Supernova, p.43
Supernova, page 43
How do you kill a phantom?
“You want to know fear?” said Phobia, his voice bellowing from all directions. His form engulfed them, blacking out the rest of the world. “Fear of the dark. Fear of being trapped. Fear of death. I am master of them all.” As the sanctuary succumbed to impenetrable darkness, Adrian and the others were forced together, crowding against the altar.
“I’m not afraid of you,” said Adrian, daring to step forward into the shadows. His heavy boots clanged on the stone floor.
“Actually, you are,” said Phobia, with a low, sinister laugh. “But you are even more afraid to know the truth.”
Adrian hesitated.
Phobia’s voice dropped to a whisper. “Or do you already know?”
Heat climbed up Adrian’s neck. It wasn’t true. It couldn’t be.
“I suppose I should be grateful,” Phobia rasped. “It’s a rare gift indeed to meet one’s maker.”
Adrian shrank back, colliding with the wall.
Another game, he told himself. Phobia was toying with him.
“It’s impossible,” he said. “You would have died years ago. Faded away to nothing, like all the rest!”
“Is that so?” Phobia’s hood had reached the vaulted ceiling, so that the blackness enguled the room. Nothing but shadow in every direction. It felt like death itself closing in on them, sucking the warmth from the air, suffocating them, slowly, agonizingly.…
“I suppose I should be dead,” said Phobia, “but you were so clever in your fearful youth, to imbue me with an endless source of strength. A bottomless well of power. Your … own … fears.”
Adrian shuddered. “What are you talking about?”
“I used to worry that they would fade as you got older, but I needn’t have bothered. Fears might change, but they never go away. You once feared losing your mother above all else, but once that nightmare came to pass … there was another lurking to take its place. Fear that you would lose your new family. Fear that the Renegades would collapse. Fear that Ace Anarchy would win. Fear that you would always be in your fathers’ shadows. Fear that you would lose more loved ones. Fear that you would be weak and helpless when it mattered the most.” He cackled, almost delightedly. “There is no end to your fears, Master Everhart, and there is no end to the life they give me.”
Adrian tried to swallow, but it was like swallowing a mouthful of sand. He started to choke.
The refrain persisted in the back of his thoughts—impossible—but he knew that was only because Phobia was right. He was terrified of this truth.
Because if he had created this monster, that meant he had created his mother’s murderer. But instead of the anger that had propelled him in his search for the killer, all he felt now was a deep, weary distress. He had created this thing. On some level, he was responsible for every unspeakable act Phobia had ever committed. His imagination had rendered a soulless creature and set it loose on the world. He had made him to be a villain, a killer, everything Adrian loathed.
Adrian clenched his jaw until he thought his teeth might break.
Phobia was his own worst nightmare come to life, and it was entirely Adrian’s fault.
And now, Phobia was going to kill him, his friends, Nova. People he would give anything to protect.
It had a sick sort of completeness to it. Adrian even found himself wondering if maybe he deserved to die, now that he knew one of his drawings had been the cause of so much suffering. The guilt of it settled into his core.
Maybe a death at Phobia’s hands would be fitting. He even suspected, though he didn’t know for sure, that all his creations might perish, too, when his own life was ended. That would provide its own sort of justice, if Adrian’s and Phobia’s deaths were intrinsically knotted together. It lacked only that moment of satisfaction that Adrian might have known to see his mother’s killer ended once and for all. It lacked only his own yearning for revenge.
Nova believed there was a way for Adrian to destroy Phobia. Perhaps this was it. Perhaps his own death was the only way.
A rumbling laugh shook the wall. “Ah, the sweet bravery of one who is ready to die,” crooned Phobia. “But don’t overindulge your self-sacrificial fantasies just yet. I’m not going to kill you.” The enormous scythe swung lazily overhead, a shard of silver light glinting in the blackness. “I’m going to kill them, while you watch, and know that you can do nothing to stop me.”
“No!” Adrian jerked forward, but collapsed to one knee. The darkness had thickened to something tangible, rendering him trapped. He could barely make out the stricken faces of his friends through the shadows. “No … you can’t…”
Phobia knew his fears too well. He knew how this would torment Adrian. To be powerless, to lose his loved ones and be unable to stop it, just like he’d lost his mother. His rib cage squeezed inward, suffocating him. He couldn’t let this happen. He couldn’t let Phobia win. There had to be a way to defeat him. He would do anything. Anything.
Then, suddenly, he knew.
Or, he hoped.
Because if this didn’t work, it would be the biggest mistake of his life.
Coughing against the press of shadows, Adrian reached for the plate of armor and retracted the protective suit. It clanked inward along his limbs, leaving him in the remains of his Renegade uniform, still shirtless, his skin dotted with dried blood and the bandages he’d hastily drawn on himself in the belfry.
“Adrian!” Nova yelled through the chasm. He could barely see her in the gathering dark. “What are you doing?”
“I have an idea,” he yelled back, pulling out Nova’s pen, the one with the hidden blow-dart chamber. He opened it up and pulled the single dart from the chamber, sloshing with familiar thick green liquid. His mouth ran dry.
“No, it won’t work!” yelled Nova. “Don’t waste it!”
Ignoring her, Adrian grabbed a massive leather-bound tome from the shrine and spread it out on the floor. Pressing the pen against the pages, he started to draw.
Phobia’s voice boomed through the cathedral. “I’m impressed.” Adrian’s gaze traveled up the length of the shadows, into the emptiness beneath Phobia’s hood, which now brushed the ceiling beams so far above them. “Your courage is remarkable, for such insignificant creatures. But you know what they say about courage. One cannot—”
“—be brave who has no fear, yakkity-yak,” said Adrian, remembering how Winston Pratt had once mocked Phobia’s favorite saying. “But do you know what they say about fear?”
The hood fluttered around Phobia’s obscured face.
Adrian pressed his hand into the book and pulled his drawing from the brittle pages. A narrow rod, the length of his forearm, with a flat cross at one end. It glowed like a lit ember in the darkness.
His hand started to shake.
“Adrian,” Nova croaked. “Is that a firebrand?”
Adrian ignored her, facing off against the shadows. “One cannot be afraid,” he said, “when they have nothing left to lose.”
His gut lurched, even as he angled the brand toward himself.
“Adrian!” Nova yelled, her voice hitched with panic. “Adrian!”
He braced himself and, before he could talk himself out of it, thrust the heated iron against the immunity tattoo on his chest. A cry of pain ripped out of him. Almost immediately, the sickening aroma of burnt flesh filled the sanctuary.
When he pulled the brand away, a deep red X had destroyed the tattoo.
He dropped the firebrand with a shudder. He felt suddenly dizzy with pain, white spots creeping into his vision, but adrenaline and will kept him standing.
Closing his fist around the dart full of Agent N, he searched the depths of Phobia’s hood. The phantom who had haunted his childhood dreams. The nightmare who had stolen his mother from him.
The monster he had created.
Phobia hissed, sounding almost worried for a moment, before his low cackle shook the sanctuary again. “Don’t be a fool. More than any prodigy I have ever crossed, you fear being powerless. You would never—”
Adrian set his jaw and drove the needle into his own thigh.
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
ADRIAN SANK TO one knee, knowing there was nothing else he could do. Either this worked, or he’d just given up everything on a whim. On a chance. He didn’t even know if it was a good chance.
That, and his chest was burning and he thought he might pass out from pain and blood loss, and the shadows of Phobia’s cloak were still engulfing him, still closing in around him and his friends, still swallowing them whole.
When the effects of Agent N began, he was almost too weak to notice them. The sensation was reminiscent of being in the quarantine with Max, before he’d discovered the Vitality Charm and given himself the tattoo. It was like a spark extinguishing inside him. A chill sweeping through his body. A slow draining-away of strength, concentrated in his hands. The fingers that had sketched so many amazing things in his nearly seventeen years.
The fingers that had sketched Phobia himself.
They tingled and grew cold, until he almost couldn’t feel them at all.
He heard a rattling cough. “No,” Phobia whispered. “This isn’t … you can’t…”
He wailed as he began to fade away. His cloak vanished like fog on a breeze, a cloud of ash billowing across the sanctuary floor. The cloak, the skeletal fingers, the shadowed hood, and, last, the scythe—a curl of candle smoke wisping into the air, before it, too, was gone.
Adrian held his breath. He counted to ten.
Phobia did not come back.
Adrian slumped forward. Warmth was returning to his fingers, but it didn’t come with the sensation of power he’d known all his life. He knew beyond doubt that he could draw a hundred flowers or a thousand weapons or a million dinosaurs, and none of them would ever come to life again.
And everything he’d ever made before … would it all be gone? All the work he’d done rebuilding the mayor’s mansion … the jungle in his basement …
Even as he thought it, Nova gasped and something clinked, hitting the floor. She bent down and picked up her bracelet. The clasp was broken again.
The star, however, was still there, glowing brightly, indifferent to their victory. He had drawn this, too, and yet …
His thoughts caught on themselves.
No. He hadn’t drawn it. In the mural, the statue had its back turned, so its hands could not be seen. The star had been Nova’s dream, not his.
Nova shoved the bracelet into her pocket and crouched beside Adrian. “I can’t believe you did that,” she said, inspecting the burn on his chest. “Sweet rot, Adrian. A firebrand?”
“It was the fastest method I could think of,” he said. “It’s not that bad. I think it singed off the nerve endings. Really. I can hardly feel it.”
Nova sat back on her heels, staring at him with something like awe. It wasn’t the first time she’d looked at him that way, with something more than admiration, more than respect. With something akin to amazement.
He would do just about anything to keep her looking at him like that.
He was still tense, his whole body strung tight, half expecting Phobia to reappear, howling his dark laugh.
But only the sound of their own uneven breaths persisted and, after a moment, Oscar’s voice cutting through the gloom. “That was simultaneously the bravest and stupidest thing I’ve ever seen.”
Adrian tried to smile, though he knew it was weak. “I created Phobia. It had to be me.”
Oscar opened his mouth, but Adrian raised a hand. “I’ll explain later.”
Harrumphing, Oscar said, “There’s a growing list of things you’ll be explaining later.” He grabbed the altar and pulled himself up, weak on his feet. As the rest of them stood, too, Adrian wondered how long Oscar had been without his cane.
A faraway rumble shook the walls of the cathedral. Adrian glanced toward the nave. In the struggle against Phobia he’d nearly forgotten that his dad was still out there, battling the most infamous villain of all time. He knew that Ace Anarchy was powerful, but it was still unbelievable to him that anyone could be a match for the Captain.
Then he remembered that his dad had given up his favorite weapon, the Silver Spear, when he’d thrown it at the bell tower. The pike must have been buried beneath the tower’s wreckage.
Was there any hope of finding it? Would it give his father the upper hand again? Surely no one could defeat Captain Chromium, not even Ace Anarchy.
“Adrian,” said Nova. “That was the last of the Agent N. The only way we can stop him now is if we can somehow get the helmet, but—”
“I have Agent N,” said Narcissa.
Nova froze, then spun to her.
“You do?” said Adrian, at the same time Nova said, “Why are you helping us?”
Narcissa crossed her arms. “Could ask the same of you.”
“She helped us escape,” said Danna. “Well, I mean, we only made it this far, but she broke the doors and cut our ropes. And she doesn’t even have to stay—she could leave through a mirror anytime. As far as I can tell, she’s a few steps ahead of you as far as trustworthiness goes.”
“We’re all trustworthy,” Adrian insisted. “We’re all on the same side.” He gave Narcissa’s shoulder a squeeze. “Thank you for helping my friends.”
“I didn’t do it for you,” she said. “I just…” Her attention traveled from Adrian to Nova, Oscar to Danna. She cleared her throat. “My grandfather was a lot of things to me, but I never thought of him as a villain. I know he did some bad things, but he was just trying to survive, to take care of me and the library. I don’t think he would want this for me, and … I’m not sure I want to be a part of it.” Guilt scrawled over her face. “Any more than I’ve already been.”
“We’ve all done things we’re not proud of today,” said Nova.
“Speak for yourself,” Danna muttered.
“Danna’s right,” said Oscar. “I’ve been pretty awesome today.”
“You said you have Agent N?” said Adrian.
Narcissa reached into a pouch at her waist and pulled out a dart full of green liquid. Adrian recognized it as the projectile Frostbite had given him, the one he had brought with the intention of neutralizing Ace Anarchy from the start. “I swiped it when we were carrying you back to that chapel. I figured they’d give it to Cyanide, but”—she frowned at Nova—“after Ace Anarchy’s speech about us all becoming gods, I worried this whole plan might be going off the rails. I thought this might come in handy at some point, and … I wasn’t entirely sure I trusted anyone else with it.” After a moment’s hesitation, she held it out to Nightmare. “Please don’t make me regret this.”
“I’ll do my best,” said Nova, tucking the dart into her belt. “Now, to figure out how I’m going to sneak up on him.”
Oscar held up his hand. “Just so we’re clear, you are officially on our team again, right?”
“Of course she is,” said Adrian, more defensively than he’d intended.
“No,” said Danna, pressing her hands into her hips. “There is no of course she is. She betrayed us. She let them neutralize us! She doesn’t get to just—”
“She killed Queen Bee,” said Adrian, “and she saved my life. I know things are messed up right now, but I trust her.”
Danna’s glare only intensified.
Nova took a step forward. “I know it doesn’t mean much, but I am sorry.”
Danna huffed, but Oscar made a face like maybe the apology meant something.
“Look, we’re going to have to work this out later,” said Adrian. “The three of you”—he gestured to Oscar, Danna, and Narcissa—“you’re with me. My dad threw his spear into the belfry before it collapsed. It’s his strongest weapon, and one that Ace can’t control. We’re going to see if we can find it and get it back to him.”
“Spear, belfry, got it,” said Oscar, saluting. He cocked his head toward Nova. “What’s she doing?”
Adrian turned to Nova.
She took in a steadying breath. “I might be the only one who can get close enough to Ace to neutralize him. I have to try.”
* * *
Adrian had been so focused on making sure Nova was okay after the bell tower collapsed, he hadn’t fully grasped the extent of the destruction. The tower had crashed through the roof of the transept, leaving a gigantic pile of rubble beneath a split roofline. The dust had begun to settle, but Adrian still covered his mouth to keep from inhaling too much as he made his way through the treacherous landscape. He could see the doorway that led down to the catacombs, now largely covered up by debris. A handful of the bells stuck out from the mayhem, silent where they had fallen.
“Whoa,” said Oscar, who had taken a floor candelabra from the nave to use as a makeshift cane … and possibly a weapon, in case it was needed. “I think I found a body?”
Adrian cringed, not eager to see Queen Bee again. But Oscar had crouched in front of one of the fallen bells, where a foot was dangling from the opening.
“That’s Cyanide!” said Narcissa.
Adrian nodded. “He was trying to kill me, so Nova put him to sleep. We thought he’d be safe inside that bell, in case the whole cathedral collapses around him.”
They started sifting through the wreckage, searching for the chromium pike. It wasn’t long before Adrian began to realize how much he was going to miss the strength that had come with his alter ego’s suit. Each stone block, every ancient timber, seemed heavier than the last. He was already exhausted, and it wasn’t long before his muscles were groaning at him to stop. He was glad Oscar was there. He, at least, had actually bothered to spend time lifting weights in the training halls. Unlike Adrian, who had just gotten really good at drawing weighted barbells.
“There!” Danna cried, standing on a bank of rubble.
Adrian scurried up beside her and saw what was left of the wooden scaffolding that had supported the tower’s central bells. The pike was still stuck in one of the timbers.
In the end, it took all four of them and an embarrassing amount of straining and grunting for them to pry it free. When the spear finally came loose, they fell backward with a cry, landing in a heap among the stones and mortar. A broken gargoyle dug into Adrian’s hip. Hissing, he grabbed it and threw it back into the pile.
