"Okay," I say, once everyone's settled and I've got Tasha and Amelia on speakerphone. "Catch-up time. There's a lot."

  Maggie's still folding chairs, but she stops and looks at me. Lily's leaning against one of the booths, arms crossed. The phone sits on the card table between us, Tasha's breathing audible through the speaker.

  "How bad?" Amelia asks.

  "Not immediate emergency bad. Just... a lot of threads." I pull out my notebook - the one I've been using to track stuff since Liberty Belle's files got too complicated to keep in my head. "First thing: the Songbirds."

  "The what?" Lily asks.

  "New group. They showed up at that Jumphead incident yesterday. Blue jackets, yellow bandanas, filming everything. Bulwark told me they've been deliberately provoking confrontations with powered people, trying to make us look dangerous." I flip through my notes. "They had guns. Concealed carry, but definitely armed. One of them almost shot Bulwark before I... before someone stopped him."

  "Before you threw a rock at him," Maggie says flatly.

  I ignore that. "They're positioning themselves as like, concerned citizens protecting their neighborhoods. But they're also showing up armed to confront teenagers having medical emergencies, so."

  "Do we know anything else about them?" Tasha asks through the phone. "Organization structure, leadership, funding?"

  "Just the name and the uniform. Bulwark said they've been around for a week or two, maybe? But I don't know more than that."

  I hear typing. "I'll dig into it. Cape Watch probably has something, and if they're doing public confrontations there's gotta be news coverage."

  "Second thing," I continue. "The Jump that kid OD'd on yesterday wasn't normal Jump. His blood looked wrong. I remember, uh, Ricochet, he took two different doses of Jump and exploded. I don't think this kid took two doses. He probably just took one. It was orange and fizzy like normal but it felt like water in my blood sense. Too loose. Not coagulating right, and then he had a seizure."

  "Jesus," Lily mutters.

  "Bulwark said the Kingdom's been intercepting Rogue Wave shipments and tampering with them. Modifying the compounds, then releasing them back to street dealers. Third incident this week, apparently."

  "Why?" Maggie asks. "Just to fuck with Rogue Wave?"

  "Gang war tactics. Disrupting their market, making their product unreliable. Also maybe testing compounds - Bulwark mentioned NSRA coordination being inadequate, which makes me think they're collecting data from hospital admissions."

  Amelia's voice comes through the speaker. "So the Kingdom is using random civilians as test subjects for drug modifications."

  "Looks like it."

  There's a pause. Then Tasha says, "That's fucked up even for them."

  "I wonder if the Kingdom has anything to do with Vysera," Maggie pitches.

  I can hear Tasha's disgust over the phone. "I sure as fuck hope not."

  "Third thing," I say, before anyone can dwell on it too long. "I owe Rogue Wave a favor."

  That gets everyone's attention.

  "What kind of favor?" Lily asks carefully.

  "They want help capturing Mr. Polygraph. From the Kingdom. They want to 'de-power him' - I don't know what that means exactly, but they were pretty specific about wanting him." I close my notebook. "In exchange for protecting my family and friends from Shrike and his neo-Nazi followers. Which they're still doing, apparently, even though Shrike's dead."

  "How are they still protecting you from dead Nazis?" Maggie asks.

  "Shrike is dead," I say. "His followers aren't. A lot of them were at the construction site fight. Shrike's people. They didn't just disappear when he died."

  Lily's frowning. "So you made a deal with criminals to protect your family from fascists, and now they want you to help them kidnap another criminal."

  "Basically."

  "And you're bringing this to us instead of just doing it," Amelia says, and there's something in her tone I can't quite read. "That's new."

  "I'm trying to be responsible," I say, a little defensive. "Thought we could talk through it before anyone makes any decisions."

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  "Do we even want to help Rogue Wave?" Maggie asks. "Like, ethics aside, what's the strategic advantage?"

  "They respect us," I say. "Or at least, they respect what we're trying to do. I think they think a world full of people like me is more admirable than a world full of people like... Bulwark, or Multiplex, or Fury Forge. Which is... I don't know if that's a compliment or an insult, but it means they're not actively trying to kill us. I think they like me for giving as good as I get, and they like my Dad for having the balls to shoot Rush Order in the shoulder," I continue. "I think I understand their worldview."

  "Low bar," Lily mutters.

  "They're the sort of people that reach out and take things. When they think the world is wrong, they fix it--" I start.

  "They fix it?" Tasha blurts, incredulous.

  "Let me finish! When they think the world is wrong, they fix it through the means that make sense to them. But I think their diagnosis and their prescription is wrong. They have values and ideology, even if I think their values and ideology are wrong. And they're willing to go through extreme means for their ideology. The Kingdom, on the other hand, is a pure money machine. That's what Mr. Antithesis told me, 'only business passes through this room' or whatever. And I, Sam Small, am someone who sees problems, and I go out and fix them," I explain. "That's what Rogue Wave sees in me."

  Maggie and Lily both stare at me a little bit. It takes a couple of seconds for someone to speak.

  "That makes sense. I don't like it, but it makes sense." Amelia says, to murmurs of agreement.

  "The question is whether we pay this debt now, proactively, or wait for them to call it in," I continue. "Because they will call it in eventually. And I'd rather have some control over when and how that happens."

  Tasha's typing continues in the background. "What do we actually know about Mr. Polygraph? Besides the obvious lie detection thing?"

  "He's high up in the Kingdom. First Kingdom guy I ran into. He's everywhere. He pops up a lot. Seems like he handles personnel and internal security." I pause. "And he executed someone for being a suspected informant. Just shot them in the head during a briefing. This was, uh, back in the Jordan and Spindle days."

  "Lovely," Amelia says dryly.

  "Fourth thing," I say, because we're not done yet. "Someone manipulated my grandfather into coming to Philadelphia to mess with my family. I think it was the Kingdom."

  I explain about the texts, the arranged hotel room, Victor's flip phone with the unknown number. How someone went to significant effort to weaponize a family member my mom's been terrified of for decades.

  Then, I have to explain Victor. That's another weird conversation. It takes half an hour.

  "That's pretty elaborate for psychological warfare," Lily says when I'm done. "And your grandpa sounds like a douchebag."

  "That's what I thought. But it worked - it really fucked with my mom, fucked with all of us. And Victor's pissed about being used, which means he might actually cooperate if we ask him about it."

  "You want to call him," Maggie says. It's not a question.

  "I want to do detective work. Actual detective work, the kind Liberty Belle would do. Trace the number, analyze the timing, see if we can connect it to Kingdom operations." I look around at all of them. "That's not dangerous. That's just... methodical."

  "You had cardiac arrest yesterday," Amelia points out. "Methodical still requires you to be functional."

  "I'm functional enough to make a phone call."

  There's another pause. Then Tasha says, "I think we should prioritize research before action. I can dig into the Songbirds, see what we're actually dealing with. Sam can contact Victor for the text chain. We gather information before we decide what to do about any of this."

  "Agreed," Amelia says. "And we need to talk about the Polygraph thing as a team before Sam commits to anything."

  "I haven't committed to anything," I protest. That's not entirely true. I'm thinking about trying to contact Nina. And I'm thinking about using my grandpa to contact the unknown number back. If they still have the burner, that means I could get them in a position where they and Rogue Wave bump into each other, and not put myself, Victor, or anyone else that's not already a supervillain at personal risk.

  They know who I am. They know I've been a thorn in their side for years.

  But those are just ideas right now. Half-baked ones. I need more information before I know if they're even workable, much less present them to the team. I don't think it's insane to feel like my tactical skills are on less solid ground since Shrike. Is that insane? So I need to think before I talk, for once in my life.

  "Yet," Maggie adds. "You haven't committed yet."

  She's not wrong, but I don't have to like it.

  "Okay," Lily says, taking charge. Something changed in her since Shrike. A little more assertive. I like that, actually. "Research phase. Tasha, you're on Songbirds - find out who they are, what they want, how organized they are. Sam, you call Victor, get those texts, see if we can trace the number. Amelia, can you pull together what we know about Kingdom operations? Locations, known associates, patterns?"

  "I can do that," Amelia confirms.

  "What about me?" Maggie asks.

  "You make sure Sam actually rests instead of immediately running off to investigate something." Lily looks at me. "You're still recovering. You don't get to pretend you're fine just because there's work to do."

  I want to argue, but she's right. My chest still hurts. The Lichtenberg figures are still fading. I'm running on muscle relaxants and spite.

  "Fine," I say. "Research phase. We reconvene when we have actual information."

  "And then we decide together what to do about it," Amelia adds firmly. "No solo operations."

  "No solo operations," I agree, only feeling a little bit like I'm lying.

  Tasha disconnects first, probably already pulling up Cape Watch forums. Amelia hangs up after confirming she'll have her analysis ready by tomorrow. That leaves me and Maggie and Lily in the Music Hall, surrounded by folded chairs and the remains of our mentorship program.

  "You did good tonight," Lily says. "With the kids. And with bringing this to us instead of handling it alone."

  "Character growth," I say, trying for levity.

  "We'll see how long it lasts," Maggie says, but she's smiling.

  I pull out my phone, looking at the blank screen. Thornton Transport. Victor's dispatcher Maeve. A phone call to someone who doesn't experience human connection the way normal people do, asking him to help investigate the criminals who manipulated him.

  "You gonna call now?" Maggie asks.

  "Tomorrow," I say. "I should... I should think about what I'm going to say first."

  Which is true, but also I'm tired and sore and I've done enough responsible decision-making for one day. Tomorrow I'll be a detective. Tonight I just want to go home and sleep in my own bed without worrying about spike traps or neo-Nazis or any of the other things that keep trying to kill me. Small things. One at a time.