But then the parade happened. Danna got hurt. Nightmare got away. And suddenly he could see the appeal of keeping a secret identity, well … secret.
It wouldn’t be forever. Once he was sure he could control all the Sentinel’s powers, then he would reveal himself. Or, perhaps he would wait until after he’d found and arrested Nightmare. Or until he uncovered her connection to his mother’s killer and brought them to justice too.
Just like Rebel Z—once his mission was complete, he would reveal himself. Until then, the Sentinel had work to do.
Adrian laid out his tools, filling a shallow dish with black ink and lighting a candle. He swiped a new alcohol-dipped cotton ball over his skin one more time, fading the blue ink slightly, then dabbed it dry with a clean towel.
Finally he sterilized the needle—an everyday needle he’d found in a forgotten sewing box in a cabinet in the laundry room—running the point back and forth through the flame.
Adrian flexed his forearm, dipped the needle into the ink, and set to work.
The first stick was always the worst. That moment when he wondered, yet again, if it was a really bad idea to be doing this.
But the doubts faded faster every time.
He soon fell into a steady rhythm. Hunkered over the desk, watching his fingers progress along the blue lines. Needle in, needle out. Pausing only occasionally to wipe away tiny beads of blood with a clean rag. A thousand tiny punctures into his flesh as seconds and minutes ticked into hours. At one point he heard the telltale creaks of the overhead floorboards announcing that someone was moving around the kitchen upstairs, but he ignored it. His dads always left him alone when he was down in his room and, besides, they probably thought he was still sleeping.
When he was done, Adrian set down the needle, stretched out his neck with a few satisfying pops, then held out his arm to admire his work. Sore and shining and permanent.
He stashed the implements back in the drawer, then headed up to the bathroom on the main floor to wash and bandage the skin. He had just finished the wrapping and pulled on a long-sleeve shirt when he heard Simon calling him.
“Yeah?” he asked, walking into the kitchen.
Simon was standing over a skillet that hissed with bacon, while Hugh leaned over the bar sorting through a large stack of mail.
“I thought I heard you awake,” said Simon, nodding toward a plate overflowing with cantaloupe, strawberries, and scones. “Have some breakfast.”
Adrian stared at it. “Really?”
“Really,” said Simon, giving him a stern look, though Adrian knew it was just because he felt guilty that the idea of a homemade breakfast was worthy of suspicion. “We’re starting a new family tradition. Breakfast together once a week. Now get some bacon and sit down.”
Adrian suppressed a smile and did as he was told. Hugh and Simon liked to start new family traditions every few months, and over the years had cycled through everything from Friday board-game nights to summer picnics at the park to a short stint in which they agreed to all go jogging together at six a.m. every morning, which had lasted exactly one day. Adrian knew it was their way of trying, as though after all these years his dads still weren’t convinced that the three of them really were a family.
So Adrian, who loved his dads, the men who had taken him in without a second thought after his mother died, accepted four slices of bacon and sat down at the bar. “Does this new family tradition come with fresh-squeezed orange juice?”
“Don’t press your luck,” said Simon, making up a plate for himself.
“So,” said Hugh, dumping a stack of junk mail into the garbage bin. The Council kept saying they were going to start up a citywide recycling program one of these days, but it, like so many of their aspirations, had yet to become a reality. “Are you looking forward to having a new teammate starting today?”
Adrian blinked. He’d been so focused on the tattoo he’d nearly forgotten about Nova McLain.
Nearly.
“Yeah,” he said, breaking open his scone and slathering it with butter. “I think we’re all really excited to have her.”
Simon shook his head. “When she opted to go against Gargoyle, I thought she was out of her mind. But I was impressed with how she handled it. We need people who can be resourceful like that, who can think fast during an altercation.”
Adrian smiled wryly at the term altercation. At some point his dads had gone from talking like superheroes to talking like police chiefs, and he wasn’t entirely sure when it had happened.
“I just hope you all work well together,” said Hugh, shredding open an envelope. “Chemistry is important on a team. And you all seem to have a good thing going so far. Hopefully she’s a good fit.”