Light. Then dark. Then light again.
I was underwater. Not literally, at least I didn't think so, but everything had that drowned quality, that thick syrupy slowness where sound reaches you late and wrong, warped by distance. Voices above me. Faces, maybe. Shapes that moved like fish through murky glass.
A flashlight in my eye. I tried to flinch. Didn't work. My body had filed for independence from my brain and was currently not accepting requests.
Someone said, "Responsive. Barely."
Someone else said something I couldn't parse. The words arrived in my skull like furniture being dragged across a floor. Heavy, shapeless, scraping.
I was on my back. That much I knew. Something flat and hard beneath me, a gurney, probably. The sky was above me, then it wasn't. A ceiling. White tiles. Fluorescent lights that buzzed with the particular hostility of institutions that are trying to help you.
I closed my eyes. The dark took me again, gently this time, like a hand pressing me back into a pillow.
* * *
When the light came back, it came with Leon's face.
He was standing above me, or leaning, more like, his hands braced on either side of the gurney, his expression cycling through relief and guilt in a loop I could track even through the fog. His lip was split. There was a purple bruise beneath his left eye that looked like it went deep. But he was alive. That part I clung to.
"He's awake," Leon said. Not to me. Over his shoulder.
A medic appeared. Young guy, maybe my age, with the calm efficiency of someone who'd seen worse today and would see worse tomorrow. He pressed something cold against my arm. I tried to speak. What came out was a sound that could generously be called a vowel.
"Don't move," the medic said. "You've got a fractured radius, three cracked ribs, and a concussion that I'd classify as..." he checked his datapad, "enthusiastic."
Cool. Enthusiastic concussion. Great first mission, Maxey. Dad would be proud.
The world dimmed again. I was losing my grip on consciousness like a man trying to hold wet soap. Every time I squeezed, it slipped.
* * *
Outside the Bank — Leon
The street that had been empty twenty minutes ago was now a circus.
Three hero response teams had arrived within six minutes of the call. Two from Austerium's municipal agency, one from the regional tier-two outfit that operated out of a glass tower forty miles north. The heroes who'd shown up were serious people. Real rankings. Real power. They'd subdued the giant in under ninety seconds, which said something about their skill and a lot about how outmatched Leon and Maxey had been.
Ambulances lined the curb. Medical heroes, specialists whose powers were biologically oriented, healers and cellular manipulators, were already working the scene. A woman with glowing green hands knelt beside one of the hostages. A man with silver eyes was running a diagnostic scan on the unconscious fire-user, still cuffed inside the bank.
Leon sat on the bumper of a parked SUV and watched the organized chaos unfold. His hands hurt. His jaw hurt. Everything south of his neck was one continuous ache. A medical hero, young kid, buzz cut, datapad in hand, approached him with that particular blend of authority and disinterest that suggested government employment.
"Sir, I need to assess your—"
"I'm good." Leon waved him off.
The medic shrugged. The universal gesture of a healthcare professional who'd made peace with noncompliance. He held out his datapad. "Just sign here confirming you refused medical care."
Leon took the stylus and signed in a beautiful, flowing cursive: Fuck you.
The medic didn't look at the signature. He tapped confirm, pocketed the datapad, and turned to leave. "Guess I'm going home early."
Leon almost laughed. Almost.
But the laugh died before it reached his mouth, because the street was filling with people who didn't belong at a crime scene. Black SUVs with tinted windows were pulling up in a convoy, four, five, six of them, and from each one emerged a small army of people in suits. Khaki. Grey. Navy. The coordinated blandness of bureaucracy. They moved through the police tape without stopping, flashing credentials that nobody questioned, and began fanning out across the scene with the quiet efficiency of people who did this often.
Leon didn't know what a fleet of suits was doing at an active crime scene. This wasn't normal procedure. Normal procedure was a detective team, maybe a forensic hero or two, and a lot of yellow tape. Not this. This was something else.
But then, in the sea of pressed slacks and agency lanyards, he spotted a face he recognized.
Short. Round. White hair cut close to her skull. A face that looked like it had been frowning since birth and had simply committed to the bit. Sheila Marcano, Regional Investigative Liaison, technically his superior by about four levels of bureaucratic chain, and one of the only people in the entire system Leon actually trusted.
Leon speed-walked toward her. She was already moving toward him, matching his pace, her short legs covering ground with the determined efficiency of a woman who had never once in her life been accused of being slow.
"Sheila." Leon stopped in front of her. "What the fuck is going on?"
Sheila's face held its permanent frown. Her eyes swept the scene, the SUVs, the suits, the heroes still securing the perimeter, and settled back on Leon with a look of genuine puzzlement.
"You tell me."
"Ambulance took Maxey and they didn't tell me shit about whether he's alive or not."
Sheila put a hand on Leon's shoulder. The touch was firm, grounding. "Don't worry. He's okay."
Something in Leon's chest cracked. Not in a dramatic way. Not cinematic. More like a wall you've been holding up all day finally develops a hairline fracture, and everything behind it starts to seep through. Tears gathered at the edges of his eyes. He grabbed his own hair with both hands and pulled.
"Fuck me. Fuck me. Fuck me. Fuck me." Each repetition quieter than the last. "It was his first mission, Sheila."
Sheila didn't respond to that directly. Instead, she turned and pointed at a man standing thirty feet away. Older, mid-fifties, grey hair, white complexion, a face that wore its wrinkles like credentials. He stood with the practiced stillness of someone who was used to being the most important person in any room. Dark suit. No lanyard. No visible credentials. He didn't need them.
The man walked over when Sheila flagged him. He moved like time was something that existed for other people. He stopped in front of Leon, took out a datapad, and tapped a few inputs with the detached competence of a man ordering lunch.
"Okay." He put the datapad away. "This is what we're going to do. Go to the clinic. Get some rest. We'll take it from here."
Leon's eyes damn near fell out of his skull.
"You're..." He blinked. "You're not going to take my statement?"
The older man was already walking away. "No, you're good. Just go home. Sleep if you want."
Leon jogged to catch up. He stepped in front of the man and planted himself. The older man stopped. Rolled his eyes the way you'd roll them at a traffic light that was taking too long.
"What type of bullshit detective," Leon said, his voice low and steady, each word placed like a brick, "doesn't get a statement from the main witness, who is also a victim, who is also, I don't know, a fucking sworn hero of the city?"
The older man studied Leon for a long moment. Not with hostility. With the flat, appraising patience of someone who dealt with emotions the way a janitor dealt with spills. They happened, they were inconvenient, and they would be cleaned up in due course.
"Mr. Martin." His voice was dry. Desert dry. The kind of dry that made you thirsty just hearing it. "My name is Governor Aldric Trent. I'm not a detective. I'm the person the detectives report to. And what I'm telling you is that we have the situation in hand. Your cooperation is appreciated but not required."
"Not required?" Leon's jaw tightened. "I watched two of my clones get killed. My partner, a twenty-four-year-old kid on his first day, got slammed into a wall so hard he might have brain damage. And you're telling me my input is not required?"
Trent didn't flinch. Didn't blink. He had the particular talent of absorbing emotional intensity the way sand absorbs water. Completely, silently, and without visible effect.
"What I'm telling you, Mr. Martin, is that your agency is going to receive five hundred thousand dollars in emergency operational funding. Effective immediately. Consider it a recognition of the risks you and your partner endured today." He paused, and the pause was surgical. "I'd recommend you use it wisely. Build out your team. Upgrade your infrastructure. The world is getting more dangerous, and small agencies need every advantage they can get."
Leon stood very still. The number sat in the air between them like a bribe wearing a suit.
"Five hundred thousand," Leon repeated.
"Correct."
"And in exchange?"
"In exchange, you allow us to conduct our investigation without external interference." Trent's voice didn't change pitch. Didn't change speed. It was the vocal equivalent of a flat line on a heart monitor. "You go to the hospital. You check on your partner. And you let the professionals handle the rest."
Leon felt his teeth pressing together so hard his molars ached. He wanted to say something sharp. Something righteous. Something that would crack that bureaucratic armor and make this dry, grey man feel something for once in his colorless life.
But Sheila was at his elbow now. She leaned in. "Leon."
"Don't."
"Listen to me." Her voice was low, private. "You're a two-person agency. You and a kid who's currently unconscious. That's it. That's the roster. With five hundred thousand, you can actually build something. You can hire people. You can get equipment that isn't held together with tape and optimism."
"It's hush money, Sheila."
"It's money." She squeezed his arm. "And right now, you need it more than you need a fight with the governor's office. Take the deal. Build up the agency. And when the case progresses, when new information surfaces, you'll be in a better position to act on it. Right now, we don't have anything."
Leon looked back at Trent, who had already resumed walking, already moving to the next item on whatever internal checklist governed his day. A man who operated on efficiency and control, and who viewed human beings as inputs in a system he was paid to manage.
"One more thing," Leon called out.
Trent paused. Didn't turn around.
"There've been hero killings in the region. Three in the last six months. This ambush. It feels connected. Is it?"
Now Trent turned. His face was unreadable in the way that a locked door is unreadable. You knew something was behind it, but you weren't getting through.
"Not at the moment that we're aware of." He held Leon's gaze for exactly one second longer than was comfortable, then walked away.
Leon watched him go. The SUVs were already repositioning. Investigators were already photographing the scene, interviewing bystanders, checking security cameras. All the things that Leon should have been a part of. All the things a sworn hero and primary witness had every right to contribute to.
And not a single one of them had asked him a question.
Something is wrong here.
He didn't know what yet. But the shape of it was forming, the way a bruise forms. Slowly, darkly, and with a promise of worse to come.
* * *
Austerium General Clinic — Room 14
I came back to the world in pieces.
First, sound. A beeping machine to my left, steady and rhythmic, counting out the proof that my heart was still doing its job. Then smell. Antiseptic, that hospital-specific blend of cleanliness and despair. Then light, creeping in through my eyelids, insistent. And then, underneath it all, voices.
Two voices. One I knew. One I loved.
I kept my eyes closed. Not on purpose. I didn't have the energy to open them yet. But the voices were clear enough, close enough, and they didn't know I was listening.
"He shouldn't be doing this." My mother. Her voice had that specific frequency it hit when she was trying to sound reasonable while being anything but. "I'm going to pull him out. I'm going to—"
"Mrs. Adeyemi." Leon. Calm. Measured. But with an edge. "With all due respect, I think pulling him out is the last thing—"
"The last thing?" Her voice sharpened. "He's in a hospital bed, Leon. His arm is broken. His ribs are cracked. His head is—" She stopped. I could hear her breathing. Fast, tight, the breathing of a mother who'd already buried one person she loved and was staring at the possibility of a second.
A silence. Then Leon, quieter: "Isn't this what you want? For him to keep going?"
Another silence. Longer.
"Don't you dare," she said. "Don't you dare turn this around on me."
"I'm not turning anything. I'm asking you a question. Because from where I'm standing, you've been pushing this kid toward the field since before he signed with me. The academy application, the training, the letters to agencies. That wasn't all him, was it?"
I heard my mother's breath catch. A small sound. The kind that escapes before you can catch it.
"You don't know what you're talking about."
"Maybe I don't. But I know what I saw today. His first mission. It was a disaster, and he's lying in that bed because of it. So if you're his mother, if you're supposed to be protecting him, why does it feel like you're the one who wanted him out there in the first place?"
The room was so quiet I could hear the fluorescent light above me humming. I kept my eyes shut. Kept my breathing even. I wasn't ready for them to know I was awake. I wasn't sure I wanted to hear what came next. But I couldn't stop listening.
My mother's voice, when it came back, was different. Lower. Stripped of the sharpness. What was left underneath was something rawer, something she almost never let anyone see.
"His father's death broke him, Leon."
A pause.
"He was thirteen. He ran out into the street in his socks looking for the fight. Looking for the man who killed his dad. He was six miles away from the scene and he ran." Her voice cracked on the word. "He hasn't been the same since. He pretends he's fine. He makes his jokes. He talks big. But I'm his mother, and I know the difference between a boy who's living and a boy who's just... continuing."
I felt something hot behind my closed eyelids. I didn't move.
"He needs this," she said. "Being a hero, it's not a career choice for him. It's the only thing keeping him tethered. It's the only thing that gives him a reason to get out of bed in the morning. And I know—" Her voice broke again. She rebuilt it, word by word. "I know how that sounds. I know what kind of mother pushes her son toward danger. But if he goes out there and he dies on a mission, if he dies being a hero..." She swallowed. "That's better than watching him die on the inside. And that is what will happen if you take this away from him."
The silence that followed was the heaviest thing in the room. Heavier than the cast on my arm. Heavier than the ribs pressing against my lungs.
Leon spoke first. His voice was different now, too. The sarcasm was gone. The easy confidence. What was left was something careful.
"You're not using your powers on me right now, are you?"
A beat.
"Excuse me?"
"Your ability. The charm. The soothing. You're not—"
"I don't use it like that." Her voice went hard again. Not angry, but final. The voice of a woman drawing a line. "I use my power to help my children sleep. I use it to calm my son down when the nightmares come. I use it to sing to him. I am not using it now. What I'm telling you, I'm telling you because I believe it. Because I have watched my son for eleven years since his father died, and I know what he needs better than anyone on this planet."
Another silence. Then Leon, softly: "Okay."
"Okay?"
"Okay. I'll keep him on. I'll train him. I'll protect him as best I can." A pause. "And I have an idea. Something that might actually help."
I heard my mother exhale. Long, slow, the release of a breath she'd been holding since she got the phone call.
That's when I opened my eyes.
* * *
They both turned to me at the same time. My mother's hand went to her mouth. Her eyes were red. She'd been crying before, I could tell. The kind of crying you do when you think nobody's watching.
"Maxey." She was at my bedside in a step, her arms around me, and the embrace was so gentle it almost hurt worse than the injuries. She was shaking. I could feel it through the hospital gown. Her whole body trembling against mine.
"Hey, Mom." My voice sounded like someone had run it through a cheese grater. "I'm okay."
She pulled back. Tears were streaming down her face, and she was smiling at the same time, which is somehow the most heartbreaking expression a human face can make.
"You're not okay. Look at you. Your arm, your ribs—"
"Cosmetic damage." I tried to grin. It hurt. Everything hurt. "Adds character."
Leon stepped forward. The bruise under his eye had darkened since the last time I'd seen him. He looked like he'd been in a bar fight, which I suppose was technically accurate if the bar was a bank and the fight was an ambush by a seven-foot murder machine.
"So." He sat in the chair beside the bed. "The rundown. You've got a fractured radius, that's your left forearm. Three cracked ribs on the right side. Mild concussion, which they're calling mild because you're young and your skull is apparently very hard. Some soft tissue damage to your lower back. And a laceration on your temple that needed eight stitches." He paused. "I'm sorry, Maxey. I should have—"
"Don't." The word came out harder than I intended. "Don't apologize. You saved my life in there."
Leon held my gaze for a moment, then nodded. He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, and when he spoke next, his voice had shifted into a different register. Lower, more deliberate. The voice of a man who was about to say things he'd been thinking for hours.
"The investigation is wrong, Maxey."
I blinked. "What?"
"The governor himself showed up. Guy named Trent. Dry as a cracker in a desert. He offered the agency five hundred thousand dollars in emergency funding."
"Five hundred—" The number short-circuited something in my brain.
"And then told me to go home and take a nap. Didn't take my statement. Didn't ask what I saw, what the attacker looked like, what he said, how many there were, nothing. I'm the primary witness and a sworn hero, and they treated me like a civilian who wandered into the wrong intersection."
My mother was watching Leon with an expression I couldn't fully read. Part concern, part something sharper.
"It's hush money," I said.
Leon pointed at me. "See? The kid gets it." He sat back. "I asked Trent about the hero killings. Three in six months in this region. I asked if the ambush today was connected."
"What'd he say?"
"'Not at the moment that we're aware of.'" Leon's impression of Trent's voice was dead-on. Flat, dry, the vocal equivalent of a government form. "Which, translated from bureaucrat to English, means: we know something and you're not getting it."
I tried to sit up straighter and my ribs informed me that was a terrible decision. I settled back against the pillow. "So what do we do?"
Leon's half-smile made a tentative return. The first time I'd seen it since the bank.
"Two things. First, I have some contacts in higher-ranking agencies. People in the city who owe me favors. I'm going to take a trip, have some conversations, and see if I can find out what the governor's office is trying to bury." He paused. "Second. There are scouting festivals happening in the city right now. Up-and-coming heroes, fresh talent, the whole showcase. I want you to go."
"Go and... watch?"
"Go and recruit. If you see anyone, anyone at all, who you think would be a good addition to the agency, you have my full authority to sign them. On the spot."
I stared at him. The beeping machine beside me seemed to speed up, which was either a medical concern or an accurate measurement of my disbelief.
"You're giving me recruiting authority."
"I am."
"I've been with the agency for three months."
"And?"
"And none of the five-star, four-star people I went to the academy with have this kind of authority. Not one. They're filing reports and fetching coffee."
"They're also working at agencies that have fifty-person rosters and dedicated HR departments." Leon shrugged. "We're a two-person shop. You're fifty percent of the workforce. That comes with responsibilities."
I processed this. It was insane. It was also, in a roundabout way, the most anyone had ever trusted me with anything.
"Okay," I said. "What's the budget? Five grand? Ten? I might be able to get one or two volunteers at that rate. Maybe a rookie who doesn't know any better—"
"Five hundred thousand dollars."
My mouth opened. It stayed open. No sound came out. The heart monitor beside me beeped in what I can only describe as an alarmed fashion.
"Five hundred—" I turned to my mother. She was looking at Leon with raised eyebrows. I turned back to Leon. "Five hundred thousand. Dollars. American dollars. You're giving me half a million dollars to recruit heroes."
"The governor's money," Leon corrected. "Might as well use it before they figure out we're not going to shut up."
"I'm getting paid minimum wage," I said. The words came out strangled. "I eat ramen three meals a day. I have seventeen dollars in my checking account. And you're handing me five hundred thousand dollars like it's a lunch voucher."
Leon stood. That smile, that infuriating, impossible, somehow comforting smile, was back in full force.
"Welcome to the agency, kid. We take the train tomorrow."
* * *
The 7:15 to the Capital
I couldn't sleep that night. Not because of the pain. They'd given me something for that, a pill the size of a marble that turned the ache in my ribs into a dull, manageable hum. I couldn't sleep because the number kept circling my brain like a vulture. Five hundred thousand. Five. Hundred. Thousand.
The train was a regional express. Fast, clean, the kind of transit that connected mid-tier cities to the capital in under three hours. Leon and I sat across from each other in a booth near the back. The landscape scrolled past the window in a blur of farmland and industrial parks and the occasional cluster of houses that wanted to be a town but hadn't committed.
My arm was in a sling. My ribs were taped. The stitches on my temple were hidden under a bandage that made me look like I'd lost a fight with a door, which was not far from the truth.
Leon had a coffee. I had a coffee. We drank in silence for the first twenty minutes, watching the world move past, each of us inside our own head.
"So," I said. "You're going to talk to your contacts. I'm going to the scouting festivals. We're both in the same city but doing different things."
"Correct."
"And I just, what, walk around and pick people?"
"You watch. You evaluate. You trust your instincts." Leon sipped his coffee. "Don't go chasing star ratings. Stars are a number someone gives you based on how impressive your power looks on paper. That's it. Some of the best heroes I've worked with were two-stars and three-stars who compensated with intelligence, discipline, and the ability to stay calm when everything around them was on fire." He looked at me. "Sound familiar?"
I wasn't sure if that was a compliment or a pep talk, so I just nodded.
"And some of the worst," he continued, "were five-star prodigies who crumbled the first time a mission went sideways. Power without spine is just a parlor trick."
I thought about the golden doors. The fire blast. The giant's fist. My power failing when I needed it most, then working when I didn't think at all.
"I froze in there," I said. "At the bank. When you told me to shoot. I froze."
"I know."
"It could have gotten us both killed."
"It could have." Leon's eyes were on the window. "But it didn't. And the second time, when the clones were down and the fire was coming and there was nothing between you and death but instinct, you didn't freeze. You acted." He turned back to me. "That's what I'm looking for when you scout. Not the flash. Not the spectacle. The thing underneath."
The train hummed. The landscape blurred. Somewhere ahead of us, the capital was growing on the horizon. Towers and spires and the faint shimmer of a skyline that held more heroes per square mile than anywhere else in the country.
Leon set his coffee down and pulled out a worn folder from his jacket.
"There are three scouting showcases happening this week. Here are the schedules, the rosters, and the venue maps. Study them. Mark the names that interest you. When you walk in there, know more about every candidate than they know about themselves."
I took the folder. It was heavier than it looked.
"And Leon?"
He raised an eyebrow.
"What you said at the bank. About being my dad's partner." I swallowed. "We're going to talk about that. Right?"
Leon's smile faded into something I hadn't seen before. Not his usual deflection, not his armor, but something closer to sadness. He looked out the window.
"Yeah, kid. We're going to talk about that."
He picked up his coffee. "But not today."
The train carried us forward. The city waited.