Mr. Antithesis studies me for a long moment. I keep my expression neutral, professional, but my heart is racing because private conversations with Upper Management are rare and usually significant.

  “You’re taking this personally,” he says finally.

  It’s not an accusation. Just an observation.

  “A teenager outmaneuvered us,” I reply. “The same teenager, what seems like four or five times now, and only getting smarter about it each time. Yes, I’m taking it personally.”

  “Good. Use that.” He moves slightly closer, still maintaining safe distance. “But don’t let it make you sloppy. The Kingdom exists because we bring rational order to an irrational world. We succeed because we think clearly when others are emotional. If you let anger drive your decisions, you’ll make mistakes.”

  “I understand.”

  “Do you?” His head tilts slightly. “Because right now I’m watching you process this as a failure that requires immediate correction. That’s the wrong framework. This is a setback. One tactical loss in an ongoing strategic competition. We adapt, we respond, we move forward.”

  He’s not angry. That’s what’s throwing me. He should be angry. I let a teenage vigilante compromise our operations, cost us a senior lieutenant’s powers, and expose our disposal protocols. That merits anger. That merits consequences.

  Instead he’s giving me analysis and strategic guidance like this is a business school case study.

  “I’m not blaming you, Mrs. Zenith,” he continues, and somehow that’s worse than if he were. “You couldn’t have predicted Rogue Wave’s extraction capability. You couldn’t have known Bloodhound would coordinate between multiple adversarial parties. These are novel threats requiring novel responses. That’s why I’m here - to ensure we develop those responses appropriately.”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Seventy-two hours. Comprehensive plan. Multiple options.” He walks toward the door, pauses with his hand on the handle. “And Maya? Sleep on it before you finalize anything. Your best thinking won’t happen tonight while you’re still angry.”

  Then he’s gone, and I’m alone in the warehouse with my thoughts and this awful restless energy that has nowhere to go.

  He’s right, of course. I’m angry. I’m furious. A sixteen-year-old just demonstrated she can outthink, outmaneuver, and out-strategize a professional criminal organization.

  And nobody’s going to yell at me about it. Nobody’s going to demand answers or threaten consequences or give me that clear hierarchy of conflict and resolution.

  Just: Here’s the problem. Develop a solution. Be creative.

  I hate how much sense it makes. I hate that I can’t argue with it. I hate that the anger has nowhere productive to go except into planning.

  I drive home on autopilot, my mind already cycling through options. Sleep on it, Antithesis said. Good advice. Professional advice. The kind of advice I’d give someone else.

  I’m not going to sleep.

  Back in my Center City apartment, I pour myself two fingers of whiskey and sit at my dining room table with a legal pad and three different burner phones. Old school planning. Writing things down helps me think, and writing on paper means there’s no digital trail.

  Option 1: Direct Legal Pressure

  I start with the obvious. Rachel Small works for the Philadelphia Free Library system. Budget cuts happen all the time. Restructuring. Downsizing. Her position could become “redundant.” Nothing personal, just municipal efficiency.

  Ben Small does city planning. Permits get delayed. Projects get complicated. Zoning becomes a nightmare. Not enough to ruin him, just enough to make his life difficult. Enough that he comes home stressed, starts noticing his daughter’s extracurriculars are causing problems.

  Tacony Charter Academy High. A few well-placed complaints from “concerned parents” about safety. Some questions about liability. Maybe an anonymous tip to the school board about students engaging in dangerous activities.

  I write it all down, pros and cons in neat columns.

  Pros: Low risk, high deniability, uses legitimate systems

  Cons: Slow, indirect, might not connect to Sam in her mind

  That’s the problem. This assumes Sam thinks strategically about consequences to her family. What if she doesn’t? What if pressure on her parents just makes her more committed, more protective?

  The market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.

  I take a drink and move on.

  Option 2: Isolate the Support Network

  The Auditors. That’s what they call themselves. Cute. Five teenagers playing vigilante, each one with their own pressure points.

  I write faster now, the ideas flowing.

  Pros: Surgical, targeted, breaks up the team

  Cons: Requires multiple simultaneous operations, could backfire if it strengthens their bonds

  This novel is published on a different platform. Support the original author by finding the official source.

  That’s the problem with going after teenagers. They’re tribal. Attack one, the others rally. Create external pressure, they dig in together. Basic adolescent psychology.

  Unless I make them blame each other. Unless I make it look like one of them is the weak link, the liability. Create internal division rather than external pressure.

  That’s more complicated. Requires better intelligence on their group dynamics. Might take too long.

  I move on.

  Option 3: Economic Warfare

  The Auditors operate on limited resources. Sam’s family is comfortable but not wealthy. She’s funding her vigilante activities somehow - probably stealing equipment, repurposing stolen goods, operating on a shoestring budget.

  What if that budget got tighter? What if every piece of equipment she tried to acquire disappeared before she could get it? What if her fences stopped dealing with her? What if the black market dried up?

  I could make it expensive to be Bloodhound. Not dangerous. Just expensive. Drain her resources until being a vigilante becomes financially unsustainable.

  Pros: Indirect, hard to trace back to Kingdom

  Cons: Slow, assumes she’s operating rationally about costs

  There’s that word again. Rationally. Assumes she thinks like someone doing cost-benefit analysis. Assumes she’ll stop when it gets too expensive.

  But what if she doesn’t care about the cost? What if she just finds cheaper, more desperate methods? What if economic pressure makes her sloppier, more dangerous, more likely to take stupid risks?

  The whiskey’s gone. I pour another two fingers.

  I’m writing faster now, barely pausing between options. The anger is sharpening into focus, into purpose.

  Option 6: Garbage Day Round Two

  He failed the first time because he went in loud and stupid. Frontal assault on a historic building, didn’t take into account their security measures, got sloppy. We let Davis control the narrative and it’s backfiring now.

  But Garbage Day has skills. He’s good at what he does when he’s not being an idiot about it. What if we used him properly? Surveillance first. Learn her patterns. Find her vulnerabilities. Wait for the perfect moment when she’s isolated, tired, vulnerable.

  Then extraction. Clean. Professional. No witnesses. No evidence. She just… disappears for a while. Long enough to scare her. Long enough to make her understand she’s not untouchable.

  Not permanent. Just temporary. A message.

  Pros: Direct, sends clear signal, removes problem temporarily

  Cons: High risk if it fails again, creates martyr if exposed, escalates to direct violence

  I cross this one out. Too messy. Too likely to go wrong. Garbage Day’s already proven he can’t handle this target without fucking it up. I write an arrow pointing it into a column I label “Last Resorts”.

  Option 9: Family Pressure

  Not hurting them. Not yet. But making them worry? Making them scared enough to put pressure on Sam themselves?

  A few close calls. Some near-misses that aren’t quite close enough to investigate but close enough to notice. Rachel’s car gets broken into - nothing taken, just rifled through. Ben’s office gets vandalized - just property damage, nothing serious. Maybe bring in Victor again. I never followed up on that. How’d that go? I’ll have to investigate.

  Create ambient fear. Make the family understand that Sam’s activities are putting them in danger. Let parental protection instincts do the work.

  Pros: Indirect, uses family dynamics against her, might actually work

  Cons: Risks making her more committed, could trigger retaliation, requires careful calibration

  I drink. Stare at the page. The anger is still there but it’s transmuted into something colder, more calculated.

  None of these are right. They’re all too conventional, too predictable. Antithesis said be creative. These aren’t creative. These are just variations on standard plays.

  What makes Sam Small different? What makes her dangerous?

  She’s unpredictable. She doesn’t follow normal cost-benefit analysis. She weaponizes systems against each other. She operates without apparent regard for consequences.

  And she’s protected by her age, her civilian identity, her lack of formal power. She’s a ghost. Hard to pin down, hard to target directly, hard to definitively prove anything against.

  I flip to a new page on the legal pad.

  Option 10: Frame Job

  We have assets who can make her look guilty of anything. Stage a crime, have witnesses, physical evidence. But that’s high-risk - if the impersonation gets caught, it traces back to us. And depending on who we use, it might not be perfect enough to stand up to scrutiny.

  But the idea is still seductive. Unauthorized vigilante activity. That’s the charge. Operating without Argus Corps oversight. Using metahuman abilities without proper registration. Endangering civilians through reckless behavior.

  Argus Corps would have to respond. They’re the authorized superhuman law enforcement. If Bloodhound is caught committing crimes, they’ll come down hard. Doesn’t matter if Sam protests her innocence - the evidence will be there. Witnesses. Video footage. Physical evidence at the scene.

  It forces her onto the defensive. Makes her prove a negative. Makes every future action suspect because “how do we know it’s really Bloodhound and not another frame job?”

  It uses legitimate institutions against her - Argus Corps, the legal system, public opinion. It’s surgical. It’s deniable. And it exploits her biggest weakness: her need to maintain a civilian identity.

  Pros: Uses legitimate authorities, surgical precision, deniable

  Cons: Expensive, requires perfect execution, if it fails we’re exposed

  I stare at the page. Read through the logic again. Look for holes.

  The exposure risk if it fails… that’s the big one. But we insulate. Another lieutenant getting captured. One of Upper Management’s favorite 25. And what if she just doubles down as a fugitive? She’s a stupid fucking teenager. If she acted in response to rational pressure systems we wouldn’t be in this shitshow.

  I flip back through all my other options. The legal pressure. The economic warfare. The information campaigns. The proxy conflicts. All of them too slow, too indirect, too easy to counter or ignore. Every solution has a flaw.

  I check my watch: 2:47 AM. I’ve been at this for nearly four hours. The whiskey bottle is half empty. My legal pad is covered in crossed-out plans and spiral logic. I’ll need to stitch these ideas together. Figure out something better than the semi drunken slop. This is brainstorming, a rough draft. Keep it together, Maya.

  I pull out my Kingdom burner. Tab through the contacts.

  Mrs. D.

  Professional. Discreet. Expensive. Perfect.

  I take a breath. Consider for exactly three seconds whether this is the right move. Decide that I’ve already spent four hours considering and I’m not going to second-guess myself now. We're not going to hammer things out yet, but I want her in the neighborhood. She's gotta come here on loan from Boston. So. Calling.

  The call connects on the second ring. Professional work hours aren’t a thing in our line of business.

  “Mrs. Z. To what do I owe the pleasure?”

  She hangs up.

  I sit there for a long moment, phone still in my hand, staring at nothing.

  I finish the whiskey, close the legal pad, and finally let myself feel something other than anger.

  Satisfaction. Exhaustion. Tiredness. Buzz wearing off.

  Tomorrow, I'm going to get up with a slight hangover, look over the paper, and start pinning things on my corkboard. No. First, I'll take a shower. Then, I'll start corkboarding. The next day, I'll have a proposal ready for Mr. Antithesis.

  Everything before this has been throwing stones to scare wild animals. Something I can do with free time and spare resources to handle a low-cost, low-threat teenager. But if she wants the hunting rifle, I'll get the hunting rifle. I'll get my friends. We'll take our cabin for the season.

  Sam Small wants to play games with the grown-ups? Sure, kid. Let's see how you handle a real plan.