“I doubt we’ll have any luck destroying it now,” he added.

Nova angled the helmet one way and the other. She could feel the weight of the dead star in her pocket, and wondered whether it could have been used to destroy the helmet. But it was too late now. Whatever power that star had held, it was gone, spread out across the world.

“We can put it down in the catacombs,” she suggested. “We’ll bury it down there, and hope no one will find it.”

“In a chromium coffin?” Hugh suggested, and though his eyes twinkled as if it were a joke, Nova actually liked the idea.

“With Ace,” she said.

The humor faded from Hugh’s face.

“Any public grave will be defiled,” she said. “I can’t forgive him for what he did to my family—” Her voice caught. Inhaling shakily, she forced herself to continue, “But he did give me something to believe in, and to fight for. His vision for the world wasn’t all bad.”

Hugh nodded in understanding. “A chromium coffin, for Ace Anarchy and his helmet.” He started to turn away.

“Captain?” said Nova.

He paused.

“What would you think if … if a villain happened to fall in love with your son?”

He stared at her, a twitch at the corner of his mouth, though he fought to remain serious. “To be honest, I’m not sure there are such things as villains anymore.” He shrugged. “Maybe there never really were.”

He walked away, returning to his family. Adrian was watching them, an arm around Max, a question in his eye.

Nova smiled, hoping that Hugh was right. Maybe there were no villains.

But watching Adrian and Max, she knew there were heroes.

She was beginning to wonder if she might be one of them.

EPILOGUE

WE WERE ALL heroes in the end.

At least, that’s what people liked to tell themselves.

Which, in her humble opinion, was a heaping load of garbage.

She missed the days when the Renegade Parade actually meant something. Back when people would watch the floats passing by and be awed by what they represented. Gifts and abilities that were truly extraordinary. Power too great to be quantified. Back when the word superhero was more than a marketing device.

That was before “the Supernova,” as they had taken to calling it.

One minute, the world had been in an uproar over the return of the greatest supervillain of all time. Mass panic, mass terror, the media drawling on and on about the end of the world.

And then—destruction collided with creation. Devastation met rebirth.

Suddenly, everyone and their mom had superpowers.

It was the end of heroism as she’d known it, which was pretty sad, given that she hadn’t been too impressed with heroism to begin with.

This year, the Renegade Parade had a different feel to it. Rather than putting the Council and their cohorts up on a pedestal, it was about the celebration of all prodigies, of all gifts, extraordinary and otherwise. It was full of peppy good vibes and people saying things like, “Now anyone can be a superhero!” and whatever other mumbo-jumbo they were buying into these days.

The spectacle was still impressive, to be sure. The floats were alive with flames and ice, lightning and fireworks, towers of suspended water and gravity-defying props and the prodigies at its center—the gears that made it all work.

But they’d gotten rid of the villain floats, which were now seen as disrespectful and uncouth. She wasn’t sure who, exactly, they were supposed to be respecting now. The Anarchists? The villain gangs? Ace Anarchy himself?

Please.

Instead, the villain floats had been replaced with memorials for the warriors who had been lost. Blacklight. Queen Bee. Even that jerk, the Puppeteer, which was the height of irony, given that he’d attacked this same parade just one year before.

There was even a float with a statue dedicated to Callum Treadwell.

Her heart did jolt at the sight of it, but she’d never tell anyone that. Sweet marvels, Callum may have been a ridiculous nerd, but he deserved better than being lumped in with these goons.

She watched from the jostling crowd, arms crossed, scowling at each float that passed. What were they supposed to be celebrating now? The idea that they’d all gone from helpless civilians to courageous superheroes? Laughable. So what was it? The second fall of Ace Anarchy? The great equalization?

A return to mediocrity?

No one else seemed to have figured it out yet, but she knew they would soon enough. The facts were inescapable.

If everyone is special … then no one is.

A float rounded the corner, bringing with it a chorus of eager shrieks.

The Council, naturally, every bit the political figureheads they’d ever been. Without Blacklight, the float was lacking a certain flair—no more strobe lights and fireworks and sparklers. Otherwise, not much had changed.

Despite having their own superpowers, people still tried to emulate the Council. Scanning the crowd, she picked out at least a dozen Captain Chromium costumes, along with branded light-up wands and plastic masks. She also saw a large banner hung from a nearby storefront.

BOLD. VALIANT. JUST. DO YOU HAVE WHAT IT TAKES TO BE A HERO?

YES, YOU DO!

But it was a lie. For starters, not all powers were created equal, and she knew the hierarchy would start sorting itself out soon enough, once all this chumminess over “equality” wore off. And not everyone was cut out to be heroic, even if they could boil water with their breath or hypnotize puppies with their magic kazoo or whatever. They weren’t all empowered, no matter how much they wanted it to be true.

Empowered. Gross. She wanted to vomit every time she heard that word.

The crowd broke into another round of cheers. A parade float came into view displaying a miniature model of Gatlon City, crafted entirely of glass, just like the one she remembered at headquarters. It was pretty, sparkling in the bright afternoon light. It took her a minute to notice the boy in the center of the city. He seemed a lot older than the last time she’d seen him.

Max Everhart.

The haunting recluse she’d so often seen watching the Renegades from behind his quarantine walls. He was a legend now. If anyone was a hero, it was him, after he single-handedly rebuilt Gatlon City when Ace Anarchy had tried to tear it apart.

The funny thing was, Max Everhart was quite possibly the only human being on the planet who didn’t actually have any superpowers. Not anymore.

He could have had them all, but instead, he chose to give them up.

To give them away.

She sort of admired him for it. She sometimes wondered whether he had regrets. She sometimes dreamed of having chance encounters with Max Everhart where she could ask him what it had been like to have that much power, even if just for a moment.

Actually, she thought a lot about Max Everhart these days. At some point in the past year it had occurred to her that he was actually kind of cute, and she wondered if he had always been cute and she’d just never noticed it before because, well, no one really noticed Max Everhart before.

But people noticed him now, and she couldn’t help the fact that she had, too.

She’d never tell anyone that, either.

Next came a float that was painted all in black, with light shining through a million pinprick holes, reminiscent of the night sky. A giant five-pointed star stood in the center of the float. On one arm of the star stood Monarch, alongside a shorter girl with red hair that hung to her hips in a long, narrow braid both of them waving exuberantly to the crowd. On the opposite side of the star were Smokescreen and Red Assassin. Grinning his dopey-eyed grin, Smokescreen pointed a finger at the sky and sent off a stream of fluffy white clouds that folded in on themselves to form the shape of a heart. A second later, a second burst of smoke sent an arrow piercing the heart, and Red Assassin gave him googly eyes like he’d just ended world hunger or something.

On the topmost point of the star stood another happy couple.

She scowled. Her lip curled in disgust of its own accord, even as the crowd roared gleefully in her ears.

They were the proof, people kept saying. Adrian Everhart and Nova Artino were evidence that there could be common ground. That the divide between heroes and villains wasn’t as wide as they’d always thought.

That love conquered all.

She didn’t know about any of that, but it was clear enough that the two were disgustingly infatuated with each other.

Her attention landed on the bronze-filigree bracelet Nova was wearing. It was still pretty, and a twinge of desire still coursed through her every time she saw it, but not nearly as much now that the stone had been swapped out. She never could pinpoint what had been so alluring about it before, other than she had a sixth sense for the value of things, and that stone had been worth more than any trinket she’d ever lifted before. Than all the trinkets put together.

It was gone now, though, replaced with a hunk of onyx or black sapphire or something. She couldn’t tell from so far away.

There were a lot of rumors circulating about what had happened at the cathedral that day. Rumors about a star, an explosion, a new weapon made by David Artino himself. Rumors about Ace Anarchy and Phobia and Captain Chromium and Max Everhart.

Rumors about Nightmare.

On the float, Nova leaned over to speak to Adrian, and something passed between them. A softening of the eyes. A widening of smiles.

Then they were kissing, and she had to turn away before she gagged.

She’d seen enough. Any hopes that the Renegade Parade might still be worthwhile were smashed. She shouldered her way through the crowd, dodging people who were drunk on excitement and cheap beer, kids propped up on their parents’ shoulders for a better view.

She wasn’t sure which of the rumors were true, but the only ones she cared to pay much attention to were the rumors about Ace Anarchy’s helmet. They were saying it still had not been destroyed. They were saying it was indestructible, and that the power contained within it would never fade. She had even heard whispers that the helmet had been hidden beneath those cathedral ruins. Buried deep in the catacombs.

It made her pulse race to think about it.