I wake up in a hospital.

  Mami is holding my hand. Papi is in the chair by the window, rosary beads wrapped around his fingers. DeShawn is asleep on the floor because apparently he refused to leave.

  "Mija." Mami's voice is thick. "You're awake."

  "I'm okay," I say, and my voice comes out rough, scratchy. "Is everyone - the people on the mountain--"

  "Everyone's fine." That's Papi, standing now, moving to the bed. "Everyone's alive. Because of you."

  "I don't - what do you mean, because of me?"

  "Seven people got buried, mija. You, and six others." Papi sits on the edge of the bed, takes my hand. His eyes are red. "By the time search and rescue got there, you'd already pulled three of them out. They said - they said they could focus on the other four because of you. Everyone got dug out in time."

  "Seven people," I repeat. "Zero..."

  "Zero fatalities." Mami's crying now, quiet tears running down her face. "The rescue team keeps calling you a hero. The news too. They keep asking to talk to you."

  "The news?"

  "You're all over it, mija." Papi almost laughs, but it comes out wrong. "My daughter, the hero of Camelback Mountain."

  I try to sit up. Everything hurts. "What happened? With the avalanche, I mean. I heard - I thought I heard something. Before it started."

  Mami and Papi exchange a look. That parent look, the one that means they're deciding how much to tell me.

  "They're still investigating," Papi says carefully. "The ski patrol said the conditions weren't right for a natural slide. Something about the snowpack being stable that morning."

  "So what does that mean?"

  Another look. Mami squeezes my other hand.

  "It means they don't know yet, mija. Maybe they never will." She brushes hair off my forehead, the way she used to when I was little. "What matters is you're safe. Everyone's safe. That's what matters."

  I want to push. I want to ask more questions. But Papi's eyes are red and Mami's still crying and DeShawn is stirring on the floor, waking up, and I'm so tired.

  "Okay," I say. "Okay."

  I let it go. Hero. That word feels weird, like a coat that doesn't fit. I wasn't trying to be a hero. I just heard someone screaming and I went to find them.

  "The doctors want to talk to you," Mami says carefully. "About... what happened. How you survived. They say your core temperature was - they don't understand how..."

  She doesn't finish.

  I look down at my hands. Normal now - brown skin, chipped nail polish from where I'd been picking at it on the bus ride up. But I remember the heat. Remember the steam.

  Being a hero in Camden is different than being a hero anywhere else. That's what I've learned in the three years since the avalanche. Philly has the Philadelphia Protectors, New York has about a dozen registered teams, even Trenton has a few licensed operators. Camden has the me. And like maybe 20 other people, total, but I'm the best one.

  Not officially. I don't have a license, don't have a costume beyond a domino mask and whatever clothes I don't mind ruining, don't have anything except the fire in my chest and the inability to sit still while people get hurt.

  The shipyard's been closed for years. Papi used to work there, before I was born. Now it's just rusting cranes and empty warehouses and, apparently, someone's target.

  I hear the explosion before I see it. It sounds like a stale ginger snap breaking, a sharp crack, and I'm moving. Loud, sharp noises are never a good sign. Hopefully it's something mundane and uninteresting. I grab the stickshift in my chest mentally and shift upwards. Ka-clunk!

  My body heats up, my speed doubles, and I'm running - over the fence, through the yard, toward the smoke rising from one of the warehouse clusters. I pass through fences that I'd normally have to vault over, fences I've practiced on plenty of times, now with near-perfectly circular holes just ripped out of them, like a giant's fist just reached down and pulled and pulled.

  What the hell can do that? I find my answer standing at the security office, which is currently coated in flames.

  Average height. Average build. Wearing a welding mask and heavy work clothes, the kind you'd see on any dockworker in the city. Nothing special. Nothing that screams supervillain, except for the milk crate of unlit molotov cocktails he's carrying.

  A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  "Hey!" I shout, because I've never been good at subtle. "What do you think you're doing?"

  He turns. The welding mask catches the light from the fire, blank and reflective. When he speaks, his voice is calm. Almost bored.

  "This building houses records for Delmarva Chemical. They've been dumping in the river for thirty years. Exposed. Known. Exposed again. Exposed again. Never prosecuted." He gestures at the hole. "I'm... relocating their files."

  "By blowing up the building?" I ask.

  "The files are digital now. This is symbolic." He tilts his head, studying me. He points to a milk crate full of papers. "And these are going to the DA's office."

  I haven't thought that far ahead. "I'm telling you to stop."

  "Why?"

  The question catches me off guard. Why. It should be obvious. He's destroying property, he's breaking the law, he's--

  "You're hurting people," I say.

  "Who?" He spreads his arms, gesturing at the empty shipyard. "Show me the person I've hurt. Point to them."

  "There could be security guards. Night watchmen. Anyone."

  "There aren't. I checked. I spent three weeks learning the patrol schedules." He lets his arms drop. "I don't hurt people. Buildings are insured. Your body isn't. Walk away before you do something you regret."

  Something about the way he says it - casual, almost rehearsed - makes me realize he's said this before. This is a speech. A philosophy.

  "That doesn't make it okay," I say. "You can't just destroy things because you think the owners are bad."

  "Can't I?" He takes a step toward me. Not threatening - curious. "What's your plan, hotshot? Rescue people from the consequences of Delmarva's dumping? Pull kids out of hospital beds where they're dying of cancer because the water's poisoned? Save them one at a time, forever?"

  "I--"

  "I need these people to know that I'm coming. I want them to feel afraid. The property damage on the abandoned factory is the first step. Then the second step, and then the third. Or would you rather I just firebomb their corporate building first and put innocent middle-managers in danger?" Another step. "Now I know where I recognize you from. You're that girl from the avalanche, right? Three years ago?"

  My fists clench. The heat rises, Gear Two kicking in without me consciously deciding. I can feel my skin flushing, my heart hammering, the energy building in my muscles.

  "You don't know anything about me," I say.

  "I know enough. I know you've been running around Camden for two years now, pulling people out of fires and car wrecks and I'm sure all sorts of other disasters. And I know that nothing you've done has changed a goddamn thing about why those disasters keep happening."

  "So what? I should start blowing up buildings instead?" I challenge him.

  "You should start asking who profits when the buildings stay standing." He reaches up and pulls the welding mask up.

  He's older than I expected. Thirties, maybe. Tired face. The face of someone who's been angry for a long time. He's not stupid - he's wearing dark makeup around his eyes, some kind of goggles or lenses or something that blocks me from seeing the sclera, the shape. But I don't need to see his eyes to see the exhaustion.

  "I used to work here," he says. "This shipyard. Before it closed. Before the layoffs. Before the owners moved the jobs overseas and left us with nothing but a poisoned river and a tax write-off." He sets the mask down on a chunk of rubble. "I'm not your enemy. I'm just further along the same road."

  "We're not on the same road."

  "Aren't we?" He smiles, but it's not a nice smile. "You put out fires. I'm trying to stop the arsonists. We both want Camden to stop burning."

  "And blowing up buildings is going to accomplish that?"

  "This building?" He looks at the smoke, the rubble, the hole in the wall. "No. This building is a message. But messages need messengers." He looks back at me. "Are you going to try to stop me?"

  I should. I know I should. He's broken the law. He's destroyed property. He's admitted to planning more destruction. Everything about this situation says to stop him.

  He sees the hesitation. His smile widens.

  "You're not ready yet," he says. "That's okay. You've got time. Come find me when you've got answers to the questions I asked."

  He pulls out a big, heavy zippo, engraved with something I can't make out from this distance. He picks up a Molotov cocktail before I get the opportunity to stop him. He lights it, and smashes it on the ground, and before I can even think, there's a wall of fire between him and me.

  By the time I manage to find an old, disused fire extinguisher, he's gone.

  I meet him again three weeks later. Different target - an office building downtown, something to do with a real estate developer who's been buying up foreclosed properties and evicting families.

  This time I'm ready.

  Gear Three. I've only hit Gear Three a handful of times since the avalanche, and never in combat, because I've fought all of two people in my life. My body runs hot, steam pouring off me, and I'm fast, faster than I've ever been. The world slows down and I speed up and the distance between us is nothing, just gone, and my fist is already swinging for his stomach, somewhere I can punch without turning him into a fine paste.

  Then, I hit a wall. The wall is invisible. The wall fights back.

  I go through another wall. This one was already damaged - bricks torn loose minutes ago - and I go sailing through drywall and plaster. I'm lying on my back in an office space, ears ringing, chest aching. Fluorescent lights flicker overhead. There's a motivational poster on the wall - a cat hanging from a branch, Hang in there! - and I think, hysterically, that I should take its advice.

  What the hell was that?

  He steps through the hole I made, casual, unhurried. Doesn't even look winded.

  "Normally, I would demonstrate by poking you, but you looked like you were prepared to break my spine, so I had to do a palm thrust," he says. "100 shot palm wall of air,"

  "What, so your superpower is kung fu?" I interrupt, wheezing, trying to pry myself off the floor.

  He laughs. "That would be cool. No, I just have extra hands. I have extra everything when I have the ammo for it. What I did was throw a wall of compressed air out into you. My next move will be hitting you with a 50 shot haymaker that punches you everywhere on your body that you've ever thought about, and a dozen body parts you hadn't. Or, you can stay down on the ground and let me commit just a little bit of arson. This building is insured. You aren't. Don't be a hero."

  He turns away from me, pulling his zippo out from his pocket.

  No.

  No.

  I don't decide to hit Gear Four. Gear Four decides to hit me.

  It's not something I like to use.