The conference room on the fourth floor of City Hall smells like bad coffee and carpet that hasn't been replaced since the Clinton administration. I've been in this room maybe two hundred times. Budget hearings, committee sessions, the kind of procedural tedium that makes people's eyes glaze over, which is exactly why I've always loved it. Nobody looks too hard at what happens in boring rooms.

  Today's boring room has Councilman Silverstein, Councilman Davis, two NSRA liaisons I've met before - Sarah Jennings and a younger guy whose name I can never remember, something Greek - and the three members of Argus Corps who could be bothered to show up. Patriot in the corner looking like he's guarding a doorway even when he's sitting down. Turbo Jett two seats away from me, vibrating at a frequency I can feel through the table. Captain Devil slouched in his chair doing something on his phone that he thinks nobody notices.

  Miasma isn't here. Miasma is never at these things if he can help it, and frankly that suits me fine. The man makes me itch. That's not even the smell, I just don't like being around him. I'm 99% sure he's already turned on me and is the primary reason why Samantha Small didn't eat shit when she got turned into a fugitive. I'm only 90% sure that he planned that stunt with Mrs. Doppelganger to rip my alibi flywheel out from under me. But 90% is a lot. So... I'd rather he not be here.

  The agenda says "Argus Corps Oversight Transition - Administrative Review." Administrative. That's a nice word for what's happening. A nice, bloodless word for having my sword taken out of my hand and placed in someone else's.

  "I want to thank Councilwoman Richardson for her service as civilian sponsor," Silverstein is saying, reading from notes that someone else clearly wrote for him. His pen is the same heavy one I noticed last time - gift from a constituent, probably, the kind of thing politicians keep because it makes them feel important. "The formation and early operations of Argus Corps have been a credit to her leadership, and this transition reflects the council's commitment to distributing oversight responsibilities, not any dissatisfaction with her performance."

  That's a lie, and everyone in this room knows it's a lie, but it's the kind of lie that lubricates government machinery, so I smile and nod graciously. "Thank you, Councilman. I'm confident that Argus Corps will continue to thrive under new sponsorship."

  I catch Davis watching me. He's got that careful, assessing look - the one that means he's not sure if I'm performing or genuine and he's trying to figure out which. Smart man. Smarter than I gave him credit for six months ago, which was my mistake. You always know that the ones that run superhero teams are the real nutters, the only question was which direction he'd fall once the chips were down. I'll be honest, I didn't expect him to go team "young superheroes are bad".

  I underestimated the quiet ones. Won't happen again.

  Silverstein continues with the procedural language. Transfer of oversight authority. Budget allocation adjustments. Reporting structure modifications. I listen with half my brain while the other half runs numbers.

  Here's what's actually happening: Davis built a coalition. Five council members, enough for a committee vote, all convinced that Argus Corps oversight should be "diversified" across multiple sponsors rather than concentrated under one councilwoman. The stated reason is institutional best practices. The actual reason is that Davis has been quietly making the case that I have too much influence over too many municipal assets, and Silverstein - Silverstein, of all people - co-sponsored the motion.

  That's new. Silverstein has been reliable for years. Quiet, compliant, happy to sign whatever I put in front of him as long as the campaign donations kept flowing and nobody asked questions he didn't want to answer. Something changed. Something shifted in the past few weeks, and I don't know what, and that's what's keeping me up at night more than the transition itself.

  I could fight this. I have enough political capital to delay it, maybe enough to kill it entirely if I called in the right favors. But fighting it would generate attention. Questions. Heat. And heat is the one currency I can't afford to spend right now, not with the Bellwether fallout still settling, not with the Inquirer sniffing around financial records, not with Rachel Small's coalition gaining traction in exactly the suburban demographics that matter for reelection. No, it won't matter this year. 2026. Election's next year, 2027. But I still need to keep an eye on it.

  So I smile. I cooperate. I make it easy, because making it easy is what a confident, secure councilwoman does when institutional processes work as designed. Nothing to see here. Just good governance.

  "The transition will be effective as of April 1st," Sarah Jennings says, checking something on her tablet. "Councilman Silverstein will assume primary civilian sponsorship, with Councilman Davis retaining secondary oversight through his existing relationship with the Delaware Valley Defenders, and Councilwoman Richardson retaining tertiary oversight of operations. Argus Corps operational protocols remain unchanged during the transition period."

  April 1st. Three weeks from now. That's faster than I expected - these things usually take months of bureaucratic grinding. Someone greased the wheels. Davis, probably, or someone behind Davis.

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  "I do have one concern," I say, because not raising any concerns would itself be suspicious. Cooperative doesn't mean passive. "The transition timeline is ambitious. Argus Corps has ongoing operations that require continuity of command. I'd like to suggest a two-week overlap period where Councilman Silverstein and I co-sponsor, to ensure nothing falls through the cracks."

  Jennings nods. "That seems reasonable. Councilman Silverstein?"

  Silverstein glances at Davis - quickly, barely perceptible, but I catch it - before nodding. "I think that's a sensible suggestion. Continuity is important."

  He glanced at Davis. He checked with Davis before agreeing with me. That's not how Silverstein operates. Silverstein is a solo act, always has been. He doesn't check with colleagues. He checks with donors, with lobbyists, with the people who keep his campaign funded. The fact that he just looked to Jamal Davis for permission tells me something has fundamentally changed in his political orientation, and I need to figure out what, or I need to write him off as a variable and assume he's compromised. Actually, I should do both. Note to self: do both.

  "Excellent," I say, maintaining my smile. "I'll have my office prepare the transition documents by end of week."

  The meeting moves on to operational updates. Patriot delivers a clipped, professional summary of Argus Corps activities - patrol schedules, incident reports, the usual. He's addressing Silverstein directly, not me, which is technically premature since the transition hasn't happened yet. Either he's being proactive about the new chain of command or he's making a point. With Patriot, it's always hard to tell. The man has the emotional expressiveness of a fire hydrant.

  Jett is watching me. Not staring - she's too well-trained for that - but I can feel the weight of her attention even when I'm looking at Jennings's PowerPoint slides. Jett has been watching me differently for the past two weeks, ever since Patriot started asking questions about operational budgets that he'd never cared about before. Something is shifting inside Argus Corps and I don't have full visibility on what.

  That's the problem with building a weapon. Eventually, it develops opinions about who it should be pointed at.

  Captain Devil, to his credit, appears to be completely checked out. Phone under the table, occasional nod, contributing nothing. Are you reading leaks from one of your stupid Japanese import shows again? He only pays attention when it's about actual operations, and checks out for the bureaucracy. I mean, shit, me too. But at least pretend, man.

  The meeting wraps in forty-five minutes. Handshakes all around. Silverstein holds mine for a beat longer than necessary and looks me in the eye with something I can't quite read. Not hostile. Not friendly. Something in between. Something that looks like a man who's made a decision and is still not entirely sure it was the right one.

  "Thank you for making this smooth, Maya," he says.

  "Of course, David." I use his first name deliberately. Collegial. Warm. Nothing to worry about. "The work is what matters."

  I walk back to my office with my attaché case and my smile firmly in place. Close the door. Sit down at my desk. Pour water from the pitcher I keep on the credenza because I'm not going to start drinking at 11 AM no matter how much I want to.

  Argus Corps is gone. Not today, not officially, but functionally - the transition is a formality. Silverstein is going to rubber-stamp whatever Davis wants, and Davis wants a superhero team that isn't answerable to me. In three weeks I lose my legal paramilitary, my authorized surveillance capabilities, my ability to direct operations against Kingdom enemies under the cover of legitimate law enforcement.

  That's significant. That's not a layer I can sacrifice and regenerate. Argus Corps was infrastructure, not a shell company. You can't dissolve it and reform it under a different name in Delaware.

  But it's also not fatal. It wasn't a secret weapon. It wasn't checkmate. It was a tool, built in a shed full of other tools, used like a tool, and eventually it broke. This thing happens all the time, and I know it sounds like coping in my head, but I mean it. I built the Kingdom's Philadelphia operation before Argus Corps existed. I can operate without it. It just makes everything harder, slower, more expensive. More personal risk, less institutional cover. The math changes but the equation doesn't break.

  Plus, I got together four extremely incompatible personalities because I knew if all else fails they'd rattle themselves apart like a badly made shop class project. Yeah, I've seen the shiners Patriot and Captain Devil have given each other. That's on purpose, guys.

  What bothers me - what actually keeps the gears turning behind my professional smile - is the how. Davis didn't have the votes three months ago. I know because I counted them. He had himself and two allies, maybe three on a good day. Now he has five, including Silverstein, who was supposed to be mine. Something mobilized those votes. Something shifted the political calculus for at least two council members who had no reason to oppose me.

  Rachel Small's coalition? Possible. The angry suburban moms have been surprisingly effective at generating constituent pressure. But constituent pressure doesn't usually flip council votes this fast. It takes months of sustained contact, town halls, petition drives.

  The Inquirer coverage? Also possible. Financial irregularities in campaign donations make council members nervous about association. But the Inquirer hasn't published anything directly linking me to anything criminal. It's all innuendo and suggestive patterns.

  The Bellwether raid? The federal investigation is generating ambient anxiety in city government. Nobody wants to be standing next to the person who gets indicted. But again - nothing connects to me directly.

  It's all of it. It's the accumulation. No single factor flipped those votes. The combination did. The heat is building from multiple sources simultaneously and I can't cool any one of them fast enough because there are too many.

  I pull out my personal phone - not the burner, the real one - and open the weather app. Force of habit. Low pressure system moving through the Delaware Valley. Rain by Thursday. I used to be able to do something about that. I used to be able to stand on a rooftop and push the front through faster, clear the sky for a parade or a campaign event. Small kindnesses that made people love Stormrise.

  I haven't been Stormrise in a while. I'm not sure she still exists in any meaningful sense. Maybe Mrs. Zenith ate her whole.

  My desk phone buzzes. "Councilwoman, you have a two o'clock with Sanitation."

  "Thank you, Terrence."

  I close the weather app, and I straighten my jacket.