Other than Nova and her guards, the room was empty.
The chair appeared wholly uninviting, not only because of the cold metal, but also because of the braces on the arms and the chains around the legs.
She didn’t struggle as the guards shoved her into it. They bound her ankles to the chair legs and attached the metal cocoons around her hands to the armrests. Her fingers had just enough room to wriggle inside their confines.
It felt a little bit like being led to her doom, and she wondered whether the visitor thing had been a ruse. Maybe this was where it would happen—already, so soon. It was easy enough to imagine someone appearing in a white lab coat and sticking a syringe full of Agent N into her arm.
The guards disappeared behind her, where she could not see them past the tall back of the chair.
Directly ahead of her, on the other side of the chasm, was a glossy black wall. The base of it disappeared beneath her platform, so she had no idea how far the drop was. There was nothing remarkable about the wall, other than how very sheer and smooth it was. Unscalable, or at least, that was the effect. Not that there would be much point to scaling it. The ceiling, thirty feet overhead, held nothing but a few rows of sickly fluorescent lights.
Then there was a click and the wall before her was no longer just a wall. A portion in front of her, ten feet tall and stretching between the walls of the chamber, lit up, revealing that it was, in fact, a window.
Nova was staring directly into the face of Adrian Everhart.
She shivered, overcome with the mix of relief and dread that surged through her.
She could tell, in the first moment of their eyes connecting, that he had been able to see her from the moment she’d been brought into this room and had time to steel himself. His face was neutral and cold, in a way that didn’t fit him at all.
But behind the lenses of his glasses, his eyes revealed what his unyielding features did not.
Disbelief. Hurt. Betrayal.
Hatred.
Nova felt her chin tremble—but it wasn’t the act she’d planned. “Adrian…,” she whispered.
His only reaction was a brief tightening of his jaw.
There were two more people on the other side of the glass. Adrian’s dads, Captain Chromium and the Dread Warden. The three of them together, all wearing their traditional Renegade garb—black cape, blue armor, and that despicable red R stitched onto Adrian’s uniform—made for an intimidating team. But fear was nowhere near the top of Nova’s swirling emotions.
The Dread Warden started to speak, and it startled Nova to realize that she couldn’t hear them. Instinct prompted her to lean forward as much as she could in the grasp of the chair, but it made no difference.
Adrian tore his gaze from her and nodded. He spoke. Nova tried to read his lips, but it was no use. Captain Chromium placed a hand on Adrian’s shoulder, but it was brief. He gestured toward the back of the room.
Adrian nodded again. Spoke again. Looked briefly at both his fathers. Their features were serious, but kind.
Then the two Council members left, and Adrian was alone inside the room.
Nova’s heart thundered, but it might as well have been chained up, too, for how tight her chest felt.
“Adrian?” she said, the name coming out as barely more than a breath.
He flinched, confirming that he could hear her.
His Adam’s apple bobbed as he reached for a pedestal beside him and pressed a button on a remote.
Nova heard a click, and the chamber became full with both of their silences.
Their eyes bore into each other’s, and she didn’t know if he was waiting for her to say something, or was trying to build up the courage to speak first.
Before she realized it, she was crying. Tears pooled in her vision and quickly began to slide down her cheeks. She gasped at the sensation of the two warm trails making their way to her jaw, and she wanted to rub them away, but couldn’t move. Nova sniffed loudly, hoping she could inhale the tears back into her body, but it was too late.
Adrian moved closer to the window, and he had given up trying to be emotionless. The hurt was written plainly now: in the tension across his brow, in the tightness of his jaw, in the squint of his deep brown eyes against