“Draw something,” Max demanded, ignoring his glee. “Quick.”

Adrian took out his marker, still beaming. “Sure thing, Bandit. Any requests?”

Max shook his head, and Adrian stepped closer to the window and drew the first thing that came to mind—a Renegade pin, like the one he gave Nova at the trials.

When he pulled it fully formed from the glass, Max gave a little squeak of shock. “How?”

Adrian met his eye, and beneath the stunned disbelief, he could see the start of possibilities filtering into the kid’s mind.

For almost Max’s entire life, he had been kept separate from the ones who loved him, everyone but Hugh, anyway. And Hugh may have loved Max, but he was so busy, trying to squeeze his fatherly responsibilities in between Council meetings and public appearances and the occasional heroics. When was the last time Max had sat next to someone and played video games and ate snacks into the wee hours of the morning?

Never. That was when. He had never experienced anything like that before.

“I have the best idea,” said Adrian. “Tomorrow, I’m going to bring some chips and soda and a super-greasy pizza and I’m going to completely slaughter you in an all-night Crash Course III marathon. Unless you’d rather, I don’t know, learn to play backgammon or something, and then we’ll do that. Doesn’t matter. It’s up to you. You let me know.”

Max shook his head, bewildered. “Adrian, how?” he repeated, more forcefully this time. He grabbed the medallion and flipped it over, examining the back, which contained a mirror image of the protective hand. “What is this? How does it work?”

“I don’t know!” said Adrian, still beaming. “It protects from diseases and poisons and stuff, so I just thought—”

“I’m not poison! I’m not a disease!”

“I didn’t mean it like that.”

“It shouldn’t work!” Max dropped the pendant. “It shouldn’t.”

“But it does. And next, I’m going to give myself a tattoo of this symbol,” said Adrian, pointing. “That will make me permanently immune, and then I can give this charm to anyone who wants to visit you. Can you imagine the look on Ruby’s face? And Oscar, and Danna? They’ll be so excited to come see you. And Simon, of course.” He gasped, leaning forward. “Dude. Simon. He’ll be … I don’t even know. I bet he’ll cry.”

“The Dread Warden crying?” said Max. “Let’s get it on film.” He said it jokingly, but Adrian could tell he was overwhelmed, and on the verge of tears himself. “Did you say tattoo?”

“Oh. Yeah. That’s how I do … you know. All that other stuff I do.”

Scanning Adrian’s shirt, Max stammered, “You give yourself tattoos? And that’s how you—”

Adrian held up his hands. “That’s not important right now.” He swooped his arms around Max’s waist and lifted him off his feet, letting out an excited whoop. “Vitality Charm! Visitors! Think of the possi”—his voice hiccupped as he glimpsed a figure in the lobby beyond the glass—“bilities.”

“Put me down!”

He set Max down and took a step back, clearing his throat. “Visitors like … Nova?”

Max spun around.

Nova was standing not far from the lobby’s information desk, staring up into the quarantine with her mouth hanging open.

“Act normal,” Adrian whispered, his glee quickly overcoming his surprise. He elbowed Max in the side and they both raised their hands and waved.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

“EXPLAIN,” SAID NOVA the second she stomped onto the sky bridge. Her arms were folded tight over her chest, her brain churning through a hundred explanations, each more absurd than the last. Adrian was inside the quarantine. And smiling. And apparently fine.

Then the pendant around his neck caught the light and Nova gasped, launching herself forward. She pushed her finger into the glass wall. “That?” she barked in disbelief. “Really?”

“Really,” Adrian confirmed, flashing more teeth than she had ever seen him flash before. He was practically luminescent with joy.

He started to explain his theory and the research he had done on the Vitality Charm and why he’d guessed it would protect him from Max’s power, but there were so many pauses and jumps in his story that Nova struggled to follow it all.

Plus, he couldn’t seem to stop laughing. It was partly the laugh of a mad scientist who hadn’t fully expected his latest experiment to be successful, and partly the laugh of a guy who could finally hang out with his little brother, without a glass wall dividing them.

He kept reaching out to ruffle Max’s hair, or punch him lightly in the shoulder, or wrap his elbow around Max’s neck and put him in a pretend chokehold. Max didn’t seem to know quite how to respond to this outpouring of brotherly affection, but he kept smiling. A smile as full of disbelief as Nova felt, but a smile all the same.

There was something endearing about the way Max was watching Adrian. A bit of awe, coupled with an abundance of hope.

Yesterday, Max was a prisoner and an outcast. Valuable and loved, yes, but also an anomaly. A science experiment. A lab rat. He knew it as much as anyone.

“What about Agent N?” said Nova.

Adrian turned to her, startled. “What about it?”

“It was created using Max’s blood. Will the charm protect people from it too?”

Adrian’s eyebrows knit together over his glasses. He peeked at Max, but Max just shrugged and said, “Don’t look at me.”

“I don’t know,” said Adrian. “It might.” He opened his mouth to say more, but hesitated. He studied Max again, then looked back up at Nova. “Yes. I’m pretty sure it would.”

“And does the Council know about this? They’ve put so many resources into developing Agent N … and there was this necklace in the vault the whole time, able to protect someone from it? There could be other things too. First the Captain is immune to Max, and now this?” She bit her tongue to stop herself from talking, worried that her eagerness would show.

Protection from Max. Protection from Agent N.

Maybe the Anarchists didn’t need to be quite so worried about this new weapon after all.

“I’m convinced no one knew about the medallion and what it could do,” said Adrian, “otherwise someone else would have taken it out of the vault as soon as Agent N was revealed. And you heard them at the presentation. There are no known antidotes. And invincibility, like my dad has, is just about the rarest superpower ever documented. No one else is like him. There’s no reason to think his powers can be replicated, at least not where Max is concerned. There might be other things that could act as a ward against Max’s power, but as far as I could find, this is the only artifact of its kind.”

Maybe Adrian was right, but even so, the existence of this charm gave her hope that Agent N wasn’t the death knell for the Anarchists.

She wondered if such a charm could protect others from a power like hers, too. As an Anarchist, Nova most often used her ability to put people to sleep as a weapon, but sleep in itself didn’t weaken a person, beyond making them vulnerable. If anything, sleep helped to restore them. It was an interesting puzzle, and one she would have to consider at length if Adrian shared the discovery of the Vitality Charm with any more Renegades.

“Could I use the charm sometime?” she said, plastering a smile to her face. “It would be easier to help Max reconstruct the broken parts of his city if I could go in there.”

“Sure!” they said in unison, and the way Max’s eyes brightened made Nova’s heart surge.

“But,” said Adrian, “I think we should give it to Simon first.” He grimaced apologetically. “It’s just symbolic, but … I know it would mean a lot to him.”

She refused to let her smile fade. “Of course. I understand.”

Adrian’s expression was so endearing Nova felt a little guilty for contemplating how the charm could serve her purposes over Max’s.

“I know it doesn’t change everything,” said Adrian. “You’re still stuck in the quarantine. You still can’t go out into the world. But … it’s something, right?”

“It’s a lot,” said Max. “Even just…” As he gestured between himself and Adrian, his control over his emotions started to crumble. “This has been … This is…”

Adrian wrapped an arm around Max’s shoulders and pulled the kid against his side.

Nova turned away. She felt like she was intruding. Not just because she wasn’t a part of their family, but because she wasn’t even really a Renegade. She didn’t deserve to enjoy this moment with them.

The velociraptor, who had disappeared into his nest, emerged and made a melancholy cooing sound, poking at Max’s ankle with its needlelike talons. Wiping his eyes, Max stooped and picked it up, pointedly avoiding Nova’s gaze.

“Max,” she said, hesitantly, “why … why don’t you just live with a non-prodigy family?”

Adrian flinched. “I’ve thought that, too, but…” His face was tight with pain, but Max only shrugged.

“It’s okay,” he said, resigned. “I’m fine here.”

“No, you’re not,” said Nova. Her fists clenched. “You’re a prisoner! You’re a—a—”

Adrian shot her a warning look and she bit back the words on the tip of her tongue.

You’re a science project to these people.

“It’s not safe for me to be out in the world,” said Max, letting the tiny dinosaur nibble at the tip of his thumb. “I could cross paths with a prodigy at any time, and it wouldn’t be fair to them. And also, if news ever got out about who I am and what I can do … it would make me a target. There are still villains out there who would want to use me for their own purposes—”