But not anymore.
Years ago, there had been a little girl who believed the Renegades would come. How had she strayed so far from the betrayed hopes of that little girl? How had she forgotten the dreams and intentions of Ace Anarchy, who had saved her, who had dreamed of a society in which all people were free of tyranny?
He had failed.
But so had the Renegades. They had failed her family. They had failed her.
And they would go on failing until someone stopped them.
Nova made her way back through the tunnels as these thoughts crowded and tangled inside her head, occasionally lighting a new flare to guide her way. She had just reached her old train car when the darkness began to converge before her. Rivulets of inky blackness seeped down the curved concrete walls, dripping into the languid shape of a long cloak, a hood, a scythe.
Nova paused. She had seen little of Phobia since they had fled from the tunnels, and at times she wondered if he had chosen to return to the one place he felt most at home once the Renegades had given up their search.
Though she could not see his eyes beneath the overhang of the hood, she could feel him studying her, his breaths making the fabric of the hood flutter ominously.
“You have always feared failure,” he said, and his voice seemed even raspier than normal, “but it is an especially strong fear tonight.”
“Not really interested in the psychoanalysis,” she said, moving to pass him.
He shifted the scythe, hooking her with the blade.
Nova scowled.
“And also a fear that all will be for naught…”
Nova rolled her eyes and waited for him to finish.
“The Detonator is dead.” His voice quieted. “You fear that you will come to regret this.”
“You just let me know when you’re done.”
Phobia brought the tip of the blade up to Nova’s cheek and used it to turn her face toward him. “These doubts … these insecurities … they will come to serve you well, Nightmare.” He listed his head toward her. “After all, one cannot be brave who has no fear.”
She stared into the shadows where a face should have been. Utter nothingness stared back.
Leroy had once told her that Phobia did not need a body, because he was the embodiment of fear. She still wasn’t sure what that meant.
“Yeah,” she said, taking hold of the scythe handle and pushing it away. “You’ve said that before.”
She walked past her train car, and when she dared to give a cursory glance back, Phobia had dissolved back into shadows.
Nova turned her back on the car that had been her home for so many years and paused to gather herself. Her hands had begun to shake, but she wasn’t sure why. She wasn’t afraid. At least, she didn’t think so. Surely Phobia would have deigned to tell her if she was.
Nervousness, perhaps. Or even dread, to have to confess all the ways she had failed up until now.
Phobia was right about that, at least. She had always been afraid to fail.
Which is why she wasn’t going to let it happen.
Sucking in a deep breath, she approached the old graffitied poster and angled it away from the wall. She slipped into the tunnel. This time she did not bother to turn on any flares. There was only one path here—she could find her way just fine by the feel of rough stone scraping against her elbows.
The journey through this narrow, damp passageway had seemed to take eons when she was a fearful little girl fleeing from the cathedral, but in the years since, the journey seemed to get shorter every time she made it. Perhaps knowing that it wouldn’t go on forever, that there was indeed an end to this cramped, filthy passage made all the difference.
She knew she was getting close when the air stopped smelling of stagnant water and rats, and started to smell like death and slow decay instead.
She reached the end of the tunnel and pressed her hand against the simple wooden crate that served as a makeshift door, shoving it aside just enough for her to slip into the cathedral’s tombs. Inside the door, a tray had been set with a meal for one. A goblet of red wine and a cloth napkin, a china plate holding a triangle of hard white cheese, a sprig of grapes, a hunk of bread. A white taper candle was burning in a silver candlestick. She could taste the sulfuric tang of a recently lit match, and the candle was tall enough still that Nova could guess the meal had not been left there for long. She wondered if Phobia had delivered it, or if one of the others had been making pilgrimages too.
She felt guilty that this was the first time she’d come since they had abandoned the tunnels.
Stepping over the tray, she passed the familiar stacks of old stone sarcophagi, their inscriptions so covered with cobwebs and dust they were impossible to read. She passed beneath an arched doorway that had words from a dead language carved into the top, past the wall of rubble and broken stones where Ingrid had long ago closed these tombs off from the cathedral above.
She arrived at the bones, stacked so thick and deep they made a wall from floor to ceiling. Mostly skulls, but there were other things too. Femurs and ribs and even the tiny little finger bones that, for whatever reason, had scared Nova the most when she was young.
Nova looked into the empty eye sockets of those countless skulls of saints and clergymen and warriors, or whoever all these people were. She found herself wondering, as she had countless times before, if any of them had been prodigies. If so, had they dared to use their powers, or had they kept them secret? In their time, had their gifts been seen as miracles, or did even the devout feel the need to disguise who and what they truly were?
That was one thing that everyone had to agree on when it came to Ace Anarchy. Because of him, prodigies no longer had to hide.
At least, most prodigies no longer had to hide.
Nova settled down onto the floor, folding her legs beneath her. She stared into the faces of death and felt death peering back at her.