English class is doing Homer today.

  Not the whole Odyssey - we did that last semester - but the teacher is on one of her tangents, the kind where she gets excited about something adjacent to the actual curriculum and the rest of us just try to keep up. Today it's about color words. How ancient Greek didn't have a word for blue. How Homer described the sea as "wine-dark," which sounds like purple, except wine was different back then, and also maybe Greek eyes literally processed color differently, or maybe it's just that language shapes perception, or--

  "The point is," Ms. Castellano says, tapping the whiteboard where she's written ο?νοψ π?ντο? in what I'm pretty sure is her own wobbly attempt at Greek letters, "we assume that the way we see the world is the way everyone sees the world. But even something as basic as what color is the ocean turns out to be culturally constructed. The words we have determine the categories we think in."

  I'm taking notes, sort of. My pen moves across the page while my brain runs parallel tracks.

  ο?νοψ π?ντο?. Wine-dark sea. The color of blood diffusing in water, if I'm being honest about where my head's at.

  I sent texts this morning before school. The Auditors. Derek. Councilman Davis. Sundial. Miasma, through the secure channel he set up. Short, factual: Found the tainting operation. Bellwether District, west side, four buildings. Need to talk. Kingdom fucking with Jump.

  Sundial responded first. When and where?

  Miasma: Interesting. Will look into it.

  The others haven't replied yet. Maggie's in class. Derek keeps weird hours. Tasha's probably got her phone off - she's been better about that lately, about not being available 24/7, which is good for her even if it's inconvenient for me right now. And is also at class. Davis probably has... stuff to do.

  "Sam?" Ms. Castellano is looking at me. "Thoughts?"

  I blink, reorient. "Sorry, what was the question?"

  "I asked if you could think of any modern examples. Words that shape how we see things, or gaps in language that hide something from us."

  Thirty faces turn toward me. I resist the urge to sink into my seat.

  "Uh," I say, buying time. "I guess... there's no good word for the feeling when you know something bad is going to happen but you can't prove it yet? Like, 'dread' is close, but dread is about something you're afraid of. This is more like... you can see the shape of it, but you can't point to it."

  Ms. Castellano's eyebrows go up. "That's actually a great example. The Germans might call that something like Vorahnung - a foreboding or presentiment. But we don't have a single English word that captures that specific shade of meaning." She turns back to the whiteboard, marker squeaking. "Language constrains thought. If you don't have the word, you have to talk around the concept, and that makes it harder to examine directly."

  The lecture continues. I write down Vorahnung and underline it twice.

  "Now, I won't prescribe it as an assignment, but if you'd like extra credit, we have copies of 'Basic Color Terms' by Berlin and Kay, and a five paragraph essay on your takeaways on color development in linguistics will earn you an extra 5 points..." she says, outlining an assignment I don't plan on participating in.

  Lunch is a non-event. I sit with the usual people, eat without tasting, check my phone under the table every few minutes. Maggie texts back: wtf sam. after school? I send her a thumbs up.

  The afternoon crawls. History, then pre-calc, then science class where I pay perfunctory attention to the labs at hand while sneaking glances at my phone, waiting for follow ups.

  By the time the final bell rings, I've got a plan. Sort of. Meet with Maggie tomorrow to brief the Auditors. Try and get info to the Titans through Sundial, maybe take another trip to South Philly to meet with Bulldozer again to create neighborhood pressure. Wait for Miasma to work whatever angles he's working inside Argus Corps. Maybe reach out to Ford by the end of the week if nothing else shakes loose.

  It's not a good plan. It's a "wait and see" plan, which is just another way of saying "I don't know what to do yet." But it's what I've got.

  Melissa catches me at my locker. "Walking home?"

  "Yeah."

  We fall into step together, the way we've done a hundred times. Out the main entrance, past the security guards with their body armor and bored expressions, through the gate in the new chain-link fencing. It feels like the outside of a scrapyard. The February air is cold but not brutal - mid-thirties, maybe, with a weak afternoon sun doing its best.

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  Even the elementary schools have fences now, but people are putting a little more care into making them look not so foreboding. More... architecturally... present. I'm sure Pop-Pop Moe would have something to say about it. The nearby elementary school I pass by on the way home has wooden fences that curve, that have a rounded top that would be hard to climb over, that have been painted by local mural artists with butterflies and soccer balls.

  We've got chain links.

  Middle school also has chain links.

  Melissa's talking about something. A group project in her bio class, a partner who isn't pulling their weight. I make the right noises at the right moments, but I'm not really listening. My eyes are moving. Scanning the street, the parked cars, the gaps between buildings.

  Nothing looks wrong. That doesn't mean nothing is wrong.

  "--and then she had the audacity to say I was the one who - Sam? You okay?"

  "Hmm? Yeah. Sorry. Distracted."

  Melissa gives me a look. "You've been weird all day. Everything good? Is someone giving you shit?"

  "Fine. Just tired. Didn't sleep great."

  She doesn't look convinced, but she lets it drop. We walk another block in comfortable silence.

  Her street comes up. "This is me," she says, and I nod, and we do the little wave thing, and then she's peeling off toward her house and I'm alone.

  Two blocks to go.

  I keep walking. The neighborhood is quiet - too cold for people to be out on their porches, too early for the after-work crowd. A car passes, doesn't slow. A dog barks somewhere behind a fence.

  One and a half blocks.

  I hear them before I see them. Footsteps behind me, too fast, too deliberate. The particular rhythm of someone closing distance with purpose.

  I don't turn around. I shift my weight forward, onto the balls of my feet. Let my shoulders drop. Hands out of my pockets.

  The footsteps break into a run.

  I spin.

  He's mid-twenties, white, built like someone who lifts but doesn't fight. Blue jacket. Yellow bandana stuffed in his breast pocket, another one wrapped around his face to cover his features. Baseball cap. I don't see enough to catch the color of his eyes. He's got a collapsing baton in his right hand, already extended, and he's swinging it at my head before he's even finished closing the distance.

  I step inside the arc of the swing, too close for the baton to land with any force. His arm hits my shoulder - it'll bruise, but the weapon part whiffs past my ear. I drive my elbow into his solar plexus, feel the air go out of him, and he doubles over but doesn't go down.

  What is this, amateur hour?

  A second, more rational part of my brain says that maybe you should be less contemptuous of the armed, random attacker on the street, and more fearful of the fact that you are getting jumped.

  Another part, maybe the first part, maybe a third part, says that I am five foot ten now and am starting to approach the part of puberty where I'm not quite looking teenage.

  Anyway.

  He pulls his body back up and chokes up on the baton with both hands. He's tougher than he looks. Or more committed. He swings again, wild, and this time I'm not quite fast enough - the baton catches me across the ribs, and that one hurts, a bright flare of pain that my body files away for later.

  But he's overextended now. Off-balance. I grab his weapon arm, twist, and use his momentum to take him down face-first onto the sidewalk. I don't even need to box him. I feel like one of Jordan's anime characters, just for a split second, the phrase pops into my head - I don't even need to waste my special attack on the likes of you - and then the feeling fades into the grim mixture of satisfaction, phobic anxiety, what is almost certainly PTSD jitters, and adrenaline that characterizes the end of a fight. My knee goes into his back, pinning him. I wrench his arm up behind him, just short of the angle that would dislocate his shoulder.

  "Don't," I say, quiet, calm, not even breathing hard. "Move."

  He moves. Tries to buck me off. I add pressure to the arm, and he screams.

  "I said don't."

  He stops.

  The whole thing took maybe eight seconds. The street is still empty. No one's come running. No phones out. Just me and a guy in a blue jacket, face-down on cold concrete.

  I pat him down one-handed, keeping pressure on the pin. Wallet, keys, phone. And in his jacket pocket, a folded piece of paper.

  I pull it out. Unfold it with my flat capped teeth and my free hand.

  It's a photo of me. Grainy, obviously taken from a distance - me walking out of the community center, maybe a week ago. My face is circled in red marker. Red marker, some sort of symbol. A swoosh? A letter? Something like a checkmark, but rounded.

  "Who gave you this?" I ask.

  He doesn't answer.

  I add a little more pressure. "I can dislocate your shoulder and leave you here. Or you can tell me who sent you and I'll let you keep the arm. Your choice."

  "I don't--" He's panting, voice tight with pain. "It was just a post. On the forum. Money. Money! They put a hundred up front and another two hundred to send a message. Show cape-lovers like you--"

  "Who posted it?"

  "I don't know! It was anonymous! I just--"

  I twist his shoulder just a degree more and he gasps. "Cape-lover? Your brain is rotten," I can't help but say. Phantom Jordan in my head. He sounds like an X-Men antagonist, they tell me. "Don't tell me this is an actual prejudice you have? Please tell me it's more interesting than that."

  He grunts in pain, trying to twist off from under me. "It's not... right..." he pants like someone who ran a marathon. "Unnatural. Stop helping them. Brainwashed. Temple bastard. Lefty scum."

  "Temple? How old do you think I am?" I ask, not actually fishing for an answer. Mostly because I see people rapidly beginning to notice the commotion, and right now I probably look like the bad guy.

  Okay, well. Whatever.

  I take his phone. Yank it from his pocket hard enough that he yelps. Then, I shift his arm so that it's pinned under my butt, just for a split second, and grab his leg for a spell. Upsie daisy! And a twist, and a pull. Nothing dislocated, but I need that leg nonfunctional for at least... thirty seconds. He lets out an undignified squeal, and I hop up off of him. "Keep the wallet. Dickhead," I spit, throwing it ten feet in front of him, away from where I'm headed.

  Pick.

  So, anyway, I started running.

  Three blocks later, I cut through an alley, double back, make sure I'm not being followed. The phone is a cheapo gas station burner, no passcode. I'll go through it later, see if there's anything useful in his messages or his forum history.

  The photo stays in my pocket. My face, circled in red.

  I make it home, lock the door behind me, and stand in the kitchen for a long moment, just breathing. Looking around at my house, empty, devoid of parents. Maxwell sort of ambles out of the bathroom, catches me staring, and blinks a couple of times. I lock the front door.