I head home from the library with my brain still churning over historical vigilantes and the Morrison Collection. The walk gives me time to think, the late afternoon sun casting long shadows across Mayfair's familiar streets.

  The house is quiet when I arrive. Dad's at physical therapy, Mom's still at the library, and the silence feels strange after the constant background hum of people in public spaces or the scanning machine working. I dump my backpack by the door and raid the fridge, assembling a sandwich with the automatic movements of someone who's more focused on thoughts than food.

  Belle's notebooks. I need to find them.

  The last time I looked at them was... when? During the Chernobyl case, definitely. After that, I'd been so focused on other things - getting tortured by Aaron, recovering, tracking Aaron, Rogue Wave, the Phreaks, faking Kate's death, fighting Captain Devil - that I'd barely thought about the collection of hardback journals that contain Liberty Belle's entire vigilante career.

  I take a bite of my sandwich and try to remember where I put them. Not my bedroom - I would have noticed them during one of my countless room reorganizations. Not the living room or Dad's office, where someone might accidentally browse them. The attic? No, too much risk of heat damage.

  The basement.

  When we rebuilt the house after Mr. T-Rex's dinosaur demolition derby, the basement was left unfinished. Just concrete floors, exposed beams, and sturdy metal shelving units holding everything from holiday decorations to Dad's vinyl collection. The perfect place to store boxes you want forgotten but accessible.

  I finish my sandwich in three large bites (Mom would disapprove) and head for the basement door. The light switch activates a single bare bulb that casts harsh shadows across the concrete floor. The temperature drops noticeably as I descend the wooden stairs, my footsteps echoing in the empty space.

  The basement is organized in Mom's methodical fashion - holiday decorations on the left, tools and home repair supplies on the right, miscellaneous storage at the back. I make my way past the Christmas tree stand and boxes of Hanukkah decorations, scanning the shelves for anything that might hold Belle's notebooks.

  And there it is - a plain cardboard file box labeled "S. Small - Personal" in Mom's neat handwriting. I pull it down carefully, surprised by its weight. Did I really inherit this much from Belle? The box is sealed with packing tape, which means I haven't opened it since we moved back into the rebuilt house.

  I carry the box upstairs to my bedroom (well, I drag it), which feels like a safer space for this exploration. No risk of parents walking in unexpectedly - at least not without knocking first, a hard-won privacy agreement established after multiple awkward incidents involving me in various states of undress and/or costume repair.

  Setting the box on my bed, I cut through the tape with scissors and lift the lid. The familiar smell of old paper and leather bindings wafts up, triggering an instant memory of sitting in Lily's living room, surrounded by Belle's case files, trying to absorb her years of experience in mere minutes.

  Inside, nearly a dozen notebooks, some leather, some... just school notebooks, are stacked neatly, alongside a portable hard drive, several manila envelopes of photographs, and a small wooden box containing USB drives. It's a comprehensive archive of one superhero's career, methodically documented and preserved.

  I lift out the first notebook, the leather cover worn smooth at the corners from handling. The first page bears a date - June 15, 2013 - and a simple heading: "Day One."

  Belle's handwriting is precise, almost architectural in its clean lines and perfect spacing. No wasted space, no flourishes.

  "Today I begin what will likely be either a brief and embarrassing experiment or the start of something meaningful," she wrote. "I believe I'm ready to make a difference in this city beyond what a badge would let me."

  The notebook continues with her methodical preparation - training regimens, equipment tests, area familiarization exercises. She approached vigilantism like someone planning a military operation, leaving nothing to chance.

  The next notebook details her first three months as "Breakout". There are detailed accounts of petty crimes stopped, intelligence gathered from informants, and careful maps of criminal activities across various Philadelphia neighborhoods.

  And then, something that takes up more than a page. Shrike.

  Belle's first major case, documented in exhaustive detail across dozens of pages. Serially attacking families in Strawberry Mansion and then vanishing. Belle tracked him for weeks, gathering evidence, interviewing witnesses, building a profile of his movements and methods.

  "Unlike most powered criminals I've encountered so far, Shrike seems to derive pleasure from the artistic arrangement of suffering," she wrote. "The attacks are not primarily about theft or territory - the copper wiring theft appears to be a cover for his true purpose. This makes him unpredictable and particularly dangerous."

  If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

  I flip through the pages, following Belle's investigation as she narrowed down Shrike's hunting grounds, identified patterns in his attacks, and then... got lucky. A confrontation in a Strawberry Mansion rowhome where he'd trapped a family with his spikes. Belle and Franklin arrived before the police, managing to subdue him.

  "Franklin's electrical disruption was key," Belle noted. "The consistent voltage appeared to interfere with his ability to generate or control the metal spikes. Subject Niles Nolan taken into custody at 8:37 PM. Multiple homicides confirmed, including Officer James Martinez of the PPD."

  It's fascinating to read about Belle and Franklin working together, years before his death and her final battle with Chernobyl. They had a rhythm, a partnership based on complementary abilities and absolute trust. I wonder if that's what she was trying to build with me, before everything went sideways.

  The next few pages detail Belle's follow-up on the Shrike case - court proceedings, sentencing (multiple life sentences without possibility of parole), temporary holding at Eastern State while awaiting transfer to Daedalus. And then something unexpected - pages of notes about rehabilitation programs, psychological evaluations, and treatment plans.

  "N.N. has been evaluated for the Daedalus rehabilitation program," Belle wrote. "Initial psychological assessment suggests antisocial tendencies without comorbid mental illness. Judge Keller recommended rehabilitation alongside containment, despite the severity of sentencing."

  I pause, surprised by this focus on rehabilitation for someone sentenced to life without parole.

  The next entry, dated two months later, shows a shift in tone.

  "Daedalus transfer complete, but concerning news from Dr. Henley. Budget cuts have eliminated most of the rehabilitation programs. N.N. has been placed in standard containment with minimal psychological support. This contradicts Judge Keller's recommendations and treatment plan."

  Belle's notes become increasingly frustrated as she tracks Shrike's processing through the system. The rehabilitation programs she'd advocated for were systematically dismantled or underfunded. Her attempts to follow up were met with bureaucratic stonewalling. There's other notes in between this, but right now, I'm focused on the Shrike bits, this little story playing itself out in microcosm, in between the other captured criminals and rescued cats.

  "Spoke with Warden Holt today," reads an entry from six months after Shrike's incarceration. "She claims resource allocation decisions are made 'above her pay grade.' When pressed about the abandoned rehabilitation protocols, she suggested I 'focus on catching criminals, not coddling them.' This attitude is precisely why recidivism rates remain high. Bitch."

  I flip through more pages, finding Belle's meticulous documentation of other cases, other villains. But she returns to Shrike periodically, checking on his status, noting the deterioration of conditions at Daedalus, recording her growing concerns about the facility.

  "Visited Daedalus today for a case consult," she wrote in early 2014. "Security protocols have increased, but actual rehabilitation services have decreased. The focus is entirely on containment, not correction. When I raised this with Director Simmons, he asked why I care about 'reforming monsters.' His exact words."

  "The current approach to powered incarceration is creating a pressure cooker," she noted after another Daedalus visit a year later. "Individuals who might have been rehabilitated are instead being hardened by the environment. Worse, they're forming connections and hierarchies that never would have existed outside. We're essentially creating a university for supervillains and calling it justice."

  I take a second to swallow.

  The next notebook shifts focus to other cases, but Belle's concern about the prison system remains a thread throughout her investigations. She documents multiple attempts to advocate for better rehabilitation programs, reaching out to officials, trying to leverage her growing reputation as Liberty Belle to influence policy.

  Most of her efforts hit brick walls. The responses she records are depressingly similar - budget constraints, security priorities, "tough on crime" political posturing. One Department of Corrections official even told her, "If they're in Daedalus, they're never getting out anyway. Why waste resources?"

  I check the time - almost 7 PM. Mom and Dad will be home soon, and I've barely scratched the surface of Belle's notebooks. But already I'm seeing her in a new light. My brain is churning, thinking.

  The front door opens downstairs, and I hear Dad's voice calling out. "Sam? You home?"

  "Up here!" I call back, hurriedly gathering the notebooks and returning them to the box. I want more time with them before I bring up the digitization idea with Mom. I need to understand what I'm dealing with first.

  As I replace the lid, my eyes catch a notation on one of the later notebooks - a tab marked "Daedalus Contractors." My curiosity spikes, but Dad's footsteps are already on the stairs. I shove the box under my bed, making a mental note to check that section later tonight.

  "Hey," Dad says, appearing in my doorway. He's using a cane now instead of the wheelchair, which is progress. "How was the library? Your mom said you've been reassigned to the dungeon." His eyes twinkle with amusement.

  "Archive room," I correct him. "And it's actually pretty interesting. They have all this historical stuff about powered people in Philadelphia."

  "Find anything about your old man in there?" he jokes.

  "Not yet, but I'll keep an eye out for 'World's Most Embarrassing Dad,'" I reply, falling easily into familiar banter. "I'll be down in a few."

  After he leaves, I pull the box back out and quickly flip to the notebook with the "Daedalus Contractors" tab. The section is brief - just a few pages of notes about the companies involved in building and maintaining the prison. Belle seems to have been investigating the facility's structural vulnerabilities, perhaps as part of her ongoing concern about its security and management. Lumina... some other companies that are just lists of last names... And then, there, "Weatherproofing: Horvath-Small ltd."

  Before I can dig deeper, Mom's voice calls up from downstairs. "Sam! Dinner!"

  I reluctantly close the notebook and slide the box back under my bed. Belle's investigation is raising more questions than answers, and now my own family seems to be connected to it somehow. I need to keep reading, to understand what Belle was uncovering. And maybe, just maybe, these notebooks really do belong in an archive where others can learn from them too.

  But dinner first.