The station smells like burnt coffee and antiseptic, which is an improvement over what it smelled like an hour ago. Someone - probably Hector - has been aggressively spraying air freshener since we got back from the last call.

  I'm sitting on the cot in the break room, elbows on my knees, staring at the floor. My hands are still shaking a little. Not from cold. Not from exertion. Just... shaking.

  Valentine's Day, it turns out, is a nightmare for EMTs.

  "Eighteen calls," Deena says, dropping onto the cot across from me. She's got a protein bar in one hand and a look on her face like she's seen too much. "Eighteen calls in one shift. That's got to be some kind of record."

  "Record's twenty-three," Hector says from the doorway, NOT TODAY SATAN mug in hand. "New Year's Eve, 2019. But tonight was... yeah. Tonight was something."

  I don't say anything. I'm still thinking about the kid - nineteen, maybe twenty - seizing on the floor of his girlfriend's apartment while she screamed at us to do something. The way his eyes rolled back and his hair was sparking and smoking like it was about to catch on fire. The smell of his blood when he started bleeding from the nose - orange, fizzy, wrong.

  He'd taken Jump to impress her. Valentine's Day special. Give yourself superpowers for a night, be her hero. Except someone had cut his dose with something that didn't play nice with the Vyvanse he'd taken that morning to get through his shift at the warehouse.

  He's alive. Probably. Last I heard, they were still working on him at Jefferson.

  "You okay, kid?" Hector asks, settling into the ancient recliner that's been in this break room since before I was born.

  "Fine," I say automatically.

  "Uh huh." He takes a sip of coffee. "You've been staring at the same spot on the floor for ten minutes."

  "I'm thinking."

  "About?"

  I look up at him. Hector's got that unflappable demeanor that comes from two decades of this work, but there's something in his eyes tonight. Tiredness, yeah, but something else too. Frustration, maybe. The same thing I'm feeling.

  "How many of those calls were Jump-related?" I ask.

  Hector and Deena exchange a look.

  "Define Jump-related," Deena says carefully.

  "You know what I mean. Orange blood. Powers going haywire. Seizures. Unusual cardiac events."

  Silence. Deena unwraps her protein bar, takes a bite, chews slowly.

  "Seven," Hector says finally. "Maybe eight, depending on how you count the guy with the heart arrhythmia."

  "Seven out of eighteen."

  "Welcome to Philadelphia," Deena says, but there's no humor in it.

  I lean back against the wall, running the numbers in my head. Seven Jump-related calls in one shift. That's not normal. That's not even the new normal. That's an escalation.

  "Has it been getting worse?" I ask. "The Jump stuff specifically. Not just more calls, but more... bad reactions?"

  Another exchanged look. I'm getting tired of those looks.

  "Sam," Hector starts.

  "I'm not asking as a superhero or whatever. I'm asking as someone who's been on these calls with you. Someone who can taste the difference in their blood." I sit forward. "Something's wrong. Not just 'drugs are bad' wrong. Something specific. And I think you've noticed it too."

  Deena finishes her protein bar, crumples the wrapper, tosses it toward the trash can. It bounces off the rim and lands on the floor. She doesn't move to pick it up.

  "Three weeks," she says. "Maybe four. The bad reactions started spiking around mid-January."

  "Right after the blizzard," I say.

  "Right after the blizzard," she confirms. "At first we thought it was just... you know, stress. Holidays, bad weather, people cooped up and making bad decisions. But it's not slowing down. If anything, it's getting worse."

  Hector sets down his mug. "The thing is, Jump's been around for a while now. We know what normal Jump reactions look like. Temporary powers, maybe some disorientation, occasional nosebleeds. Nothing we can't handle."

  "But these aren't normal reactions," I say.

  "No. These are..." He searches for the word. "Bad. Worse. What did Bulwark say before? Someone was effing with the drugs?"

  Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

  "They're putting junk in them." I finish. "It's not the same junk every time. Their blood feels different."

  Deena looks at me sharply. "You can tell that? Just from... what, smelling it?"

  "Tasting it. Sort of. It's hard to explain." I wave a hand. "It's like. You know how your skin can detect different kinds of touch and your eyes have different colors? I get different... bloods of blood."

  "Weird," "Fascinating," they say simultaneously.

  "The point is, you're right. Something's different about the Jump that's been going around lately. It's not the same stuff that was on the streets six months ago," I point out.

  "Tainted batches," Hector says. "That's what Bulwark called it, back when you--" He stops, probably remembering that I nearly died that day.

  "Yeah. I remember." I remember Bulwark saying the Kingdom was intercepting Rogue Wave shipments, modifying the compound, releasing it back to street level. I remember filing that information away and then getting too busy with everything else to follow up on it.

  Stupid. People are dying and I've been too busy playing community center volunteer to do anything about it. No. That's not fair. The community center matters. The EMT work matters. But this matters too, and I've been letting it slide.

  "Where are they clustering?" I ask. "The bad calls. Is there a pattern?"

  Deena frowns. "What do you mean?"

  "Geographically. Are they spread out across the city, or are they concentrated in specific areas?"

  Hector leans back in the recliner, staring at the ceiling. "Kensington's always bad. That's not new. But lately... Temple's been rough. Lot of college kids mixing Jump with study drugs."

  "South Philly too," Deena adds. "The working-class neighborhoods. Guys using Jump to get through double shifts, then having reactions because they're on blood pressure meds or whatever."

  "West Philly?"

  "Some. Near Drexel, mostly."

  I'm building a map in my head. Kensington. Temple. South Philly. West Philly near Drexel. Not random distribution - these are high-demand areas. Places where people are likely to use Jump, and likely to be mixing it with other substances.

  But notably not Northeast Philly. Not Tacony, not Mayfair, not the neighborhoods where the Kingdom has the strongest grip. Maya's smart enough not to shit where she eats.

  "What about timing?" I ask. "You said the bad reactions come in waves. Like someone's pushing out new shipments."

  "Every week or two," Hector says slowly. "We'll have a few quiet days, then suddenly we're slammed with Jump calls. Then it tapers off, then it spikes again."

  "Shipment schedule," I murmur. "They're intercepting batches, tainting them, and releasing them back into circulation. When a new tainted batch hits the streets, you get a spike in bad reactions. Then that batch gets used up, things calm down, and the next tainted batch comes through."

  Deena's staring at me. "You've thought about this a lot."

  "I'm thinking about it now." I stand up, pacing the small break room. "The tainted stuff has to come from somewhere. It doesn't just appear on the streets - someone's making it, or modifying it, and then distributing it through existing channels. If we can figure out where it's entering the supply chain--"

  "Sam." Hector's voice is gentle but firm. "That's not EMT work. That's cop work. Or cape work."

  "I'm not a cape anymore."

  "Then definitely not your work."

  I stop pacing, turn to face him. "Seven people tonight, Hector. Seven people who might die or end up brain-damaged because someone's poisoning the drug supply. And it's going to keep happening. Tomorrow night, next week, next month. More calls, more seizures, more kids choking on their own tongues while their borrowed powers tear them apart from the inside."

  "And what exactly are you going to do about it?" Deena asks. Not challenging - genuinely curious.

  I don't have an answer. Not yet.

  "The guy tonight," I say instead. "The one at Jefferson. What do we know about him?"

  Hector shrugs. "College kid. Worked at a warehouse to pay tuition. Took Jump to impress his girlfriend on Valentine's Day."

  "Which warehouse?"

  "Does it matter?"

  "Maybe. Where do people get Jump around Temple? Is there a specific corner, a specific dealer?"

  Deena and Hector exchange another look. This one's different - less 'should we tell her' and more 'where is she going with this.'

  "There's a couple spots," Deena says carefully. "North Broad, around Susquehanna. Diamond Street. Why?"

  "Because the tainted batches are entering the supply chain somewhere. If I can figure out which dealers are selling the bad stuff, I can trace it back to whoever's supplying them. And if I can trace it back far enough..."

  "You'll find whoever's doing the tainting," Hector finishes.

  "Maybe. Or at least get closer."

  Silence settles over the break room. The coffee maker gurgles. Somewhere outside, I hear the wail of another ambulance - different unit, different crew, another emergency in a city full of them.

  "This isn't something you should do alone," Deena says finally. "Or at all. You should take this information and go to a private eye instead, or the cops."

  "I know."

  "Do you? Because you've got that look. The one that says you're about to do something stupid again."

  I almost smile. "I'm not going to fight anyone. I'm not even going to confront anyone. I just need a little more information before I can point the right people in the right direction."

  "I know some guys that do a lot of cape adjacent PI work. Chambers & Woo. You ever hear of them?" Hector asks, raising an eyebrow as he drinks. He drains the last of his coffee and hauls himself out of the recliner.

  "News to me," I lie, not wanting to point out that two of my ex-teammates from the Young Defenders work there.

  Hector puts his mug on the nearest horizontal surface. "Shift's over in twenty. You need a ride home?"

  "I'm good. I'll take the bus."

  "At this hour?"

  "I like the quiet."

  He gives me a long look, then nods. "Sam. We're not your babysitters. It's not our job to keep you safe more than it's our job to keep each other safe. But..."

  "But?" I ask, while he screws his face up trying to figure out how to word something delicately.

  "It'd be a waste if some random goon caps you before we actually manage to hire you full-time. Real waste of good EMT talent. So... just consider that," he says, probably trying to appeal to something different than the usual adult appeal to quit it. Which I appreciate. It's different than "it's not your responsibility". Or "you just shouldn't". Or "it's too dangerous".

  It'd be a waste of a good EMT.

  Honestly, that might be the first "don't do that" that's actually meant something to me. Thanks?

  I grab my jacket from the hook by the door. My mind is already racing ahead - the corners Deena mentioned, the timing patterns, the geographic spread. Somewhere in all of that data is a thread I can pull. Somewhere in this city, someone is tainting Jump shipments and watching people die from a safe distance.

  I'm going to find them.

  "Thanks," I say from the doorway. "For talking to me about this. I know it's not... standard procedure or whatever."

  "Nothing about you is standard procedure," Deena quips, but she's almost smiling. "Go home. Get some sleep. Go contact those guys - Chambers and co or whatever."

  "Chambers & Woo," Hector corrects her.

  "Whatever," she bites back.