The community center is busier than I expected.

  When I walk in, there's already a line at the front desk - not long, maybe four or five people, but still. A line. The woman with the lanyard (her name is Patricia, I've learned, she used to work at a women's shelter in Kensington) is checking people in with practiced efficiency. Sign here, fill out this form, someone will be with you shortly.

  I edge past the line and head for the stairs. A couple of the waiting people clock me - that high school girl that's here all the time and has a nonzero chance of being Bloodhound - but nobody says anything. I think having a secret identity is maybe a little less important than people were insisting to me.

  The second floor is organized chaos. Two of the group rooms are occupied - I can see through the glass doors, people sitting in circles, talking. One of the therapy rooms has a OCCUPIED sign on the door. Staff members are moving between spaces with clipboards and tablets, the constant low-level bustle of an institution actually functioning.

  Maggie finds me before I've made it halfway across the room.

  "You're late," she says.

  "I'm not late. I said I'd be here by nine."

  "It's nine-fifteen."

  "That's not late, that's fashionably delayed." I look around. "Where is everyone?"

  "Tasha's in the office doing Tasha things. Lily's prepping for an exam. Amelia's..." Maggie frowns. "Actually, I don't know where Amelia is."

  "That's okay. I think you and I are the only people who are like actually formally signed up for this thing. Everyone else is just kind of dragged this way by our gravity well, ha ha." I spot a familiar face near the kitchenette - Zara sitting at one of the tables with a textbook open in front of her. She's got headphones on and she's mouthing along to something, probably music. "How's she doing?"

  "Better. Her mom's been coming to the parent sessions. They're actually talking now, which is apparently new." Maggie follows my gaze. "Liam's around somewhere. Jasmine's in one of the therapy rooms - she's been doing individual sessions with Dr. Hernandez."

  "And Alex?"

  Maggie gives me a look. "He's downstairs. Helping incinerate cardboard trash. Being very normal and not at all weird about anything."

  "Good."

  "Uh huh." She doesn't push, which I appreciate. "So what's your plan for today? We've got the afternoon group at two, but until then it's mostly drop-in stuff."

  "I figured I'd just... be around. Help where needed." I shrug. "I don't have a plan. I'm trying this new thing where I don't always have a plan."

  "You mean the thing you've been doing your entire life?"

  We're interrupted by Patricia's voice from the stairs. "Sam? There's someone here asking for you specifically."

  My shoulders tense automatically. "Who?"

  "Young woman. Says she's having issues with..." Patricia checks her clipboard. "She said 'the orange stuff.' I wasn't sure what that meant."

  Jump. She means Jump.

  "I'll be right down."

  The young woman is maybe nineteen, twenty. Latina, dark hair pulled back in a messy ponytail, wearing a coat that's too thin for February. She's sitting in one of the waiting chairs, knee bouncing, fingers picking at the hem of her sleeve.

  "Hi," I say, taking the chair across from her. "I'm Sam. Patricia said you wanted to talk to me?"

  "You're the one who works with the EMTs, right?" Her voice is tight, controlled. "The one who can tell if someone's on Jump?"

  "Yeah. That's me."

  "My brother." She swallows. "He's been using. I don't know how long. But lately it's been... bad. He's been acting weird. Paranoid. And he cut himself shaving the other day,"

  "And let me guess, it was orange?" I ask, trying to keep myself stern but professional looking. "And bled a lot."

  She nods, looking relieved that I understand. "He won't go to a hospital. He doesn't trust doctors. But I thought maybe... if there was someone who knew about this stuff..."

  This is outside the original scope of the program. We're supposed to be helping powered youth, not dealing with Jump addiction in the general population. But the line between those two things has gotten blurry fast. Jump gives people temporary powers. Jump addiction means dealing with superpowered problems. Someone with 30 doses of the same thing is effectively a superhuman for a month.

  Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.

  And the tainted batches that have been going around - the ones that interact badly with other drugs - those are putting people in the hospital. Or worse.

  "What's your name?" I ask.

  "Carmen."

  "Okay, Carmen. I'm not a doctor, and I can't diagnose anything. But I can tell you what I know about Jump, and I can connect you with people who might be able to help." I lean forward slightly. "Has your brother been mixing Jump with anything else? Stimulants, heart medication, anything like that?"

  "I don't... maybe? He takes Adderall sometimes. For focus."

  "And does he work a blue collar job?" I ask.

  She blinks a couple of times. "Blue collar?"

  "Like, labor. Warehouse stuff. Or construction. A lot of people use Jump to help with hard shifts. Or double their quotas," I say, recalling stuff I've been told by Hector and Deena during EMT shifts.

  She nods, swallowing. "Yeah. He does construction in Bucks County."

  "Okay. Here's what I think you should do," I start.

  I walk her through it - the harm reduction resources, the clinic on Frankford that specializes in Jump cases, the warning signs to watch for. I give her my number, tell her to call if things get worse. It's not enough. It's never enough. But it's something.

  Carmen leaves looking slightly less terrified than when she came in. I watch her go, then head back upstairs, feeling the familiar weight of problems I can't punch my way through.

  Tasha's in the private office when I find her, surrounded by three laptops and what looks like printed screenshots taped to the wall. She's got that expression she gets when she's deep in research mode - focused, slightly manic, completely in her element.

  "What's all this?" I ask, closing the door behind me.

  "Songbirds." She doesn't look up. "I've been digging."

  I move closer, examining the printouts. Photos from forums - people in blue jackets at various events. Screenshots of chat messages. A timeline written in Tasha's neat handwriting.

  "I thought we decided they were just regular anti-powered extremists," I say.

  "That's what the surface looks like." Tasha finally turns to face me. "But I keep finding weird things. Look at this."

  She pulls up something on one of the laptops. A Facebook page for a neighborhood watch group in Mayfair. Normal enough - meeting announcements, crime alerts, complaints about potholes. But Tasha's highlighted several posts from the past few months.

  "See the language? 'Protecting our community from dangerous elements.' 'Keeping our streets safe for normal families.' 'Standing up against threats to our way of life.'" She scrolls down. "Now look at who's commenting. Same names keep showing up. And when you cross-reference those names with photos from Songbird events..."

  "Overlap."

  "Significant overlap. It's like there's a pipeline. People start out in these neighborhood watch groups, get exposed to the rhetoric, and then graduate to the Songbirds."

  "That could just be organic radicalization," I point out. "People who are scared of powered individuals finding each other, getting more extreme over time."

  "Could be. But look at this." Tasha pulls up another window. "Mike D'Ambrosio. The guy with the megaphone from the opening."

  The screen shows a JobMonster profile. Michael D'Ambrosio, Project Manager at a construction company in Bucks County. Normal photo, normal resume, normal everything. My brain connects "construction company in Bucks County" to Carmen's brother and twitches. No! Down boy. There's lots of contractors in the world.

  "He's been showing up at city council meetings since October," Tasha says. "Public comment period, always the same speech about metahuman threats. But here's the thing - before October, he has basically no online presence related to anti-powered activism. Nothing. And then suddenly he's the face of this movement?"

  "People get radicalized."

  "In three months? To the point where he's organizing protests and giving speeches with a megaphone?" Tasha shakes her head. "That's fast. That's really fast. And it's not just him. A lot of the visible Songbird leaders have the same pattern. Normal digital footprint, then nothing related to anti-powered stuff, then suddenly they're true believers."

  I stare at the timeline on the wall. October. That's about two weeks after Shrike died.

  "You think someone's organizing them," I say slowly.

  "I think someone created a vacuum and then filled it." Tasha leans back in her chair. "Shrike had followers. True believers. When he died, they didn't just disappear. But they also couldn't keep operating the same way - the Nazi stuff was too toxic, too obvious. So what if someone came along and offered them a rebrand? Same underlying ideology, new packaging. 'We're not white nationalists, we're concerned citizens worried about public safety.'"

  "That's a hell of a theory."

  "It's a theory that fits the data." She gestures at the wall. "I'm not saying I can prove it. But something about the Songbirds doesn't add up. They're too organized, too fast, too polished for a grassroots movement that supposedly sprang up spontaneously."

  "And they're called Songbirds. A Shrike is a kind of songbird. I'm not stupid," I mumble. "Is it like... a taunt?"

  Tasha doesn't answer me.

  I think about D'Ambrosio on the porch of the community center, megaphone in hand, that ugly smile on his face. The way he knew exactly how to provoke without crossing lines. The professional quality of their signs, their coordination, their messaging.

  "Keep digging," I say. "But carefully. If someone is pulling strings behind the Songbirds, we don't want to tip them off that we're looking."

  "Obviously." Tasha turns back to her laptops. "I'm no Jordan but I'll try and find what I can. And before you suggest it, I'm not roping Jordan into this. They're busy on, like, the frontier of science. I don't want to bother them."

  "Fair enough," I grumble, thinking exactly that I was about to go bother Jordan about it.

  I leave her to it and head back out to the main floor. Through the window, I can see the street below. There's a blue jacket on the corner. Just one guy, standing there, phone out, occasionally taking photos.

  They're watching us. Documenting who comes and goes. Building their files, just like we're building ours.

  The question is: who's going to figure out who first?

  I find a spot near the window where I can see the Songbird without being obvious about watching him. He's maybe mid-twenties, beard, the standard uniform of blue jacket and yellow bandana. He's not doing anything threatening. Just standing. Just watching.

  That's the thing about this kind of pressure. It's not dramatic. It's not a fight you can win by being stronger or faster. It's just... presence. The constant reminder that they know where you are, what you're doing, who you're helping. The slow accumulation of discomfort that makes people think twice about showing up.

  Zara's still at her table, doing homework. Liam's emerged from somewhere, talking to one of the staff members about something. Through the glass door of a group room, I can see a circle of people - parents, I think, from the parent support group - having what looks like an intense conversation.

  Normal stuff. Good stuff. The center doing what it's supposed to do.

  And outside, a guy in a blue jacket, taking pictures.

  I look at the Songbird on the corner.

  He looks back, just for a second, then returns to his phone.