Page 89 of Supernova

“That still doesn’t solve the problem of how we’re going to simultaneously inject hundreds of Renegades with it,” continued Nova. This dilemma had been cause for much discussion since she first broached the possibility of rescuing Ace. Originally they planned to dose the Renegades with a gaseous anesthesia pumped in through the venting system, except, thanks to Nightmare’s Agent N bombs, most of the Renegades would now be outfitted with gas masks.

“Don’t worry,” said Honey. “Leroy and I are working on a few options. You stay focused on getting to Ace and making sure the Agent N reveal falls through. We’ll take care of the rest.” She draped an arm over Leroy’s shoulder and steered him back toward his makeshift laboratory in the basement’s far corner.

Nova watched them go, her gut tight with apprehension. There were so many things that could go wrong.

But there wasn’t time to dwell on any of them.

“All right,” she said, turning back to Narcissa, who was still staring dumbfounded at the unconscious Harbinger. “Did you find what I asked for at the mansion?”

Narcissa blinked at Nova for a few seconds, before giving herself a shake. “Yes, I did. Right where you said they’d be.” Narcissa pulled a satchel from behind her and set it on the table. Reaching inside,she produced a thick stack of papers, many yellowed with age and crinkled at the corners, some tears fixed messily with clear tape. “At first I thought this was just a part of your infatuation with the Everhart guy, but now… I get it.”

Nova tensed. “You read them?”

“Of course I read them.” Narcissa flipped through a few pages, then stopped on a child’s drawing of a shadowy monster with narrow white eyes. “It’s just a blob at first, but as he got older, and his art got better…” She kept flipping. The papers were more organized than when Nova had seen them the first time, stuck in a forgotten box on a forgotten shelf. Narcissa must have put them in roughly chronological order, and the result was striking. She stared as, page after page, Adrian’s phantom took shape.

At the bottom of the stack were the three issues ofRebel Z, the comic Adrian had started in his younger years. Nova had flipped hastily through the first one when she’d been sneaking around the office, but Narcissa took her time now, turning page by page. In the story, a homeless street kid who looked an awful lot like a young Adrian was abducted by an evil scientist. He, along with twenty-five other children, were subjected to cruel testing. Narcissa stopped on a page showing one of the other kids strapped to a medical table, screaming in agony as the doctor and his assistants applied some sort of high-tech probes to his skull and chest.

Narcissa turned another page, and Nova’s breath caught.

The boy on the table appeared dead, and rising up from his parted blue lips was a monster—the same shadowy figure that had plagued Adrian’s artwork for so many years. But it was no longer vague and obscure. Now its edges were outlined in crisp black.

A hooded cloak hovered over the boy’s body, bending down as if to see into the boy’s dead eyes.

A skeletal finger stretched out from billowing sleeves.

A weapon was clutched in its opposite hand, glinting faintly in the doctor’s laboratory.

A scythe.

“It could be coincidence,” Nova whispered.

“I thought that, too,” said Narcissa, lowering her voice. “So I asked Honey about him. Most of the Anarchists had followed Ace for decades; some had been with him since before the start of the Age of Anarchy, even. But Phobia just appeared out of nowhere a year or so before the Day of Triumph and told Ace that it was his purpose to bring terror to their mutual enemies. As far as Honey knows, he’s never told anyone his real name or who he was before he became Phobia.” She shivered. “The timeline works. Adrian Everhart would have been… what? Five or six when he first started drawing this… thing.” She pulled some of the older drawings from the stack. “His skills weren’t there yet, but it seems safe to say that he was drawing Phobia… even back then.”

Nova massaged her temple. She had half expected this. Thoughts of Phobia and Lady Indomitable had plagued her in her prison cell almost as much as thoughts of Adrian himself. It was a puzzle that had quickly resolved itself once Adrian told her about the card found on his mother’s body.One cannot be brave who has no fear.

Phobia’s power was to prey on his enemy’s deepest fears, and Adrian himself had told Nova that the greatest fear of his childhood had been that someday his mother would leave and never come back.

She’d hoped she was wrong. But now…

“He created Phobia,” she whispered, taking the child’s drawing from Narcissa and inspecting it with mounting dread. She was startled to find her vision misting as she tried to imagine what Adrian would feel if he knew the truth. “He created the monster that killed his mother.”

“Nova…” Narcissa reached forward and took the drawing back. “Adrian Everhart is a Renegade. He’s not on our side.”

Nova straightened, blinking back any signs of approaching tears. “I know that.”

“Yeah, but…” Narcissa frowned doubtfully. Hell, she looked borderlinesorryfor Nova.

Scowling, Nova gathered up the papers and shoved them back in the bag. “Thanks for getting these. I need to talk to Millie and—”

“Whoa, whoa, there was something else I wanted to show you.” Narcissa grabbed theRebel Zcomics before Nova could put them away. “Have you read these?”

“I don’t have time.”

“But there’s something—”

“Later,” Nova snapped. Then, feeling guilty, she forced a smile. She wasn’t mad at Narcissa; she was mad at this whole impossible situation.

Adrian Everhart was her enemy.

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