The door opens before I finish knocking, which means she was waiting for me.

  Terrence - mid-twenties, nice tie, the kind of face that says "I chose public service because I genuinely believe in it" - smiles and steps back. "Sam Small? Councilwoman Richardson is expecting you. Can I get you anything? Water, coffee?"

  "Water would be great," I say, because my mouth is a desert and I need something to do with my hands that isn't touching the thing in my pocket. And because I don't like coffee.

  He leads me through a short hallway - framed photos on the wall, Maya with various Important People, a couple of community event shots, one of her at a ribbon-cutting that might be the Crescent but might just be some other building with too much glass. Her office door is open.

  "Sam, welcome." Maya Richardson stands up from behind her desk and extends her hand. She's in a navy blazer over a cream blouse, silver earrings, professional but not intimidating. Her handshake is firm and warm and exactly the right duration. Everything about her is exactly the right duration.

  "Thank you for making the time, Councilwoman," I say, and I'm proud of how steady my voice is considering that ninety minutes ago a man described putting a screwdriver through my eye on a subway.

  "Of course. The Tacony Community Center has been doing impressive work. I was glad to hear from your office." She gestures to a chair across from her desk. Not a power chair - it's the same height as hers, which is a deliberate choice that's supposed to make me feel like an equal, or, as always, I am overthinking a non-gesture. I sit down, folder on my lap, backpack on the floor by my feet.

  Her office is what you'd expect. Desk, bookshelves, the standard-issue municipal carpet. A couple of plants that look real but might not be. Her computer is locked - I can see the login screen from the reflection in the window behind her. There's a framed photo on her desk that I can't quite see from this angle. Family, maybe, or maybe a pet.

  I notice the window. Third floor, overlooking the courtyard. It's the kind of window that doesn't open - sealed units, climate-controlled building. No exit there. One door in, one door out, and Terrence is between me and it. My brain catalogs all of this automatically and I tell it to stop because I'm not here to fight.

  "So," Maya says, settling into her chair. "Youth mentorship program outreach. Tell me about what you're building."

  And this is the thing - this is the part that makes my stomach hurt in a way that has nothing to do with the screwdriver - the pitch is real, the community center is real, and the kids are real. The program works and it matters and I actually do need municipal support to expand it, and Maya Richardson is actually the right person to talk to about it because she chairs the committee that controls the relevant funding streams. And because it's literally in her neighborhood. Through some goofball maneuvering, she is the person that runs my chunk of Northeast Philadelphia.

  So I pitch. I open the folder and I pitch.

  "We're running about six to eight kids per session now," I say. "The core model is one-on-one mentorship paired with structured activities - homework help, skills workshops, some recreational stuff. We've been tracking outcomes for the past three months. Attendance is up, disciplinary referrals for our kids are down across three schools, and we've got parent feedback surveys that are running about ninety percent positive."

  Maya is listening. Not performing listening - actually listening, the way a good politician does when they're hearing something that might be useful. She's making notes on a legal pad - her own legal pad, cream-colored, expensive-looking - and I expect her to be asking questions that aren't softballs.

  "What's your retention rate?" she asks.

  "About seventy-five percent week to week. We lose kids to scheduling conflicts mostly, sometimes transportation. That's actually one of the things I wanted to talk about - we've been exploring a partnership with SEPTA for discounted youth passes, but the bureaucratic--"

  "You'd need to go through the transit authority's community partnership office," she says. "I can give you a contact there. It's a slower process than it should be, but if you have the attendance data to back it up, they'll work with you."

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  She's good. She's genuinely good at this. I can feel the gravitational pull of it - the competence, the warmth, the sense that this woman actually cares about the bureaucratic machinery that connects kids to bus passes. I feel it rattling something in my brain loose. She cares about this job - she's competent at it - while also being a murderous supervillain who kills people for strategic and tactical value. And she's also giving me what is almost certainly the correct advice.

  Maya Richardson is a good councilwoman, that's not an act. The act is everything underneath.

  "We're also looking at expanding the model to other centers," I continue. "Our site coordinator has been working on a pilot evaluation report. I brought a copy if you'd like to see it."

  "I would." She takes the report from my folder and begins reading. Actually reading, not skimming. Her eyes move left to right, line by line. She pauses on the attendance figures. Flips to the parent feedback section. Makes a small note in the margin.

  I sit and watch a woman who might have ordered my death read careful formatting and Jamal's attendance numbers and the quotes from parents who said the center changed their kid's life. She's reading it the way she reads everything - with the part of her brain that processes information and the part that processes opportunity running simultaneously.

  "This is solid," she says, looking up. "The outcome metrics are better than most programs I see at this stage. Your coordinator knows what she's doing."

  "She's amazing," I say, and I mean it.

  "The challenge you're going to face with cross-district expansion is jurisdictional." Maya leans back slightly. "Each district has its own community development budget and its own priorities. What works in my district might not have the same political support in, say, Councilman Davis's territory. Though..." She pauses. Smiles. "I imagine you've already spoken to Councilman Davis, given his connection to the Delaware Valley Defenders."

  That's the first probe. Delivered casually, wrapped in a helpful observation about municipal politics. She wants to know who else I've been talking to. What other meetings I've been taking. Whether this appointment is part of a pattern she should worry about.

  "Councilman Davis has been really supportive," I say. "He helped us get the initial space. But the program has kind of outgrown what one district can support."

  "Mmm." She makes a note. I can't see what she writes. "And you're - what, seventeen? Eighteen?"

  "Sixteen. I turn seventeen in a couple of weeks."

  "Remarkable," she says, and she means it and she doesn't mean it at the same time. "When I was seventeen I was worried about prom. You're running a youth mentorship program and pitching city council members on cross-district expansion."

  "I didn't go to prom," I say.

  "Right, you went to homecoming. And junior prom for your school is in May," she says, so casually that I almost don't notice. Is that a threat? "If you're sixteen going on seventeen, you're a junior." She closes the report, sets it neatly on her desk, and folds her hands. "Sam, I want to be honest with you."

  Here it comes.

  "Programs like this - grassroots, community-driven, genuinely impactful - they're rare. And they're fragile. They depend on the energy and commitment of the people running them, and those people burn out. I've seen it happen. Enthusiastic young coordinator starts a program, does amazing work for a year or two, then life happens. College, career, family. The program loses its engine and it folds."

  She's looking at me steadily, her eye contact warm and direct. A mentor talking to a protégée.

  "I'm not saying that to discourage you. I'm saying it because if we're going to invest municipal resources in expanding this model, I need to know it has institutional legs. That it's not dependent on one person - even a very impressive person."

  "It's not dependent on me," I say, and I feel the truth of that settle into my bones in a way that surprises me. "Jennifer runs the day-to-day. Jamal Davis built the infrastructure. We've got parent volunteers, community partners, school liaisons. I started it, but it doesn't need me to keep running."

  She nods. Something moves across her face - recognition, maybe. Or reassessment. Like she's updating a model.

  "That's the right answer," she says. "And it's the answer most seventeen-year-olds can't give, because most seventeen-year-olds haven't figured out that building something sustainable matters more than being the hero of your own story."

  I feel the knife in that sentence - the word "hero" doing double duty - but I keep my face neutral. Desai breathing. In for four, hold for four.

  "I'm going to be direct with you, Councilwoman," I say.

  She raises an eyebrow. Patient. Waiting.

  "The community center work is real. I care about it more than almost anything in my life. And I really do want your help with the SEPTA partnership and the cross-district funding. That's not a pretense. I'm not here under false pretenses."

  "I didn't suggest you were."

  "But I'd be lying if I said that was the only reason I wanted this meeting."

  The air in the room changes. Not dramatically - not the way it changed on the subway when Mr. Nothing sat down next to me. The air doesn't feel thicker physically, but I still feel it squishing between us. Like the physical therapy slime they made me squeeze between my fingers after Chernobyl turned me into a pile of Acute Radiation Syndrome.

  Maya doesn't move, uncross her hands, or blink. She just waits and looks at me, like she understands that the waiting is the only thing that matters. So I wait back, just a little, and look around the room, trying to grab onto something. I'm about to speak first before she breaks the silence.

  "Okay," she says. "I'm listening."