Wednesday.

  School is school. History class earns me a five-page essay on the Missouri Compromise that's due Friday, which is fine because I can write five pages about almost anything if I'm caffeinated enough, and English class tells me that our Crucible unit is wrapping up next week with an in-class essay on the role of institutional authority in enabling mass hysteria, which - yeah. I have thoughts about that. Mom has thoughts about that. Mom has thoughts about Arthur Miller in general that could fill a book.

  I eat lunch with Alex Garcia in the cafeteria. Turkey sandwich, apple, bag of chips, granola bar, second turkey sandwich because the first one wasn't enough. Alex watches me eat the way you watch someone load a dishwasher wrong - fascinated and slightly concerned.

  "You're going to give yourself a stomachache," he says.

  "I have never had a stomachache in my life."

  "That can't be true."

  "My stomach is basically a wood chipper. I put food in it and it stops existing." I take a bite of the apple. "What's your thing today?"

  "Trying not to fall asleep in AP Gov. Senioritis is real, Sam. It's a medical condition and I'm terminal." He tips his chair back and balances there, which the lunch monitors hate. "You?"

  "Missouri Compromise. Crucible essay. The usual."

  "Ah, the Crucible. Fun. Did you know Arthur Miller wrote it while he was getting investigated by HUAC? Like, the metaphor isn't even a metaphor. He just wrote down what was happening to him and set it in Salem."

  "I did know that, yeah," I mumble, thinking about Pop-Pop Moe's parents.

  "Of course you did. Your mom's a librarian." He lets the chair drop forward. "Hey, you hear about the pharmacy thing?"

  I keep chewing, extremely aware of the pharmacy thing. "What pharmacy thing?"

  "The break-ins. Roosevelt Boulevard. My cousin works at the CVS on Cottman - they got hit a couple weeks ago. Someone walked through the back wall, trashed a bunch of stuff, and left. Didn't take anything. Just - destroyed inventory and bounced."

  "Huh," I say, trying to sound surprised.

  "Cops don't know what to do with it because nothing was stolen, so it's technically just vandalism, but it's powered vandalism, so now everyone's got their panties in a twist. There's a Safer Streets thread already."

  "A Safer Streets thread."

  "Yeah. Someone posted security cam footage. It's grainy but you can see the guy just sort of SFX through the wall. And there's a bounty pool - people throwing in twenty bucks for whoever IDs him." Alex shakes his head. "Five hundred from the program plus whatever the pool adds up to. Some kids are taking it seriously."

  "That's messed up," I say.

  "That's what I said. The dude's clearly not stealing. But money's money and people are broke." He looks at me. Alex has always been good at looking at me - not the sideways Maggie look or the analytical Tasha look, but this direct, steady thing where he's clearly thinking about whether to say the next part. "Sam,"

  "I'm eating a turkey sandwich."

  "You're eating a turkey sandwich and you have stolen Jordan's facial expressions."

  "Maybe I'm thinking about the Missouri Compromise. I don't have a small homunculus of Jordan living in my head,"

  He scrunches his face. "You know anyone who doesn't watch as much anime as I do wouldn't know what a homunculus is. And nobody thinks about the Missouri Compromise voluntarily." He steals one of my chips. "There's a lot of people out there trying to make their neighborhood safe. That's not a good thing. You've got the Songbirds and the SSI and SARA and the Pals and... you know," he starts counting on his fingers, and then trails off.

  "Don't worry. I won't do anything Jordan wouldn't do," I reply.

  His breath audibly picks up. "Maybe the worst sentence you could've said," he says, staring at me. "Sam. I know you have like your team thing and I'm not really a teammate but--"

  "Relax. I'm leaving it to the adults in the room. You started this conversation, remember?" I point out.

  His nostrils flare. He inhales. "Fine."

  I finish my second turkey sandwich and check my phone. The Auditors group chat has forty-seven unread messages. Lily sent a photo of a pigeon wearing what appears to be a tiny hat. Amelia sent fabric swatches. Tasha sent, buried between the pigeon and the swatches: Interesting vehicle patterns on Roosevelt corridor. Two cars, same plates, three nights running. Not cops. Will brief at center.

  I stare at that for a second and then scroll past it to tell Lily that the pigeon hat is excellent.

  Mentorship session runs four to six on Wednesdays. I've got the usual four today, the three Musketeers plus D'artagnan - Zara, Liam, Alex Kirby (not Garcia), and Jasmine. The sessions are structured but flexible. First hour is power work: controlled exercises, limit-testing in safe conditions, technique development. Second hour is what Mrs. Patterson calls "life skills" and what I call "the part where we sit in a circle and talk about our feelings, which is good for us even though it sounds corny."

  Alex Kirby wants to spar. Alex Kirby always wants to spar. So we all go outside because it's a nice day outside while we work on power control and I tell him "hey, go vault over this dumpster". And then I get some safety cones and other assorted children's stuff to make a little obstacle course out of because he's about to genuinely try to vault over the dumpster, and I do not want him falling into the dumpster or injuring himself. I could probably get in trouble with that.

  Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

  Zara's glass-sensing is getting sharper. She can feel every pane in the building now without trying, which she describes as "like having a hundred extra fingers that are all touching cold things." We work on range control - dialing it back so she's not tracking every window on the block, which gives her headaches. She's thirteen and takes this more seriously than most adults I know.

  Liam holds his dragon-arms for two minutes and forty seconds, which is a new record. The scales go halfway up his biceps before the transformation stalls. He's frustrated that it won't go further but I tell him that two months ago he couldn't hold it for thirty seconds, which is true, and that progress isn't linear, which is something Dr. Desai says to me and I'm passing along because it's good advice even when it's annoying to hear.

  Jasmine's chlorokinesis is the one that worries me. Not because it's dangerous - it's beautiful, actually, watching her coax a spider plant into doubling its size in ten minutes - but because it's growing faster than her control. Last week she accidentally sprouted moss across the entire bathroom floor when she was stressed about a math test. We work on intentionality: grow this specific leaf, stop, grow the next one, stop. She's frustrated but she gets it. She's a good kid. They're all good kids.

  During the circle part, Alex Kirby brings up the thing I was hoping nobody would bring up.

  "So there's a pharmacy ghost," he says, the way someone throws a grenade into a conversation.

  Everyone looks at him. I keep my face neutral, which takes effort.

  "A what?" Liam asks.

  "There's some superhero who's been hitting pharmacies. I heard my parents talking about it," he explains.

  "Your parents work for the NSRA or something?" Zara asks, raising an eyebrow.

  "I hear a couple of people want to turn this guy in for the $500," Alex replies, ducking the question. "I'm saying it's happening. And some kids at Lincoln are saying they know who it is."

  The room gets a little quieter. Lincoln is close. Roosevelt Boulevard corridor close.

  "Do they actually know, or do they think they know?" I ask.

  Alex considers this with more seriousness than I expected. "The guy I heard it from isn't a liar. But he's the kind of guy who says he knows things because he wants to be the guy who knows things. You know?"

  "Yeah. I know the type." I say, thinking about Jordan again and feeling a weird, wistful pang of nostalgia lance me in the gut. "Here's what I'm going to say about this, and I want everyone to hear it. If any of you hear anything about this person - names, locations, anything specific - you bring it to me. Not to Safer Streets, not to social media, not to your friends. To me."

  "Why?" Jasmine asks. Not challenging. Genuinely asking.

  "Because whoever this is, they're trying to do something good in a way that's going to get them arrested or hurt. The bounty means people are looking for them if they're underage. And people looking for powered individuals don't always have good intentions, even when they think they do." I look around the circle. "The last thing we want is for some kid to get cornered because a classmate wanted five hundred bucks. You can buy a lot of video games with five hundred bucks. And that's not nearly as much money as this kid's hospital bills are going to be if Patriot catches him."

  Four nods of varying levels of solemnity.

  After the session, I catch him before he leaves. "The Lincoln connection. The guy who says he knows things."

  "Yeah?"

  "If he brings it up again, just listen. Don't ask questions, don't show interest. Just listen and tell me what he says."

  "You're going to find this person, aren't you," Alex says. It's not a question.

  "I'm going to make sure this person doesn't get hurt. There's a difference."

  Alex grins. "Sure, Sam. Thought you retired?"

  "I did. You know the Tacony Titans?" I ask.

  "Yeah. What, you gonna pass it along?" He asks.

  "Something like that," I say, letting him draw his own conclusions.

  Danny comes back at 5:45, right as the mentorship kids are clearing out. Same Carhartt jacket, same work boots, same slight stiffness in his hands when he pulls the door open. He's got a folded piece of paper in his jacket pocket that he hands me like it's a note being passed in class.

  "Managed to get some details," he says. "Didn't want to text it - don't have your number, and also I figured this is a face-to-face kind of thing."

  I unfold the paper. His handwriting is blocky and careful, the kind of handwriting that belongs to someone who doesn't write much but tried hard when they did.

  Blue and white capsules. No markings. Gel caps. Guy sells out of a white Econoline van, usually parked on Rhawn near the Wawa. Name might be "Trucks" - that's what the guys call him. Shows up Wednesdays and Fridays after 3.

  "Trucks," I say.

  "Yeah. I don't know if that's a name or a description or what. But that's what I heard."

  Blue and white gel caps with no markings. That's not standard Jump packaging. Jump pills are usually either pressed tablets or green gel-caps full of powder. Green is their favorite color. That's what it comes in. Why would someone even go through the effort of taking it out of one gel-cap and packing it back into another gel-cap?

  I mean, I know the answer to that, but I'm not saying it out loud.

  "Does your friend know what these are supposed to do? Like, what the pitch is?"

  Danny shrugs. "Just, you know, super-strength stuff. Everyone wants some of that for construction work. Temporary strength boost, pain reduction, work longer without getting tired. Construction stuff. But my buddy said the last time he took one he couldn't sleep for two days and his hands were shaking so bad he couldn't hold a drill. And he's not a small guy."

  Insomnia, tremor, loss of fine motor control. Plus the stuff Deena flagged. That's not a standard Jump side effect profile - that's a stimulant interaction. Something in these caps is hitting a different pathway than normal Jump. So whatever was at Bellwether is still circulating - and it's probably going to keep circulating for a while...

  Unless... someone is cutting it off at the source, of course.

  "This is really helpful, Danny. Thank you."

  "Yeah, well." He flexes his hands again. In and out. "I've been where my buddy is. Not the same way, but - you know. You take something because you think it's going to help and then it doesn't help and then you're stuck with what it did to you." He looks at his knuckles.

  There's a sentence behind that one. But he doesn't say it and I don't ask.

  "Rhawn near the Wawa," I say. "Wednesdays and Fridays after three."

  "That's what I heard."

  "I'll tell someone to look into it. I know people. And Danny - tell your friend to stop taking those. Whatever they are, they're not Jump. Or they're not just Jump."

  "I'll try. He's stubborn," he sighs.

  "I get that."

  He pauses at the door. "Hey, Sam?"

  "Yeah?"

  "Thanks for not - you know. Making it weird. Some places you go for help and they look at you like you're the problem."

  "You're not the problem," I say. "This is a place for young people with superpowers. Jump problems, Fly problems - those count."

  He nods once, like he's filing that. Then he leaves.

  I stand in the hallway with his note in my hand. A white Econoline van, a dealer called Trucks, blue-and-white gel caps that aren't what they're supposed to be. Wednesdays and Fridays after three, which means Trucks is parked on Rhawn right now, has been parked there for the last two and a half hours while I was running mentorship sessions four blocks away.

  I go find Tasha, because Tasha said she had something about vehicle patterns on the Roosevelt corridor, and I have a feeling these two things are about to become the same thing.