The Broad Street Line smells like a subway station (huh...) - metal and body heat and the ghost of someone's lunch. I'm in the third car from the front, sitting in one of the window seats because I like having a wall on one side. The community center folder is on my lap. My legal pad is in my backpack. The nice sweater is doing its job.

  It's 3:22 PM on a Monday and the train is maybe half full. After-school crowd mixed with early commuters - a couple of Temple kids with backpacks, an older woman with grocery bags, a guy in scrubs who's sleeping sitting up, which I respect deeply. Normal people doing normal things on a normal Monday. I watch the stations tick by. Erie. North Philadelphia. Susquehanna-Dauphin.

  I go over the list in my head. Goals: show enough cards to introduce uncertainty. Rules: community center business is real, lead with it, mean it. You're not trying to win today. You're trying to start a clock.

  My hands aren't shaking. That's good. My heart is doing the metronome thing - fast but steady - but my hands are still. I focus on my breathing the way Desai taught me. In for four, hold for four, out for four. The train rocks. The fluorescent lights hum. Normal Monday.

  Someone sits down next to me.

  This happens all the time on SEPTA. Seats fill up. People sit where there's space. I don't look up immediately because looking up immediately is what paranoid people do and I'm working very hard at not being paranoid today. But my blood sense - the passive ambient thing that's always running in the background whether I want it or not - pings something.

  The heartbeat next to me is very slow. Unusually slow. Forty-eight, maybe fifty beats per minute. Athletic or trained or both. And the blood pressure is low-normal in a way that suggests someone who's extremely calm, or someone who's made themselves extremely calm through practice.

  Then, I notice that the entryway into this person's vascular system - the reason I can detect them at all - is an extremely precise, deliberate looking cut on their fingertip. Like getting lanced with one of those diabetes test things. If it was any less recent, it would've closed up by now. That's odd.

  I look up.

  He's in a dark track jacket, zipped to the sternum. Jeans. Sneakers - clean ones, the kind you buy to look like you didn't buy them. No sunglasses, which is why it takes me an extra half second, because every other time I've seen this man he's been wearing them. But the face is the same. The jaw is the same. The way he holds his shoulders - loose, balanced, ready - is the same.

  Mr. Nothing.

  You never forget the first real supervillain you fight. Mudslide doesn't really count.

  My body does something I wish it wouldn't - it sends every drop of adrenaline I have straight into my bloodstream, all at once, like someone opened a fire hydrant. My heart rate spikes from seventy to one-twenty in about two seconds. My vision sharpens. My teeth itch in their sockets, and my arms tense up, ready to throw a fist. No. Not in public. I clamp down on all of it because I'm on a crowded train and the girl in the nice sweater cannot suddenly sprout shark teeth.

  He's not looking at me. He's looking at his phone. Scrolling through something with his thumb, casual, like he's checking scores. Then he locks the screen, slips it into his jacket pocket, and turns his head just enough to make eye contact.

  "Hey," he says. Like we're acquaintances who bumped into each other at Wawa.

  I don't say anything. My brain is running calculations so fast I can almost hear them. The hamster wheel is running so hard I can hear it squealing in my limbic system or whatever part of your brain handles fear. Is it the limbic system? Am I mentally spelling limbic right? Amygdala? Stop distracting yourself, Sam. Live in the fear. He's sitting on my right side, between me and the aisle. The wall is on my left. To get past him I'd have to climb over him or push through him, and the moment he touches me my regeneration goes dark and I'm just a tall, extremely well built seventeen-year-old with an adrenaline problem, and I am sure he has a gun.

  100% sure.

  "Relax," he says, still in that conversational tone. "I'm not here to start anything. Just wanted to catch up. Heard you've been busy."

  "I'm always busy," I manage, and I'm proud that my voice comes out flat instead of scared.

  "Yeah, you are." He stretches his legs out, crossing one ankle over the other. Getting comfortable. A man settling in for a ride. "Moving up in the world, too. Community center coordinator. EMT shifts. Mentorship program. That's a real résumé you're building. College applications are going to be killer."

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  He knows. He knows about the center, the EMT work, the mentorship. He's been watching me, or someone's been watching me for him. That's not surprising - I'd be more surprised if the Kingdom wasn't keeping tabs - but hearing it listed back at me in this man's calm, low voice makes the hair on my arms stand up.

  "You have a penchant for following minors?" I ask. "Fond of them?"

  "Following is a strong word. You're not exactly subtle, Bloodhound." He says the name quietly, just for me, the way you'd say someone's real name at a party where they're using a fake one. "You do a lot of things out in the open. It's one of the things about you. You just... do stuff. Walk into buildings. Make phone calls. Schedule meetings." He pauses. Lets that last word sit. "Busy girl. And for your records, I fucking hate children."

  He knows about the appointment. Of course he knows. Maya told him, or someone told someone who told him, and now he's here on the Broad Street Line at 3:22 PM on a Monday because I made a phone call to Terrence five days ago.

  "I have a meeting about the community center," I say, keeping my voice neutral. "With a city council member. About funding. It's boring stuff."

  "I bet it is," he says agreeably. "City council's boring as hell. Trust me, I've sat through those meetings. The budget stuff alone could put a man in a coma." He uncrosses his ankles. Recrosses them the other way. "But you know, here's the thing. I don't think you're going to that meeting to talk about funding. And you don't think you're going to that meeting to talk about funding. And the person you're meeting doesn't think you're coming to talk about funding. So why don't we skip the part where we both pretend and have an honest conversation?"

  "I'm having a pretty honest conversation right now," I say. "I have a meeting. I'm on a train. And a man I didn't invite sat down next to me."

  He smiles. It's a good smile - warm, almost friendly. The kind of smile that works on people. "Fair enough. I'll rephrase. You've been poking around in places that make people uncomfortable. People who prefer being comfortable. And those people would really appreciate it if you found a different hobby."

  "I have hobbies. I do EMT work. I mentor kids. I go to school."

  "You also run around in a dog costume beating up drug dealers and digging into things that don't concern you." The smile doesn't change but the voice drops half a register. "And that's been... tolerated. Up to a point. You want to play street level? Fine. Take down dealers, bust up corners, help old ladies cross the street. Nobody cares. You're good at it, even. You've got a real talent for the small stuff."

  He shifts slightly in his seat, angling his body toward me just enough that I become acutely aware of how close he is. Not touching - not yet - but close enough that if he reached out, he'd have my wrist before I could pull away.

  "But you're not doing the small stuff anymore, are you?" His voice is almost gentle. "You're scheduling meetings with city council members. You're pulling threads. You're talking to people who talk to other people who talk to people I work with. And that's a different game. That's not Bloodhound chasing goons through alleys. That's a kid who thinks she can play in the big leagues because she won a few hands of penny poker."

  "I don't know what you're talking about," I say, and we both know it's a lie, and he's polite enough to not call it one.

  "Sure you don't." He looks at the subway map above the doors. We're passing Spring Garden. Three more stops to City Hall. "Here's the thing, Sam. Can I call you Sam?"

  "You can call me whatever you want. You're the one who sat down next to me."

  "Sam." He tests the name like he's tasting it. "The people I work with have invested a lot in this city. Time, money, resources. Relationships. It's a whole ecosystem. And ecosystems don't like it when new species show up and start eating everything. You know about that, right? Ecology? Invasive species?"

  "I'm taking AP Bio next year, so."

  He actually laughs at that. Short, surprised, genuine. "You're funny. I'll give you that. You've always been funny." He sobers. "But funny doesn't change the math. You've been climbing the food chain, and the thing about food chains is they go both ways. The higher you climb, the bigger the things that notice you. And some of those things have been doing this since before you were born. There's fish in this pond you've never even heard of."

  The train is slowing. Cecil B. Moore. Doors open. People get on, people get off. A normal exchange. Nobody looks at us twice - just a man and a girl sitting together, could be father and daughter, could be uncle and niece. Nothing to see.

  I could get off here. Stand up, push past him, join the stream of people exiting. Make a scene if I have to. Scream.

  But his hand is resting on his thigh, relaxed, fingers loose, and I can see the outline of something in his right jacket pocket. Not a gun shape. Something thinner. A cylinder. And I remember how it felt the first time we fought and he grabbed me. Without what I now know was the regeneration keeping a concussion at bay, I was just - gone. Everything about me that makes me dangerous. Regeneration, blood sense, tooth growth, all of it. For as long as he's touching me, I'm baseline human. A strong human. As strong as a fully grown professional killer?

  If I try to push past him and he grabs my arm, I'm a seventeen-year-old girl in a sweater being restrained by a grown man on a SEPTA train. No powers. No backup. Nothing.

  The doors close. The train moves.

  "Relax," he says again. "Like I said. I'm not here to start anything. I just want to have a conversation. And at the end of the conversation, you can make whatever choice you want. That's fair, right?"

  It's not fair. Nothing about this is fair. But the train is moving and he's between me and the aisle and the thing in his pocket is probably a screwdriver and I'm running out of stations.

  "Fine," I say. "Talk."

  He nods. Settles back in his seat. The train rocks. The fluorescent lights flicker once and stabilize. He pulls a screwdriver out from inside his jacket, and gently flips it around, grabbing it by the driver. Then, flips it again, by the handle. Driver. Handle. Driver. Handle.

  "You can let yourself feel flattered, by the way," he says, catching it with a firm whumpfh. "You're worth causing this much trouble over."