“I got pretty good at it, actually,” she said.

 

“If I draw you some bowling pins, will you give me a demonstration?”

 

“Nope.”

 

“How about some scarves? Softballs? Flaming torches?”

 

She turned her head away, in part to hide the smile she was having trouble keeping back. “We’re supposed to be on a very important mission, you know. I’d hate to be a distraction.”

 

“Fine. I’ll let it go … for now. What was the other thing you mentioned?”

 

“Astronomy.”

 

“Right. Now, that one, I get. Being up all night, you’ve probably spent a lot of time looking at the stars.”

 

Nova looked up, to the few bright stars that could be seen dotting the sky between the buildings. There had been no ulterior motive for learning about the night sky, only that she found it fascinating. She could remember the sky being full of stars when she was a child. They were more difficult to see these days, now that so much of the city’s power grid had been fixed.

 

She liked electricity, but some nights, she would have given almost anything to see the Milky Way again.

 

Nova was still staring at the stars when, behind her, Ruby started to mutter in her sleep—Nova heard only show you a zero … and then what might have been casserole. She looked back as Ruby rolled onto her side and curled into a fetal position, her head sliding off the pillow and onto Oscar’s outstretched arm.

 

“Are they…?” she asked, gesturing between their sleeping forms.

 

“No,” said Adrian, who was turning pages in his sketchbook again.

 

“But they like each other?”

 

“Hard to say.” He found the sketch of the library and glanced back once, his eyes softening a bit as he looked at his friends. “I’m almost positive Oscar likes her, but I think he’s too afraid to do anything about it. And Ruby … she pretends to be oblivious, but I wonder.” He thumped his pen against the paper. “So, what are you training for?”

 

“Hm?”

 

“You said you spend a lot of your time training. For what?”

 

She leaned back on her hands. What did she train for? To destroy the Renegades. To avenge her family’s deaths. To someday see Ace’s vision realized—a world in which all people could be free. Where the people would not be heralded over by villain gangs or the Council. Where prodigies would not be subjected to constant injustices and cruelty, as they had been before the Age of Anarchy.

 

A world in which the Anarchists could return to sunlight and not fear persecution for even the slightest misstep.

 

“For this, I guess,” she whispered, tracing the filigree of her bracelet. “To be a Renegade.”

 

Adrian nodded, as if this were a perfectly reasonable thing to train for. “And is it everything you hoped for and more?”

 

Smirking, Nova looked back at Oscar and Ruby again and saw that Ruby was drooling a tiny bit. “So far, I can honestly say that it is surpassing every expectation.”

 

Turning back to the window, she saw that a slivered moon had risen over the library. It must have been going on two o’clock in the morning.

 

“What’s the significance of the bracelet?”

 

Nova looked down. She hadn’t realized she’d been fidgeting with it again. “Oh. It … was my mom’s.” She cleared her throat. “Thank you, by the way. For fixing it.”

 

“My pleasure,” he murmured. Reaching over, he took hold of the filigree between two fingers and twisted it around so he could see the empty setting. “What happened to the stone?”

 

She pulled her hand away, settling it on her lap. “This is how it was when I got it,” she said, picturing the bracelet abandoned on their tiny kitchen table. Ace had grabbed it as he carried her from the apartment, refusing to let another piece of David’s work fall into the hands of the gangs.

 

Her stomach tightened. “Aren’t you tired?” she asked.

 

Adrian blinked at the change of topic, but his surprise quickly turned to sheepishness. “Not too bad. I’ve worked night patrols before, plus I had one of those energy shots right before you came back down.”

 

“Go rest for a while.” Nova brought her legs up onto the table, sitting cross-legged and watching the street and the alley and the pitch-black windows as nothing, nothing, nothing happened. “This is what I’m here for, right?”

 

“I know, but … I don’t want to miss anything.”

 

“Miss anything of what?” said Nova, gesturing toward the library.

 

He frowned.

 

“Adrian,” she said, more firmly now. “I can handle this. If you don’t get some sleep, you’re going to be useless, so…” She gestured to the blanket.

 

He sighed and lifted his hands in resignation. “Fine. But you’ll wake me up the moment you see anything suspicious, right?”

 

She sighed, feigning exasperation. “What do you think I am, an amateur?”

 

Adrian stretched out on the blanket, pillowing his hands beneath his head. “Watch it, Insomnia. You haven’t even been a Renegade for three whole days yet.”

 

She turned back to the window. In the glass, she could see her own reflection, and she was caught off guard by the faint smile still playing around her lips. She settled her focus on the library, and said the words she thought Adrian would believe without question—what any Renegade would hear as the absolute truth.

 

“Yeah, but some days I feel like I’ve been a Renegade my whole life.”

 

Nova shut her eyes to hide the laughter in them. It sounded so painfully ludicrous, but she was proud of her delivery. She’d almost convinced even herself.

 

She waited for some smart comment to be shot back her way, but none came.

 

She frowned. Waited some more.

 

And heard only heavy breathing.

 

Nova glanced back over her shoulder. Her jaw fell.

 

He was already asleep.

 

“Ugh. You would be one of those.” Sighing, she wrapped her arms around her legs, settled her chin on her knee, and stared out into the dark world beyond this abandoned office. She had always been astonished by people who could fall asleep fast, like there was nothing to it. Like their spirits weren’t burdened with suffering and resentment. Like their hearts and minds could so easily be at peace.

 

After a while, she dared to look back at Adrian—just to make sure he really was asleep. She frowned as her gaze alighted first on the steady rise and fall of his chest. Her attention swept down his lean body to casually crossed ankles, then back up to his face. He had removed his glasses and set them, neatly folded, beside the wall. His face was different without them. More open and tranquil, though that could have been as much because of the sleep.

 

She knew it was a stereotype, but the glasses really did give him an air of studiousness. Of artistry. Without them, he looked like … well, like a superhero.

 

A really good-looking superhero.

 

Nova flushed, suddenly mortified at the direction of those thoughts, and hastily turned back to the window, vowing not to stare at him for another second.

 

The vow was harder to keep than she ever would have admitted, but keep it she did. Listening to the sounds of deep breathing. The occasional rustle of fabric and peaceful sigh as her companions slept and shifted and slept some more. In the city, a distant siren. A motorcycle roaring to life a few blocks away.

 

It wasn’t the shortest night of her life, but it wasn’t the longest, either.

 

She searched for any sign of activity inside the library, but there was nothing but stillness and darkened windows. Which was good. Ingrid and the Librarian would have had all the previous day to clear the library of incriminating evidence. There was nothing to do now but wait until morning, when Nova could encourage the Renegades to go inside and the Librarian could prove that he had nothing to hide, thereby putting an end to this investigation.

 

Nova was getting anxious to get it over with. She had other things to be doing than sitting with a patrol unit on a hopeless surveillance assignment. She had things to investigate at headquarters—secrets to uncover, weaknesses to ascertain, and she wasn’t going to get any of that done here.

 

Eventually, the sky overhead began to shift from black to navy to sapphire, a progression she was intimately familiar with. The window was facing north, so she had no hope of seeing the sunrise, but she sensed it in the gradual lightening of the clouds and the way shadows began to stretch long down the street, and how all at once the windows of the library began to glimmer with morning light.

 

At eight o’clock sharp, the CLOSED sign in the window was flipped over to OPEN. Nova couldn’t see who had turned it—Narcissa, or Gene Cronin himself?

 

Nine minutes later, the first patron arrived, an elderly woman carrying a basket full of thick paperbacks, her head tucked beneath a plastic hood, even though there were no rainclouds in the sky.