"I panicked," I say. "He was in my office, he wouldn't leave, and I - I did something I've never done before. Something I didn't even know I could do at that intensity." I look down at my hands. They're still shaking. That part is real. "The barokinesis. You felt it. It's not weather control. It never was. The NSRA has me registered as a weather controller because that's what it looks like from the outside, and I have never, ever corrected them."

  "Why not?"

  "Because the Kingdom thinks I'm a weather controller." I meet her eyes. "That's what's in their files. That's what they recruited me for. Stormrise, the hero who could move clouds and clear skies for parades. Nice, safe, useful, not too dangerous. I can make lightning and hail at the worst. Maybe a tornado if you give me two days of prep time." I gesture at the ruins of my living room - the cracked tiles, the broken lamps, the Jett-shaped impact crater.

  Okay, now sell it. "If they knew I could do that? Do you think they'd be using me to sign liquor licenses and run interference on city council? They'd have me killing people every week. I'd be their assassination tool. The only reason I have any breathing room at all, any space to maneuver, is because they think I'm less than what I am."

  Jett is listening. The peanut butter spoon is frozen halfway to her mouth. Her eyes are still bloodshot from the burst vessel but the anger has been alloyed with something else now. Something I need.

  "Duvall is on me," I say quietly. "I won't pretend otherwise. I killed him, and I covered it up, and I have to live with that. But I need you to understand the context. I need you to understand what I'm trapped in."

  "Trapped," she repeats. Flat.

  "Seven years ago," I say, "I had a relationship with a man named Darnell Hayes."

  Her expression shifts. She wasn't expecting a pivot. Good. Let's work this.

  "He goes by Mr. Nothing. He's Kingdom. High-ranking. I didn't know that when we were together. You can look him up, I think he's cousins with the lady that runs the library, Iris. This is a real guy. He even got arrested at the zoo, before the Kingdom busted him out. You know, some stupid shit with our good ol' friend Sam Small. But... you know, okay, back to the story - he was just some charming brother from the Bronx. By the time I found out about the supervillain shit, there was already a complication." I pause. Let it build. "The complication's name is Roxy, and she's six now, and lives with his relatives. Roxanne Elisabeth Hayes."

  The kitchen is quiet. The refrigerator hums. Somewhere in the building, a neighbor's television murmurs through the wall. Normal sounds in the aftermath of something very not normal. I point to the small line on my now-exposed stomach. No, I didn't expect to show off a c-section scar today. But I might as well while I'm shirtless.

  "The Kingdom has never once failed to remind me that Roxy exists," I say. "That they know where she lives. That they know what school she goes to. That her safety - her life - depends on my continued cooperation. Every liquor license. Every shell company. Every favor I've done for people I despise. All of it, Jasmine. Every single piece of it traces back to a six-year-old girl in the Bronx who doesn't know her mother is a city councilwoman and doesn't know her father is a supervillain and doesn't know that the only reason she's alive is because I keep doing what I'm told."

  Jett puts down the spoon.

  "And Duvall," she says slowly. "He was going to--"

  "He was going to expose me. Not to the police - to the Kingdom. He figured out enough to be dangerous, and he was going to use it as leverage, and if the Kingdom found out that someone had that information - if they thought for one second that I was compromised - Roxy would disappear. Not metaphorically. Actually, physically disappear."

  I let my voice do something it almost never does. Thin. Frayed at the edges. The sound of someone who's been holding something too heavy for too long. "So I killed him. And I'd do it again. And I hate myself for it. And that's the truth."

  Jett looks at me for a very long time. The shivering has stopped. Her color is coming back - the orange juice and peanut butter doing their work. She's twenty-nine and she trusted me and now she's sitting in my destroyed kitchen trying to figure out if the woman she trusted is a villain or a victim, and the answer I've given her is: both.

  It's only sort of bullshit, too. I'm sure Mr. Antithesis would shoot Roxy without question if I gave him a reason to believe I wasn't going to bend with the reeds. And I do feel bad about the things I do, sometimes. But I know that in the end, it will all be worth it.

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  "You can leave," I say. "Right now. Walk out, go to the NSRA, tell them everything. The barokinesis, Duvall, the Kingdom, Roxy. I won't stop you. I won't retaliate." My voice catches, and the catch is manufactured but the technique is flawless. "Just know that if the Kingdom finds out I talked, she's the one who pays. Not me. Her."

  She blinks at me a couple of times. Good. I remember that shit you pulled after my blizzard. "That's what a superhero does," and all that. I won't pretend your newly recovered conscience isn't useful sometimes. The one good thing Sam Small ever did for me.

  And frankly, even if Jasmine could know the truth, I don't know if she'd want to. Call me a bleeding heart, but I think this is a better story for her than the actual one. That he was trying to blackmail me normal style, and that I killed him because he was an existential threat to my criminal apparatus. No, let her have her clear cut good guys and bad guys. Let her live in a world without grey. She deserves that much.

  I'm not heartless. I'm just a gangster. There's a difference.

  "You can even quit Argus Corps," I add, barely above a whisper. "I won't make it a big deal. I'll vouch for you. Just - stay down. Please. Don't put my kid in danger."

  Jett looks at me for a long time. The kitchen is quiet except for the refrigerator and the faint creak of settling drywall from the living room. I think I cracked a stud. That's going to be expensive.

  "Maya, I'm--" she starts, and I can hear it coming. The apology. The guilt. She came here ready to burn my apartment down and instead she's sitting in my kitchen eating peanut butter out of a jar while a woman with a bleeding nose tells her about a six-year-old girl she's never going to meet.

  "Don't," I say. Not harsh. Just firm. "Don't apologize. You were right to be angry. You were right to come here. Everything you found is real - the shell companies, the licenses, Duvall. All of it is real. You should be upset. Just..." I find the right words. "Know where the upset lives. Know what the truth actually looks like, and be upset at that instead."

  She nods. Slowly. Processing. I can see her rebuilding her model of the world - not the one she walked in with, where her boss is a criminal who used her, but the new one, where her boss is a hostage who protected her. Neither model is accurate. But one of them lets her sleep tonight, and that's the one she's choosing. That's the gift I'm giving her. It's so much easier to deal with these goody two-shoes types when I don't have to look them in the goddamn eye about it.

  "I need to go," she says, looking... blank. Numb. Tired. Dragged out of the black and white, and back into the grey she hates so much.

  "Okay." I walk her to the door. Or what's left of it - the frame is warped from the pressure differential and it sticks when she pulls it. I help her yank it open. There's something almost funny about the two of us, battered and bleeding, tugging on a stuck door together. Almost.

  "I'll turn myself in," I say, and I'm surprised to find that I half believe it. "When the time is right. When I can do it in a way that doesn't get Roxy killed. I'll do the right thing, Jasmine. I just need time."

  She looks at me with those bloodshot eyes. "How much time?"

  "I don't know. But I'm working on it." That part is true. Just not in the direction she thinks.

  "Okay," she says. And then she's gone, down the hallway, and I start thinking about all the repairs I need to do to my apartment now.

  I close the door. It doesn't latch properly anymore. I'll deal with it later.

  I stand in my ruined apartment for exactly thirty seconds. Broken tiles. Cracked stud. Shattered lamps. A peanut butter jar with a spoon sticking out of it on my kitchen counter next to a glass of orange juice with Jett's lip print on the rim. Somehow, my wine glass is totally undisturbed. How the hell did that happen?

  I dump the red wine. Throw the peanut butter jar away. Rinse the glass. Wipe down the counter.

  Then I sit at the dining room table and fill my wine glass with water. I swish it a couple of times, dump it out, and fill it up again with more, colder water. No whiskey planning today.

  I pull out the legal pad. The one with the transition documents. I flip past them to a blank page, and at the top I write: OPTIONS.

  I don't get very far. The headache is back, throbbing behind my eyes in time with my pulse. My nose has stopped bleeding but I can feel the dried blood cracking on my upper lip every time I move my mouth. Everything hurts in that specific way that overextending my powers always produces - like someone inflated a balloon inside my skull and forgot to pop it.

  But the machine doesn't stop because I'm tired. The machine never stops because I'm tired.

  I write down three words, spaced evenly across the page. Three columns. Three categories.

  DELAY. REDIRECT. EXIT.

  Under DELAY, I start listing. Under REDIRECT, I start listing. Under EXIT, I start listing. The pen moves and the options multiply and each one has sub-options and each sub-option has contingencies and the page fills up the way it always fills up when I sit down with a legal pad and let the machine run.

  I'm still writing when my phone buzzes. Not the burner. The office line, forwarded.

  Text from Terrence: Councilwoman - scheduling request from Sam Small, associate program coordinator, Tacony Community Center. Re: youth mentorship program outreach. Requesting Monday 4 PM. Please advise.

  I stare at the message. Sam Small. Requesting a meeting. Through official channels. With my receptionist. Like she's making an appointment at the dentist.

  The audacity of this girl.

  I pick up the legal pad. I flip to the OPTIONS page. Under REDIRECT, about halfway down, I've already written: Bloodhound → bigger target? Red Calf? Rogue Wave?

  I look at that line for a long time. Then I look at Terrence's text.

  Then I text back: Confirm the appointment.

  Tell a bitch, "Hoorah"

  Step up in this bitch, I look too fly

  Copped the Dior shit on Ventura

  Took a midnight swim in my jeweler

  Hatin' bitches clog my medulla

  I showed the bitch my pen, then I schooled her

  Shout out ese them and my chulas

  Doechii the Don, Doechii the dean

  Doechii supreme, the swamp ruler

  Freaky little, sneaky little, creepy little whack bitch

  Creepin' on me, speakin' on me, sleepin' on me, mattress

  Now I got some bands to burn and bars to bend 'em backwards

  It's time to wake 'em up, 'cause they been sleepin' on the tracklist

  Body so attractive, y'all be giving catfish

  Log 'em off the web, and every gangster's giving actress

  Gangster's giving actress and all these fake activists

  Leave me baffled, bewildered, relax a bit

  Let me relax a bit, I think I need to cool it off (boom!)

  I put some pep up in my step, and then I do it up (boom!)

  I shine my cutlery and hit my jeweler up (boom!)

  Jeweler up, my jeweler up (boom, boom, boom, boom!)