Page 81 of Renegades

“Shows what you know,” said Oscar. He was leaning against the window frame, tapping the end of his cane against the floor. “I’ve got the stamina of a triathlete.”

Nova’s eyebrow lifted.

“He didn’t mean itthatway,” muttered Adrian.

“Didn’t I?” said Oscar, with a suggestive glance in his direction.

Adrian snapped his fingers at him. “Eyes on the window.”

Nova glanced from Oscar to Ruby. It was the first time she’d seen them in civilian clothing—he in a checkered-blue dress shirt, the sleeves rolled to his elbows, and she in a T-shirt with theSUPER SCOUTSlogo scrolled across the chest, a fan-comic from overseas that was immensely popular, but that Nova had never actually read. As Red Assassin, her black-and-white hair was always pulled back high on her head, but tonight it was down in loose pigtails that made her look adorably harmless. What was most striking, though, was the thick white bandage wrapped around her upper arm, disappearing beneath her sleeve. Nova wondered if Ruby had been injured during their fight at the parade, though Nova was sureshehadn’t wounded her.

Adrian, too, was dressed casually, almost exactly as he had been at the parade. Red sneakers. Blue jeans. A dark long-sleeved T-shirt. There was nothing particularly fashionable about the outfit, but it fit him well, hanging in just the right way to suggest toned muscles underneath.

She looked away quickly, annoyed that the thought had occurred to her.

“We brought games,” said Ruby, when the silence tipped toward uncomfortable. She riffled through a backpack and pulled out a deck of cards and a box of dominoes. The tiles inside clacked noisily as she set it down on the blanket. “Anyone?”

When a quiet lack of enthusiasm greeted her, she shrugged and grabbed the deck of cards instead. “Fine. I’ll play solitaire.”

Nova watched her lay out a row of cards. “So. This is the life of a superhero.” She glanced up at Adrian. “No wonder everyone wants to be one of you.”

He met her look with a smile and lowered himself onto the other corner of the blanket. “Everyone wants to be one ofus,” he corrected. “And yes. We are living the dream.”

“Okay,” said Oscar, propping one foot up on the windowsill. Without looking back, he lifted his hand in the shape of a pistol and shot an arrow of white smoke in Nova’s direction. It struck her chest and dispersed. “Origin story. Go.”

“Excuse me?” she said, waving away the remnants of odorless smoke that wafted toward the ceiling.

“You know,” he said, glancing back. “When someone decides to write the highly dramatized comic-book version of the story of Insomnia, where will it start?”

“He wants to know where you got your power,” said Ruby, slapping down a new card.

“Was it the result of some personal trauma?” said Oscar. “Or human experimentation or alien abduction?”

“Oscar,” said Adrian, warning, and Oscar turned his attention back to the window.

“Just making small talk,” he said. “We should know more abouther than just her ability to turn an ink pen into a receptacle for blow darts.”

“We know she can clean the floor with the likes of Gargoyle,” said Ruby.

“And that she can give sass to Blacklight in the middle of an arena full of screaming fans,” added Adrian. He grinned at Nova, who looked away.

“Fine, I’ll go first,” said Oscar, and though she couldn’t see his face, Nova had the impression that this was where he’d wanted to take the conversation from the start.

“By all means,” she said, leaning back on her palms. “Origin story. Go.”

Oscar inhaled a long breath before proclaiming, quite dramatically, “I died in a fire when I was five years old.”

When he said nothing else, Nova glanced at Adrian to see if there was a joke she’d missed, but Adrian merely nodded.

“So…,” started Nova, “you’re a smoke-controlling zombie?”

She saw Oscar’s grin in the reflection of the window. “That would beawesome.But no. I’m not dead anymore, obviously.”

“Obviously,” agreed Nova.

“As the story goes,” he said, “my mom was down in the basement of our apartment building doing laundry when one of our neighbors fell asleep and her cat knocked over a candle she’d left burning. The whole place went up in flames in—I don’t know—minutes.I was in my bedroom and I heard people screaming, and then I saw the smoke, but I was petrified, and besides, I’m not exactly fast, right?” He shook his cane. “So by the time I got the courage to try to get out of the apartment, the fire was coming up the stairs and I didn’t know what to do. So I just froze in the hallway, watching the smoke until it was so thick I could hardly see, and couldn’t breathe. I passed out, and that’s how the Renegades found me.”

“The Renegades?” said Nova.

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