Patty's Bar is the kind of place that hasn't changed its decor since 1987 and considers that a selling point.

  I'm sitting in a booth near the back, hood up, nursing my second diet coke, watching the door. The bartender - Patty herself, seventies, white hair, arms like she used to arm wrestle for money - gave me a look when I came in but didn't say anything. She knows who uses her back room. She knows not to ask questions.

  It's not official, nothing on paper, but everyone in South Philly knows: you've got a problem that needs a certain kind of solution, you come to Patty's and you wait.

  So I'm waiting.

  The bar is half-full, mostly older guys watching a Sixers game on the TV above the liquor shelf. A couple of them clocked me when I walked in - too young, wrong neighborhood, obvious outsider. I can feel their attention like a low-grade itch on the back of my neck. They're not hostile, exactly. Just aware.

  I check my phone. 4:47 PM. McNulty should be wrapping up his patrol soon. I told the guy at the door I'd wait, and he passed it along, and now I'm sitting here with flat diet coke and a growing sense that everyone in this bar knows exactly what I am even if they can't prove it.

  The door opens. Cold air, street noise, and then McNulty.

  He's hard to miss. Bulldozer. Sean McNulty. Everyone here knows who he is, especially now that he's the main point of contact for the Pals, ever since Patriot ditched them for greener pastures. My fault. Sorry! He's in civilian clothes - jacket, jeans, work boots - but he moves like someone who's used to people getting out of his way. Because they do.

  His eyes find me immediately. He doesn't look surprised.

  He crosses to my booth, slides in across from me, and doesn't say anything for a long moment. Just looks at me with that flat, assessing gaze that all the veteran capes develop eventually. The one that says I'm figuring out how much trouble you're about to be.

  "Small," he says finally.

  "McNulty."

  "You look like shit."

  "Thanks. It's been a day."

  He flags down Patty, orders a coffee, waits until she's gone before speaking again. "The guy at the door said you had something. Said it was urgent."

  "It is." I pull out my phone, bring up the notes I made Saturday night - the ones with the locations, the timing, the headcounts. "Bellwether District. West side, near the river. Four buildings, one active cutting operation. They're intercepting Rogue Wave shipments and tainting them with stimulants before pushing them back out. That's why you've been seeing bad reactions cluster in South Philly - it's not random, it's geographic. The contaminated product is radiating out from a central point."

  McNulty takes my phone, scrolls through the notes. His expression doesn't change, but I can see him processing, filing, connecting. "Who's they?"

  "The Kingdom," I answer, plainly.

  "How sure are you?"

  "I watched a truck unload fifty-four boxes Saturday night. I've been tracking the blood signatures on my EMT shifts for three weeks - the bad batches all have the same chemical profile, and they all trace back to that area." I take my phone back when he's done. "I'm sure."

  He's quiet for a moment. Then: "You went out there alone?"

  "Not exactly. There was... someone else working the same problem from a different angle. We crossed paths."

  "Rogue Wave?"

  This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

  "Yeah."

  McNulty grunts. He doesn't ask for details, which I appreciate. "And you're telling me this because...?"

  "Because the Pals have South Philly. Because you've got eyes and ears I don't have. Because someone needs to be watching that site, and I can't do it alone." I lean back in the booth, suddenly tired. "And because the Songbirds are escalating. Someone put a bounty on me - not Bloodhound, me, Sam Small, community center volunteer. I got jumped walking home from school today."

  That gets a reaction. A slight narrowing of the eyes, a tension in the shoulders. "You said it was the Kingdom."

  "Yeah, I think the Kingdom is using the Songbirds like attack dogs. Useful idiots. Easy to aim. Aggressive. Clearly all restraining their lizard impulses," I try to explain.

  He stares at me again. "Are you okay?" he asks. It's not the voice of someone who sees me as an enemy. Suddenly, he's a dad, and I'm a civilian in his district. And I'm not even from around here.

  "I'm fine. He's not." I don't elaborate. "But it means someone's paying attention. Someone doesn't want me poking around Bellwether, and they're willing to use the Songbirds as heat-seeking missiles to discourage me."

  "Right, the Kingdom. Like you said."

  "That's my guess. Can't prove it yet."

  McNulty sits with that for a long moment. Patty brings his coffee; he wraps his hands around the mug but doesn't drink.

  "I'll put eyes on it," he says finally. "No promises beyond that."

  "I'm not asking you to pick fights. I'm asking you to watch. Document. Build a picture." I stand up, leave a ten on the table for my diet cokes. "And if you see anything actionable, you've got my number."

  He nods. Doesn't get up. "Small."

  I pause.

  "I heard you've been retired."

  "I did say that."

  "But you're still doing this." He gestures vaguely - at me, at the bar, at the situation. "Still running around, still gathering intel, still putting yourself in the crosshairs."

  I don't have a good answer for that. So I just say: "Yeah. I guess I am."

  He takes a small sip of coffee. "You're doing good work out there with the O'Connors' kid. Don't throw it all away on a hunch."

  I blink a couple of times. Liam? He knows Liam? Liam's family?

  "I won't," I promise him.

  The bus takes forty minutes to get from South Philly back to Tacony.

  Forty minutes of stops and starts, of people getting on and off, of the city scrolling past the window in a blur of rowhouses and corner stores and chain-link fences. I find a seat near the back, put my hood up, and let my brain run.

  I told McNulty everything. The Bellwether site, the tainting operation, the Songbird bounty, the Kingdom connection. He listened, he didn't interrupt, he asked smart questions. Whether he'll actually do anything about it is another matter, but at least the information is in the right hands now.

  One channel down. Several more to go.

  Councilman Davis already knows. I called him this morning, before school, and gave him the abbreviated version. He's going to pass it to the DVD through official channels, which means paperwork and jurisdictional questions and all the slowness that implies. But it also means federal resources, eventually. Warrants. Manpower. The kind of weight I can't bring on my own.

  Miasma knows. He's "working on it," whatever that means. Probably figuring out how to use the information inside Argus Corps without exposing himself or me. That's a delicate game, and I don't envy him the playing of it. I'm sure if he suggests it to Maya, bad things are going to happen. But I'm also sure he knows that.

  The Auditors are waiting for me at the community center. Maggie, Lily, Amelia, Tasha. Maxwell's coming too - Crossroads, technically, though he's still not cleared for field work. They need to hear all of it, the full picture, not just the pieces I've been parceling out in text messages.

  And then there's the EMT problem. Hector and Deena need to know that tainted Jump is coming from Bellwether, that the bad batches are going to keep coming until someone shuts down the source. But I can't just tell them that - not without explaining how I know, not without burning my cover as "just an intern who's weirdly good at blood-smelling." I need to launder the information somehow. Route it through someone with legitimate standing. Jamal, maybe, or the health department, or--

  The bus lurches to a stop. A woman with a stroller gets on, struggles with the steps, finally makes it to a seat. The driver waits, patient, then pulls back into traffic.

  I watch the city go by and think about rules.

  Maxwell was right. The rule I followed - retirement, compartmentalization, pretending I could be two separate people - brought me here. To a bar in South Philly, begging for help. To a bus seat, alone, running through a mental checklist of all the people I need to tell all the things I've been keeping secret.

  The rule didn't work. The rule was never going to work. I was always going to end up here, one way or another - still doing the work, still taking the risks, just doing it badly instead of well.

  So what's the new rule?

  The bus turns onto Torresdale Ave. Three more stops until the community center.

  I pull out my phone, check the group chat.

  Maggie: here, where are you?

  Tasha: Brought snacks.

  Lily: is this a meeting meeting or a hangout meeting?

  Amelia:??

  I'm pretty sure that means "my call".

  Sam: meeting meeting. five minutes out.

  Then I put the phone away and watch the last few blocks scroll past.