When she finally speaks, her voice is so soft I have to strain to hear it.

  "It's because I love you, you stupid fucking idiot cocksucker loser."

  I blink, certain I've misheard. The words don't compute, like they're in a language I only partially understand.

  "What did you just say?" I ask. The cuss words just kind of formed into a big ball around the rest of it.

  Kate's head snaps up, and suddenly she's not whispering anymore. "I said I love you!" she almost yells, her voice cracking. "I'm in love with you, Sam! I have been for years! And that's why I'm going to hell!"

  The tears she's been fighting back all night finally break through, streaming down her face as her shoulders shake with sobs. Not the quiet, dignified kind, but the ugly, snotty, gasping kind that only happens when someone has been holding something in for so long that it's eating them from the inside.

  I stand frozen, unable to really parse what just got said. Kate. In love with me. Kate, who I've known since kindergarten. Kate, who is Soot, who has been fighting the Kingdom, who believes she's damned. Kate, who is my roommate, for like at least two more weeks. Huh? What?

  "But... why would that send you to hell?" I finally manage, my voice sounding strange and distant to my own ears.

  Kate stares at me like I've just asked why water is wet. "Because I'm a lesbian, Sam! I can't... I'm not supposed to... It's a sin."

  "Says who?" I ask, genuinely confused. Kate's family isn't particularly religious—at least, not that I've ever noticed.

  "Says the Bible! Says the Church! Says Father Patrick! Says every Catholic forum on the internet!" She gestures wildly around her, as if these authorities are physically present in the dusty abandoned house. "I'm supposed to be fruitful and multiply, to honor God's plan. Instead, I want..." She trails off, fresh tears spilling down her cheeks. She sucks in air and it sounds like a gasping, dying fish.

  "Your dad wouldn't care about this," I say, still trying to process everything. "Liam's not exactly a fire-and-brimstone type."

  "It doesn't matter if he cares," Kate says, wiping her nose with her sleeve. "It doesn't matter if he's the most accepting dad in the world. It's not about him—it's about what's right, what's... ordained."

  She starts pacing the small space, her movements jittery and tense. "I talk to Father Patrick in confession. He's nice about it, says God loves all His children, says I shouldn't hate myself. But the doctrine is clear. I can have these... feelings, but I can't act on them. Ever. It's abstinence or damnation."

  The pieces start clicking together in my mind. "So that's why you think you're damned? Because you're gay?"

  "I don't think, I know," Kate insists. "That's what I saw when I died, Sam. Hell. Because deep down, I knew I couldn't change what I am, what I feel. I couldn't be what I'm supposed to be."

  The despair in her voice is unbearable. "Kate, that's not—"

  "Can you even imagine?" she continues, not hearing me. "Sleeping in the same room as you for four months? Watching you change, watching you sleep, trying not to... I just want to grab something with my hands and start pulling until it comes apart into bloody meat."

  She flexes her fingers as she says it, as if demonstrating the urge, and I suddenly understand the violence of Soot in a new light. All that rage, that destructive energy, channeled toward criminals because it had nowhere else to go.

  "So that's what Soot is about?" I ask quietly. "An outlet?"

  Kate lets out a hollow laugh. "Partly. And partly... I don't know, penance? Redemption? If I can't be good in the way I'm supposed to be, at least I can do something useful with the time I have left. I get to help you. That's all I ever wanted."

  She sinks down onto her sleeping bag, the fight suddenly draining out of her. "I can't even... jack off about it," she admits, her voice dropping to a miserable, whimpering whisper, like a kicked dog. "That's a sin too. And all these rules, they just make me angrier, more violent. Hurting bad guys feels good. It feels right. Like at least I'm doing something with all this... brokenness inside me."

  I'm at a loss for words. This is just not a framework I have any experience with at all. My parents always told me that whoever I ended up loving was fine with them. And they liked Jamila-- actually, let's not go down that road. My fingers shake.

  The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  "And then there's you," Kate continues, her voice thick with emotion. "You saved my life, Sam. When the fire happened, when I was dying—you found me. You got me out. You're the reason I'm still here, still breathing." She looks up at me, her eyes red-rimmed and desperate. "Do you know what it's like, being saved by the person you love, knowing you can never tell them how you feel? That you're doomed to hell for wanting them?"

  And I never saw it. Never even suspected.

  "Kate," I say, carefully moving to sit beside her on the sleeping bag. Not touching, just close. "I don't know much about Catholic doctrine or what Father Patrick told you in confession. But I do know that no loving God would send someone to hell for loving another person. That doesn't make any sense."

  "It doesn't have to make sense," she says bitterly. "That's what faith is."

  "No, faith isn't about accepting things that don't make sense. It's about trust. And I don't think you should trust anyone who tells you that you're damned for something you can't control."

  Kate shakes her head stubbornly. "You don't understand, Sam. This isn't just about what some priest said. I saw hell. I felt it. And I knew, in that moment, exactly why I was there."

  I'm silent for a moment, thinking about what Multiplex told me earlier today about powers and costs and energy. About things that shouldn't be possible according to physics.

  "What if," I say slowly, "what you saw wasn't hell at all? What if it was something else entirely?"

  Kate looks at me skeptically. "Like what?"

  "I don't know. Maybe it was just a hallucination from oxygen deprivation, like I said before. Or maybe..." I hesitate, then press on. "Maybe it was related to your powers somehow."

  "My powers have nothing to do with this," Kate says flatly.

  "Are you sure? Because I've seen how you control smoke and chemicals as Soot. That's clearly a metahuman ability."

  Kate's eyes narrow slightly. "My powers let me absorb and release vapors. That's it. It doesn't explain... visions of hell."

  "But you manifested those powers after you died, right? After the fire?"

  She nods reluctantly. "I started noticing it in the hospital. The smoke particles from the fire... they were in my lungs, and then suddenly they weren't. Like my skin was eating them." She flexes her fingers. "But that's just physical. Just... chemical. It has nothing to do with damnation or the afterlife."

  "After you had a vision of fire and light," I point out. "That seems connected to me."

  Kate goes still, staring at the cluttered corkboard on the wall but clearly seeing something else entirely. "You think... my dying was my activation event? And the hell I saw was just... power manifestation?"

  I shrug. "It's a theory. I don't know enough about Catholic theology to debate you on sin and damnation, but I do know a lot about powers. And there's a lot we still don't understand about how they work, where they come from."

  "But that doesn't change anything about the rest of it," Kate says, though her voice lacks the previous conviction. "About me being... you know. About the church's teachings."

  "Maybe not," I acknowledge. "But it might change how you interpret what you saw. Because if that wasn't hell—if it was just part of how your powers manifested—then maybe you're not as damned as you think you are."

  Kate doesn't respond right away, and I can almost see the wheels turning in her head, reassessing everything she's experienced through this new lens. The silence stretches between us, filled with the faint sounds of the abandoned house settling and the distant noise of early morning traffic beginning to stir.

  "I still love you," she says finally, her voice small but steady. Despite all the logic I'm trying to throw at her, she looks thoroughly unconvinced. "That hasn't changed."

  I exhale slowly, feeling the weight of her confession. "I don't know what to say to that," I admit. "This is... a lot to process at once."

  "You don't have to say anything," Kate says quickly. "I didn't tell you because I expected anything back. I just... I couldn't keep lying to you. Not when the Kingdom is coming after both of us."

  Her honesty deserves honesty in return. "I've never thought about you that way," I say gently. "Not because there's anything wrong with you, or with being gay. It just never crossed my mind. You've always been Kate, my best friend since forever."

  She nods, looking down at her hands. "I know. I didn't expect anything different. I just needed to tell you the truth, for once. All of it."

  "Thank you for trusting me with that," I say, and I mean it. Whatever else is happening between us—whatever complications Kate's feelings create—I'm touched that she felt safe enough to share this with me.

  "So what now?" Kate asks, glancing around the cluttered safehouse. "I've been fighting the Kingdom for months. I can't just stop."

  "Maybe you don't have to stop entirely. Just... take a break. Lay low until we figure out a better plan."

  "We?"

  "Yes, we," I confirm. "I'm not letting you do this alone anymore, Soot. Especially not now that I know the Kingdom is actively hunting for you."

  Kate looks at me with a mix of gratitude and apprehension. "They're dangerous, Sam. You saw that today. And if they find out who I am..."

  "All the more reason for us to work together," I say firmly. "But we need to be smarter about it. No more solo runs into Kingdom territory. No more improvised chemical attacks without backup."

  "Sounds like you're taking charge," Kate says, a hint of her old stubbornness returning.

  "Someone has to," I reply. "Especially if you're going to keep risking your life because you think you're already damned."

  Kate winces, but doesn't say anything. Like I said - she doesn't look convinced by my scientific explanation.

  "We all make mistakes," I say. "The important thing is that we fix them before they get us killed."

  She nods, then glances at her phone. "We should head back soon. It'll be morning before we know it."

  "Kate," I say, before she can stand up. "One more thing. Whatever happens with the Kingdom, with Soot, with... everything else. We'll figure it out, okay? This doesn't change who we are to each other."

  A ghost of a smile crosses her face—the first genuine one I've seen all night. In months, really. "Promise?"

  "Promise," I say. "Once we're done kicking these guys' asses, we can talk about this more, okay? Then we can figure something out."

  The relief in her eyes is almost painful to see. Like she's been carrying this weight for so long that she'd forgotten what it felt like not to be crushed by it.

  "Okay," she says softly. "Okay."