"I've been doing a lot of thinking this year," I say. "About Philadelphia. About how things work. The institutional stuff - who funds what, who controls what, how decisions get made at the municipal level. I didn't used to care about any of that. I just wanted to help people in my neighborhood. But the more I tried to help, the more I kept running into... walls."

  Maya nods. Encouraging. The good mentor, listening to the bright young woman articulate her political awakening.

  "Walls like what?" she asks.

  "Like community organizations getting harassed by people who should be protecting them. Like - I don't know if you followed this, but there was a series of incidents at the Tacony Community Center. Vandalism. Threats. A bomb threat at my school that happened to coincide with the center's opening week."

  "I'm aware," Maya says. Neutral. "The Songbird incidents. Domestic extremism is a growing concern across the region."

  "Right. The Songbirds." I let the name sit for a moment. "And then there was the Bellwether raid. And some financial reporting in the Inquirer about campaign donation patterns. And a coalition of parents in the suburbs who started asking questions about where certain funding streams originate."

  I'm not accusing. I'm listing. Just a teenager who's been paying attention, laying out things she's noticed the way you'd lay out cards on a table. Face up. Nothing hidden.

  Maya's face doesn't change. Her hands stay folded. Her breathing is steady. She's not bleeding, so I can't read her. Not yet. And I don't know if I want her to bleed, either - it'd psych me out.

  "You've been busy," she says. The same words Mr. Nothing used on the train.

  "I have." I hold her gaze. "And so have a lot of other people. People who don't know each other, necessarily. Who aren't coordinating, exactly. But who keep finding the same threads when they pull at different things. A reporter finds a financial pattern. A federal agent finds an organizational connection. A political coalition finds a voting irregularity. A retired judge starts asking why certain cases got dismissed."

  I don't name names. I don't name Ford or Tasha or Rachel or the Inquirer or Silverstein. I just describe shapes in the dark and let Maya fill in the faces.

  "It's interesting," I say. "Because none of these people are working together. They don't have a conspiracy. They don't have a master plan. They're just... doing their jobs. Following their own threads. And the threads keep converging."

  "Converging on what?" Maya asks. Her voice hasn't changed. Her heart rate hasn't changed. She's a professional.

  "On a shape," I say. "I don't know what to call it. An organization, maybe. A network. Something that operates at the intersection of politics and crime and has been operating there for a long time. Something that has a lot of institutional cover and a lot of resources and has been very, very careful about not leaving fingerprints."

  Silence. Maya looks at me the way you'd look at a student who just turned in an essay that's either brilliant or insane and you haven't decided which.

  "Sam," she says. "That's a very dramatic way to describe what sounds like a conspiracy theory."

  "Maybe," I say. "But conspiracy theories don't usually come with federal raids and independent autopsies and financial records."

  "Federal raids on a logistics company. Financial irregularities in campaign donations that every politician in this city deals with. An independent autopsy on a man who died of natural causes." She ticks them off on her fingers. Calm. Organized. Each one reframed and diminished. "I understand that when you're sixteen, these things can look like a pattern. But patterns aren't evidence. And evidence is what matters."

  "You're right," I say. "Evidence is what matters. And I don't have evidence. Not the kind that holds up in court. If anyone here is playing ball, they're playing it with double rubber gloves. They'll never leave a single fingerprint. They're too good. There's never going to be a smoking gun."

  Something shifts in her eyes. Just a flicker - there and gone. I don't think she expected me to say that. "Sounds unfalsifiable to me."

  "What I have," I continue, ignoring her quip, "is a lot of people in a lot of different positions who are all pulling threads. And they're going to keep pulling. Not because I asked them to - some of them don't even know I exist. They're pulling because that's what reporters do, and federal agents do, and political coalitions do."

  "And what shape do you think you see?" She asks it the way you'd ask a child what they see in the clouds.

  "I think you know what shape I see, Councilwoman."

  Silence again. Longer this time. I can hear Terrence's keyboard through the wall. A phone rings somewhere down the hall. Normal sounds in a government building on a Monday afternoon.

  "Let me be direct with you," Maya says, and her voice shifts - not warmer, not colder, just... flatter. The mentor voice is gone. This is her real register. Professional. Precise. "You're a sixteen-year-old girl who runs a community center. You do good work. You clearly care about your neighborhood. And somewhere along the way, you've gotten it into your head that there's some grand conspiracy operating out of City Hall, and you've decided that I'm involved."

  "I didn't say that."

  "You implied it heavily, because I understand implicature." She leans forward slightly. "And I want you to think very carefully about what you're doing right now. Because accusations - even implied ones - have consequences. For you, for your program, for the people who depend on that program. You've built something real, Sam. Something that helps kids like you. You're a good girl. You do EMT work. Do you want to throw that all away for a feeling?"

  That's her counterpunch. And it's a good one because it's true - I am risking the center, and the kids, and Jennifer and Jamal and Patricia and everyone who's poured themselves into that building, and Hector and Deena and the hospitals that are relying on me. Maya's pointing at the thing I love most and saying: are you sure?

  "I'm not accusing you of anything," I say. "I'm telling you what I see. And I'm telling you that other people see it too. And I'm asking you - as someone who chairs the committee that funds community programs, as someone who represents my district - to think about what happens when enough people see the same shape."

  You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

  "What happens." she asks. Flat.

  "There are three doors I'm looking at from here," I say. And now I'm not pretending anymore. I close my folder with a loud, echoing thwump. Pitch over, Maya. This is me and you. "Here's door number one. All of this just goes away. I leave this office and whoever's shepherding this horrendous monster steps down, or vanishes one day, and just fucking leaves us alone. That's door number one. I don't care what they do as long as they stop torturing our city."

  Maya's lip turns upward at the corner. "I'll bite. What's door number two?"

  "Door number two is the hard door. We keep this farce going. The young superheroes in Mayfair keep fighting, and they get fought, and it becomes a long, painful stalemate where nobody's happy, and then, this is the funny part - the feds close in anyway. All the bad guys did was buy some time. Maybe it buys enough time to retire. Maybe it doesn't."

  Maya's lip turns back flat. "And door number three?"

  "That's the stupid door," I say, drawing a chuckle out of Maya. Somehow, that makes me feel good. "I go home and a dinosaur stomps me to death again. Or someone sends some assassin to shut my heart off and I look like I died in my sleep. And that's a very stupid decision."

  "I'm curious as to why you think that's the stupid decision from this alleged conspiracy. Mind filling me in?" Maya asks, raising an eyebrow.

  "Gladly," I answer, bowing my head a little. "Because it activates everyone, instantly."

  The air is still and quiet. The air conditioner has shut off, and the vents, I've noticed, are closed.

  "You're very articulate for a sixteen-year-old," she says.

  "I've been told."

  "And very confident in your analysis."

  "I appreciate the compliment," I snark back, knowing it's not a compliment.

  Maya doesn't hit me with the 'that's not a compliment'. Instead, she just giggles. It almost sounds drunken. Then, she puts a hand through her stormcloud hair and gets up and adjusts her clothes. She walks out to the edge of her office, towards the window, and just stares, her back is to me, which is either a power move or a genuine need to not look at me while she thinks. I watch her reflection in the glass. Her face is doing something I can't read.

  "There are organizations in this world," she says, still facing the window, "that make whatever you think is happening in Philadelphia look like a school play. Organizations that operate at the national level, the international level. Organizations that have been responsible for things that would keep you up at night for the rest of your life."

  Here it comes. The redirect. Point the dog at a bigger steak.

  "If you really care about making a difference - if this isn't just teenage crusading - then there are better targets for your energy than chasing shadows in City Hall. There are real threats out there, Sam. Threats that kill people. Threats that have killed people, right here in Philadelphia. The Daedalus breakout, for example. Do you think Shrike escaped by pique and luck?" Maya asks, and my blood goes cold.

  "Are you saying you know who was behind Daedalus?" I ask.

  "I'm saying that if you're as smart as you think you are, there are people worth investigating who aren't city council members." She turns back from the window. Her face is composed again. The mentor mask is back, but it's thinner now. I can see the edges. "I could make introductions. Point you in the right direction. Give you something real to chase instead of shadows."

  Porcelain. She's talking about the man called Porcelain.

  No. That's the play. That's exactly the play. Give the dog a bigger steak and let her slip out the back door while I'm chewing.

  "I appreciate the concern," I say. "But I'm not interested in being redirected."

  Her eyes harden. Just a fraction. "Then I think we're done discussing community center funding for today."

  "Almost," I say. And I reach into my pocket. And I pull out a screwdriver.

  Here's the thing about poker that Liberty Belle taught me, a month before she bit the bullet. You don't win by having better cards. You win by being willing to bet more than the other person can afford to lose. You win by tricking them into thinking what you want to think, and believing what you want to believe.

  I'm not a superhero, not by any means. I'm a card shark.

  I pick up the screwdriver.

  "I want to tell you something about me," I say. "Something I think you've miscalculated."

  "I haven't calculated anything about you, Sam. You're a community center coordinator who came to discuss funding," she talks, almost but not quite interrupting me.

  "You're operating under the assumption," I say, ignoring her, "that I'm a rational actor. That if you apply enough pressure to certain people, they stop, because the cost of continuing outweighs the cost of the pain. And that's true for most people. Most people do the math, and the math says stop, and they stop."

  I angle the screwdriver against my neck, so that any uncontrolled jostling might send it right into my carotid artery. Maya's eyes widen. "Samantha, put that down. That's dangerous."

  "I am not most people," I ignore her. "I am not a rational actor."

  "Put that down," Maya says. Her voice is steady but it's the wrong kind of steady - the kind that's being held steady by force. I press the screwdriver to my neck hard enough that the skin dimples.

  "I don't respond well to torture. I'm extremely difficult to kill. And, this is the part I've learned recently - I have people that love me. Lots of people. And I'm willing to use that love because it's worth more to me as a weapon than it is for the warm fuzzy feeling," I continue, feeling my mouth split open. I feel like a chimpanzee. The animal violence. Not even rage - just a killing impulse. "Because something's deeply wrong with me."

  "Sam--"

  "And they can't torture me into stopping because I don't stop. That's - that's the thing about me that nobody seems to understand. Before, you couldn't stop me because I didn't value my life at all," I say, feeling more like a magician chanting a spell than a human being. "Now, you can't stop me because I know exactly what I'm worth. To the entire ecosystem of Northeast Philadelphia. And everyone my Mom has summoned for her goofball parent group. You know. Rachel Small? The girl someone tried to scare to death by sending grandpa after us?"

  I press a little harder. I feel the tip dimple my skin. Not piercing. Just pressure.

  "By the way, letting me meet my sociopath grandpa - maybe the worst strategic error," I say. "Here's what I can do that you can't. I'm willing to blade myself for cheap heat. And you have to stop me, every single time. I only have to win once. And unlike most 16 year old superheroes, I'm crazy enough to hold myself hostage."

  Maya is standing very still. I can see a vein on her forehead and another one on her neck throbbing. There's nothing she can do. She can't make a storm cloud here.

  "I don't need evidence," I say. "I don't need a smoking gun. I don't need anything that holds up in court. I just need enough people asking questions at the same time. And right now, sitting in your office, I'm the only thing standing between you and that happening. Because the moment something happens to me - anything, whether you do it or not - the questions start. And they don't stop."

  Maya looks at me for a long time. I can't read her expression. I've never been able to read her expression - she's the one person I've met whose face gives me absolutely nothing. Even Victor, even Silverstein, even Mr. Nothing on the train. They all have tells. Maya Richardson is a wall.

  "The people you're putting at risk," she says quietly. "The reporter. The federal agents. Your mother and her coalition. The people at your community center. Do they know what you're doing? Do they know you're sitting in a government office holding a screwdriver to your carotid artery and making speeches about how you can't be stopped?"

  My smile dampens for a second. Involuntarily.

  "Because from where I'm sitting," she continues, "what I see is a teenager who's been through a lot of trauma - and I mean that sincerely, Sam, I've followed your story and it breaks my heart - who has convinced herself that she's the protagonist of some grand conspiracy narrative. And she's dragging innocent people into her delusion. People who trust her. People who don't know she's sitting in offices with screwdrivers."

  "That might've worked a year ago. Before I self-actualized a little bit. But my friends, my family, and my colleagues - they're adults. They can take care of themselves." I counter.

  "Zara Khan isn't an adult. She's 13." Maya shoots back.

  That makes me grin harder. "Old enough to have a Bat Mitzvah."

  Something moves across Maya's face. I can't identify it. It's there for maybe half a second and then it's gone and the wall is back. But for half a second, something was there that looked almost like - recognition. Not of the political situation. Of something else. Something personal.

  I don't mention door #4. I need to make her feel cornered enough that it becomes her own idea.

  I press a fraction of an inch harder, and,