BEGIN ARC 17: RULES OF ENGAGEMENT

  I find out Maya Richardson resigned from City Council while eating cereal.

  Store-brand Honey Nut Cheerios, because Mom says the real ones are four-fifty and "it's the same oats, Sam." It is not the same oats. These taste like someone swept the floor of a granola factory and added corn syrup. But that's what I'm eating at 9:47 on a Saturday morning in April when Tasha sends the link to the group chat with no commentary except a single period.

  Just: .

  Anthony Robinson, Philadelphia Inquirer. I know the byline. Maya's announcing plans to seek NSRA re-certification as Stormrise, launching national advocacy for repeal of the Superhuman Geometeorological Engineering Regulation Act of 2012, citing the Federation of Saharan States as a model. There's a photo of her outside City Hall looking composed and forward-thinking and exactly like someone who makes hard choices for principled reasons.

  The cover story is genuine. That's the part that - I don't know. She really does believe weather-controlling superhumans should be allowed to practice freely. She's not wrong about the policy. She's also a gangster who probably used a localized hurricane as cover for a prison break and hit me with some kind of crazy telekinesis attack three days ago hard enough that my back still clicks when I twist left. Both things.

  Robinson lays the timeline - January protection racket exposé, February Doppelganger kidnapping, February Bellwether raid, March Argus Corps transition - right next to the resignation without connecting them. I think that's what journalists are good at in a way I'm not. I bet Abigail would be good at that. Or, rather, is good at that.

  Davis gives a diplomatic non-answer. Silverstein declines to comment.

  Richardson is expected to relocate from her current residence in the coming weeks, though her office did not confirm a destination.

  I put the spoon down. Milk drips on the table.

  She's gone. Either door one or door four - vanish, or cooperate. From here, from the outside, I can't tell. It's not like they'd put in the news in size 30 font "Maya Richardson Enters Witness Protection".

  I should feel something bigger than this. My chest feels - not empty, more like the space after you've been clenching your jaw for hours and you finally stop and everything aches from the release. I won. I think I won. The article says I won. My back clicks when I twist left and Maya Richardson is going to be on a policy panel somewhere in six months and I'm sitting in my kitchen eating bad cereal and I won.

  Okay.

  Tasha calls twenty minutes later, which is restraint for her.

  "You saw," she says.

  "I saw."

  "Thoughts?"

  "I think it was really easy," I say, and I mean it, which is the part that's bothering me. The screwdriver to my own carotid, the telekinesis, Maya's eyes vibrating - the first time I'd ever seen her genuinely rattled - and then three days later she just... leaves. Writes a resignation letter. Walks out. Becomes a weather policy advocate.

  "Too easy," I say. "Things don't just work when I do them, Tash. That's not how my life goes."

  "Maybe this time it did."

  I want to argue but I don't have anything that isn't just anxiety pretending to be pattern recognition. Dr. Desai would call this catastrophizing. "Maybe," I say.

  "Come to the center. Lily's already here. Amelia's on her way with fabric samples because apparently we're getting summer-weight upgrades whether we want them or not."

  "It's April."

  "Amelia plans ahead. You know this." Pause. "Maggie's bringing donuts. If you don't come I'm eating yours."

  "What kind?"

  "Boston cream."

  I think about it for a second. "Fine."

  The community center on a Saturday morning in early April looks like what it is - a building that used to be something else trying to be something better. The old Music Hall bones show through, the high ceilings and the stage they converted into a group space and the acoustics that carry whispers weird. But there are bulletin boards now, GED prep flyers and meeting schedules and a de facto unregistered food pantry type thing going on in the kitchenette for all the kids who need to be here way after hours. I am not sure this is legal, but...

  Lily's in the main room on her skates, doing slow loops while she reads her phone. Her hair is a new color - seafoam green, which against the white costume pieces makes her look like a mint chocolate chip ice cream cone.

  "Bee!" She rolls toward me with her arms out and I catch the hug. Lily gives hugs like she means them, full commitment, both arms, and I absorb it the way I absorb most impacts, which is completely.

  "You look like mint chocolate chip ice cream," I say.

  "I was going for mermaid."

  "You achieved frozen dessert."

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  She punches my shoulder, which doesn't hurt, and then her face shifts - big eyes, bottom lip tucked in. "I read the article. Are you okay?"

  "I'm something," I say. "I think I'm fine. I'm something."

  "Something is okay," she says, and squeezes my arm.

  Amelia arrives with two rolling suitcases and a tape measure already in her hand. She's measuring my shoulders before I've finished saying good morning. She looks around, confirming that there are no children in earshot while we all start moving in one blob to the office, and is also visually assessing me at the same time.

  "Summer weight," she says. "The... new suit. You're probably going to want to shed some layers or the heat and humidity will cook you alive. Do you need a back brace after that telekinesis thing?"

  Yes. "It's fine. Isn't your fabric designed to wick moisture?"

  "It is, but that's like 90% for blood. I need to adjust some panels for sweat. Mainly your armpits," she answers, clearly not believing me.

  "Gross."

  Maggie shows up with donuts once Lily, Amelia and I are settled in the office - Boston cream plus a box of assorted because Maggie over-provides for everything. Brown hair in a braid, Temple hoodie, jeans. She sets the box down, takes one, and says, "So we won?"

  "Apparently."

  "Why do you sound like that?"

  "Like what?"

  "Like someone told you the test was canceled and you already studied."

  That's - yeah. I'd braced so hard for the aftermath of the Maya meeting that the absence of aftermath feels like a phantom limb. I was ready for war and got a newspaper article about atmospheric modification policy. "I think I need a minute to catch up," I say. "Like when you sprint and then stop and your legs keep wanting to run."

  Maggie nods. "Take your minute. Eat a donut. We're not going anywhere."

  Tasha is there also. She waves quietly at Maggie.

  So I eat a donut. I sit in the community center I helped build with my team around me and I try to feel the thing I'm supposed to feel, which I think is relief but might just be the sugar hitting. Tasha's checking drone feeds on her laptop with the scanner going low in one ear. Lily's showing Amelia something on her phone, probably costume reference, and Amelia's nodding while simultaneously pinning fabric samples to a board she brought. Maggie's eating her second donut and watching me sideways, waiting to see if I need something I won't ask for.

  This is my team. These are my people. We took down a city councilwoman who was running a criminal empire and nobody got killed and the community center is open and I have six mentorship kids and therapy on Tuesdays and my parents know about Megalodon and I negotiated patrol terms and I have a weekly schedule with white space in it.

  It worked. The thing I built actually worked.

  My phone buzzes. 773 area code. Not a number I recognize. "Anyone recognize 773?" I ask the room.

  "Chicago," Tasha and Lily answer simultaneously, and then glance at each other.

  My thumb hovers. Chicago. I know exactly one person in Chicago, and I don't have her number saved because her last number was a 215. And I deleted that number anyway. Not anger. Some kind of surgery. Cutting out the part that kept checking to see if she'd texted.

  I step into the hallway and close the door behind me. Press accept.

  "Hey," I say, and my voice comes out normal, which is a small miracle.

  "Sam." Her voice is exactly the same. Warm and a little low and careful around the edges, like she's picking her way through a room full of things she might knock over. "Hi. It's - hi."

  "Hi."

  Silence. Three seconds, four. I can hear something in the background - wind, maybe, or traffic. She's outside.

  "I read the article," she says. "About Richardson."

  "Yeah."

  "I just wanted to - I wanted to make sure you're okay. That's all. I know we haven't..." She trails off. Restarts. "Are you eating enough?"

  I almost laugh. Almost. Because of course that's where she goes. Two years of silence and she leads with are you eating enough, because that's who she is, that's who she's always been, the person who checks if you've eaten before she asks how you feel. "Yeah," I say. "I'm eating. Mom's been - you know how Mom is. There's always food."

  "Good. That's good." Another pause. "Are you sleeping?"

  "Mostly. Better than before. I have - I'm on a schedule now. It helps."

  "A schedule?"

  "Weekly routine. School, mentorship, EMT shifts, patrol, rest. With, like, actual blank space built in. My therapist and I worked it out."

  "You're seeing a therapist?"

  "Yeah. Voluntarily, even. I know, right?"

  She laughs, and it's small and a little wet and I feel it in my sternum like a tuning fork. I haven't heard her laugh in - a long time. "That's really good, Sam. I'm glad."

  I lean against the hallway wall. The paint is cool through my shirt. "How are you? How's Chicago?"

  "It's - good. Different. I'm doing work with CPYI, community service stuff, infrastructure. It's structured."

  "Structured" is a word that's doing a lot of heavy lifting. I can hear it. "And school?"

  "School's fine. My cousin Nadia is - she's good. She's a good roommate."

  I want to push. I want to ask why did you leave even though I know why she left, I've always known why she left, she told me why she left in her bedroom two years ago while I sat on her floor and tried not to cry. She left because the violence was too much. She left because she couldn't watch me keep getting hurt. She left because our paths were fundamentally incompatible, her word, and she was right.

  But I also want to ask why now, why today, why call me the morning the article drops after two years of nothing and I think I know the answer to that too. She's been watching. She saw Rush Order beating me into fish paste. She saw the Torresdale video. She saw the Bellwether raid coverage. She's been tracking every piece of Philadelphia news from eight hundred miles away and building up the pressure to call until the Maya resignation broke the seal.

  "I'm glad you called," I say, and I mean it more than I expected to.

  "I almost didn't. I've been - it's complicated. Family stuff."

  Family stuff. Her dad, probably. "You don't have to explain," I say.

  "I know. I just - I didn't want you to think I wasn't paying attention. To what you've been doing. Because I have been."

  My throat does something. Not a lump, more like a tightening. A muscle that didn't know it was clenched letting go half a millimeter. "I know," I say. "I mean - I didn't know. But I'm not surprised."

  "That's probably the nicest thing you could've said."

  "Don't get used to it, I'm usually meaner."

  She laughs again. Stronger this time. "You're always meaner. That's what I -" She stops. Reorganizes. "I should let you go. I just wanted to hear your voice. Make sure you're okay."

  "I'm okay," I say. "I'm actually - I think I might be okay."

  "Good. That's - yeah. Good."

  "Can I - is it okay if I save this number?"

  Pause. "Yeah. Yes. Please."

  "Okay."

  "Okay," she says. "Bye, Sam."

  "Bye."

  I hang up. I stand in the hallway for a minute with my phone against my chest like an idiot. The paint is still cool through my shirt. I can hear Lily laughing about something on the other side of the door and Tasha's scanner chattering low and Amelia's sewing machine - she brought a portable one, of course she did.

  I save the number. I'm feeling melodramatic so I put 'Her' as the name my phone insists I save. Then I put my phone in my pocket and go back in, because my team is in there and there's work to do and I've had my minute and the donuts are getting cold.

  "Who was that?" Maggie asks, because Maggie watches sideways.

  "Old friend," I say. "Checking in."

  Amelia and Lily both look at each other, a little worried.

  Maggie looks at me for a second longer than necessary. Then she nods and slides the donut box toward me. "There's one Boston cream left."

  "Thanks."

  I eat the donut. It's good. The sugar helps.

  Back to business.