"Easy as pie," he cracks. The two of us share an uncomfortable sort of breath laugh. "Now just tell me what, exactly, you plan on doing about it?"

  "The question isn't what we do," I say slowly. "It's what Maya expects us to do."

  Miasma tilts his head slightly. "Standard fugitive playbook. You hide, gather alibi evidence, work through lawyers. Maybe reach out to DVD for official help. Play defense."

  "Right. She's planned for that. The tracker data, the school records, all of it - she knows I have that. She's probably got counter-arguments ready. 'The tracker was hacked.' 'The school covered for her.' Whatever." I'm pacing now, small circles in the cramped basement like a zoo animal. "She thinks I'm going to try to prove my innocence through the system."

  "Are you?"

  "I mean, yeah, eventually. But that's slow. That's months of legal bullshit while I'm either in custody or in hiding." I stop, turn to face him. "And while that's happening, she's won. I'm neutralized. Can't investigate. Can't operate. Can't do anything except wait for lawyers to fight it out."

  "So don't do that."

  "So don't do that," I agree. "She wants me hiding. Scared. Backing down. So I do the opposite."

  Miasma's quiet for a moment. Then: "You understand what you're proposing."

  "I keep operating. Show I'm not scared. Show I'm not stopping." I'm thinking it through as I say it. "Make myself enough of a problem that she has to escalate again. Ideally, in a way that we can grab Alice at the same time."

  "And when she does, we catch her." Miasma nods slowly. "It's not a bad plan. It's also extremely reckless."

  "Yeah, well." I shrug. "That's kind of my thing."

  "You haven't promised your parents you'd stop that sort of thing by now?" he asks, and I can tell it's a genuine question, not him trying to snoop. Have I? He doesn't know.

  "I have."

  "And this wouldn't go against that?" he asks.

  "It would," I reply. I think about that. About how many times I've been told to stop, to back off, to let the adults handle it. About how many times I've gotten hurt and just kept going anyway. Is it just something irreparably wrong with me? "But I can't see any other way of doing this without putting my life on pause for at least like three months. Remaining a fugitive. Losing school time. I don't know. I'm a teenager, for fuck's sake. I shouldn't have to deal with this."

  "You shouldn't, but yet you are. What are you going to do about it?" Miasma challenges.

  "The only way out is through," I recite from some part of me I can't quite recall. "My parents gave me the go ahead. Implicitly. For once in my life they're on my side totally, unflinchingly. I think to them the sooner this is over, the sooner I can get back to preparing for college. And I bet my Mom wants to snub Richardson's nose again. But the difference between me and a normal teenager is I can get back up."

  "That's the operational advantage," Miasma agrees. "But it's also why Maya's miscalculating. She's treating this like standard criminal pressure - threats, violence, legal trouble. Tactics that work on normal people because normal people break under enough stress. But you don't break. You just get more stubborn. Don't look smug, it's not a compliment. It's dangerous. You're going to get yourself and other people killed."

  I go quiet for a minute. "Are you trying to dissuade me? I'm not going to let anyone else die on my watch."

  It feels childish as I say it. Almost... what's the word, like a... fetish? A totem?

  "The opposite. If you're going to be fighting a war you need to fight it with a clean conscience. You owe everything you're throwing away that much. You need to make your peace with the fact that escalation will make her start going after your family in earnest. Your friends. When that doesn't work, random civilians, just to try and get you to stop. And if she's hurt or killed everyone you know and love and you still keep going, they're going to just start hiring snipers," he lectures, intoning it like a grim prayer. "Ask me how I know."

  I don't ask him. I just sit back down on the mattress. I run my hands through my hair. "No. Nobody dies. I'll make sure their attention is on me."

  I don't have a plan on how this is going to happen. But I'm going to.

  He looks at me through the respirator. "You're sixteen. You're good at this, but you're not invincible. Maya has resources you don't. The Kingdom has reach you can't match. This isn't some street gang or Jump dealer. This is organized crime at the institutional level."

  "I know." I do know that. I've known it since I shook Mr. Antithesis's hand in Manhattan and realized I was playing in a game way above my weight class. "But what's the alternative? Hide forever? Turn myself in? Let her win? If I stop... If I stop fighting, they just keep conquering the world dollar by dollar."

  "Some people would say those are the smart options."

  "Yeah, well, some people aren't me." I sit back down. "Look. I get it. This is dangerous. It's probably going to go wrong in ways we can't predict. But staying defensive doesn't work either. She's already inside my head, inside my life. She's got people watching my family, my friends. She's framed me for crimes I didn't commit. Garbage Day almost killed Tasha. I can't just wait for her to decide what happens next. Someone really important to me told me that with great power comes great responsibility--" he laughs at that, "--and someone just as important told me that I can't spend my life reacting. I need to be the bullet, not the vest."

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  Yeah. I know my parents and I had a talk about that exact phrase. I'm aware!

  We look at each other for another uncomfortable minute. "I just can't sit back and watch when I could be doing something. I don't even think it's my powers. I think it's just something wrong with my moral system. Every day people are getting hurt all the time. No more. We can fix things. I refuse to accept either outcome. I refuse!"

  My voice bounces around on the concrete. Miasma's quiet for a long moment. Then he makes that rattling sound again. "You sound like Belle."

  "Is that a compliment or an insult?"

  "Both." He stands up. "She had the same problem. Couldn't let things go. Couldn't back down. Got her killed in the end. She spent her last six months making sure you'd be ready to keep fighting after she was gone." He's gathering his things. "She saw this coming. The Kingdom, Maya, all of it. She knew someone would have to stand up to them eventually, and she picked you. I disagreed with her a lot about it. I didn't think it was a fair thing to do to a child."

  I don't know what to say to that. Liberty Belle's been dead for over a year, but her shadow is still everywhere. Her notebooks. Her equipment. Her enemies. Her mission. When he continues, he sounds like he's trying to be resigned. "You're the only person that I've seen match her particular kind of insanity. Nobody else ever got worked up about trying to take the third option. Not like she did. Always thought she could just out-clever or out-stubborn reality. And nobody else combined that with worrying about all the hungry children. All the injustice."

  I hear him inhale, hard, rough. "It drives me mad, too. It's the poison we get that makes us put on capes and call ourselves 'superheroes'. Caring about the hungry children. We've got the flu."

  I didn't know he knew about me before we had even met. I try to articulate a response, but nothing comes out. All my emotions feel scrambled up inside me like tangled yarn. The thing I want to say is - who says we can't help all the hungry children? Why not? - but it doesn't come out. My throat is dry. I start talking, and a totally different question comes out instead. "Why?"

  "Why?" he repeats back at me.

  "Why help me?" I complete the thought.

  "The generals and politicians that changed the world didn't do it by being the best dismemberers of men. Some were good at it, true, but it wasn't what put them in the history books. Righteous willpower only takes you so far," he lectures, bending down into an uncomfortable looking squat. "Better we do it together smartly than alone stupidly."

  I can just barely see his eyes under his hood. The light in the safehouse bouncing off his black sclera like candles during a power outage. I need to change topics before I start throwing up. "I know friends that can help us. Do you guys have institutional connections to the DVD?" I ask. "Like, Argus Corps."

  "Yeah," Miasma grunts. If he minds me shifting gears, he doesn't show it.

  "Get in contact with Crossroads. If you can do it on the down low, he can help. He's my... I don't know. My walking plan-unfucker. I need to get him a gift basket one day,"

  Very suddenly, very painfully, I feel a swallowing, gnawing pit in my chest. It takes me a second to identify what that emotion is. Guilt? Probably? How much do I even know about Crossroads? Are we just... war buddies? Mutual tools for each other? Miasma's body expresses the clear language of concern, but I don't have time to start randomly crying no matter how much I want to. In through my nose, out through my mouth. I breathe a square breath and shove it back down.

  "And I'm going to try to see if I can rope in Sundial. The main problem we have is that we can't tell what actions will lead to getting Alice's attention, and we don't know what she was doing prior to setting up her photo ops. Both of them would help us figure that out. Crossroads is more important, though," I speak through grit teeth, trying not to throw up.

  "Alright. I can work with that." Miasma's already making plans, I can tell. "I'll handle misdirection from inside Argus Corps. Point them wrong directions. Buy you time. Give me twelve hours to set things up on my end. Make sure my cover's solid, establish communication protocols, reach out to some contacts." He's heading for the stairs.

  Then, he stops at the bottom of the stairs, turns back. "Sam. When this starts, it's going to get bad fast. Maya's going to come at you with everything. You need to be ready for that."

  "I know."

  "Do you?" His voice is serious now. "Because once you kick this hornet's nest, there's no backing down. You commit to this, you're in it until it ends. One way or another."

  I think about that. About what I'm agreeing to. About the fact that I'm sixteen and a fugitive and about to deliberately antagonize a criminal organization that's already tried to kill me multiple times.

  And I think about Liberty Belle, dying in an abandoned refinery because she wouldn't let go. About Tasha with her shoulder dislocated because I kept digging. About my house destroyed because I got too close. About my parents having to watch their daughter run from federal agents in their own front yard.

  About how none of that made me stop.

  "Yeah," I say. "I'm ready."

  "Alright then." He starts up the stairs. "This means war."

  "You already said that."

  "Worth repeating."

  The door closes. The lock clicks. The internal lock engages after a few seconds.

  I'm alone again.

  I sit there for a while, thinking about what we just agreed to. Thinking about how this could go wrong. Thinking about how it probably will go wrong. Thinking about doing it anyway.

  The snow's coming down harder now, fat flakes that stick to my jacket and melt against my face. My breath plumes white in the cold air. I can't feel my toes anymore, which is probably not great, but they'll warm up eventually. Everything's quiet except for the soft whisper of falling snow and the distant sound of traffic on Frankford Avenue.

  I'm standing on a back road in Tacony, somewhere between residential and industrial. Empty lots on one side, row homes with dark windows on the other. The kind of place where nobody looks twice at someone walking alone at night, because people mind their own business around here.

  The winter gear helps. Big coat, hood up, scarf wrapped around the lower half of my face. Generic enough that I could be anyone. Could be a teenager walking home late. Could be someone waiting for a ride. Could be a lot of things.

  I check my watch. Almost time.

  My blood sense picks up the rats in the walls of the nearest building. A few cats prowling through the empty lot, hunting. Someone's dog barking three blocks away. But no people nearby. No cars approaching.

  Good.

  I pull my phone out, check the screen. No new messages. Tracker bracelet is still on my wrist - Mom and Dad can see I'm here, wherever "here" is on their map. They're probably losing their minds. Probably arguing about whether to call the police, call the DVD, call someone.

  A particularly large snowflake hits my face, and I brush it away.