Page 31 of Renegades

And the springs on his feet had worked like a charm. The first time he’d launched himself from street level up to a ledge three stories high, he’d felt almost as if he’d taken flight.

But the fire… the fire was problematic.

It had seemed like a great idea when he’d done it. Had, in fact, been the first tattoo he’d given himself, before he’d even known for sure that it would work. Before he could be certain that the gift of his drawings could transfer into a permanent tattoo and imbue his body with a brand-new, entirely real superpower.

Everyone wanted fire manipulation. It was a classic, and it came with so many applications, from lighting birthday candles to torching an entire warehouse stocked with illegal narcotics.

Not that he’d ever stumbled across such a warehouse, but if hedid, he liked knowing he could do something about it.

But fire was also unpredictable. It was a force of nature—wild and erratic.

What Adrian needed was something clean and orderly. Something that could be systematically aimed and fired, even by him, who was admittedly not the best shot in the Renegades. He needed something that would be a lot less likely to strike one of his own teammates.

His first thought had been some sort of gun appendage built into the armor, but then he’d remembered a girl who had come to be trained at headquarters a few years back—a prodigy who could shoot narrow beams of energy out of a node in the center of her forehead, hitting any target with percussive force. People had mostly referred to them as lasers, but that’s not what they were. Adrian wasn’t actually surewhatthey were, but he did know that they hit with enough force to stun an opponent and sometimes even knock them unconscious, without leaving any of the evidence a bullet might have left. No shell, no casing, no open wound.

It was perfect.

The trick was for him to figure out how to incorporate such an ability into the Sentinel’s armor… and what sort of tattoo would convey such a power. He often found it ironic that he could make absolutely anything come to life when he drew it, if only he could first convince himself that it would make sense in reality. He had to be strategic. Practical.

Springs on the soles of his feet. A swirl of flame on his forearm. A zipper on his sternum that could be opened to release the armored suit.

And now, a laser diode, of sorts. A long, narrow cylinder, this time on his right forearm, that would emerge on the Sentinel’s gauntlet, already charged and ready to fire…

He set down the sketchbook and crunched through another spoonful of cereal.

“… and yes, the Puppeteer was caught in the end, but I just don’t think it’s acceptable that so many bystanders were harmed before he was stopped.”

Adrian’s eyes skipped back to the television, where two men and two women, all finely coiffed, were sitting around a table inside the news studio.

“Exactly!” said one of the men, leaning over the table and pointing an accusatory finger toward the woman who had spoken, even though he seemed to be in agreement with her. “It’s not acceptable. This was a heavily attended public event. Where was the security? And why did it take the Council so long to respond to this threat? It’s their job to protect us, but today they seemed more concerned with bad publicity than they did with stopping this madman.”

“Now, in the Council’s defense,” said the second man, raising both hands in a calming gesture, “we do have witness reports telling us that within the first few minutes of the attack, Captain Chromium managed to rescue seven young children from the Puppeteer’s control, while the rest of the Council and a number of off-duty Renegades ushered literally hundreds of civilians to safety inside nearby buildings and parking garages.” He lifted a silencing hand as the other man tried to interrupt. “Andthis aligns with what the Council has been telling us from the day the Renegades became an official entity—that they will always focus on protecting innocent lives first, and engaging in an attacksecond.They followed their protocols today, and I have to admire them for it. It couldn’t have been easy, especially when the Puppeteer was making himself such an obvious target.”

Adrian lifted the bowl to his mouth, slurping at the pink-tinged milk.

“Yes,” said one of the women, “but how many injuries could have been prevented if they’d just stopped him?”

The man shrugged. “And what if one of those civilians they took to safety had ended up dead? We’ll never know.”

“What we do know,” said the first woman, “is that—casualties aside—Winston Pratt probably would not have been captured today at all if it wasn’t for that would-be assassin tossing him out of his own balloon. Can we please talk about the elephant in the room here?” She spread her arms wide, her face contorted in disbelief. “Nightmare! Who is she? Where did she come from? We don’t know the first thing about her, except she almost assassinated Captain Chromium today, she took down Thunderbird, and she eluded a Renegade patrol unit in a one-on-three fight. Isn’t anyone concerned about this?”

“I am,” said the man beside her. “But what concerns me even more than this solo attack—if itwasa solo attack—is that, for all we know, this could be a sign that more prodigies are going to start coming out of the woodwork, bent on destruction and mayhem all over again. It shows that the Renegades may not have the city under control like they want us to think they do. That new,villainousprodigies are still going under the radar. And if that’s the case, I’d like to hear from the Council about what they plan on doing about these threats.”

“Hopefully,” said the woman beside him, “they have a better plan going forward than they had today!”

Scowling, Adrian grabbed the remote and turned off the TV. He leaned back into the sofa cushions and took another bite of cereal. In the sudden silence, the crunching became absurdly loud, the demolition of small artificially flavored rice puffs filling the entire living room.

It was uncanny how much the news anchor’s questions mirrored those that had been revolving through his head all day.

Nightmare. The great mystery. And they didn’t even know the greatest mystery of all, those words that he could not quiet.

One cannot be brave who has no fear.

Swinging his feet down to the carpet, Adrian set the bowl on the coffee table and grabbed his sketchbook.

The wooden floorboards of the house creaked beneath him as he padded into the main foyer and up the oak staircase to the second floor. It was an old, stately home. Had, in fact, been the mayor’s mansion, back when Gatlon City had a mayor. The mayor and his family and even some of the staff had been murdered in this very home in the early days of the Age of Anarchy. When he was younger, Adrian had been convinced their ghosts still haunted the upper floors, which was why he begged to be able to convert the basement into his bedroom. Though he no longer believed the spirits of the dead were still hanging around, he often felt a chill of apprehension when he went up to the second floor, where the master suite and a series of guest rooms branched off a central hallway. He rarely had cause to come up here, though. The basement, the kitchen, the living room—those were his domains.

But what he needed to see now was up here, in his dads’ shared home office.

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