called it. A truce. Though Ingrid said it had been little better than groveling. Still, the Council had accepted his terms. The few surviving Anarchists would be permitted this tiny bit of autonomy, this pathetic little life underground, so long as they never again used their abilities against the Renegades or the people.