"Elena, then." I don't move from my chair. "What are your conditions?"

  She holds up a finger. "First, I need your first aid kit. Bandages, gauze, medical tape. I've got a look I need to put together."

  "A look."

  "My real face isn't something I show to cameras. Or to people, generally." She says it matter-of-factly. No self-pity. "You'll understand when you see it. We have something in common, actually."

  I consider that. "The kit's in the bathroom. Cabinet under the sink."

  "Second condition." Another finger. "Turn around while I change. Maya's boobs are smaller than mine and I need to take my bra off, in addition to not wanting you to see my face."

  I turn my chair to face the window. The storm is still hammering the glass, visibility maybe twenty feet. Behind me, I hear rustling. Fabric. The click of a compact mirror opening.

  "You can record this," she continues, voice slightly muffled - she's pulling something over her head. "In fact, I want you to record it. But it goes to the Inquirer, not your bosses. I want this public. I want everyone to know what's happening. That's condition three."

  "Why the Inquirer specifically?"

  "Because they broke the story this morning. Seems poetic." More rustling. The tear of medical tape. "And because I want the narrative out before anyone can spin it. Raw footage. Unedited. Let people see what they're dealing with."

  "And what are they dealing with?"

  "Rogue Wave," she says. She vanishes into the bathroom - I track her footsteps - and comes back about three minutes later. For a second, I consider that she's going to try and jump out the locked window, or something. I hope! That would be funny. But, no, then she just comes back out. "You can turn around now."

  I turn.

  The woman sitting on the couch is not Maya Richardson anymore. She's shorter - I hadn't noticed before, but Maya's clothes hang differently on her now, rumpled and loose in places they shouldn't be. Her face is wrapped in white gauze, layered carefully to leave only her mouth exposed. The mouth is scarred - pockmarked, uneven, the kind of damage that doesn't heal cleanly even with good medical care. She's applied lipstick, dark red, precise despite the terrain. "Elena Morales. I'm from Boston, too. You can look me up. I've got a history and everything."

  She's holding a pack of cigarettes. Camels. "Mind if I smoke in here?" She asks. "You can have one too, if you want."

  "Go ahead. I'm good," I reply. Her voice is different, too, and her breath. I guess different vocal cord structure. Different accent. I wonder about all the biomechanics involved, sort of idly. Something to look up later. She pulls a cigarette out from her pack, stuffs the rest back into her clothes, and lets it dangle limpy from between two fingers. Other hand retrieves a big, old, heavy looking Zippo, well-cared for and shiny, and lights it up. The smoke curls around her bandaged face. She looks like a noir villain. She looks like she knows it.

  "When I was 15 I stopped putting out for this high school senior because he 'accidentally' called me a spic. So he and his friends threw some shit on my face. It was a big news article. Verify me," she explains, as if I care one iota about her tragic and probably real backstory.

  "That's okay, I can verify later." I start, waving a hand. "Rogue Wave. That's what I want to know about."

  "Rogue Wave," she confirms. "You know them?"

  "Anarcho-capitalist organization. Decentralized. Distribute Jump and Fly to whoever can pay. Headquartered in Camden, active throughout the region." I pause. "They've been quiet lately. Figured something was keeping them busy."

  "More organized crime muscling into Northeast Philly," Elena says. "Rogue Wave had distribution networks up there. Had. Past tense. You guys have been doing a bang up job smacking us down on Richardson's orders. Those guys the Inquirer wrote about are just doing the mop up."

  "And Rogue Wave hired you to - what? Impersonate a city councilwoman?" I ask, incredulous. I know for a fact she's lying to me, but I don't really care. That's not the game I'm playing.

  "Leverage." She taps ash into an empty coffee cup. "Argus Corps - that's you guys - is getting in the way. Maya looks like she's going to be making big moves. Maybe reaching higher up the political ladder. Even though all those other anti-vigilante bills failed in every state senate, there's going to be a round two. Geometeorological superpower regulation is next on her list. Improved resources for Registered Superhuman Entities. More budget for proactive crime control. So they wanted insurance. Compromising material. Blackmail, if it came to that."

  "By having a shapeshifter impersonate her," I ask, raising a nonexistent, rotting eyebrow.

  "By having a shapeshifter be seen as her in places Maya Richardson shouldn't be. Meeting with known criminals. Accepting cash payments. That kind of thing." She shrugs. "I'm a contractor. I don't ask too many questions about the endgame. I just do the face work and collect my fee."

  The story hangs together. That's the problem - it hangs together too well. Every piece fits. Every motivation is plausible. It's exactly the kind of narrative a professional would construct: internally consistent, externally verifiable in the ways that matter, and conveniently impossible to disprove in the ways that don't.

  The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  "The two capes who attacked you," I say. "Also Rogue Wave?"

  "Cell-based system," Elena says, waving her cigarette. "The left hand doesn't even talk to its own fingers, much less the right hand. Monkey Business sets high-level strategic goals and lets everyone handle it however they want. I'm guessing someone decided the operation was compromised after the Inquirer article and sent a cleanup crew. They didn't know I was one of theirs." She laughs, short and bitter. "Or maybe they did know and didn't care. Wouldn't be the first time."

  "Monkey Business," I repeat. "That's the leadership?"

  "That's what we call them. I've never met anyone higher than my handler, and he's probably three levels down from anyone who matters." She takes another drag. "Like I said. Cell-based. Radical decentralization. It's a philosophy for them, not just operational security."

  I let that sit for a moment. She's giving me a lot - names, structure, motivation. More than she needs to. Either she's genuinely cooperative, or she's burying the real information under a pile of plausible details. Everyone knows who Monkey Business is, that's not anything new or interesting. If she's spinning a yarn, it's a very convincing one I'd need to take months if not years to unravel.

  "Why attack Maya at all?" I ask. "If the goal was leverage, why draw attention?"

  "Isn't it obvious?" Elena leans back, cigarette dangling from her scarred lips. "Argus Corps has been spending most of their time hitting Rogue Wave's storehouses and dens. Every week it's another raid, another bust, another press release about getting Jump and Fly off the streets. Now these other guys move into the neighborhood, starts muscling down on Rogue Wave's turf, knocking heads, and suddenly there's an opportunity."

  "To make Maya look like the bad guy."

  "To implicate a connection that isn't there," she corrects. "If people think Maya Richardson is secretly working with one of the factions - if there's footage of 'Maya' meeting with criminal agents, being outside while there's a storm going, or even just having me say shit in public that's bad for her, then the real Maya becomes politically radioactive. Her legislation dies. Argus Corps probably dissolves or gets absorbed into the DVD. No more proactive drug raids."

  She stubs out the cigarette in the coffee cup.

  "It's game theory," she says. "You understand game theory, right? Everyone's trying to maximize their position. I'm just a piece on the board. A useful one, but still just a piece."

  "And now?"

  "Now I'm a burned piece." She spreads her hands - bandaged fingers, chipped nail polish that doesn't match Maya's manicure. "The operation's compromised. My face is going to be on every news channel by tomorrow. I can't exactly go back to doing anonymous body-double work after this."

  Come on. You're a shapeshifter, you expect me to believe that? If you do your job right, nobody would've ever known you were there in the first place. Don't bullshit me. "So you're cooperating out of spite?" is what I ask, though.

  "I'm cooperating because it's the best available option." She meets my eyes - her eyes, not Maya's, dark and tired behind the gauze. "Rogue Wave burned me. Maybe on purpose, maybe because they're incompetent, doesn't matter. Either way, I'm done protecting them. You want information? I'll give you information. Names, locations, operational patterns. Everything I know."

  "In exchange for?"

  "Witness protection would be nice. New identity. Relocation somewhere warm." She almost smiles. "But I'll settle for not going to prison. I'm a contractor, not a true believer. I don't have any loyalty worth protecting."

  I consider her. The bandages. The scarred mouth. The casual way she's dismantling an entire cover story.

  She's good. Really good. The performance is flawless - the bitter contractor, the burned asset, the pragmatist cutting her losses. Every beat lands exactly where it should.

  But here's the thing: I don't care if she's lying about Rogue Wave. I don't care if the real story involves the Kingdom, or Maya Richardson herself, or some third player I haven't identified. The details are noise.

  What matters is this: she just admitted that she's not Maya Richardson. That a shapeshifter has been impersonating a city councilwoman. That the woman the public has been seeing at press conferences and community events may not be who they think she is.

  That's what Sam needed. That's what I needed.

  The rest is someone else's problem.

  "Alright," I say. "Let's get you on camera."

  I pull out my phone. She straightens up, adjusts the bandages, checks her lipstick in the compact mirror. Preparing for her close-up. I hit record, show her that I have hit record, and turn it around to prop it up on the coffee table.

  "My name is Elena Morales," she says, looking directly into the lens. "I'm a metahuman shapeshifter. For the past several weeks, I've been occasionally impersonating Philadelphia City Councilwoman Maya Richardson on behalf of an organization called Rogue Wave, as well as several other unimportant civilians as necessary. This is my confession."

  I let her talk. When she's done, I stop the recording.

  "The Inquirer," she says. "You promised."

  "I'll make sure it gets to them."

  "And witness protection?"

  "Above my pay grade. But I'll advocate." I pause. "For what it's worth, I believe you. About the face, at least. About Boston."

  She touches the bandages, almost unconsciously. "Yeah. That part's true."

  "I figured."

  We sit in silence for a moment. The storm is finally easing outside - the wind dying down, the snow settling into something quieter. Through the window, I can see the first hints of clearing sky.

  "What happens now?" she asks.

  "Now I make some calls. You stay here until someone with more authority decides what to do with you." I stand, joints creaking. "There's food in the kitchen. TV works if you want background noise. Don't try to leave."

  "Wasn't planning on it." She pulls out another cigarette, lights it. "I know when I'm beat."

  I head for the other room, pulling out my phone. Three messages from Sam, increasingly terse. I text back:

  She's cooperating. Blaming Rogue Wave. Doesn't matter. Alibi's burned.

  The reply comes almost instantly: Good. Storm's breaking. We're clear.

  I look back at Elena Morales, sitting on the couch in her borrowed clothes and her gauze mask, smoking a cigarette and watching the snow fall. Looking like a mummy. She's already thinking about the documentary, probably. The interviews. The way this story will be told. Whenever anyone mentions Maya Richardson now, she'll have to come up. Even if as a footnote. This is permanent history.

  If she is a contractor, which I don't believe, she just increased her profile a thousandfold. Does that give her a license to increase rates? Food for thought.

  She thinks she played it smart. Protected her real employer, burned a rival, positioned herself as a cooperative witness. From her perspective, this is the best possible outcome. Rogue Wave is going to come under immense federal scrutiny. But does she realize the actual game we're playing here? Getting to her was never the outcome.

  We're after Mrs. Zenith. Not Maya Richardson, politician. Mrs. Zenith, supervillain mobster. It's all a matter of what they know and what we can press. Whoever's Maya's boss - do they know which half we're chasing? Which half those two new, shiny, fake supervillains were after? And what would they do if they did know?

  That's the question, isn't it?

  END OF ARC 15: SEVERE WEATHER WARNING

  To make them drink, tell them that it's only water

  No one leaves 'till we figure this out

  What made you so scared?

  Maybe you're mistaken for someone who cares

  If you remember, remember

  I've been trying to get back to the centre

  I'm sure

  it's not like it was before

  Patience

  Both we and our words are over produced by influence

  By influence

  Patience (Patience)

  Both we and our words are overproduced by influence

  (By influence)

  By influence (By influence)

  I'm only asking if you remember, remember

  I've been trying to get back to the centre

  I'm sure

  it's not like it was...