The week passes like a fever dream, except in reverse - everything sharp and clear and present in a way it hasn't been in months.

  Tuesday night I stop a robbery. Wednesday I sleep for eleven hours and eat three full meals and do my homework without once checking the Songbird forums. I go to school and actually listen in class, actually take notes, actually laugh at something Jake says at lunch that isn't even that funny but my body wants to laugh so I let it.

  Wednesday night I go out again.

  Not for a mission. Just to move. I take the Megalodon suit out through my window and run - not sprinting this time, just a steady lope through the back alleys of Mayfair, learning the territory. There's a gap between two garages on Cottman that leads to a whole network of back paths I never knew existed. There's a fence behind the old dry cleaner's that looks solid but swings open if you know where to push. There's a stretch of rooftop along Frankford Ave where you can see three blocks in every direction, perfect for watching, perfect for waiting.

  I'm thinking about Mayfair the way I never have before. Not as "the neighborhood I grew up in" but as terrain. Sight lines and choke points and escape routes. Places to hide, places to fight, places to disappear. It's like I'm seeing it for the first time, even though I've walked these streets my whole life.

  Thursday morning I ask my Dad for maps.

  He looks up from his coffee, surprised. "Maps of what?"

  "Mayfair. Tacony. The whole northeast, really." I'm already sitting down across from him, pulling out a chair. "You've got access to the city planning archives, right? The old survey maps, the infrastructure stuff?"

  "I mean, yeah, but--" He studies my face, trying to figure out where this is coming from. "Why?"

  "School project in History class," I lie, smooth and easy. "Urban geography. We're supposed to pick a neighborhood and trace its development over time."

  It's a terrible lie. But Dad's a city planner, and city planners love nothing more than talking about city planning, so he doesn't push. By the time he gets home from work I've got a stack of photocopies on my desk - survey maps from the 1920s, infrastructure overlays from the '60s, zoning documents, sewer plans, everything. I spread them out on my floor and start memorizing.

  Nobody has thought about Mayfair this hard except maybe the people who built it. And my Dad. And now me.

  Thursday night I go out again. Bulletproof vest but not strapped super hard, no need to run, and definitely no need to agitate my ribs. This time I swing by Donovan's Hardware - not to fight, just to check in. The window's been boarded up, plywood over the gap, but the lights are on upstairs. I watch from across the street for a few minutes, just making sure everything's quiet. Mr. Donovan comes to the window at one point, looks out at the street, doesn't see me in the shadows. Good. That's how it should be.

  Friday after school I take an EMT shift and it feels good - not just tolerable, not just useful, but actually satisfying in a way it hasn't been since I started. We get three calls: a fender bender on Roosevelt Boulevard, a kid with a broken arm at a birthday party, an elderly woman who fell in her bathroom and couldn't get up. Nobody dies. Nobody's on Jump. Nobody's bleeding out from a gunshot wound or seizing from tainted product. Just normal emergencies, normal people, normal help.

  Hector tells me I seem different. "More present," he says, which is such a therapist thing to say, but he's not wrong. I am more present. I'm here, in my body, in my life, in a way I haven't been since--

  Since before Shrike, maybe. Since before I killed someone.

  I don't think about that. I file it away for later, for Dr. Desai, for some future version of myself who has time to process. Right now I'm just riding the wave. I spend the weekend taking it easy, but, like, intentionally. Reading maps. Resting my ribs and neck and shoulder. Recovering in a way that makes me better at what I do. Acting as a one-woman node - one-girl node, excuse me - people report and I report back and everything feels... Good. But slightly itchy.

  Monday and Tuesday blur together, rolling into March proper. School, homework, EMT training, another hour at Melissa's house eating her mom's pasta and watching reality TV I don't care about. Melissa keeps giving me looks like she's waiting for me to explain what's going on with me, but I don't explain and she doesn't push. I'm sure she'll understand eventually. I'm beginning to think secret identities don't really work. But for now I am just taking it as... operational rest. Something that keeps me sane that doesn't involve seeing Kate in Center City.

  I'm aware, distantly, that this might be a high. The bipolar thing. I'm medicated, I'm stable, but I still know the shape of my own brain. The way everything gets brighter and faster and more possible when I'm trending up. The way I feel invincible even when I'm not.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

  But here's the thing: I'm not wrong. Things are better. I'm not manic, I'm not making reckless decisions, I'm not spending money I don't have or picking fights I can't win. I'm just... good. Competent. Present. For the first time in months, maybe years, I feel like I'm actually living my life instead of just surviving it. Maybe that is being manic - thinking you're not manic. Therapy next week. Something to talk about.

  Wednesday night I go out again. Third outing as Megalodon.

  There's a fight brewing on the corner of Hegerman and Torresdale - some local guys squaring off with some other local guys, the kind of territorial bullshit that usually ends with someone in the hospital or the morgue. I drop down from a fire escape, land between them, and just stand there. Shark helmet. Blue and white armor, dark grey and navy winter coat. Not saying anything, not moving, just present.

  They scatter. Both groups, gone in opposite directions, not even bothering to finish whatever argument they were having. I don't chase them. That's not the point. The point is that there's something new in the neighborhood now. Something that shows up when there's trouble. Something with teeth.

  Word's going to spread. Someone's going to figure out that the shark showed up right after the Big Bad Wolf vanished. But that's okay. It's not for hiding. It's for... discontinuity. What's it called in math class? A piecewise function?

  Thursday I'm sore from all the running, all the climbing, all the late nights. But it's a good sore - the kind that means I'm using my body, pushing it, making it stronger. My ribs are healed. My shoulder's back to full mobility. My regeneration has done its work, erased the evidence of the week ago's Tuesday's fight, left me clean and ready for whatever comes next.

  I catch myself in the mirror after my shower, really looking for maybe the first time in months. I'm not the same girl who put on the Bloodhound suit two and a half years ago. I'm taller - five-ten now, and still maybe growing. Broad in the shoulders. Wide-hipped, not narrow. I'm rectangular. I'm not exactly endowed but that's not something I care about in the first place. I'm built like a powerlifter with wingspan, not a gym bunny or a runway model.

  My jaw can lock hard enough to take a baseball bat without a concussion. My brain can smell blood and my mouth can rip through solid metal. Bone conditioning has turned my fists and shins into cinderblocks. My body is a machine I've been building since I was fourteen, and it's finally finished.

  I'm probably the strongest seventeen-year-old girl on the planet. Not in terms of powers - there are plenty of Flygirls and Juggernauts who could bench-press a car. But in terms of baseline human capability, peak physical conditioning, trained combat reflexes? I'm a brick shithouse. I'm a monster. I'm exactly what Liberty Belle was training me to be, even if neither of us knew it at the time.

  I should feel maybe a little less awesome about this. Possibly slightly frightened.

  Friday morning starts normal. I wake up, shower, eat breakfast, argue with Mom about whether I need a warmer jacket, and end up taking the jacket anwyay. Dad's already gone to work. Maxwell's at his physical therapy appointment, figuring out how to use his shoulder again. The house is quiet and I'm running late, so I grab my bag and head out.

  The walk to school is fine. Cold but clear, February finally starting to think about becoming March. I vary my route like I've been doing all week - down Harbison instead of Torresdale, cut through the parking lot behind the pharmacy, come at the school from the east instead of the north. Keeping myself unpredictable. Staying sharp.

  Nothing happens. No one follows me. No cars slow down.

  I get to school, go to my locker, sit through first period English and second period pre-calc and third period history. Everything's normal. Everything's fine.

  Fourth period is study hall. I'm in the library, pretending to work on a lab report, actually thinking about the maps spread out on my bedroom floor and whether there's a faster route between the community center and Donovan's Hardware. The librarian is shelving books. A few other kids are scattered around, some actually studying, some on their phones.

  The alarm goes off at 11:47 AM.

  It's not the fire alarm - I know that sound, everyone knows that sound. This is different. Longer, more insistent, with a recorded voice underneath that I can't quite make out.

  The librarian freezes. Everyone freezes.

  "What is that?" someone asks.

  The voice becomes clearer as the alarm cycles: "This is not a drill. Please shelter in place. Faculty and staff will direct you to the shelter-in-place locations. This is not a drill. Please shelter-in-place. Faculty and staff..." and so on.

  The librarian is moving now, herding us away from the windows, toward the back corner of the library where there's a storage room. Other kids are pulling out their phones, texting, trying to figure out what's going on. Someone else is laughing nervously, saying it's probably just a mistake, probably just a false alarm.

  I move with the group, let myself be herded, but my brain is running calculations. Shelter in place means a threat inside the building or an external threat they can't identify. Earthquake? Has Maya finally snapped and just hurled a tornado at me? It would be... an escalation, sure. Extremely out of character. And, it would be about me. Is this about me? Not everything is. But maybe this is.

  I try to listen to the people around me. Everyone has their rumors, but there's one I'm hearing better, a single word that's picking up through the crowd. One very recognizable syllable; bomb. For me? Why the hell would someone issue a bomb threat if not--

  I wave the thought away before it finishes forming. That's paranoid. That's crazy. Not everything is about me. Bomb threats happen. Schools get evacuated. It's probably some idiot who didn't want to take a test, some kid who thought it would be funny, some random act of chaos that has nothing to do with Sam Small or Megalodon or any of it.

  Probably.

  The librarian leads us all away from windows, away from visibility, and then locks the library door, and turns the lights off. Response time in Tacony is not great, but I hear the sirens within one one hundred, one hundred ten, one hundred twenty... three minutes, ish. So, clearly, they're taking something seriously.

  Nobody seems to be losing their shit. Everyone around me, faces of students I don't recognize and have never interacted with before, seems to be more confused than frightened. Nobody is taking it seriously. I don't know if that's reassuring or not.