Cisco finished his coffee and made the face.
The face he made when the coffee was too bitter. Same face every morning for three months. Same pot. Same beans. He'd never once changed the beans.
"Cisco," Caitlin said without looking up from her screen. "Get different beans."
"These beans are fine."
"Then drink without the face."
"I'm committed to these beans."
"That's the problem."
I hid my mouth behind my own mug so the smile wouldn't show. Not hiding in the old way — not because the expression would give me away. Just the private reflex of a person in a room with people he liked, keeping a small moment small.
The cortex looked the same and didn't.
New monitor array where the old one had fried in June. New couch where a rogue meta had melted the old one in August. New coat hook on the back of the door because I'd thrown a gear bag at the old one in July after a long night. New habits everybody had. New gaps in the room where a person used to stand.
Ronnie's lab coat was still on the second coat hook.
Nobody talked about it.
We worked around it.
"Meta signature on screen three," Cisco said. Work voice. "Mercury Labs perimeter last night. Somebody punched through the chain link. The reinforced section."
I leaned over his shoulder. He didn't flinch anymore when I came in close. Hadn't for about six weeks. Progress was gradual. I cataloged it without being obvious.
"Strength enhancement," I said. "Mid-tier. They didn't go in?"
"Punched the fence. Walked away."
"Scouting."
"Yeah."
Barry came in from the sparring level pulling his jacket on over a damp t-shirt.
"Somebody casing Mercury?"
"Looks like."
"You want to take a look?"
"I'll swing by tonight. Quietly. Not official patrol."
Barry thought about it for about a second. Not the long hard second he used to do. Just the regular kind.
"Yeah. Thanks, Harry."
He went for coffee.
Cisco made the face.
Caitlin said, "Cisco," again.
She caught my eye across the room. Didn't smile. Hadn't done a real smile in three months. But she tilted her head an eighth of an inch — the old are we sharing this? tilt — and I tilted back. Good enough, for now.
The System had been patient for twelve weeks.
This morning it had stopped being patient.
[Extended stabilization period has ended.]
[Growth deficit: -480 PP over 90 days.]
[Passive drain activated: -5 PP/day until collection activity resumes.]
[Recommendation: Extraction.]
I didn't need the reminder. The target list had been building since August.
Mercury Labs wasn't the job. That was cover. The actual job was three blocks north of there, above a laundromat, where a man named Teague had been running protection through the Glades with fire on his fingertips and had put two shop owners in the hospital in six weeks.
Teague didn't know it yet, but tonight was his last Tuesday.
---
[Glades — 11:47 PM]
The laundromat was a sodium-yellow square on a dark street.
The room above it was darker. One window. Blinds down. A shape moving against them now and then.
I watched from a rooftop across the way for an hour.
Not because I needed the hour. Because the System had gotten impatient and I wanted it to remember who set the clock.
Also — and I could admit this to myself only — because I was out of practice. Three months without a hunt had rusted the edges of the calm I used to slip into before an extraction. I had to pick it up in pieces tonight. Arrange them. Sit with them until they were the only thing in the room with me.
When they were, I moved.
Back wall. Phased through. Stairwell. Second floor. Door.
Teague was at his desk with a beer open and a TV playing low. Not watching the door.
Minor strength enhancement — sync rate had come up through months of passive use — squeezed a sleeper hold at the exact pressure that puts a man down in four seconds. I counted. He went.
I laid him on the floor. Checked the pulse.
Hand on his chest.
[Target: Teague, Marcus. Signature: Pyrokinesis — intermediate.]
[Extraction ready.]
The extraction was the easiest one I'd run. Almost embarrassing. The power came up out of him like warm water filling a glass, and when I lifted my hand there was a new pressure behind my sternum where the collection had caught it.
[Pyrokinesis — Intermediate — 60% extracted.]
[+1,050 PP.]
I left his wallet. Left the TV going. Walked two blocks to my car without rushing.
At a red light on 4th, my phone buzzed.
Caitlin.
Anything at Mercury?
I thumbed a reply one-handed.
Quiet. Watching the rest of the week.
Thanks.
Three months ago she wouldn't have texted. Three months ago she'd have avoided my name on her screen. I put the phone face-down on the passenger seat and drove through a city that had no idea one of its monsters had come back to work.
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