I wake up Saturday morning still wearing yesterday's clothes, tasting copper and dust.

  My phone's clutched in my hand, screen dark. I don't remember falling asleep. Don't remember much after hitting the bed except the blue dot, stationary, mocking.

  Everything hurts. Not the sharp pain of fresh injury - more like someone beat me with a phone book. Ribs ache with every breath. Back's stiff. There's a pounding behind my eyes that might be concussion or might just be stress or might be both. I try to sit up and my core screams at me, so I roll onto my side instead and take it slower.

  The clock says 9:47 AM.

  I tap my phone awake. Seventeen texts in the Auditors group chat, last one from Maggie at 8:23. Three missed calls from Amelia. One text from Mom: Let me know when you're up. No rush.

  And the tracker app, still running, still showing that blue dot in East Falls. I zoom in. Same apartment complex. Same spot. Hasn't moved in - I check the timestamps - fourteen hours.

  Either he lives there or it's a safehouse or he found the tag. Or he's just sleeping off getting chunks bitten out of him. That's a possibility too.

  My mouth tastes like I licked a subway platform. I need to shower. I need to see how bad the damage actually is, now that the adrenaline's worn off and my body's had time to catalog everything wrong with it.

  Standing up is an adventure. The room tilts a little and I have to grab the bedpost, wait for it to pass. Concussion, probably. Not a bad one - I've had worse - but enough that I should probably take it easy. (I won't take it easy. But I should.)

  The hallway's quiet. I can hear Mom and Dad talking downstairs, low voices that stop when I open my door. They know I'm up now.

  Bathroom first. Deal with parents after I've assessed whether I need to hide anything.

  The mirror's not kind, and it's not a designated Mirror Day so I don't stare for very long. There's a bruise blooming across my left cheekbone I don't remember getting. My ribs are a watercolor painting in purple and yellow. The electrical burns from Thursday - god, was that only Thursday? Was it? My days are all scrambled - have faded to angry red welts following the path of least resistance across my skin. There's a cut above my eyebrow that's scabbed over, and when I probe my scalp I find a lump the size of a walnut where my head hit something. The partition wall, probably.

  I check my teeth. All there, no cracks. Small mercies. They will fall out at their normally appointed time.

  The hot water feels like absolution and punishment at once. I watch pink-tinged water circle the drain - some mine, some his, impossible to tell which. My hands are shaking. I notice it when I try to squeeze shampoo into my palm and miss. Hopefully not withdrawal from anything, although G-d, I do need a cigarette. I mean. I don't need one. I don't feel the symptoms of nicotine withdrawal. I just feel anxious, and it would be nicer to not feel like that. I need a cigarette, or anti-anxiety medication. More anti-anxiety medication. Anyway.

  I wash my hair carefully around the lump on my head. Soap everywhere else, watching more dust and dried blood sluice away. The bite wound on my forearm from where I tore into his shoulder has already scabbed over, pink and puckered. My regeneration doing its thing.

  When I get out I can hear my parents' voices more clearly. Not arguing. Just talking. The concerned-parent discussion about how to handle this without pushing me away, probably. They've gotten better at that since therapy started. Better at knowing when to push and when to give me space.

  This is a "give her space" situation. I can tell because when I come downstairs in clean clothes - leggings and an oversized hoodie that hides most of the damage - Mom just looks at me for a long moment before pulling me into a hug that's gentle enough not to hurt.

  "How are you feeling?" she asks.

  "Sore. Tired. I'm okay." It's mostly true.

  Dad's at the table with coffee and his laptop. He closes it when I sit down. "We talked to Mrs. Reynolds this morning. Tasha's home, doing alright. Shoulder's going to be in the sling for a few weeks but no permanent damage."

  "That's good." I should've texted her. Should've checked in. I pull out my phone.

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  "Eat something first," Mom says, already moving toward the kitchen. "When's the last time you had actual food?"

  I try to remember. Lunch yesterday? Before everything went to shit? "I'm not really hungry."

  "Samantha."

  "Fine. Toast or something."

  She makes me eggs and toast anyway. I eat because arguing takes more energy than I have, and because my body probably needs it even if my brain's not interested. Dad watches me eat without comment, which is somehow worse than questions would be.

  "The police called this morning," he says finally. "They want to follow up on your statement. Nothing urgent - they said Monday's fine."

  I nod, swallowing toast that tastes like sawdust. "Okay."

  "Councilman Davis also called. He heard about what happened. Wants to make sure you're alright and talk about the Music Hall." Dad pauses. "He said something about emergency funding for repairs."

  Of course he did. I can at least pretend it's a little silver lining or something, can't I? Maybe this will get some of the money... expedited? Was there insurance that Mr. Feldman gets to collect on now? He has superpower insurance, right? Oh, this is gonna be a huge headache...

  "I should call him," I say.

  "Later," Mom says firmly. "Finish eating. Rest. The world can wait a few hours."

  My phone buzzes. The Auditors group chat.

  Maggie: sam you up yet?

  I type one-handed while shoveling eggs into my mouth with the other.

  Me: yeah just eating. give me like 10 min

  Lily: OH THANK GOD

  Lily: tasha told us what happened but we wanted to hear from you

  Amelia: Take your time. We're not going anywhere.

  Maggie: speak for yourself im climbing the walls

  Maggie: this is BULLSHIT

  Tasha: told you she was fine

  Me: gimme 10. gonna go upstairs. video call?

  Lily: yes

  Maggie: FINALLY

  I finish the eggs faster than I probably should, thank my mom, and escape upstairs with a mumbled promise to take it easy. My room feels smaller than it did yesterday. Safer, maybe. Or just more confining.

  I prop my phone up on my desk and start a video call. Maggie answers first, already talking before the video even connects.

  "--completely fucked up, I swear to god if I see that bandage asshole I'm going to--" She stops when my face appears on screen. "Jesus, Sam. Your face."

  "It's not that bad."

  "It's pretty bad," Lily says, appearing in her own window. She's in her kitchen, the Golden Panda's distinctive red and gold decorations visible behind her. "You look like someone used you for batting practice."

  "Thanks, Lily. Really feeling the love here."

  Amelia joins next, her expression tight with worry. "Tasha explained what happened. Or as much as she knew. You two were researching at the Music Hall and someone just... broke in?"

  "Broke through the door. Literally twisted the metal frame apart like it was aluminum foil." I pull up the tracker app, show them the screen. "But Tasha got a BugTag or something on him before he left. We've been tracking him since."

  "Holy shit," Maggie breathes. "Where is he?"

  "East Falls. Same apartment complex since last night. Either he lives there or it's a safehouse. We're not sure yet."

  Tasha's window pops up last. She's in bed, arm in the sling, looking pale but alert. "Hey."

  "Hey. How's the shoulder?"

  "Hurts like a bitch. Mom gave me the good painkillers though." She holds up a pill bottle. "Vicodin. Making everything floaty."

  "Maybe sit this planning session out then," Amelia says gently.

  "Fuck that. I'm here. Just don't ask me to do math."

  I can't help but smile.

  "Okay, so." I pull up the tracker map again, screen-share it to the call. "This is where he went after leaving the Music Hall. South on Frankford, then northwest toward East Falls. Stopped here around six-thirty last night and hasn't moved since."

  "Could be a trap," Amelia points out. "He knew Tasha hit him with something. Might've found it, left it somewhere to draw us in."

  "Maybe. But he was bleeding pretty bad when he left. I bit chunks out of his shoulder and palm. If he's Kingdom—and he probably is, given the timing—he'd want to get somewhere safe to patch up."

  "The timing's what bothers me," Lily says. "Like, we've been investigating Kingdom stuff for months. Why attack now? What changed?"

  I think about Nina. About Rachel meeting with her, about how we'd been digging into Silverstein's property records right before the attack. About how we'd gotten close to something. About, annoyingly, my grandfather.

  "We got too close to something," I say. "The shell companies owning Crescent, Silverstein fast-tracking licenses... someone noticed we were connecting dots."

  "So they sent a guy to fuck up our base and scare us off." Maggie's jaw is tight. "Didn't work."

  "Yeah, well. Music Hall's still fucked." I rub my eyes, immediately regret it when I hit the bruise on my cheekbone. "Water damage from the broken pipes. We can't use it anymore, not until it's repaired. Which means we don't have a headquarters."

  Silence on the call for a second.

  "Davis will probably parlay this into emergency funding," I continue. "Dad said he called this morning. Probably going to use this whole thing as proof we need proper support, facilities, oversight. Which, like... he's not wrong."

  "But we lose independence," Amelia says quietly.

  "Maybe. I don't know. We need to talk to him." I check the tracker again. Blue dot, stationary. Mocking. "But first I want to figure out what we're doing about this asshole. We have his location. We have a blood trail we can follow. We have something."

  "We have you and Tasha both injured," Amelia counters. "And a guy who throws people around like ragdolls and tears through buildings with his bare hands. We need to be smart about this."

  "I'm always smart about things."

  Four skeptical faces stare back at me through their respective windows.

  "Okay, fine. I'm sometimes smart about things."