For about two seconds, nobody moves.

  Patriot is sixty feet away. Mr. Nothing's hand is on my back, fingers pressed through the torn seam of my sweater into my skin. My powers are dark. The platform stretches between us - narrow, fluorescent-lit, white tile and red accents and the yellow safety strip along the edge.

  Then Mr. Nothing's hand tightens, just slightly, and he changes direction. Smooth. Unhurried. Like he was always planning to turn this way. He steers me back toward the south corridor, away from Patriot, toward the Market-Frankford transfer.

  "Change of plans," he murmurs. "Let's take the long way."

  But Patriot has seen us. I watched his eyes track from my face to the hand on my back and something in his posture shifted - not dramatic, not obvious, just a soldier's weight moving from at-rest to ready. He uncrosses his arms. Takes a step forward.

  Mr. Nothing sees it too. I feel his calculation happening through the pressure of his hand - the micro-adjustments in grip, the slight change in his stride. He's running the same math I am. Sixty feet. Narrow platform. Argus Corps insignia. Government-sanctioned super. Witnesses.

  "Keep walking," he says to me. Low. Calm. "Eyes forward."

  I keep walking. My legs are doing what they're told while my brain screams from a locked room somewhere inside my skull. We're moving south, away from the stairs up to Broad Street, and Patriot is behind us now. I can't feel his heartbeat because Nothing's hand is still on my skin and everything is dark. And probably because he didn't cut himself shaving.

  We make it maybe twenty steps before I hear the footsteps. Not running. Walking. Deliberate. Military cadence. The kind of walk that says I am coming to you and I am not in a hurry because I don't need to be.

  "Excuse me." Patriot's voice carries down the platform. Professional. Neutral. The voice of a man in a vest with a badge asking a question he already knows the answer to.

  Mr. Nothing stops. His hand doesn't leave my back but the grip loosens - barely, just enough that I feel the blood sense flicker at the edges. Like a radio between stations. Static, then a heartbeat, then static again.

  "Can I help you, officer?" Nothing says, turning halfway. Easy smile. Regular guy. Track jacket and clean sneakers. "We're just heading to the transfer."

  Patriot closes the distance. Forty feet. Thirty. Twenty. He stops about ten feet away, which is a deliberate choice - close enough to read faces, far enough to react if something goes wrong. His eyes move from Nothing to me. Linger. Then, to Nothing's hip, where a gun is hidden under his track jacket. He looks like he can see right through the fabric.

  "Miss," he says. "Are you alright? Do you know this man?"

  This is it. This is the hinge. Mr. Nothing's hand is on my back and the screwdriver is in his jacket pocket and the gun is on his hip and Mrs. Quiet is somewhere behind us - maybe she got out with us, maybe she didn't - and two other guys are probably in the train and if I say the wrong thing, any of a dozen plans I can't see activate and people get hurt.

  "I'm fine," I say. "We're fine. Just catching a transfer."

  Patriot looks at me. Not the way he looked at me at homecoming - with contempt, a sort of sadistic glee that only a jackbooted thug like him gets to experience. He looks at me the way someone looks at a person they think is lying. Patient. Waiting for the truth to surface through the performance.

  "Alright," he says. He nods and steps aside. "Have a good day."

  We turn. Mr. Nothing's hand presses into my back again - gentle, guiding, the parental steering - and we start walking south. I don't hear Patriot's footsteps. We walk, squeezing between people, trying to make good time.

  Then a hand lands on Mr. Nothing's shoulder from behind, right between our ears.

  The grip is - I feel it through the contact, through the thin channel of blood sense that flickers when Nothing's concentration shifts. The hand on his shoulder is squeezing with a force that has no business coming from a human being. I hear something pop in Nothing's jacket - a seam, maybe, or something underneath - and Nothing goes very, very still.

  "Hayes."

  The name of changes everything - the posture, the grip, the temperature of the air between the three of us. I feel Nothing's hand lift off my back as he shifts his weight, instinctively, to face the threat. My powers flood back all at once - blood sense screaming, teeth aching, the ambient heartbeats of the platform crashing back into my awareness like someone turned the volume up to ten.

  Mr. Nothing turns inward, clockwise, towards me, reaching up to grab Patriot's hand. There's no seam that they can make skin contact with in the shoulder of his track jacket. But if Mr. Nothing grabs Patriot's exposed fingers...

  I twist away, bumping against Mr. Nothing as he adjusts his stance. The three of us in a tight triangle. A Mexican standoff. I shove my hand back into my pocket, and then bring it back out, palms out, without moving. I'm not going anywhere. You don't need to use any hostages.

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  "You probably don't think of me very much." Patriot's voice is steady. Conversational. Almost friendly, in the way that a dog's wagging tail doesn't always mean what you think it means. "Most people don't. I know what I am. I know what I look like."

  Mr. Nothing is facing him now. The easy smile is still on his face but it's frozen - a mask that hasn't caught up with the situation. Patriot's hand is still on his shoulder and I can see, through the blood sense, exactly how much force is being applied. The blood vessels in Nothing's shoulder are compressed nearly flat. Nothing's fingers are tense around Patriot's palm. "Is there a problem, officer?" He asks, playing dumb.

  Nothing has figured this out. I can tell because his heartbeat - forty-eight BPM for the entire train ride, clinical and controlled - spikes to seventy in about one second.

  There's nothing for his power to turn off. Patriot's power is "peak human condition". What's there to negate?

  "I know the name and face of the Kingdom operatives that got captured after the Philadelphia Zoo raid," Patriot continues. "I'm not a quick study. I'm not a mathematician. But my memory is pretty good."

  Nothing says nothing. His free hand - the one not grabbing Patriot's meaty fist on his shoulder - twitches toward his hip. Toward the gun.

  Patriot's other hand is there first. Not fast - inevitable. Like it was already in position before Nothing decided to reach. His fingers close around Nothing's wrist, and I hear the grinding sound of bone against bone under controlled pressure. Not breaking. Not yet. Just demonstrating what breaking would feel like.

  "Don't," Patriot says. Quiet. Almost gentle. "You're not going to like it."

  Nothing's hand moves away from the gun.

  "Whatever shit you think you're trying to pull with Bloodhound," Patriot says, "I need you to know that you're surrounded. Devil and Jett are being rerouted here as we speak. Miasma is intercepting the train you just got off. I don't know if this is some sort of hostage situation or what, but there's no future where you get out of here with your strategic goals and your tactical goals intact. There is a triangle, and the third corner is your freedom. Pick one."

  He takes a breath. The shoulder grip doesn't loosen.

  "Normally, I'd arrest you here. But I imagine you wouldn't be this vulnerable if there wasn't a backup. Someone tailing your six that can get rid of me. Or a dead man's switch that will kill someone if you don't phone home. So know that you're being given mercy, not a get-out-of-jail-free card. This is your one mulligan."

  Patriot releases the shoulder. Steps back. Positions himself between Nothing and me with the casual ease of a man who's been putting his body between threats and civilians his entire career.

  "Leave the girl with me and we won't have a problem. Or, whatever you're planning, I'll break your wrists faster than you can blink and leave you a heap on the ground for the PPD to deal with." His voice drops. "I'm not averse to a little police brutality. And who'd blame me? Arrogant gangster abducting a nebbish little Jew girl."

  G-d. Even when he's rescuing me he can't help but be a huge fucking prick.

  The platform is quiet. A saxophone player at the far end has stopped mid-note, watching. Two commuters have moved away, sensing the energy. The fluorescent lights buzz.

  Mr. Nothing looks at Patriot for a long moment. I watch his heartbeat - seventy-one BPM, no, seventy-two, no, seventy-three, each second the highest I've ever felt from him. He's running the math. Argus Corps inbound. No extraction team on the platform. Wrists vulnerable. Gun neutralized. The triangle: strategic goals, tactical goals, freedom. Pick one.

  "Sure," he says. The easy smile comes back, but it's different now. Thinner. A professional acknowledging a lost hand. "No problem. Just a conversation between old friends."

  He picked freedom.

  He straightens his jacket - doesn't check the pocket - and nods at me. "Think about what I said, Sam. About the ecosystem." Then he turns. "At ease, old soldier. We'll be in touch."

  He takes two steps forward, away from us, letting me get away.

  "Is that a threat?" Patriot growls, like a hungry German shepherd.

  "Yes, it is." Mr. Nothing throws over his shoulder like a pebble. Patriot flinches slightly, like he just got hit in the head. A subway train screams down the track, kicking up napkins and discarded plastic wrappers, and before Patriot can shout STOP or GET BACK HERE, Mr. Nothing rounds a corner and vanishes down the transfer.

  I'm standing on the platform next to Patriot, shaking. Nobody around here is bleeding enough for me to pay attention to except someone on her period up the stairwell.

  "What happened to the boorish idiot I made look like a fucking idiot in a warehouse?" is what I want to say. What I actually say is: "Thank you. If you talk about me like that ever again I'm gonna--"

  He twists his head towards me hard enough to crack his neck. "Yeah?"

  I flare my nostrils on the inhale. He doesn't acknowledge it. He turns back away and stares down the corridor where Nothing disappeared.

  "You have somewhere to be?" he asks.

  "Yeah," I say. "I have a meeting."

  "Yeah, no shit, why do you think Miasma sent us?" He grumbles, and my heart gets cold, fingertips filling with anxiety. I look at him. He looks at me.

  "Come on," he says. "I'm escorting you to your stupid fucking appointment."

  We walk. Up the stairs, through the turnstiles, out into the late afternoon light. City Hall is right there - the big, absurd, beautiful building with the William Penn statue on top, catching the March sun. Patriot walks half a step behind me, not beside me. Escort formation. Protecting my six the way his training taught him.

  We don't talk. There's nothing to say. He doesn't ask why I'm meeting with Maya Richardson and I don't offer to explain. He doesn't mention homecoming and I don't mention his nose-breaking fist. We just walk.

  At the entrance to the building, I stop. Turn to face him. He's already scanning the perimeter - left to right, cataloging, the soldier thing. Always the soldier thing.

  "Patriot," I say.

  He looks at me.

  I want to say something meaningful and cool, but the clock is ticking and Maya is upstairs and I don't have time for a moment. My pocket feels heavy. "You didn't have to help me."

  "I don't have to do anything but pay taxes and die," he says. And then he takes up position by the door, arms crossed, Argus Corps vest catching the light. Guarding the entrance. Not for me specifically. For the principle of the thing.

  "If I ever hear you talk about anyone like that, ever again," I whisper, feeling my Mom's voice boiling out from my throat, "I'll castrate you. I don't care if they're a supervillain or if you're saving someone's life. Cocksucker."

  "Blow me," he coughs, and the conversation is over.

  I walk inside. Sign in at the desk. Take the elevator. Third floor. The hallway is quiet - government-building quiet, carpet and fluorescent lights and closed doors with nameplates. I find the right one.

  COUNCILWOMAN MAYA RICHARDSON

  I knock.