Gwen rattled off her AP course list without hesitation, which told Locke everything he needed to know about her. An ordinary student treated their college target like classified information, too scared someone might compete for the same spot. Gwen just told him, because the way she saw it, universities competed for her, not the other way around.
He wrote the courses down in his phone notes.
She added, almost as an afterthought: "You should probably lock down your regular credits first."
"Right." He pocketed his phone. "Thanks."
He had no intention of worrying about credits. Credits were fine, exams were what mattered, and AP exams were daily mission gold. He didn't need to actually understand the material going in. He just needed to pass, and he had a more direct route to passing than anyone else in the building.
That afternoon he stopped by the college counselor's office and asked about sitting in on AP Chemistry as an audit.
The counselor looked at his transfer records, looked at him, and said she'd allow it on a trial basis.
Gwen didn't see him come in.
She was already three paragraphs deep in her notes when the door opened and Locke slid into a seat near the back. She caught the movement in her peripheral vision, did a small double-take, and mouthed hi across the room.
He nodded back.
She turned to her textbook.
The teacher launched into electrochemical equilibrium and Locke sat there listening to what might as well have been a foreign language. He followed maybe one word in eight. The terminology alone was a wall.
Okay.
He pulled up the System.
[Chemistry — upgrade to 8th Grade: 1,000 Potential Points. Confirm?]
He confirmed. The knowledge settled in — clean, immediate, like turning on a light in a dark room. Better. He could follow the thread now, more or less. But the teacher kept building on concepts Locke's 8th-grade baseline didn't quite cover.
[Chemistry — upgrade to 9th Grade: 1,000 Potential Points. Confirm?]
Two thousand points in under twenty minutes. He felt it like spending cash he'd been saving — not painful exactly, just very, very present.
But then the teacher wrapped up the lecture and wrote the homework assignment on the board: a lab project, due in two weeks, requiring a minimum of two partners.
[Mission Generating...]
[Chemistry Lab Project — Base Reward: Achievement Points ×500 / Potential Points ×500]
There it is.
Locke looked around the room. Every desk was already clustered — people had partners from day one, the natural gravitational pull of established friendships. He didn't have that yet.
He looked at Gwen.
She was already looking at him, reading his expression with the particular accuracy of someone who had been watching people navigate social situations their whole life.
"Hey," she said.
"Hey."
"Want to be partners? Kem's out today and I need someone anyway."
"...Yeah. Thanks."
She started packing up her bag. "We can work at my place, I've got all the reference books there."
Locke processed this for a beat.
George Stacy. NYPD Captain. Already watching me.
"Something wrong?" Gwen asked.
"No." He picked up his bag. "Let's go."
Mission first. Potential awkwardness second.
In the parking lot, Gwen stopped walking.
"Wait — is that yours?"
The silver Audi R8 flashed its lights as Locke clicked the key.
"Bought it at lunch," he said, opening the passenger door. "I've got my license."
Gwen got in slowly, the way someone does when they're recalculating something. She didn't ask about the money, she was too well-mannered for that but he could see the question sitting behind her eyes.
He'd grabbed the car the same day he'd gotten his license back in March, the moment he turned sixteen. It had taken the last of what remained after the apartment purchase. His bank account was currently at a balance that would concern a reasonable person.
He'd need another contract soon.
But the car was a genuine need, New York was large and missions didn't wait for subway schedules.
He pulled out of the lot, and Gwen directed him toward Brooklyn.
He didn't look back at the parking lot. If he had, he might have noticed the ripple, the way news traveled in a high school in the time it took to walk from chemistry to the exit and the particular, slightly outraged energy of two dozen students watching the new transfer kid leave with the girl everyone agreed was untouchable.
The Stacy house was a brownstone on a quiet block — the kind of neighborhood that had stayed itself while everything around it changed. Warm inside, organized without being sterile. Shelves full of actual books. A kitchen that smelled like something had been cooking since afternoon.
They set up at the dining room table, Gwen's reference materials spreading across half the surface in the methodical way of someone who had done this a thousand times.
Locke worked through his half steadily. The System upgrade meant he could follow the concepts now, and following concepts was enough to contribute something real. Gwen corrected him twice, both times without making it a thing, which he noted as a point in her favor.
An hour in, he heard a key in the front door.
Helen came in first, took in the scene, two students, textbooks, a reasonable amount of space between them and smiled. "Gwen. I didn't know you were bringing someone home."
"Last-minute thing. Mom, this is Locke."
"Hi, Mrs. Stacy."
Helen looked at him for a moment with the particular attention of a person who notices things. "Hi, Locke."
She went to the kitchen. Locke heard her on the phone a minute later, too low to make out the words.
Upstairs, the sound of a key in the front door again, heavier this time, faster.
George Stacy came in with the look of a man who had been moving quickly since he got a text message thirty minutes ago. He stopped in the hallway, looked at Helen, and said: "Where?"
"Dining room. They're studying."
"Helen-"
"Chemistry project." She caught his arm before he could go further. "They've been at it for an hour. Don't."
George held for a moment, then redirected toward the stairs instead, taking them two at a time. He stood outside the dining room, technically the second floor landing, with a clear sightline down for about forty-five seconds. Textbooks. Notes. Locke writing something, Gwen correcting it. Standard.
He came back down.
Helen was already at the stove. "Rough day?"
He dropped into a kitchen chair and rubbed his face. "We've got a problem."
"Work?"
"You know the Texas cases? The ones with the," he lowered his voice "-the calling card."
Helen glanced over. She knew the stories. George occasionally brought pieces of work home, enough that she'd built a picture over time. "The one who only goes after people who have it coming?"
"Sin Hunter." That was what the department had started calling whoever it was internally, not for the papers. "He's in New York. Found a body in an alley yesterday. Allen Wood." George shook his head. "Half the department's looking for him. Other half's untangling what Wood was into."
Helen turned back to the stove. "...And the things Wood was into?"
"Bad."
She was quiet for a moment. "I'm not going to pretend I think that's the worst news you've ever brought home."
"We follow the law, Helen."
"I know." She stirred something without looking up. "I didn't say otherwise."
George opened his mouth and then footsteps on the stairs.
"Mom-" Gwen appeared in the kitchen doorway, then stopped. "Dad? You're home early."
George rearranged his expression into something easier. "I live here."
Gwen rolled her eyes with the efficiency of someone who had heard that line many times. She turned toward the kitchen. "Mom, can Locke stay for dinner?"
George stared at the middle distance.
Helen smiled at the stove.
"Of course," she said.