Arthur Parker sat on the edge of the bed long after the house had gone quiet, the suspension slip lying on the nightstand like an accusation.
Helen was already under the covers, reading glasses halfway down her nose, a paperback resting on her chest. She watched him over the rim of the lenses.
"You're brooding," she said.
"I'm thinking," he corrected.
"You're brooding and thinking."
He sighed and picked up the suspension slip again, reading the same line he'd read already a dozen times.
Altercation with another student. Excessive force. No serious injuries reported.
"He threw the boy into the lockers hard enough to dent them," Arthur said. "And then sat here looking more annoyed than proud."
Helen set the book aside and turned off the lamp on her side. The room fell into soft half‑darkness, lit only by the streetlight filtering through the curtains.
"He also didn't lie," she said. "About how it started."
"No." Arthur dropped the paper back to the nightstand. "He didn't."
They were quiet for a moment.
"You saw his eyes?" Helen asked softly. "When he came in?"
Arthur nodded. "Not the first time I've seen that look."
"Which one?" she asked. "The one that says 'I've seen too much' or the one that says 'I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop'?"
"Both," Arthur said. "On a sixteen‑year‑old."
Helen reached out and took his hand under the covers, fingers warm and familiar. "You're thinking about the old days," she said.
"Hard not to," he admitted. "Kid shows up with no records at the hospital, heals like a bad plot device, then hurls a linebacker into a wall by accident three days into a new school." He let out a humorless huff. "If I were twenty years younger, I'd already be on the phone."
"With Cecil," Helen said.
"With…him," Arthur confirmed, not quite saying the name. Saying it made it too real. "Because that's what we were trained to do. Anomaly shows up, you tag it, bag it, and let the man in the suit figure out whether it's a threat or an asset."
"And you're not twenty years younger," Helen said. "And we retired for a reason."
He thought of Omni‑Man. Of the first time he'd seen the alien in person, not on a screen. The casual way he'd floated above a disaster zone, cape billowing, blood on his suit from "collateral damage." The way Cecil had looked at him—not like a partner, not exactly, but like a necessary devil.
Arthur shivered, just a little.
"You still think we were right?" he asked quietly. "To walk away?"
Helen's grip on his hand tightened. "Yes," she said. "I think we were right. I think the moment Nolan Grayson arrived, everything changed, and no one in that building wanted to admit how badly outmatched we were."
She paused.
"And I think," she added, "that if Cecil ever gets a whiff of what that boy in the next room can do, he'll never let him go."
Arthur looked toward the door, where a thin slice of light from the hallway edged the frame. Morgan's room was down the hall, door closed. The kid had said goodnight with the wary politeness of someone who expected good things to expire quickly.
"He's not like the others we've fostered," Helen said, voice soft. "They were hurt in the usual ways. Neglect. Bad parents. Bad breaks. He's…hurt differently."
"He's coiled," Arthur said. "Like he's waiting to be attacked. Or discovered."
"He might be," Helen said.
Arthur scrubbed a hand over his face. "We don't actually know what he is."
"We know enough," Helen said. "Normal boys don't heal that fast. Normal boys don't put holes in lockers with one push and then look more guilty about the principle than the property damage." She tilted her head. "He's not proud of it."
"No," Arthur agreed. "He isn't."
He remembered Morgan at the kitchen table earlier, saying, I'm not a victim, with a steadiness that didn't come from teenage bravado. It came from tiredness. From having been one once and deciding never again.
"He didn't brag," Helen continued. "Didn't deflect. He told us exactly what happened, and he looked…annoyed at himself. Not for fighting, but for losing control."
"Which is more than I can say for half the capes I've seen," Arthur murmured.
"You like him," Helen said.
"I do," Arthur admitted. "Which is inconvenient."
"Because we might have to protect him," Helen said, "from the people we used to work with."
Arthur let out a slow breath. "Especially from them."
They lapsed into silence again, letting the weight of that hang between them. Outside, a car drove by, tires humming over asphalt. Somewhere down the block, a dog barked twice and then stopped.
"At least Cecil doesn't know yet," Helen said.
"As far as we know," Arthur said. "Street‑level fight at a high school doesn't usually ping his radar. But a hospital flagging odd recovery metrics might. A third‑party report might. We're not the only ones who still have eyes."
Helen frowned. "You think someone at the hospital might have called it in?"
"I think if I were still in the game, I'd have someone watching ER scans for anomalies," Arthur said. "And Cecil's smarter than me."
She was quiet for a moment.
"So," she said. "We keep our heads down. We don't call. We don't hint. We don't write anything down we don't have to. And we give that boy a chance to be…whatever he's going to be. Without being turned into a weapon."
Arthur nodded slowly. "For as long as we can," he said. "If he's dangerous—"
"He's already dangerous," Helen said. "The question is whether he decides to be dangerous for someone, or dangerous on his own terms."
He thought of Omni‑Man again. Of the reports that had never made it to the public: the near misses, the "training exercises" that had leveled facilities, the way Cecil had started locking certain files behind more and more clearance levels.
"You never trusted Nolan," Helen said softly, reading his face.
"I wanted to," Arthur said. "I wanted to believe the story. Alien hero, here to help. But every time I looked at him, I felt like we were…stockpiling dry tinder and pretending the man with the lit match was our best friend."
Helen squeezed his hand again. "You said that to Cecil once," she recalled.
"He told me I was paranoid," Arthur said. "Then promoted me. Which somehow felt worse."
"And now?" she asked. "What does your paranoia tell you about Morgan?"
Arthur thought about the boy's eyes when he'd said I will finish it. There was no empty swagger there. There was calculation. There was a line drawn, not out of anger, but out of…resolve.
"My paranoia," Arthur said slowly, "says he's the kind of variable the board won't be able to predict. Which makes him dangerous to everyone with a plan."
"And your instincts?" she asked.
He smiled, faintly. "My instincts say he's a good kid who's had a bad hand, and that if someone tries to own him, they're going to regret it."
Helen nodded once. "Then we keep him off the board," she said. "As long as we can."
Arthur lay down, finally, and turned off his lamp.
Down the hall, in his room, Morgan lay awake on his narrow bed, staring at the ceiling.
He'd spent the afternoon with a broom instead of a suspension‑day TV binge, sweeping the porch and helping Helen with groceries. Arthur had shown him how to fix a sticking cabinet door. None of it had felt like punishment. It had felt…weirdly normal.
They haven't asked any questions, he thought. Not the ones that matter.
They hadn't asked how he'd dented metal with a "push." They hadn't asked why his hospital chart looked like something out of a comic book. They hadn't asked what he planned to do with the kind of strength that could very easily ruin lives.
Most people would have.
Most people would have been afraid.
The Parkers were careful, yes. Concerned, definitely. But not afraid. Not of him.
He turned that over in his mind.
They're not stupid, he thought. They're not oblivious. So they know something's off.
They'd seen the same news footage everyone else had: explosions, flying bricks, capes. They lived in a world where "super" wasn't hypothetical. If they hadn't put two and two together already, they'd at least noticed that he was not just another lanky sixteen‑year‑old.
And yet they'd said "We'd rather you avoid fights, but we won't ask you to let yourself be hurt."
That felt…intentional.
He thought of Arthur's eyes when the man had said fighting should be avoided. There had been history there. Regrets. And something else—recognition.
They've met people like me before, Morgan realized.
Or at least close enough.
He exhaled slowly.
They want to help.
That should have made him relax. It didn't.
Because he knew this world. Knew the man who ran its secret defenses. Knew the kind of call that could drop out of the blue once someone high enough up heard the words "fast healer" and "dent in a row of lockers."
Cecil would love me, he thought darkly. A half‑Viltrumite, half‑Saiyan wildcard? He'd put me in a box and call it "for your own good."
Morgan turned onto his side, staring at the blank wall. The night was quiet enough that he could hear the faint murmur of the Parkers talking in their room, just out of range of his enhanced hearing.
For now.
They're keeping quiet, he realized. On purpose.
He didn't know how he knew, but he did. The same instincts that let him feel the edge of his own power hummed when he thought about the Parkers. They carried themselves like people who had spent decades weighing every word they said in a world where words could get people killed.
They were retired. He didn't know from what. But his gut said: not from teaching or accounting.
They're actually decent, he thought. Not pretending. Not playing a long con. They like me.
The thought landed with a strange weight.
That's new.
He closed his eyes, listening to the steady tick of the clock in the hallway.
Fine, he decided. I'll let them help. For now.
He'd train in the gaps. Test his limits when the house was asleep. Learn control so he didn't keep turning hallway bullies into drywall projects. Grow stronger, quietly, until the day this world's script caught up to what he knew was coming.
And when Cecil finally noticed him?
When Omni‑Man finally went off‑script and the blood started flowing for real?
He wanted to be in a place where he wasn't just another piece on someone else's board.
In the next room, Arthur turned on his side and murmured, almost too quiet to hear, "We'll keep you out of his hands, kid. As long as we can."
Morgan's lips twitched in the dark.
"We'll see," he whispered to the ceiling. "But thanks for trying."
For now, at least, the Parkers' house was the calmest part of a very dangerous world.
And Morgan, anti‑hero in the making, decided he was okay with having one place where he didn't have to be on guard all the time—even if the people providing it were far from as simple as they looked.