Page 111 of Supernova

A small device clattered to the ground at his feet.

The tracker that had been buried in his skin, now slick with blood and covered with dust.

Ace released himself of the device, too, pulling it out of his skin and down his sleeve before dropping it into the dirt and crushing it beneath his heel.

Ace lured a wide concrete slab into their midst and stepped up onto it, gesturing for the others to follow. Nova felt a twinge of relief to see Honey alive, though bedraggled and stumbling, leaning on Leroy’s shoulders as they both limped toward Ace. Others followed—the Rejects, the inmates—gathering at Ace’s side in the midst of the battlefield. All except Phobia, who dissolved into a wisp of black smoke without another word.

Their dead were left behind, including Winston Pratt. Nova cast a sorrowful last look at his body and Callum’s, as Ace raised his palms and the concrete lifted into the air. It drifted slowly, smoothly over the arena’s field.

Kneeling to keep her balance, Nova forced herself to face Adrian, He was still standing, brave and defiant behind the shimmering wall that divided them. The wall that he had built to protect himself from her and her allies.

She was overcome with more emotions than she could name as their eyes met across the distance.

Then the villains cleared the destroyed roof of the arena and were gone.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

THEY DID NOTsoar for long, though from the serenity and strength in Ace’s eyes, Nova believed he could have kept them in the air for a year if he’d wanted. He was not tired. He was not unsure.

Leroy was guiding Ace, and their time spent weightless after leaving the arena was too short. Nova wasn’t ready to face whatever was going to come next.

She was still reeling from the truth of what she had witnessed. Her brain kept replaying those last moments in the arena over and over again. The Sentinel was Adrian. Adrian was the Sentinel.

A hundred other realizations struck her in fast succession. The Sentinel’s uncanny ability to gain new powers each time she faced off against him. Adrian thinking he could use tattoos to increase his own abilities. How the Sentinel always seemed nearby when she and the rest of the team were there. How she’d never seen the two of them at the same place, at the same time. How the Sentinel had seemed murderous when he’d found her over Max’s unconscious body. How he’d once rescued her as the Cloven Cross Library burned around them.

Adrian. The Sentinel.

The Sentinel. Adrian.

She felt like the biggest fool in history for not having seen it sooner.

Adrian Everhart. Who had fixed her bracelet. Brought her childhood dream to life. Made it possible to have one night in which she could sleep, for once feeling safe and protected.

He was her enemy. He was the one who had been hunting her all this time. He was the one who had captured Ace.Adrian.

Her stomach grew tighter and wormier until she was sure she would be sick.

Ace changed their trajectory, lowering them toward the ground where Leroy indicated.

Nova choked back the sour bile that had filled her mouth. She would not think about it. Not Adrian. Not the Sentinel. Not Winston. Not Callum. Not those who had died, nor the hundreds of Renegades who were now powerless.

Not the fact that even the Anarchists had lied to her.

She had done what she’d set out to accomplish that day, and she would allow herself this moment to be proud. Though she had hoped for far less devastation, onbothsides, what was done was done and there was no going back. She tried to find solace in knowing that the Anarchists were together again. Ace had his helmet. The Renegades could no longer threaten them with Agent N.

Things were not what she’d hoped, but at least she had not failed.

This was a good day.

Ace had set them down in the street outside Dave’s Pawnshop. A man smoking a cigarette near the side alley stood gawking at their ragtag group, with their muddied jumpsuits, blood-soaked clothes,Ace and his helmet. The man’s mouth hung agape as the cigarette burned, forgotten, down to his fingers.

Ace twitched, and the cigarette dropped to the ground, extinguishing itself in a puddle of standing water beneath the nearest street lamp.

The man let out a wail, shaky and terrified, then turned and ran. Soon the sound of his pounding footsteps fleeing down the alley was the only noise they could hear. That, and the electric zaps of the fluorescentCLOSEDsign illuminated in the pawnshop window.

One of the Rejects cleared his throat and said, quietly, “So, that was Dave.”

No one else spoke for a long while. No one moved toward the store. Everyone seemed to be waiting for Ace to make the first move. When Nova dared to look at Ace, though, she could see disgust in the eyes behind the helmet.

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