The Music Hall looks better than it did in November, which isn't saying much because in November it looked like a disaster zone.

  Maggie and I take the bus from Pennypack Park, both of us still cold despite Alex's portable space heater routine. My toes have that pins-and-needles thing happening where they're trying to remember what warmth feels like. The walk from the bus stop to the Music Hall is only three blocks but it feels longer when there's slush seeping into your socks.

  The building's exterior still looks the same - red brick, old signage, the kind of historical landmark that Philadelphia has dozens of and nobody really notices except when they're giving directions. But the scaffolding is gone from the front, which is progress. The boarded-up window on the second floor is still boarded up, but someone painted it to match the building instead of leaving it raw plywood.

  "Looks better," Maggie says, which is generous.

  "Looks functional," I correct.

  We go in through the back office entrance because the main entrance is still under construction. The hallway smells like fresh paint and sawdust and that particular chemical smell that new carpeting has. Our footsteps echo differently than they used to - the water damage got ripped out and replaced, so the floorboards don't creak in the same spots anymore.

  The first floor lobby used to be where people passed through on their way to the stairwell. There was an office, an "office", but we didn't really use it. Now it's... well, it's trying to be an office. There's a desk someone donated, a couple of filing cabinets, some folding chairs arranged in a circle like a support group. The overhead lights work, which is an improvement. The heating works too, which is a bigger improvement. The plumbing is fixed. The electrical is up to code.

  Everything else is still a work in progress.

  Lily and Amelia are already here, sitting in two of the folding chairs. Tasha's at the desk, laptop open, looking at something that's probably either news or HIRC. She's out of the sling finally - her shoulder healed up over the past six weeks, though she still favors it sometimes when she thinks nobody's watching.

  "Hey," Lily says when we come in. "How'd it go?"

  "Good," Maggie reports. "Jasmine showed her powers. Plant control. Pretty cool."

  "Finally," Amelia says. She's got a notebook open, and I can see it just enough to see it's lists of names, phone numbers, and known haunts. Still trying to track down the guy that busted up the place in the first place. "That's progress."

  "Yeah." I drop into one of the folding chairs, immediately regret it because folding chairs are universally terrible. "She caught Liam when he fell. Like, the plants just moved to protect her and caught him mid-fall. It was actually pretty impressive."

  "Unconscious response?" Tasha asks without looking up from her laptop.

  "Mostly. But she's been watching us teach the others. Learning how to direct it consciously, I think." I stretch out my legs, trying to get feeling back in my toes. "She's making progress. They all are."

  Lily grins. "Look at you being a good teacher."

  "I'm a great teacher," I correct. "Ask anyone."

  "We literally can't, you won't let us observe," Amelia points out.

  "That's for their privacy. Totally different thing."

  Tasha finally looks up. "Davis called earlier. Construction's on schedule. Upper floors should be done by late February, maybe early March. We might be able to use this space for actual meetings by mid-February though."

  I look around the lobby. It's bare bones but it's functional. Better than meeting at my parents' house, which has been the default location since November. Not that my parents mind - Mom especially likes being able to eavesdrop on the mentorship sessions - but it's not exactly private.

  It feels like the first meeting we've really had in forever. Our first time really sitting down and going over the evidence.

  "That's good timing," Lily says. "Jordan wanted to video call tonight, show them the progress. They should be wrapping up finals week."

  "They're still at the library," Tasha adds, checking her phone. "Said they'd call in about twenty minutes."

  Twenty minutes. I can work with that.

  "Anything else happen today?" Amelia asks.

  "My Mom's coalition is meeting next week," I answer. "They're coordinating with groups in New York and Boston. Apparently the Richardson legislation is being proposed in three more states, so they're getting ahead of it."

  My mom the political organizer. It's still weird seeing her in that role, but she's good at it. Really good at it. She's got this whole network of parents now, all of them with powered kids, all of them furious about anti-vigilante laws and school security theater and the constant low-level surveillance.

  "How's Nina doing?" Amelia asks.

  "Good, I think. Mom talks to her more than I do." Which makes sense. Nina's twenty-four, works nights at a bar, lives in a completely different world than high school and mentorship programs. "She's training for a new job. Some admin position Mom's friend set up. Should be able to quit Crescent by end of January."

  "What about the Silverstein stuff?" Maggie asks. "The shell company evidence?"

  I shake my head. "I'm sure we're not the first people to notice. Davis knows, but without a preponderance of evidence he can't convince the DA to do anything."

  "That's frustrating," Lily says.

  "Yeah. Damn civil rights," I mumble.

  It is frustrating. We know Silverstein fast-tracked liquor licenses for Kingdom properties. We know the shell companies that own Crescent donated to his campaign. We know he's corrupt. But knowing isn't the same as proving, and proving isn't the same as getting the DA to care, and getting the DA to care isn't the same as getting charges to stick.

  This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  So the evidence sits in an encrypted file on Jordan's server, and we wait.

  The room goes quiet for a minute. This is the frustrating part - the waiting. We've got leads that go nowhere, evidence we can't use, investigations that stall out. The Kingdom's been quiet since Roxborough. No retaliation for Mr. Polygraph getting arrested, no response to us tracking their enforcer, nothing.

  It should feel like a win. It feels like the quiet before something worse.

  "Mr. Polygraph gets out soon, right?" Maggie asks.

  "Late January," I confirm. "DA couldn't make anything stick beyond minor charges. Two, three months tops."

  "That's bullshit," Lily mutters.

  "It's bullshit because I've seen him shoot a guy in the head. But there's no record of him doing so. So it might as well not exist," I explain, trying not to furrow my face too much.

  At least Rogue Wave got what they wanted. At least he's off the streets for a while.

  Tasha's phone buzzes. "Jordan's calling."

  She props her laptop up on the desk, angles it so the webcam can see most of the room. The video call connects, and Jordan's face appears on screen - they're in what looks like MIT's library, wearing a hoodie I don't recognize, looking tired but happy.

  "Hey," Jordan says, grinning. "Let me see the place."

  Tasha picks up the laptop, does a slow pan around the lobby. The desk, the filing cabinets, the folding chairs, the fresh paint, the new flooring. Jordan watches, nodding.

  "Not bad," they say. "Looks way better than the hole in the floor I remember."

  "Is that in reference to that guy ripping a hole in the floor, or just a general state on the quality of the Music Hall?" I ask.

  Jordan grins without answering, which is its own sort of answer. I look behind them, half-expecting to see Connor. But he's somewhere in Bucks County right now, I think. Not MIT.

  "How's Connor?" Lily asks.

  "Good. Great, actually. He finished his GED last month. Got his scores back yesterday - passed everything, high marks on the math section." Jordan's voice does this thing where it goes soft when they talk about Connor. It's kind of gross but also kind of sweet. "He's applying to community colleges now. Thinking about trade programs, maybe electrician or plumbing. Maybe BCCC."

  "That's great," Amelia says, and means it.

  It is great. Connor spent most of his life in the foster system, then got recruited into a supervillain gang, then betrayed that gang to help us. Now he's getting his GED and applying to college and living a normal life. That's about as happy an ending as you get in this business.

  "How are finals?" I ask.

  Jordan groans. "Fine. Brutal. I have one more tomorrow and then I'm done. Computer architecture. I've been living in this library for seventy-two hours."

  "You should sleep," Maggie says, sounding concerned.

  "I will. After the final." Jordan leans back in their chair, rubbing their eyes. "How's the mentorship thing going?"

  "Good," I report. "Jasmine finally showed her powers today. Plant control. She's been watching and learning even though she hasn't been participating."

  "That's progress."

  "Yeah."

  We talk for a few more minutes about nothing important. Jordan tells us about their classes, about the project they're working on for some robotics lab, about how MIT's cafeteria is surprisingly good. We tell them about the mentorship program, about the Music Hall repairs, about how quiet everything's been lately. They say they'd love to tell me about what they're up to at DAAS but it's Literally Classified and they can't afford to get their scholarship revoked or go to jail.

  But it's nice to hear from them. I miss them.

  Eventually Jordan has to go - the library closes in an hour and they need to study more before tomorrow's final. We say goodbye, the video call ends, and the lobby feels quieter without their face on the screen.

  "I miss them," Lily says after a moment. "Even if we didn't interact that much."

  "Yeah," I agree.

  The thing about Jordan leaving is that it was the right choice. Full scholarship to MIT, internship with some government science division, actual future prospects. But it also means the Auditors are down a founding member, and the team feels different without them.

  Better in some ways - Maggie's stepped up, Lily's taken on more leadership responsibilities, I've gotten better at making decisions without deferring to Jordan's tactical genius. But also worse, because some problems I used to bounce off Jordan, and now I'm just bouncing them off my own skull until they make sense or give me a headache.

  Usually both.

  "So," Tasha says, closing her laptop, the dark from the outside creeping in through the non-boarded windows. A family-sized tub of Wawa mac & cheese sits comfortably on a little fold-out table we've dragged out into the first floor lobby. I have a bunch slopped onto a paper plate in front of me. And Old Bay is there, my old friend. "Have you heard the news?"

  "In general? Yes. But you're clearly referring to something specific, so tell me," I reply.

  Tasha rolls her eyes at me. "About Vysera? And the hearings about the Daedalus break-in?"

  "What about it?" Maggie asks, leaning in close.

  "You are going to need to be more specific," Amelia adds. "Don't string us along."

  Tasha sighs. "Daedalus is designed for powered prisoners. Heavy security, isolation protocols, the works. But it's expensive and there's only seven facilities like that in the US." Tasha pulls up something on her laptop. "So Congress is floating the idea of using Vysera to de-power prisoners temporarily. Let them serve time in regular prisons instead of specialized facilities."

  "That's what Derek's using," I muse, more out to myself than anyone else.

  "Right. Except Derek volunteers to take it." Tasha turns the laptop so we can see. "They're pitching mandatory Vysera for powered inmates so that they can be returned to gen-pop while they, uh what's the word. When you de-termite a place." She snaps her fingers impatiently. "Sam?"

  "Fumigate?" I answer.

  "Yeah, while they metaphorically fumigate. Or, well, not mandatory, but..."

  The room goes quiet as everyone reads. Volunteer for regular treatments of Vysera, get returned to a gen pop prison ward instead of Daedalus. Or, keep your powers, but stay in the super-dupermax. Yeah. Some choice.

  "That's..." Amelia starts, then stops. "That feels like a line."

  "It is a line. That's... that's bad. That's not a thing you should do to people," Lily says, sort of folding her hands out in front of her. "I can't really explain--"

  "No, I think we get it intuitively," I add. "It's like getting your powers chemically castrated."

  "But they're criminals," Maggie points out. "I mean, these are people in Daedalus. Murderers, terrorists, the really bad ones. Isn't it safer if they don't have powers?"

  "It feels like a rights thing," Lily half-asks. "Right?"

  "And you don't know if Vysera has bad long-term effects," Tasha quips over top of her laptop.

  "Derek's doing fine," Lily mumbles.

  "Derek's using it three, four times a week. For a few hours each time. Not twenty-four seven for years." I'm leaning forward now, elbows on my knees. "And he has a choice. That's the difference. He can stop taking it whenever he wants."

  "They have a choice, too," Maggie says.

  "Some choice," Amelia mutters under her breath.

  "Do you think it'll, what happens, it's like a bill, right? They have to pass it?" Lily asks.

  Tasha shrugs. "Hard to say. It's got bipartisan support because it's framed as a cost-saving measure. Cheaper than building more Daedalus-style facilities. But there's pushback from civil liberties groups about forced medication."

  "As there should be," I quip.

  "What does your Mom's group think?" Amelia asks me.

  "No idea. I'll ask her." Probably she's against it. Probably the whole coalition is against it. But I'm not sure how much that matters when Congress is looking at budget numbers and security concerns. You can put a lot under the bus for 'national security'.

  I think about the phrase. National security. It makes me think about Illya.

  I hope he's okay. I know he'd love to have some Vysera. Maybe Aurora Springs is looking into it, too? Note to self - look up if they're looking into it.

  We sit with that for a while. The heating system kicks on, warm air flowing through the vents. Outside, it's getting dark. The construction crew must have left for the day - there's no hammering or drilling from upstairs, just the quiet of an old building settling. It's almost six. My parents expect me home for dinner. The tracker bracelet on my wrist itches quietly - I get to do mentorship and investigations as long as I follow the rules. Curfew is one of the rules.

  "I think we have to get going soon. Er, I have to get going. Is that cool with everyone?" I ask, running my hands through my hair.