The scanner crackles from Maxwell's laptop—he's had it running in a background window this whole time, volume low. I catch fragments: "...altercation on Frankford Ave... group of six, blue jackets... subject with powers fled the scene..."

  "Songbirds," Tasha says flatly from the TV.

  "Sounds like." Maxwell pulls up the scanner window, turns up the volume. More chatter - officers responding, no injuries reported, witnesses describing a confrontation between "concerned citizens" and a teenager who "started glowing" before running. The Songbirds are claiming self-defense. They always claim self-defense.

  "Kid's probably terrified," I mutter. "Some jackass with a concealed carry gets in your face about being a menace to society, you panic, your powers flare, and suddenly you're the threat they were warning everyone about."

  "Self-fulfilling prophecy," Tasha says. "That's the whole point. Provoke a reaction, film it, prove that powered people are dangerous."

  I want to go find that kid. I want to track them down before the cops do, before the Songbirds post their footage online, before another teenager gets fed into the system for the crime of being scared in public. I want to do something.

  I look down at my ankle monitor.

  "We can't do anything about that right now," Maxwell says quietly. He's watching me, probably reading the impulse on my face. "Titans might pick it up."

  "I'm texting Sundial right now," Tasha says, pulling her phone visibly up into the camera frame.

  "Yeah." I exhale. "Yeah, okay."

  "I'll text Multiplex just in case he has a duplicate nearby, too," Maxwell says. And I know he's probably just saying that to make me feel better (right?) but it doesn't really work.

  The scanner keeps chattering. Another thread I can't pull.

  Jordan texts the group chat: highlights folder done. 43 usable images. drafting inquirer package now. eta 30 min.

  "Okay," I say, trying to refocus. "So. The plan is: Jordan sends the package to the Inquirer, we pass the distribution schedules to the Titans, we keep documenting. And we wait."

  "And we scope the neighborhood," Tasha adds. "Be visible. Let people know they're not alone."

  "Right." I look at the map on Maxwell's screen again. All those red dots. Maya's territory, expanding like a bruise.

  Something's nagging at me. Something about the structure of it - Maya on the rooftop, Alice at the public event, the alibi machine that makes her untouchable. We've been thinking about how to catch Maya. How to prove she's behind the storm, the break-ins, all of it. But you can't catch someone who's never where the crime is happening.

  So maybe--

  "Sam?" Maxwell's looking at me.

  "Nothing." I shake my head. The thought isn't fully formed yet, just a flicker. Not a useful idea yet. "Just thinking."

  Alex stands up slowly, wincing as his ribs remind him they exist. He's got his folder tucked under his arm - the original, not the printouts, those are ours now.

  "I should go," he says. "Before it hits, like, 5 PM. Just so your parents don't get mad at me."

  I'm hearing an unspoken 'because my parents won't', or maybe I'm just hallucinating that. Injecting meaning where it isn't.

  "You need a ride?" Maxwell offers. "I can drive."

  "I can take the bus." He hesitates at the edge of the dining room, looking back at the command center - the laptops, the map, the scattered printouts, Tasha on the TV, Maxwell already grabbing his keys. Alex sees this, and waves his hand a little, so Maxwell puts them back on the table. Probably for the best, given Maxwell's injuries. "This is... you guys do this a lot?"

  "More than we should," I say. "This is the non-glamorous part of superheroing they don't tell you about. It's a lot of 'planning around tables'."

  Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.

  He nods slowly. Processing. I can see him filing it away, fitting it into whatever mental model he's building of what this work actually looks like. Not the warehouse raid. Not the fistfight with Garbage Day. This - the grind of it, the information warfare, the waiting.

  "Thanks," he says. "For... I don't know. Not just yelling at me, I guess. For letting me be here."

  I don't know what to do with that. I was expecting argument, pushback, the same stubbornness that sent him into a burning building alone. Not gratitude.

  "Don't make me regret it," I say, and it comes out softer than I intended.

  "I won't." He means it. I can tell he means it, which doesn't mean he'll actually manage it, but the intention is there. "I'll see you Saturday? For the mentorship thing?"

  "If you're healed enough to move without looking like you're about to cry, sure."

  He smiles a little bit. "Actually, yeah, I have like three hours. I'll go to an urgent care."

  "Atta boy," I reply, trying to give him an injection of confidence to end out on. It comes out weirdly hollow, but he grins anyway like I just gave him heroin instead. Oops?

  And then he's gone, moving stiffly toward the front door, and I hear it open and close behind him.

  "He's going to be okay," Tasha says from the TV. I'm not sure if she's asking or telling.

  "Maybe." I watch Maxwell's map, the red dots pulsing like a slow heartbeat. "I'm going to walk the neighborhood. Check on people."

  "The ankle monitor--" Tasha replies.

  "Doesn't stop me from walking. I already talked about this with Caldwell. Just stops me from doing anything useful once I get there." I grab my coat from the back of a chair. "I'm allowed to go out for a walk."

  "That's not as reassuring as you think it is," Maxwell says, chuckling, but he doesn't try to stop me.

  The snow is melting but it's still cold, that wet January cold that gets into your bones. I take the long way down Frankford Ave, past the businesses that got hit.

  Mr. Pak's grocery store has plywood over one window. He's inside when I pass, restocking shelves, and he looks up when I tap on the glass. I wave. He waves back, then gestures me inside.

  "Sam Small," he says. "You're out."

  "Ankle monitor." I lift my pant leg to show him. "Can't go far."

  He nods like this is normal, which I guess in this neighborhood, maybe it is. "They took the register. And the safe. Knew exactly where it was."

  "I heard. I'm sorry."

  "Insurance says three weeks to process. Three weeks." He shakes his head. "I've been here nineteen years. Never once had a break-in. Now this."

  I don't know what to say that isn't empty. We're working on it sounds like a cop-out. It's going to be okay is probably a lie. So I just help him restock for a few minutes, putting cans on shelves, and we don't talk about the boarded window or the empty space where the register used to be.

  "You need anything?" I ask when I'm leaving. "Groceries, supplies, whatever. I can make runs."

  "I need customers who aren't afraid to come outside after dark," he says. Then, softer: "But thank you. For asking."

  I hit three more places on my walk. Mrs. Adebayo's salon, where the front door lock got smashed and she's been propping it closed with a chair. The laundromat on Harbison where someone kicked in the back entrance and took the coin machine. The check cashing place that was already Kingdom-adjacent - I don't go inside there, just walk past, note that the lights are on and someone's stationed by the door who wasn't there last week.

  Everyone's got the same story. Happened during the blackout. Cops took a report. Insurance is "dealing with it". Haven't heard anything since. Nobody has a name for me, a specific organization that did this, but people are talking now. They know it was a group. Do they know how far down the roots stretch?

  I pass two guys on the corner of Torresdale - not the same ones from last night, different faces, same energy. They watch me walk by. One of them nods, almost friendly.

  "Heard you got tagged," he says, gesturing at my ankle. "Tough break."

  "Yeah."

  "You know where to find us. If you need anything."

  I keep walking.

  This is what occupation looks like. Not tanks and soldiers. Just guys on corners, watching, being seen. Letting everyone know the territory's been claimed. The violence is mostly invisible - it already happened, during the blackout, and now we're in the aftermath. The collection phase. The part where everyone learns the new rules.

  I think about Maya on a rooftop somewhere, watching all this fall into place. I think about Alice at the fundraiser, wearing Maya's face, being Maya's alibi.

  And I think, and I saw that the think was good: the alibi is the weak point. Not Maya. The alibi.

  The thought crystallizes as I'm walking, fully formed now in a way it wasn't in the war room. Maya's untouchable because she's never where the crime is.

  I pass by a group of kids playing basketball. There's a car watching them, two adults, one listening to the radio. Mom and pop, probably. They're talking. They don't look rough and tumble. I spend ten minutes trouncing the kids, just to let my thoughts gelatinize (i.e turn into gel), and then keep moving.

  I could contact Rogue Wave. Tell Rush Order, if you can point me towards Maya with your homing pigeon power while she's doing one of her blizzards, I'll owe you another favor. I'll have to break my ankle monitor or something. Get myself in deep shit. But I could catch her mid-storm... if I could survive walking several city blocks in a blizzard. Can you regenerate from that, Sam Small?

  ...And what would I do if I even found her? How can I prove that she's not just there as a coincidence? Meditating on the roof or whatever it is adults do when they're having a mental episode. No. That wouldn't do anything. I think Maya has a perfect defense. It's, truly, well and truly, impenetrable, at least with the resources I have.

  I feel my own feet grinding to a halt against the pavement as the thought occurs to me. Two Songbirds are visible a block and a corner away, hassling two guys that strike me as probably Kingdom-adjacent. I leave them to it.

  Maya might have a perfect defense. But Alice doesn't.

  I've been thinking about the wrong target this whole time.