Wednesday morning I wake up before my alarm, which almost never happens for good reasons. But this time it's not adrenaline or nightmares or the sound of something breaking - it's just my body deciding that seven hours is enough and the sun is coming through the blinds and I might as well get up.

  I check the news on my phone before I get out of bed. Bellwether is still in the cycle. Channel 6 has a follow-up: "ATF confirms at least twelve improvised explosive devices recovered from Bellwether site; investigation ongoing." Channel 10 ran a piece on tainted Jump last night that I missed - interviews with two ER doctors at Temple University Hospital talking about the spike in bad reactions. One of them uses the phrase "public health crisis," which is exactly the language Ford needed to hear and now it's coming from someone with a medical degree on television.

  Tasha texts at 7:15: a screenshot of the Inquirer's website, below the fold but still front page. BELLWETHER RAID REVEALS SCOPE OF DRUG TAINTING OPERATION; FEDERAL INVESTIGATION EXPANDS. Below that she's typed: they're connecting it to the earlier financial exposé. the reporter is anthony robinson. remember him?

  I remember him. Bruised face, bandaged nose, clipboard and recorder at the community center opening. He's been roughed up for asking questions and he's still asking them. Good for him.

  I get dressed. I eat breakfast - cereal, banana, the last of the orange juice. Dad left early for a meeting about the Frankford Avenue corridor rezoning, which is exactly the kind of sentence that would've bored me to tears six months ago and now I find genuinely interesting, because I've run down Frankford Avenue at two in the morning and I know which buildings are empty and which ones have people sleeping in them and what the sight lines look like from the roof of the check-cashing place. City planning is just tactical mapping with a longer time horizon.

  I sit down at the kitchen table with a legal pad - one of Dad's, yellow, the good kind with the thick lines - and I write out my week.

  Monday through Friday: school, obviously. Tuesday and Thursday afternoons: mentorship sessions at the center. Wednesday afternoon: EMT shift with Hector. Friday afternoon: open - homework, recovery, life maintenance. Saturday: EMT shift, then patrol after dark. Sunday: rest. Actual rest. Not "rest while refreshing the scanner" rest. Rest.

  I look at it. It fits on one page. It has gaps in it - actual white space, time that belongs to me and isn't allocated to saving anyone or investigating anything or recovering from injuries. The gaps feel dangerous, like something's going to rush in to fill them, but Desai said that's the hypervigilance talking. The gaps are the point. The gaps are where you recharge so you can do the other stuff without burning out.

  I add two more things: Monday evening patrol (short, two hours max, planned route), and Thursday morning before school - parkour with Alex.

  He's been texting me since the Bellwether news broke. Not about Bellwether specifically - he doesn't know my connection to it, or shouldn't - but the energy is obvious. He's restless. He's sending me articles about the raid, about the Songbirds, about Maya Richardson's public statement expressing "deep concern about criminal activity in our city." He's asking when he's unbenched. He's asking if he can come on patrol. He's asking if I need backup.

  What he's really asking is: let me do something. Anything. Please.

  I know that feeling. I know it in my bones, in my teeth, in whatever part of my brain lights up when I hear sirens. The difference between me and Alex is that I've had two years and multiple near-death experiences to learn that the feeling lies to you sometimes. It tells you that action is always better than waiting, that your presence is always necessary, that sitting still is the same as letting people get hurt. And sometimes that's true. But mostly it's just adrenaline wearing a moral philosophy costume.

  So I'm not unbenching him. But I'm also not going to let him sit in his empty house - his parents don't come home until seven most nights, I checked - stewing in his own frustration until he does something catastrophic. The parkour is a pressure valve. Physical exertion, skill development, something that feels like preparation without being combat. And honestly, it's useful. If he's going to be in this world - and he is, I can't stop him any more than my parents can stop me - he should know how to move through a city without being seen.

  I head to school. My week has structure. My calendar has white space. And a federal agent is reviewing a very interesting looking file right now, I bet.

  Wednesday afternoon, EMT shift. Hector picks me up at the corner of Frankford and Cottman in the rig, same as always, coffee in the cupholder and talk radio on low. He does a quick look at my face - the bruise is basically gone, just a faint yellow shadow under the concealer - and doesn't comment. Hector is my favorite adult who isn't related to me for many reasons, and one of the biggest ones is that he never asks questions I don't want to answer.

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  "Quiet day so far," he says, pulling back into traffic. "Two calls before you got on. Diabetic episode at a grocery store - guy forgot to eat, classic. And a fender bender on Roosevelt Boulevard where everybody was fine but wanted to go to the hospital anyway because they think it helps with the insurance claim."

  "Does it?"

  "No." He takes a sip of coffee. "But try telling that to someone who watched a legal drama last week."

  First call with me on board is a sprained ankle at the Lawncrest rec center - pickup basketball, guy came down wrong on someone's foot. He's sitting on the bleachers looking embarrassed while his friends give him shit. Standard stuff. I do the assessment, check range of motion, determine it's not fractured based on the Ottawa rules. Wrap it, ice it, recommend follow-up with his doctor if swelling doesn't go down in forty-eight hours.

  "You sure it's not broken?" he asks, looking at me like I'm twelve.

  "I'm sure. But if you want to go to the ER and wait four hours for them to tell you the same thing, that's your right."

  Hector gives me a look from across the rig that says bedside manner, Small but also yeah, that was the right call. The guy decides not to go to the ER. We clear the scene in twenty minutes.

  Second call is better. Elderly woman in Fox Chase, fell in her kitchen, hip pain, can't get up. Her name is Mrs. Benedetto and she's eighty-three and she calls me "sweetheart" and she's got a cat that keeps trying to climb into the medical bag. Hip's not broken - she landed on her side, bruised it, lost confidence in her legs. We help her up, do a full assessment, check her medications - she's on blood thinners, which I flag for the chart because bruising plus blood thinners is something her doctor needs to know about.

  While Hector's doing the paperwork, I'm holding her hand, and, I don't know, call it impulse. This is not a good thing I should be doing. But I squeeze out just the tiniest toothtip and prick the fat, meaty part of her palm and - there we go, bingo. Her entire vascular system lights up like a blooming flower. Her pulse feels thready to me, a little fast for someone who's been lying on the floor for twenty minutes and should be calming down. It's not something I can explain without explaining how I know.

  "Hey, Hector - want to run vitals one more time? She's feeling a little tachy to me."

  He doesn't question it. He's learned that when I say "feeling" I mean something specific, even if he doesn't know what. BP is 148/92, pulse is 104. Not emergency territory but not great for an eighty-three-year-old on blood thinners who just fell.

  "Mrs. Benedetto, we're going to recommend transport," Hector says in his gentle-but-firm voice. "Your blood pressure's a little high and we'd like someone to take a closer look."

  She goes without argument. The cat watches us leave from the kitchen window. In the rig, Hector glances at me.

  "Good catch on the pulse."

  "I just had a feeling."

  "You have good feelings." He says it like it's nothing, like he's commenting on the weather. I let it sit there and be enough.

  We do two more calls - a kid with an asthma attack whose inhaler was expired (we give him a neb treatment and lecture his mother about prescription refills, gently), and a guy who cut his hand on a table saw in his garage and is more angry about the ruined piece of wood than the bleeding. Four calls, nobody dying, nobody on Jump, nobody with powers going haywire. A normal Wednesday in Northeast Philadelphia.

  At some point between calls, Hector's got the radio on in the cab and I hear it - the NBC10 anchor, lead-in to a segment: "--concerning video from the Mayfair neighborhood showing what appears to be several adults assaulting a teenage girl in broad daylight--"

  Hector turns it up. I sit very still.

  "--the victim, whose identity has not been released, is reportedly a volunteer at the recently opened Tacony Community Center, the same facility that was the target of protests by a group calling themselves the Songbirds of Liberty--"

  "That's up by you, right?" Hector says. "The community center?"

  "Yeah." I keep my voice neutral. "I work there. Associate program coordinator."

  "You know anything about this?"

  I look out the window. "Yeah," I say. "It's me in the video."

  Hector is quiet for about five seconds, which is a long time for Hector. The radio keeps going - "--advocates for the center have pointed to a pattern of harassment, including a bomb threat at a nearby school the same day--"

  He turns the radio down. "You okay?"

  "I'm fine. It happened last Friday. Four guys. I didn't fight back."

  Another long pause. "Because you chose not to."

  That's the second person who's said that to me in exactly those words, after Dad. It's an interesting sentence. It contains the acknowledgment that I could have, without asking why I didn't.

  "It's more useful as evidence than as a victory," I say, which is probably too honest for this conversation but Hector has earned honesty.

  He nods slowly. "You file a report?"

  "Yeah. Officer Reilly, 15th District."

  "Good." He picks his coffee back up. "You ever call those PIs I mentioned? Chambers & Woo?"

  "Not yet."

  "You should. I've heard they're good people. One of their junior detectives - Washington - she's... She's got a nose on her, I'll tell you what. Or so I've heard," Hector says.

  "I'll think about it," I reply, trying not to laugh. Yeah, I bet Akilah has that sort of reputation now.

  He lets it drop. We ride in silence for a while, comfortable silence, the kind where nobody needs to fill the space. The radio moves on to weather. Partly cloudy, highs in the mid-forties. Spring is coming whether Philadelphia is ready for it or not.