The community center is winding down when I get there.

  A few kids are still in the main room, finishing homework at the folding tables. Mrs. Patterson is wiping down the kitchen counter, humming something I don't recognize. The fluorescent lights buzz overhead, that particular frequency that always makes me feel like my teeth are vibrating.

  Maggie meets me at the door. She takes one look at my face and doesn't say anything, just puts a hand on my shoulder and steers me toward the back.

  The Faraday Room. It used to be a storage closet lined with aluminum foil. And now it's like... an actual Faraday cage. Professional grade. With enough mesh and stuff I don't understand that there's no way a signal is getting in or out. Not that I think I've been bugged, and not that I think Faraday cages block Mr. ESP - a threat we always have to be aware of, even subconsciously - but... it's better than no Faraday cage, right? My phone reception cuts out almost instantly.

  Everyone's already here. Tasha's got her laptop open, a bag of pretzels beside it. Lily's perched on the edge of her chair, legs crossed, watching the door. Amelia's in the corner, fiddling with something small and mechanical - she doesn't look up when I come in, but I see her shoulders relax slightly. Maxwell is by the door, standing because there aren't enough chairs, his bad arm still in a sling. He nods at me once.

  "Okay," Maggie says, closing the door behind us. "We're all here. What's going on?"

  I don't sit down. I'm not sure I can sit down. My body wants to pace, to move, to do something with all the restless energy that's been building since the bus ride. But the room is too small for pacing, so I just stand there, gripping the back of an empty chair.

  "Saturday night," I start. "I went to Bellwether."

  Maggie's eyebrows go up. Tasha stops typing. Amelia's hands go still. "Where?" Lily asks.

  "Bellwether district? District? It's in Southwest Philly, near the river. You know, where it stops being city and starts just being acres of construction vehicles," I describe for her.

  "Okay, and... Alone?" Lily asks. Her voice is carefully neutral.

  "Mostly. There was - someone else showed up. Rogue Wave. We ended up working together, sort of. Temporarily." I wave a hand, dismissing it. "That's not the important part."

  "It feels like a pretty important part," Lily says. I think they would be upset with me if they knew the other guy was Marathon. So... let's keep that close to the chest for now.

  "The important part," I press on, "is what I found. Four buildings on the west side of the site, near the river. One of them is an active cutting operation - tables, scales, packaging equipment. I watched them unload fifty-four boxes from a truck. That's enough Jump to supply half of South Philly for a week, maybe more. And they're getting a lot of trucks. Semi-regularly."

  "Jesus," Maggie breathes.

  "They're intercepting Rogue Wave shipments and tainting them with stimulants before pushing them back out. That's why we've been seeing bad reactions cluster geographically - it's not random contamination, it's deliberate. The product goes in clean, gets cut with something at Bellwether, and comes out poisonous. Oh, right, someone's been tainting Jump. I don't know if you guys knew that." I realize I'm gripping the chair hard enough that my knuckles are white. I make myself let go. "I've been tracking the blood signatures on my EMT shifts. The bad batches all have the same chemical profile. Ritalin, probably. Maybe Concerta. Something that interacts badly with Jump's existing cardiac load."

  Tasha's typing again, fast. "You said four buildings?"

  "One active, one storage, one empty, one with cots. People sleeping on site - workers or prisoners, I couldn't tell which."

  "And you think this is Kingdom?" Maggie asks.

  "The guy I was with - the Rogue Wave guy - he recognized some of the muscle. Said they used to work for him before they flipped. So yeah. Kingdom's running it, using ex-Rogue Wave people who defected."

  Maxwell clears his throat softly. Everyone looks at him.

  "For the record," he says, "Sam came home Monday afternoon with cracked ribs. Someone jumped her walking home from school."

  The room goes very quiet.

  "I'm fine," I say, too fast. "He's not. It was - it wasn't a real fight. He had a baton and a lot of enthusiasm and no idea what he was doing. I put him down in maybe eight seconds."

  "Sam." Maggie's voice is tight. "Someone attacked you. On your walk home from school."

  "Yeah."

  "And you didn't lead with that?"

  "Because it's connected." I pull out the photo, unfold it, lay it on the card table. My face, circled in red. The curved symbol in the corner that Maxwell thinks is a J. "He had this in his pocket. Someone posted a bounty on the Songbird forums - my picture, my route, my schedule. Hundred dollars up front, two hundred more to 'send a message.'"

  Tasha pulls the photo toward her, studies it. "Is that a checkmark?"

  "We don't know what it means yet," I say, cutting her off. I don't want to think about what it might mean. I really, really don't want to think about it. "The point is, someone's coordinating this. Using the Songbirds as - as attack dogs. Point them at a target, let them off the leash, maintain deniability."

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

  "And you think Kingdom's behind that too," Lily says. Not a question.

  "The timing fits. I spend a week poking around, find the Bellwether operation Saturday night, and Monday someone puts a bounty on my head?" I point out, trying not to laugh. Why do I want to laugh? "That's not coincidence. That's retaliation."

  "Or it's two separate things," Tasha says carefully. "The Songbirds have been escalating for weeks. They showed up at the community center opening with signs. They've been harassing powered kids online. This could just be... the next step in that progression. Not connected to Bellwether at all."

  "It could be," I admit. "But I don't think it is."

  "Okay." Maggie holds up her hands. "Let's say you're right. Let's say Kingdom is using the Songbirds to come after you because you got too close to their operation. What's the play?"

  I open my mouth to answer, and nothing comes out.

  Because I don't know. I've been so focused on gathering information, on distributing it to the right channels, on running the circuit from South Philly to Tacony and back - I haven't actually thought about what comes next. What I'm supposed to do with all of this.

  "I told McNulty," I say finally. "The Pals are going to put eyes on Bellwether. Councilman Davis is routing it to the DVD through official channels. Miasma's working the Argus Corps angle. Sundial knows, so the Titans know." I'm ticking them off on my fingers, like a checklist. "I've got the information out there. People who can actually do something about it have the information."

  "And what about you?" Amelia asks. It's the first thing she's said since I walked in. Her voice is quiet, but it cuts through everything else.

  "What about me?"

  "You just said you've distributed the information to everyone else. People who can 'actually do something.'" She tilts her head, studying me with those sharp dark eyes. "So what are you doing? Are you just going to go to school and accept the risk of another ambush?"

  "I'm--" I start, and stop. My hands are shaking. Why are my hands shaking? "I'm coordinating. I'm the one who found it, so I'm making sure the right people know."

  "You're treating yourself like a messenger," Amelia says. "Like your job is done once the information's delivered."

  "Isn't it?"

  "Is it?"

  I want to scream. I want to throw something. I want to pace around this tiny room until my legs give out, because standing still feels like being slowly crushed.

  "I don't know what I'm supposed to be doing," I admit, and my voice cracks on the last word. "I was retired. I was supposed to be retired. But then people started dying from tainted Jump, and I couldn't just - I couldn't not look into it. And then I found Bellwether, and then someone put a bounty on me, and now I'm standing here telling you all of this and I don't know what comes next. I don't know what I am anymore."

  The room is silent. Maggie looks like she wants to hug me. Lily looks like she's running calculations. Tasha's stopped typing entirely. Maxwell is just watching, quiet and steady, the way he's been watching since I came home with bruised ribs and a stolen phone.

  "Sam," Lily says gently. "What do you want to do?"

  "I want it to stop." The words come out before I can think about them. "I want the tainting operation shut down. I want the Songbirds to stop putting bounties on people. I want to be able to walk home from school without checking every car and every alley. I want--" I stop, swallow hard. "I want to help. I want to be useful. I don't want to just sit on the sidelines and watch while other people handle it."

  "That doesn't sound retired to me," Maggie says quietly.

  "No," I agree. "It doesn't."

  Another silence. I run my hands through my hair again and try not to pull.

  "And I want history to just stop for like. A week. I just want a week to go to the beach. And read on the sand. And get a tan. And like... I want to play soccer again, man. I haven't played soccer in like three years. And I can't even play it at school because my regeneration gives me an advantage," It sort of all just comes out of me in one tidal flow. "I just got finished cleaning up this place, can it just stay clean for like... Five minutes?"

  "They don't let you play soccer?" Maxwell asks.

  "I mean, I can play it, like... during gym class. When we do soccer. But not like, as part of the school team. Well, I mean. Tacony Charter Academy High doesn't even have a soccer team. We have a track and field team, and I think field hockey, and some other shit," I explain, trying to keep my hands still.

  "Do you wish you could be like... normal?" Lily asks, clearly trying to therapize me.

  And I appreciate it! I do. But "No!" almost immediately comes out like something pre-thought. "G-d. Can you imagine having to watch all this and not be able to do anything about it? I'd have killed myself." Everyone stares at me like I just said something really bad. I laugh nervously. "What?"

  "Sam, are you, like, okay?" Maggie asks.

  I put my hand down and notice that the spaces between my fingers are full of loose hair. "No. But we keep going regardless of my okayness status."

  Lily puts her hand on my back. I don't flinch from it. The room takes a second to breathe.

  "So," Tasha says, "what do you need from us?"

  I look around the room. My team. My people. The ones I've been keeping at arm's length because I was too scared to admit I wasn't really retired.

  "I need you to help me figure out the Songbird angle," I say. "The forums, the bounty system, who's posting, how they're organizing. If Kingdom is really using them as deniable assets, there's got to be a trail. I don't know how much they can let Maxwell subpoena--"

  "Not a lot," he admits.

  "--But I think your right to free speech goes out the window when you start offering real money to beat people in the real world. I don't know, I'm not a politician. I'm not here to make policy statements," I finish.

  "I think most people would agree with you," Maxwell adds.

  Tasha nods. "I can dig deeper. The research I did before was surface-level - just trying to figure out who they were. If there's a money trail, I'll try to find it. Worst comes to worse I tail some people with drones."

  Next. "I need eyes on the community center. If they're targeting me, they might be targeting this place too. The kids who come here."

  "Already thinking about it," Lily says. "I live closest here besides Tasha. We'll make it work," she continues, putting on a winning smile.

  "I can try to be here more frequently. My parents like that I'm doing something volunteery. Looks good on my college applications," Maggie says.

  "And I need--" I hesitate, looking at Amelia. "I need to talk to you. Later. About something else."

  She nods, just once. She knows.

  "What about Bellwether itself?" Maxwell asks from the door. "You've got eyes on it now, but eyes aren't action. Eventually someone's going to have to actually shut it down."

  "That's above our pay grade," I admit. "The DVD, the Titans, maybe Argus Corps if Miasma can swing it - they've got the resources for a raid. We don't."

  "So we build the case," Tasha says. "Document everything, establish the pattern, make it impossible for the people with resources to ignore."

  "Yeah." I nod slowly. "That's the play for now. Build the case. Protect our own. Wait for an opening."

  It's not a satisfying answer. It's not the dramatic "let's go kick down doors" moment that part of me desperately wants. But it's realistic. It's sustainable. It's what we can actually do with the resources we have.

  "Okay," Maggie says, clapping her hands together. "We've got assignments. Tasha's on research, I'm on patrols, Lily's on quick-response. Amelia, Sam - you two figure out whatever you need to figure out. Mr. Crossroads, you're..."

  "Keeping meeting minutes," he says dryly.

  "Good. Then let's--"

  There's a knock on the door. Everyone freezes.

  "Just Mrs. Patterson," Maxwell says after a moment. "She's locking up. Wants to know if we're almost done."

  The tension breaks. Lily laughs, a little shakily. Maggie mutters something about heart attacks.

  "Yeah," I say. "We're almost done."