Max surveyed the street below, his brows knitted together. He started to rub his arms. He wasn’t dressed for the cold weather, much less the intense winds coming off the bay.
“You can do this. You’re the Bandit. You’re a Renegade.”
Shutting his eyes, Max spread his hands, palm up. His feet left the edge of the building, until he was hovering a foot above the rooftop.
A smile stretched across Adrian’s face. Like Ace Anarchy’s ability, Max’s control over telekinesis usually applied only to inanimate objects—not humans or animals. The one exception was to himself. Adrian had known for a while now that Max was capable of levitation, but it was different to see it with his own eyes.
“That’s it,” Adrian muttered to himself, not wanting to distract him.
An alarm rang out from somewhere inside the hospital.
Max gasped and dropped back to the ground.
“Come on! Now or never!” shouted Adrian.
Max seemed immobilized, frozen by indecision.
Then, to Adrian’s horror, he shook his head and started walking back toward the stairwell. Back to the safety of his hospital room. Back to the numbing security of the quarantine.
“Max!”
Then Max turned again and started to run. This time, he didn’t hesitate. He launched himself from the edge of the rooftop, arms extended.
Adrian’s breath caught and he braced himself, prepared to jump forward and catch his brother at the first sign of danger.
But it wasn’t necessary.
Proud laughter tumbled from Adrian’s mouth, at the same time Max whooped with joy.
Adrian had been right. The Bandit could fly.
CHAPTER TWENTY
THE PRISON CAFETERIA was eerily silent, as usual. Nothing but sniffles as noses dripped from being out in the freezing wind and the click of plastic cutlery on plastic trays. Nova stood at the back of the line, envying how the pant legs of the jumpsuit in front of her actually fit the wearer. She kept having to roll hers up.
The line shuffled forward.
She shuffled with it.
Her attention switched to the nearest table, where a couple of inmates sat beside each other on the same side, facing the back wall of the cafeteria. To further discourage talking, all seats were on one side of the tables, so all inmates faced the same direction as they ate. Nova eyed their trays, though she wasn’t sure why she bothered. She had the menu memorized by now. Roll. Mystery vegetable. Potato. Fish. It must not have been Sunday, because she didn’t see anyone with a coveted slice of cheese.
An odd gesture caught her attention. One of the seated inmates tapped the handle of her fork twice against the side of the tray before scooping up some vegetables. A second later, the prisoner beside her used the tines of his fork to scrape against his tray’s corner.
Nova didn’t know what it meant, but she was sure they were communicating.
Someone grunted behind her, and realizing that the line had moved, she shuffled forward and claimed her own tray.
She sat at her usual place, between the usual peers who, as usual, did not try to speak to her. She scrutinized the room with renewed interest, though. Now that she’d noticed the sly exchange, she started to see more signs of it. At least, what she thought might be a secret language between the inmates. Some gestures were so subtle—a scratch on the nose, a scrape of a shoe, a spoon swirled counterclockwise over the table—that a lot of it could have been coincidental.
But she was sure that a lot of it wasn’t. The inmates had found ways to speak to each other, after all.
She wondered how long she would have to be here before she started to understand it.
“You know the Puppeteer?”
The question was asked so quietly, Nova almost thought she’d imagined it.
She glanced to the side, at a bald man whose skin and eyes were both neon yellow. Between that and the bold stripes of the jumpsuit, it was hard to look at him without squinting.
For his part, he kept his attention resolutely on his food.
Nova dug her fork into the fish, flaking it apart. Just before popping it in her mouth, she muttered simply, “Yeah.”
For a long while her neighbor was silent, and she thought that might be the end of the conversation.
But then—“He all right?”
She paused with a chunk of roll half demolished in her mouth. Was Winston all right?
After swallowing, she answered, “Don’t know. Haven’t seen him in a while.” She considered telling him that