I don’t know how many times I’d told myself what a good thing I’d done for him in that moment, what a friend I’d been. I’d never considered until right then, sitting there against that steel wall in the dark, that maybe I had it backwards. Maybe I hadn’t been a friend to him at all.
The next morning, Hannah and Greer found me lying against the wall of the ellipse and said they were heading back to camp. I nodded and let them pass, listening to their footsteps as they left the Serra room and climbed to the lobby. Once they were gone, I went inside and began gathering up the comics, but stopped the second my hand touched Behold, Abaddon. I stared at that cover for a long time before opening it and slowly turning to those pages.
I thought maybe seeing them again after all that time would feel different. Maybe the horror wouldn’t be as sharp, maybe that sick feeling in my gut would be gone. But I was wrong. It was as if no time had passed at all. I felt exactly the same as I did the very first time I saw them.
Sally Sparrow on her knees, beaten bloody, her armor torn, the barrel of a gun pressed to the back of her head as she cried.
Cardinal, wings flailing as he screams across the Liberty City skyline, desperate to warn the others about his discovery of secret protocols the Volanti buried deep in the Brotherhood armor that, when activated, would render them utterly helpless.
An explosion of glass as Cardinal smashes through the window, and then— Sally Sparrow lying crumpled on her side, her hands tied behind her back, her lifeless body framed in the same pool of blood that surrounds the rest of the Brotherhood. Black Eagle. Kestrel Kain. Rex Raven. Goldfinch. Lord Starling. Blue Jay.
Cardinal sees that he’s too late. They’re all gone. He’s the only one left.
I dropped my face into my hands and cried until my throat burned. When I was done, I closed the book and looked up at the walls of the ellipse. What was it, really? A carousel? A ship? A rose? A prison? Right then it didn’t feel like any of those things. It felt like an empty room in a house where no one had lived in a long time.
I stepped outside the museum. The rising sun was painting the sky above Lucy’s Promise pink and gold. I tightened the straps on my mask and started the long walk back. I left Dad’s comics behind.
19
A?COUPLE OF DAYS later I was sitting by my tent when Gonzalez emerged from the woods.
“Love the new digs, Cassidy! Very Yoda in Da-gobah. Luckily, Mr. Larson’s quite the spymaster, or I never would have found you.”
For the first time since I’d known him, Gonzalez wasn’t wearing his Guard uniform, just camo shorts and a Green Lantern T-shirt. I was about to ask him if it was casual Friday, but then I saw the backpack he had over his shoulder and it hit me how much time had passed.
This is it. He’s leaving.
He dug a slip of paper out of his pocket and dropped it in front of me as he sat on a nearby tree stump.
“What’s this?” I picked it up and turned it over. A picture of Mr. Tommasulo. Two of them, actually—a front and a side view.
“That the guy who went after Hannah?” Gonzalez asked, then pointed to the bruises on my face. “Guy who gave you that beating?”
“How’d you—”
“Chitchatting with the guys who answered the call that night,” he said. “I thought the kid sounded like you, but then I thought that would be impossible because A, Card said he was keeping his ass up on the mountain where it belonged, and B, if something like that happened, Card definitely would have told me.”
“Listen, Gonzalez—”
“Damn it, Card! This animal messes with you again, and this is how I hear about it?”
“Well, it’s over now, right? They got him.”
“That’s not the point!” he shouted.
I started to argue, but then I dropped my head into my hands. “Yeah. I know. Sorry, Hec. Look, things have been kind of . . .”
What? Things have been kind of what? I didn’t even know how to start.
“You all right?”
I looked up. Gonzalez has that type of face that always looks like he’s smiling even when he isn’t. I nodded. “So, they going to put him away?”
“Oh, hell yes. They found a ton of seriously creepy stuff in the dude’s house when they went to talk to him. He and a few of his buddies are going to be spending the rest of their natural lives in a detention center. Thank God for Freeman Wayne, right?”
“What? Why Freeman?”
“He’s the guy that tipped them off,” Gonzalez said. “Waltzed right into their HQ and ratted the guy out for what he did to you and for an attempted robbery and assault one of his buddies committed earlier that same night. Crazy, huh?”
I picked up the mug shot of Tommasulo again. First Freeman saved me in the park, and then this. Why would a guy spend a year playing hermit in that library and then out of nowhere decide to become my own personal Superman? It didn’t make any sense.
“Hey,” Gonzalez said, “did I tell you? Word is they’re going to be screening footage from that new Cloak and Dagger movie at the Con. Supposed to be hot.”