Page 139 of Renegades

Max looked up, his face rife with regret. He didn’t answer, but Adrian could see the truth written plainly on his face.

Sighing, Adrian capped the marker. “For starters, most of the horrible things Ace Anarchy did, he could only do because he had that helmet. Once they got the helmet, he was… I mean, for a telekinetic he was still pretty strong and all, but not nearly like before. And more important than that, what we do—what any of us do—it’s just a series of choices, right? Take… take fire elementals. Every fire elemental has a choice. They can burn down buildings, or they can make s’mores.”

He intended it to be funny, but Max frowned, looking unimpressed at Adrian’s attempts at being clever.

“If you had the power to do everything Ace Anarchy could do, you would have chosen differently. You would build things, not tear them down.” He gestured at the glass city. “Case in point.”

This, finally, brought a small smile to Max’s mouth.

“Speaking of building things,” said Max, his eyes brightening. “I discovered something this morning. Want to see?”

Without waiting for an answer, he got up and bounded back to his rooms, returning a moment later with a slim red marker.

He crouched down in front of the wall and began to draw onto the glass. Soon he had completed a rudimentary sketch of a car.When he was finished, he capped the marker, then pressed his forefinger into the car’s center and pushed.

Adrian was already grinning by the time the car popped out of the wall, landing in the palm of his hand. It was roughly the size of his palm. A little lopsided. The wheels did not turn. It also did not have the same solid feel that one of his own glass figurines had, but rather there was a softness inherent in the material. A malleability. Like glass that was on the verge of melting.

All that aside, it was real.

“Why, you little bandit,” he said. “You stole my power.”

Max grunted. He was staring at the car with obvious disapproval. “I’m not a very good artist. And there’s something wrong with all the things I’ve made so far. They’re not stable like yours. I did some things on paper first, and they just crumple like tissue paper as soon as I pull them out.”

Adrian turned the car over, holding it by the hood, when the whole thing drooped down toward the floor, bending nearly in half. “Ah! Sorry.”

Max shrugged. “You weren’t in here for very long, so I didn’t get much of your power. Which is good. If I’d gotten it all, then I’d be stuck making new buildings for the city, and they wouldn’t be very good.”

“Maybe at first, but I could give you drawing lessons.” Adrian tried to bend the car back into shape, but it was quickly losing its form. Already it sat in his palm with the consistency of bread dough. Giving up, he set the clear blob down on the floor. “Do you know yet how much you got from Nova?”

Max shook his head. “She was in here for longer than you were, but… it still wasn’tthatlong. You showed up right when it was happening. But I guess we’ll see.” His frown deepened. “I wish therewas a way I could turn it off. I don’t really want her power. The last thing I need is eight more hours of boredom every day.”

Nodding in sympathy, Adrian drew his own version of Max’s car onto the glass and pushed it through. Rather than picking it up, though, Max just scowled. “Show off.”

“Can’t help it.”

Max’s posture changed suddenly. His spine stiffened, his glower turned more thoughtful, but also hesitant.

“Adrian?”

The way he said it made Adrian tense up, too. “Yeah?”

“When you were in here… after you grabbed Nova…” His eyes narrowed and he wasn’t looking at Adrian, but staring blankly at the glass car. “Youflew.”

Adrian’s pulse thumped. The words hung between them, solid as the wall that divided them, for far too long before Adrian forced out a small chuckle. “I think you might have been seeing things. All that blood loss, probably.”

Redness flooded Max’s cheeks and when he did lift his eyes, they were flashing with anger. “I’m not stupid.”

Adrian swallowed. “I didn’t mean—”

“Okay, maybe it wasn’t actual flying, but it wasn’t normal, either, what you did. You jumped”—he glanced back, measuring the city with his eyes—“at least fourteen feet, and you weren’t even running or anything at the time. You just took off.”

Adrian stared at him as his mind searched for an explanation, but nothing came. The silence felt impermeable and Adrian wanted to break it, but he had nothing to say.

Finally, Max sank back onto his heels. “You know, I’ve seen videos of another prodigy that can jump like that too.”

Adrian’s pressed his lips tight together, as if the confessionmight emerge of its own accord. Already he was debating if it would really be so bad to tell Max the truth. He could be trusted with this secret, couldn’t he? Clearly, he’d already figured it out—at least,guessed—so how much harm would there be in admitting it?

But still he hesitated. Because as much as he loved Max, he also knew that Max loved Captain Chromium, and Adrian couldn’t be sure where most of his loyalties lay, and Adrian still wasn’t ready for his dads to know that he was the Sentinel. Their expressions when they’d gotten to headquarters last night, after they heard about what happened in the quarantine, were burned into his memory. Fear and panic, relief coupled with concern. Not just for what had happened, but more for what could have happened. Adrian knew it wasn’t just the fear that he might have lost his powers, which would be hard to come to terms with at first, but wouldn’t have been the end of the world. But it was also the fact that he’d nearly died at the library that still had them shaken up. Perhaps, too, their nerves were running high from the Captain’s brush with death at the parade, even if neither of them was admitting how close it had been.

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