The dining room table becomes command central. Maxwell's laptop is open, his GIS map from yesterday still up, little red dots marking every Kingdom sighting we logged before the storm hit. There's a lot more red now. Tasha's on the TV via some streaming app I've never heard of, propped up on her couch with her shoulder in a sling and her good hand holding her phone so she can pull up references. Alex is sitting at the far end of the table with his folder of evidence, the one he stole from that car three weeks ago, and he's being very quiet.

  I'm standing because I can't sit still.

  "Okay," I say, pulling my phone out. "Let me get Jordan on."

  It takes three rings. Jordan's face appears in a little rectangle, their dorm room visible behind them - posters I don't recognize, a desk covered in papers, Connor's arm visible at the edge of frame. "Hey. I've got about forty minutes before my study group, so let's make this fast. What am I looking at?"

  "Alex got photos from a Kingdom warehouse last night," I say. "Territory maps, payment ledgers, distribution schedules. Physical evidence of the protection racket."

  "The warehouse he burned down," Jordan clarifies.

  "The warehouse that caught fire, but did not burn down, because the firefighters arrived quickly enough that it was contained," I correct, glancing at Alex. He doesn't react. "Most of the originals are gone but we've got digital copies. I need you to sort through and figure out what's actually usable versus what's, like, wrong angles and blurry timestamps."

  "Send me the folder."

  I airdrop the photos to the shared drive. It takes almost a full minute - Alex wasn't kidding about having a lot of them. While we wait, Maxwell pulls up something on his laptop.

  "I've been cross-referencing the break-in locations with the territory map we built yesterday," he says. "Every single one of the fifteen - sixteen now, there was another one reported this morning - falls inside the grid pattern we identified. Commercial corridors, not residential. They're hitting businesses, not homes. No protection rackets on the personal, even people who didn't take the snowplow offer."

  "Because businesses pay protection money," Tasha says from the TV. "Homes don't. This isn't random looting, it's establishing a revenue base."

  "It's a land grab," I say. "Maya's consolidating. She used the storm as cover to hit every business in her expansion zone at once, and now she's got sixteen new potential clients who just learned what happens when you're not paying anyone for protection."

  "The snow's melting," Maxwell says. "Forecast says clear skies for the next week. She's not going to be able to pull another blizzard without it looking suspicious."

  "She doesn't need to." Tasha shifts on her couch, winces. "The damage is done. Sixteen businesses just got robbed during a blackout while the cops were busy with weather emergencies. The message is already sent. Now she just has to send collectors."

  I think about the dealer on the corner, the way he looked at my ankle monitor. The way he said I could find him if I needed to.

  "The police scanner's still going," I say. "It's not just the break-ins. There's been - what, three fights reported since this morning? Someone got jumped on Magee Ave. And that's just what's getting called in."

  "Kingdom's establishing presence," Maxwell says. "The break-ins were the shock, this is the awe. They want everyone to know they're here and they're not leaving."

  Alex clears his throat. We all look at him.

  "The warehouse," he says carefully, "had goods from all fifteen break-ins. Labeled by source. That means they've got a central collection point, and they're organized enough to track inventory. This isn't just guys grabbing stuff opportunistically. There's infrastructure."

  "Good catch," Maxwell says, and I watch Alex's shoulders tighten slightly. Not relax - tighten. Like he's bracing for something.

  "What else was in the warehouse?" I ask. I haven't actually gotten the full scope from him yet. Too busy browbeating him. Guh.

  Alex points to an innocuous printer - the one that I promise has been there the whole time but I've never had to think about until now - in the space right up against the edge/corner of the living room. One by one, it is shitting out papers from Alex's phone. "Distribution schedules for the next two weeks. Territory assignments. There's a rotation - different crews covering different blocks on different days. And payment records going back at least a month. Some businesses were already paying before the storm."

  "So the storm wasn't the start," Tasha says slowly. "It was the escalation. They were already running protection in parts of the neighborhood. The blizzard let them expand to everywhere else at once."

  I look at Maxwell's map. The red dots from yesterday - the Kingdom operatives we spotted during my walk with Melissa and Isaiah - cluster in a pattern I didn't see before. They weren't random. They were marking the perimeter of territory they already controlled.

  "The fifteen break-ins are the new territory," I say. "Everything inside that perimeter was already theirs. We just didn't know it."

  "Jordan?" I ask my phone.

  "Still loading," Jordan says. "You sent me like two hundred photos, give me a minute. But based on what I'm hearing - yeah, this tracks. Classic expansion pattern. You secure your core, then you use a crisis to grab everything adjacent before anyone can respond. By the time things stabilize, it's already done."

  My phone buzzes. Text from Lily in the group chat: hey just checking in. we're back in bridesburg, stopped two attempted break-ins last night before maggie had to go home. amelia's whip is REALLY good btw

  If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.

  I frown at my phone. Type back: new whip?

  Lily: we'll show you later!

  Maggie: we also helped iwth like blizzard control!

  Maggie: being a superhero is more than just punching people

  Amelia: :)

  "Auditors South reporting in," I say to the room. "Lily, Maggie, and Amelia were covering Bridesburg last night. Stopped two break-ins. So Kingdom was hitting outside Maya's district too, or at least trying to."

  "Testing boundaries," Maxwell says. "Seeing how far they can push while everyone's distracted."

  "The Titans?"

  "Stretched thin," Tasha says. "I talked to Sundial this morning. They've been running all night. She sounded exhausted. They're covering what they can but there's too much ground and not enough people."

  I start pacing. Three steps toward the kitchen, three steps back. My ankle monitor is heavy and I keep catching myself looking down at it, like if I stare hard enough it'll disappear.

  "Okay," I say. "So. What do we actually do with this?"

  Silence.

  "The photos go to the Inquirer," Tasha says. "Same channel we used before. Let them verify, let them publish. Public pressure."

  "That takes time. The Inquirer took three days to run the last story."

  "It also works," she says. "The financial crimes piece got real attention. People are paying attention to the Kingdom now. More pressure means more scrutiny means it's harder for Maya to operate openly."

  "But it doesn't stop the guys on the corner tonight," I say. "It doesn't stop the collectors who are going to show up at those sixteen businesses tomorrow and say hey, sorry about your break-in, that's a real shame, you know what would prevent that from happening again?"

  "We could tip the DVDs," Maxwell offers. "Davis gave you that number."

  "With evidence I obtained how? 'Hi, anonymous tip line, I have detailed photos of Kingdom operations that a sixteen-year-old vigilante took while committing arson.'" I shake my head. "Chain of custody is fucked. And even if they wanted to act on it, the cops in Maya's district are--"

  "Probably compromised," Tasha finishes. "And we can't know which ones, which means strategically, we have to act as if all of them are."

  "We could give it to the affected businesses directly," I say. "Let them know they're being targeted, that it's coordinated, that they're not alone--"

  "And then what?" Maxwell interrupts gently. "They know they're being targeted. What do they do with that information? Form a militia? Call the cops who might be on Kingdom payroll? All you'd be doing is painting targets on them for retaliation."

  He's right. I hate that he's right.

  "The Inquirer," Tasha says again. "I know it's slow. But it's the lever we have that doesn't get anyone killed. Send them the photos, send them the context, let them do the verification legwork. Meanwhile we keep documenting, keep watching. The weather's clear for a week. Maya can't pull another blizzard. That gives us time."

  "Time for what?"

  "For the story to hit. For political pressure to build. For Maya to make a mistake we can actually catch her on," Tasha replies. "And time to scope the neighborhood. Let people know not that they're being targeted but that there's people on their side. That we protect us, even if the cops and the feds won't."

  "You sound like a regular civil rights activist," Maxwell quips.

  Tasha raises a blistering eyebrow. "Are you saying that because I'm black?"

  For the first time in probably his entire life, Maxwell looks totally caught off guard. Alex is clearly stifling a laugh but also looks like he's about to shit his pants. Related? Can't tell.

  Also, wait, what? Now I let myself start laughing. The whole room takes a second to collect it's breath after a wave of titters rides through us like the common cold.

  "Okay, back to business," I mumble. I stop pacing. Look at the map on Maxwell's screen, all those red dots spreading like a rash across Northeast Philadelphia. Look at Alex, who hasn't said anything in five minutes, who's staring at Maxwell's hands on the keyboard with an expression I can't quite read.

  "There's something else," I say slowly. "The blizzard. Maya used her powers - that's a huge expenditure, a huge risk. Weather manipulation is already legally complicated, and she had to coordinate fifteen simultaneous break-ins with a power outage window while maintaining an alibi in Center City. That's... that's a lot. That's not something you do opportunistically. I don't know how her power works but I think if she could do this at any time she would've already. Maybe while I was a fugitive. Would've been better."

  "You think there's something else," Tasha says. "Something we haven't found."

  "Fifteen break-ins is loud. It's visible. What if that's the point? What if we're supposed to be looking at the break-ins while something else happened during the blackout that we haven't noticed yet?" I ask, running a hand through my hair.

  Maxwell starts typing. "I can pull the scanner logs from last night, cross-reference with the outage window. See if anything got called in that didn't make the news."

  "Do it."

  Jordan's voice crackles from my phone. "Okay, I've got the photos sorted. About forty of them are actually usable - clear shots of documents, ledgers, maps. The rest are garbage. I'm putting the good ones in a highlights folder. You want me to draft something for the Inquirer?"

  "Yes. Timeline, context, the pattern we've identified. Make it easy for them to verify."

  "On it. Twenty minutes." Jordan's rectangle disappears.

  I look at Alex again. He's been quiet this whole time, and I realize I've been waiting for him to interject, to argue, to push back against the slow careful approach we're taking. He doesn't. He's just watching, and there's something in his expression - not fear exactly, not quite intimidation. More like someone who walked into a room expecting a fistfight and found a chess tournament instead.

  Good, I think. And then: that's not fair.

  "Alex," I say. "The distribution schedules you photographed. Is there anything in there about what's happening tonight? Specific assignments?"

  He blinks, looks down at his folder. Flips through pages. "Uh. Yeah. There's a crew assigned to Torresdale Ave from eight to midnight. Three guys, rotating from a car parked near the Wawa."

  "That's useful," Maxwell says. "That's actionable."

  "Not for us," I say firmly. "Not tonight. We're documenting, not engaging." I look at Alex. "That's intel we can pass to the Titans. Let them decide what to do with it."

  Alex nods. Doesn't argue.

  My parents' footsteps creak on the stairs. Dad appears in the doorway, coffee mug in hand, surveying the command center we've built in his dining room.

  "How's it going?" he asks carefully.

  "We're figuring out what to do with Alex's evidence," I say. "Sending it to the Inquirer. Coordinating with the Titans."

  "Coordinating," Dad repeats. "From here. From this table."

  "Yes."

  He takes a sip of coffee. "And the ankle monitor?"

  "Still attached."

  "Good." He looks at Maxwell, at Alex, at Tasha on the TV screen. "You know the rules, Sam. You're benched until that thing comes off. And realistically--"

  "I know."

  "--you should be benched forever, if your mother and I were the kind of parents who could actually make that stick." He sighs. "But we're not. So just... be smart. Please."

  "I'm being smart," I say. "This is me being smart. Sitting at a table, making phone calls, not punching anyone."

  "Yet," Dad mutters, but he retreats back upstairs. I don't know exactly what's in his voice - it's the same combination of emotions from before, the complicated one, made out of too many adult emotions. What is it, exactly? I keep trying to place it, like remembering an unfamiliar taste.

  I turn back to the table. Maxwell's pulling up scanner logs. Tasha's making notes on her phone. Alex is still holding his folder, still quiet, still watching.

  Resignation? And pride? And sadness... Maybe it's something like this; the uncomfortable emotion of realizing that you are living in history. Maybe? I'll ask later.