"So what's our best move here?" I ask, trying to get us back on track. "With the data, I mean."

  "Well," Akilah says, pulling out a laptop from beneath her desk, "first things first – let's get what you do have transferred over so we can at least analyze the unencrypted portions. Jordan, I'm setting up a secure file transfer now."

  She opens the laptop and begins typing rapidly. Devonte wheels his chair back to his desk, grabs a USB drive, and tosses it to her. She catches it without looking up from her screen, which I'm pretty sure involves some subtle telekinesis. Show-off.

  "What's the server address?" Jordan asks through the phone, their own typing audible in the background.

  "One seventy-two dot sixteen dot sixty-eight dot twenty-one, port twenty-two," Akilah replies, still focused on her screen. "I'm sending you my public key now."

  "Got it," Jordan confirms. "Setting up the SFTP connection. This might take a while – we're talking about almost two hundred gigabytes of data."

  "Two hundred gigabytes?" Devonte whistles. "You guys really did smash and grab everything that wasn't nailed down, huh?"

  "We didn't really have time to be selective while the place was getting gassed," Jordan murmurs.

  Mom shifts uncomfortably at the mention of my near-death experience, but doesn't comment. She's been remarkably quiet throughout this whole thing, just observing and taking it all in. I'm not sure if that's a good sign or not.

  "Transfer initiated," Jordan announces. "ETA... about forty-five minutes to an hour, depending on connection stability."

  A loading bar appears on Akilah's screen, creeping slowly from left to right. The laptop fans kick in with a gentle hum, settling into what's going to be a long process.

  "So," Devonte says, leaning back in his chair and propping his feet on the desk, "while we wait for the digital equivalent of watching paint dry, how's life in the vigilante fast lane? Besides, you know, nearly getting killed."

  He winks at my Mom, so I kick him under the table. He grimaces.

  "Could be worse," I shrug. "I'm grounded for blowing up a warehouse, there's... a new vigilante out who hates me in particular, and there's a criminal organization watching my house. But hey, my ankle's almost healed, so I've got that going for me."

  For a moment, I almost say 'my roommate is a vigilante', but I catch myself before I have to do a lot of explaining to my Mom.

  "Wait, what?" Akilah's head snaps up. "Who's watching your house?"

  "Kingdom, we think," I explain. "White sedan, dark Honda, different cars but similar patterns. Nothing overtly threatening yet, just... surveillance."

  "They're probably trying to figure out if you were involved in the warehouse incident," Akilah says thoughtfully. "The official story is that it was an industrial accident, but they know better."

  "Yeah, well, they can watch all they want. Not like I can go anywhere anyway," I gesture to Mom.

  "Home restriction," Mom addresses the room. "Also, it's not guaranteed to be... bad guys. Three letter agencies use plenty of unmarked white sedans, too. As do private investigators."

  "This is true," Akilah mumbles.

  "Speaking of injuries," Devonte says, tapping the device behind his ear, "how are the shark teeth treating you? Any new developments in the dental department?"

  I run my tongue over my teeth self-consciously. "Nothing interesting yet. Still just popping them out like knuckledusters. How's the ear?" I ask, changing the subject. "For real, I mean. I know the cochlear implant helps, but..."

  Mom glances back and forth between the two of us. I watch her face twitch a little bit at the mention of knuckledusters, but she keeps her mouth closed.

  Devonte's expression shifts, the perpetual smirk fading for a moment. "It's a mixed bag. On one hand, being mostly deaf sucks. The implant is uncomfortable, makes everything sound tinny and artificial. Like listening to the world through a cheap drive-thru speaker." He taps the device gently. "On the other hand, Fury Forge made this custom for me, free of charge. And the hearing aid for the other ear, too."

  "Fury Forge?" I ask, mildly surprised. "She said she'd, like, hook you up. She made them?"

  "I mean, I guess. The hearing aid, at least, since it's supposedly fireproof and non-heat-conducting and has this weird echolocation mode I have yet to understand how to use. She probably did not make the cochlear implant. Frankly, I'm not sure what hearing aids have to do with firefighting, but if she was able to pull it out..."

  "That's handy," I say, genuinely impressed.

  "Plus, if I mark the hearing aid, because it's recording and transmitting sound, I can use it to capture stuff for my powers. So I can record things now. If I don't mind going deaf in that ear again."

  Akilah tugs on her earlobe pointedly. "Pennsylvania is a two-party consent state for recording, Devonte."

  "Yes, thank you, Junior Deputy District Attorney," he says with exaggerated patience. "I'm aware of the legal implications. I don't use it for anything that would get me in trouble." He grins suddenly. "Much."

  "I'm just reminding you that recording without consent is—"

  "A felony, yes, I remember the PowerPoint presentation. All seventy-three slides of it." Devonte turns back to me. "Anyway, it has its uses. How about you, Jordan? Excited for MIT?"

  "Incredibly," Jordan says from the videophone. "The physics program alone is worth it, but I'm more interested in the computational applications. Plus, there's the internship."

  "What internship?" Akilah asks, her attention briefly diverted from the slowly advancing loading bar. Yeah, what internship, Jordan?

  Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

  "The Department of Applied Anomalous Sciences," Jordan says, trying and failing to sound casual about it. "I'll be working with them part-time while I'm studying."

  Akilah's jaw actually drops. "You got an internship with DAAS? How? They don't take undergrads, let alone... I mean—"

  "Let alone what?" Jordan asks, an edge to their voice. "Let alone high school graduates? Let alone people without formal education? Let alone what, exactly?"

  "I was going to say 'let alone people without previous published research,'" Akilah says stiffly. "It's extremely competitive."

  "What's DAAS?" I ask, glancing between Akilah's shocked face and Jordan's prideful one on the screen.

  "Department of Applied Anomalous Sciences," Devonte explains. "Government think tank near MIT. They basically take superhumans with external powers, especially those who can create weird materials, and stick them together in labs hoping they'll accidentally discover something new about physics."

  "It's not 'sticking them together in labs,'" Akilah corrects. "It's a highly sophisticated research facility dedicated to understanding the fundamental mechanisms behind anomalous materials and powers. The work they're doing could revolutionize our understanding of physics and materials science."

  "So... sticking powered people in labs," Devonte reiterates with a grin. "And smashing them together in a big tunnel to make all the particles come out."

  "And you got an internship there?" I ask Jordan, impressed despite myself. I knew they were smart, but this sounds like a big deal.

  Jordan shrugs on screen, but I can tell they're pleased by my reaction. "My space manipulation abilities are of interest to their theoretical physics department. And I looked up what the people on the application team had papers in and made like a two-weekend website that I pretended I was interested in the entire time. You know?"

  "You're way smarter than I thought you were," I blurt out before I can stop myself.

  "Wow, thanks," Jordan says dryly.

  "I just mean – you never talked about it. About being that into physics or whatever. The computers I knew."

  "Because people don't generally want to hear about eigenvalue decomposition or quaternion rotation matrices when we're trying to avoid getting shot," Jordan points out. "But yeah, I'm pretty good with computers."

  "Understatement of the century," Devonte mutters.

  The computer pings softly, drawing our attention back to the loading bar. It's at about thirty percent now, plodding along steadily.

  "So what kind of data do you actually have that's not encrypted?" Akilah asks, tapping a pen against her notepad. "From what Jordan was saying, it sounds like most of the valuable information is locked away."

  "We've got facility blueprints," Jordan answers. "Some shipping manifests, a partial staff directory, and a few fragmented research notes. Nothing that explicitly states what they were producing, but enough to confirm it was some sort of pharmaceutical operation."

  "And you think it's related to these black autoinjectors?" Devonte asks, gesturing to a printout on his desk showing a sleek black device resembling an EpiPen.

  "We're pretty sure," I confirm. "We've seen them used by Kingdom enforcers to boost existing powers. A guy named Bash used one during a confrontation we witnessed. It basically supercharged his abilities within seconds."

  "Like Jump, but for people who already have powers," Jordan adds.

  "Yeah, I've heard reports about these," Akilah says, her brow furrowing. "They're calling it 'Hypeman' on the street. Very expensive, very exclusive, mildly addictive. Not something your average powered individual can get their hands on."

  "You've heard of it?" I ask, surprised. "Why didn't you say anything?"

  "In general, or in this conversation?" Akilah snarks back, not answering me.

  "That's why having a name to a face is so interesting," Devonte adds. "We'd been tracing financial records that suggested the Kingdom was funneling significant resources into some kind of research and development project. But we could never pinpoint exactly where or what it was. Stheno Biopharma..."

  "Very cool sounding name if you have never read any mythology," Akilah jokes.

  "Well, now you know," I say. "Or knew, I guess, since we kind of blew it up."

  "About that," Akilah says, her tone shifting to something more serious. "The warehouse explosion has created a lot of attention. Local news, environmental inspectors, insurance investigators – they're all over it. The official story is that it was an accident caused by improper chemical storage, but there are plenty of people who don't buy that."

  "Including the Kingdom," Devonte adds. "They're not stupid. They know it wasn't an accident, and they're looking for someone to blame."

  "Which is probably why they're watching your house," Akilah concludes. "Probably."

  "So what do we do?" Mom asks, breaking her long silence. Her voice is steady, but I can see the tension in her shoulders, the way her fingers grip her water glass just a little too tightly.

  "For now?" Devonte shrugs. "Keep your heads down. Don't do anything to confirm their suspicions. You have an alibi. It's not necessary for non-cops but given that Councilwoman Richardson just banned youth superheroes, the longer you go without doing anything, the more they think you might just have... given up the ghost. Get back to you in a couple of years when you graduate."

  "And we'll keep digging," Akilah adds. "With the data you're providing, we might be able to map more of their network, identify key players and vulnerabilities."

  "What about the Hypeman formula?" I ask. "Even if we can't decode the technical details, isn't there something we can do to disrupt production? Now that the warehouse is gone?"

  "That's the thing about organizations like the Kingdom," Devonte says grimly. "They never keep all their eggs in one basket. The warehouse was a significant facility, sure, but it was almost certainly just one node in a larger production chain. They've probably already shifted operations to backup locations."

  The computer pings again, the loading bar now at seventy percent.

  "You know," Jordan says thoughtfully from the screen, "even without cracking the encryption, we might be able to track the supply chain through the shipping manifests. Follow the chemicals to their source, or trace where the finished products were being sent."

  "Exactly," Akilah nods. "And once we have those locations, we can expand our surveillance net, gather more evidence, and start building a comprehensive case."

  "A case for who?" I ask skeptically. "The cops? The DVDs? The whole point of us doing this ourselves is that normal channels are compromised. Maya Richardson is on the city council, for god's sake."

  "Not all channels are compromised," Akilah says. "There are still honest people in the system, people who would act on solid evidence if it were presented to them."

  "Like who?" I challenge.

  "Like Chambers and Woo, for starters," Devonte says, gesturing around the office. "The principals here have connections in both law enforcement and federal agencies. People who operate outside Richardson's sphere of influence."

  "And there's the press," Akilah adds. "With enough evidence, the right journalist could blow this wide open, make it too public for anyone to sweep under the rug."

  It's not a bad idea, but I'm still skeptical. "Wouldn't that just force the Kingdom further underground? Make them harder to track?"

  "Maybe," Devonte acknowledges. "But it would also disrupt their operations, force them to rebuild networks, reestablish connections. That buys time, creates opportunities."

  "And it puts public pressure on Richardson," Akilah points out. "Makes it harder for her to operate openly."

  Mom clears her throat, drawing our attention. "This all sounds very... strategic. But what about immediate concerns? Like the people watching our house? Or Sam's safety at school?"

  "We can help with that too," Akilah says, her voice softening slightly. "Counter-surveillance measures, security protocols, emergency response plans. Part of what we do here is protect our clients, not just investigate for them."

  "We're not clients," I point out. "We can't afford to hire you."

  "I mean, we could, but not for very long," Mom jokes nervously, fanning her face with her hand.

  "Pro bono," Devonte says with a wave of his hand. "Consider it payment for the data. This might be the break we've been looking for in our ongoing Kingdom investigations."

  The computer pings again, more insistently this time. The loading bar has completed, flashing green.

  "Transfer complete," Akilah announces, turning the laptop around so we can all see the screen. A folder has appeared, filled with dozens of subfolders and files with incomprehensible names. "Now we can really get to work. Tell me again about Stheno?"