Maxwell doesn't ask what happened. He just looks at me - the way I'm holding my side, the way I locked the door behind me, the way I'm standing in the kitchen like I forgot why I came in here - and says, "Sit down. I'll get ice."

  I sit, after ambling past the living room and into the kitchen. The kitchen chair is cold through my jeans, and my body aches in a dull way that tells me "I just got an injury that would be mildly serious on anyone else".

  Maxwell moves around the kitchen with his good arm, the other one still in a sling. He's been healing up well - another week or two and he'll have full mobility back. Right now he's managing a bag of frozen peas and a dish towel one-handed, which is more dexterity than I'd have in his position.

  "Here." He hands me the makeshift ice pack, and I press it against my ribs. The cold helps. A little.

  He sits down across from me. Doesn't say anything. Just waits.

  Maxwell's good at waiting. It's a precog thing, maybe - when you can see fifteen minutes into the future with perfect clarity, you learn that most moments aren't the ones that matter. You learn to be patient for the ones that are.

  I'm sitting at the kitchen table, the useless flip phone in front of me, the photo with my face circled in red next to it. My ribs are screaming - not broken, probably, but definitely cracked. The kind of injury that would sideline a normal person for weeks. For me, it's maybe two days of discomfort and one day of itchy healing.

  Still hurts now, though.

  "Here," Maxwell says, handing me a bag of frozen peas wrapped in a dish towel. His right arm moves a little stiffly - the shoulder's healing, but not healed. We make quite the pair.

  "Thanks."

  I press the peas against my side and hiss at the cold. Maxwell sits down across from me, doesn't say anything, just waits. He's good at that. The waiting.

  I know that the phone is a dead end before I start dialing back numbers. Two of them immediately spit back out the disconnected number dial tone. Another one gives me a helpful robo message that the voice mail box hasn't been set up. Awesome. There's exactly one text message that is just the intersection I was at when the guy started chasing me. Exact streets, exact times. Cool. "Dark hair, five foot ten". Got that right.

  "It's not going to have anything useful," Maxwell says. Not a question.

  "No." I flip the phone closed, then open it again, then closed. Fidgeting. "It's a burner. Probably bought it specifically for this. The numbers are dead ends, the texts are just... logistics."

  "What about the photo?"

  I look at it again. Me, walking out of the community center. The red circle. The checkmark?

  "Proves someone's coordinating this. Putting bounties on the forum, targeting specific people." I tap the checkmark with my finger. "This is their mark, I think. Like a signature. 'Job confirmed' or whatever."

  "But not who's behind it."

  "No."

  Maxwell nods slowly. He's thinking - I can see him doing it, the way his eyes go slightly unfocused when he's running possibilities. Not using his power, just... processing. "Sam, I think that's a letter J?" he asks. "Not a hundred percent sure."

  I turn the photo a little bit, left and right. "Sure, maybe. Looks like a checkmark to me."

  "You went to Bellwether Saturday night," he follows up.

  It's not an accusation. It's barely even a question. Just a statement of fact, delivered in that quiet way he has.

  "Yeah."

  "Alone?"

  I want to say no. I want to say I had backup, I had a plan, I was being smart about it. But the word that comes out is: "Mostly."

  Maxwell waits.

  "There was... someone else there. Working the same angle from a different direction. We ended up collaborating. Sort of. Temporarily." I shift the frozen peas, wincing. "He wanted to blow the place up. I talked him out of it. Or he ran out of explosives. One of those."

  "Rogue Wave?"

  "Yeah. One of their people. Not a friend."

  Maxwell absorbs this. Doesn't react, doesn't judge. Just files it away.

  "And you think Saturday night is connected to this," he says, nodding at the photo.

  "Has to be. I spent a week poking around, asking questions, tracking shipments. Then I find the actual operation, and two days later someone puts a bounty on me?" I chuckle. "That's not coincidence. That's consequence. The Kingdom using Songbirds like attack dogs."

  This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

  "You're certain it's not just two people who hate you independently? Did they catch you?" he asks, trying to poke holes in my theory.

  I think. "I didn't see anyone see us. There wasn't any alarm raised, and if they did, it would be to the other guy. I'm sort of a small fry in comparison, right?"

  "So it might be a coincidence," he surmises.

  "Might is a big word. Someone's sending the shock troops after Bloodhound now," I say, the name coming out entirely unbidden.

  "But they're not targeting Bloodhound. They're targeting Sam Small," Maxwell points out.

  "Yeah." I stare at the photo. "Community center volunteer. Librarian's daughter. Cape-lover." The last word tastes sour. "He called me a cape-lover. Like that's the worst thing you can be."

  "That's..." he starts.

  "It's so stupid. I'm not--" I stop, because I don't know how to finish that sentence. I'm not a cape? I'm not a cape-lover? Both feel like lies. "It's like a cartoon, dude. It's a cartoon prejudice. At least Shrike hated me because I was Jewish. What's there even to hate about people with superpowers?"

  Maxwell raises an eyebrow.

  "Alright, fine, I get it," I pull myself down from the rhetorical ledge. "It's just... I can't take it seriously even as a turn of phrase. But he still broke my ribs over it. Even if I think it sounds stupid. I'm not a cape. I don't wear capes. I'm..."

  I open my mouth to say retired.

  "You're retired?" he finishes for me, after a couple of seconds. I don't know what just happened. It was like my brain filled with static.

  Then, it all starts coming out at once. It's more like vomiting than anything else. Complete with the pressure, the way my throat feels like it's tensing up. My mouth is filling with warm, uncomfortable wetness. Oh my G-d, am I about to vomit?

  "I don't know," I sort of hack up, and it feels like pulling a tooth. "I thought I knew. I thought I could just... stop. Be normal. Let other people handle it." I gesture at the phone, the photo, my bruised ribs. "But it turns out it doesn't matter if I'm retired or not. People still want to hurt me. People are still dying from tainted Jump. The community center still needs protecting. None of that stops just because I decided I was done."

  "No," Maxwell agrees. "It doesn't."

  "So what's the point?" The frustration is leaking through now, cracking my voice. "What's the point of being retired if I'm still doing the work? If I'm still going out at 2 AM, still tracking drug operations, still getting jumped on my walk home from school? All 'retired' means is I'm doing it alone, without backup, without telling anyone. It means I'm doing it worse."

  Maxwell doesn't say anything

  "I benched Alex for this," I groan, pinching the bridge of my nose. "For going off on his own, no plan, no backup, thinking he could handle it solo because he's good enough and the cause is just enough. And then I turned around and did the exact same thing. Except I'm better at it, so I convinced myself it was different."

  "Is it different?"

  "Come on, asshole, you know the answer to that," I bite back.

  Maxwell raises an eyebrow again.

  "Stop doing that," I grunt. I put the frozen peas down on the table. My side aches, but the cold was starting to burn.

  Maxwell lowers an eyebrow.

  "I have a team," I say. "I have the Auditors, the Titans, contacts in the DVD, even Miasma inside Argus Corps. I have resources. I have people who would help me if I asked. And instead of using any of that, I've just been lying to people for-- I don't even know why. Lying to myself? G-d, I sound like such a drama queen."

  "Why?"

  "Why do I sound like--"

  He puts a hand out and cuts me off. "Why do you think you're lying? You have been retired."

  It takes me a solid two minutes of the most agonizing thinking I've done in my entire life. By the time I'm done thinking, my nose has filled with snot and I'm like maybe three seconds from crying.

  "Because everyone kept telling me to stop," I gasp. "My parents. Multiplex. Various doctors and surgeons. Even Hector, even if he was nicer about it. Every adult in the room. Some of the teens, too. Everyone kept saying 'this isn't good for you, Sam' and 'you need to take care of yourself' and 'you can't keep doing this forever.' And I retired. I don't want to be Bloodhound anymore. It's miserable. The suit smelt like death so I got rid of it. I retired. I was done. I was fine."

  Maxwell nods slowly. "Were you?"

  I look at the photo again. Sam Small, circled in red. Target.

  "I'm the girl who runs toward the trouble," I choke out through grit teeth. "I always have been. Even before I had powers - I was the kid who made the dive play in soccer even when it didn't make sense. The kid who got hurt because I couldn't not try." I touch my ribs, gently. "But I can do that being an EMT. I don't need to go out in a costume about it. I don't need to be stupid anymore. I was done!"

  "I don't think you ever left," Maxwell replies like a bullet right in my sternum. "I think you just started compartmentalizing more. Maybe not exactly psychologically healthy."

  I blink at him, owlishly.

  "'If the rule you followed brought you to this, of what use was the rule?'" he asks, reciting it like a quote, but I don't ask him from where.

  I feel everything accelerating together. Something in my brain pulling downwards. I almost want to get mad at Maxwell for what is clearly his best attempt at doing therapy-via-Socratic-method. How can he just be so G-d damn cool-headed all the time? And now I'm panting for breath like I just ran a marathon. Or like there's someone after me. I feel like there's not enough air in the room.

  Maxwell scoots back on the chair and starts making some tea in the microwave just like my Mom does. Is that because he thinks it'll make me feel better, or because he wants some tea?

  "The retirement thing isn't working," I gasp. "It was supposed to make things easier, but it's just made everything harder. I'm doing the work anyway, but stupider. I'm not even taking my own lessons," I pull out my phone, scroll to Amelia's contact. My thumb hovers over the message button. "I should probably figure out what I actually want before I ask her to make it."

  "Probably," Maxwell agrees. "But starting the conversation isn't a bad first step."

  I look at the phone. Look at the photo with my face circled in red. Look at Maxwell, sitting himself back down across from me with his healing shoulder and his quiet patience. He hands me a mug full of microwaved tea. I stare at it, the kitchen lights just bright enough that I can see my face reflected in a cup full of Raspberry Zinger.

  The front door opens. Mom's voice. Mom's footsteps. I am trying to think of how to phrase literally anything, but I think she clocks my ugly, snotty crying face before I even get the opportunity to say a word. "Is everything alright, honey?"

  I glance at Maxwell out of the corner of my eye, trying to calculate how much I want to tell her. Calculating how much she wants to tell me. Where do I start?

  "So, a funny thing happened on the way home from school today," is where I pick up the story.