Anarchists don’t make it back … then we’ll do it without you, too. You are handing us a pretty awesome weapon here.”
Nova glared at the blueprint. It felt like a betrayal, but she’d known Narcissa for such a short time, she wasn’t sure why it surprised her.
“Fine.” Nova started to roll up the blueprint. “You wouldn’t be much use at the arena, anyway, but I do need to know who’s with us so I can work it into my strategy. And make sure you don’t leave any Agent N behind when you’re leaving that storeroom.”
“Of course.”
One of the Harbingers appeared in the hall, his gold robes rustling around his legs. “Cyanide asked me to tell you the substance decoy is just about … ow!” He clapped a hand to his arm and spun around.
Nova jumped to her feet, already tensed for an attack. But it was only Leroy standing behind the boy, a small needle in his hand. He grinned sheepishly. “Apologies. I only had to be sure—”
Before he could finish, the Harbinger boy let out a groan and collapsed against the wall.
“So very sorry,” Leroy said again.
Honey appeared, coming to see what had caused the yelp. She seemed mildly intrigued as she took in the unconscious boy. “What’s wrong with him?”
“He’ll be fine. Should wear off in ten minutes. Twenty at the most.” Leroy held up the needle, showing Nova. “Good news. The paralysis poison is ready. I’m going to call it Agent P.”
Nova grimaced. “For the sake of fostering good will, let’s try to find willing volunteers next time you need to test something, all right? But … nice work.”
“Thank you.”
“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 of Rebel 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.