Anyway, he hoped Nova would think the gesture was thoughtful. He hoped she wouldn’t be annoyed that he was interrupting her work. He hoped maybe they’d be able to sit and talk, because he kept thinking about the night spent in the office building across from the library and how it had been really nice to talk to her. To get to know her, at least a little.
The more he thought about it, the more he wanted to know her even better. Questions kept popping into his head when he wasn’t around her, but then vanishing the moment they were together, and all the conversations turned toward the investigation again. Questions like, where did she get her ideas for her inventions? And, what was the most bizarre thing she’d ever done to keep from being bored at three o’clock in the morning? And, did she have a boyfriend?
He was pretty sure he knew the answer to that last one. She’d never talked about a boyfriend. But then … she hadn’t talked much about her personal life at all, so he couldn’t be sure.
He’d even had this outrageous idea as he was leaving Mama Stacey’s. This fantasy of sneaking into Nova’s cubicle while she was gone and laying out the spread of sandwiches and napkins like a picnic. He could even draw some candles, except that would probably be too much, and he didn’t want her to think this was, like, a romantic thing.
Except a part of him sort of did.
His palms were damp by the time he got to headquarters and he kept having to switch the paper to-go bag from hand to hand so he could rub them dry on his pants. The scanner near the door recognized the signal from his communicator band and unlocked with a clunk. He pushed through the revolving door and immediately heard someone yelling.
Adrian glanced at the security booth, where the guard on duty was screaming into his communicator. “—only two healers on night duty, and they’re both on their way. But what was she thinking, going in there in the first place?”
Frowning, and wondering if something had happened to one of the patrol units, Adrian jogged down the steps into the lobby. His gaze shot up to the bay of windows where Nova had been working lately. He could see the light on in her cubicle, but her desk appeared to be empty.
His hair stood up on the back of his neck as he crossed the inlaid R in the tiled floor.
An erratic pounding made Adrian draw up short. He turned his gaze toward Max’s quarantine, where a faint light was casting a glow across the lobby.
Max was standing at the quarantine wall. He was wearing plaid pajama pants but no shirt. One hand was wrapped up in cloth—perhaps the missing shirt—while he pounded the other fist against the glass. He was yelling, his face wild with panic, and it took Adrian a moment to understand him.
Adrian! Hurry!
The bag of sandwiches fell from his hand, hitting the floor with a crackle and thud, and then Adrian was sprinting up the stairs to the quarantine. As soon as he reached the sky bridge he saw a body lying inside the quarantine.
His heart jolted.
It was Nova.
She was unconscious.
She was inside the quarantine.
He slowed for only a second, but still—he did slow, and he knew it, and he would later feel like the biggest coward for that moment of hesitation. But then he was running again, as fast as he could. Before he could sort out what he was doing, his hand was grasping the handle of the quarantine door and yanking it open. He didn’t know how long she’d been in there, but he knew that every second could make a difference. Every second that passed, her strength would be leaching from her, bit by bit.
Her power draining away, bit by bit.
But he would not be any safer if he didn’t hurry.
Once past the door, his vision attached itself to Nova. He could reach her. He had to reach her.
On the far side of the quarantine, pressing his body against the glass wall, Max was panting as if he, too, had just dashed across the lobby and the stairs and the bridge. His thin, pale shoulders were shaking, and Adrian could see now that the shirt around his hand was soaked with blood. Glass buildings were toppled and broken everywhere he looked.
“I’m okay,” said Max, before Adrian could speak. “I sent a message to security. The healers are on their way. But Nova! You have to get her out of here!”
Adrian gulped.
Whatever had happened, there was nothing he could do for Max. But Nova …
Gritting his teeth, he launched himself over the skyscrapers, careening down the streets of Gatlon City.
He was halfway across the quarantine when he felt it. Like someone had uncorked a drain in him and all his strength was seeping out.
Mostly he felt it in his hands. His fingers went cold. The muscles, the ligaments in his joints, they felt like they were atrophying with every step he took. Fingers curling inward, becoming useless and frail. Fingers that would never again hold a pen or a paintbrush … hands that would never again create reality from imagination …
Hurling himself over the hospital, he knelt beside Nova. His breaths were strangled wheezes as he scooped his arms beneath her. Her head fell against his chest and he turned and sought out the exit.
The door felt impossibly far. How many steps would it take to reach it? Thirty? Fifty? Adrian’s head spun.
He wouldn’t make it. Not if he had to stumble every step of the way.
He crushed Nova’s body against him and crouched down. Though he didn’t know if it would work. He couldn’t be sure if that ability had already been sapped from him.
Still—he took in a deep breath and leaped.
His body sprang upward. Power coursed through his legs, sending him and Nova soaring over the skyline. For one delirious moment he thought, this is what it would be like. To fly over the city, to really fly …
Then the ground rushed up to meet them, the jagged glass buildings like hundreds of spikes jutting upward. Adrian adjusted his body with the lost momentum, and he and Nova crashed down onto Scatter Creek Row, mere steps away from the door.