Tasha's briefing takes fifteen minutes at the center and then another forty-five over the phone once I get home. The vehicle patterns are solid - two sedans, dark colors, rotating between three parking positions along a half-mile stretch of Roosevelt Boulevard. Same plates showing up Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday nights. Tasha caught them on her perimeter feeds almost by accident - she'd been running a drone along the corridor to map the pharmacy hit sites and noticed the same car twice in twenty minutes.

  "That's not a coincidence," she says.

  "That's a stakeout."

  "That's a stakeout. The question is who's staking out what."

  We spend the forty-five minutes going over everything we have. The three pharmacy hits, the geographic pattern, the tainted Jump cluster from Deena, Danny's gel cap intel, the Safer Streets bounty pool. Tasha's built a map on her laptop - pins for each pharmacy hit, pins for each bad Jump call, circles for the surveillance vehicle positions. When you overlay them, there's a gap. A fourth pharmacy in the corridor that fits the pattern but hasn't been hit yet.

  "Lee's Pharmacy," Tasha says. "Frankford Avenue near Cheltenham. Independent, not a chain. It's right in the middle of the cluster."

  "If I were the phase-walker and I was working through these pharmacies in order, that's next."

  "And if whoever's running the stakeout figured out the same thing, that's what they're watching."

  "I want to go look tonight."

  Pause. "It's a school night."

  "Home by eleven."

  "Home by ten-thirty."

  "Deal."

  The suit goes on at 9:15. Blue and white, tension-hardening knuckles, tooth seams at the joints, Amelia's polymer shark helmet with the permanent slight grin and the voice modulator. Gauntlet on the right forearm - pepper spray, smoke, pig's blood solution for tracking. Belt with the first aid kit, zip ties, and Tasha's two emergency drones folded flat. I check myself in the bathroom mirror and the shark face looks back at me with its fixed smile and for a second I feel - I don't know. Not powerful. More like dressed for the job. I take the helmet back off and fold it into my backpack. Everything else under my jacket. I'll kit out fully at my usual alleyway.

  I text Mom: Going out. Planned route. Home by 10:30.

  Mom texts back: Be safe. Text at turnaround point.

  Dad texts: There's construction on Harbison, detour around it.

  This is my life now. My parents give me traffic updates for my vigilante patrol. It's weird and it works and I'm not going to think too hard about it.

  Megalodon hits the Roosevelt corridor at 9:32 PM.

  It's a Wednesday night in April, which means the boulevard is medium-busy. Cars, buses, the 14 trolley rattling along, people coming out of the Wawa and the laundromat and the check-cashing place. I'm on rooftops, moving north along the corridor from Cottman toward Cheltenham.

  Blood sense is passive - I'm not looking for anyone specific, just keeping a general awareness of the bodies below me in case someone is hurt or hiding. It's harder to see the rooftops. Every sidewalk has been bled on at least once in every city, and that stuff sticks even after the street cleaner. Rooftops? Not so much. Can't rely on proprioception.

  Tasha's in my ear. "Drone one is up. I've got you on visual. Battery at full, call it twenty-eight minutes before I swap."

  "Copy."

  "Don't say copy. You sound like a cop."

  "What do I say?"

  "Just say okay. Or say nothing. You heard me, I know you heard me."

  "Roger roger."

  "Come on, man," she mumbles.

  The first pharmacy - the CVS on Cottman - is closed and dark. I drop to street level behind the building and look at the back wall. There's a patch of new drywall where the phase-walker came through, already painted over but not quite matching. No security cameras on the back, which is probably how the phase-walker chose it. The damage report said they went straight for specific shelves. I can't get inside without breaking in myself, which I'm not doing, but I can look through the window with a flashlight and see the back stockroom. Everything looks normal. Restocked, cleaned up, moved on.

  The independent on Rising Sun is the same story. New drywall, no rear cameras, a stockroom that's been cleaned up. The owner here apparently handled the insurance claim as "vandalism - unknown cause" without mentioning the powered component, which is either smart or scared or both. Maybe he didn't have superpower insurance.

  I move north toward Cheltenham. Tasha swaps to drone two somewhere around Rhawn - I hear the quiet whir change pitch as the fresh one comes up and the tired one heads home for a battery swap. The system works like a relay race. Tasha's gotten good at the handoff.

  "I'm coming up on Lee's," I say.

  "I see it. One-story building, shared strip mall, pharmacy on the end unit. Back alley runs north-south. No cameras I can see from this angle."

  "Same MO as the other two. End unit, back alley, no cameras."

  "If I were going to phase-walk into a pharmacy, this is the one I'd pick."

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  I settle onto the roof of a laundromat across the street. From here I've got a clean line of sight to Lee's front entrance, partial view of the side alley, and enough elevation that nobody at street level is going to spot me unless they're specifically looking up. The shark helmet is dark enough to blend against the roof edge at night. I tuck my legs under me and wait.

  I'm good at waiting. That's one of the things that changed since Bloodhound. Bloodhound was an impatient sprinter who showed up and hit things. Megalodon plans, positions, and waits. Dr. Desai would say that's maturity. I think it's just that I've been hit enough times to learn that patience hurts less than hospitals.

  Lee's Pharmacy is dark. Closed since seven, according to the hours posted on the door. The strip mall is mostly dead - a nail salon, a cell phone repair shop, a Laundromat (the one I'm on), and Lee's on the far end. There's a light on in the back of the cell phone shop but the rest is shut down.

  Twenty minutes of nothing. I eat a granola bar from my belt pouch and watch a cat investigate a dumpster. Tasha swaps to drone three. My back doesn't click when I shift position, which means the telekinesis thing is finally healing, which is nice.

  Then I see the car.

  Dark sedan, no markings. Pulls into the strip mall lot at 10:04 PM, parks three spaces from Lee's front door, and kills the engine. Headlights off. Nobody gets out.

  "Tash. Dark sedan, strip mall lot."

  "I see it. Running the plate now." Thirty, forty, fifty second pause. "That's one of the two. Same plate from Tuesday night."

  So whoever's been running surveillance on the corridor is here tonight. Watching the same pharmacy I'm watching. Which means they've done the same math I did about which one is next.

  A second car arrives six minutes later. Parks on the street, not in the lot. Different angle of approach, different sightline. If I weren't on this roof I might not have connected them, but from up here the positioning is obvious - they've got the front and the side alley covered. Crossfire coverage. These are people who have done this before.

  I watch for another ten minutes. Nobody gets out of either vehicle. The windows are dark. This is patient, professional surveillance. Not Safer Streets bounty hunters - they'd be in a truck with a phone out, checking some app or website, fidgety. Not regular cops - no police radio chatter leaking through cracked windows, no coffee runs. This is trained.

  "Okay," I say to Tasha. "So these aren't amateurs."

  "Nope."

  "Not cops either. Cops would have a wider perimeter and they'd coordinate with the district. I haven't seen any patrol cars swing through, which means either the district isn't aware or it's a federal operation that doesn't coordinate with local."

  "FBI? Ford's people?"

  "I don't know. Maybe? I'd like to think Ford has bigger things to work on, that's why I'm tentatively ruling her out. This is a small fry. Not worth two cars."

  "Kingdom?"

  "Kingdom doesn't run clean surveillance. They send goons or they send Mr. Nothing. This is... methodical."

  "So what does that leave?"

  I run through the options. FBI is unlikely if it's not Ford. Local PD is out. Kingdom doesn't operate like this. Private security is possible but there's no client - who hires private security to stake out a pharmacy in NE Philly? Rogue Wave has resources but not this kind of discipline.

  "NSRA," I say. "Powered individual committing property crimes. That's their jurisdiction."

  "That was going to be my guess too."

  NSRA. The same agency that cooperated with Project Titan. The same agency that protected Chernobyl until Agent Torres defected and told me where he was. The same agency that tried to confiscate Belle's investigative files after she died. Now they're running a professional stakeout to catch a kid who's been destroying tainted drugs.

  I don't say any of that. What I say is: "I need to get closer."

  "Sam."

  "Just close enough to confirm. If it's NSRA, they'll have credentials. Or equipment. Something identifiable."

  "Or they'll have guns and a very low tolerance for another powered individual showing up on their stakeout."

  "I'll be careful."

  "You'll be on a rooftop in a shark costume sixty feet from a federal operation."

  "Carefully."

  I hear Tasha exhale through her nose, which is the Tasha equivalent of throwing her hands up. "Drone two is recharged. I'm sending it to the alley side for a second angle. You have twelve minutes before I need to pull it."

  I move. Rooftop to rooftop, keeping low, working my way around the strip mall to get a better angle on the sedan in the lot. From the cell phone repair shop roof, I can see the driver's side of the first vehicle. One occupant, driver's seat, facing Lee's. I still can't make out features - it's dark and the windows are tinted.

  I wait.

  At 10:31, the driver's side door of the second car opens. The street-parked one. A man steps out - not rushing, just stretching. Like he's been sitting too long and his legs are cramped. He's not in a suit and tie. Jacket, slacks, comfortable shoes. Built like someone who works out but doesn't make it his personality. He rolls his shoulders, checks his phone, and leans against the car for a second while he looks up and down the street.

  I can see his face now. The streetlight catches it and something snags in my brain. I know that face. I know that face and I can't - where do I know him from? Not Kingdom, not Rogue Wave, not DVD. Somewhere else. Somewhere that felt urgent and dark and -

  He turns slightly and the angle changes and I see him in profile and it hits me.

  The tunnels. Under Broad Street. An NSRA agent coming to the Music Hall because he couldn't stand his partner's cruelty - Jennings, that's her - who told me where Illya was hiding because his conscience couldn't take it anymore. Who broke ranks and risked his career because a fifteen-year-old girl asked him to do the right thing and he did.

  Torres. Agent Torres.

  "Sam?" Tasha says in my ear. "Your heart rate just spiked. What's going on?"

  "I know him," I say. "The agent. I know him."

  "From where?"

  "He's NSRA. He's the one who told me where Chernobyl was hiding. During the subway thing. He - he was a good guy, Tash. He broke ranks for me."

  Silence for a second. Then Tasha says, very carefully: "And now he's here."

  "And now he's here."

  Torres finishes his stretch, puts his phone away, and gets back in the car. The door closes. The street goes quiet again.

  I crouch on the roof of the cell phone repair shop and stare at the back of his sedan and something in my chest does a thing that isn't anger and isn't sadness and isn't betrayal exactly but lives in the neighborhood of all three. Because Torres isn't doing anything wrong. He's doing his job. A powered individual is committing crimes and the NSRA is investigating, which is literally what they exist to do. He's not corrupt. He's not malicious. He's a good agent doing good work within a system that's about to crush a kid.

  And that's worse, somehow. If he were a bad guy I could fight him. You can't fight a good man doing his job.

  "Tash," I say. "The phase-walker can't come here tonight."

  "Sam--"

  "If this kid phases into that pharmacy tonight, Torres and his partner are going to be on him before he gets back through the wall. And then he's in the system. NSRA custody, powers assessment, juvenile detention if he's lucky."

  "I know. But what are you going to do about it? You don't know who the phase-walker is. You don't know if he's coming tonight. You can't exactly knock on the NSRA's door and ask them to leave."

  She's right. I don't know any of those things. I don't know this kid's name or face or schedule. I don't know if he hits pharmacies on a pattern or at random. I don't know if tonight is his night.

  But I know the pharmacy. And I know who's watching it.

  "I'm staying," I say. "If he shows up, I'll figure it out."

  "Home by ten-thirty, Sam. You promised your mom."

  "I know."

  "It's ten thirty-three."

  I text Mom: Running late. Safe. 11 latest.

  Mom texts back: 11. Not 11:05. Not 11:10.

  Dad texts: What she said.

  I settle back on the roof and watch Lee's Pharmacy and watch Torres's sedan and wait for a kid I've never met to walk through a wall into the worst night of his life.