Archenemies (Renegades #2)(47)
Nova swallowed. “Oh. That’s … great.”
“Is Snapshot in?”
The door to the filing room opened, but it was Callum, not Snapshot, that strolled out. He froze as soon as he saw Adrian. “No way! Sketch in the flesh! I’m a total fan.”
“Oh, thanks,” said Adrian, accepting a firm handshake with a bewildered expression.
Nova gestured between them. “Uh … Adrian, Callum. Callum, Adrian.”
“Are you here to check something out?” said Callum. “We’ve got a feather quill that I think you’d really like.”
“Oh yeah?” said Adrian, though he quickly shook away his interest. “No, thanks. Actually, I was told there’s a place here where they’re storing all the stuff that was confiscated from the Anarchist holdings in the subway tunnels?”
“Sure, there’s a storeroom in the back. But I’m warning you, it’s a mess back there. It’s on my list to get cleaned up, but…” Callum shrugged. “Hey, maybe that’d be a good job for us to do together, yeah?”
It took Nova a moment to realize he was talking to her. She jerked upright. “Yeah. Great. Sounds like fun.”
Callum pointed at Adrian. “You know, I should probably check that you’ve been given clearance, but … bah, who am I kidding? Of course you can see it. Come on back.” He waved his arm.
Adrian flashed an excited grin at Nova and started to follow.
“Hey, wait,” she said, jumping from her chair. “Can I come too, or…?”
Callum laughed. “This girl! Her curiosity is insatiable!”
Taking that as a yes, Nova flipped over a BE RIGHT BACK sign on the desk and darted after them. Callum weaved through the front section of the warehouse, giving Adrian much the same orientation he’d given her on her first day, until they arrived at a freestanding room near the back corner, with walls that didn’t quite stretch all the way to the ceiling.
Callum thrust open the door. “All right, you two have fun. I’ll let Snapshot know you’re back here.”
Nova hovered beside Adrian in the doorway, her jaw dropping. She half expected to be overcome with sadness to see all of her things and the belongings of her family, now in the hands of the Renegades—unappreciated and unloved.
But instead, she felt overwhelmed.
And a little relieved.
The chances of Adrian finding anything amid this clutter were slim.
Squaring his shoulders, Adrian angled his body to fit between two towering shelves and squeezed into the room. “He wasn’t kidding, was he?”
Nova followed after him. It was as if the Renegades had filled cart after cart with all the random things they had found down in the tunnels and just … dumped it here, without care or ceremony. Though, as her eyes adjusted to the chaos, she began to notice at least some half-hearted attempts at organization. She spotted Honey’s beloved wardrobe against one wall, piled over with her sequined dresses and silk scarves, but also Leroy’s bathrobe, and a trash bag from which Nova’s own street clothes were bursting through. Other accessories—jewelry, shoes, and the like, almost all Honey’s—were strewn across a cart nearby. The furniture was mostly lumped into a teetering stack in the middle, including Leroy’s beloved moth-eaten armchair. Practical household items were grouped erratically across a series of shelves, from electric teakettles to can openers and even a broom, though Nova couldn’t recall anyone ever using a broom down in the tunnels.
Wait, no, there had been that time when she’d seen Ingrid chasing a rat with one …
Adrian weaved through the narrow pathway, and Nova saw what had caught his attention. A bright-colored play tent, crumpled beneath a long table. “Looks like there’s some Puppeteer stuff over here,” Adrian said, crouching to dig through the rumpled nylon fabric.
“Great,” said Nova, unable to muster even a hint of enthusiasm. The smell of the subway was all around her, and she hated being reminded of it after so many weeks of life aboveground. Though there were things that had been taken from her that day that she would like to have back, she had to admit that she wasn’t sad to have left their underground prison.
Sad to leave Ace behind, yes, but not sad to be gone.
“I’ve been doing some research on the Anarchists lately,” said Adrian. He found a plastic toy kitchenette behind the tents and started yanking open its mildew-covered cupboards. “Did you know Winston Pratt’s dad was a toymaker?”
Nova blinked at the back of his head. “No,” she said, and it was the truth. She knew little about Winston or who he had been before he was the Puppeteer.
“I don’t know this for sure, but something tells me this puppet he wants might have been made by his dad. Makes sense it would be something he’s attached to, right?”
Nova didn’t respond. She had spied a desk tucked behind a series of shelves.
Her desk.
“Couldn’t find anything about his origin story, though,” Adrian continued. “Or Phobia’s. Actually couldn’t find anything about Phobia.”
Nova pushed aside a rack hung with more of Honey’s dresses, making her way to the desk. “That’s odd,” she said half-heartedly, though, in truth, she knew hardly anything about Phobia either. With a power like his, so immersed in humanity’s greatest terrors, she wasn’t sure she wanted to know his origin. She did know there were times when Phobia seemed halfway normal. Like there could be just a regular guy under that cloak—quiet and solitary, with an odd sense of humor and subtle ambition.