Archenemies (Renegades #2)(100)

She was sure that Simon hadn’t been wearing the Vitality Charm at dinner. If Adrian had given it to him, then maybe it was in their bedroom, or in his office back at headquarters. But she couldn’t very well search either of those places at the moment.

At least, searching their home office might turn up something useful while she waited, hoping the two Councilmen would fall asleep without her assistance.

She approached the large desk, which was overflowing with stacks of papers and files, one of which had toppled over onto a keyboard. Nova grabbed the top file and scanned the label, then the next, making her way through the stacks, searching for anything useful. But these all seemed to be drafts of laws the Council was considering or had already put into effect. Ongoing social projects throughout the city. Plans for future construction. Trade deals with foreign nations.

She turned to the drawers, finding one full of statistics and reports on crime rates of various countries. Near the top of the drawer was a list of the cities around the globe that had Renegade syndicates in operation.

It was a very long list.

Nova set the list aside and turned to a filing cabinet beside the wall. Inside were fat folders outlining plans and blueprints for headquarters and other Renegade-operated properties, from alarm system details to elevator permits. Nothing about the helmet. Nothing about Agent N. But still, it wasn’t bad information to have access to.

She pulled out a few documents to review later and set them beside the list of international syndicates.

She kept searching, though she sensed her luck, and time, were dwindling.

Turning toward the room’s built-in bookcases, she scanned the spines of enormous volumes of legal guides and political manifestos, all published before the Age of Anarchy. On the bottom shelf were a handful of photo albums, and she ignored the curiosity spiked by the chance of seeing adorable kid pictures of Adrian and grabbed a box instead. She pulled off the lid and froze.

A monster was leering up at her from the box.

Breath hitching, she set the lid aside and picked up the top sheet of paper, where a creature had been drawn in frenzied scribbles of black crayon. The creature itself was a formless shadow that stretched to the edges of the paper, leaving only the hollow whiteness to show through where its eyes should have been.

Empty, haunting eyes.

Adrian’s monster.

Nova picked up the drawing that had been beneath it. Another illustration of the creature—a floating mass of blackness. Two outstretched arms almost resembled wings. A bulbous head, the only detail of which was those eerie, watchful eyes.

She flipped through a few more drawings, though they were more of the same. Same, yet each with small differences. Some she could tell were made when he was very young, when his scribbles were more emotion than skill. But some of the later drawings developed details. Sometimes the wing-like arms ended in bony fingers or sharp talons. Sometimes it was a shapeless shadow, other times it was tall and thin. Sometimes its eyes were red, sometimes they were yellow, and sometimes they were slit like a cat’s. Occasionally the monster would be holding a weapon. A jagged sword. A javelin. Iron shackles.

How long had his dreams been wrought with this creature? It was almost a wonder he hadn’t developed insomnia himself.

At the bottom of the stack of drawings, she found a collection of pages stapled together. Nova lifted them from the box and a small, surprised laugh escaped her.

On the front page—in much more skilled artistic style than the images of the nightmare monster—was a drawing of a young, dark-skinned boy wearing a white straitjacket, with a patch on his chest that read Patient Z. He was strapped to a chair and a collection of electrodes and wires were plugged all around his shaved head, each one connecting to various machines. A stereotypical mad scientist hovered over him, scribbling onto a clipboard.

A title was printed boldly across the top: Rebel Z: Issue 1.

Her mouth twitching around an amused smile, Nova turned to the first page. It showed the kid from the cover trying to buy a candy bar at a convenience store, but being turned away when he didn’t have enough coins in his pocket. Newspapers on a stand by the register sported headlines warning about missing children and government conspiracies.

A caption read, “I was the doctor’s twenty-sixth victim.”

Holding the stapled pages by their spine, Nova flipped through the rest of the book. Images of the boy flashed by, along with a bunch of other children, being locked in jail cells and subjected to various tests by the scientist and his minion nurses. The last page showed the boy crying over the body of a girl—Patient Y. The final dialogue bubble read, “I will find a way out of this, and I will avenge you. I will avenge you all!”

At the bottom: To be continued …

Shaking her head, smiling openly now at this glimpse into Adrian’s eleven-year-old imagination, Nova reached for Issue 2 in the box. Her fingers had just closed around it when she heard a door open at the end of the hallway.

She froze.

Footsteps.

Immediately her brain clamored for an excuse. Adrian decided he wanted me to see these old comics after all. I was just going to bring them downstairs to look at and …

But her excuse went unneeded. The footsteps thumped down the stairs.

Nova listened, motionless. At some point during her search, the water had stopped running through the pipes.

She stuffed the comics into the box and closed it, pushing it back onto the shelf. She grabbed the folder detailing headquarters plans and the list of international dignitaries.