Renegades Stories

Chapter 14: Adrian

 Adrian was exhausted. His team had been two people short for the last week, leaving only two people to conduct the search of the city. With Ruby on maternity leave, and either Danna or Adrian staying home to keep an eye on Nova, the search had been slow, with no results. No clues, nothing. Every other day, he would go from house to house, apartment to apartment, asking people if they had seen Blake. If the person was suspicious, he would check their house.

It wasn't fun work. But Oscar and Ruby were desperate. Some teams would join them when they were free, others were too busy. Two days ago, Thunderbird had joined the search, but even she found nothing.

All this, and only a third of the city searched. They had decided to start from the center and work their way out, everyone checked one section everyday. Once they were all done, they would meet together and discuss. Everyday, there was nothing.

The next week went by, with Danna and Adrian back everyday. Now that Nova was working, they no longer had to stay home.

She still hadn't come out of her shell. He could tell she rarely slept, and while her eating habits had improved, she was still thin and sickly.

Despite his distrust of her, after everything she had done, he had a strange pull towards her. What made her tick? Who was she now?

Adrian knocked on the door of a small apartment building on the east side of the city. He had been at this for maybe three hours, and was ready to go home. But he had a duty to do for his friends. They were counting on him.

A middle aged woman opened the door. "Hello, can I help you?" A little kid appeared from between her legs.

"A Renegade!" he exclaimed, his mouth open wide, showing the missing front teeth.

"I'm Adrian Everhart, a member of the Renegades. As you may have seen on the news, the baby of a family who works for our organization was kidnapped about a week ago, and we're searching the city. Have you seen or heard anything that may be important for our search?"

"No, I'm sorry, sir. But I'll let you know if I do."

His heart sank, but he forced a smile. "Thank you for your time. Have a nice day."

That night at his apartment, all Adrian wanted to do was to lay in his bed, watch TV, and then sleep. However, Nova cornered him before he was able to retreat.

"They kept my mask. Why did they keep my mask?" she asked, her blue eyes burning into his.

Adrian was surprised by this question. "How did you find it?" he asked.

"It was in the Vault. During my tour."

"Callum just set you free to do whatever? That was really irresponsible of him."

"He followed me around, okay? I'm not as stupid. I'm not going to steal valuable objects within your stupid headquarters. Now, answer my damn question."

Her hands were curled into fists, and she glared at him.

"Fine. I wanted to throw it away, but the Council insisted it was an important part of your story. And don't ask me what that means, because I don't fucking know."

Nova seemed to change from angry to confused. "I don't understand."

"Didn't I just say I don't know?" His temper was flaring. He rarely lost control, but she was testing his patience.

He felt so conflicted when he thought about her. On one hand, she had tried to kill him. She had been an Anarchist, and that wasn't something you could just erase. On the other hand, it had been ten years. She'd been given plenty of time to mull over her choices. And from what he'd seen, she wasn't okay mentally. She'd gone through extensive amounts of trauma in the last twenty years.

He wanted to help her, but he wanted to stay as far away from her as possible at the same time, and he didn't like either of those options.

Adrian turned around and walked away from her. Before going into his room, he looked back at her. She was still standing there, tense and frustrated. "Get some sleep. I want you to help me search tomorrow."

Dammit. Nova Artino was digging her way forcefully into his head, and he was letting her.

(hey guys! long time no see. i never wanted to be one of the authors who writes a story that people enjoy and then never finish without announcing it, but sadly i was for a while. since i last updated, i think it was summer??? but now i'm in my junior year and let me say i'm pretty much busy ALL THE TIME. but i'm going to try to update more often. hopefully that'll be like once a week, but realistically that'll be once a month. i'm also going to try to update my one-shots too. but this chapter was kinda bad, just a filler, but i promise more action and nodrian moments are coming soon. i also wanted to thank for 8.5K reads??? that's unreal. i love everyone of you who reads it, especially when you vote and comment. you guys are the ones who motivated me to write despite everything going on. so, hopefully i'll be updating in the next week or so, and in the meantime keep a lookout on my one-shots cause hopefully they'll be something there soon! if you have any questions don't be afraid to contact me <3)