“Here,” said Adrian, pulling out his marker. “You need a bag.” He moved toward the nearest table and sketched out a large tote bag. Lifting it from the acrylic surface, he took the handles and gave it a shake, holding it open for Nova to drop her clothes into.
“Thanks,” she murmured, shoving the clothes inside. She wrapped her hands around the base of the bag’s handles, almost as if she were avoiding touching Adrian’s hands as she took it from him. “You sure do enjoy showing off with that trick, don’t you?”
Heat warmed the back of his neck. Had he been showing off?
“Well, it can be pretty convenient … sometimes.”
Nova looked briefly like she would smile, and he started to wonder if she was teasing him.
“Anyway,” he said, gesturing toward the corner of the lounge, “you can put it in the lockers over there while we give you the grand tour.”
A rage-filled scream pulled their attention toward the arcade game, where Oscar was laughing maniacally while Ruby pounded at the buttons. “My controls froze up! That so doesn’t count!”
“Please direct all complaints to the great scorekeeper in the sky,” said Oscar, popping his knuckles in mockery of how Ruby had done so before.
Adrian capped his marker and tucked it away. “Believe it or not, they’re actually really great superheroes.”
Nova met his gaze, and he could tell she was unconvinced. “Did you mention something about a grand tour?”
*
ADRIAN HAD PLANNED ON only taking Nova around to the areas of headquarters they used frequently as a team. The lounge she’d already seen, so he thought they would stop by the cafeteria and the training hall, then do a quick team-simulation on the virtual reality floor and call it a day. But the second the four of them stepped into the elevators, Nova’s curiosity surprised him. She wanted to know about the armory and how they distinguished what weapons were housed there versus those that were stored in the vaults specifically intended for powerful prodigy artifacts. She wanted to see the laboratories in research and development, and though they didn’t have clearance to go inside, Adrian caught her craning her head to see through an open door as one of the technicians passed by. She was curious about their forensics work, the investigations departments, Council Hall, and the state-of-the-art prison cells—though here again, Adrian could only describe them to her as best he could; he had never actually been inside to see them himself.
To his surprise, she even wanted to see the call center, located far up on the seventy-fifth floor of the building. Ruby and Oscar gave halfhearted attempts to talk her out of it, explaining that it really wasn’t all that interesting, but Nova’s enthusiasm for the various aspects of the organization, even the dull aspects, was becoming contagious. He and his team spent so much time on the streets, communicating with headquarters through hasty messages transmitted into their communication bands, it was easy to forget just how complex their whole system was. Seeing Nova’s wide-eyed intrigue and trying to answer her emphatic questions reminded him that the Renegades had become so much more than the group of vigilantes seeking to defend the people of the world. They were still protectors, but they were now inventors, lawmakers, and activists. They were working to improve society in a hundred different ways at any given time, and seeing how interested in it all Nova was served to make him more interested in it, too.
Arriving on the seventy-fifth floor, they stepped out of the elevator onto a circular platform that looked over row upon row of computer desks. The surrounding walls were taken up by satellite imagery projected in real time onto massive screens, some showing Gatlon City, others the nearby suburbs or other parts of the country. Green lines, red markers, and digital notes were being constantly added and removed from the screens, and the room buzzed with activity. Phones ringing. Staff barking into their headsets and clacking at their keyboards. People shouting orders or demanding to know the status of various ongoing situations.
A home invasion is being reported in C14—how fast can a patrol team get over there?
That landlord on East Bracken is complaining about the graffiti again—do we have a clean-up crew available?
I need a squad to check out this bomb threat outside the arena. What’s Metalocks’s status?
Metalock is still dealing with that explosion in Murkwater, but we can send Dead Drop.
He says this is the fourth time his store has been vandalized in the past two months. I swear, didn’t we already catch these guys?
We have a situation at the B-Mart on Sixty-Second.… Sounds like a man is getting aggressive over receiving incorrect change?
Adrian leaned his elbows on the rail that rimmed the platform. “We think of this as the nervous system of the city,” he said. “Distress calls come here, the situation is assessed, and a patrol team or sometimes a solo Renegade is assigned to deal with it.”
“Much more efficient than prowling the streets at night, searching for crime,” said Ruby, “which is what they did in the old days.”
“More efficient,” said Oscar, heaving a dramatic sigh, “but not nearly as glamorous.”
“It’s amazing how they could pull this together in such a short period of time,” said Nova. “The laboratories, the virtual-reality simulators, this. How did they build this in just ten years?”
“Nine years,” said Ruby.
“Eight,” corrected Adrian. “They took over this building eight years ago. It was home to squatters during the Age of Anarchy but was abandoned by the time the Council decided to make it their headquarters. As for turning it into this”—he gestured around the bustling call center—“when you have a team full of metalworkers and earth elementals, prodigies who have basic telekinesis skills and superstrength, not to mention one really helpful cyberlinguist, it tends to come together pretty fast.”
“Cyberlinguist?”
“A prodigy who can communicate with cybernetic technology,” he explained. “He’s our tech guy.”