Saturday night, 11:47 PM. I'm crouched behind a concrete barrier on the western edge of the Bellwether site, watching the access road through binoculars.

  The cold is manageable. The Remora suit holds heat well, and I've been moving enough to keep my blood circulating. The real challenge is patience - waiting for the right moment to move closer, watching the patterns, learning the rhythm of the place.

  The cluster of old buildings is maybe three hundred yards from my position. Four structures total, all brick and corrugated metal, remnants of the refinery days. One of them has lights on inside, visible through grimy windows. The others are dark, but that doesn't mean empty.

  I've counted six people so far. Two on what looks like a patrol route, circling the perimeter every twenty minutes or so. Four others coming and going from the lit building - carrying boxes, checking phones, the mundane logistics of an operation that doesn't want to be noticed.

  No sign of the white van yet. It's early. I can wait.

  I'm adjusting my position, trying to get a better angle on the lit building's entrance, when I hear footsteps behind me. Not patrol footsteps - those are predictable, rhythmic, bored. These are quiet and deliberate. Someone who knows how to move without being heard, but not quite quiet enough.

  I don't turn around. Instead, I shift my weight onto my back foot, ready to spring sideways, and say, very quietly: "If you're going to hit me, you should know I bite."

  The footsteps stop.

  "Sunoco girl," a voice says. Male, familiar, carrying that particular tone of someone who's just had their plans complicated. "The hell are you doing here?"

  I turn around slowly, keeping my hands visible. I need a second for the name to come to me. Big plugs. Chunky guy. Brunette sort of shaved-side mohawk thing going on... Marathon! He's standing about ten feet away, dressed in dark clothes, no yellow windbreaker tonight. Plus, he's got a backpack slung over one shoulder and his hands aren't raised, but they're not in his pockets either. Ready position.

  "Same thing you are, probably," I say. "Following the supply chain."

  His eyes narrow. "You're tracking the tainted batches."

  It's not a question, so I don't answer it. Instead: "You're tracking the tainted batches."

  He grimaces at me like I've just force fed him cough syrup. "No. I'm tracking where my dipshit coworkers flipped to. Different story entirely."

  "Are 'coworkers' what you call your minions these days?" I ask, trying to recall that particular fight scene. Three other guys. Varying levels of... efficacy. It sort of smears together in my head. "I didn't know they flipped. Trouble in paradise?"

  "What, you think you're gonna drag a monologue out of me? It's nothing personal. Just bad for business," he growls. "And you? Get your girlfriend to explode or something?"

  "I'm an EMT intern. I see what the bad batches do to people." I keep my voice flat, professional. "Three weeks of bad reactions, all radiating from this area. Took me a while to trace it back here."

  Marathon glances toward the cluster of buildings, then back at me. He's calculating something - whether I'm useful, whether I'm a threat, whether dealing with me is worth the noise it would make. I've seen the face of a person calculating opsec considerations. It's that face, although I get the impression from this guy's... furrowedness that he doesn't know what the word opsec is. No, that's not nice, Sam. You have no reason to believe that just based on his eyebrows.

  "Those guys," he says finally. "They worked for me. Distribution, muscle, the usual. Then Kingdom comes along with better money and Fly, and suddenly they're too good for Rogue Wave."

  "And now they're poisoning your product."

  "They're fucking with the good doctor's good work. But it's hitting the streets under our reputation." His jaw tightens. "That's bad for business. Worse for the cause."

  The cause. Right. Democratizing superpowers through market forces. I don't roll my eyes, but it's a near thing.

  "So what's your plan?" I ask. "Walk in there and start swinging?"

  He shifts the backpack on his shoulder. Something inside it clinks, metal on metal. "Something like that."

  "There are at least six people in there. Probably more we haven't seen. And if your former guys took Fly, they've got powers now."

  "Yeah, that's for sure," he chuckles without giving me anything else to bite on.

  "And you think you can take all three plus whoever else is in there."

  Marathon looks at me like I've said something stupid. "I don't need to fight anyone. Why play stupid and fair when you can play smart and unfair? Now don't jostle me. I've got fragile goods in here."

  He starts trying to muscle past me, not taking the time to swat me or hit me or punch me in the face or do anything that I've gotten used to. No, he's got the determined expression of a man with bigger fish to - wait a fucking minute. "You have bombs? That's insane," I grab the back of his sleeves, while he grunts at me like a determined chihuahua. I keep hissing at him, voice low. "You don't even know the layout. You don't know how many people are inside, where the product is stored, whether there are civilians--"

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  "There aren't civilians in a drug cutting operation."

  "There might be. Forced labor, people working off debts, I don't know. And even if there aren't, you blow this place up, you destroy any evidence of who's actually running it. Kingdom doesn't care about three mid-level guys - they'll just set up somewhere else."

  He's quiet for a moment, watching me, running numbers. Then: "What's your play, then? Sit here and take notes until they pack up and leave?"

  "Reconnaissance. Figure out the full scope of the operation, identify the leadership, document everything. Then pass it to people who can actually do something about it."

  "Cops."

  "Maybe. Or the Defenders, or--" I stop myself before I say Argus Corps. "People with legal authority and resources."

  Marathon chuckles under his breath, sort of like boiling syrup. Low and sticky with a little hint of phlegm. "I think you've got a rosy view of the world. You've convinced yourself you're some sort of world weary operator, but you're a brat in diapers who still thinks that the feds and the cops and the sheriffs all play fair. Newsflash, asshole; they aren't gonna do anything about it. Not fast enough, anyway."

  "So your solution is to blow it up and hope for the best?" I try to put on my best three-headed stare. Maybe try to make him feel shame.

  "My solution is to hurt them enough that they think twice about setting up again. Make it expensive. Make it painful." He shrugs. "Make it clear that we'll track down any stupid bullshit they set up and blow it sky high. They have a budget. We have an ethical code."

  "Some ethical code," I grunt.

  We stare at each other across ten feet of frozen ground. Neither of us is going to back down, and neither of us is going to leave. Which means we're stuck.

  "Okay," I say finally. "New proposal. We get closer, both of us. You know how these operations work - where they'd put lookouts, how the product moves, the stuff I can't figure out from satellite photos. I know how to move quiet and not get spotted. We pool information, figure out what we're actually dealing with, and you give me a couple of days to try and get people on it. And if nobody listens to me, I'll cede the ground. I'd rather do it together, smartly, than die alone stupidly."

  Now he's staring at me like I have three heads. Pride vs pragmatism. Then, something totally different from either comes out. "You're a weird fucking superhero."

  "I'm retired," I insist.

  He laughs again. "I'm not promising you diddly squat. If I decide this place needs to go sky high tonight, it's going sky high, the only question is if I give you warning or not."

  "Mara--"

  "Don't try to appeal to some sense of inner nobleness in me. You're fifteen years old and have no leverage. I have a backpack full of explosives and would beat you in a fair fight. You follow me and we pool information, or you don't follow me and get nothing but rubble. There's your deal."

  Now I'm the one furrowing my brow. G-d damnit.

  Marathon knows how to think like a criminal. I'll give him that.

  "Not that way," he murmurs when I start toward a gap in the fence that looks unmonitored. "That's where I'd put a camera. Or a tripwire. It's too obvious."

  He leads me around to the north side, where a section of fence has been bent back - not cut, just pushed aside, probably by construction workers taking shortcuts. It's the kind of thing that looks like an oversight, not an entrance.

  "You learn this from running drug operations?" I whisper as we slip through.

  "I learned this from being poor in Camden," he says. "You learn where the holes are, or you don't survive."

  Fair enough.

  We move between shipping containers, using them as cover. Marathon's fast - not using his power, whatever it is, just naturally quick on his feet, efficient in his movements. But he's not quiet. His footsteps are heavier than they need to be, his breathing louder than mine.

  "Heel-toe," I murmur. "Roll your foot, don't plant it flat."

  He glances at me, annoyed, but adjusts his gait. It helps.

  We get within a hundred yards of the lit building before we have to stop. The patrol is coming back around, two guys in heavy coats walking the perimeter with flashlights. We press ourselves against the back of a shipping container and wait.

  "The product comes in by truck," Marathon says, barely audible. "Probably once or twice a week, whatever they're intercepting from our distribution network. They cut it here - mix in whatever's causing the bad reactions - then send it back out through street-level dealers who don't know the difference."

  "Ritalin, probably. Easier than... crack," I point out. "Smells like Ritalin in people's blood."

  "Sure," he dismisses, trying to pretend like he's not mentally noting it down.

  "Why here specifically?" I ask.

  "Contaminated land means nobody comes looking. Construction traffic covers vehicle movement. And they've got Kingdom backing, so anyone who does notice looks the other way."

  The patrol passes. We wait another thirty seconds, then move again.

  Closer now. I can see through one of the windows - figures moving inside, tables covered with equipment, the industrial setup of a cutting operation. No faces I can identify from this distance, but the scale is bigger than I expected. This isn't a small-time operation. They're processing serious volume.

  "There," Marathon says, pointing.

  A truck is approaching on the access road. Not the white van I've been tracking - this one's bigger, a box truck with a delivery company logo on the side that's probably fake. It pulls around to a loading dock on the far side of the building.

  "That's our supply chain," I say. "If we can see what they're unloading--"

  "We'd have to get closer. Across open ground, with two guys on patrol and who knows how many inside."

  He's right. The approach to the loading dock is exposed, no cover for at least fifty feet. We'd be visible to anyone looking out the windows, anyone on the dock, anyone coming around the corner at the wrong moment.

  "Can you get there fast enough that no one sees you?"

  Marathon gives me a look. "I could. Can you?"

  I look at the side of the building, watching for pipes to grab onto, places I can scale with the Remora gloves. I could get up there. The question is if I could do so without being seen or heard.

  And, no offense, tubby, but I've got my doubts about your stealth skills, too.

  But I shake my head nonetheless.

  "Then we wait," I say. "Watch what they unload, how long it takes, where it goes from here. Build the picture."

  "And then what?"

  I don't answer right away. I'm watching the loading dock, watching the figures moving in the lit windows, watching the patrol make another circuit. Thinking about Hector's words, about the kid with the burned hands, about the woman working double shifts who just wanted to stay awake.

  "And then we figure out how to shut it down," I say. "For real. Not just this site - the whole operation."

  Marathon is quiet for a long moment. Then he reaches into his backpack and pulls out a pair of binoculars, nicer than mine.

  "Loading dock," he says. "Let's see what they've got."