Maggie cursed herself up and down as she stomped through City Park with nothing in her pockets but her good-luck charm and a small amount of cash. She'd done stupid things before—things like stealing from people right under their noses, trading said stolen goods at public pawnshops, and forming an alliance with Frostbite and her crew. But nothing she'd done in the past seemed quite as idiotic as planning to meet Max Everhart at City Park, and not having the slightest clue what they were going to do when they got there.
She wanted to do something special for him, like he'd done for her with the jewelry making and the watch factory watching. But she had no idea how Max liked to spend his free time. She'd been so focused on working up the courage to ask if he wanted to hang out again, she'd forgotten to ask exactly what he liked to do. And that in itself was annoying, the fact that she'd been nervous. Maggie didn't get nervous. She couldn't afford to. Her entire career consisted of being smooth and suave, subtle to the point that nobody even suspected anything was amiss until it was too late. She'd once pilfered a golden necklace from a woman standing hand-in-hand with a guy who had to be at least six-foot-three, and later the same day attempted to lift a pearl hair clip from an elderly lady who turned out to be telekinetic. But even once the lady had pulled the clip back to her hair and started staring around suspiciously for the perpetrator, Maggie's pulse hadn't increased in the slightest. She'd simply turned her eyes toward the pizza place down the road and gradually assimilated herself into a group of people walking in that direction.
It was irritating that the simple act of asking Max if he wanted to meet up with her again had come not just with an increased heart rate, but also with sweaty palms and a flushing face.
She pushed the memory out of her mind. That wasn't her problem right now. Her problem was that she had almost arrived at the playground—their agreed-upon meeting place—and her list of plans was still frustratingly empty. Maybe she should just turn around and go home. Maybe she should pretend she'd gotten sick, or that something had come up and—
"Hi Maggie!"
It was too late. He was jogging toward her, his blond hair ruffling in the breeze. She stifled a groan and tried to ignore the way her heart fluttered at the sight of him. "Hi."
"Sorry I'm a little late," he apologized, slowing down and catching his breath. "Got caught up in an investigation."
"Flamethrower?" she asked. The villain's midnight attack on the 24-hour diner had been all over the news, much to her gang's dismay. At least she'd managed to get out of the theater before Frostbite came stomping in to blame her again.
Max shook his head. "Nothing that exciting. But… potentially something you could help me with."
"Something I could help you with?"
Max nodded eagerly, his bangs flopping into his eyes. He brushed them away impatiently and beseeched her with an eager grin. "There was this robbery a couple nights ago, that my team was hired to look into. A couple teenagers holding up a convenience store, nothing earthshattering. But I started doing some research last night, and I found a possible suspect—so I did some more research on her this morning, and I found out she used to live at the Prodigy Children's Home!"
Maggie froze. A robbery suspect… who used to live at the Prodigy Children's Home? Yasmin and Kevin had committed a robbery a few nights ago, Maggie knew. In general, she tried to dissuade Yasmin from using her bladed fingers to threaten people, aware that such acts could get Yasmin into serious trouble and thus blow up the entire plan they'd spent the last few years working on. But Yasmin had wanted money for new clothes, no one had been willing to share their earnings with her, and the robbery had been the result. At least Kevin had reluctantly agreed to be her lookout, so they'd both had time to skedaddle before any Renegades or vigilantes showed up.
It won't be her, Maggie told herself. The Gatlon City Prodigy Children's Home had been around for a long time. Probably hundreds of kids had passed through there at some point or another. Gatlon City was huge; small robberies like that happened all the time. Whoever Max was investigating, it definitely wasn't Yasmin.
"What's her name?" Maggie asked nonchalantly, feigning disinterest.
"Yasmin Wong, alias Dagger. Apparently her fingers are all made of knives. I don't know how she does stuff like getting dressed or washing her hair. Maybe she gets to choose when her fingers become knives and when they're regular skin?"
Maggie felt her stomach drop. Screw you, Yasmin, she thought angrily. All this time, all these years of being careful, and now one of their own was being investigated?
"What have you found out about her so far?" Maggie asked, hoping she didn't sound as desperate to know as she really was.
"Not much." Max wrinkled his nose. "The general database just had stuff like her name and what her powers are, and a range of how old she is. I tried looking her up in the Renegade criminal database but couldn't find anything. I asked Sampson and he couldn't remember ever meeting her. Finally I thought to search her name in the historical archives and I found an entry saying that she was brought to the Children's Home as a baby, twelve years ago." He raised one eyebrow hopefully. "You said you were brought there as a baby too, and that you were there for about eight years afterwards, so I figured you might have known her?"
"Dagger…" Maggie chewed her lower lip, squinting her eyes and trying to appear as though she was trying to recall a distant memory. "It sounds kind of familiar. I probably crossed paths with her once or twice."
"You did?" Max leaned forward eagerly. "Tell me what you remember."
Maggie shrugged. "Not much. It was a long time ago."
Max looked so crestfallen, Maggie's mind started racing for a fake story she could feed him, just so she could give him something. Something to make him look at her with hope and expectation again, like before.
He interrupted her thoughts before she had the chance to come up with something plausible. "Did you have anything… in particular planned for today?"
Maggie instinctively glanced down to her left wrist, where the ruby bracelet still hung hidden beneath her sleeve, then surreptitiously stole a glance at Max's wrist. He was still wearing his too. For some reason, this observation made her feel suddenly shy.
"I… don't know what you like to do," she admitted, nudging her toe against a tuft of grass. "I was going to plan something, but… what are you into?"
"Oh." Max sounded surprised, and she couldn't tell whether it was good surprise or bad surprise. "I guess probably my favorite thing to do is explore, check out new places, do things I haven't done before. I also like to build, create, make things… and investigate." His smile turned a little sheepish. "Honestly, that's kind of why I was asking… I just got this idea that maybe we could go to the Children's Home and, I don't know, talk to the employees or something? You're familiar with the place, so you might still know some of the people there, and I just thought… if you'd be interested in helping me with my investigation."
Maggie stared at him incredulously, trying not to show her dismay. Intentionally go back to the place she'd hated as a child, to seek out information that she didn't want Max or anyone else having access to?
"If you don't want to, that's okay," Max retracted quickly. "I should probably do it with my team anyway."
Maggie paled. A whole team of investigators looking into Yasmin? At least if it was just her and Max, she could steer Max away from anything actually incriminating.
And he was asking for her help…
"No, that sounds good," she told him. "Like you said, I might still know some people there, and that could be useful." And it's not like I managed to think of any better plans for today anyway.
"Really?" Max's face lit up. "Cool. All right, so we can cut through the park that-a-way for a little bit, but then we'll have to come out on Stanton Street and keep walking south until we get to the old train station. Then we'll have to go east for about half a mile, and shortly after that we'll arrive. It's about two miles total."
"Is that something you need to be able to do to be an investigator?" Maggie asked as they started walking. "Memorize directions and stuff?"
"Oh—no," Max looked slightly embarrassed. "I just have kind of a map of the entire city in my head. I've been memorizing the layout since I was a little kid."
Maggie shot him a sideways glance. "I thought you weren't allowed to go out around the city when you were a little kid. Weren't you pretty much imprisoned in the quarantine?"
"I wasn't imprisoned. I could've gotten out if I wanted to."
"Then why didn't you?"
He shrugged. "I didn't want to put everyone at risk. Besides, they needed me. Needed my blood, at least." A slight shadow passed over his face.
"Your blood?" Maggie was aghast for a moment, then realized why. "Oh. Because of your power? They were trying to figure out… how to get rid of it? How to duplicate it? What?"
"How to make Agent N," Max grimaced. "At the time, I sort of thought it was cool, to be part of something big like that. I mean, I was constantly watching superheroes go off and make a difference in the world, and there I was, stuck in the same three rooms day after day after day, always seeing all this bad stuff happening on the news but not ever having the chance to help. When I found out what they were using my blood for, I was kind of proud to be able to be useful for once." He cocked his head, thinking. "But when I found out what had happened that day in the arena, when the Anarchists attacked with all the bees stinging everybody and neutralizing them, I started thinking about how if the Supernova hadn't given everyone their powers back, I probably would've felt guilty. I probably would've felt like it was all my fault, since the only reason the substance existed was because of my blood." His face held a pensive look for a moment, then he seemed to snap out of it. "I'm just glad it didn't actually happen that way."
Maggie could feel the memories rising to the surface of her mind. That day in the arena. The bees swarming around, everybody fighting, her noticing Ace Anarchy's helmet in Nightmare's backpack, recalling that day in the artifacts storeroom and getting her 'brilliant' idea, actually being dumb enough to think that she could stop everyone from fighting, that she could put an end to all the mayhem and violence and destruction, snagging the helmet and tossing it to Callum, urging him to put it on, those few small moments where she could actually see a positive future, actually imagine a way out, and then—
The shudder tore through Maggie's whole body, and she increased her pace, stalking a few feet ahead of Max and trying not to let jealousy consume her. Jealousy over the fact that he didn't have to feel guilty, because everything that had happened as a result of Agent N had been reversed. Even all the prodigies he'd stolen powers from had gotten their powers back. He didn't have to feel guilty because none of those repercussions were permanent.
Whereas the repercussions of what Maggie had done were permanent and final.
"What's wrong?" Max had caught up with her, and was peering at her, concerned. "You okay?"
"Fine," Maggie flashed him her brightest smile, the one she typically used to reassure people everything was okay once she'd pulled off a heist. "So, you didn't explain how you memorized the layout of the city when you were in quarantine."
"Oh, that." Max chuckled. If he was perturbed about the change of subject, he didn't show it. "Well, when I was about six, my older brother started drawing buildings for me, to keep me entertained. His power is bringing his artwork to life—"
"I know Sketch," Maggie interrupted. "I used to run across him a lot when I was a Renegade."
"Oh—right. Anyway, at first he was just drawing the biggest buildings, HQ and Merchant Tower and things like that, but then he started drawing other parts of the city, parts I couldn't see from my windows. And then I'd start making requests, places I'd seen on the news, and pretty soon it evolved into him just making the entire city for me. And then I'd ask him to make people, and cars, and trees, and I'd stage scenes of things that had happened recently, and the whole thing became really detailed. I was pretty obsessed with it. I mean, it was one of the only things I could really do there, but I liked doing it."
"That's right." It had been a while since she had thought about it, but now that he mentioned it, she could envision the glass spires of the city rising up from the floor of the quarantine room at Renegade Headquarters, and, more recently, glistening in the sunlight on Max's float every year at the Hero Parade. She'd always thought it was more of an artistic representation, rather than a scaled model. "Did you really have the whole city in there?"
"Yep. Pretty close. I'm sure I was missing a few things here and there, and I probably had a few things out of order or mixed around, because all my arranging came from what people told me and what I saw on the news, but it was essentially a model of the whole city." He smiled. "I have one now too, but it's not as detailed as the old one. Not yet, at least. I don't spend as much time on it as I used to because—well," he gestured to the park around them, and to the world in general. "I have other things to do now. But I still like maintaining the model, and it's especially cool now that I've been to a lot of the places." He looked away, then met her eyes, then averted his gaze once more. "Maybe you could come see it sometime."
"Come see it?" Maggie couldn't hide her surprise. "At your house?"
"Yeah?" Max looked a little unsure. "If you want. I don't mean right now, but sometime?"
Maggie bit back a laugh. How ludicrous was this, that she was walking side-by-side with Max Everhart, hanging out with him for the third time, and he was inviting her over to his house? "That sounds—"
She was interrupted by a loud male voice. "Max!"
She and Max both turned their heads in the direction the voice was coming from. They had just emerged from the path leading from the park onto Stanton Street, and they'd been so caught up in their conversation that they hadn't noticed the six people strolling down the sidewalk practically right in front of them.
Maggie stiffened. It was them. Sketch, smiling and waving. Mirror Walker, a bag draped over her shoulder, looking like it might be full of books. The dozens of black-and-orange butterflies that reformed into the solid human body of Monarch right before her eyes. Smokescreen and Red Assassin, bringing up the rear with their fingers laced together, Red Assassin apparently laughing at something Smokescreen had just said.
And right in the front of the group, standing next to Sketch with her eyes narrowed and focused directly on Maggie, was Nova Artino.