Nova swiveled to the side. The pike missed her by inches.
A gasp—horrified, shocked—sucked the air from the lobby.
Nova spun around in time to see Max appear again. Genissa had been aiming for Nova’s heart, but Nova had dodged, and Max … Max was right behind her. Sneaking up on her. His hand even now was stretched out, trying to grab the helmet from her hand.
The chromium spear was driven clean through him.
A scream was ripped from Nova’s mouth, splitting into the air. She could do nothing as Max stumbled back. His hand fell to the pike jutting from his abdomen. His eyes were wide, his face contorted in shock.
He fell to his knees.
“No,” Frostbite said, her voice etched with panic. “No, no, no!” She released the spear and stumbled back. Her legs shook and she fell, then started scraping against the ground with her heels, scrambling away from the boy. “No! You can’t have it!”
And Nova realized that she wasn’t worried about Max.
She was worried because she could feel the Bandit stealing her powers.
Ignoring Frostbite, Nova dropped to the ground beside Max. The helmet thumped at her side. The iron pendant felt hot against her sternum. “You’re okay. You’re going to be…”
She trailed off. The wound around the pike was blue and sprouting ice crystals.
Ice.
“Take it … out…,” Max gasped, wrapping a hand around the pike. His eyes were round and his cheeks were wet.
“No, don’t,” said Nova. “It’s stanching the bleeding. If we—”
“Take it out,” he said again, more insistently. The ice was frosting over the pike.
Nova gulped. He had gotten some of Frostbite’s power. Maybe …
“Please,” he begged.
“Okay,” she said, her voice warbling as she gripped the pike. “This is going to hurt. I’m sorry.”
He stared at nothing. He said nothing. But when Nova slid the pike from his body, his scream curdled in her veins.
Then the pike was out and he fell to his side, blood soaking his pajamas. Nova’s hands shook as she reached for the salve and bandages in her pouch, but when she rolled up the bottom of Max’s shirt, she saw that the skin around the wound was covering over fast with small ice crystals. He was stopping the bleeding himself. She wondered if he even knew he was doing it. His eyes had closed, his face white as the broken tiles all around them. His body could have been acting on instinct, using whatever powers he had begun to gather from Frostbite to numb the area and stop the bleeding.
It would not save him, but if it could protect him until he could get to help—
Nova lifted her head. Frostbite had swooned and appeared only half conscious, but Aftershock was there, his arms wrapped around Frostbite’s waist as he dragged her away from Max.
Nova didn’t think as she grabbed the bloodied pike and charged toward them. Aftershock, startled, dropped Frostbite in a heap and prepared to face Nova’s attack.
But the Agent N had taken effect and he no longer had any powers. Without them, he had no idea what to do.
Nova jumped forward, preparing to slam the pike against his temple. He cowered, raising his hands in a pathetic attempt to defend himself.
Nova stopped the side of the pike half an inch from his ear.
Lowering the weapon, she pressed her forefinger to Mack Baxter’s forehead. He crumpled.
She spun back to Frostbite. The girl was on her hands and knees, attempting to crawl away from the Bandit. Nova pointed the tip of the spear at her nose. Frostbite paused.
“Go back,” Nova growled. “You’re giving him your power. All of it.”
Frostbite lifted her eyes, but nothing else. “Like hell I am.”
Nova snarled. Max was dying. Dying. And she didn’t care if he was a Renegade, an Everhart, the very prodigy who had taken Ace’s power and ruined him almost ten years ago. It was Max, and she would not let him die. “It could be the only thing that saves him.”
“It’s mine,” Frostbite growled.
“Fine,” said Nova. “I gave you a chance to be noble about it.” Reaching down, she scooped her fingers beneath Frostbite’s chin, gripping her throat. A startled groan escaped the girl and for half a breath she struggled to get away.
But then she fell limp. Fast asleep.
Nova dumped her beside Max. She couldn’t gauge how fast he was absorbing Genissa’s power, but the ice formations over his wound started to thicken.
She thought he was unconscious, but then his eyes fluttered open, meeting hers. She couldn’t tell if there was recognition there, but she knew there was a question.
Why was she helping him? She had the helmet. Why was she still there?
“Get away from him!”
Her head snapped up. Her pulse jumped.
The Sentinel stood inside the main entrance, his armored suit haloed by the moonlight reflecting off the glass doors.
Nova stood. Her heart felt brittle, her body on the verge of collapse. But her mind was sharp again, jolted awake when that pike had been driven into Max, and already she was assessing her options.
The pike was only a few feet away.
The helmet was on the ground behind her.
Another dart was loaded in the gun at her holster and she still had two more gas-release devices, though she couldn’t be sure the gas would penetrate that suit.
She had one destroyed quarantine, three unconscious former prodigies, and Max—dying at her feet.
“I said,” growled the Sentinel, as his right arm began to glow, “get away from him.”
Nova took a step back. Her heel brushed against the helmet.
As much as she despised the Sentinel and all his feigned superiority and self-absorption and the way he had hunted her like some obsessed stalker, she was pretty sure she knew one thing about the vigilante.
He was capable of good things.
Heroic things.
Like rescuing ten-year-old boys when they were dying.
She took another step back.
The Sentinel raised his arm. The concussion beam drove toward her. Nova ducked, barely dodging it, and grabbed the helmet off the floor.
Then she ran.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
HE WANTED TO CHASE after her.
A big, loud, furious part of him wanted to chase after her. To tear off her mask, to make her face him, to look him in the eye, to tell him why she would do this. To destroy Max’s home, his glass city, his everything, and then to attack him—to attack a child! What purpose— What possible point—
But he didn’t chase after her.
In part because he already knew the truth.
Max had helped to defeat Ace Anarchy, and now Nightmare had tried to exact her revenge against him.
And he didn’t go after her because …
Because …
“Max,” he said, the name overtaken by a sob. He fell to his knees over Max’s body and did his best to remember the training they’d had. How to deal with various injuries so they could keep their comrades alive long enough for a healer to get to them.
But he had never seen this before.
Max’s shirt had already been pushed up, revealing a deep gouge beneath his ribs. There was blood, but there was also ice. Flakes of brittle white frost creeping across the skin, forming a protective barrier over the wound.
Stolen from Genissa Clark, no doubt.
But even with the ice, the blood beneath Max’s body was sticky and thick. The wound was deep, and could have punctured an organ—his kidney, his stomach, his intestines.
How long did he have?
Adrian’s arms shook as he scooped them beneath Max’s body and lifted him as tenderly as he could.
Nightmare was gone. Despite his fury, he hardly remembered her leaving. There was only Max. Whose skin appeared thin as tissue paper. Whose chest barely rose with each breath.
Holding the kid close, he ran from the building. Out onto the street, where even now he could hear sirens approaching. The Council, the rest of the Renegades, having heard about Nightmare’s attack. Rushing to the scene of the crime.
They were too late.
Adrian only hoped that he wasn’t.
Turning away from the sirens, he ran.
No—he flew.
The healers were all at the gala. Everyone was at the damned gala, and the hospital was six miles away and Adrian could think of nothing but the blood on his hands and Max’s weak breaths rattling through his skinny chest and the fact that all the stitches he could draw wouldn’t be enough to keep the life from slipping out of him.
The ice had bought him time, but still, he was dying. Max was dying.
And the hospital was six miles away.
Adrian had never moved so fast in his life. His entire world became a tunnel, pitch-black and narrow. He saw only obstacles— the buildings in his path and the streets crammed with traffic. He saw only the hospital waiting at the top of the hill, too far away, then closer, and closer, as he bounded from rooftop to fire escape to water tower to overpass. All the while he clutched Max’s body so tight he could feel the faint flutter of his heartbeat even through the armored suit. No, he was probably imagining that. Or it was his own heartbeat, erratic and desperate.
There was wind and the hard slap of boots on concrete. Another leap, another rooftop, another building, another city street blurring below, and the hospital—closer, closer, but never close enough. Don’t die, hold on, we’re almost there, I’ll get you there, don’t die.
And then he was there, a lifetime having passed in the minutes—seconds?—since he’d raced out of headquarters. He was moving so fast that the automatic sliding doors didn’t have time to register him and so he crashed through, sheltering Max’s body as well as he could as glass shattered around them.
Gasps and screams. Bodies leaping away from the infamous prodigy who had just burst into the emergency room waiting area.
A man in scrubs jumped up from behind a desk.
“A doctor, quick!” Adrian yelled.
The receptionist stared.
“NOW!”
Swallowing, the man reached for a call button.
Adrian crouched down, holding Max away from his body so he could inspect him. He tried to ignore the boy’s frost-covered clothes and the splatter of blood that had dried on the side of his face. It was the pallor of his skin that terrified him most, and the way Adrian could barely see his chest moving, until he couldn’t see it moving at all.