“Adrian!” he yelled, scanning him up and down. “What happened? Are you all right?”
“No!” he yelled back, because shouldn’t it have been obvious? Had he not heard what she just said?
But he knew his frantic, furious thoughts weren’t really what his dad was asking about. Hugh Everhart pulled one hand away, looking down at his fingers wet with blood. Adrian had already forgotten about the scratch from the nail. It was nothing. Nothing. Not when Nova … when Nova was …
Where is Nova?
He yanked himself away and spun in circles, seeing Evander as he shot a series of white lights into the air, brightening the field surrounding the fun house. Then he spotted Kasumi and, a moment later, Simon, too, shifting into visibility. The Council. The whole Council was there. Was it for Nightmare … or for him?
Then, too, he spotted Ruby and Oscar and Danna, running through the abandoned park, calling his name.
“Mercy mine,” said the Detonator. “What an all-star show this turned out to be. It’s so very nice of you all to join us.” Though she was slumped against the wooden theater, her arms latched securely on top of her stomach, she was still grinning as she peered around at all the new arrivals. “Why, this has worked out even better than I expected. All five Council members.” She clicked her tongue. “What will people say once they realize that you were right here? You were so close … and you still couldn’t save them?”
“What is she talking about?” said Hugh.
Adrian shook his head, frowning. “I don’t know. This was all a setup—she killed Nightmare, something about how she thought Nightmare would betray the Anarchists. And she tried to kill me. But I don’t—”
A distant explosion rumbled the ground beneath their feet. They all turned to see a plume of black smoke erupting from the amusement park on the other side of the fence.
Oscar and the others froze and turned. They were the closest to the explosion, and they hesitated for only a moment before Danna burst into a swarm of butterflies and soared back toward the fence, Ruby and Oscar chasing after her as screams spread through the park.
Adrian stumbled forward a few steps, blinking in disbelief. The sun had set. The carnival was alight with twinkling lights and flashes of colors from the rides and booths, and it was almost impossible to tell at first, but as he stared he could detect a faint blue haze emanating from the whole carnival. Dozens—maybe hundreds—of small blue spheres blending in with the cacophony of twinkling lightbulbs. Even as he watched, they continued to brighten, their vibrant sapphire glow gradually overwhelming the multicolored hues of the park.
But … she was here. The Detonator was here, she was captured, she was bound. How could she …
His thoughts trailed off, answering themselves.
She had done it at the library too. She had set a bomb against the basement wall and detonated it from the other side of the room, with nothing but a snap of her fingers. She didn’t just make bombs to be tossed around and used up like hand grenades. She could be much sneakier, much more calculating than that. The Detonator. It was right there in her alias.
Adrian looked at her confined hands, his gut sinking in horror.
The snap had been for show.
She could detonate those bombs with nothing but her thoughts.
Tsunami sprinted off toward the park while Thunderbird took to the sky, soaring in the direction of the explosion. A second later, another blast shook the earth and, in the distance, the pillar that held the giant swings toppled over mid-rotation. It spun out like a top, launching hapless riders into the fence and across the pavement.
The Detonator was laughing again, staring up at the sky, dazed and content. “By tomorrow morning, they are going to hate you…,” she sang.
Another explosion destroyed a leg of track on the rollercoaster. Thunderbird changed direction, rushing to get to the coaster before the riders plummeted off the edge.
And that faint blue haze grew brighter.
Bombs, everywhere he looked.
What if she set them all off at once?
Adrian clenched his fists and felt a surge of power rush into his forearm again. But the energy beam had been designed to stun, not to kill. And the only way to stop her, to be sure the rest of those bombs would never be detonated, was—
A gunshot rang across the grass. The Detonator’s head snapped back, hitting the boards of the theater.
The world seemed to still, hovering in a space without time. Then the Detonator slumped down. Adrian released his breath and watched her topple onto her side, leaving a smear of blood on the wood.
Real blood.
Adrian flexed his fingers, dissipating the building energy, and peered into the shadows of the fun house.
Nova pushed aside a blockade of wood scraps and crawled out of the rotating cylinder that had crashed down from the second floor and landed not far from the exit doors—or where the exit doors had once stood. She was holding a handgun. Her hair and skin and the iconic gray bodysuit were caked with dust.
“I found this,” she stammered, shaking the gun a little. “In a … a duffel bag.” She sounded worried, as if anyone would care that she’d stolen the gun that had stopped the Detonator.
Breathless, Adrian glanced back out toward the park. Thunderbird was at the crest of the rollercoaster, holding back the train of carts only a few feet from the gap in the tracks.
The rest of the carnival was in pandemonium, with civilians screaming and running in all directions, though he could imagine Danna and the others had reached the sites of the first two explosions by now.
Clouds of smoke were still swelling over the park, but the blue glow was gone. The rest of the spheres had extinguished, evaporating back into the atmosphere.
“All right, everyone,” said Simon, always the first to snap out of his shock. “Let’s get as many patrol units as we can here, pronto, to help with the injured and start getting this place cleaned up.”