Page 78 of Supernova

He was beginning to think that maybe he’d only imagined the noise before when there was a thud from the hallway.

Gripping the poker, he raced out of the master suite and noticed the light spilling out from beneath the door to the office. He was sure it had been dark before.

Pulse racing, he inched toward the door and wrapped his hand around the knob.

He braced himself.

Then he threw the door open, weapon at the ready.

His attention landed on the large window behind the desk. The sash had been thrown open and the curtains were fluttering from the nighttime air. The sound of rain outside was suddenly deafening. With a curse, he crossed to the window, searching the lawn for signs of movement, scanning the side of the house for the shadow of a girl who was quite adept at scaling buildings.

Footsteps sounded behind him, barely heard over the downpour.

He spun around just as the figure, dressed in her signature black, darted into the hallway.

“Hey!”

Adrian chased after her. She ran into the master bedroom, slamming the door shut between them. Growling, he shoved it open, preparing to throw the weapon, javelin style, at the same time the tattoo on his right arm began to glow molten white, readying an energy beam to incapacitate her.

The bell chimed as Nightmare, a dozen steps ahead of him, yanked open the closet door. She held what appeared to be a bundle of files tucked under one arm. She didn’t look back as she sprinted forward.

It took Adrian a split second to decide—energy beam or spear?

He could kill her. He could end her now.

The second passed. He lifted his right arm, fist squeezed tight, and aimed.

A piece of paper fluttered from her hold as she launched herself through the mirror at the back of the closet, in the same moment the beam of light blazed from the diode that had risen up from his flesh.

The beam struck the glass. It shattered, the impact sending shards flying across the carpet, into the clothes on the racks, some no doubt landing inside his dads’ neatly organized shoes.

Adrian cursed and, for good measure, threw the poker, too. It hit the backing of the mirror, puncturing a hole through it and sticking there.

“Dammit, dammit, dammit,” he muttered, letting the laser diode sink back into his skin as he ran both hands over his hair. Stomping into the closet, glad to be wearing shoes as bits of glass crunched beneath him, he wrapped his hand around the weapon, but then thought better of it. This would at least explain how the glass had broken.

Huffing, he stooped and picked up the piece of paper Nightmare had dropped, wondering what could have brought her snoopingthrough their house again.He expected blueprints of headquarters or research findings on Agent N or a list of home addresses of all the Renegades currently active in the organization.

Just the thought of the mirror walker knowing where his friends lived made him shudder.

But when he flipped the paper over, he was surprised to see that it wasn’t any of those things.

It was a drawing.

He squinted at the illustration, done in a combination of markers and crayon. It was one of his childhood conceptions of the monster who had, for years, haunted his nightmares. His mom had told him that one way to combat bad dreams was to draw them out—that doing so could teach your brain that they were only figments of your imagination, and nothing to be afraid of.

He had drawn the monster more times than he could count, and it had never made the nightmares any less real.

Crushing the drawing in his fist, he retraced his steps back to the office to see if he could figure out what else Nightmare had taken. Surely this drawing was a fluke—something she just happened to grab along with whatever prize she had really come for.

But all the drawers in the desk and filing cabinet were closed. The stacks of papers neat and tidy. Nothing pulled from the bookshelves.

Nothing, that is, except a single box that usually lived tucked away in the corner of the bottom shelf, but now sat on the carpet. Adrian knelt beside it and began rummaging through the papers that remained, all drawings from his childhood that his dads had cared enough to save.

Why would Nightmare care about these?

He reached the bottom of the box, and a thought struck him.

A terrible thought.

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