I lead them to the main hall first because it's the biggest room and the furthest from the hallway where Marco is sitting on a dusty couch trying not to vibrate through the floor. Buy time. Project confidence. Talk about the program like it's the most important thing in the world, which it is, which makes this easier and harder at the same time.

  "The center opened in February-ish," I say, gesturing around the main hall. The high ceilings, the converted stage, the bulletin boards. "Councilman Davis secured the funding through a combination of city grants, historical preservation money, and community donations. The building used to be a music hall - we kept the bones and built around them."

  "Beautiful space," Jennings says, and she means it, which is somehow worse than if she were faking it. Agent Reeves's tablet is up and her fingers are moving. I can't see the screen from this angle but I can see her eyes tracking the room - exits, layout, capacity. She's mapping the building. Of course she is.

  "How did you get involved?" Jennings asks me. Casual. Conversational. The question of someone making small talk, except small talk doesn't get recorded on a tablet.

  "I volunteer here. Mrs. Patterson runs the day-to-day operations - she's been doing community work in Philadelphia for twenty years. I coordinate the mentorship program for powered youth specifically."

  "And that's the program we're most interested in. Walk me through how it works?"

  So I walk her through it. The structure - power work first hour, life skills second hour. The philosophy - meet kids where they are, build trust, develop control in a safe environment. The outcomes - Zara's range control, Liam's transformation endurance, Jasmine's intentionality exercises. I don't name them by their full names. I don't describe their specific powers in detail. I give enough to sound cooperative and not enough to build a file.

  Jennings nods along. She asks about safety protocols, liability coverage, whether we have a relationship with any medical providers. Good questions. Professional questions. The questions of someone who is evaluating a program, not investigating one. And that's the trick - she's doing both and making them look like the same thing.

  We move through the kitchenette. I show her the food pantry setup - the shelves, the donation bins, the sign that says TAKE WHAT YOU NEED in three languages. Reeves photographs it. Jennings opens the fridge, sees leftover pizza and a gallon of milk and someone's labeled Tupperware, and closes it. She doesn't comment. She doesn't need to.

  "The GED prep runs in here," I say, leading them to the secondary room. Folding tables still half-stacked from where I was breaking them down twenty minutes ago. "We partner with the Literacy Council for materials. It's open to everyone, not just powered individuals."

  "Integrated programming. That's smart. Reduces stigma." Jennings touches one of the folding tables, running her finger along the edge like she's checking for dust. "How many powered individuals use the center on a typical week, would you say? Ballpark."

  "Hard to say. The mentorship kids come regularly. Beyond that, people drift in and out. We don't ask everyone who walks through the door if they have powers."

  "But some of them do."

  "Some of them do. Philadelphia has a higher-than-average metahuman population, as I'm sure you know," I say, unable to resist the obvious bait when it's put so delectably in front of my face. "That's part of why the center is here."

  "Of course." She nods at Reeves, who types something, trying to look like I didn't just bop her in the snout.

  We move to Mrs. Patterson's office. Patterson is at her desk, having materialized there with the supernatural speed of a woman who wants to be present for every second of this visit. She shakes Jennings's hand and launches into the formal program overview with the practiced fluency of someone who has briefed city officials, grant committees, and school board members. I let her talk. Patterson is better at this than I am - she speaks the institutional language, she has the credentials, and she doesn't have a fugitive phase-walker sitting in a room down the hall.

  While Patterson talks about intake procedures and data privacy protocols, Jennings listens attentively. But her eyes wander. I watch them track down the hallway toward the closed doors. The therapy rooms. The one-on-one spaces.

  "And these?" she asks, when Patterson pauses for breath. She nods toward the hallway. "Private session rooms?"

  "Counseling and mentorship rooms," Patterson says. "We have three. They're used for one-on-one sessions with mentees, and the therapists who work here use them for confidential client meetings."

  "Could I see them? Just to get a sense of the full facility."

  Patterson looks at me. I look at Patterson. The exchange lasts maybe a quarter of a second but it contains an entire negotiation.

  "Sure," I say. "This way."

  A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  I walk down the hallway toward the two doors. One on the left, one on the right. Marco is in the one on the right - the one with the dusty couch and the window that faces the side alley. I'm talking as I walk, which is natural because I always talk, but I'm talking at the volume of someone who is energized about giving a tour and wants to make sure everyone in the building can hear how much she loves this program.

  "These rooms are really the heart of what we do," I say, and my voice fills the hallway the way voices do in buildings with high ceilings and old acoustics that carry whispers weird. "The group sessions are great for community-building but the real work happens one-on-one. That's where kids can be honest about what they're going through without an audience."

  I open the door on the left first. Empty. A desk, two chairs, a box of tissues, a poster about breathing exercises. "This one's mostly for the therapists. Dr. Adler uses it on Tuesdays and Thursdays."

  Jennings looks in, nods, and turns to the door on the right.

  I put my hand on the handle. Behind this door, Marco is either sitting on the couch where I left him, or he heard me coming and he did the smart thing. I don't know which. I have no way of knowing which. My hand is on the handle and Jennings is behind my right shoulder and Reeves is behind her with the tablet and I'm about to find out if a kid I met two days ago trusts me enough to have listened to the sound of my voice getting louder and understood what it meant.

  I open the door.

  The couch is empty.

  The room is exactly as it always is - dusty couch, folding chair, window facing the alley. The window is closed. Nothing is visibly disturbed. No backpack, no cracked phone case, no impression in the cushions that I can see from this angle. Just an empty room that smells faintly like the inside of a community center, which is to say like dust and cleaning product and old upholstery.

  "This is the main... what's the word, like... social work room," I say, and my voice is steady, and my heart is running a marathon inside my ribs. "I use this one for the one-on-ones. The couch helps - kids relax more on a couch than in a chair across a desk. Body language thing, I'm guessing."

  Jennings steps into the room. She looks around. She looks at the couch. She looks at the window. She looks at the folding chair.

  She stands there for three seconds longer than she stood in the other room.

  I don't know what she sees. Maybe nothing. Maybe the couch cushion has an impression I can't see from my angle. Maybe there's a warmth to the seat that means someone was sitting there recently. Maybe she smells something I don't - anxiety sweat, teenager, the particular scent of someone who was here ten minutes ago. Or maybe she's just being thorough and I'm reading meaning into a pause that doesn't have any.

  "Nice space," she says. "Cozy."

  "We try."

  She turns and walks back into the hallway. Reeves follows. I close the door behind us and my hand is perfectly steady on the handle because I am a professional associate program coordinator giving a tour of my facility and there is absolutely nothing unusual about anything that just happened.

  We walk back to the main entrance. Jennings collects her bag from the chair where she left it. Reeves closes the tablet cover with a precise little snap.

  "This is really impressive, Sam," Jennings says. "You should be proud of what you've built here."

  "Thank you. It's a team effort."

  "I'm sure it is." She produces a business card from her blazer pocket - NSRA seal, her name, a phone number, an email. "If you ever need anything from us - materials, assessment support, safety consultation - don't hesitate. We're here to help."

  That word again. Help. It keeps coming back like a stray cat that looks friendly until you see the teeth.

  "I appreciate that," I say.

  "And Sam - one more thing." She pauses at the door, half-turned, sunglasses in her hand but not on her face. "The NSRA is going to be more present in this area going forward. More outreach, more community engagement. It's not targeted at you or this center specifically - it's a citywide initiative. But I wanted you to hear it from me first so it doesn't feel like a surprise."

  "I appreciate the heads up," I say. The sentence tastes like glass.

  "Of course. We're on the same side." She puts on the sunglasses. "We'll be in touch."

  They leave. The dark sedan pulls away from the curb and I watch it go and I don't move from the doorway until it turns the corner onto Frankford.

  Mrs. Patterson is beside me. I don't know when she appeared.

  "Sam."

  "Yeah."

  "We need to call Davis. Today."

  "I know."

  "And we need to review every intake form, every sign-in sheet, every piece of paper in this building that has a name on it. Because that woman is going to come back with a more specific request and we need to know exactly what we're willing to share and what we're not."

  "I know."

  "And you need to tell your parents."

  "I know, Mrs. Patterson."

  "Please. Jennifer," she says as she puts a hand on my shoulder. It's the hand of a woman who has been doing this work for twenty years and has seen government interest in community programs before and knows exactly how it goes. "You're a natural at bullshitting authorities."

  "She's going to figure that out."

  "She already knows. That's not the point. The point is the record - what she can document, what she can report upward. You gave her a clean visit with a cooperative coordinator. That buys us time." She squeezes my shoulder.

  "How do you know all this?" I ask, raising an eyebrow.

  She looks at me like I'm stupid. "I'm a Black community worker in Northeast Philadelphia. Just stir in your brain how many cops you think I might have had to demand warrants from, and then quintuple that number. Now go find your kid."

  She pats my shoulder a little more and then gives me some forward momentum. My kid. Marco. I go back to the therapy room and open the door again, this time alone. The room is empty. The window is closed. I check it - locked from the inside. He didn't go out the window.

  I put my hand on the wall. The interior wall, the one shared with the supply closet on the other side. Drywall over studs. I go to the supply closet and check - nothing disturbed, but the closet shares a wall with the back hallway, which shares a wall with the emergency exit. Three walls between the therapy room and the outside.

  He's gone. He listened. He heard my voice getting louder and he understood and he went horizontal, just like I taught him in the alley, and now he's somewhere in NE Philly and I don't have his phone number.

  I pull out my phone and text Tasha: NSRA visited the center. Jennings. Formal introduction, informal recon. Pharmacy kid was here - got out before they saw him. We need to talk.

  Tasha responds in eleven seconds: Coming over. Don't touch anything until I sweep for bugs.

  I stare at that for a second. Right. Bugs.