Torres's partner stares at me from a little bit across the way. Not fat exactly, just settled. A guy who used to be beefy. No sunglasses, no suit, just a jacket and a holster I can see because his jacket rides up when he stands.

  "Torres, you need help over there?" he calls.

  Torres doesn't look away from me. The taser is still pointed at my back and I can feel exactly where it's aimed - center mass, between my shoulder blades. Not because I have eyes back there. Because you can feel when someone is pointing something at you after enough people have pointed things at you. It becomes a sense, like blood sense but less useful and more awful.

  "I'm good, Lewis. Give me a minute."

  Lewis looks at me - teenage girl, hands laced on her head, standing on a sidewalk in a hoodie and jeans. He looks at Torres. He looks back at me. His face does a thing that I'd describe as polite professional confusion, and then he makes a decision, leans against the car, and pulls out his phone.

  Good. One audience member instead of two. I'll take those odds.

  "Turn around," Torres says.

  I turn around. Slowly. Every movement deliberate, nothing sudden, hands staying exactly where they are, laced on my hair.

  He looks older than I remember. Same broad jaw, same serious eyes, but there's more grey at his temples and the lines around his mouth are deeper. Three years of NSRA fieldwork will do that, I bet. Or maybe it was always there and I was fourteen and didn't notice. The taser is at his side now, not holstered, not aimed. Somewhere in between - the position of a person who doesn't think they'll need it but isn't ready to commit to that belief.

  "I'm going to ask you again," he says. "What are you doing here?"

  "I was trying to catch the pharmacy kid."

  "You were trying to catch the pharmacy kid," he repeats, clearly incredulous.

  "Yeah. Argus Corps's SSI thing, five hundred bucks for turning in teenage vigilantism. What's more teenage vigilantism than stealing shit from innocent drugstores?" I can hear myself talking and it sounds right, it sounds like a teenager explaining something obvious to an adult, which is the register I need. "He got away. Went through the walls sideways. I tried to cut him off from the roof but by the time I got up there he was already through the strip."

  Torres studies me. His eyes move the way trained eyes move - not scanning, assessing. Taking in details and running them against a mental database of tells and indicators.

  "You were on that roof," he says. "I heard the gutter."

  "Yeah. Old aluminum. Sorry about that."

  "And before the roof. You were in the alley."

  My heart does something. Not a skip, more like a stutter. "I was coming around the back when I saw him exit. I tried to--"

  "You tried to cut him off. You said that." His voice is patient. Not aggressive, not threatening. Just patient in a way that's worse than shouting because it means he has all the time in the world and I don't. "Walk me through the timeline. You were where when you first saw the target?"

  I note the word choice.

  "I was on the street. Frankford, south side. I saw movement in the alley behind the strip mall and went to check it out."

  "On foot."

  "Yeah."

  "At ten-forty-seven at night."

  "I was walking home from--" I almost say the community center and stop myself because that's a bread crumb I'm not dropping. "From a friend's house. I cut through the Roosevelt corridor sometimes. It's faster."

  "What friend?"

  "Is that relevant?"

  Torres tilts his head slightly, choosing, very deliberately, not to push on that.

  My arms are starting to ache - hands laced on your head sounds casual until you've been holding it for three minutes. I mean, I imagine it'd be way worse for people who can't regenerate. But I'm noticing it at all, which is notable.

  "The target exited the pharmacy through the rear wall at approximately 10:47," Torres says, like he's reading from a report he hasn't written yet. "You're saying you saw him from Frankford Avenue. That's - what, sixty, seventy feet? Through the alley, in the dark."

  "Hard to miss someone walking through a wall like it's not there."

  "It is," he agrees. "From sixty feet."

  "I have good eyes."

  "You have shark powers."

  "Those too."

  Something almost happens in his face. The corners of his lips witch.

  "So you saw the kid," he says. "You went into the alley. The target was already phasing through the interior walls. You went up to the roof to try to cut him off."

  "Correct."

  "And then I heard the gutter groan because you were pulling yourself up."

  "Correct."

  "And when you lost the target, you came back down, changed out of--" He pauses. Looks at my hoodie, my jeans, my backpack. "You were in a costume."

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  "I was wearing dark clothes. For the - you know. Stealth."

  "Sam."

  "Agent Torres."

  "You were in a costume. You're operating in that corridor. I don't know under what name and I don't particularly care right now, but let's not insult each other."

  He knows I'm active. He doesn't know I'm Megalodon specifically - or maybe he does and he's giving me the courtesy of not saying it - but he knows a retired vigilante doesn't climb buildings at eleven PM for five hundred dollars. The cover story was never going to hold against someone who actually knows me. It was only ever going to hold against his report.

  A car passes on Frankford. The headlights sweep across us and for a second I can see Torres's face clearly - the tiredness, the calculation, the faint edge of something that might be disappointment. In me? Or in the lack of arrest? I can't really tell.

  "Let me tell you what I think," he says. "And then I want you to listen."

  "Okay."

  "I think you've been investigating those pharmacy break-ins independently. I think you mapped the same pattern my team did and identified Lee's as the next probable target. I think you were positioned on that rooftop before we arrived, which means you've been tracking our surveillance too. And I think when that kid came through the wall, you didn't try to catch him." He pauses. "I think you helped him get away."

  My heartbeat is loud enough that I'm worried he can hear it. I keep my face still. I keep my breathing even. I keep my hands laced on my hair even though my shoulders are screaming.

  "That's a lot of thinking," I say.

  "It's my job." He shifts his weight. "The target has hit four pharmacies in three weeks. We have security footage from two incidents, witness descriptions from a third, and forensic evidence from all four, including one that wasn't reported to police. We have a partial physical profile and we're three, maybe four data points from a positive ID. This isn't going away, Sam. We're going to find him."

  Four incidents including Mayfair Rx. Forensic evidence from all four - meaning they've processed the scenes, not just reviewed them. Partial physical profile from the security footage. The NSRA is further into this than I thought. They're not fumbling around with police reports like I was a week ago. They have lab resources, analysts, a case number, a dedicated field team. They're a federal agency doing what federal agencies do, which is grind methodically until the answer falls out.

  "I understand," I say, because I do.

  "I don't think you do. Because I think you see this kid doing what you used to do and you want to help him. And I get that. I do. But this is an active federal investigation into a powered individual committing a pattern of felony property crimes, and if you're interfering with it - if you're aiding a suspect, coaching him on evasion techniques, providing material support--"

  "I'm not."

  "If you are," he continues, as though I hadn't spoken, "then you're committing federal obstruction and I don't have enough pull to get you out of that. Nobody does."

  Lewis glances up from his phone. He's been listening more than he's been scrolling - I can tell from the angle of his head, slightly turned toward us, the phone held a little too still. Keeping an ear on the conversation while giving Torres the space to run it. Professional courtesy between partners. I wonder if Torres and Jennings worked like this, or if Jennings was the type to insert herself.

  My arms start to twitch a little bit. I can feel the specific muscles that are complaining - deltoids, traps, the connective tissue between my shoulder blades. It's not pain exactly, more like a loud request to please stop doing this. I adjust my fingers slightly, relacing them, and Torres's eyes track the movement and then release it. He knows what he's doing. Making me hold the position is part of the interview. Discomfort makes people talk. It's not cruelty - it's technique.

  "Can I put my hands down?" I ask.

  He thinks about it for a second that lasts a year. "Yeah."

  I lower my arms. For anyone else this would probably be an enormous relief. For me, it just feels mildly better. I roll my shoulders once. "So. Are you taking me in or are we done?"

  "That depends."

  "On what?"

  "On whether I believe you're going to stay away from my operation."

  "I was going for the bounty, Agent Torres. I failed. I don't make a habit of repeating failures." That's actually true in the broader sense even if it's a lie in the specific one.

  "Uh huh." He looks at me for a long time. Long enough that I start cataloging the sounds around us because I need something to do with my brain besides panic - the trolley two blocks south, Lewis's phone making a notification sound he ignores, a dog barking somewhere on a side street, my own breathing. In, out. Even. Controlled.

  "Three years ago," Torres says, and his voice changes. Not softer exactly, but less official. The report-voice gives way to something underneath. "I did something stupid because it was the right thing to do. Because a kid asked me to do something decent and I did it."

  I know what's coming. I know and I'm already composing the thing I want to say back and already discarding it.

  "Chernobyl turned himself in," he continues. "You made that happen. That bought you--" He holds up one finger. "One. Exactly one free pass. And you're spending it right now, tonight, on this sidewalk."

  I want to say: you know the NSRA cut a deal with him, right? The man who killed my mentor. The woman who recruited me, who trained me, who died in my arms. Your agency negotiated with him. They traded him for energy - for brownout protection - and considered Professor Franklin and Liberty Belle a fair trade for that, and they would've kept doing it if I didn't do anything, which meant they would've kept doing that if you didn't defect. So, I appreciate it, but from my perspective what you did was the bare fucking minimum, and I am owed at least five free ones, not one.

  I don't say any of that.

  Because Torres probably didn't know the details of the deal until they came out at trial. And if he did know, telling him I know doesn't help Marco. It doesn't help anyone. It just turns a clean exit into a confrontation, and confrontations with federal agents on sidewalks at eleven PM don't end the way I want them to.

  Some truths aren't weapons. They're just more dogshit on your plate.

  "Thank you," I say. And I mean it, which is the part that hurts.

  "Don't thank me. This is the mulligan. There isn't another one." He holsters the taser. Actually holsters it, clicks it into place, and the crackle dies and the silence that replaces it is somehow louder. "Stay away from the Roosevelt corridor. Stay away from my investigation. And stay away from this individual. If I find out you're in contact with him--"

  "You won't."

  "Sam."

  "You won't find out."

  He almost smiles. I see it happen - the corner of his mouth twitches upward for maybe a quarter of a second before professionalism reclaims his face.

  "Go home," he says. "It's a school night."

  "Everyone keeps telling me that."

  "Maybe you should listen."

  I flex my hands - they've been at my sides for a while but the ghost of the position is still in my shoulders - and I adjust my backpack strap and I turn and I walk. Steady pace. Not hurried, not casual. The pace of a person who has been told to leave and is leaving. I don't look back because looking back is what guilty people do, and right now I am an innocent teenager who tried to catch a pharmacy vandal for bounty money and failed. That's my story and I'm walking home with it and every step I take is a step further from a taser and a case number and a good man doing his job.

  Lewis says something to Torres as I round the corner. I catch the shape of it, the rhythm, but not the words. Torres's response is clipped. Short. A car door opens and closes. Engine starts.

  I keep walking. Frankford Avenue at eleven-something on a Wednesday night, the trolley track running down the middle of the street, closed storefronts and the bodega on the corner that never closes. My hands are shaking. Just a little. Just enough that I put them in my jacket pockets so nobody can see.

  Four incidents. Forensic evidence from all four. Partial physical profile. Coverage model adjustments. A case number that sounds like a filing system and means a human being is being processed into a problem to be solved.

  Torres is going to find Marco. Maybe not this week, maybe not this month, but the NSRA is methodical and patient and well-funded and they don't stop. "It's a matter of time" isn't a threat. It's a fact.

  I have to find him first. Before Torres. Before the coverage model adjusts. Before the NSRA's methodical grinding finds the name behind the hoodie.

  Twelve hours. Maybe less.

  But first, Rachel Small, and my front porch.