The drive home takes forty minutes in evening traffic.

  I could take the subway, but after Kensington I needed the quiet. The phase-walker wasn't there - hadn't been for days, according to the pharmacist I talked to. The kid's getting smarter, varying his pattern, never hitting the same area twice in a row. Part of me is relieved. I'm not sure what I would have said to him if I'd found him.

  You're not wrong about the drugs.

  Jett's voice in my head, all afternoon. She's right. He's not wrong. But that doesn't make what he's doing legal, and legal is supposed to matter. That's the whole point of the system we're building - rules that apply to everyone, accountability, structure. If we start making exceptions for the people we agree with, where does it end?

  I don't have an answer. I'm not sure there is one.

  The neighborhood looks the same as always when I pull onto our street. Row homes with little patches of yard, some better maintained than others. The Hendersons have their Christmas lights still up - probably will until March, if last year is any indication. Mrs. Milkovich is walking her ancient beagle, who has been dying for approximately six years and shows no signs of actually doing it.

  Normal street. Normal lives. The thing I'm supposedly protecting.

  Diana's car is in the driveway, which means she beat me home from the clinic. That means it was a quiet day at the clinic, which means... I'm not sure. I feel mixed up, ill-at-ease, like I'm getting my own fear aura thrown right back at me. Something is looming over my shoulder.

  I park behind her and sit for a moment, letting the engine tick as it cools. The scarf is in my bag. The beret too. Captain Devil stays in the car; Andrew Mitchell goes inside.

  The front door is unlocked, which I've asked Diana not to do approximately eight hundred times. She does it anyway. "The neighbors watch out for each other," she always says, which is true, but also not the point.

  "Dad!" Destiny hits me at knee level before I'm fully through the door, her braids flying. She's seven and has decided that running is superior to walking in all circumstances. "Dad, Malik said I couldn't be a superhero because I'm too short, but that's not true, right? There's short superheroes?"

  "Plenty of them," I confirm, scooping her up. She's getting heavy - when did that happen? "Your brother doesn't know everything."

  "I know more than her," Malik calls from the living room, where he's sprawled on the couch with a tablet. Ten years old and already perfecting the dismissive older sibling routine. "She can't even do a cartwheel."

  "Cartwheels aren't a superpower," I point out.

  The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

  "They should be," Destiny says firmly.

  Diana appears from the kitchen, wiping her hands on a towel. She's still in scrubs - light blue, the color of the pediatric ward - and her hair is pulled back in the twist she wears for work. She looks tired, but the good kind of tired. The kind that comes from doing something that matters.

  "You're late," she says, but there's no accusation in it. Just observation.

  "Kensington ran long." I set Destiny down and she immediately sprints toward her brother, probably to continue whatever argument they were having. "The phase-walker's gone to ground. Smart kid."

  "You sound almost proud."

  "Maybe a little." I cross to her, kiss her cheek. She smells like hand sanitizer and something floral - the lotion she uses to combat the constant washing. "How was your day?"

  "Two ear infections, one broken arm, and a very determined four-year-old who tried to convince me he needed a cast even though nothing was wrong with him." She smiles. "The usual. You hungry? There's leftover jollof rice."

  "Starving."

  We eat in the kitchen while the kids argue in the living room - something about a show they both want to watch and can't agree on. Normal domestic chaos. The kind of background noise that used to drive me crazy and now feels like music.

  Diana tells me about the four-year-old and his imaginary injury, which turns out to be a longer and funnier story than her summary suggested. I tell her about the ribbon-cutting Jett had to attend, leaving out the parts about stolen phones and secret investigations and the growing certainty that my boss's boss is a crime lord. Or that my boss is a crime lord. Maybe.

  There are things Diana knows about my work and things she doesn't. She knows it's dangerous. She knows I've done things I can't talk about. She knows that some nights I come home and can't sleep, and she doesn't ask why, just stays awake with me until the weight gets lighter.

  "You're thinking too loud," Diana says, breaking into my thoughts. "I can hear it from here. Mr. Dark Hero of Justice," she teases, poking me in the chest with enough force that it almost sends me stumbling.

  "Sorry. Long day," I mumble back.

  "Mm-hmm." She studies me with the same look she uses on patients who claim nothing's wrong. "Anything you want to talk about?"

  I consider it. The Tremont & Fairfax dead end. Patriot's weather reports. The phase-walker I couldn't find and wasn't sure I wanted to. The slow-building weight of a choice I haven't made yet but can feel approaching.

  "Not tonight," I say. "Tonight I just want to be home."

  She reaches across the table and squeezes my hand. "Then be home."

  Later, after the kids are in bed and the house is quiet, I stand at Malik's door and watch him sleep. He's got his tablet tucked under his pillow, which he thinks I don't know about. I let him keep it. Some battles aren't worth fighting.

  He looks like Diana when he sleeps. Same set to his jaw, same way his brow furrows slightly like he's working through a problem even in dreams. Destiny takes after my side - same stubborn chin, same way she sprawls across the entire bed like she's claiming territory.

  These are the people I'm protecting. Not the abstract public, not the citizens of Philadelphia, not the system or the mission or any of the words we use in briefings. These specific people, in this specific house, living lives that depend on me coming home every night.

  Ten years ago, a bear ran me down in the Pine Barrens. I made a choice about what to do with what came after.

  Now I'm making another choice, slower and less dramatic but just as important. The kind of choice that doesn't happen all at once but accumulates, day by day, decision by decision, until one morning you wake up and realize you've already decided.

  I close Malik's door softly and head to bed. Diana is already asleep, curled on her side of the mattress, leaving space for me.

  I'm going to figure this out. I'm going to find the truth. Even if I have to wring the answers out of Maya myself.

  Non-violently, of course.

  Too alarmin' now to talk about

  Take your pictures down and shake it out

  Truth or consequence, say it aloud

  Use that evidence, race it around

  There goes my hero

  Watch him as he goes

  There goes my hero

  He's ordinary