Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The sky over Torrance looked like clean glass laid over heat. Midday had baked the streets to a shimmer, and by late afternoon the warmth had sunk into everything, into the roofs, into the bus stops, into the cheap vinyl seats of delivery bikes waiting at red lights. Traffic stacked west toward the 405 in orderly despair. A plane dragged its silver belly across the blue, unhurried, while sirens stitched and unstitched the distance. Vendors hosed their carts down with weary rhythm. A palm frond skittered across asphalt like a crab. The city was awake in that tired, anxious way it gets when everyone’s almost off work but not free yet: restless, gleaming, loud.

The Superhero Dispatch Network’s Torrance branch sat back from the main street, a two-story box of smoked glass and secondhand ambition. Inside, the air conditioning was cruelly efficient, the kind that gnawed at the skin and whispered about funding cuts. Fluorescents buzzed overhead, bureaucratic and soulless. Motivational posters, Second Chances. Real Results.—peeled at the corners, their glue giving up just like the smiles on them. The break room smelled of overworked coffee, instant ramen, and the kind of microwave that had seen things.

Robert Robertson III washed his hands beneath a thin, resentful stream of water, the steel backsplash reflecting a face that had seen too many nights and too few victories. The SDN powder-blue shirt hung clean but weary on him, sleeves rolled to the elbow, exposing forearms marked by the quiet history of old burns and mech grease. He had the kind of build that came from hauling weight his own and everyone else’s, and the posture of someone who’d learned not to complain about it.

Behind him, the door cracked open before the sigh of the hinge could even finish. Trouble entered laughing.

“—just saying, man, if hero work were janitorial, you’d be world-class.”

Flambae’s accent was a ghost of Herat—still sharp around the vowels, softened by years of Californian noise. He had the body of a fighter who liked mirrors too much: compact, lean, and ready to burn something just to stay warm. Across the room, Waterboy froze by the fridge, clutching a styrofoam bowl of ramen gone limp with surrender. Steam curled weakly, like it was afraid to rise.

Robert didn’t look up. “Leave him alone.”

Calm. Even. A dispatcher’s voice—the kind designed to cut the wire without triggering the bomb.

Flambae smiled without warmth. “We’re just talking.”

He wasn’t. Words were just flint waiting for a strike.

Waterboy tried to smile. “It’s okay, Mr. Robertson, I—”

The noodles hit first—a slap of scalding broth and salt across his chest. The bowl followed like punctuation. Broth ran down his shirt, pooling at his beltline. The smell of cheap chicken filled the air—humiliation flavored with MSG.

Robert didn’t think. He reached for the nearest object with mass: a protein shake, unlidded. His grip tightened. The plastic gave. Beige liquid geysered upward and down again in a lazy arc that caught Flambae square in the face. The room froze.

The silence that followed had weight. Even the hum of the lights seemed to hold its breath.

For half a second, Flambae wasn’t a man—he was a temperature. Heat shimmered off him in visible waves. The shake began to sizzle on his skin, bubbles forming on his cheek where rage met dairy. Sparks crawled along his forearms like fireflies trying to find a way out. The air warped.

Then the door opened.

Mandy (Blonde Blazer) walked in with the easy authority of someone who’d survived both boardrooms and battlefields. The blue-and-gold suit fit her like intent. Her cape shifted as she moved, catching the overhead light like a living flag. Under the mask, her eyes flicked between Waterboy’s drenched shirt, the steam rising from Flambae’s shoulders, and Robert calmly rinsing his hands at the sink.

“I walk away for two minutes,” she said, voice bone-dry, “and you start a smoothie bar?”

Robert didn’t bite. “Flambae had a moment,” he said, soap sliding from his knuckles. “Shakes are fragile things.”

Flambae’s jaw flexed. Pride wanted a target, but the chain of command was still a chain. He swallowed his spark with effort. The glow dimmed to an ember.

Mandy’s expression was equal parts hero and HR manager. “Shower,” she said, pointing toward the hall. “Then come back and clean this up. And if the next smell I catch in here is burning laminate, I’ll send you to janitorial rotation myself.”

Flambae’s eyes flared once, hellfire simmering behind restraint—but he left, dripping protein shake like breadcrumbs.

Waterboy stammered something like thanks and vanished behind him.

The room sagged into quiet again, except for the distant wheeze of the vending machine. Robert turned off the faucet. Beige water swirled down the drain in slow circles. The tile had gone slick, an office hazard in waiting.

Mandy’s heel slid. A sharp catch, a shift in balance, a quick recovery, core strength and grace in motion. She hissed through her teeth and steadied herself, glaring down at her boot where protein sludge clung like regret.

“Perfect,” she muttered. “Now I smell like CrossFit.”

Robert gave the ghost of a smile. “You’re glowing.”

“Don’t start.” She leaned against the counter, arms folding, the faint scrape of armor on laminate. Up close, her cape still hummed faintly with static from her kinetic cells—she always carried a low thrum, like bottled lightning. “Have you talked to Chase yet?”

He reached for a paper towel, wiped his palms. “About what.”

Her brow lifted. “About who.”

She tilted her chin toward him, waiting. The air-conditioning hummed louder for company.

“Who’s it going to be?” she said finally. “Phenomaman or Waterboy?”

Robert stared at the sink drain, where soap bubbles burst like tiny planets dying. His reflection looked older in steel.

“These two are my only options?”

“For now? Yeah.” She exhaled like a pressure valve. “We can revisit later, but Waterboy’s already sort of in the pipeline. And you know Phenomaman got cut by DTLA.” A small wince ghosted her mouth. “Thanks for getting him out of the parking lot, by the way.”

Robert rinsed. Beige turned to pale to clear, and inside that gradient lived the whole job: take a mess, make it almost clean, hope the stain doesn’t remember. Mandy kept talking because somebody had to...onboarding, chemistry, optics—the need for a new addition to slide into Z-Team like a knife into its own sheath. Her voice held the line while the rest of him sank.

But “under” was gravity.

The last cut still bled: Coupé. Efficient. Elegant. Cold as a coin. He’d told her she was out. His reasons had been sound, his tone even. “We’re creating urgency,” Mandy had said earlier—truth in a corporate suit. Show results or the program dies. It felt like telling a drowning person to adjust their form.

Coupé hadn’t argued. She’d answered with steel: a throwing knife buried into the conference table an inch from Robert’s hand, the hilt humming, the oak splitting with a wet fibrous crack like a mouth opening to spit. Then she slid into shadow, umbrakinesis sighing after her like smoke dragged beneath a locked door. Ten minutes later Sonar’s pointed head had risen behind a cubicle like a bad card trick—ears quivering, eyes amused. “Her old crew’s back in town,” he’d breathed, and Punch Up had rumbled a laugh like distant thunder at the notion she’d backslide. Robert had believed…what? That people pivot because you provide a better axis?

Now the decision narrowed the corridor.

Waterboy. Kind. Proud in small, honest ways. Loyal enough to mop a spill he didn’t make without being asked. Fear in him like loose wiring behind drywall—quiet until it wasn’t. A trainee because someone had said the word aloud. Pros: steady heart, gratitude that could ballast a team. Cons: you don’t fix a wolf pack by throwing a lamb.

Phenomaman. Once a billboard, now a cautionary footnote. Alien, technically; painfully human in the ways breakage shows. After Mandy ended it, after the billboard, after that night on a Hollywood roof that left Robert stupid enough to kiss a line he shouldn’t—Phenomaman spun until the world got dizzy with him. DTLA cut him. The public stopped clapping. He found every rung on the way down and kept falling. Pros: power, history, a name bright enough to buy one more week of faith. Cons: grief as gravity, jealousy like a hairline crack—tap the wrong place and the whole sheet goes to razors.

Under it, the small private weather of his own guilt—not about the kiss; he could hold an error without apology—but about what the kiss meant in the constellation other people had already mapped. He’d told Phenomaman the truth. It didn’t matter. Breaks are rarely single events; they’re rot that finally says the quiet part out loud. Truth loves to wear the wrong hat.

Something slid into his vision, the reflex of a mind that had spent years watching heads-up displays and countdowns.

[SELECT NEW RECRUIT]
Waterboy — Reliable heart, no field record.
Phenomaman — High ceiling, unstable base.
Choose none — Explain why.

Time Remaining: ▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓░░

The mental bar chewed the moment smaller. Futures flickered in fluorescent stutter: Waterboy promoted too soon, panic whitening his face as a routine call goes sudden red, boots heavy with ounces becoming pounds. Phenomaman trying to prove he still mattered—routine collar blooms into incident report with teeth. Public sentiment curdles; Phoenix becomes a headline, then a budget cut, then a nostalgic argument online.

The bar ticked. The room felt colder.

He pictured Coupé hearing she’d been replaced by a janitor—imagined that small, unimpressed smile. Sonar’s smirk, bat-brain whispering stock tips to disaster. Invisigal’s eye-roll as she measured respect in competence and nothing else. Punch Up’s loyal jaw tightening. Malevola sharpening sorrow until it cut. Prism bright and brittle without structure. Golem steady as a hillside until you made him choose between orders and the person bleeding in front of him. Mandy in rolled sleeves selling a program to people who wanted to buy something easier.

Breathe. Purpose over panic. Breathe again.

Time Remaining: ▓▓▓▓░░░░░░

“Robert?” Mandy’s voice, closer. “We don’t have to decide on the floor of a smoothie homicide, but we do have to decide.”

He dried his hands on brown paper that felt like penance. The futures lined up like targets. He could pick the wrong one and call it leadership—or he could refuse the frame.

He turned and met her eyes. “No.”

Her brow notched. “To which?”

“Both.”

A small, sharp silence—blade catching light.

“What?” she said, not blinking.

Robert leaned beside her, arms crossing without threat, an old habit of meeting force with balance. Fluorescents put a thin, morgue-cold sheen on everything: the laminate counter; the trickle of broth snaking toward the drain; the damp on Waterboy’s collar as he mopped in taut, embarrassed circles; the beige protein smear drying to a crust the color of old scab. The room smelled like chalk and chicken and the metallic ghost of hot anger cooling.

“You can’t just—” Mandy kept her tone soft and it still cut. “Robert, we have to pick one. You have to pick one. Coupé’s slot isn’t a suggestion. We follow through.”

“I know.” He didn’t raise his voice. “However—”

“However what?”

“Putting the wrong body in the right chair is how programs die.” He faced her fully. “Waterboy’s good. Good isn’t ready. He’s green, he panics, and his reflex is to apologize to danger. He needs months, and wins that don’t bleed. Throw him in now and he breaks, and then we’ve got two problems: a broken kid and a room that stops trusting me to keep it alive.

“Phenomaman—” he exhaled, the word tasting like an old bruise—“is a collapse waiting for one more nudge. He’s grieving the version of himself he can’t get back to, and grief makes shortcuts look like exits. He could be brilliant, again, but only when he’s not performing for ghosts. Right now he is. The minute a mission turns sideways he’ll play to the crowd in his head, and we’ll be hauling him out of a PR crater with teeth.”

Mandy listened the way professionals do: everything still, the thinking loud only in the eyes.

“Z-Team is a chemistry set,” Robert went on. “Sonar hunts weakness like dividends. Invisigal respects exactly one thing: competence. Punch Up wants fair fights and a leader who doesn’t flinch. Malevola pretends doom fits; it doesn’t. Prism needs rails so her illusions don’t slide into lies. Golem is granite until forced to pick between orders and the bleeding person in front of him. Feed that room the wrong personality now and they’ll eat it—and each other. We don’t have slack. The upstairs clock is already counting us in headlines.”

The building answered with indifference: the distant crack of a locker door; a laugh that showed too many teeth; a wheeze from a vent like an old lung rattling. Down the hall, a hero with a split lip touched a paper cup to it again; the blood stringing to brown, then flaking under his thumb. On the conference table outside, the knife-worry in the wood still gaped, the grain parted like flesh that had decided not to close.

Mandy’s gaze dipped, not surrender but calculus. One slow nod. “Those are…not bad points.”

“They’re the ones I’ve got.” He let a thin smile show and die. “I’m not trying to be difficult.”

“I know.” The corner of her mouth tilted; some wire in the room loosened. She pushed off the counter and stretched her arms overhead—practical, unshowy, vertebrae clicking quiet as beads. The cape settled with a static sigh. Robert looked away on instinct, back to the sink’s steel, to the faint eddies where beige had been and now wasn’t.

“Maybe,” she said, letting her arms fall, “you just made it easier for me.”

“How?”

The look she gave him had private heat, the edge of a secret deciding to be spoken. It wavered once, as decisions do before remembering they’ve already been made. “There’s another option. But not here. Walk with me.”

They left the break room, threading the slick comet tail of spilled shake. Dispatch opened like an anatomy cross-section: nerves and signals, voices and pulse. Headsets bowed and lifted, monitors blinked triage; maps pulsed with calls that meant crisis and the chance to be exactly enough. A corridor of lockers clanged; Punch Up’s voice rolled from somewhere unseen, showman even when he was just asking where his jacket had gone. A flicker by the stairwell might have been Invisigal holding her breath or just a light giving up. Golem’s trail was a smudge of dried earth down one aisle like a vein. Someone limped past cradling a palm wrapped in gauze already browning at the edges. On the pinboard: printouts from last week’s botched collar—blown-up 8×10 stills of a blood-slick alley, tire tracks turned black as script, a chalk outline ruined by rain.

They cut through the cube farm where dispatchers kept three conversations alive at once and their own hearts on the quiet setting. The air tasted like toner and cold air and the penny-sharp tang of adrenaline that never entirely left.

Mandy’s office waited on the edge of it all, glass on two sides, the blinds tilted so the city looked in and saw itself judged. She closed the door; the outside world softened into aquarium-murmur. Her desk wore the neatness of someone who’d had to be both formidable and unimpeachable for longer than was fair. A photo faced the window instead of the room: a younger Blonde Blazer beside a woman with a smiling mouth and predatory eyes.

“Sit,” she said, already pulling open a drawer.

Robert did. His palm found the small nick in the vinyl arm—an old chip, smooth around the wound. Mandy rummaged, breath steady, then lifted out a beige folder gone soft at the corners. She opened it, read, and something in her face changed—first a little light gone out, then a shadow of guilt that wasn’t hers and still wouldn’t leave her. She closed the folder and slid it across.

He drew it in. Opened.

The first page hit like a cold hand. A mugshot: a young woman looking through the lens with the steadiness of someone who’d lost the argument with the world and chosen not to blink. Hair hacked practical—shag refusing to lie, bangs trimmed by a hand that hadn’t asked permission. Eyes a stormed grey-blue ringed in nights without rest. A bruise purpled along the cheekbone, the kind that flowers ugly before it fades. The lower lip split, lacquered with dried red that had gone to brown—scab licked by fluorescent light. No plea. No posture. Just a quiet with teeth.

NEW YORK STATE DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS AND COMMUNITY SUPERVISION
INMATE RECORD – CONFIDENTIAL

Name: SINCLAIR, ENID LAUREN
Date of Birth: 03 / 17 / 2000
Age at Intake: 20
Gender: Female
Ethnicity: Caucasian
Facility: Bedford Hills Correctional Facility, Westchester County, NY
Inmate ID: #BH-21745-EN

Sentence Length: 10 Years (Eligible for parole after 5)
Current Time Served: 4 Years, 9 Months

Convictions:
Aggravated Battery on a Peace Officer (2 Counts) – Felony Class B
Assault with a Deadly Weapon (Improvised Blunt Object) – Felony Class C
Destruction of Property / Public Vandalism – Misdemeanor
Resisting Arrest – Misdemeanor
Public Intoxication / Disorderly Conduct – Misdemeanor
Trespassing in Restricted Government Facility – Misdemeanor
Simple Assault / Street Altercation – Misdemeanor
Petty Theft (Multiple Offenses) – Misdemeanor

Case Summary:
Subject apprehended during altercation with responding officers after vandalism incident at Midtown precinct evidence garage. Incident escalated following intoxication and resistance to arrest; two officers sustained non-fatal injuries. Subsequent search linked subject to series of property and assault charges across Los Angeles and San Diego prior to relocation to New York.

Behavioral Record (Facility):
Initial months: Multiple altercations with inmates, two solitary confinements.
Year 2–4: Significant behavioral improvement; enrolled in vocational training (welding, mechanical repair).
Current standing: Stable; noted for cooperative demeanor and low incident frequency.

Psychological Evaluation:
Diagnosed: Impulse-control disorder (mild), trauma-related stress (untreated).
Recommendation: Continued therapy upon release.

Release Recommendation:
Approved for Phoenix Program rehabilitation transfer under SDN supervision, Torrance Branch, California.

Parole Officer of Record: M. Sinclair (Blonde Blazer) – Authorized Custodian

He turned the page and the paper bled a different authority.

SUPERHERO DISPATCH NETWORK (SDN)
ARCHIVED FILE – ARTEMIS PROJECT / SUBJECT: ENID SINCLAIR
CLEARANCE LEVEL: 5A — Director Eyes Only, Unless Given Access

I. SUBJECT OVERVIEW

Full Name: Enid Lauren Sinclair
Alias: Dire-Wolf IV
Date of Birth: March 17, 2000
Current Status: Phoenix Program Probationary Operative (Active)
Custody Authority: SDN Torrance Branch – Director Mandy Sinclair
Classification: Enhanced Human / Divine-Linked Artifact Host (Inactive)
Artifact Association: The Artemis Amulet — Containment Unit #AA-001, Secure Site Delta

II. ARTEMIS AMULET – LINEAGE & BACKGROUND

Origin Summary:
The Artemis Amulet is a divine containment vessel forged by the goddess Artemis and her twin brother Apollo after subduing an ancient malevolent entity known as the Wolf God — a being born from humankind’s first capacity for cruelty. Unable to destroy it, the gods sealed its heart within a crescent-marked silver amulet, binding instinct to restraint, rage to reason.

The artifact resurfaced millennia later in Greece, unearthed by Thomas Allen Sinclair, an American archaeologist. The amulet’s dormant energy bonded to his bloodline, creating the first human hosts capable of channeling divine might without immediate destruction. Each subsequent bearer inherited fragments of both Artemis’s purity and the Wolf’s hunger.

This legacy birthed a line of hybrid heroes known by a single mantle: Dire-Wolf.

III. PREVIOUS BEARERS (SINCLAIR LINE)

Thomas Allen Sinclair (Dire-Wolf Alpha): The first mortal host. Served as an independent protector during the late 19th century. Documented superhuman feats in urban New York; rumored to have saved over two hundred civilians during the Great Fire of 1889. Died under unexplained circumstances; amulet passed to son.

Gabriel Sinclair (Dire-Wolf II): Military-era hero active during the 1940s. Operated in coordination with early metahuman task forces. Declassified SDN records indicate involvement in “Project Lycaon”—testing divine augmentation under combat conditions. Killed in action, likely from overuse of the amulet’s power.

Lauren Sinclair (Dire-Wolf III, “Lady Wulf”): Acclaimed superheroine operating throughout the 1990s–2010s. Known for her tactical precision and control over the amulet’s dual energies—light and feral instinct. Died in action during a confrontation with the meta-criminal Belladonna; case remains partially sealed.

Enid Sinclair (Dire-Wolf IV): Inherited the amulet at age ten following her mother’s death. Activation incomplete. Displayed erratic synchronization and uncontrolled surges of divine aggression, resulting in multiple collateral incidents before incarceration.

Robert’s finger hovered on Dire-Wolf as if the letters might cut. Memory came back as scent: ozone and oil in his father’s workshop, coolant sweetness under the iron sting, heated leather stamped with knuckle prints. He was small again in a world built big. Mecha Man Astra, dad, clapping his shoulder with a laugh that meant the city was quiet for once. A woman in a jacket that looked like it had been chewed by weather and returned the favor, eyes winter-clear. She’d kneel to his height, mask off, and say something he never remembered right, only the certainty that the room grew safer when she drew breath. Years later, she was dead the way legends die—too publicly, too clean on paper, too dirty in the photos—and the world never found a fair exchange for the hole she left. Shroud took his father soon after. Robert learned the rhythm: build, lose, rebuild, repeat.

He glanced up. Mandy watched him read the way you watch a fuse: hopeful, sure, afraid. “Interesting file,” she said. “I assume you know the name Dire-Wolf. The former one.”

“Yes.” He touched the edge of the page with the back of a knuckle, a small respect. “Met—well, not this one.” His eyes returned to the photo. “Lauren. Is this…her—”

“Daughter.” Mandy’s answer was clean and steady, the way she put a floor under rooms that wanted to fall. “Her only child. It was supposed to be a mantle—grandfather to mother to daughter. Old line.”

He nodded, posture picking up an inch from the weight of it. He didn’t expect the next drop.

“She’s my cousin,” Mandy said. “Younger. Lauren was my aunt. My father’s sister.”

“Talk about family history,” he said quietly.

Her shrug had heavy bones. “My dad didn’t make it easy. Grandfather chose Lauren as successor. He never forgave that. Families do the worst politics.”

Silence set down without making itself a spectacle. Beyond the glass, dispatch churned—lights, lips, the choreography of emergency—muted to a fishbowl hum. Robert turned another page and the air sharpened. Incident photos, legal blocks like black teeth redacting the worst. Behind yellow tape the crowd’s faces blurred into one animal. Asphalt carried a smear that had dried to rust, the jagged edge of a handprint where someone had slid. A boot tread stamped through it, grinding old blood to brick dust.

“If Waterboy or Phenomaman won’t cut it,” Mandy said, and there was no sell in her voice now, only the kind of tired honesty you could balance on, “give her a chance. The program needs the right kind of dangerous. And I—” She stopped. Swallowed. “I need an excuse to stop watching what’s left of my family turn into a headline. She’s wasting everything she was built to do. Let’s not let the worst day of her life be the last thing it counts as.”

The choice came back together in his hands like a weapon he knew blindfolded. He pictured the first meeting: Sonar’s nostrils flaring at the scent of a story; Invisigal’s we’ll-see; Punch Up’s hand, big enough to hide intent; Malevola measuring the break points with eyes made to haunt; Prism already drafting choruses in the air; Golem’s patience, earthen and exact. He pictured Enid in the field—compact, coiled, a heart wired to run toward fire—and the moon catching the fuse underneath her ribs and tugging.

The phantom interface ghosted his sight again, a habit he couldn’t quit:

[CANDIDATE: ENID SINCLAIR]
Pros: Legacy training; high-value capability set; reform narrative with public hook; potential to bind team around a shared risk.
Cons: Volatility; criminal record; grief-driven decision-making; amulet custody unresolved.

Time Remaining: ▓▓▓▓▓▓░░░░

Best case: she steadies, teeth where they’ve been gums, turns chaos into aim. Worst case: he opens the door and invites a wolf into a glass house. Middle case—where leaders live—was meat and grit: wins that bled, losses that taught, the slow manufacturing of trust.

He thought of Mandy selling second chances in rooms that preferred fairy tales. He thought of his father, who believed redemption was an engineering problem. He thought of himself—scar tissue, a small dog, and a building full of people who kept asking him to be exactly one good decision ahead of a bad week.

Time Remaining: ▓▓▓▓░░░░░░

“Okay,” he said, and the word put a floor back under him. He closed the folder gently, like it could bruise. “We give her a shot.”

Mandy’s smile broke clean through the blinds. Her posture eased the way armor eases when it remembers the skin under it. “That’s all I needed,” she said, voice unvarnished, grateful. “I’ll take care of the rest. Thank you, Robert. This…means a lot.”

The folder twitched.

Paper rustled; a corner lifted as if breathed on. Air wavered with a violet shimmer, heat-haze without the heat. The invisibility stuttered. A figure resolved the way film does in a bath, first outline, then color, then smirk.

“Jesus, Visi,” Mandy said, half startle, half resignation.

Invisigal shook a short wedge of purple-black hair out of her eyes and grinned. The cropped magenta jacket was a bruise made stylish over a black tank, dark jeans scuffed at the knee where asphalt had argued and won. Her skin held L.A. sun and bad choices. She palmed an inhaler, took a clean hit, exhaled like punctuation, then brandished the folder as if she’d liberated contraband.

“So we’re swapping Watercunt and Phenomamal for this Dire-chick?” she chirped. “Damn. And she’s your cousin? She’s kinda hot—in that ‘I got booked in a parking lot’ way.”

Robert pinched the bridge of his nose. “It’s Phenomaman. And Waterboy.”

“Sure, sure. Titles, genders, decimal places.” Invisigal hopped onto the desk like a housecat claiming a warm hood, one leg swinging. She flipped pages with a thief’s thumb. “Whoa, priors longer than Punch Up’s arm. But no Murder but we do have Battery and a shit ton of petty crimes—double feature. Queen of multitask.”

“Can you not,” Mandy said, reaching—and failing—to sound entirely like a commander when the fondness kept leaking through.

“I’m just saying.” Invisigal’s grin widened. “Rehabilitating a wolf girl beats babysitting Flambae’s midlife crisis. Maybe she’ll teach him not to trip the alarms every time someone bruises his ego, especially when he gets a protein shake thrown at his face. Poor wet ponytail.”

Robert’s mouth betrayed him with an exhale that was almost a laugh. The room got a size larger; chaos let in air.

“Seriously,” Invisigal said, tapping the inhaler against her thigh, “if she’s as nuts as her file, she’ll fit. Z-Team’s basically group therapy with capes.”

“Minus the therapy,” Robert said.

“Minus the therapy,” Invisigal agreed brightly.

“You’re impossible,” Mandy told her.

“Lovable,” Invisigal corrected, and winked.

For half a heartbeat, watching them, commander and contrarian, order and appetite—Robert wondered about lines and how people kept mistaking them for walls. He’d asked himself the same thing about Mandy and himself once, and learned not to trust a tired heart with boundary work.

Mandy snapped the folder shut with a soft thud and tucked it under her arm. The professional mask slid back into place, but the light stayed. “Alright. Enough gossip. If upstairs wants progress, they’ll get it. This is our shot...and hers.”

Robert nodded; the weight found its place across his shoulders and sat without biting. Beyond the glass, dispatch kept up its pulse, radios, laughter, frayed tempers, the grind of second chances. Outside, the sky bled from gold into bruise. Streetlights tested themselves and decided to live another night.

Invisigal popped off the desk, stretching until her spine ticked like distant hail. “Guess I’ll clean my locker. Make room for wolf-girl.”

“Try not to scare her off,” Mandy said. "Which means behave."

“No promises.” The magenta jacket flashed once; the air bent around her as she ablated out of sight. The door opened, invisible fingers on the handle, and closed on a giggle you could hear or imagine.

Silence settled, the good kind—heavy with next.

Mandy let out half a laugh and half a sigh. “Welcome to the next problem.”

Robert gave her a crooked smile. “Wouldn’t be SDN without one.”

Pale ribbons of last light slipped through the blinds and laid stripes across the folder’s edge. Inside it, a name waited with a history that had already drawn blood and would likely draw more. On the pinboard outside, a photo showed a gutter river gone brown with dried violence; the city had washed it and the stain still told a story if you knew how to read rust.

The Phoenix Program had its new candidate.

And somewhere under the indifferent California sky, a woman who used to be a mantle and was now just a name stood in a room with too little air, counting her breath and trying to remember how not to drown.

Chapter Text

The song bled through the concrete like a memory with a pulse. Not the radio, those privileges lived and died on a rotating schedule but the words themselves, stitched into Enid’s skull from a thousand replayed nights. Breaking Benjamin. “So Cold.” Verses she didn’t have to sing to hear. A chorus that uncoiled whenever the air was thin. She let it play inside her and didn’t chase it away.

Her cell was a shoebox of honest edges: eight by ten, cinderblock painted a color that wanted to be eggshell and settled for institutional resignation. Stainless sink, bolted shelf, single slit of wired glass admitting a gray-pale wash that pretended to be morning. The floor smelled faintly of disinfectant and old bleach ghosts; the air was colder than the radiator’s promises. She had the luxury of solitude now, earned after a row of bad months and a longer row of good ones. Fewer neighbors to practice cruelty on. Fewer chances to teach or be taught the wrong lesson.

Enid sat cross-legged on the narrow mattress, back resting against the brick, the chill seeping in like it had business. Her uniform—a dark green set with a number that no longer felt borrowed—lay folded with military neatness at the foot of the bed. Slippers squared beneath. For now she wore the minimum: cotton briefs and a white crop tank soft from too many washes. Nothing about it was meant to flatter; everything about it was meant to survive laundry and women who didn’t care what they ruined. The tank left her shoulders bare—corded and lean from hours of pushups and wall sits and the slow religion of prison exercise. Scars mapped her in plain, workmanlike strokes: a crescent by the rib where a shiv had kissed and learned respect; a stippled line along the forearm from a fence climbed the same night a girl named Lani didn’t make it over. Her body wasn’t a billboard. It was a ledger.

The journal rested open on her knees, paper gone soft at the corners, the spine trained to kindness. Graphite blew a muted halo across the side of her hand. She drew the way some people pray, head down, breathing even, hours disappearing. Today it was a figure study: a woman rendered with patient lines, shoulders like a marble slope, chin tipped toward an idea. The face had comic-book symmetry without the lie; the posture carried that impossible mix of strength at rest. The reference lived in Enid’s head as clearly as if it were on the wall—those animated stills she’d copied and recut, Wonder Woman spreads she pretended were for anatomy when what she wanted was grace. The curve of the clavicle, the tension at the deltoid, the fall of hair that wasn’t hair so much as a river of intent. She worked the shadow under the cheekbone with the side of the pencil, smudged it with a knuckle, then went back to define the ear with one clean stroke. The line held.

Statues had taught her how to look. Comics had taught her how to move into imagination. Between them she’d found a way to put people on paper who couldn’t be taken away.

The song inside her tapered to the line that always landed like a cold hand on a hot neck. Start over. Try again. She let it sit. She’d had time to think—more time than most get, less than some deserve. The first months had been all sharp teeth: corners where hands got brave and learned consequences, showers where being small meant learning angles, yards where gangs played chess with girls who didn’t know the rules. She’d broken knuckles and learned to tape them. She’d bled; she’d made others bleed. She’d slept with her shoes on for three weeks because a pair of soft footsteps at three a.m. had taught her that running sometimes beats fighting. Dignity, it turned out, could be clawed back in inches and still look like loss.

Later there was quiet: the shop class with the smell of hot metal and the peace of tools that did what you asked; the old CO who called everyone “kid” and meant it; the new counselor who didn’t flinch when Enid refused to cry for the first six sessions and then couldn’t stop for the seventh. She had a list of regrets long enough to tie around a waist and jump. Some nights she looped it and didn’t. Other nights she wrote instead, or sketched a jawline until it held.

A rap at the door, three quick, one patient—cut clean through her head. She looked up. The slot scraped open.

“On your feet and suit up, Sinclair.” Bertha’s voice, steady as a level. Early-shift holdover, or late-shift saint—either way, the woman had a face that didn’t waste expressions. “You’ve got a visitor.”

Enid blinked once. “This early?”

“Trust me, I’m as thrilled as you are.” The humor didn’t reach Bertha’s eyes, but it was real. “Not standard hours. Warden signed it. Get dressed.”

The music in Enid’s skull turned down to a hum. She capped her pencil, closed the journal, set it gently on the pillow like a warm thing. The uniform slid on with practiced economy: shirt, pants, elastic that had lost the right to complain. Slippers. She stepped forward and offered her wrists without being asked.

Bertha studied her for the half-second a guard buys with experience, then shook her head and waved the cuffs away. “Hands where I can see ’em, Sinclair. Let’s not make this a day.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.” Enid put her palms out, relaxed, elbows loose. Bertha opened the door with a clack that lived somewhere between ritual and mercy.

The corridor slapped brightness into her eyes. Overhead fluorescents hummed like angry bees, their glare bouncing from glossed cinderblock to sealed concrete until the whole hall became a lightbox. Doors spaced at metronome intervals kept their mouths shut. Inside some of them, soft sounds lived—murmurs, a cough, the feathered shuffle of someone doing burpees because time demanded a toll. The posted rules were laminated and blunt: NO CONTACT WITHOUT PERMISSION. KEEP LEFT. EYES FORWARD. She kept left. She kept forward.

Checkpoint one: a waist-high table, a wand, a scan. Enid lifted her arms; the wand sang a thin soprano around the seams of her life. Checkpoint two: ID slides, the CO glances from photo to face as if faces have the decency to stay the same in here. Checkpoint three: the choke point with the old metal detector that always screamed at Bertha’s belt and never at Enid, because uniforms didn’t earn metal. The gates banged open then banged shut, music in a minor key.

They didn’t take her to the phone booths with their cracked plastic shields and the choreography of awkward hands finding where to rest. They wound through a back corridor she’d only seen twice before—once for a disciplinary review that ended in her losing yard time, once for a medical check after she’d slipped and a tile had taken skin from her palm like a souvenir. Today the door at the end led into a room the size of a decent kitchen. Table. Four chairs. No mirrored glass; the corners held small smoke-colored bubbles that might be cameras and might be nothing. The quiet had its own smell—dry paper, old dust, a hint of lemon cleaner laid down like apology.

“Have a seat,” Bertha said.

Enid did, the chair’s legs rasping on the waxed floor. “If this is about Martha,” she added, feeling the prickle at the back of her neck sharpen into a point, “I had nothing to do with it.”

Bertha’s jaw worked once. “Warden knows.” Which wasn’t an answer but wasn’t not one. “Wait here.” She left on soft soles, the door closing with a seal’s tidy certainty.

Enid let the silence settle, then tested it. No throat-mic whisper in the vents. No metal tattle of a camera panning. Her pulse declined from alert to wary. She folded her hands on the table because posture can be armor, and counted slow to thirty for no reason except the body likes numbers. On twenty-nine, the handle turned.

The woman who stepped in carried the room with her like weather.

Enid’s world kicked twice, once in recognition, once in disbelief. The last time she’d seen Mandy Sinclair had been months and months and another life ago: a blur of court corridors and a promise with more obligation than comfort. This version wore her hair a deep brunette, swept back in a bun that looked effortless and wasn’t. Blue eyes (those eyes) still glacier clear. Slacks that fit because they were supposed to, a pale blouse tucked with military neatness, a blazer folded over one forearm like the afterthought of someone who forgot to be ordinary. The shape of her was capability first: shoulders built for taking weight, balance in how she stood, hands that could sign or strike and be convincing either way. A pair of heels lifted her an inch above problems and clicked like punctuation against the tile.

“Mandy!?” It broke out of Enid before she decided to say it. “What the hell—”

“Hey, cuz.” Mandy closed the door and set a stack of files down as she sat, the motion entirely tidy. The mouth tilted; it wasn’t quite a smile. “Long time.”

Enid slouched, not defiant, just letting some armor leak out of her shoulders. “Yeah… been a long minute.” History ran between them like barbed wire someone had tried to braid into a rope. Mandy had always been the taller shore and older by four years, steadier by ten, the one who showed up to school fights in a clean shirt and left with grass stains and a principal’s warning. Enid had been the kid who laughed on her way to the office and cried in the bathroom afterward, the scrapper who mistook bruises for proof of life. Cousins by blood, sisters by bad timing and stubbornness; they’d sparred in kitchens and hallways, words first, hands later, both of them always reaching for the same thing, control—only one of them better at pretending it didn’t matter. You could say they loved each other; you just had to say it like a dare.

They sat in the little room and looked. Ten quiet seconds where openings auditioned and failed.

Mandy went first. “Warden says your record’s clean. Over a year.” She didn’t check the file to confirm; she already knew. “No write-ups. You volunteered on hygiene kit assembly with the church group, the food line on Saturdays when the COs could spare the bodies, clothing sort once a month. You logged the most hours in welding—moved to MIG, even stuck your name on the sign-out for the grinder and brought it back without a nick.” One brow twitched. “They said you fix the locker latches when they go wonky.”

Enid’s mouth tilted. “If I don’t fix ’em, someone else pries them with a spoon.”

“Library too,” Mandy continued. “Wellness shelves. The little affirmation paperbacks, the trauma workbooks with the unicorn covers they think grown women won’t notice. A couple of Greek sculpture monographs that haven’t been checked out since 2006. Comic omnibuses—Wonder Woman, mostly.”

Enid blinked once, slow. “Are you reading me my report card? You didn’t even ask how I’ve been. I mean—” her jaw set, then loosened— “you show up at dawn to narrate my Goodreads? Just tell me why you’re here. Is my sentence extended? Shortened? Transfer? What is this.”

Mandy sighed, one of those exhale-only breaths that meant the answer didn’t fit in a sentence. She opened the stack and fanned a spread of eight familiar squares; the paper smelled faintly of toner and old decisions. Mugshot lighting. Prison orange. Names on placards that had since been torn up or framed depending on who you asked.

“History,” she said, tapping the first.

Top-left: a lean girl with a blade of a smile and purple-black hair razored short. “Courtney. Invisigal. Breath-hold invisibility. Used to call herself Invisibitch until she got tired of the punchline. Assault, B&E, resisting. Asthma like a land mine—timing is everything. Lone-wolf, shares poorly, smarter than she admits.”

Top row, middle—the red X slashed over a cool-eyed woman in the same orange. “Coupé. Flight suit. Shadow play. Took contracts for the mob before she went boutique. Precise as a metronome, soul like a switch. We cut her last week. She cut the table on her way out.” Mandy didn’t look at Enid when she said it.

Top-right: a mass like earth learned how to stand. “Golem,” Mandy said. “Bruno on paper, sometimes. Fire suppression, heavy lift, hard stop. Gentle until he isn’t. Needs a partner with a good direction with maps.”

Middle-left: a forehead and narrowed eyes glowering up from too low in the frame, like the camera had flinched. “Chad. Flambae. Afghan kid who learned to burn before he learned to slow down. Arson, property destruction, public endangerment. Hair’s flammable; don’t mention it unless you want a bad afternoon.”

Center: a compact, furious mountain. “Colm. Punch Up. Deal with something older than sense, strength of ten men, height of half. Prideful. Fair to a fault. Will bench-press a car and apologize to it if he scuffs the paint.”

Middle-right, already covered by Golem in this layout, but Mandy nudged the stack and brought up the bat. Bottom-left: a head half man, half nightmare petting zoo, ears like sails, eyes glassy. “Victor. Sonar. Cult nonsense, echolocation, bat shift when his chemistry decides his day. Smirk is armor. Money launderer turned repentance tourist.”

Bottom-middle: a popstar mugshot that refused to be unglamorous. “Alice. Prism. Light tricks, media warfare, espionage without calling it that. Image-conscious for structural reasons—don’t confuse it with shallowness.”

Bottom-right: a woman in orange who looked like hell took finishing school—red skin, gold eyes, horns, boredom. “Malevola Gibb. Portal blade, half demon, whole problem. Body count, cult work, a sense of humor that makes priests cry. Brilliant inside a structure. Dangerous when the structure breaks.”

Enid scanned the grid twice, then looked up. “I thought you had a boyfriend. Phenomaman—right? Why are you showing me other people? Shopping for a worse toy?”

Mandy rolled her eyes, the gesture neat as a full stop. “They were you,” she said, and left just enough air around it to sting. “Caught, thrown into a system that solves problems with cages. We gave them a door—conditional, monitored, earned. They’re not saints. They’re not beyond saving. That’s the Phoenix Program.”

Enid’s jaw ticked. “Never heard of it.”

“You know SDN,” Mandy said. “Dispatch. We send help when civilians call and when they don’t know how. Phoenix sits inside that mission. It’s rehabilitation and field integration for powered offenders who can be trusted further than a yard. Not charity. Not PR. It’s a lever. We take people the world is done with and ask them to prove the world wrong—loudly, on camera, with oversight that would make God itch.” She slid a sheet out—letterhead, the logo a stylized flame rising through a ring. “You get a team. A dispatcher who lives in your ear. Counseling you don’t have to like but you have to attend. No solo runs. Body cam. Quarterly boards where a room full of people who learned ethics in school decide if you keep breathing free air. You work. You serve. You fail, we take you back in chains the same day and write a press release nobody enjoys.”

Enid listened with her face half-shuttered, fury and hope trading the mirror between them. The word team snagged and held. The word chains didn’t bounce at all.

“And the Z-Team is the… charity case?” she asked, dry.

“The bad alphabet,” Mandy said, allowing the smallest smile. “They were our pilot. They still are our proof. Imperfect, loud, occasionally on fire. But they save people. Real ones.”

Enid snorted, because the other choice was letting warmth into her throat. “You’re asking me to sign up for group therapy with capes.”

“Minus the therapy,” Mandy said. Then more softly: “Except not really minus.”

Enid leaned back. “No.”

Mandy didn’t flinch. She opened a new folder and slid a single form across the table. It had weight. The kind paper gets when it changes the room.

“Judge signed off under clause 18-B. Ethics Board cleared it. The Warden countersigned at five-oh-nine this morning. Robert Robertson, Senior Dispatcher, signed too.” She tapped each signature—ink asleep, power awake. “You join Phoenix. Torrance branch. You work under me. You do the evaluations. You meet the conditions. At twelve months, the remainder of your sentence is vacated. You break faith, you go back. Simple math.”

Enid looked down. The header was an organism of acronyms and authority.

SUPERHERO DISPATCH NETWORK (SDN)
PHOENIX PROGRAM – REHABILITATION AND FIELD INTEGRATION DIVISION
TRANSFER AUTHORIZATION FORM

CONFIDENTIAL – CLASSIFIED INTERNAL USE ONLY

Transfer Type: Inmate Release / Rehabilitation Assignment
Program Designation: Phoenix Program (Tier 3 – Field Integration)
Branch Assignment: SDN – Torrance, California
Receiving Officer: MANDY SINCLAIR (Hero Alias: Blonde Blazer)
Title: Torrance Branch Director / Phoenix Program Supervisor

SUBJECT INFORMATION
Full Name: ENID LAUREN SINCLAIR
Alias: “Dire-Wolf IV”
Date of Birth: 03 / 17 / 2000
Age: 25
Gender: Female
Place of Birth: San Diego, California
Incarceration Facility: Bedford Hills Correctional Facility, Westchester County, NY
Inmate ID: #BH-21745-EN
Sentence: 10 Years (4 Years, 9 Months Served)
Custody Status: TRANSFERRED under SDN Supervised Release
Criminal Classification: Ex-Villain / Former Unauthorized Vigilante
Known Abilities: Enhanced strength, agility, regenerative physiology (Artemis Amulet host)

REHABILITATION TERMS & CONDITIONS

Subject placed on probationary employment within the Phoenix Program.
Subject to 24/7 digital monitoring and quarterly performance evaluation.
Prohibited from solo field operations without dispatcher authorization.
Any breach of conduct or unsanctioned use of divine artifact (Artemis Amulet) results in immediate termination of probation and re-incarceration.
Weekly counseling sessions mandated with SDN Behavioral Division representative.
Subject’s guardian/supervisor assumes full responsibility for compliance.

JUSTIFICATION FOR TRANSFER
Following observed behavioral reform and stable psychological evaluations, subject deemed eligible for Phoenix Program integration.
Recommendation approved by SDN Ethics Board and New York State Department of Corrections under clause 18-B “Experimental Rehabilitation of Superpowered Offenders.”
Subject considered moderate risk / high potential for controlled fieldwork.

AUTHORIZED BY:
ROBERT ROBERTSON III – Lead Dispatcher, SDN Torrance
MANDY SINCLAIR – Branch Director, SDN Torrance
DR. ISADORA CAPRI– Chief Psychological Officer, SDN Behavioral Division

SIGNATURES:
[ ✅️ ] _______________________________ (Enid L. Sinclair – Subject)
[✅️ ] _______________________________ (Mandy Sinclair – Custodian)
[✅️ ] _______________________________ (Robert Robertson – Witness)
[ ✅️ ] _______________________________ (Warden Signature – Bedford Hills Correctional Facility)

STATUS:
☑ APPROVED  □ DENIED  □ PENDING  □ RETURNED TO CUSTODY

TRANSFER DATE: 04 / 02 / 2025
FILE ID: #SDN-TB/PP-04A-21745

At the bottom: ROBERT ROBERTSON III. MANDY SINCLAIR. DR. ISADORA CAPRI. And the Warden’s practiced autograph cutting a clean artery across the page.

Enid’s pulse ticked in her jaw. Somewhere inside, a thin familiar overlay ghosted her vision, habit dressed as fate:

[ACCEPT TRANSFER?]
Join Phoenix Program — Freedom with conditions.
Decline — Continue sentence (5 years, 3 months remaining).
Request Delay — Risk revocation of offer.

Time Remaining: ▓▓▓▓▓░░░░░

She kept her face flat. She read it again. And again, slower, like the words would admit they were bait if she gave them time.

Which Enid was now pressured.....Delay.

“Hold on, Mandy. What the hell—this is all too much. You walk in here before sunrise with a government contract and expect me to what? Just sign my name before I’ve even had coffee?”

Mandy didn’t even blink, just drew a slow breath that said she’d rehearsed this in the mirror. “Enid, I know it’s sudden. And I know I probably look like I came here on a business trip instead of to see family—but believe me, I fought tooth and nail to make this even possible.”

Her voice softened, losing its corporate polish. “This isn’t charity. This is your second chance. Maybe mine too. It’s a chance to rebuild something we both wrecked—family, name, faith, I don’t know. But it’s real.”

Enid laughed under her breath, not out of humor. It was a sharp, thin sound. “A second chance to do what? To be someone’s PR miracle?”

Mandy’s eyes didn’t flinch from the hit. “To unvarnish your mother’s name.”

That landed. Enid looked away. Lauren Sinclair—the third Dire-Wolf—flashed through memory like a wound that never fully closed. Strength wrapped in discipline, voice like a bell that never cracked, body carried through fire and flood and headlines. And then gone. Enid pressed her palm to her thigh, grounding herself against the tremor that word always woke.

Mandy kept talking, careful, deliberate. “You’ll have pay, real pay. Benefits, too—health, dental, full coverage. They’ve even got a trauma therapist on staff who’s worked with artifact hosts before. You’ll get your own apartment—small, but private. No more bunk beds. You’ll have a savings plan, vacation days, even bonuses for successful dispatches. I can’t promise peace, but I can promise purpose.”

“Purpose,” Enid muttered, voice dry as dust. “That’s what they called it when they sent my mother into the field too.”

“Enid—”

“No. Don’t ‘Enid’ me.” Her voice cracked on its way up, brittle and loud. “You don’t get to show up after four years of being on and off again and call this a family reunion just because the system finally gave you a pen to save me with.”

Mandy flinched. Not much—but enough.

Silence dug its roots in between them for a beat too long.

Then Enid exhaled, shaky. “Can I at least think about it?”

Mandy shook her head, eyes firm but not cruel. “No time. My higher-ups need an answer before I walk out that door. You know how they are—this offer dies the second I step back on the tarmac.”

“That’s convenient.”

“It’s bureaucracy,” Mandy said. “And mercy. Both don’t last long. Come on, cuz. Don’t make me watch you rot in a cage because you couldn’t say yes.”

She reached across the table, her hand catching Enid’s. The touch was warm, grounding. Her thumb grazed the ridge of scar tissue knotted across Enid’s knuckles—the old fights, the old hunger for control written there like braille. “You’re not alone this time,” Mandy said. “I’ll be there every step of the way.”

The words might’ve been rehearsed, but the look wasn’t. Enid saw the sleepless lines under her cousin’s eyes, the guilt sitting quiet behind them. For a moment, the glass and concrete around them fell away, and it was just the two of them, blood and memory, old bruises and older promises.

“What about the Amulet?” Enid asked finally, her voice barely more than a rasp.

“They’ll release it to you under certain conditions,” Mandy replied, watching her closely. “We have a division that specializes in divine artifacts. They’ll help monitor it, study the resonance, train you to regulate its influence. No lab cages, no experiments. Just guidance. You’ll have control again, Enid.”

Enid’s jaw clenched. “Control,” she echoed. “That’s a funny word for something that’s been inside my bones since I was ten.”

“It doesn’t respond to anyone else,” Mandy said, quieter now. “It’s yours. Maybe it always was. And maybe—just maybe—you can do something good with it. Like she did.”

Lauren’s ghost sat in that sentence. The room felt smaller for it. Enid’s chest tightened until she thought she might laugh or break.

Her mind spun, faces of guards, flashes of metal, sweat, blood, the metallic sting of fear in her throat, the music that had kept her from screaming. The idea of walking out and of seeing sky without razor wire, breathing air that didn’t smell like bleach—was enough to make her stomach hurt.

Freedom. On paper. In chains made of clauses and signatures.

Her heartbeat synced with the ticking in her head.

[ACCEPT TRANSFER?]
Join Phoenix Program — Freedom with conditions.
Decline — Continue sentence (5 years, 3 months remaining).
Request Delay — Risk revocation of offer.

Time Remaining: ▓▓▓░░░░░░░

The world narrowed. Her breath came shallow, and she stared at the pen. One stroke could undo nearly five years of slow boring hell—or start another kind.

She looked up at Mandy, saw the same woman who once taught her to punch with her wrist straight, who yelled at her for shoplifting candy and then paid for it anyway. Saw a hero who’d dragged herself through headlines and heartbreak to stand here asking for one more leap of faith.

Enid sighed, deep and final. The timer in her head burned out to black.

She reached for the pen.

The paper trembled under her hand, then steadied as if it had been waiting for this all along.
And with a single, unsteady motion, she signed her name.

Mandy didn’t speak at first, just watched the signature bleed into permanence. Then her composure cracked, joy breaking through the armor she wore like another uniform. “So… that just happened,” Enid muttered, her voice half a groan, half disbelief. “What now?”

Mandy didn’t bother answering. She came around the table, wrapped her cousin in a hug that could’ve cracked ribs, and lifted her clean off the chair. “Now,” she said against her ear, laughing through a choked breath, “we start over.” Enid swore softly, muffled against Mandy’s shoulder, as the older woman kissed her cheek once, twice, three times like she was blessing a miracle she’d stopped believing in.

The walls blurred, gravity loosened and the world changed shape.

The harsh white of the interview room dissolved into the quiet hum of altitude. The cold became conditioned air laced with coffee and recycled leather. When Enid blinked again, the city below was already a quilt of clouds. The jet’s hull carried the silver letters of SDN, stylized flame logo stenciled along its flank. The world outside the oval window was washed gold with morning—the kind of light she hadn’t seen without bars in front of it in almost five years.

She sat on the window side, seatbelt still loose around her waist, one hand cradling the journal balanced across her lap. Her reflection looked strange in the glass, same eyes, same bones, but different weight. Jeans, hoodie, sneakers. Clothes that actually belonged to her skin. It felt almost indecent, how soft the fabric was. The hoodie smelled faintly of detergent and airport air. The cuffs still had the crease from the plastic bag they’d handed her after release. No orange. No number. No hidden stink of bleach.

Mandy sat to her right, finally out of uniform herself—hair down now, blazer hung across her knees, phone off for once. Somewhere between takeoff and ten thousand feet, exhaustion had found her. Her head had drifted to Enid’s shoulder, her breath warm and steady against the fabric. The proud hero, undone by a red-eye rescue mission. There was something childlike about it. Trusting. Human.

Enid stared out at the clouds, the Pacific bleeding into horizon. The sound of the jet was a low, constant heartbeat. Her mind was too loud for the silence, too quiet for the relief clawing through her chest.

She was free. Not unchained, not unsupervised, but free enough to feel it. Air without alarms. Shoes that didn’t squeak on waxed floors. A sunrise that wasn’t a headcount.

Her fingers brushed the edge of her journal—the one thing she’d fought to keep, its pages filled with drawings of women carved from myth and marble, and the quiet lines of people she’d imagined forgiving her someday. It sat heavy in her lap now, as if the sketches themselves couldn’t quite believe the cell was gone.

She turned to look at Mandy. Drool had started to gather at the corner of her cousin’s mouth, glinting in the plane’s soft light. A small thing, a ridiculous thing—and yet Enid didn’t move.

[TIME PRESSURE]
Wake her — “Mandy, you’re drooling.”
Let her rest — “She earned this.”

Time Remaining: ▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓░░

Enid hesitated, then smiled faintly and let her rest.

Maybe it was mercy. Maybe it was love. Maybe it was both.

Mandy shifted, murmured something incoherent, then settled deeper into her shoulder. Enid turned back to the window, watching the sky divide itself between light and cloud. The earth below rolled westward, toward California, toward the next cage painted to look like a chance.

She didn’t know what waited there? fire, monsters, redemption, but for the first time in years, the horizon didn’t look like punishment.

And for now, that was enough.

Chapter Text

Enid didn’t speak for the first full minute. She just stood in the doorway and let the air hit her—real air, not the recycled, chemical-stale kind that lived behind locks. Her new apartment was small, sure, but it felt enormous in the ways that mattered.

One narrow bed sat tucked against the far wall, white sheets turned down like someone had been expecting her. A kitchenette hummed quietly opposite, stainless steel and warm wood tones under the soft amber of hidden ceiling lights. Beyond it, a sliding glass door led into a bathroom clean enough to belong in another world—no mold, no rust, just the faint scent of soap and space.

Her sneakers stayed planted at the threshold, afraid to scuff something so foreign as freedom.

She dropped her duffel, barely more than her sketchbook, a few folded shirts, and a packet of letters she hadn’t opened in years—then walked in slow circles like she might wake up if she moved too fast. Posters climbed the walls in soft rebellion: bands she used to love, movies she once quoted, faces she hadn’t seen since her mother’s voice still filled the house. Someone, Mandy, obviously had decorated the place using memory as a paintbrush.

A mini fridge sat open on the counter, humming low, stocked with frozen dinners, bottles of root beer, and three neatly stacked chocolate bars. Chips, noodles, and candy bags were lined like a care package disguised as groceries. Her hand hovered over the freezer handle before she pulled it open and laughed quietly when she saw a tub of mint chocolate chip. Mandy remembered everything.

The window overlooked Torrance with low rooftops, the bruised glow of city lights, the sprawl of palm silhouettes caught between dusk and the Pacific. The sound of cars below felt strangely holy, like proof of life.

“Whoa,” she breathed. “This is… this is—”

“Amazing, huh?” Mandy said from behind her, a grin hidden in her voice. She moved past with the ease of someone who’d done this a dozen times, collapsing onto the couch and tossing her blazer onto the armrest. “Yeah, SDN wanted you close to the branch for probation tracking, so they found something within walking distance. Fully covered—utilities, rent, the basics. Don’t worry about the bills. The only thing you’ll have to pay for is Wi-Fi, if you want it. But knowing you, you’ll use it to binge cartoons, not research.”

Enid turned back, still stunned. “You’re joking. This is actually mine?”

“Your name’s on the lease,” Mandy said, legs crossed, casual as breathing. “Conditionally, of course.”

Enid crossed the floor to the small closet. Inside hung a tidy rack of clothes: jeans, soft shirts, a couple of hoodies, sneakers lined by color. Nothing fancy and verything new. She ran her fingers across the cotton, almost reverently. Prison clothes had always felt like wearing regret. These just felt like air.

When she came back out, Mandy had kicked her shoes off and was sprawled with a remote in hand. “You like it?”

Enid grabbed the other remote from the coffee table, turned on the TV, and blinked at the screen. The Simpsons flickered in yellow and noise, a rerun so old it still felt alive. “Freak yeah,” she said, grinning despite herself.

Mandy’s smile softened at that, one of those rare, unguarded moments when the world didn’t owe her perfection. “Good. Settle in tonight, okay? You’ve got a long day tomorrow.”

Enid glanced over. “Tomorrow?”

“You’ll meet Robert and the team,” Mandy said, reaching over to swipe a crumb from her knee. “They’ll love you. Or at least pretend to. I made sure they’ll be on their best behavior.”

Enid arched a brow. “You bribed them, didn’t you?”

Mandy smirked. “Let’s call it morale management.”

Enid let herself fall back onto the couch beside her, the cushions sighing under the weight of something that wasn’t fear anymore. For the first time in years, there was no lock behind her, no schedule carved into concrete, no distant shouting from the other side of a wall. Just the low hum of the city outside, the smell of new sheets, and the warm static of a television bleeding laughter into her living room.

Freedom, fragile and conditional as it was, still felt like flight.

Tomorrow would bring the Z-Team, and Robert, and all the mess that came with second chances—but tonight, it was enough just to exist here.

To breathe.

To belong somewhere again.

When Mandy finally left that night, the apartment fell still in a way Enid hadn’t heard in years. She lay in bed and waited—for the keys jangling, the heavy boots outside the door, the clipped voices calling lights out. Her body tensed when 9:00 came and went. Then 10:00. Then midnight. Nothing.

No flashlight beam cutting across her face. No barked “count check.” Just the sound of city air through the vent and the hum of the fridge keeping its little kingdom cold. Freedom had a sound, she realized. It was the absence of control.

She waited a while longer, because habit is harder to break than handcuffs. Sleep came slow, but when it did, it wasn’t filled with the usual metallic echoes or screaming pipes.

When morning arrived, it did so rudely.

The alarm clock beside her bed shrieked at full volume. Enid shot upright, fists ready, heart going a mile a minute. For one wild second she was back in the block—ready for a fight, a search, an order. Then her eyes adjusted, saw sunlight spilling through the curtains, and she exhaled.

“Jesus—” she muttered, unplugging the thing like it had insulted her personally.

Her pulse still hammering, she stumbled toward the bathroom. It was strange how quiet the floor felt beneath her bare feet. At Bedford, every step echoed through concrete like guilt. Here, it was just soft tile and the smell of soap.

She turned on the shower, steam curling up like a ghost from the drain. For a second she hesitated, old instincts telling her to glance for eyes, for watchers, for that sour blend of sweat and bleach that clung to communal showers. There had been too many stares in those years. Women long starved of touch looking for something, anything, to feel alive again. Enid had learned early how to scrub fast, eyes down, elbows sharp.

But here, there was no one. No echoing laughter. No guards banging batons. Just water and quiet.

She stepped in. Cold first—it was always cold at the prison, so her body didn’t flinch. But then warmth came. Actual warmth. It slid down her spine like a foreign kindness. She washed slow, deliberate: lathering the generic citrus body wash across her arms, her legs, scrubbing the soap under her nails, around her scars, over the pale crescents on her knuckles. When she reached her collarbone, she lingered, tracing the ridged reminder of one of her first fights—won ugly.

The water turned faintly pink as it ran off. Old skin cells, maybe. Or memory bleeding out.

When she was done, she towel-dried her hair—still damp at the tips and dressed in the outfit Mandy had left folded on the chair: a flannel shirt in deep mustard and forest green, sleeves rolled just enough to show the faded ink on her wrists, blue jeans cuffed at the ankles, and worn high-top Converse that squeaked faintly on the tile. It was practical, unpretentious, comfortable. She caught her reflection in the mirror as she looked… normal. Almost.

Breakfast came next. Toast, peanut butter, banana slices, and honey. The smell hit her before the taste did, and she almost laughed. “Holy hell,” she said to the empty room. “Real food.”

At Bedford, breakfast was watery eggs, limp bacon, and grits burned into concrete. How anyone burns grits was one of life’s mysteries with some kind of state-sponsored art form in culinary disappointment.

She ate fast, washed it down with a glass of water so clear it felt criminal, then packed a plastic grocery bag: ramen, chips, a handful of pork rinds. Prison habit—always bring a backup meal.

When she slipped on her jacket and turned the key in the lock, the click of it made her chest tighten. Keys. Hers. Not a guard’s. Not a warden’s. Just hers.

Outside, the air smelled faintly of exhaust and coffee, sharp with morning.

Then came the voice. “Rise and shine, rookie.”

Enid turned and froze.

Blonde Blazer was standing by the curb, golden hair catching the sun, blue-and-yellow uniform bright enough to shame daylight. The red crystal in her chestpiece glowed faintly as her cape rippled behind her. She looked like every poster Enid had seen as a kid come to life—confident, composed, and strong in a way that made Enid’s insecurities curl up for warmth.

Mandy grinned under the mask. “How was the first night? You sleep good?”

Enid nodded, tugging at her sleeve. “Yeah. First time in a long time I didn’t wake up screaming. So… thanks for that.”

“Good.” Mandy stretched, the cape shifting with the motion. “Come on, then. Being on time makes a great first impression.”

Enid frowned. “Wait—what do you mean ‘come on’? You’re not—oh, hell no—”

Before she could finish, Blonde Blazer’s arm hooked around her waist and lifted her clean off the ground like she weighed nothing.

“Mandy—!”

“Hold tight!”

The world blurred into blue and gold. The wind punched her lungs empty. Her hair whipped across her face, the cold slicing through her jacket as Torrance turned into a mosaic below with rooftops, cars, surf breaking far in the distance. She screamed once, then clung harder, bag flapping violently against her side.

“THIS ISN’T WHAT YOU MEANT BY ‘CARPOOL’!” she yelled into Mandy’s shoulder.

“Technically, I’m the vehicle!” Mandy shouted back, voice carried by the wind.

By the time they landed, smoothly, of course—Enid still had her eyes squeezed shut, arms locked tight around her cousin’s neck like a terrified koala. Mandy planted her boots on the asphalt outside the Superhero Dispatch Network building, sunlight gleaming off the mirrored glass.

“You can let go now,” Mandy said, trying not to laugh.

“Nope,” Enid said flatly, eyes still closed.

“Enid.”

“Still nope.”

Mandy snorted. “Suit yourself.” She pried Enid’s fingers off one at a time until the girl finally stumbled back, legs trembling, hair a wild mess.

When Enid opened her eyes, she froze again—but this time in awe.

The SDN Torrance Branch shimmered in the sunlight like a promise that didn’t entirely trust itself. The building’s mirrored glass caught every gleam of morning and threw it back at the sky, a perfect corporate fortress, modern, sterile, heroic. Rows of cars filled the lot in disciplined stripes: gleaming sedans, dented hatchbacks, a couple of bikes lined up beside a charging port. A few heroes landed with a sound like thunder muffled through velvet, their capes flashing against the asphalt. Others strolled in through the main doors, still in their uniforms, smelling faintly of ozone and caffeine.

Enid stood at the curb, bag slung over her shoulder, watching all of it with a quiet disbelief that bordered on vertigo. It felt like she’d stepped into someone else’s comic book.

Mandy—Blonde Blazer now in every sense of the word—looked like she belonged here. Sunlight clung to her armor, her cape catching a mild wind as she rested a hand on Enid’s shoulder. “Welcome to S.D.N Torrance Branch, Dire-Wolf.”

The name hit like a soft punch. Her mother’s title. Her curse. Still, she nodded. “Guess this is home base.”

“Guess so.” Mandy smiled, and together they crossed the glass doors.

---

Inside, the SDN lobby was a sprawl of polished concrete and light. Sun cut through the high windows in long beams that striped the floor. The air smelled faintly of coffee, ozone, and lemon polish. A front desk dominated the far wall beneath a glowing blue sign—SDN Reception. Dispatchers in crisp blue shirts weaved between heroes in spandex and armor, trading schedules, jokes, and caffeine debts.

Several of them stopped what they were doing the second Blonde Blazer walked in. It was like watching the sun enter a room.

“Morning, Blazer!”
“Ma’am, your segment on Channel 8 was incredible!”
“Hey, uh, if you’re free later, I’d love to grab—”

Mandy handled it with the grace of a practiced celebrity, smiling and waving off compliments. “You’re all too kind, really—big day, folks, keep saving the world.”

Enid trailed quietly behind, very aware of the curious looks that followed her. It wasn’t the stares that got her, she’d had worse but the polite confusion in them, the silent Who’s that with her?

She tried to focus on the details instead. The waiting area to their right was arranged in warm reds and dark wood, sunlight pooling on armchairs. A vending machine hummed beside a row of framed “Hero of the Month” plaques. Through the tall glass wall, she glimpsed the outdoor courtyard—a serene rectangle of greenery where a few dispatchers sat with tablets and coffee, laughter faint but real.

Then came the elevator. The chrome doors slid open with a chime, and they stepped inside—immediately packed shoulder-to-shoulder with costumed and civilian staff alike. The air smelled like deodorant and stress.

Someone sniffed the air. “You smell good,” a man said conversationally. “That shea butter?”

Every head turned. Even Mandy blinked.

Enid hesitated. “Uh… yeah, I think so?”

“Good choice,” he said, as if confirming a sacred truth.

The elevator dinged mercifully before anyone could respond. The crowd spilled out in a wave of polite chaos, leaving Enid flushed and trying not to laugh.

---

“Morning, Miss Blazer!”

A voice chirped down the hall. Enid turned and saw a tall, awkward young man in a yellow-and-blue jumpsuit, hair sticking out beneath his goggles, a mop bucket rolling beside him. His name tag read Waterboy in sharpie over a faded SDN patch. He beamed like someone perpetually two sentences ahead of an apology.

“Oh—hey, Waterboy,” Mandy said kindly.

He nodded quickly, then looked at Enid, fumbling the rag in his hands. “Hi. Uh, nice to—meet you. I’m—Waterboy.”

[TIME PRESSURE]
Ignore — Too weird, too eager.
Engage — Fist bump, harmless enough.

Time Remaining: ▓▓▓▓▓▓▓░░

Enid studied him. Nervous, but harmless. She lifted her right fist. “Dire-Wolf,” she said, instantly regretting the weight of her own mother’s name.

Waterboy’s grin split wide. He bumped her fist gently. “Cool name. Uh—welcome aboard.”

“Thanks,” she said softly.

Mandy leaned close as they walked on. “He’s nice. Bit of a weirdo, but harmless. You’ll get used to him.”

They turned a corner into the dispatch floor, where the atmosphere shifted. Rows of cubicles stretched in tidy lines, lit by monitor glow and fluorescent fatigue. The air thrummed with overlapping voices—dispatchers coordinating missions, heroes checking in, printers grinding through endless reports. A massive whiteboard at the far end listed names, callsigns, and current assignments under the bold header: PHOENIX PROGRAM / Z-TEAM STATUS.

Blonde Blazer led her toward one particular desk.

The man there didn’t immediately notice them. He sat with a headset on, voice calm, steady, the kind that could defuse bombs or arguments equally. His shirt was SDN blue, sleeves rolled, jaw shadowed with stubble. His eyes were locked on the dual monitors, fingers moving with precision over the keyboard.

“Copy that,” he murmured into the mic. “Redirect Punch-Up to the east sector. Flambae, you’re too close to civilian ground zero—repeat, back off the damn heat.”

The moment was cut by a blur at Enid’s feet. Something small and black darted between her shoes and sniffed enthusiastically at her pant leg.

She looked down—and smiled.

A corgi. Short legs, dark fur, a white chest, tail stub wagging like a metronome. His name tag gleamed Beef.

“Hey, little guy,” Enid said, kneeling. Her hand brushed over his fur—soft, warm, grounding. The small thump of his tail against her boot sent a pang straight through her chest. It had been years since she’d touched anything so unguarded.

“Beef,” Mandy said dryly. “You’re on greeting duty again, huh?”

“Robert,” she called over the office noise. “Got a minute?”

The man at the console glanced up, pulled off his headset, and swiveled in his chair. His eyes met Enid’s first—steady, assessing, kind beneath the exhaustion.

“Morning, Blazer,” he said. “And this must be our new recruit.”

“Enid Sinclair,” Mandy said, proud but cautious. “Codename Dire-Wolf. She’ll be joining the Phoenix Program effective today.”

Robert stood, offering a handshake. His grip was firm but not performative. “Robert Robertson the Third, but everyone just calls me Rob or Robert. Dispatch lead for the Z-Team. Welcome to the circus.”

Enid smiled faintly. “Heard worse job offers.”

“Good,” he said. “You’ll fit right in.”

Beef barked once in apparent approval.

Then another voice broke through the hum of computers.

“Christ, Blazer, you brought a celebrity and a criminal to work. What’s next, a daycare?”

The man approaching wore a mustard sweater over a white collared shirt, his hair silver and cropped close. His skin was dark, eyes sharp with mischief that age hadn’t managed to dull. He carried a coffee mug in one hand and the confidence of someone who’d already had two too many.

“Enid, meet Chase,” Mandy said, deadpan. “Try not to take him personally.”

“Don’t worry,” Chase said with a grin. “Nobody does. You must be the wolf girl—heard you tore up a few city blocks before breakfast once many year's ago on New Year's day.”

Enid blinked. “That’s… not exactly how it happened.”

“Eh,” he shrugged, sipping his coffee. “Rumors keep things interesting. Otherwise this place would just be paperwork and broken egos.”

“Still is,” Robert muttered.

Chase pointed at him. “See? Skinny latte prick here gets it.” Then to Enid, lowering his voice conspiratorially: “If he starts giving you motivational speeches, just fake static and walk away. Works every time.”

Enid couldn’t help it—she laughed. Chase’s grin widened, satisfied.

“Alright, enough charm,” Mandy said, gesturing down the hall. “Let’s get her cleared through HR before you two corrupt her entirely.”

“Too late,” Chase said, raising his mug. “She already smiled. That’s the first step down the slippery slope.”

And as they walked deeper into the buzzing heart of SDN, Enid couldn’t tell if she felt more out of place—or more alive—than she had in years.

They didn’t rush her. Mandy let the walk be the walk—past the mission boards pimpled with sticky notes, past the glassed-in gym where a caped woman was angrily rowing as if the ocean had insulted her, past a break room that smelled like burnt coffee and victory doughnuts. While they moved, Mandy kept murmuring the conditions like handrails:

“Remeger you're on Probationary employment. You’re on the books and on a leash, both. Twenty-four/seven digital monitoring; quarterly evals. No solo ops without a dispatcher’s green light. Any unsanctioned use of the amulet and you’re on the next bus back to Bedford Hills. Weekly counseling—non-negotiable. I’m your custodian of record, which means if you sneeze funny, Legal emails me a PDF.”

Enid listened, jaw tight, bag hugged to her ribs. The words clicked into architecture in her head: an invisible exoskeleton built out of rules. She was used to cages; this one at least had daylight.

They stopped at a door of dark wood with a small brass plaque: Dr. Isadora Capri. Mandy’s knuckles hovered for a beat—respect, or superstition—then rapped lightly.

A smooth contralto called, “Hold on,” followed by the little interior choreography of a tidy person making space. The door opened on a tall woman with copper hair coiled in soft structure, a wine-dark blouse and a long pendant that drew the eye without begging for it. Intelligent eyes; the kind that liked precision and found humor anyway.

“How are you, love?” she said, folding Mandy into a brief, practiced hug. “Morning’s behaving.”

“For once,” Mandy answered, stepping back. “Doctor Capri, meet Enid.”

The doctor’s attention shifted. She didn’t ogle Enid’s record or her scars; she took her in like a puzzle she had time for. “Ah yes, been expecting you Ms. Sinclair,” she said, offering a hand. Her grip was cool, measured. “Come in.”

The office looked stolen from a saner universe. Soft leather recliners with matching ottomans anchored the corners like civilized islands. Tall fiddle-leaf figs bracketed a wall of windows, leaves glossy against the bright city haze. Built-in shelves held rows of worn spines and neat stone bowls with smooth river pebbles. A low table carried a small armada of mugs and tissues that didn’t apologize for their purpose. The carpet ran rust-red, warm as a theatre curtain.

And the art, Enid’s breath caught. Framed reproductions in careful arrangements: a muted Birth of Venus, an Athena Parthenos study, fragments of Pompeian frescoes with their impossible reds, a Praxiteles Hermes sketch. Classical bodies rendered without apology with weight, line, balance.

“You know Botticelli?” Dr. Capri asked, catching the glance and the little reverent hitch in it.

Enid’s mouth went before she could modesty herself. “La Nascita di Venere, late 1480s. Likely for the Medici villa at Castello. Venus is proportionally off, elongated neck, impossible stance but that’s half the point. She isn’t human, she’s an idea. Zephyr and Aura blowing her ashore, Horae waiting with the robe. It’s… about arrival, I guess. And being seen before you’re clothed for the world.”

A short, pleased silence stretched. Mandy’s brows had climbed somewhere interesting.

“Accurate, almost like words from a book” Dr. Capri said, the corner of her mouth tipping. “And useful as a metaphor. Please—sit.”

Enid eased into one of the recliners. It swallowed her like a patient animal. She didn’t realize how tightly she’d been holding herself until the leather sighed.

“So,” Dr. Capri began, settling opposite with a legal pad and pen she clearly trusted. “This is an intake. Very dull, very necessary. My role: I’m your Behavioral Division therapist of record—trauma-informed, integrative approach. That means we’ll combine modalities depending on what fits: cognitive restructuring for the thoughts that lie to you, somatic grounding for a nervous system that learned to sprint, motivational interviewing so I listen more than I lecture, and, if indicated, EMDR or exposure in small, consensual doses. Sessions are fifty minutes once a week to start; we can adjust frequency with the program lead. There’s homework sometimes. Nothing graded.”

The pen hovered. “Confidentiality: I don’t share what you say except under specific limits and imminent risk to yourself or others, ongoing abuse of a minor or vulnerable adult, or a court order. SDN receives attendance and high-level treatment goals; not content. Your cousin gets compliance pings, not diary entries. You can request your records; you can refuse any intervention. You can also fire me if the fit is wrong, though my ego will sob quietly into a pillow and unfortunately you'll get an off brand of me.”

Enid felt her jaw unlock a fraction. The words were clean and adult. No sugar, no sneer.

“Questions?” the doctor asked.

“Yeah,” Enid said, surprising herself with honesty. “What if I don’t have anything noble to say. What if it’s just… gross. Angry. Petty.”

Dr. Capri nodded like someone handed a tool, not a confession. “Then we will treat gross, angry, and petty as data. Messy feelings are still map-making.”

Mandy, from the doorway, exhaled a humorless little breath. “Told you she was good.”

They ran through the dull but necessary: late-cancel policy, crisis protocol numbers, the difference between a panic attack and a heart attack, how to ground using five things you can see when the room looks like it wants to eat you. Enid answered background questions with the sanded-down facts: the fights, the first months inside, the way the showers made her skin crawl because hunger smelled the same whether it wanted food or a throat to bite. Dr. Capri didn’t flinch. She wrote quickly, efficiently, only looking at the page when it served the person in the chair.

“Begin tomorrow, evening slot,” she concluded, standing. “We’ll build from there.”

They shook hands again. The doctor’s palm was cool, and something about the temperature sent a little shiver down the ladder of Enid’s spine and like stepping into shade after crossing hot pavement.

Back in the corridor, Enid rolled her shoulders. “She’s… not terrible.”

“In this line of work,” Mandy said, lips quirking, “that’s a rave.”

They cut across a different artery of the building. The smell changed—less coffee, more steel and desiccant. They passed through a badge-locked door into a wing that felt like a museum got bored and learned to do paperwork. Glass cases lined the hall: tagged gauntlets with scorched knuckles, a shattered helm webbed with hairline cracks, a black blade under three layers of tempered proof that made the air feel thinner near it.

“Artifacts,” Mandy said, tour-voice back on but softer, respectful. “Recovered villain tech, cursed whatnots, stray divine temper tantrums. Everything cataloged, studied, triple-contained. Field offices hold the mess until HQ’s Reliquary can pick it up. In the meantime, our nerds poke it with the safest sticks we can invent.”

They stepped into a lab that buzzed gently with fluorescent lights and low music. Two techs in hoodies argued softly about spectrometry settings; another scribbled formulas on glass with a dry-erase marker while eating a protein bar like it had offended her. Posters of nebulae and safety protocols shared wall space with a crocheted sign that read PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH THE HAUNTED SWORD.

“Team,” Mandy announced, her voice bright but weighted. “This is Enid Sinclair. Play nice.”

Heads lifted from monitors and microscopes. A chorus of casual greetings rippled through the room—hey, welcome aboard, love your mom’s work. Their friendliness only half-registered; something colder had already brushed the back of Enid’s neck. It wasn’t air conditioning. It was memory, moving through her like breath she hadn’t meant to take.

Her ribs constricted—a phantom ache, the cage remembering what it had once tried to hold. The air thickened. She could hear her pulse in her ears.

Her eyes tracked past them all—to the far end of the lab, to a steel door that didn’t quite belong. It was built into the wall like a wound that never healed right, rimmed with frost where metal met stone. A small wired window reflected nothing but the fluorescents above, and the keypad blinked slow, patient, like a heart biding its time.

Something behind that door stirred.

The hum of machinery faded. Her breath hitched as her skin remembered static, the pulse of something vast and ancient that once shared her blood. It wasn’t sound she heard—it was awareness, whispering in a tongue older than thought. It was hunger dressed as recognition.

Behind that door, something old and silver listened for her name.

She flinched when Mandy touched her shoulder. “You good?”

“Yeah.” The lie came dry. Enid blinked, and the spell cracked. The room filled again with chatter and fluorescent drone.

Paperwork came next, waivers, acknowledgments, procedural memos. Enid scrawled her name in the designated boxes while a tech explained that the Artifact Analysis Division would supervise her reclamation process. No field trials without oversight, no extended contact without vitals monitoring. A few of them offered smiles that didn’t quite hide their awe.

“You know,” one of them said as he collected her forms, “your mom was my favorite. Lady Dire-Wolf saved my uncle’s convoy in ‘07. It’s good to see the mantle back where it belongs, despite everything that happened you know.”

[TIME PRESSURE]
Sarcastic - Crack a joke about how it’s overrated.
Respectful- Accept the compliment.

Time Remaining: ▓▓▓▓▓░░░

Enid hesitated, then forced a thin smile. “Yeah,” she said softly. “Feels like a second chance.”

The words tasted metallic in her mouth.

The tech nodded and keyed in a code at the far door. The keypad blinked green, then yellow, then green again as several other access sequences followed in rhythm. The lock disengaged with a hiss like a creature exhaling. Cold air spilled through the seams and curled around their ankles.

“Wait here,” one of them said. “We’ll bring it out.”

Enid caught only a glimpse through the widening gap—rows of containment cases glinting under sterilized light, artifacts slumbering under glass, some faintly pulsing with their own colors. The air in that room wasn’t just cold—it was pressurized, like the world on the other side operated by a different set of rules.

Then came the briefcase. Heavy, matte black, sealed with three layered locks. It hit the table with the dull weight of something that didn’t want to be touched. Mandy stood beside her, one hand steady on Enid’s shoulder as the final latch clicked.

The lid opened.

Inside, the Amulet rested on dark velvet—silver and moonlight, its crescent sigil faintly breathing. Frost had formed along its edges, melting now into thin rivulets that ran across the metal and steamed in the warmer air. It wasn’t glowing, but the space around it bent slightly, as if the light itself remembered where to bow.

Enid’s chest tightened.

Memory struck like shrapnel. Her mother’s scream—cut short by the sound of breaking glass. Blood on her hands, her own voice begging the Wolf to stop. The taste of cheap pills and liquor. The heat of a stranger’s skin. The roar of sirens, the cell door clanging shut.

The Amulet pulsed once.

She flinched back, but it followed her—its reflection bending toward her like a tide reclaiming its shore. The whisper returned: mine.

Her breath hitched. For a moment, she hated it. For a moment, she needed it.

Mandy’s fingers tightened on her shoulder. “You don’t have to—”

“I do,” Enid said.

She reached forward. The air thickened around her hand; the static rose like a swarm. Sparks leapt across her knuckles, blue-white arcs stinging her skin. The Amulet’s hum deepened, recognition. Her pulse synced with it before she even made contact.

And when her fingers closed around it, the room went white.

Electricity tore through her arm and into her ribs, her heart answering with a desperate, matching beat. Every sense detonated outward—sound, scent, motion collapsing into one raw, vibrating awareness. She could hear the scrape of a pen in the hall, the flutter of a moth three rooms away, the metallic taste of fear on her cousin’s breath.

Her pupils blew wide; her veins lit blue under her skin. The Wolf stirred, not as voice but as instinct—old, divine, wild. It filled her chest, her throat, her head until her vision split into sharp, crystalline layers.

For the first time in years, Enid felt everything.

The Amulet burned against her sternum like a second heartbeat. The Wolf inside exhaled low and content, and the world seemed to kneel just slightly at the sound.

The world steadied again as white light dimming to the quiet pulse of machines and the narrative lens turned elsewhere.

Robert sat behind the Dispatch Terminal, half-lit by the glow of six monitors, one coffee gone cold, and a dog snoring under the desk. His fingers moved with the muscle memory of an old soldier working a new war. “SDN Dispatch, Torrance Branch,” he said into the mic, tone steady, that soft authority he’d learned when calm meant survival. The call feed blinked red across the top screen.

Mall Looting Youths – Case Type: Red Ring
TINA / @TORRACEMALL
“We need backup! Dozens of youths just started rushing us and looting the shops!”
Requirements:
• Catch as many looters as possible
• Detain the minors but do not use force

Robert leaned back, cracked his neck, exhaled through his nose. Teen mobs, again. Not worth risking Flambae’s temper or Punch-Up’s… everything. He toggled the mic. “Visi, I’ve got a civic special for you. Mall, level two, Torrance Plaza. Keep it clean—non-lethal, minimal property damage.”

Invisigal’s voice came through bright and smug. “On my way, boss man. You just like watching me run around in tight pants.”

“Yeah,definitely the only reason you’re still employed.”

She cackled, the sound crackling with static as her signal flickered into motion. “Copy that. So—anyone excited for the new Square?”

Punch-Up’s Irish burr cut in immediately. “The new what? Square, is this geology!?”

“Geometry, you fucking rock-brain,” Prism sighed.

“Don’t start shite with me, disco ball, I’ll—”

“Language,” Robert muttered into the mic, already typing her route overlay.

“—light you up like a rave at Burning Man!” Prism shot back, ignoring him completely.

“Enough,” Robert said, a tone that dropped like an anchor. “Focus up. Invisigal’s on point, Punch-Up standby for riot control if this escalates. Flambae, where are you?”

“Im still fucking mid-air, west of the freeway!” Flambae’s accent was sharp and fast, words flaring like sparks. “I got the heart in my hands, literally, so unless you want this donor to fucking flatline, keep me outta your stupid mall soap opera! Ok, shit.”

“Copy that....Mr. Wet Pony Tail,” Robert said, smirking. “Keep it warm but not roasted.”

A deep rumble—Golem, somewhere in the background. “Flambae roasted heart once. Smelled like pork and his burnt ego.”

“Jesus,” Sonar muttered, voice thick with a nazel Californian drawl. “You people are one HR complaint away from a group therapy session.”

“We already got therapy,” Prism said. “It’s called drinking alone.”

Malevola’s laugh cut through like the scrape of a match. “At least you get to drink. Try explaining to a bartender you’re half demon. Nobody likes a girl who literally eats souls on her off days.”

Robert grinned despite himself. Dysfunctional didn’t even cover it. They were like a bad family dinner with superpowers—and somehow, it worked. Orders were followed, chaos contained.

---

By the time the sun began melting into the horizon, the Z-Team limped home. The Branch offices had that end-of-shift stillness that came after chaos—a tang of recycled coffee, burnt circuits, and half a dozen egos trying not to combust.

Flambae came in first, still steaming—literally. His jacket smoked faintly as he muttered in Pashto about “idiot chopper pilots” and “owing me their firstborn.” A faint scorch mark trailed behind him like a signature. Prism followed close, sequins dulled by soot but humming a tune under her breath—half pop, half prayer. Golem’s footsteps made the tile hum, a low tremor that carried Sonar perched on his shoulder, one wing twitching where a teen’s thrown Slurpee had crusted to the membrane. Punch-Up brought up the rear, pint-sized rage barely contained, his face smeared with frosting from what had once been a mall bakery.

“Can’t believe you got outrun by literal children,” Prism called, voice sugar-sweet and lethal.

“Children with skateboards!” Punch-Up thundered, tossing his gloves on a desk. “One of the little shites yeeted a churro at me head, Prism! A churro! And it was stale, like weapon-grade hard!”

Malevola snorted from behind her mug. “Could’ve been worse, mate. Could’ve been gluten-free.”

“Feckin’ hell, they were like feral pigeons!” he went on, gesturing wildly. “One climbed up Golem like he was a jungle gym! Another called me ‘Funko Pop Thor’ before legging it!”

Prism lost it first, her laugh cutting high and contagious. Even Sonar cracked a grin, his leathery wings rustling with amusement.

For one fragile moment, they didn’t sound like convicts in costume. They sounded like what they could’ve been—a team.

Across the bullpen, Robert sat hunched over his dispatch terminal. The cubicle lights carved tired grooves into his face. Monitors blinked like indifferent eyes. He’d been at it for ten hours straight—logging, redirecting, cleaning up civilian statements that all sounded the same: someone should fix this mess.

Beef snored under the desk, curled between power cables. The little corgi’s steady breathing was the only sound that didn’t give him a headache.

Then, with a faint shimmer of air and the smell of mint gum and irritation, Invisigal materialized on the corner of his desk. Legs crossed, hair damp with sweat, eyes sharp.

“How’s my performance lately?” she asked, voice dripping with mock confidence. “Kicked fucking ass out there, didn’t I?”

Robert didn’t look up immediately. He just saved his last report, exhaled, and finally met her gaze. “Kicked ass? You mean when you got out run in circles by a bunch of middle-schoolers?”

She groaned so dramatically it might’ve qualified as performance art. “Ugh, they scattered like roaches on a Red Bull drip, okay? Try corralling ten caffeinated delinquents when your lungs decide to unionize mid-chase!”

From the next cubicle over, Chase leaned on the divider, arms folded. “All you do is hold your damn breath and vanish,” he said, voice gravel and venom. “At least Prism throws sparkles and distracts people. Should’ve sent her instead.”

Invisigal’s head snapped toward him. “Don’t you have a shuffleboard tournament tonight, Grandpa Zoom?”

Chase’s grin was a wolf’s. “Careful, sweetheart. Keep talking and I’ll shove your inhaler so far down your throat you’ll be exhaling Albuterol for a week.”

“Oh yeah? Keep flapping that old-man mouth and I’ll staple your hip replacement to your forehead.”

“Classy.”

“Effective.”

Robert rubbed the bridge of his nose, muttering, “You two are why HR drinks.” Beef licked his wrist in sympathy.

Then—laughter. Unexpected, bright. It wasn’t one of theirs.

At the far end of the bullpen stood Blonde Blazer, rubbing her temple in disbelief. Next to her was Enid, trying—failing—to smother a snort. She’d been in HR all day, wading through paperwork and probation clauses, the Amulet already locked away for conditions. Her first day had been nothing but signatures and procedures. Still, seeing this circus almost felt… grounding.

Every head turned.

Invisigal’s eyes widened, then narrowed in delighted mischief. “Enid, right? Oh, shit—damn. You’re a cutie, aren’t you?”

“Visi,” Mandy said, voice sharp enough to split atoms.

“Oh, relax. Nobody’s eye-fucking her yet,” Invisigal said, hopping off the desk to saunter closer. “But you—” she poked Mandy’s hip, “—been hitting the all-you-can-eat hero buffet, huh? Don’t lie, you’ve been stress-snacking on Twinks and Noodles, haven't you.”

Mandy’s hand twitched, the faintest charge dancing across her knuckles.

“Joking!” Invisigal threw up her hands, laughing. “Jesus, no sense of humor anymore. What’s the point of saving the streets if you can’t make fun of your thighs?”

Enid covered her mouth, trying not to laugh again.

“Name’s Invisigal,” the woman said finally, extending a hand with the confidence of someone who’d start a bar fight for fun. “Former bitch, current legend.”

Enid took it. Her grip was firm. “Dire-Wolf. Former disaster, current work in progress.”

Invisigal grinned. “You’ll fit right in, Wolf Girl.”

Beef trotted over then, tail wagging. He sniffed Enid’s boots, then her hands, and finally pressed his head against her shin. She crouched, fingers finding the soft fur behind his ears. The corgi sighed in bliss, eyes fluttering half-closed.

“Smart dog,” Invisigal said. “Already knows who's gonna be part of this shit team.”

“Yeah,” Robert murmured, shutting down his terminal, the glow dying across his face. “He usually does.”

The bullpen hummed again in half jokes, half exhaustion, the warmth of shared misery. Enid lingered by the desk, watching them all—these broken, bickering ex-villains pretending not to like each other and somehow succeeding anyway.

Her first day had been chaos, bureaucracy, and mild humiliation. And still, standing here, with the smell of burnt coffee and ozone and a dog curled at her feet—Enid realized something she hadn’t felt in years.

Tomorrow would be worse.
But it would also be hers.

Chapter Text

The scene began cold.
Not the kind of cold that lived in the air, but the kind that crept out of the ribs, whispering up through bone and memories.

Morning light clawed weakly at the curtains of Enid’s small apartment, spilling in as fractured gold. The heater hummed its uneven lullaby. She sat cross-legged on the bed in the same hoodie she’d slept in, pen scratching across the first blank page of the new journal Mandy had bought her the night before. The ink bled slightly where her hand shook.

The mind is a bad neighborhood. I should stop walking through it unarmed.
But maybe writing counts as a weapon. A small one. Like a letter opener.

Her handwriting slanted, words bruising the paper.
Last night’s laughter with the Robert, Chase and Invisigal had faded to a distant echo; now there was only the quiet hum of nerves. She wrote until the pen stuttered out of her fingers and sighed.

“Yeah,” she muttered. “Today’s gonna be… great.”

---

As the scene shifted.

The walls peeled away.
The bed dissolved.
The room cracked open like a shell, and the floor beneath her became polished wood instead of carpet. The ceiling lifted, reshaping itself into the fluorescent glow of a conference room.

The scent hit first, cheap vanilla plug-in and recycled oxygen. Then came the stares.

Around the long table sat the Z-Team in various stages of impatience and caffeine dependence: Flambae flicking a lighter in his palm, Punch-Up perched on a chair like a child denied recess, Prism checking her reflection in a spoon, Invisigal leaning back with her boots on the table, Golem silent and still, dirt crusted at the seams of his large joints.

At the head of the table stood Robert, sleeves rolled to his forearms, headset looped around his neck; Mandy on Enid’s left, arms folded; Chase on her right, Beef nestled in the crook of his elbow like a prop from a better day.

Robert cleared his throat, tone clipped and measured. “Alright, folks. Meet Dire-Wolf.”

The title hung in the air. Not Enid. Not her. Just her mother’s legacy. Eyes shifted. A few polite nods. A few glares.

Flambae arched a brow. “She’s smaller than I expected.”

Malevola leaned forward, horns glinting under the lights, a lazy grin curling her lips. “Not fun-size like Punch-Up over there,” she said, voice honey-dark, “but definitely compact. Travel-sized perhaps....maybe golem cam carry her in his pouch like he des with little guy over here.”

Punch-Up grunted. “Oi! I’m standing right fuckin’ here, ya horned kangaroo.”

[What's The Response]
Vicious- Fire back with a jab.
Neutral- Laugh it off.
Smile and say nothing.

Time Remaining: ▓▓▓▓▓▓░░░

The habit of her mouth beat her restraint. Enid smiled, tilted her head, and said, “You know the last woman who made fun of my size ended up with a bar of soap down their jaw and now can only eat liquid foods, care to join?”

A low whistle slid around the table. Prism laughed outright. Sonar muttered, “Yikes,” into his coffee.

Malevola’s grin sharpened, eyes glowing ember-orange. “Oh, she’s got bite. I like this one.” Her gaze prowled over Enid as if measuring worth—or appetite.

Mandy chose that moment to plant both hands on the table, leaning forward until her reflection burned in its polished surface. Her voice cut through the room like a wire. “Everyone here treats Dire-Wolf with respect. She’s part of this program now. Anyone who decides otherwise…”—her eyes flicked, electric and dangerous—“…answers to me. Got it?”

Flambae straightened. Punch-Up gave a mock salute. Invisigal rolled her eyes but didn’t comment. Even Malevola’s smirk softened into something almost like deference.

Robert clapped once. “Great. Now that introductions and death threats are out of the way…” He looked around the table, mind already spinning through options. “Dire-Wolf’s probation requires a field pairing. Let’s see who’s lucky enough to babysit today.”

He scanned the files projected on the wall, muttering as he went:

“Flambae—no, he’d blow up half the city before lunch. Punch-Up’s decent, but we’d need a step stool for the team photo. Malevola…” He hesitated, tapping her name. “Dark, competent, terrifying. Checks all the boxes.”

He kept scrolling. “Golem, too gentle. Sonar, too unstable in the sense of the transformations. Invisigal, already hates workbg with others. Prism…” He looked up at her. “PR liability waiting to happen.”

[Pick A Partnership]
Sonar
Prism
Malevola

Time Remaining: ▓▓▓▓▓░░░

He exhaled. “Malevola. You’re up.”

Mandy’s head snapped toward him, brows lifting in a silent really? Chase stifled a laugh that sounded more like a cough.

Malevola leaned back in her chair, a slow predator’s smile spreading across her crimson face. The faint heat shimmer around her made the air tremble. “Finally,” she purred. “A little Sacrifice worth sweating for.”

Flambae looked relieved enough to sag in his seat. “Praise Allah, not me this time.  Can't be a freaking babysitter, to many cry babies in this world.” he just kept mumbling.

Invisigal threw up her hands. “This is bullshit! Why does the She-Devil get first pick? I wanted the newbie! I was literally nice to her, and i 'do' Do well with other's.”

Robert didn’t even look up from the tablet. “Because the She-Devil has the highest mission completion rate in the division,” he said evenly. “Also, she hasn’t set anything on fire or caused major property damages which is very surprising. Personal best.”

Malevola’s eyes flashed brighter at that. “Don’t worry,” she said, glancing at Enid with a grin that promised both trouble and thrill. “I’ll make sure she learns fast.”

For a long, quiet moment after the meeting, Enid couldn’t tell whether Malevola’s grin had been a promise or a threat. Probably both. So much for first impressions, because that bar of soap thing was like her first day in prison, years ago. Man....did she have to act tough here also?

The world seemed to tilt with the memory of it—her molten eyes, the curve of her smirk, the faint brimstone scent that clung to the air after she spoke. And then, just as Enid blinked, the conference room dissolved like steam.

Light. Heat. Sound.

The walls folded inward, then peeled apart like stage curtains, spilling her straight into Columbia Park beneath the wide, blue ache of morning. Sunlight pressed warm fingers along her skin, the asphalt still damp from a night rain. Joggers passed by with earbuds in; somewhere, a food truck hissed to life. The air smelled like cut grass and gasoline.

Enid adjusted her suit, her new suit. It clung like a second skin, sleek and responsive, every muscle mapped and defined beneath the black polymer weave. Mandy had it made to move with her, durable enough for a firefight, breathable enough to survive Los Angeles humidity. The design shimmered faintly red along the seams, and the domino mask hugged the top of her face, matte black.

But what really unsettled her was the weight around her neck. The Artemis Amulet. It pulsed faintly against her sternum, each throb in sync with her heartbeat. Not burning—no, breathing. A quiet, cold whisper in her blood. She could feel the Wolf pacing behind her ribs again, sniffing for weakness, testing the leash as it did years ago. The rhythm of it made her want to move, to run, to tear open the horizon until nothing was left.

Instead, she followed Malevola.

The demoness cut through the park like a living exclamation mark—bare shoulders gleaming bronze-red, dark hair falling down her back, a tail swaying lazily behind her like punctuation. The absurd part? She was in heels. Actual, black, stabbing-into-the-grass heels, and she walked like gravity had signed a contract not to touch her. A massive sword was strapped across her back, its sheath engraved with symbols that glowed faintly when the sun hit them.

“So,” Malevola said around a sip of her 7-Eleven drink, straw clinking against ice. “Four? Almost Five years in Bedford Hills, and now you’re here. Phoenix Program poster girl. That’s one hell of a commute.”

Enid shrugged, eyes scanning the horizon. “Guess so. It’s been… a fast couple of days with the transfer.”

“I’ll say.” Malevola swirled her drink, ice rattling like dice. “Robert kicking Coupé to the curb, Invisigal managing to not get canned, miracle right there and then poof, new girl from prison drops in. Funny how that works.”

Enid arched a brow. “How so?”

Malevola smirked but didn’t answer right away. The look she gave her was somewhere between appraisal and amusement, like she was deciding whether to finish a story or let it burn out on its own.

Then Robert’s voice sliced through both their earpieces, brisk and all-business:

“Mal, got a situation at the Rockwell Hotel—downtown, near central. Couple of drunks making a scene on the rooftop patio, causing property damage. Try not to traumatize the civilians. Dire-Wolf, shadow her and observe. Minimal engagement.”

Malevola rolled her eyes, already crushing her cup in one hand. “Copy that, Dispatch. Babysitting duty, my favorite hobby.”

She turned to Enid. “C’mon, Pup. Let’s get to it.”

Enid grimaced. “Please don’t call me that.”

“Too late, Pup. It’s stuck.”

Malevola’s heels clicked once on the concrete before she sprinted, moving faster than should’ve been possible in three-inch stilettos. The crushed cup arced perfectly into a trash bin without her looking. The sword on her back flared to life as she unsheathed it—an obsidian blade veined with crimson light, humming with power. Sparks cracked off the edge, and a rush of heat washed over Enid as Malevola slashed downward.

Reality tore open like fabric. A wound of light, bleeding crimson.

“Hurry up, portals don’t stay open long!” Malevola barked, stepping through.

“Wait—what?!”

Too late. The pull hit like a magnet, and instinct screamed before reason caught up. Enid bolted and leapt.

Wind tore past her ears, then—nothing solid beneath her.

She was falling.

The sky expanded in every direction—towering glass, concrete canyons, sunlight flashing off skyscraper windows. The sound of wind became a scream in her bones. Her hair whipped her face, lungs locked. She tried to shout, but the words went nowhere, stolen by the air.

And beside her, Malevola. Laughing.

The demoness freefell with effortless control, body aligned like a diver, her grin wide and wild. She reached out, wrapped an arm around Enid’s waist, pulling her close against the slipstream. Her skin radiated heat, her horns slicing the air like dark crescents.

“There!” she shouted over the wind, pointing with the tip of her sword toward a red brick building below—the Rockwell Hotel, gleaming like a target in morning sun. “See the one with the rooftop bar? I know the place. Great cocktails, terrible people!”

Before Enid could answer, Malevola twisted midair and swung her blade. A rip of red lightning tore open another portal—vertical this time.

“Hold your breath, Pup!”

They plunged through.

The world inverted.

Enid hit concrete shoulder-first, rolled hard, and came up in a crouch, dust and adrenaline stinging her eyes. Her claw like nails, God, they’d grown again—scraped against the ground as she found her balance.

Malevola landed in front of her like she’d rehearsed it, heels clicking, tail curling lazily behind her. She straightened, sword resting on her shoulder, completely unbothered by the dimensional gymnastics.

“Welcome to field duty,” she said with a wicked smile.

Enid panted, hair in her face, pulse in her ears, the Amulet burning faintly under her suit.

“Yeah,” she rasped. “Thrilled to be here.”

The glass doors of the Rockwell gleamed ahead of them. Somewhere inside, someone was screaming.
And the Wolf stirred, hungry for the sound.

Malevola smirked and turned toward the glittering glass doors of the Rockwell Hotel. “Then let’s clock in, Pup.”

---

The moment they stepped inside, chaos had a face—and it was red, sweaty, and crying.
The lobby was pure pandemonium: guests shouting over one another, staff trying to corral the noise into something resembling order, the clatter of luggage carts somewhere in the background. A chandelier trembled from the sheer volume of it all.

A frazzled woman in a black hotel uniform spotted them and nearly sagged in relief. “Oh thank God, SDN finally showed up!”

Malevola cracked her neck, Australian accent thick as she replied, “Alright, what’s the bloody commotion? Something about a couple of drunken idiots?”

Before the staffer could answer, an older woman in silk nightclothes pushed through the crowd, hair wild, fury snapping off her like static. “Drunken idiots? That whore—that stupid, cheap bitch—was caught with her legs open for her coworker!”

The entire lobby went quiet for half a beat. Enid blinked. Malevola raised a brow.

The woman jabbed a finger toward the elevators. “My son—Michael, the groom or now husband —went out for drinks last night with his mates. Came back early this morning, caught his wife, Brandy in thier wedding suite with that bastard she works with! Now she’s locked herself in the room with him while my boy’s out there trying to break down the damn door!”

The hotel manager, looking like she wanted to dissolve into the carpet, chimed in quickly. “We called the police, but they’re delayed, and since we’re registered SDN subscribers, we were hoping you could, um—mediate. Quietly.”

Malevola exhaled through her nose, tail flicking behind her. “Right. Domestic bliss gone nuclear. Got it. What floor?”

“Twenty-one. Room 2104.” The manager pressed a keycard into her hand.

The elevator ride up was mercifully silent, save for the faint hum of smooth jazz playing over the intercom. Enid adjusted her gloves, trying not to think about the amulet thrumming like a second pulse.

When the doors opened, the chaos was waiting for them.

Down the carpeted hallway, a half-dressed crowd of groomsmen hammered at a locked door, shouting over one another. One had lost a shoe. Another held a champagne bottle like a club. A couple of hotel security guards hovered nearby, trying to talk them down and failing miserably.

Michael, the recently married groo., presumably—was front and center. Pale, glassy-eyed, veins standing out in his neck as he pounded the door with both fists. “Open the fucking door!”

“Oh great,” Malevola muttered, tapping her comm. “Dispatch, Sénior Roberto, this is Mal. We’ve got a domestic at the Rockwell. Groom’s trying to perform amateur demolition on a door. Bride and side piece barricaded inside. Civilians volatile, definitely drunk, possibly violent. Advice?”

Robert’s voice filtered through, dry and calm as always.

"Copy that, Mal. Do not escalate. I repeat—do not escalate. Coax them out if possible. Use empathy first, intimidation second. Last thing we need is a viral clip of you decapitating someone.”

Malevola rolled her eyes. “You spoil all my fun.”

“Handle it,” Robert finished, and the line went quiet.

Malevola strode forward, towering over the crowd. The men faltered immediately, hard not to when a seven-foot crimson woman with horns and a glowing sword hilt jutting over her shoulder walks into your argument.

“Alright, fellas,” she said, voice cutting through the hallway like a warning siren. “Let’s all take a deep breath and—”

“Who the fuck are you?” one of the groomsmen snapped, slurring. “Costume party’s downstairs, sweetheart.”

Malevola’s smile thinned. “SDN response unit, genius. Now back it up before I start charging overtime.”

Michael spun toward her, tears streaked down his face, fury and heartbreak tangling in his words. “They’re in there—in my bed! He’s still in there with her!” He slammed his fist against the door again. “I’m gonna fucking kill them both!”

Malevola started forward, but a heavyset friend shoved at her shoulder, finger stabbing at her chest. “Mind your own business, freak.”

She froze, eyes narrowing. The air between them sizzled faintly.

Enid stood a few feet back, the air thick with sweat, booze, and adrenaline. The hallway was too narrow for this kind of anger—it pulsed, contagious, pressing against her skin like heat from an open oven. The men crowded the locked door, muscles taut, eyes bloodshot, voices layering into an ugly symphony of grief and rage. She could smell the liquor in their breath from where she stood.

Malevola loomed in front of them, perfectly still, her tail flicking lazily behind her like a lit fuse. The hotel lights caught on the ridges of her horns, throwing shadows up the walls. She looked ready to end the argument with a single swing if it came to that. Enid could almost feel the temperature shift, the faint ripple of demonic heat rolling off the taller woman’s skin.

Every instinct screamed that this was about to go bad. Fast.

[Do Something]
Intervene — Step in before someone does something stupid.
Stand Back — Let Malevola handle it; learn by watching.

Time Remaining: ▓▓▓▓▓░░░░

The bar flickered down in her mind, each block a heartbeat. Enid clenched her fists, jaw tight. Don’t. Stay out of it. This isn’t your mess.

Another block vanished. ▓▓▓▓░░░░░

Then one of the men—big, red-faced, veins bulging at his temple, shoved Malevola square in the chest. Hard enough that she took half a step back. The second her hand twitched toward her sword, Enid’s restraint snapped.

That did it.

She moved before she thought, slipping between them with her palms raised, voice cutting clean through the shouting. “Hey—hey! Enough!”

The hallway’s noise faltered for a moment. All eyes on her.

Enid met Michael’s glare, the married man, the betrayed one—and softened her tone. “You just got married, right? The best night of your life turned into the worst morning imaginable. I get it. Feels like someone took everything good in you and twisted it until it snapped.”

The man’s jaw flexed, nostrils flaring. The ring still glinted on his trembling hand.

“You’re not wrong to be angry,” she continued, voice steady but low, measured like she was trying not to spook a wounded animal. “But you don’t get to torch your life because someone else burned theirs first. You’ll wake up tomorrow hungover and bleeding and realize you didn’t punish them—you punished yourself.”

One of the groomsmen shifted awkwardly. Another muttered something about her having a point. The tension fractured slightly, a crack in the storm.

Michael’s chest rose and fell in sharp bursts. The raw pain in his face made him look less like a threat and more like a man gutted and still trying to walk. For a heartbeat, it worked. The noise faded, the fight drained from the room.

Then he stepped off from the door, closing the space between them until his breath hit her face like heat from an open vent—raw, sour, trembling with the kind of heartbreak that always curdles into violence. His pupils were pinpricks, his pulse visible in his throat. Enid saw the swing coming before he even knew he was about to throw it—his shoulders coiling, grief translating into muscle memory.

“Michael—” she started, palms raised, “let’s just—”

Too late.

He slammed forward, chest to chest, and the others followed like a pack scenting blood. The hotel security guards tried to wedge between them but got shoved aside, useless in their pressed suits and half-hearted professionalism. The hallway lit up with shouts and the dull thud of fists against walls.

From behind the door came the muffled, broken voice of a woman:

“Michael, please! It was just a mistake!”

Brandy.

That single word please snapped him in half. Michael spun toward the sound, the whiskey and betrayal in his bloodstream becoming pure jet fuel. He lunged for the door, shoulder ramming it again and again until the hinges screamed. Malevola moved in behind him, placing one strong, red hand on his shoulder.

“Easy, mate. You’re not thinking—”

He turned, fast, blind, feral—and instead of hitting the seven-foot horned demoness, he clocked Enid.

The impact exploded through her jaw. The world tilted sideways. Pain flared white behind her eyes, sharp and familiar—the kind she hadn’t felt since before prison. She stumbled, caught herself on the wallpaper, teeth clenching against the taste of copper. The Amulet along her suit pulsed once, a flare of cold fury begging for release.

She didn’t let it out. Not yet.

Michael’s buddies roared, charging the door like linebackers while the guards finally decided maybe their paychecks weren’t worth this level of stupidity.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Malevola muttered, cracking her knuckles.

The demoness didn’t wait for orders. The first guy to rush her got a headbutt that would’ve registered on a seismograph—skull meeting horn with a sickening crack. Blood sprayed the doorframe in a wet crescent as he dropped. Another swung at her, sloppy and desperate; Malevola caught his wrist, twisted, and there was an audible pop like someone snapping celery. He went down screaming.

Enid ducked as a champagne bottle shattered against the wall beside her head, shards raining down like glitter. Her body moved before her mind did—reflex, instinct, training buried deep under years of suppression. She pivoted, hooked her leg around the nearest attacker’s knee, and drove him to the floor with a satisfying thud.

“Stay down,” she hissed, pressing her forearm into his chest.

He didn’t listen. They never do.

The second man kicked her hard in the face, boot connecting with her cheekbone. Her head snapped sideways, blood warm in her mouth. She wiped it with the back of her glove and smiled faintly. Okay. That one, she’d feel tomorrow.

She surged up, grabbed him by the collar, and slammed him into the wall so hard the drywall cracked. He slumped, sliding down into a heap, groaning.

Across the hall, Malevola was thriving. Her movements were brutal poetry, each punch an orchestra hit, each kick a drumbeat. She drove a knee into someone’s ribs and tossed him into a coffee table that exploded into splinters. Another swung at her with a hotel lamp; she caught it, ripped the plug from the wall, and used it as a club. A dull whomp, a crunch, and he folded like wet cardboard.

Blood spattered the carpet in ugly constellations. Someone groaned for help.

“Still alive,” Malevola said casually, stepping over a fallen man. “Barely, but I’m counting it as restraint.”

Enid was already moving, wiping sweat from her brow as Michael, adrenaline-drunk and hysterical, finally broke through the door with a roar. Wood splintered, hinges gave, and he disappeared into the suite beyond.

“Michael!” she shouted, sprinting after him.

The room was chaos incarnate. Pillows torn, curtains half-ripped from their rods, the air heavy with perfume and stale liquor. Brandy was pressed against the wall, makeup smeared, dress crumpled. Beside her, a man in boxers, Luther, presumably—gripped an ironing iron like a medieval weapon.

Michael lunged, blood on his knuckles, teeth bared. Luther swung the iron wildly, missing his head by inches.

“You ruined my life!” Michael roared.

“You ruined your own!” Luther snapped back, swinging again.

Enid barely ducked the iron as it whistled past. She groaned. “Oh, for fuck’s sake. My first day and it’s a goddamn soap opera.”

She lunged, grabbing Michael by the back of his shirt just as he swung again, dragging him back with enough force to rip seams. He twisted, flailing like a man possessed. Brandy screamed. Luther tripped backward over a knocked-over chair.

Malevola appeared in the doorway, arms crossed, eyes glowing like molten gold. “Need a hand, Pup?”

“Unless you wanna officiate their divorce, yeah!” Enid snapped, ducking another swing.

Malevola sighed, cracking her neck. “Right, then. Family therapy it is.”

She stepped forward, grabbed both men by the scruff of their necks like disobedient dogs, and banged their heads together. The sound was a meaty thunk, followed by two very satisfying groans.

Brandy burst into sobs. Luther wheezed. Michael slumped, dazed, finally done fighting gravity and heartbreak.

Enid stood there, panting, jaw aching, blood trickling from her lip as the adrenaline bled out.

Her first field mission.
Her first real punch in years.
And it had ended with a domestic brawl, an ironing board duel, and a demon referee.

She rubbed her jaw and muttered under her breath, “Yup. Nailed it.”

Malevola grinned, stepping over the unconscious men. “Welcome to the team, Pup.”

Sirens sang outside the Rockwell as the aftermath settled. Police officers filed in, half-bored, half-baffled, weaving around broken furniture and muttering something about “romantic crimes being the worst kind.” Paramedics hoisted the dazed newlyweds and their respective casualties into stretchers while Malevola leaned casually against a cracked wall, twirling her sword like a baton.

Robert’s voice cracked through their comms:

“Dispatch complete. Great job not killing anyone, Mal. Dire-Wolf, welcome to the chaos.”

Enid exhaled, still rubbing her jaw. “Yeah,” she muttered, “thrilled to be alive.”

But the day wasn’t done. Not even close.

---

MONTAGE — THE LONGEST DAY

They barely had time to breathe before the next call hit.

1. CAT FROM HELL
A feral cat clung to the top of a palm tree outside a strip mall, hissing like a banshee. Malevola rolled her eyes skyward. “You’ve got claws, mate. Get yourself down.”

When that didn’t work, she sent Enid up. The cat promptly latched onto Enid’s face, scratching deep enough to draw blood. The bystanders applauded when she came down covered in fur and profanity.

Robert’s dry voice crackled in her earpiece:

“Congratulations, Dire-Wolf. First rescue of the day—scratched by a literal feline.”

2. BINGO BLOODBATH
Next came a brawl at Sunny Pines Retirement Community. Two elderly women had gone feral over a bingo card, throwing dentures and knitting needles like throwing stars.

Malevola ducked one midair and caught it. “Jesus Christ, she’s armed!”

Enid waded in carefully, separating the two, only to have one of them smack her in the shin with a cane. “Don’t touch me, you tramp!” the woman shrieked.

Enid’s eye twitched. “Lady, I'm being extremely patient with you, so quit it! Now.”

3. HIGH-SPEED CHASE
Then came the van robbery.

A white panel van roared down Torrance Boulevard, stolen goods rattling in the back. Dire-Wolf and Malevola gave chase—Enid sprinting alongside cars, the Amulet thrumming in her chest, everything sharper, faster.

“Don’t do anything stupid!” Robert’s voice barked through the comm.

“Define stupid!” Enid shouted just before the van clipped her side mirror-first, sending her tumbling into a lamppost hard enough to dent the metal. Sparks rained down as she slid to the pavement, groaning.

By the time she looked up, Malevola was already ahead—one fiery portal opening above the van, another behind it. The vehicle reappeared upside-down in a parking lot, tires spinning helplessly in the air.

“Handled,” Malevola said into her mic, brushing dust off her jacket.

Enid spat blood. “freaking Showoff.”

4. PARKING GARAGE COLLAPSE
Their last call was worse.

A structure collapse downtown, a parking garage groaning under its own weight. Dust choked the air, concrete sagged like wet bread. Malevola braced the beams with raw strength while Enid crawled through debris, dragging a crying teenager out by the arm.

The ceiling groaned overhead. Instinct screamed. The Wolf begged to break loose.

But she held the line—breathing, counting heartbeats, remembering Mandy's heroic advice: Ground yourself in sensation, not rage.

By the time they stumbled out, gray with dust, the sun was bleeding out behind the skyline.

---

The evening air was thick with exhaust and the smell of fast food. Enid slumped against a brick wall in an alley, peeling off her fingerless gloves, hands trembling from fatigue. Malevola stood a few feet away, burrito in one hand, drink in the other, horn tips still glowing faintly red.

“Not bad for your first day,” Malevola said between bites. “You only almost died twice. And you didn’t bite anyone.”

Enid groaned. “Thanks for the vote of confidence.”

Malevola smirked. “You’re definitely out of shape, Pup. Thought you had, like, cool wolf powers or some shit?”

Enid shot her a glare, blood still crusted at the corner of her lip. “It’s been a while, okay?! And I never did this stupid hero work before!” She gestured wildly. “Saving cats, stopping granny cane fights—it’s not exactly divine training!”

“Dramatic much?” Malevola mumbled around another bite.

Before Enid could bite back, Robert’s voice came through the comms again:

“Z-Team, wrap up. Torrance HQ, now. And Mal? No more gas station food on your way back.”

“Define gas station,” Malevola said, wiping her mouth.

---

The return to SDN Torrance Branch was anticlimactic. The fluorescent lights flickered faintly as the automatic doors hissed open. Most of the team was already back—Flambae was flirting shamelessly with a woman from a different department, Punch-Up was snoring in a chair, and Prism was live-streaming herself removing her makeup.

Mandy stood waiting near the entrance, arms crossed, expression hovering between relief and disapproval. “You’re one of the last ones in,” she said.

Malevola stretched, tail flicking lazily. “Had to teach the new pup the ropes.”

Enid groaned audibly. “If you call me pup one more time, I swear to God I’ll—”

“—what?” Malevola teased, leaning down with a grin sharp enough to slice marble. “Growl at me?”

Mandy pinched the bridge of her nose. “Girls, please. It’s been a long day.” Her eyes softened as she turned to Enid. “How was your first one?”

Enid let out a weak laugh, hair matted with dust and dried blood. “Oh, you know. Domestic assault, demon portals, bingo warfare. Pretty average Tuesday.”

Mandy chuckled. “Get cleaned up. You’ve got your first official session with Dr. Capri in ten minutes.”

Enid blinked. “Already?”

“Welcome to the program, Dire-Wolf,” Mandy said, patting her shoulder. “Redemption doesn’t clock out.”

As Malevola sauntered off humming, Enid lingered for a moment in the corridor, aching, exhausted, and still feeling the faint thrum of the Amulet beneath her ribs. It pulsed once, heavy, like the heartbeat of something that refused to sleep.

She sighed and pushed through the door toward Behavioral, bracing herself for Dr. Capri’s office and whatever ghosts would follow her in.

But she made a pit stop, as enid was already ten minutes late by the time she even looked at the clock. She’d been in the bathroom, sleeves rolled up, trying to scrub the day off her skin. The sink was streaked with gray dust and blood-tinged water. Her reflection looked wrecked, hair half-wet, scratches across her cheek fading to thin pink scars courtesy of her freakishly fast healing.

She leaned closer to the mirror, running a thumb along one of them. “All that for a freaking cat,” she muttered, splashing her face again. The cold stung her eyes, cleared her head a little.

The door creaked open behind her. Invisigal leaned on the frame, chewing gum, a towel slung around her neck. “You look like someone ran you through a car wash face first,” she said cheerfully.

Enid didn’t even look up. “You should see the car wash.”

A smirk. “Rough first day?”

“Define ‘rough.’ I got punched by a husband who's wife committed adultery during the wedding night, kicked by his best man, and chased a van into a lamppost. Got F-up by a cat from hell.”

“Wow,” Invisigal said, blowing a bubble. “You’re adapting great.” She winked and sauntered out, leaving Enid to wring water from her hair and sigh like the building itself had just exhaled through her lungs.

---

By the time she reached Behavioral & Psychological Services, her boots left faint wet prints on the floor. She knocked twice, half-hoping no one would answer.

The door opened. Dr. Capri stood there, poised as a photograph, dark copper red hair swept into a low bun, blouse crisp, expression somewhere between curious and mildly amused. Her eyes traveled from Enid’s damp hair to the fresh bruise on her jaw.

“You’re roughly eight minutes late,” she said, voice smooth as silk. She glanced at her silver watch, a faint gleam catching in the low light. “And on your first official day with me, no less. Why’s that? Despite your slightly... lived-in appearance and—” she sniffed lightly “—the smell of sweat and street grit, I assume you’ve been running up and down Torrance?”

Enid rubbed the back of her neck. “Sorry. It’s been a rough one.”

A slow smile curled the woman’s lips. “Relax. I’m teasing. Come in.” She stepped aside, the faint scent of sandalwood and something herbal filling the space between them. “Trust me, I’ve had bleeding heroes sit on my couch. All I do is make them clean up after.”

That earned a small laugh out of Enid, who exhaled the day out of her lungs and stepped inside.

The office was unexpectedly warm. Soft lamplight spilled over shelves of books and potted plants. On the wall, a reproduction of The Birth of Venus caught her attention once again— the goddess rising from the sea, pale and radiant, unashamed. Enid looked at it for a beat too long before taking her seat on the couch. For the first time all day, her muscles started to unclench.

Dr. Capri crossed to a small mini-fridge and opened it with a quiet click. Bottles and cans gleamed inside like trophies. She pulled one free and handed it to Enid.

“Here. You look like you could use something cold.”

Enid blinked, taking it carefully. The can was cool and light, the label marked with swirls of Hangul she couldn’t read. “Uh, what is this?”

“Sujeonggwa,” Capri said, sitting down across from her, crossing her legs elegantly. “Traditional Korean cinnamon-ginger punch. Made by simmering cinnamon sticks, ginger, dried persimmons, bit of sugar. Garnished with pine nuts. Sweet, spicy, helps digestion. However, this is a can version.” Her eyes twinkled. “I just like the flavor. Don’t tell anyone I gave you one, though—it causes riots.”

Enid popped the tab. The smell hit her instantly—warm ginger, sweet smoke, citrus undertone. It was like inhaling comfort itself. But the Amulet made everything sharper. Taste wasn’t taste, it was color. The ginger burned gold across her tongue, cinnamon rolled like embers, the sugar bloomed red and clean.

Her throat tightened unexpectedly. She hadn’t had anything sweet that didn’t taste like bleach or rust in years. She swallowed, hard, then hummed low. “Holy bean bags. That’s... actually incredible.”

Capri smiled knowingly, jotting something in her notepad. “That’s the ginger talking. Or maybe deprivation. Hard to tell.”

“Both,” Enid admitted, taking another sip. “Definitely both.”

The sound of pen on paper filled the air for a few seconds. Then Capri asked, “So. Your first official day on the field. You were supposed to observe. But judging from the bruises, I’m guessing you didn’t.”

Enid groaned and tugged at the damp collar of her uniform. Her body ached from the day’s chaos, and the faint chemical scent of SDN’s synthetic fabric clung to her skin like regret. “Does everyone know that already?”

Dr. Capri’s brow quirked, the faintest ghost of a smirk curving her lips. “It’s in the reports,” she said, tone airy but precise. “Those get updated hourly, sometimes faster if the Records Department is feeling nosy.” She tapped her pen against her notepad. “They’re remarkably efficient. There’s one analyst in particular who knows everything before I do—never misses a detail. Creepy, really. But she's a peach.”

She didn’t say the name. Didn’t need to. Enid had already seen the way files moved through the system like blood through a vein, how things she hadn’t even spoken aloud yet somehow appeared in her profile minutes later.

Enid sighed and leaned back into the couch, letting it swallow her posture. “Okay, fine. You want the full highlight reel?”

Capri nodded once, pen poised, expression inviting.

“It started with this couple—wedding, champagne, the whole fairy tale—and it went nuclear overnight.” Enid’s hands flew up, describing the explosion in air. “Drunk bride, jealous groom, groomsmen storming the hallway like a goddamn Roman legion. The mother’s screaming about ‘that whore sleeping with her co-worker,’ and the staff are just standing there like it’s dinner theatre.”

She gestured wide, words tumbling over themselves. “So Malevola and I show up thinking it’s a noise complaint. Next thing I know, the groom sucker-punches me and kicks off what I can only describe as an unlicensed WWE event. Fists. Kicks. Flying mini bottles of champagne. Some freaking Security Guards, freezing up and not foing their jobs. I wish I was kidding.”

Capri’s pen scratched lightly across the page, the corners of her mouth twitching upward.

“Oh, and then there was the cat,” Enid said, pointing a finger as if she still couldn’t believe it. “You’d think a ‘rescue’ would be straightforward. No. This thing had murder in its eyes. I go up the tree all gentle—‘here, kitty kitty’—and it launches at my face like a grenade with claws. I’ve got scars. You just can’t see them because healing.”

Capri stifled a laugh behind her hand, but her eyes gleamed. “Go on.”

Enid did. “Then the bingo riot. Two grannies, matching sweaters, mortal enemies. One accused the other of cheating—‘You hid the damn chips under your bosom, Mabel!’—and it turned into the geriatric version of Fight Club. I tried to mediate, and one of them stabbed me with a crochet hook.”

Capri blinked slowly. “...You’re not serious.”

“Oh, I wish I wasn’t,” Enid said. “Then came the van robbery. High-speed chase. I’m running alongside the traffic like an idiot, trying to be helpful, when bam!—side mirror, straight to the ribs. Next thing I know I’m part of the city infrastructure. Lamp-post one, Dire-Wolf zero.”

Capri shook her head, half-amused, half-incredulous.

“And just when I thought the universe had finished kicking me,” Enid continued, “we get the call about a collapsing parking garage. I’m still dizzy from getting sideswiped, Malevola’s cackling like it’s karaoke night in Hell, and we’re pulling people out from under cars. Dust, blood, panic, the whole nine yards. My Amulet’s screaming to let go, and all I can think is, ‘Do not Hulk out. Not today. You’ll blow your probation on your first day on the field.’”

Her voice cracked somewhere between exhaustion and laughter. “So yeah. That was my ‘observation day.’”

Dr. Capri sat in silence for a moment, then set her pen down. “That was… quite the initiation.”

Enid threw up her hands. “I think the universe has it out for me. Like some divine comedy, but I’m the punchline.”

Capri chuckled, a low, rich sound that filled the room. “Or maybe the universe is testing how badly you want to get better.”

Enid huffed, leaning back. “If that’s the case, it’s got a sick sense of humor.”

They sat in companionable quiet for a moment—the air heavy with steam from Enid’s half-finished sujeonggwa. The sweetness lingered on her tongue, ginger and sugar and something that reminded her of home.

Then Capri asked, almost gently, “And the Amulet?”

The question hung in the air like smoke.

Enid stared at the floor, thumb running circles along the can’s rim. “It’s quiet,” she said finally. “But not gone. It’s like… it’s standing on the other side of glass, watching me breathe. I can feel it in my spine when things get tense. Like a heartbeat that isn’t mine. I built a wall between us—not stone, not magic—just... me. Willpower. But it’s thin. Its been years but it feels like only yesterday we parted.”

Capri tilted her head slightly, her expression unreadable.

“It presses against it sometimes,” Enid went on. “Like it wants to remind me it’s still there. It doesn’t rage, doesn’t scream. It just waits. Like an old lover who won’t stop calling. The kind you tell yourself you’re over, but you keep checking your phone anyway.”

Capri’s pen froze mid-word. “That’s a striking metaphor,” she said quietly.

Enid gave a crooked smile. “Yeah, well. He’s needy. Always has been.”

That earned another laugh, soft, genuine. It wasn’t clinical or polite; it was warm, human. The sound vibrated somewhere deep in Enid’s chest, loosening something that had been clenched tight for years. She found herself watching Capri differently now—the faint movement of her throat when she swallowed, the shape of her smile, the calm gravity in her voice.

Something about her presence was disarming. Safe, but also dangerous in its warmth.

Capri resumed her notes, writing in long, looping strokes. “You did well today, Enid. Not perfect—but well. You faced chaos, injury, temptation, and you didn’t let the Amulet win. That counts.”

Enid blinked, caught off guard by the sincerity in her tone. “You think so?”

“I know so.”

The words hit harder than Enid expected. No one had said you did well to her in years. Not since before Bedford. Her throat tightened, and she nodded quickly, trying to play it off. “Thanks, doc. Really.”

Capri smiled, soft but firm. “Get some rest. Tomorrow we’ll start learning control, not just survival.”

Enid rose slowly, the drink still cold in her hand. For a heartbeat, she almost reached across the desk—to shake Capri’s hand, to hold onto that voice that felt like a steadying anchor but thought better of it. Her fingers twitched once, then fell back to her side.

She turned toward the door. Capri’s voice followed her like a ribbon. “And Enid?”

She looked back.

“Next time, try not to get wrecked into a lamppost,” Capri said lightly. “Or mauled by another cat from hell.”

Enid snorted, the exhaustion cracking into laughter. “No promises.”

Capri’s answering smile was small but knowing. “Didn’t think so.”

As Enid stepped into the hallway, the soft click of the door closing behind her felt louder than it should’ve. The corridor lights buzzed faintly overhead. The building smelled faintly of ozone and coffee grounds. But beneath all that, Enid could still smell the ghost of cinnamon on her hands, and the faint echo of Capri’s voice lingered in her mind like warmth after fire.

It wasn’t just therapy. It was something quieter. Something alive.

For the first time in years, someone had looked at her—not the file, not the weapon, not the failure. Her.

And as she walked down the hall toward the exit, she realized with an ache she couldn’t name—
she wanted to be seen again.

Chapter Text

The sound hit first, a heavy deep, bone-echoing thud that vibrated through the concrete like something trying to claw its way out of the earth.

I’ll be coming home just to be alone…

A portable speaker on the far mat blared the song at a volume just shy of “please don’t report me to HR.”
Three Days Grace filled the cavernous gym, a raw pulse of guitars and words that scraped the inside of Enid’s ribs like they belonged there.

’Cause I know you’re not there
And I know that you don’t care…

The SDN gym was huge, too big, honestly. One of those renovated aircraft-hangar monstrosities turned into a federal fitness center. Fluorescent lights hummed overhead, bright enough to bleach the shadows out of every corner. Rows of treadmills lined one wall, motionless and obedient. Weight racks gleamed under the lights, bars stacked like spines. Squat racks, benches, medicine balls, assault bikes, ropes coiled like sleeping snakes.

And suspended from steel beams overhead—
a dozen heavy bags swayed gently in the manufactured breeze of the AC.
One of them jolted violently every few seconds under the force of Enid’s kicks.

No matter how hard I try
You’re never satisfied…

She pivoted, drove her shin into the swinging leather, and felt the shock ripple up her leg. Sweat slicked her back under the loose crop top, and her sports bra clung like a second skin. Compression shorts hugged her hips. Her hands were wrapped—knuckles bruised, slightly swollen, taped like she was holding herself together by cloth alone.

She moved like someone who’d learned to fight in places where softness got you hurt: sharp pivots, prison-paced discipline, breath measured through her teeth.
Punch.
Kick.
Kick.
Elbow.

Every strike landed with a sound that cut straight through the song like a heartbeat with an agenda.

This is not a home, I think I’m better off alone…

A week.
A full week since that insane first day on the field.
And every dawn after had been more unhinged than the last.

She’d fought thieves, addicts, mutated raccoons, and one particularly violent toddler (Prism and Sonar swore she was a meta; Enid swore she was possessed). She’d gotten hit more times than she cared to count. Had the new bruises to prove it.

Malevola called her “Pup” every chance she got.
Then the rest of the Z-Team picked it up.
Now half the damn building said it.

Enid tolerated it because she was trying—really trying—to be on her best behavior for Mandy and Dr. Capri.
Those two were her lifelines. Her reminders not to snap and break somebody’s mandible out of reflex.

Punch-Up was fine.

Sonar was funny.

Robert was good people.

Chase made snark feel like a sport.

But the hero work?

A glorified cop job dipped in chaos.
She felt like she was patching leaks in a sinking ship using only sarcasm and duct tape.

She launched another kick—harder this time. The bag snapped up on the chain and swung wide, its return arc perfectly timed for the next blow.

By the time you come home I’m already stoned…

Her breath grew ragged.
Her calves burned.
Her hair stuck damply to her forehead and neck, a loose wild mess where it escaped her ponytail.

The Amulet wasn’t around her neck—but she swore she could feel its absence like a phantom limb.
The craving for power.
The pressure behind her teeth.
The memory of instinct flooding her veins like cold fire.

She powered through the urge and kept punching.

Then—
a different sound.
A footstep.
A shift of air.

Enid stilled her body mid-combo, breath sharp, senses still elevated from the leftover residue of the Wolf.

Someone was behind her.

She turned and blinked.

Robert.

In a fitted athletic shirt and shorts, towel slung over his shoulder, looking like someone who had absolutely not expected to see an ex-villain beating the soul out of a heavy bag before sunrise.

He paused mid-step, eyebrows raised.
“Good morning,” he said, glancing meaningfully at the clock. “Aren’t you a little early?”

She ran the back of her wrist across her forehead. Sweat sparkled on her skin. Her knuckles were red and angry, the tape around them starting to fray. Her feet were wrapped too, small flecks of dried blood where she must’ve opened a blister earlier without noticing.

“Early bird gets the worm,” she puffed, grabbing her water bottle. Hissed at the cold metal. “Or in this case… I can’t sleep.”

Robert nodded slowly—sympathetically, even.
“Rough week.”

“You have no idea,” Enid muttered, chugging half the bottle.

He watched her for a moment, assessing the redness in her jaw, the tension in her shoulders, the bruising at her ribs visible just under the crop top. “You know,” he said carefully, “despite everything that’s been thrown at you… I’m impressed.”

She sputtered mid-drink. “Really? I thought I did crap. I mean, that one incident where I was supposed to stop a bank robbery with Punch-Up and accidentally got locked in the vault—”

Robert burst into laughter.

“Oh, come on, that was not your fault. And you did knock out every robber inside before the cops arrived. With no casualties. Vault or no vault, that’s a win.”

“Tell that to Punch-Up and Malevola. They wouldn’t shut up about it the entire ride back.”

“Oh, believe me,” Robert said, pinching the bridge of his nose with a sigh. “They make everything a bit. All of them. Doesn’t mean they don’t respect you. Hell, half of them only roast the people they actually like.”

Enid stared at him.
“...So I’m being bullied as a compliment?”

“In this building? Absolutely.”

She groaned, looking at the ceiling like it had answers.

Robert chuckled and gestured toward the punching bag. “So. What now? You want to keep working the bag… or do you want to spar?” He stretched one arm across his chest, shoulder popping. “Been a while since I got to loosen up the bones.”

A Time Pressure box flickered through Enid’s head like a glitch in reality:

[CHOOSE YOUR NEXT MOVE]
Hit the bag — Stay in your lane, keep the rhythm.
Spar with Robert — Risk bruises, maybe learn something.
Call it quits — You’re exhausted, no shame in tapping out.

Time Remaining: ▓▓▓▓▓▓░░░░

Her breath steadied.
Her muscles thrummed.
Her blood buzzed with the need to do something.

And when the bar dipped low—
she made her choice.

She dropped the water bottle, tightened her wraps, rolled her shoulders, and said:

“…Sure. Let’s spar. What could go wrong?”

The song behind them blared the next lines:

'Home, home
This house is not a home…'

And the gym seemed to inhale with them—
ready for whatever came next.

---

What came next was movement—slow, inevitable—like gravity giving them a nudge toward the far end of the gym.

The sparring ring sat raised on a low platform, tucked beside the mats like an altar to bad decisions. Black and red ropes framed the square, scuffed from countless hits, sweat stains ghosting the canvas. The corner posts were thick, metal cores wrapped in padding that had seen better years; one still had dried blood where Sonar had once misjudged a roundhouse.

Enid ducked under the bottom rope, sliding into the ring like someone who’d lived in places with far less stability beneath her feet. Robert followed—easy, practiced, rolling his shoulders in the kind of warm-up that looked casual but wasn’t. He rotated his wrists, stretched his neck, popped something in his back with a relieved sigh.

“So,” he said, bouncing lightly on the balls of his feet, “open sparring? Pure boxing? Your call.”

Enid shrugged, wiping her face on her wrist wrap. “You want gloves or—?”

“Bare knuckles should be fine. I mean”—he lifted his hands, almost sheepishly—“I don’t hit that hard.”

Enid stared at him.
Then at his hands.
Then back at him.

“…Yeah, no.”

She hopped out of the ring and jogged to the main storage closet.

Behind her, the song shifted—bass kicking in like a heartbeat doubling.

'Yeah, here we go for the hundredth time
Hand grenade pins in every line…'

Bleed It Out blasted through the gym, swallowing the silence and spitting it back as adrenaline.

Enid grabbed a bin of gloves—three pairs spilled out—and returned, tossing sizes at him until one didn’t look like it belonged on a toddler. Robert caught them mid-air, giving her a half-smile that said he knew damn well she was trying to protect his knuckles more than her face.

She slipped her own gloves on, tightening the straps with her teeth. Robert finished warming up, stance settling into something grounded, balanced, sharp.
The kind of stance that said: I used to be someone.
Even without the powers, he had the posture of a man who’d worn heavy futures on his shoulders.

They met in the center—two fighters, two histories, two bruised hearts pretending this was just cardio.

The first exchange was light.
Testing range. Testing rhythm.
Testing each other.

Soft jabs. Probing hooks.
Gloves whispering across guards like the prelude to a storm.

But then—

Robert feinted left.
Dropped low.
And snapped a hook across Enid’s cheek with veteran precision.

Her head whipped sideways, teeth clicking, a grunt ripping out before she could swallow it.

“Oh,” she said, rolling her jaw, eyes flaring with something feral. “Okay. So we’re doing that.”

Robert’s grin was sharp enough to cut. “Just warming up.”

Going out of my fucking mind
Filthy mouth, no excuse…

Enid surged forward.

This time the impact wasn’t a whisper—it was a collision.

She slipped under his next jab by a hair’s width, the air of his glove skimming her crown. She countered with a tight body hook—he caught it on the point of his elbow, absorbing the blow, shoulder rotating in a defensive coil.

He pivoted—precise, disciplined.
She mirrored—fluid, instinctive.

Sweat sprayed off her jaw. His footwork scuffed in short, purposeful bursts. They moved like two pages of a manual written in different languages but read the same.

She unleashed a rapid-fire left–right–left combination, each punch thrown with snapping recoil, elbows tight, shoulders rolling like pistons.
He deflected them—parry, slip, deflect—then returned fire with a straight so clean it cracked against her guard, jarring her wrists and sending a pulse through her shoulders.

He was good.
Better than someone stripped of powers had any right to be.
Better than she’d let herself imagine.

Robert fought with logic—angles, timing, prediction.
A chess master wearing gloves.

Enid fought with instinct—sharp pivots, torque-loaded hips, quick bursts of speed. Her muscle memory remembered violence like scripture written on bone.

Yeah, someone pour it in
Make it a dirt dance floor again…

They circled.

Her spine shivered with sweat.
His breathing thickened but never lost its cadence.

He lunged—cross, hook, hook—
She weaved under the first, blocked the second, rolled away from the third by a margin so thin the glove brushed her braid.

She answered with a snapping jab to his jaw—he slipped it. A hook to his ribs—he absorbed it and clinched.

For a heartbeat their forearms locked, breath hot, shoulders trembling with exertion.

He broke the clinch with a pivoting shove.
She came back with a whipping low kick to his thigh—illegal in boxing, but she never promised she’d follow rules. He grunted, faltered—but came back with a brutal overhand that grazed her temple hard enough to flash stars at the edges of her vision.

Enid shook it off.
Snarled.
Came again.

She fainted a right—
He bit.
Dropped his guard—
And she slipped past it like smoke in a burning house.

CRACK.

Her fist buried itself in his ribs, sinking deep.
Robert folded, breath exploding from him in a strangled cough-

And she followed with an uppercut so clean it snapped his head back and sent him stumbling into the ropes.

He hung there for a moment, both hands gripping the top rope, coughing air back into his lungs.

“Jesus, Sinclair—”

“You said you didn’t hit that hard,” she panted, wiping blood from her nose with her glove.

“I lied,” he wheezed.

They went again.

Harder.
Closer.
Sharper.

Gloves hammered guards.
Bodies slammed into the ropes.
Canvas trembled beneath their footwork.

Robert slipped inside her guard, landing two tight hooks to her ribs—she hissed, countered with a short elbow (also illegal), then pivoted behind him and hooked his leg just enough to destabilize him.

He caught himself with a palm on the canvas, swung up with a wild backfist—she ducked under, came up with a rising jab that rattled him.

Their breath fogged the air between them.
Their gloves dripped sweat.
Their bruises bloomed like dark flowers under the lights.

It wasn’t pretty.
It wasn’t clean.
It was real.

Finally—finally—they broke apart, gloves dropping.

Enid’s cheek throbbed, swelling already purpling. Her nose dripped a thin line of red. Sweat slicked her spine, soaked her sports bra, dampened her hair.

Robert’s ribs screamed with every inhale. A bruise the size of her fist darkened his side. A cut split on his lip as he grinned across the ring.

They leaned on opposite ropes, heads tipped back, chests heaving.

'I bleed it out
Digging deeper just to throw it away…'

The song sputtered out.

The gym fell into silence—
except for two ragged breaths and the soft thrum of the fluorescent lights.

The day moved on.

---

The fluorescent hum of the gym dissolved into sunlight—warm, California-bright, slicing across rooftops, alleys, and the kind of palm trees that always looked like they were posing for a movie they weren’t paid to be in. The air outside smelled like hot asphalt, sun-baked exhaust, ocean salt drifting in from Torrance Beach, and hidden behind all of that, a faint electricity—her nerves, or the Amulet, or maybe both. Hours had passed since the spar, the gym, the sweat and bruises. Now Enid stood on a cracked street corner in full gear, the suit Mandy had commissioned clinging to her frame in sleek black lines of reinforced fabric and red accents, the wolf-shaped crest glinting at her collarbone. The domino mask shadowed her bruised cheek, and the Amulet—cold, deceptively quiet—pressed against her sternum inside the suit as if listening.

Her first solo assignment.
Her first time being trusted to run alone.

Her breath ghosted faintly even in the heat, nerves coiled tight in her ribs. Freedom and responsibility braided together, threading tension up her spine. And under that, buried deep like an old heartbeat trying to sync with her own, the Wolf God lay in its cold cage, watching with the patience of something that knew eternity better than she knew a boxing ring. She rolled her shoulders, trying to shake the phantom memory of Robert’s sparring grin, of the way he moved, the way he took hits and gave them like he’d been waiting for someone who could keep up. Interesting guy. Dangerous guy. Respectably stupid for eating her uppercut like that.

Her comm crackled.
Then it exploded into chaos.

In the background of Robert’s feed, Prism was shrieking about her “aura being disrespected,” Malevola was spitting Australian accent insults so crude they probably counted as biological warfare, and Punch-Up was loudly insisting it wasn’t his fault the break room microwave exploded—he “barely touched the bloody buttons,” and “what kind of microwave blows up from heating beans, Robert? What kind!?”

Robert’s voice cut through all of them with the exhausted clarity of a man reconsidering every life choice that led him here.

“For the last time—Punch-Up, you’re banned from beans. Malevola, stop threatening to teleport Prism into traffic. Prism, stop telling everyone Malevola sheds in her sleep.”

“I DO NOT SHED!” Malevola roared.

“You molt!” Prism snapped back.

Enid snorted and kept walking down the sidewalk. A welcome breeze swayed the trees, and a few morning joggers gave her a wave or a second glance. She smoothed her fingerless gloves and stepped around a parked food truck, only to nearly bump into three kids—a scrawny boy on a bike, another with a half-eaten ice cream bar, and a girl in red crocs and overalls patterned with tiny strawberries.

The first boy squinted up at her.
“Huh! Are you dressing up for a costume party or something?”

The second boy snorted.
“Nah, bro, she probably does that weird LARP stuff. You know—plastic swords, fake dying, screaming in parks—”

The girl smacked him upside the head.
“You two have the brains of a squirrel. She’s obviously a hero. A real hero. Look at the mask, idiots.”

Enid couldn’t help the small grin tugging her mouth. She crouched slightly to their eye level.
“Hey, uh—where are your parents?”

The first boy shrugged dramatically, eyes widening.
“Oh, dead. Horribly. Orphans. We wander the streets like ghosts now.”

Another smack from the girl.
“Ricky, knock it off.”

“Ow!”

“Sorry,” the girl sighed at Enid. “My brother is a real tool. Our parents are at home—we live in the big condo building over there. They let us roam as long as we’re back by three.”

Before Enid could even process the weird mix of relief and whiplash, her senses shifted. A sour curl of cigarette smoke. Cheap cologne. Sweat touched with fear hormones, someone watching from a shadow that shouldn’t have been thick enough to hide anyone. Her spine straightened. Eyes cut to the right. She stared directly at a patch of empty air.

A ripple shimmered.
Violet light cracked like glass—
And Invisigal popped back into visibility with a smug little flourish.

Her inhaler was already halfway to her mouth.
She puffed. Pocketed it. Sauntered over.

“Talking to kids now?” she drawled. “What is this? An autograph session?”

“No, I just—”

“OH MY GOD YOU JUST APPEARED OUT OF NOWHERE!” the boy on the bike yelped, nearly falling over.

“Teleportation!?” Luke the ice-cream kid gasped.

“No,” Invisigal sighed, flicking hair out of her face. “I turn invisible when I hold my breath. Super glamorous. Super deadly. Super convenient for sneaking snacks.”

“I KNEW IT!” Sarah, the girl, beamed. “She’s a hero and you’re… also a hero! Kinda! Maybe! What’s your hero name?”

Enid straightened with an awkward little half-salute.
“Dire-Wolf.”

“COOL,” Sarah breathed, inching closer like Enid was made of gravity.

Ricky squinted. “Dire-Wolf? Like you have powers of a wolf?you actually wolf out or something?”

“Only on weekends,” Enid deadpanned, and Invisigal snorted, covering it with a cough.

The kids chattered over each other, questions, awe, too much curiosity for Enid’s comfort. Sarah hovered at her elbow, eyes too observant for a thirteen-year-old. Her overalls were high quality, stitching expensive, her bike a sleek model designed for rough terrain. Not normal. Not random. The girl carried the faint confidence of someone raised behind reinforced walls.

Enid filed that away.

Then—

The boom didn’t just shake the street—it punched the world in the chest.

A pressure wave rolled through the block with the force of a giant exhaling rage: windows bowed outward, a split-second of silence trembling over the glass before it detonated into glittering shrapnel. The shockwave slapped Enid’s skin like a hot hand; her ears rang, instincts clawing up her spine. The ground quivered under her boots. A bus alarm wailed. Birds, hundreds of them, exploded upward from the sagging power lines in a frantic cyclone.

Then came the sound-late, enormous—the kind of roaring thunder that you didn’t hear so much as feel, a deep-bellied bellow that rattled in her teeth and the back of her skull. Above the skyline, a column of oily black smoke twisted skyward from a tower three blocks away, billowing in sick, pulsing waves. Embers rained like dying fireflies.

Enid’s head snapped toward the blast, her heartbeat spiking so fast it felt like it skipped through her ribs. Her senses, pushed razor-sharp by the Amulet’s lingering echo, caught everything—burnt metal in the air, the faint scream of crumpling steel, the sour tang of ruptured insulation drifting like poison through the heat.

Behind her, Invisigal hissed a curse so rough it almost cracked.

“Fuck me—what now?”

Enid turned back to the kids, managing to wedge gentleness into the iron clamp of her voice.
“Home. Now. Go. Don’t stop for anything.”

Sarah immediately grabbed the sleeves of Ricky and Luke, shoving them ahead like a tiny sergeant. “You heard her, move! Move! I am not dying on a sidewalk today because of you idiots!”

Robert’s voice detonated through comms—tight, clipped, with no space wasted on calm.
“Dire-Wolf, Invisigal—HQ is flagging an explosion at the Hanover Mutual building on Central. You’re closest to ground-zero. We have multiple alarms, structural instability, possible secondary blasts. Move now. Begin immediate evac and triage.”

His tone wasn’t just urgent—it was surgical.
Focused. Cutting.
The voice of a man holding chaos by the throat while twenty other emergencies bit at his heels.

Enid didn’t hesitate. Didn’t think. Didn’t breathe.

She launched forward, her first step cracking a spiderweb fracture through the concrete. The air dragged at her skin as she accelerated, speed rippling through her bones. The Amulet wasn’t even active on her chest, yet panic sharpened her, old instincts carving her into an arrow shot toward disaster or more how she used to run from the authorities.

Behind her, Invisigal bolted, but she couldn’t match Enid’s burst. Enid heard the girl wheeze “slow the fu—!” before Invisigal’s breath ran out and she flashed invisible mid-stride, her violet shimmer flickering out like a dying sparkler.

The city unfurled beneath her like a living wound—heat rippling off sun-baked roads, the stink of ruptured concrete bleeding into the air. Enid didn’t slow. She accelerated. One heartbeat she was sprinting; the next she was leaping, boots planting hard on the hood of a parked Prius that buckled beneath her weight with a metallic shriek. She pushed off, landed on the roof of an SUV, then ricocheted to a delivery truck, each footfall calculated in a blur of instinct the prison walls could never beat out of her. People below shouted as she vaulted over them, her shadow slicing across sidewalk and sun, a streak of motion too quick to process.

The last vehicle gave her a perfect angle. She bent low, coiling her muscles, and then lunged—catching the edge of a small two-story brick building. The wall groaned as her fingers dug in, brick and mortar cracking under her grip as she scaled it in three rapid strides. She heaved herself over the parapet and sprinted across the rooftop, breath syncing with the grind of her boots on sun-bleached tar. The wind hit her face, hot and sharp, carrying the metallic tang of airborne insulation and the choking fug of chemical smoke. Ahead, the burning tower loomed like a torch jammed into the earth—glass shattered out of multiple floors, flames licking up its side like hungry tongues while firefighters below blasted long arcs of water that evaporated before it even touched the worst of the blaze.

“What the hell am I doing?” she muttered under her breath as she ran, each stride slamming into the roof hard enough to rattle loose gravel. “This is insane. Absolutely! freaking insane.” Running toward a fire. Running into one. For what? A paycheck? A clean record? Mandy’s faith in her? Dr. Capri’s quiet approval? She didn’t know. She only knew she wasn’t slowing down.

A memory sucker-punched her mid-leap.

She was small again—bare feet curled against the living room rug, hair messy from sleep. Mandy beside her, still in pajamas, both of them crowded around the TV, faces lit by red and orange flashes. News anchors spoke over the roar of a burning warehouse, reporters nearly drowned out by sirens and screaming civilians. “A three-alarm inferno continues to threaten—”
“Authorities have lost control of the west wall—”
“Miraculously, several survivors have been pulled from—”

And then the camera caught motion: a figure braced in a collapsing doorway, smoke curling around her like a cloak. Tall. Powerful. A wolf pelt of smoke and shadow on her back. Dire-Wolf. Lady Wolf. Enid’s mother. Lauren Sinclair in her prime, carrying two unconscious people out of the blaze as if the world had weighed nothing. Mandy whispered, eyes huge, “your mom is so cool… I wanna be just like her.” Enid whispered back, smaller, softer, “Me too.”

Reality slammed back in with a rush of grit and heat.

Enid hit the edge of a commercial rooftop and launched herself into open air. Fifty feet down, glass exploded outward as another weakened window gave in to the heat. She tucked mid-fall, angled herself, and crashed through a lower intact pane in the building. The glass erupted around her in a violent halo; she rolled across carpet in a spray of glittering shards, shoulders burning with the impact.

She came up crouched, teeth bared, the office around her half-collapsed but not aflame. Yet. Desks overturned. Papers drifting like ashen snow. The air tasted of copper—someone’s blood. And beneath it all, she heard everything.

Screams.
Sobbing.
Prayers mumbled into shirt sleeves.
The sick, rhythmic groan of metal warping above her.

“Shit.”

She bolted into the hallway, found the stairwell, and sprinted upward, two steps at a time, boots clanging, heat rising through the concrete like breath from a dragon’s throat. Halfway up she found a cluster of office workers clustered on a landing, faces pale and streaked with sweat. None injured—just terrified.

“Stairwell’s clear!” she barked, ushering them with sharp gestures. “Move! Don’t freeze. Go, go, go!”

As they poured downward, Robert’s voice snapped across her comm, frayed by stress.

“Dire-Wolf, be advised, Flambae is en route, ETA ninety seconds for vertical evac. Malevola inbound through portal corridor in two. Keep floors stable until they arrive—no heroics unless necessary.”

“Too late for that,” she muttered.

She reached the next flight and kicked through a door that should’ve been locked—ripped it off the hinges entirely. Smoke punched her in the face, thick enough to sting her eyes. The heat wasn’t gentle anymore. It pulsed, waves of it rolling like breath from a kiln. Every inhale tasted like burning drywall and synthetic carpet.

“Anyone!” she yelled, voice raw. “Anyone here?! Call out!”

A woman’s scream answered from somewhere deeper inside. Enid sprinted toward it, weaving between collapsed ceiling panels. She found a man pinned under a fallen beam, blood pooling under his hairline, his arm twisted at a sickening angle. Enid dropped low, braced her feet, and lifted the beam with a growl. Bone-deep strain ripped through her shoulders; the metal groaned but rose enough for the man to scramble out, crying as he clutched his mangled arm.

“Stairwell’s that way!” she told him, shoving him gentle-but-firm toward the exit. “Move before this floor comes down!”

She found a second victim, a young intern with glass embedded in his cheek and temple, blood dripping from his chin. She yanked her sleeve down over her fingers and pulled the largest shards free, his breath ragged as he whimpered. “You’re okay,” she said. “Stay low. Follow my voice.” He stumbled after her.

A thunderous crack boomed overhead. Part of the ceiling caved inward in a shower of sparks and molten debris. Enid dove, shielding the intern with her own body as flaming insulation splattered her back and shoulders. The room filled with choking black smoke in seconds.

Then Malevola burst through a portal like a demon shot from a cannon—wings of hellfire flickering behind her silhouette. “Move, you useless sacks of flesh!” she snarled as she shoved her sword edge-first into reality, carving open shimmering rifts and hauling people through one-handed. A man screamed when she grabbed him by his collar; she hissed, “Stop whining, you’re not dying today, mate,” and flung him into a glowing doorway.

Flambae dropped in through a window he’d blasted open himself, fire licking harmlessly along his arms as he stomped across the room. “Ah, stupid fucking hell, what a fucking mess!” he yelled in his thick Afghan accent. “Every time—every time—I tell you i feel like the buildings always burn and I'm always sent too help—those fucking stupid reporters better not blame me for this shit like the last time!” But he still scooped two people under each arm and marched toward the portal Malevola held open, cussing the entire way.

Enid didn’t laugh. Not with this much blood and debris soaking into the carpet.

She pushed higher, each floor hotter than the last, each stairwell a throat funneling her straight toward the building’s blazing heart. Smoke curled against her skin like hands trying to shove her back down, but she didn’t slow; she couldn’t—not with the screams thinning out into weak, rasping gasps, the kind people make when they’re too close to dying or too tired to keep fighting.

The next landing was a furnace. Flames gnawed the walls, turning plastic into molten strings that dripped like glowing tears. Heat blistered her cheeks, sucking moisture straight from her lungs as if the air itself resented her breathing it. The Amulet, though sealed away echoed phantom heat across her sternum, an old lover dragging its claws in warning.

She stepped into a hallway that looked like it had lost the argument with Hell. A woman was pinned under half a collapsed cubicle wall, her leg crushed at an angle no bone should bend. Blood soaked the carpet under her in a widening flower. She coughed, spit clots of blackened soot, and tried to push herself up only to cry out in agony.

Enid dropped to her knees beside her. “Hey—hey, look at me. I’ve got you.”

The woman blinked through the smoke, disoriented, skin slick with sweat and ash. Enid braced her hands and shoved hard against the chunk of debris, muscles straining, the metal still hot enough to bite the skin of her palms even through her gloves. It scraped back just enough. She hooked her arms under the woman’s shoulders and dragged her upright.

The second the bone shifted, a wet crunch sounded—Enid’s stomach lurched at the jagged protrusion forcing its way through torn skin, white gleaming red. The woman screamed hoarsely, then went limp from shock.

“Jesus fuck—okay, okay, we’re moving.” Enid didn’t let herself gag.

Malevola arrived in a flash of violet fire, flames dancing harmlessly along her demon-tough skin. “Hell’s teeth, look at this mess,” she muttered, then reached down and scooped the injured woman into her arms as if she weighed nothing. “Portal coming up—brace love, i got you.”

She slashed the air; a swirling tear of crimson-purple ripped open, wind sucking outward. Malevola stepped through, vanishing with her cargo.

Flambae stumbled into view next, shirt soaked with sweat, cursing in Pashto and English at the same time. “I swear to God this bloody city—always burning, always exploding—what is wrong with you Americans!?”

Behind him, Invisigal finally appeared in a shimmer of violet light as she re-materialized, posture bent, gasping hard. Smoke and asthma were mixing into a death cocktail in her lungs. “You—fucking—took off—” she wheezed, leaning against a melted doorway for support. “Warn someone next time—super-speed demon—fuck—”

Enid turned to her sharply, hearing the tightness in her airflow. “You can’t be up here. Your lungs—get down a few floors, help evac, crowd control—anything but this.”

Invisigal’s eyes blazed. “Who the fuck put you in charge? You’re the rookie, princess. I’ve been here for months.”

“months of what?” Flambae barked, pointing at her inhaler. “Coughing your lungs out? She’s right, girlie. You’re fucking useless in smoke.”

Invisigal’s head snapped toward him. “Shut the hell up—”

But the building groaned violently above them, cutting off her rant. A sharp metallic PANG-PANG-BOOM rattled the structure. Dust fell like warm snow. Something heavy collapsed on the floor above.

Enid froze. Her ears sharpened, her senses stretching. Grunts. Struggling. A strangled yell. A body hitting a wall. Another set of footsteps—too soft. Too smooth. Not human.

Her blood ran cold.

“Flambae,” she said, voice dropping. “Invisigal. Malevola. Finish evac. Now.”

Invisigal opened her mouth to argue but then heard the strange skittering noise overhead, like claws dragging across metal. Even she paled a little. “Fine,” she muttered, coughing hard. “Whatever. If the rookie dies, it’s on her.”

Flambae grumbled but nodded. “Don’t get dead, pup.”

Enid ignored the nickname entirely. She was already moving.

She shoved through a jammed stairwell door. The heat here hit her like the open mouth of a volcano. Smoke poured through broken wall tiles; the railing melted under her grip. The stairs above were half-collapsed, chunks of concrete hanging like loose teeth. The building screamed in stressed metal and falling glass.

The Wolf in her mind surged—heat, fear, blood, the scent of violence as it wanted in. Wanted to run, to tear, to take control. Not now, she hissed inwardly. Not yet. Not ever.

She climbed anyway.

Boots scraped ash. Her fingers found cracks in scorched drywall for leverage, claws of instinct carving purchase where nothing should hold weight. Her body moved before thought could catch up—parkour instincts honed from prison years and childhood training snapping into place like old bones cracking back into alignment. She vaulted a broken section of stairs, swung over a railing stump, and vaulted up into the upper landing—

Where she was hit by a blast wave of fire so intense it stole her breath.

The entire floor was an inferno.

Ceiling tiles dripped molten plastic. Desks were skeletons of metal frames jutting from islands of flame. Rubber and chemicals burned in choking black clouds. Her suit steamed instantly, heat punching through it with blistering hunger.

But that wasn’t the worst part.

He stood near the center of the destruction—
a man once dressed in a business suit, now reduced to char and shredded cloth clinging to blistered skin. His face was half-burned, lips split and melted, eyes wild with pain and fury. Smoke rolled off him in waves. When he sucked in a breath, his throat crackled from the inside out and then he exhaled a torrent of flame from his open mouth, a jet like a blown-out flamethrower.

“What the hell…” Enid whispered.

He turned toward her, flames licking up his neck. “You—” he snarled in a voice destroyed by heat. “You fucking creep—you ruined everything —”

But he wasn’t looking directly at her.

He was looking past her.

Enid followed his gaze—and froze.

The Shade stood half-swallowed by the roiling smoke, as if the fire itself didn’t quite dare touch it. Its cloak, if it could be called that—hung in tatters, the edges dissolving into drifting black wisps that curled and recoiled like dying insects. The fabric didn’t move with the air; it breathed, as though the shadows underneath were expanding and contracting like a living lung.

Its boots were dark, mud-caked, and too heavy for something that made no sound were planted wide, predatory, like it had been waiting for hours. The mask atop its head resembled a warped Ghostface—but the familiar scream had been mutilated. The mouth had stretched upward in a jagged crescent, an unholy grin carved far too wide, as though the face beneath was splitting open from the inside. The eye sockets glowed faintly, twin coals in a snowfield, unblinking and depthless. Smoke rose off its body not like steam, but like tendrils—thin, spindly things that writhed and curled as if reaching for something unseen.

A wrongness radiated from it.
Not magic.
Not heat.
Something older.
Colder.
Like grief wearing a corpse.

And when it tilted its head, slowly, the way predators do when deciding whether something is prey or threat—something in the twist of its posture hit Enid deep in her ribs. Something familiar, uncomfortably intimate, a silhouette she knew in a different context and a different life.

Her instincts screamed.
The Wolf roared inside her skull—danger danger danger—and for once the Amulet’s ancient prisoner wasn’t wrong.

The firebreather, oblivious to the shift in the room’s temperature from blistering to frigid, spat another erupting jet of flame at the Shade. “THIS your backup, freak?! HUH?! You think that Halloween reject scares me? You’re both DEAD—DEAD!”

Enid ducked behind a half-incinerated desk just in time. The blast scorched the wood, peeling varnish like shedding skin. Heat punched over her head, lifting her hair. Her lungs seized from the sudden temperature spike, throat tightening with smoke and panic. She tasted copper and ash. Eyes watered, stung, burned.

She coughed once and then forced it down. She listened.

And heard it.

A wet, meaty SCHLNK somewhere behind her.

Then the firebreather made a sound that didn’t belong in a human register—something between a scream and a gurgle.

Enid peeked.

The Shade stood behind him now. It hadn’t walked. It hadn’t run. It had simply…appeared.

Its arm was buried halfway up to the elbow inside the man’s side, its silhouette quivering with barely-contained energy. Then it pulled free in a single, brutal yank, and the knife was long, curved, obsidian-dark—came with it, slick with molten-looking blood that steamed off the blade in thin, metallic ribbons. Droplets hit the burning floor and hissed violently, releasing a stench like scorched pennies and meat.

The man staggered, mouth involuntarily opening—belching fire in short, panicked bursts. His flames turned erratic, shooting into the ceiling, licking across broken office dividers. Every uncontrolled exhale lit something else. Every gasp fed the blaze.

He spun, desperate, and tried again to fire at the Shade but the figure wasn’t there.

It was already behind him again.
No footstep.
No breath.
No weight.

Just a flicker, a smear of smoke, and then the blade carved into his back in a series of vicious, surgical arcs.

Crack—stab—twist—pull.
Crack—stab—slice—rip.

Blood sprayed out in jagged scarlet-black fans that evaporated midair from the heat, becoming a drifting cloud of metallic steam that hung around them like a toxic halo. Chunks of flesh struck the walls and sizzled like meat dropped onto a grill.

Enid’s jaw locked so tight her teeth ached. Her pulse hammered in her neck, in her wrists, behind her eyes. She’d seen violence. She’d made violence. But this—

This wasn’t violence.
This was annihilation.
This was someone erasing a life with the indifference of wiping down a table.

The man collapsed to one knee, coughing blood and embers through the shredded remains of his lips. Flames sputtered out of the multiple holes in his torso, flickering like dying candles.

He wasn’t dead. Not yet.
But he was fading.
Fast.

The Shade stepped over him with an eerie, unnatural grace—feet barely disturbing the debris. It didn’t spare him another glance. Its attention slid toward Enid like a shadow slithering across the floor.

It tilted its head again.

Once.

Slowly.

As if acknowledging her.
As if recognizing her.
As if…considering her.

Not with curiosity.
Not with mercy.

With the cold efficiency of a creature deciding whether the thing in front of it needed to be eliminated.

Enid’s breath hitched. The Wolf slammed against her mind like a battering ram—THREAT THREAT THREAT RIP IT APART KILL NOW KILL NOW—but she shoved it back, clawing for control, jaw locked so hard a muscle jumped in her cheek.

The Shade took one deliberate step toward her—boots soundless even as nails and glass cracked underfoot.

Enid didn’t move. Not when the Shade’s hollow coal-eyes fixed on her, not when its tattered cloak breathed like a second set of lungs, not when the smoke-tendrils curling off its limbs began to slither across the cracked tile as if tasting her. Every survival instinct she had was screaming—run, fight, shift, kill—but some deeper, older part of her brain made her freeze because the way this thing tilted its head was familiar in a way she did not want to examine too closely. It stood perfectly still, a statue carved out of shadow and nightmare, and its silence was louder than the fire roaring around them.

For a heartbeat, Enid considered retreating.

And then the HUD-pulse of her comm flickered across the corner of her vision—not tech, not real, but her brain interpreting panic as something measurable.

[ACTION SELECTION ]
Have some balls- Confront the Shade
Be cautious-Try to reason
Hero shit- Save the firebreather

Time Remaining: ▓▓▓▓░░░░

Was she seriously trying to negotiate with a shadow shaped like murder? Apparently yes, because the next words tumbled out before she could stop them. “Hey—okay—uh—hi. I’m Dire-Wolf, SDN. I’m going to need you to stay right where you are and not come any closer. I don’t wanna—”

The Shade stepped closer.

Slow. Precise. Intentional.

Her throat went dry. She raised her palms. “Listen. Stop right the—”

“You can’t reason with it!” the firebreather howled, voice cracking with agony as he clutched at the ragged meat of his ribs. “Fuckin’—bitch—help me—it hurts—”

Enid’s eyes flicked toward him for half a second—

—and that was all it took.

Instinct detonated in her chest. She pivoted hard left as the Shade’s blade came down where her face had been, cleaving the air with a sickening whump that punched her hair backward. For a surreal moment, she saw her own reflection stretched along the blade’s dark edge, wide eyes, soot-streaked cheekbones, a smear of drying blood—before she sprang back, boots skidding across glass and cinders.

The Shade followed.

Silent.

Fast.

Wrong.

It slashed again, the blade singing through the heat, and Enid ducked under it, sliding across the tilted floor. She felt the air cut open above her scalp. A kick swept toward her ribs, she twisted, blocked with an elbow, pain ricocheting down her arm. Another stab—she dodged, felt shadow graze her cheek like frostbite. Every strike was a whisper away from ending her. It moved like smoke with intention, like a thought sharpened into a weapon.

She backpedaled, parrying a downward slice by sheer instinct, and drove a punch into its side. The impact rattled her knuckles, sent shockwaves up her arm, and the Shade actually staggered, boots scraping across burning carpet. She lunged, trying to follow with a kick but the figure erupted into a burst of thick, choking shadow and vanished.

Enid spun.

Nothing.

Left—nothing.

Right—nothing.

The Wolf snarled, claws raking her skull—behind.

A line of fire burst across her face as a blade carved into her cheek. Hot blood sprayed sideways in a red arc that sizzled when it hit the burning floor. Skin peeled back, wet and stinging, pain exploding in a white flash across her vision. Enid hissed, hand clamping to her cheek, feeling the hot, slick pulse of blood.

The Shade was gone again.

Somewhere.

Watching.

Waiting.

“Oh—god....fuck, I’m bleeding out,” the firebreather whimpered behind her, voice trembling and small now. “It’s—oh fuck...please—”

Enid didn’t look away from the shadows, every nerve ending screaming, every instinct wired so tight she felt like she’d snap in half.

[What To Do]
Save Him- Save the dying man
Be On High Alert- Keep guard and wait to be attacked
Be Smart And Cunning- Try to lure the Shade out

Time Remaining: ▓▓▓░░░░░

The ceiling groaned. A heavy crack ran across it like a splitting skull. Embers rained down in glowing showers.

“Goddammit,” she muttered, and dove toward the wounded man.

She skidded beside him, hands immediately pressing to his ribcage and burned herself instantly. The skin along his wound radiated heat like a forge; her fingers blistered under her fingerless gloves. “Jesus—fuck...hang on....hang on—stop moving—”

“I CAN’T—IT HURTS—” Flames belched from his mouth mid-sentence, scorching the wall beside them. Enid flinched, eyebrows singed. “Can you—NOT do that near me?” she snapped.

“I DON’T—HAVE—CONTROL—”

“Yeah, no shit.”

She forced pressure onto the wound again, trying to staunch the bleeding but the torn flesh pulsed, black tendrils writhing from the edges as if something inside was preventing the wound from closing. They recoiled from her touch like living tar. Enid jerked back, horror prickling up her spine. “What the hell did that thing do to you?”

Before he could answer, a portal ripped open beside her and Malevola stepped through—hair wild, eyes blazing hellfire. “What the bloody hell am I looking at? Is that man leaking fire?”

“He’s spewing fire—get it right—” Enid grunted.

The man panicked at the new face. “NOPE—NOPE—I’M NOT GOING IN, YALL ARE NOT TAKING ME IN—I’M NOT—” He hyperventilated, flames sputtering uncontrollably.

Malevola recoiled. “Oh, fantastic. He’s a flamethrower with legs.”

“Just grab him!” Enid barked.

“I’m TRYING—”

The man screamed, hands flying out, and a point-blank blast of fire detonated from his mouth—

Straight into Enid.

She flew backward like a rag doll, colliding into Malevola. The impact hurled them both into a cracked support pillar so hard the pillar splintered, dust exploding outward. The heat ripped through Enid’s suit protections as her exposed face blistered instantly, skin bubbling in patches, fingers charring at the tips. She hit the floor screaming, the sound raw and involuntary.

Malevola swore violently, shadows coiling around her sword as she prepared a portal—but the ceiling finally gave out with a deafening CRACK. Steel beams, flaming drywall, and molten fixtures collapsed in a catastrophic avalanche. The floor beneath them buckled and dropped.

All three fell.

Through one floor.

Then another.

Then another as the building shedding them like loose teeth as debris hammered them from every side. Enid slammed into a desk, her ribs bending painfully before healing caught up. Malevola was cursing in her accent the whole way down, slashing open a portal mid-fall.

They went through along with a tidal wave of debris—and were spat out into open air, outside.

Gravity seized them.

They plummeted.

Enid twisted, disoriented, hair whipping in her face, suit scorched and half-melted in places—when a shadow blotted out the sun above them.

A massive shape swooped down with predatory precision.

SONAR.

Not human. Not even close.
The monstrous bat form dwarfed even Golem—fur bristling dark blue, eyes red as coals, ears huge and pulsing with veins. His fangs gleamed like ivory daggers. A crimson tie ripped and flapping—remained humorously intact at his neck. His wings spread wide enough to blanket a car lot; the downbeat wind kicked up dust and debris in spirals.

He screeched a sound like metal ripping apart—and snatched Enid mid-air with his clawed talon-feet, surprisingly gentle for something so monstrous.

Below, Flambae shot upward on a column of fire, holding Invisigal (who was screaming and swearing), while Malevola rotated mid-freefall, slashed her sword downward, and opened a portal beneath her, landing on a nearby rooftop with far more grace than anyone deserved right now.

Flambae deposited Invisigal beside Malevola with a sharp thwap of boots on concrete, his palms still smoldering faintly from the rescue. “You—are—you kidding me? I told you to exit the damn building, exit, not fucking linger like a tourist taking scenic photos! You think I’m trying to speedrun ‘Save Your Ass: DLC Edition’ every damned shift?!”

Invisigal wheezed, half lying on the roof as she scrambled for her inhaler. “I DIDN’T LINGER! The FLOOR—FELL—ON ME, FLAMEBOY!” She jabbed her inhaler at him like a weapon between desperate breaths. “If I didn’t have asthma before, I DEFINITELY—have—two—now—”

Sonar landed beside them with a thunderous crack, his monstrous claws digging trenches into the rooftop tile as he set Enid down the way a hawk might set down a wounded fox. His leathery wings curled close, fur bristling, the remnants of fire reflecting in his red eyes as he snarled back at the burning tower—almost as if challenging it to fall again.

Enid staggered upright on shaking legs, half-blind from pain and smoke, tasting copper and ash at the back of her throat. Her suit was scorched in jagged patches, melted in others, and her exposed skin radiated raw, pulsing agony. Most of it was already healing, muscle knitting, blisters tightening—but the slash across her cheek refused to close. Black tendrils writhed along the torn flesh like living barbed wire, ripping the wound open again every time it tried to mend. It felt like someone dragging hot fishing hooks under her skin. “Fuck—” she hissed, palm pressed against the cheekbone as she felt the flesh pulse, tear, stitch, tear again.

Malevola stepped closer, her sword lowering as she scanned Enid with glowing eyes. “That’s not normal healing.” She reached out with a cautious hand. “Let me see—maybe I can—”

Enid jerked away, teeth clenched so tight she tasted blood. “stop—I’m fine.”

“That is not fine,” Malevola muttered. “That’s a meat flower blooming on your face.”

Invisigal groaned from the ground. “It’s her second week and she’s already growing more accessories.”

“Shut up,” Enid growled, voice deeper than she intended—the Wolf pushing at her edges, agitated and pacing inside her skull.

They all felt it, the shift in the air. The discomfort they couldn’t name. The way Enid’s shadow stretched a little too far behind her even though the sun was directly overhead.

Malevola took one step back.

Sonar’s wings twitched.

Flambae’s flames dimmed.

But before any of them could process the wrongness behind them in the collapsing tower’s silhouette—the lingering figure half-made of smoke and hate watching from the broken upper floor—

The comms in all their ears crackled violently to life.

Robert’s voice didn’t slip in and it smashed through, frantic and raw-edged.

“Z-Team, report! Dire-Wolf, Invisigal, Flambae, Malevola—what the hell happened out there? Are you all alive? I’m getting multiple feeds, conflicting reports, thermal readings spiking off the charts—someone ANSWER ME!”

Enid lifted her head toward the burning tower as a fresh plume of black smoke twisted upward. The shade of something impossible moved in the ruin. A smear of darkness that didn’t belong to the flames.

She swallowed, jaw tight, cheek still bleeding hot down her jawline.

“Yeah,” she rasped into the comm, voice sandpapered from heat and smoke. “We’re alive.”

She didn’t add for now.

She didn’t have to.

The others could feel it—the chapter’s last breath suspended in the smoke-laden air:

Something inside that building hadn’t been a victim.

Something hadn’t been human.

Something had been hunting.

And it had attacked her.

Chapter Text

Robert stood at the head of the conference room like a disappointed father at a PTA meeting, if PTA meetings involved ex-villains, scorched costumes, and a half-melted Golem dripping mud on the carpet. His arms were crossed, expression carved into something between bewildered and exhausted as the Z-Team slouched in their chairs, each looking in a different direction as if eye contact alone might incriminate them. “What happened?” he asked, voice low, steady, trying desperately to sound like a man who expected a reasonable answer. But all he got was silence. A long, guilty, fidgeting silence.

Malevola finally lifted a hand, swirling a strand of demon-red hair around her finger as if raising a question in class. “Well, building was on fire, right? We were saving people and shit, doing the hero thing, and then out of nowhere some fuckin’ guy with a flamethrower for a mouth starts lighting floors up like it’s Mardi Gras. Could’ve been Flambae’s cousin or some shit, you know how Pyrokinetic folk are”

“The fuck does THAT mean!?” Flambae shot back, flipping her off with spectacular form before turning and jabbing a finger at Invisigal, who looked aggressively bored. “Also, don’t act like I’m the problem when Ms. Cancer Lungs over here was dragging her feet in the thick smoke so I had to babysit her like some unpaid nanny.”

“Oh fuck off, flame dick!” Invisigal wheezed, rolling her eyes so hard her inhaler practically vibrated in her pocket. “First wolf bitch yelling at me, now flame dick on my case. Y’all need to be more grateful I don’t just turn invisible and leave your asses in there.”

“Well,” Sonar said with the bizarre dignity of a Harvard grad in a body that routinely shit itself in the parking lot, “you do have asthma, and charging into a burning building is not a statistically intelligent decision. Even I know that, and I ate two rats before this meeting.”

“Oh shut it, bat-for-brains. Before i call Pest Control,” Invisigal snapped.

Golem’s deep rumble of a laugh echoed through the room. Sonar puffed up in outrage and jabbed a finger at him. “Don’t you laugh—you thought 401(k) was a model of Ford truck!”

“That’s enough,” Robert cut in sharply, rubbing the bridge of his nose with the air of a man reconsidering all his life choices. Before he could try again to wrangle them into coherence, footsteps echoed down the hallway—the kind that made grown criminals sit up straight like schoolchildren bracing for a ruler crack.

The door swung open.

Blonde Blazer strode in, eyes scanning the room with quick, surgical precision—counting heads, counting damage, and visibly noting the absence of her cousin. Her jaw tightened. She didn’t comment. Instead, she marched to the conference TV, grabbed the remote, and flicked on the news feed.

The room fell silent.

The reporter’s voice was butter-smooth and starving for drama. “We return to our top story—This Morning's catastrophic fire at the Central Horizon Insurance Tower. Authorities still cannot confirm how the blaze began, but eyewitnesses claim to have seen an unidentified individual entering the building moments before the explosions. Surveillance stills provided by anonymous sources appear to show a caped figure—possibly pyrokinetic—flying in and out of the structure during the collapse.” Flambae’s face froze mid-blink on the screen, zoomed in grotesquely, making him look guilty in the way every still frame makes someone guilty.

“What? That’s not—I didn’t even—oh you motherfu—” Flambae sputtered as the footage replayed.

The reporter continued. “Firefighters managed to contain the blaze after the top floors collapsed inward. However… the tragedy deepens. Over a dozen bodies have been recovered, many severely burned or crushed beneath debris. SDN has yet to release an official statement regarding their involvement or response time, but a spokesperson is expected to address the media later today. Public frustration is mounting as questions remain unanswered.”

Blonde Blazer turned off the TV.

Her silence was louder than the report.

“What really happened,” she said—not a question, but a demand dressed as one.

Even Sonar shut up. Punch-Up and Golem exchanged a look, both instinctively straightening like kids caught tracking mud inside. The collective vibe in the room screamed: Mom is mad. Hide the evidence.

Malevola cleared her throat. “We got there as the building was already burning. Dire-Wolf and I were containing this guy—mouth like a dragon, flames straight out his lungs. He panicked, freaked out, blasted us into a damn pillar. Then the floor gave out. That’s… pretty much all I got.” She shrugged, though there was a grim honesty to it. She knew Enid had seen more, but she wouldn’t speculate. Not yet.

Blonde Blazer studied her for a long moment, then exhaled and nodded. “Good work. All of you. You saved lives—and that matters more than whatever narrative the vultures outside try to spin.” She paused, hands resting on the table as she leaned forward. “Tech is pulling what they can from the tower’s cloud servers. Stored footage, motion sensors, anything that wasn’t melted. But as of now—there’s no sign of the firebreather in the recovered bodies. None that match his wounds, none that match the visual description. If he died in there… he didn’t stay dead long enough to catalog.”

The room stiffened.

Even Flambae didn’t have a joke for that.

“As for Dire-Wolf,” she continued, softer, “she’s alive. I heard she’s stable. For now… just leave her be.” She tapped Robert on the shoulder. “Come with me. We need to talk to Medical.”

The two left the room, Blonde Blazer leading with tight, urgent strides.

The moment the door clicked shut, Sonar leaned back in his chair and chirped, “Well, Mom’s pissed. Dad’s worried. And now Mom and Dad are going to check on the Pup. What next she going to get a chew toy.”

The room erupted into cackles—except Malevola, who reached over and flicked Sonar hard on the forehead. “Don’t be an ass,” she muttered. “She actually did a real fucking great job today.”

Invisigal didn’t laugh either.

Instead, she narrowed her eyes at the closed door, quietly rose, and with a shimmer of violet light—vanished completely. Her chair squeaked as it shifted under the sudden absence.

No one noticed. Or just didn't care.

She slipped unseen through the hallway like a rumor wearing quiet sneakers, drifting after Blonde Blazer and Robert as they headed deeper into the Torrance branch. The fluorescent lights overhead hummed, then gave way to the steadier, colder LEDs of the medical wing—a compact annex tucked behind reinforced fire doors. It wasn’t a hospital, not really; more like a battlefield infirmary disguised as a corporate clinic, outfitted with everything from mundane first-aid cabinets to arcane trauma gear locked behind biometric panels. Clean floors. White walls. The faint antiseptic scent that was somehow both comforting and foreboding.

And in the center of Exam Room Three, perched on a steel table under a floodlamp, sat Enid.

She looked like hell. Worse than hell. Her cheek wound, slashed open diagonally from cheekbone to near the corner of her jaw and was trying to close but kept failing, twitching and trembling around the thick, stubborn splinters of black that coiled inside it. Four doctors hovered anxiously around her, murmuring, each shining lights, pressing gauze, snapping photos, their latex gloves slick with diluted blood and the faintly oily sheen of whatever the hell those tendrils were. The flesh around the wound pulsed faintly, like it was breathing wrong. Every time it tried to knit together, the black threads wriggled and forced it apart again, leaving torn edges and a slow seep of fresh red.

Enid sat there with her jaw clenched, eyes half-lidded, doing her best not to punch anyone. The pain wasn’t sharp anymore. It was clawing, itchy, wrong—like something was dragging barbed wire under her skin and then getting bored halfway through.

Standing beside the doctors was a woman Enid had never met until five minutes ago—Brainbook. Dark hair pulled into a sleek ponytail, navy suit pressed so sharply it could cut glass, gold earrings glinting as she moved. She held a tablet clutched in one hand and a sample vial in the other, posture perfect, eyes cool and lightning-precise. Mandy had once mentioned SDN’s “walking encyclopedia”; Enid now understood it was not a metaphor. Brainbook radiated competence so intensely it made the room feel smaller.

“It could be bacterial,” one doctor rambled anxiously. “An infection that inhibits regenerative processes—though I’ve never seen anything this aggressive.”

“No, no, the patterning is too organized,” another countered, pulling the skin gently—earning a low growl from Enid. “It might be magical. Some kind of hex? ‘Negate Healing’ class spellwork? But the residue doesn’t match any cataloged enchantments.”

“It could be parasitic,” a third offered, holding a swab. “Something extraphysical. Maybe a thaumic leech. Maybe poisoning? Corrosive thaumic venom—”

Brainbook cleared her throat and all four stopped talking like scared interns. She finally set the vial in a tray and looked at Mandy and Robert, who stepped in right as she turned.

“Well,” Brainbook said, tapping the tablet with a long, manicured finger, “the good news is that the foreign material appears to be degrading. It’s smaller now than when we started examining her—shriveling, almost. Whatever it is, it’s losing cohesion.”

“And the bad news?” Mandy asked, already bracing herself, voice softening as she approached her cousin.

Brainbook’s lips pressed into a thin line. “The tissue keeps attempting to regenerate, but the tendrils—if that’s even the right word—actively disrupt the matrix. I’ve ruled out conventional pathogens. It doesn’t match any known curse markers either. I’ve collected samples, and with your permission, Director Sinclair, I’d like to forward them to two external specialists I trust. One is a molecular thaumaturgist, the other a dimensional biologist. With luck, they can identify the substance.”

Mandy nodded, then immediately moved closer to Enid, cupping one hand behind her back as she leaned in for a tight hug. “Hey,” she murmured, “you scared the shit out of me.”

Enid huffed a weak laugh, lifting a hand only halfway. “You should see the other guy.”

Robert stepped in beside them, gaze flicking over the wound with something like reluctance. “How’re you holding up?”

Enid gave him a thumbs-up that trembled slightly. “I just want a shower. And like… seven days of sleep.”

He let out a soft chuckle, rubbing the back of his neck. “That can be arranged.”

Her voice lowered. “I told the medical team about the knife. How it… did this.” Her fingers hovered near her cheek, not touching. “But there’s more I didn’t tell them yet. You two need to hear it.”

She reached down beside the table for her backpack—singed, dusty, but intact—and pulled out her journal. She flipped to a page, handing it to Mandy first.

It was a sketch. A disturbingly accurate sketch. The Shade’s tattered cloak, the heavy boots, the Ghostface mask twisted into that impossibly wide smile. The tendrils of smoke that curled off its limbs like it was shedding pieces of itself. The eyes were cold, hollow pits with faint glowing cores—were rendered with unsettling precision.

Mandy inhaled sharply. Robert frowned, his brows knitting, leaning closer.

“That thing,” Enid said quietly, “fought the firebreather. I’m pretty sure their scuffle caused the first explosion. They were already tearing the floor apart when I got there. I tried to intervene, but… you know.” Her hand ghosted over her cheek. “It was faster.”

Mandy squeezed her shoulder. “We’ll figure this out. I promise. You’re not dealing with this alone.” She flipped the journal closed, her jaw tightening. “I’ll go deal with the press. Robert—stay with her. Tech should have the first batch of recovered footage in a few hours. Once we see what’s on it… we’ll have a place to start.”

Robert watched Mandy leave, the door clicking softly behind her, and for a long moment the room seemed to exhale. The doctors retreated to sanitize their equipment; Brainbook left to consult her peers; the last nurse closed the cabinet with a tired metallic thunk. Soon it was just Enid on the table bandaged, bruised, still smelling faintly of smoke and Robert leaning against the wall with his arms crossed over his chest, regarding her with a look that was equal parts impressed and exhausted.

“You did good today,” he said, and it wasn’t the perfunctory kind of praise people gave out of obligation. It carried weight, quiet and earnest. “Really good. I know you’re still new to all this, but from where I’m standing? You pulled everyone together. You gave orders when things got chaotic. You went in first. And you didn’t freeze. That’s not nothing.”

Enid snorted. “I’ve been running into dangerous shit since I was twelve. Cops, wannabe gangs, pissed-off clients at the diner, my uncle grounding me—danger was always my brand. Or more like trying to be a little shit was more like it.”

“Maybe,” Robert replied, pushing off the wall and stepping closer, “but that’s not the same as leadership. You didn’t run from danger this time. You ran into it with purpose. And the others followed you. That means something.” He hesitated, then added softly, “You remind me of her, you know. Your mom. Calm in chaos. Sharp. Determined. People listened to her without thinking. People are gonna listen to you too.”

Enid blinked, taken off guard. She squinted at him, then let out a crooked grin. “What, did you, like… know her? Or just have a poster of Lady Dire-Wolf taped above your bed? Jerk-off material for teen-Robert?”

Robert groaned and punched her shoulder lightly, smirking. “I admired her. Big difference.”

“Sure.” Enid muttered, but her smile lingered, small and warm stitched into her exhaustion.

Behind them, pressed flat against the wall where the medical lamp cast no light, Invisigal held herself rigid, invisible but trembling with something sharp and sour. Jealousy. Rage. Guilt. She hated that she felt all three. Hated that they were laughing. Hated that Robert—her Robert, the one she liked far more than she let on—looked at Enid like that. Hated how easy things seemed for Dire-Wolf already. And hated herself most of all for caring.

She didn’t move. Didn’t breathe. Just stared and listened and felt something ugly build in her ribs.

---

Across the city, night pressed down like a bruise.

Rot, cigarettes, mold, and something sour—like meat forgotten in a trunk—hung over the rundown motel crouched on Torrance’s outskirts. The neon sign outside had long given up the will to live; it flickered “OT L” in sickly pulses, buzzing like an insect dying on its back. The parking lot was cracked open like a dried tongue, rainwater pooled black in the dips, and weeds jutted through the asphalt like stubborn little grave markers.

Inside room 11B, the walls were yellowed, thin, and damp thin enough that the sounds of neighbors screaming, arguing, or fucking seeped through with uncomfortable clarity. The air was sticky with old smoke, stale beer, sweat, and the wet-dog musk of old carpet. And under it all was fresh blood.

The man hunched over the bathroom sink, breath rasping in sharp, uneven shudders. The mirror gave him back a nightmare. His lips were split open like dried fruit. The burns on his jaw were patchy, warped, peeling in grotesque fingerprints where the Shade had smashed him against the floor. His skin bubbled along his cheekbones and neck. One eye had swollen shut, purple and angry, the other twitching as though trying to retreat deeper into his skull.

Worse were the stab wounds: jagged punctures along his ribs, the edges blackened, the tissue puckered. Thick drops of dark blood oozed out slowly in each bead bulging, trembling and from the open wounds, thin black tendrils writhed and crawled. They clung to the flesh like parasitic vines, rooting into him deeper with every breath he took. Every inhale sent them quivering. Every exhale made them tighten like tiny barbed hooks.

He splashed cold water on his face, trying to numb the agony but the moment the droplets hit the burns, he screamed. A raw, guttural burst that cracked in the middle like torn fabric. His hand shot forward without thinking, knuckles slamming against the mirror frame—cracking the tile, fracturing the reflection.

“Fuck—fuck—fuck—” he hissed between panting breaths, saliva and blood dripping from his lips.

Then a vibration cut through the room.

His phone.

The little burner phone on the counter buzzed aggressively, rattling against cheap laminate.

He stiffened, terror crawling up his spine in cold beads. He snatched the phone and pressed it to his ear, voice breaking, “’Bout fucking time. Where the hell is my pickup? I’ve been waiting SIX HOURS. You hear me? Six! I am NOT dying in this fucking roach motel! And if that psycho—whatever the hell it was—shows up again—”

Silence. Thick and heavy.

“Hello? HELLO!?” He snapped, voice cracking.

And then—

“Hello, Marlon.”

The voice slithered into his ear like a wet blade sliding between ribs was smooth, amused, distorted, dripping with a kind of mock sympathy that made the skin on his neck crawl.

Marlon froze. His breath stopped halfway through his throat.

“H-how…” he croaked. “How did you get this number?”

A low, lazy chuckle. Like someone lounging in velvet and blood.

“Oh, sweetheart. You’ve had a long night. Don’t make me repeat myself.”
A soft sigh.
“I have my ways. For instance, did you know your handler and his colleagues enjoyed a full-course ‘slice-and-dice’ tonight? Courtesy of yours truly.”

Marlon’s stomach dropped.

“I—what—?”

“Oh, they ordered pizza,” the voice continued brightly. “Thirty minutes or less. But the delivery boy never came. Shame, honestly. Good tippers. And now their office looks delicious. I can’t even tell if that red on the walls is marinara… or spleen.”

A chuckle. Sinister. Mirthful.

Marlon staggered out of the bathroom, clutching the phone so tightly his knuckles split and bled. “Listen to me. I SWEAR—I don’t know anything about that shadow organization crap. I’m a branch senior underwriter in Risk Management, okay? I handle industrial policies, high-risk accounts—audits, premium structures, corporate claims—”

“Oh, Marlon.”
The voice purred.
“You sweet, crispy little liar.”

Marlon’s breath came in short, terrified bursts.

“You also handle premium diversion,” the voice continued, tone sugary-sweet. “Skimming payments off the top. Creating fake corporate assets to insure. Fabricating fire inspections. Filing false statements. Laundering payouts through shell subsidiaries. You are a very busy little termite.”

“I—I—look, I was told to do that by my bosses—”

“And that money,” the Shade whispered with pleasure, “funnels somewhere. To someone. Someone bigger. Someone hungrier than you.”

Marlon backed up until his legs hit the motel bed. He nearly fell. “I don’t KNOW! I really don’t! Please—I was just supposed to sign off on things, I wasn’t—”

“Wrong answer.”

“No—please—please—”

The voice sharpened like a knife being drawn.

“Who do you work for, Marlon? Your real employer. The one who doesn’t appear in the company directory. The one who leaves no digital footprint. The one who files their paperwork in blood.”

Marlon’s breath stuttered; his ribs quivered under the tendrils. “I DON’T KNOW! I don’t—”

Click.

He had hung up.

He threw the phone across the room so hard it split into three pieces.

“Fuck. Fuck. FUCK,” he sobbed, grabbing his boots. “I need to get OUT—I need to—”

Behind him, the shadows thickened.

A wet, viscous drip echoed off the wall.

“Now, that,” the voice said, no longer filtered through plastic or static, “was very rude.”

Marlon whirled around. His heart slammed so hard it hurt.

The corner of the room bled darkness, slow and thick, like tar melting down a wall. The shadows dripped into a heap on the floor and rose into a slouched, tall silhouette. Cloak tattered. Hood heavy. The Ghost like face mask snapped forward into shape, its jawline stretching unnaturally wide, the carved smile splitting higher than any human mouth should go.

The Shade tilted its head in slow, curious amusement.

“Running already? We haven’t even kissed goodnight.”

Marlon choked on a sob. “Get away from me—please....please—”

“Oh, now you want polite conversation?” the Shade cooed. “You weren’t so chatty when you were melting a building full of people.”

“That wasn’t me! I—I didn’t start that fire!”

“You breathed napalm on half a floor.”

“I panicked!” Marlon screamed, trembling violently. “I panicked, okay!? You...you—thing—YOU STARTED IT—”

The Shade tapped one finger against its blade.
“Where does the money go, Marlon…?”

“I don’t know!”
Tap.
“I don’t—”
Tap.
“I swear—”

The Shade leaned forward, voice dropping to a whisper dripping with indulgent cruelty.

“Liiiies.”

Marlon snapped. Not courage, terror. Raw, blind terror. He inhaled sharply, chest heaving and spewed a roaring blast of flame toward the Shade, a desperate flamethrower arc that lit up the entire room. The curtains ignited instantly. The bed caught. Heat rippled violently, the motel walls vibrating like they might collapse.

For a fraction of a second, the flames painted the Shade in bright orange.

And it moved.

Fast.

Unnaturally fast.

It ducked low, gliding beneath the fire like a shadow slipping under a door. One hand on the ground, leg sweeping in a blur, cloak billowing like smoke. The fire hit the back wall and crawled up it, chewing the motel room alive.

The Shade rose in front of Marlon, almost nose-to-nose.

“Cute trick,” it crooned.

The knife struck.

Not once.

A blur.

A frenzy.

The blade punched into Marlon’s ribs—between them—under them—tearing upward until the sound became wet and clogged. Blood sprayed in a violent arc against the wall, sizzling when it hit the burning curtains. His scream tore out of him, shredded and barely human.

He stumbled backward, clutching his stomach as something hot and gelatinous spilled between his fingers.

The Shade leaned into his ear.

“Now,” it whispered almost tenderly, “let’s try this again… who… do… you… work… for?”

Marlon couldn’t even speak. His mouth opened, but nothing came out except a choking, bubbling wetness.

The Shade sighed dramatically.

“Boring.”

It drove the blade in a final time—deep, precise, and devastatingly slow.

Marlon’s silent scream tore through the paper-thin wall—brief, jagged, and quickly drowned out by the neighbor’s shouted argument. Blood splattered the carpet, thick and heavy.

The Shade stepped back, letting the body drop like a sack of meat.

Drip.
Drip.
Drip.

And then—like smoke inhaled—it vanished.

The motel room burned.

No witnesses.

No survivors.

No answers.

Only the wet sound of something dripping onto old carpet long after Marlon stopped moving.

Chapter Text

The alarm didn’t simply ring, it detonated.

A serrated, metallic shriek ripped open the dark at 5:59 A.M., stabbing through the silence like a bone saw hitting steel. It vibrated through the high-rise’s minimalist architecture, rattling the glass walls and ricocheting off the polished concrete floors. The condo’s entire aesthetic obsidian tile, matte-black cabinetry, brushed steel fixtures, a cold-marble waterfall counter seemed to flinch at the sound.

Last night’s scents still lingered faintly in the air: warm skin, incense ash, and the musk of bodies that had moved with urgency long past midnight. The sheets still held the ghost of heat, rumpled and tangled like a battlefield that had only just cooled.

The woman in the bed let out a low, exhausted groan, sharp, irritated, the kind of noise made by someone dragged out of a dream they weren’t done killing. She didn’t wake gently. She woke like a blade being unsheathed.

She rolled onto her back, silk sheets slipping off her torso and down her abdomen in a slow, whispering slide. The neon glow from the tower across the street spilled through the half-open curtains, painting her body in shifting violets and indigos. The light washed across her chest and hips, revealing a physique that seemed sculpted more by lifestyle than vanity: compact waist, defined shoulders, the soft fullness of a body that carried strength under every curve.

Her breasts were heavy and plump for her frame, rising and falling with each breath, the nipples adorned with silver rings that glinted in the neon light. Her skin caught the glow like polished stone as it was cool, smooth, faintly luminous. Silver jewelry scattered across her body glinted back: the curve of a septum ring, the bite of spiderbite piercings on her lip, the gleam of metal along her eyebrow, the shadowed hint of piercings further down her torso catching the colored light as she stretched.

Her hair, thick, raven-black, chaotic from sleep now fell around her face like an oil spill, messy and beautiful in a way that didn’t ask for permission. She ran a hand through it, pushing it back with a sigh that was half annoyance, half resignation.

Across the bed, a man slept flat on his stomach, bare back rising and falling in slow, heavy breaths. Curly brown hair stuck up in uneven tufts, shoulders broad, one arm curled under the pillow as if still clinging to a dream.

She looked at him for a moment.

Not long enough for sentiment.
Just long enough to acknowledge the fact: she liked him.

In her own strange, private way, she even loved him quietly, practically, without softness.

And the sex had been good.
Objectively. Efficiently. Repeatedly.

But emotional messiness wasn’t her sport.
So her expression remained unreadable, the surface still water over something deeper.

She slid out of bed, completely nude, walking with the steady confidence of someone who lived unapologetically inside her own bones. Her thighs were solid and powerful; her hips moved with the natural sway of a fighter who had learned balance through bruises. Her body was inked with ritualistic lines, runes, and eldritch symbols that held the strange, magnetic gravity of a sculpture brought to life. Her scars were faint but honest: thin pale lines along her thighs, ribs, and back, fragments of stories no one else got to hear.

The bathroom lights came alive with a soft hum as she stepped inside.

It wasn’t a normal bathroom.
It was a temple of sharp edges and indulgent minimalism: black marble counters veined with silver, a rainfall shower framed by glass panels, and recessed lighting that made every droplet shine like mercury.

She turned the water on hot (dangerously hot) and stepped beneath the cascade. The steam swallowed her instantly, curling through her hair, sliding down her tattoos, fogging the glass. Her breath steadied. Her expression didn’t.

Soap blossomed between her hands, creamy and fragrant, sliding across her skin in thick white suds. She scrubbed her arms, her chest, her stomach with purposeful motions, cleansing herself like someone washing off a night of sins instead of sweat. The suds clung to the runes along her ribs, sliding off slowly, tracing the shapes like pale ghosts before collapsing into the drain.

She tipped her head back, letting water run over her face, down her neck, along the lines where her body curved like a slow exhale.

She didn’t daydream.
Didn’t drift.
Didn’t think about the man asleep in the bed.

Her mind clicked instantly into its usual morning cycle: trace patterns, hunt shadows, anticipate danger, erase hesitation, move forward.

She scrubbed her hair, rinsed it, and reached for a towel and pressing it against her skin, blotting, not patting, leaving streaks of condensation behind. The mirror was fogged over, showing only a vague silhouette. She wiped a single clear swipe with her palm. Her reflection stared back with black eyes rimmed faintly in violet, expression blank and borderline predatory.

She stood for a moment, watching herself breathe.
Then she stepped into the walk-in closet, a shadowed cathedral of black fabrics, steel hangers, and the faint scent of incense woven permanently into the air. The overhead light flickered on with a low hum, catching on rows of boots, hoodies, jackets, band tees, and the occasional garment that still smelled faintly of blood despite multiple washes. Clothing here wasn’t fashion. It was armor. Memory. Ritual.

She ran her hands along the rack, fingertips gliding across cotton, leather, denim, mesh. Then she began assembling herself piece by piece.

First came the underwear, black cotton panties pulled up her hips with unhurried precision, settling flush against her skin. Then a matching bra, soft fabric overlaying the curve of her chest, the straps digging lightly into her shoulders as she adjusted them until they sat just right. There was nothing coy about the gesture. Just methodical, habitual, the way a soldier straps on gear.

Then the real layers.

The oversized black tee slid over her head like liquid shadow, falling loose around her torso, brushing the tops of her thighs. The torn cropped hoodie followed, its frayed hem hugging her ribs, the sleeves stretching snug around her forearms as she zipped halfway and let the rest hang open.

The thigh-highs came next was deep wine-red, rich as spilled wine. She rolled them up her legs slowly, smoothing the fabric over powerful thighs and calves, the elastic snapping gently into place. The contrast between the stockings and her pale skin was striking, almost ceremonial.

Combat boots waited at the bottom of the closet like faithful beasts. She stepped into them, lacing the steel-buckled leather tight around her ankles. Rings that were silver, worn, heavy with history now slipped onto her fingers with quiet clicks. Ear cuffs snapped into place. A delicate chain slid around her neck, the dark cross pendant falling into the hollow of her chest like a silent oath.

Perfume was the last step: a cool, smoky cloud misting around her collarbones, clinging to her hoodie, seeping into her hair. Cedar-dark. Amber-warm. A scent that lingered like a warning someone would remember long after she walked away.

Dressed, armed in her own way, she padded back to the bedroom.

The man still slept exactly how she’d left him, one arm under the pillow, cheek pressed into it, curls mussed, his breathing deep and steady. For a moment, she just stood there. Watching him. Not tenderly, not coldly as it was just observing, her expression softening by maybe one degree.

She approached quietly and leaned down, brushing her lips to the crown of his hair. Her hand slid across his bare back, fingertips drawing a slow, gentle path along the muscles. It was brief, almost absentminded, but real.

“Bye,” she whispered, voice low, rough around the edges. “See you later.”

He stirred only faintly. She didn’t wait for more.

Keys. Wallet. Phone.
No hesitation.
Never hesitation.

The hallway outside the condo was dead silent, the air too still, too polished like a clean, sterile stage waiting for something terrible to happen on it. The elevator chimed open and she stepped inside, leaning against the mirrored wall, hood shadowing her face as her reflection stared back: unreadable, sharp-edged, faint violet glimmering inside her irises.

The parking garage was dim, lit with fluorescent tubes that flickered like dying stars. Her car squatted in its usual spot, an aging 2009 Nissan 350Z that looked like it had survived three riots and a breakup. The paint was sun-faded, the clear coat splotchy. A fist-sized dent marred the rear bumper. One rim was scraped so badly the metal looked gnawed.

Stickers coated the back and sides with rock bands, occult symbols, indie labels, a peeling “GOD HATES COWARDS” sticker barely hanging on.

She slid into the cracked leather seat, the interior smelling of gasoline, old coffee, sage, and the metallic undertone of someone who didn’t always come home clean. She popped open the glove compartment, fished out a battered pack of cigarettes, and lit one with a quick flick of the lighter. Smoke filled her lungs, warm and grounding.

She exhaled out the cracked window, watching the smoke curl into the garage shadows like a creature returning home.

The engine coughed awake with a rough, rattling, hostile sound and then settled into its usual feral growl. She smirked faintly, shifting into reverse.

The radio erupted with snarling guitar riffs and drums that throbbed like a heartbeat played too close to a wound. She didn’t turn the volume down. She didn’t need calm. She needed noise.

The 350Z peeled out of the parking space, screeching slightly on the turn. She shot up the ramp and out onto the waking streets.

Torrance lingered in that strange pre-dawn blur where fog ribboned along the asphalt and neon flickered weakly as if deciding whether to keep shining. Streetlights blinked out one by one. Delivery vans drifted through intersections like ghosts.

She weaved through early traffic with surgical ease, one hand on the wheel, the other tapping along to the music. Her expression was blank, carved from shadow. Her eyes were razor-focused and far away at the same time.

As the city was barely conscious by the time she pulled into the SDN lot, just a gray smudge of dawn pressed against Torrance’s skyline, streetlamps blinking awake and then ashamedly dying, fog swirling low enough to graze the umbrellas of the few pedestrians brave enough to walk before sunrise. Wens killed the engine of her battered 350Z, leaned back in the driver’s seat for a single breath, then stepped out into the cold with the kind of composure most people only found after a full cup of coffee and a therapy session.

She flicked the cigarette away, grinding it under her boot with a sharp twist.

Her breath fogged.
Her eyes didn’t.

Inside the SDN building, the lobby was all vaulted ceilings and glass panels pretending they were a respectable government-adjacent agency. Light hummed too bright. Floor tiles reflected too clean. The early shift workers shuffled past in rumpled uniforms and sleep-heavy steps. She moved through them like a storm in a silk veil as in the kind you sense but never see coming.

She scanned her keycard. beep.

A Blue Shirt glanced at her outfit then too her hoodie, the thigh-highs, the boots and raised an eyebrow.

She raised one back without a word.

He looked away first.

That's right.

She rounded toward the elevators just as the doors slid open with a metallic sigh and Waterboy emerged pushing a janitor cart bursting with supplies. He had a mop balanced precariously, a bucket half-filled with grayish water, spray bottles lined up like rainbow soldiers, a tangle of rags, industrial disinfectant, and his badge clipped crookedly to his hoodie.

He didn’t see her.

Which made it perfect.

She sidestepped into the elevator with him and jabbed a finger into his ribs.

“AAA—!” Waterboy shot three inches off the ground, one hand flying to clutch his heart. “Oh my god—Wens!” He sagged dramatically. “You can’t just materialize like that!”

She smirked, leaning against the elevator wall. “Please. That was barely a scare. I didn’t even hiss at you.” She eyed him up and down. “But you do look particularly skittish this morning. In other words, good morning.”

He flushed. “Morning, Wens.”

She pushed off the wall and eyed his cart. “You doing spring cleaning on the whole building or something? That’s a lot of supplies.”

Waterboy perked a bit, proud. “Nah, uh—this is my Tuesday cart. Floors, windows, bathrooms, break rooms, trash pickup, emergency spills. You know. Regular chaos.”

She nodded. “You carry this building harder than most heroes, sweetheart.”

He blinked. “Huh?”

She shrugged. “I mean it. Don’t get bashful.”
(Oh, he was absolutely getting bashful.)

He adjusted the mop handle and then snapped his fingers. “OH! Did you see the news? That burning tower? Five alarms! And the Z-Team was involved again. I heard Flambae almost broke a skylight trying to land!”

She snorted, stepping out with him as the elevator dinged the second floor. “Of course I heard. I file every incident report that comes through this place. Including the ones Blazer writes at two a.m. while sleep-deprived and delusional.”

He winced sympathetically. “Brutal.”

“Brutal,” she echoed.

They turned into the break room, the only room in the building that looked like civilians used it instead of action figures. Waterboy parked his cart against the counter. Wens set her mug down with ceremonial reverence.

She popped open the lid of the coffee machine, poured in grounds, and tapped the container lightly with her knuckles. “Wake up, bitch,” she muttered at the machine.

Waterboy bit his lip to keep from laughing.

As the machine sputtered to life, they settled into the kind of easy conversation that only happened before the rest of the office arrived.

“Feels colder today,” he said, rubbing his hands.

“That’s because the universe hates us,” she replied dryly. “Also because I left my bedroom window cracked again.” She rolled her shoulders. “I swear, if Tyler gets sick again, I’m gonna kick him out of my bed. Man turns into a dying Victorian orphan the second he gets a sniffle.”

Waterboy snorted. “You say that like you’re not the one who nurses him back to health.”

She glared at him. “Don’t expose me like that, we have a unique relationship.”

He grinned, fiddling with a bottle of Windex.

She tilted her head. “Hey, what band was that recommendation you gave me last week? The one with the angry drummer and the vocalist who sounds like he gargles nails?”

“Oh! Uh, the Lung Ripper! Their new EP drops Friday.”

She snapped her fingers. “That’s the one. Send it to me. I need something to flood out the screaming in my brain.”

He nodded vigorously. “Yes, definitely. Also, did you watch the new paranormal show on Prime? The one about haunted oil rigs?”

She raised an eyebrow. “If the ghost doesn’t at least decapitate someone by episode two, I’m not interested.”

He choked on a laugh. “You’re such a menace.”

“I try,” she said, pouring herself the first cup of coffee with divine precision. “And succeed.”

Coffee in hand, she clinked her mug lightly against Waterboy’s thermos. “Survive your shift, chico.”

“You too!” he said brightly.

She raised an eyebrow. “I always survive.”

Then she left.

Her boots thudded softly on the industrial carpet as she crossed the bullpen. Chase jogged past at 7% the speed he could run, waving as he balanced three coffees without spilling a drop. She nodded back. Prism floated by in a glittery fog of perfume and illusions, humming. She didn’t spare Wens a glance which was how Wens preferred it.

Robert sat slumped at his desk, headset around his neck, half-finished paperwork in front of him. She lifted two fingers in greeting.

He lifted two back with a weary smile.

She slipped into the quieter hall that housed the Records Division.

“Morning, sweetheart,” called Doris, the oldest clerk, sharp as broken glass but warm as soup. Her nails were cherry red and vicious.

“Morning, Dora,” Wens replied, leaning briefly into the doorway. “Your hair looks fire today. Who we seducing?”

“My husband,” Doris said proudly.

“I support the cause.”

The other clerks chuckled as Wens ducked into her own office, medium-sized, dim, soft-glow LED strips along the wall, a comfortable, lived-in chaos only she understood.

Her posters glared down from the walls with metal bands with illegible fonts, leather-clad guitarists, eldritch artwork, a movie poster for a cult indie horror flick. A Funko of a shadow creature stood guard beside her monitor. A fake skull held her pens. A neon sign shaped like a bat glowed purple. Half of these violated HR’s “professional décor policy.” All of it remained.

She set her mug down, opened the mini-fridge, and nearly blessed the contents when she found her blueberry muffin untouched.

She plopped into her chair and booted up her system.

Multiple programs loaded:

IncidentArchive.exe
DispatchLogSync
HeroRoutineForms
RecordKeeper: Level 5 Access

She sipped her coffee, unwrapped her muffin like it was a baby bird she needed to protect, and began typing ridiculously fast, precise, fluid. She scanned reports from the overnight dispatchers, flagged inconsistencies, logged timestamps, cross-referenced hero movements, updated case files, and uploaded scanned statements from witnesses in smoldering apartment buildings.

Her fingers kept pace with the rhythmic alternative rock playing low from her speaker. The bassline thrummed like a second heartbeat. The hallway chatter buzzed faintly. Her office door stayed open just far enough to let life seep in without interrupting her.

She was deep into a fire incident log when she muttered:

“God, I love this job.”

She really did.
Even if the world didn’t know her yet.
Even if no one would believe what she was capable of.

Work was her rhythm.
Her grounding.
Her cover.

And somewhere across Torrance…
across a city still waking up…
something else was beginning its day too.

But she had no reason (At all) to worry.

Work had settled into its steady rhythm, the hum of monitors, the soft clacking of keyboards, the distant echo of Sonar shrieking about someone stealing his “organic cricket snacks,” and the occasional pop of the vending machine giving up the ghost again. Hours bled together the way they always did when Wens slipped into her quiet storm of productivity. She inhaled files, exhaled reports, and let caffeine and spite carry her through.

Sometime near noon, Doris popped her head in, pearl earrings swinging. “Sweetheart,” she said with a shiver, “did you see the news blast? Police found a body at that ratty Sunvale Motel. Some poor bastard named Marlon Tuscany — claims he was the senior underwriter for that tower that burned down. And get this, they found a ‘suicide note’ written in pen and blood.” Doris hugged herself dramatically. “Pen and blood. Just repulsive.”

Wens raised a brow. “Corporate America does things to people.”

“I suppose it does.” Doris sighed. “Anyway, Blonde Blazer might be coming by later asking for updated records on that fire. And I’m heading to lunch, love. Want me to grab you anything?”

Wens shook her head. “Nah, I’ve got a frozen burrito calling my name.”

“You and those damn burritos,” Doris muttered affectionately as she left.

Wens finished off her incident log with a few sharp keystrokes, saved her progress, cracked her stiff neck, and stood. She grabbed the frozen burrito from her mini-fridge, a cold Monster from the back corner, the one she hid behind the apples so no one would come in and steal it and headed down the hall.

The SDN break room buzzed faintly with old fluorescent lights. A microwave sat on the counter like a veteran of too many battles. Wens slid her burrito inside, set the timer, and leaned back against the counter. As the microwave hummed, she pulled out her phone and texted:

WENS: u awake
TYLER: barely
WENS: what are u doing
TYLER: i’m gathering the strength to go pee
WENS: incredible. my king.
TYLER: don’t hype me up like this babe i’ll get arrogant
WENS: u already are arrogant
TYLER: true. ily

She smirked, shaking her head. He was a lazy bastard but hers.

The microwave beeped.
She retrieved her steaming burrito, slid into one of the round tables, cracked open her Monster, and took a slow sip. Then she pulled up a YouTube video titled “Top 10 Paranormal Encounters the Government Won’t Explain” the thumbnail featured a blurry demon shape circled in red.

Perfect lunch content.

She was halfway through a bite when someone else entered with a rustle of plastic bags.

She ignored it at first (scrolling, sipping, chewing) until an unfamiliar scent drifted past: Doritos, ramen seasoning, sour cream, processed cheese.

Her face scrunched.

She looked up.

A dark haired woman stood at the counter was compact, athletic, a worn hoodie hanging off her shoulders. Her hair was darker now, streaked with shadows, and her eyes — gray-blue, too murky and yet overly bright, scanned the counter like she was building something. She dumped items onto the surface: ramen bricks, crushed chips, pork rinds, a squeeze bottle of sriracha, a fistful of shredded cheese.

Wens paused her video.

The girl tore open the ramen, dumped the dry noodles into a bag with Doritos and pork rinds, crushed it all with practiced fists, added super hot boiling water, cheese, sour cream, and then like it was a religious ceremony and sealed the bag and kneaded it with knowing hands.

Wens stared.

Enid, oblivious kept working the mush, face concentrated like she was painting a portrait instead of prepping a culinary crime scene.

Finally, Wens stood, half-eaten burrito in hand, and approached.

Stealthy. Curious. Intrigued.

She stopped just beside Enid and leaned slightly to peer down at the steaming orange… thing.

“…What the hell is that?”

Enid jumped so hard the sriracha nearly flew out of her grip. She spun, wide-eyed, shoulders tense, fingers curling protectively around her bag of food like someone about to be mugged. The amulet at her chest gave a faint hum, a warning but she forced it down.

“Huh?” she blurted.

“Huh?” Wens echoed, raising a brow. “Is that what it’s called? ‘Huh?’ Because it looks like a regurgitated version of—” she held up her own burrito, “—this.”

Enid blinked down at her creation, cheeks pinking. “It’s… uh… a burrito. Well. Prison style. Kind of.”

Wens’ eyes widened a fraction. “Prison/Jail style,” she repeated slowly. “Sweetheart, that’s not prison style. That’s witchcraft. You summoned that.”

“It’s just food,” Enid said weakly, cheeks burning hotter. “I used to make them… a lot.”

Wens nodded slowly. “And you’re alive? Like, medically?”

Enid scowled. “Yes, I’m alive.”

Wens grinned, small, sharp, teasing. “Just checking. I’ve seen corpses that look healthier than that.”

Enid flinched, then huffed. “It tastes good, okay? I promise.”

“Mmm,” Wens hummed, studying her. “let me guess, new fact i haven't seen or maybe had a glimpse...You’re Dire-Wolf, right? I recognized the amulet. And the reports. I mean, I filed your team’s incident logs this morning. You were in that fire?”

Enid stiffened. “…Yeah. That was me.”

Wens extended a hand. “I’m Wens. Records clerk. I make sure all your disasters get legally documented so this place doesn’t implode.”

Enid stared at her hand for half a second before shaking it — warm palm, calloused fingers.
Wens held the shake a beat longer than necessary.

Then:

“…Can I try some?” Wens asked, completely sincere. “Trade you half my burrito for a scoop of whatever demonic ritual you’re cooking.”

Enid froze, eyes huge. “You… want to try this?”

Wens nodded. “Hell yeah. I’m curious. And maybe suicidal, but mostly curious.”

Enid swallowed. Hard.

Something warm flickered in Enid’s chest, quick, disorienting, like the sudden flare of a lighter in a dark room. She didn’t know what it meant, only that it startled her enough to keep her still when normally she would’ve stepped back or shrugged it off.

Wens smirked, thrusting her burrito forward like it was a sacred offering. “Come on, Dire-Wolf. Don’t leave me hanging.”

“…Okay,” Enid whispered.

Wens blinked slowly, lips curving mischievously. “Wait — really? You’re gonna let a complete stranger try your weird little science experiment?”

Enid tensed, instinctive defensiveness sparking before she could stop herself. “…I mean, sure. I guess? It’s just food.”

Wens let the silence stretch and then snorted. “I’m messing with you. Holy shit, you are so awkward.”
She reached into the drawer for a plastic fork, flipping it between her fingers like she’d done it a thousand times. “Relax before you sprain something.”

Enid’s shoulders slumped with a soft huff.

Wens tore open the plastic, fork ready, hovering over the steamy, orange, questionable mass sealed inside the bag. She cut a respectable piece a generous enough but cautious enough to imply she wasn’t trying to die today.

“You can get a bigger piece if you want,” Enid offered softly, trying to help.

Wens’s eyes narrowed slowly, dangerously. “The fuck? You calling me fat?”

Enid’s soul evacuated her body. “Oh god, no! no! I didn’t — I didn’t mean—”

“Relax.” Wens patted her chest dramatically. “I’m teasing, cariño.” Then she stabbed the chunk, lifted it to her lips, and popped it into her mouth and the world stopped.

Her eyes widened.

Enid panicked.

Wens froze like she’d been shot.

And then she made the most violent, operatic gasp Enid had ever heard.

“OH—MY—GOD.”

Enid jolted, hand flying out as if she could physically push the sound back into Wens’s throat. “Shhh—shh!! The door’s open—”

But Wens was already on her way to sainthood-level theatrics, half-squatting, half-twisting, eyes rolling back with unholy euphoria as the flavors hit her like divine intervention.

“THAT IS SO FUCKING GOOD,” she yelled loudly enough that someone in the hall flinched. “Oh my lord! holy shit, this is—this is life-changing.....this is—”

Enid stared at her. Horrified. Proud. Confused. Mortified. All at once.

“Please stop moaning,” Enid hissed.

“I CAN’T,” Wens moaned harder, taking another huge bite. “Oh my god, my ancestors felt that.”

Enid was about to die. She could feel it.

And then—

“What the heck is going on in here?”

Both women froze.

Blonde Blazer stood in the doorway holding her salad like it was a shield. Her golden-yellow capelet caught the break-room lights, and her face shifted from concern to resignation in one long, weary exhale as she took in the scene: Wens in the middle of a full-body food orgasm.

Enid clutching the edge of the counter like a woman witnessing a crime. The open bag of prison burrito steaming like nuclear waste between them.

Of course. Of course she should’ve expected this.

“Oh,” Wens said brightly, turning with another chunk of the burrito in hand. “Hola, jefa. Looking gorgeous as always, by the way, hair’s doing that little swoopy thing today, muy bonita.”

Mandy pinched the bridge of her nose but smiled despite herself. “Wens… please stop flirting with me before the HR posters catch fire.”

“Can’t help it,” Wens said with a shrug. “It’s a disease. Anyway—” she pointed at the bag with the fork, “—I just tried my first prison burrito, and it has officially rewritten my entire worldview.”

Mandy blinked at her. Twice. “I… see.”

Enid crossed her arms, cheeks blazing. “She ate half of mine.”

Wens didn’t miss a beat. She tore her own store-bought burrito in half and handed it to Enid like an offering to the gods. “Here you go. Since you implied that i was fat like some big Torta or something.”

“I didn't imply you were fat,” Enid sputtered. “I was trying to be nice—”

“Mmhm,” Wens said, walking back toward the table and waving her fork dismissively. “Relax. You heroes are so sensitive. Come sit, come sit. You can lecture me about nutrition or whatever.”

“I don’t....lecture..” Enid muttered.

“You do,” Wens replied, already sitting, legs crossed, bouncing slightly as she took another bite. “C’monnnn. Bring your nuclear bomb burrito and sit.”

Mandy shook her head in fond disbelief, stepping into the room long enough to grab a fork. “I swear, this building’s going to kill me faster than any villain.”

“You’re too beautiful to die,” Wens called after her in Spanish, soft and honey-slicked, “Demasiado hermosa para morir, jefa.”

Mandy pointed at her warningly but left smiling.

Enid sat down stiffly across from Wens, clutching the half-burrito like it was a hostage she didn’t trust her captor with.

Wens grinned at her with wide, wolfish, curious eyes

“Alright, Dire-Wolf,” she said, tapping her fork against her can of Monster. “First week back from hell itself, first time we talk, and you introduce yourself with a prison burrito. I respect it. Big power move.”

Enid swallowed, unsure if she should smile or hide.
“…Thanks?”

Wens leaned forward, eyes half-lidded and amused, voice dipping low, silky and sharp. “So tell me how the hell does a girl like you learn to make that?”

The three of them Enid, Wens, Mandy shifted to the small round break-room table. Chairs scraped. The lights hummed overhead like old bees. The air smelled of coffee, reheated noodles, Monster, and the faint tang of scorched microwave burrito wrapper.

Enid glanced at Mandy first, then down at the demolished prison burrito, cheeks coloring faintly. She lifted one shoulder in a small, almost shy shrug.

“I was at Bedford Hills Correctional Facility,” she said quietly. “In New York. For a couple of years. You… uh. Learn a thing or two.” Her voice softened at the edges, roughened by memories she didn’t unpack. “Food was… creative. Everyone made do from what they can get from the commissary.”

Wens paused with her Monster halfway to her lips, eyebrows rising as something like respect slid into her expression. She took a long swig, wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, and set the can down with a dull clunk.

“Ah. Yeah.” She tapped a fingernail lightly on the table, rhythmic, contemplative. “Makes sense… since you’re part of the Z-Team now.”

Enid’s posture stiffened reflexively at the word “Z-Team,” not from shame but from the ancient instinct of someone who’d carried too many labels in too short a life. Mandy watched her carefully, a subtle, protective glint in her eyes.

Wens didn’t miss it. She tilted her head, then leaned her cheek into her palm and switched topics with casual ease.

“So,” she drawled, “you like it here? SDN? Torrance branch? The vibe, the job, the flaming gremlin squad you’re stuck with?”

Enid snorted before she could stop herself. “They’re not gremlins.”

“They set a trash can on fire in the lobby twice last week,” Wens reminded her.

“…Okay, that happened,” Enid muttered. “But they didn’t do it on purpose.”

“Sonar and Malevola absolutely did it on purpose,” Wens said, raising a brow.

“That,” Mandy sighed, “is unfortunately correct.”

Wens grinned triumphantly. “See? Validation from the boss.” Then she turned back to Enid, expression softening into genuine curiosity. “But seriously. You settling in okay? I know this place can feel like… a lot, especially for new people.”

Enid hesitated. Her fingers found the edge of her plate, tracing it absently. “It’s… different,” she admitted. “But in a good way. I like the work. And the team is—”

“Unhinged?” Wens offered.

“—trying,” Enid corrected gently. “Trying really hard.”

Wens nodded, tapping her Monster can with her finger. “Yeah. That’s the whole deal. Trying.”

Mandy leaned in slightly, cutting through the emotional weight with a warm smile. “Sorry if Wens is a bit much. She means well.”

“Hey,” Wens protested lightly, “I remember my first day. I drove Blazer here absolutely insane because apparently I talk more than a squirrel on espresso.”

“You do,” Mandy said without looking up from her salad.

Wens winked at Enid, proud of that fact.

Their conversation drifted into weather, commute times, the chaos of the Z-Team, the new Korean drama Mandy had gotten hooked on, the playlist Wens had been curating of bands she insisted Enid needed to hear. Enid relaxed enough to smile, even genuinely laugh softly once or twice, each sound surprising her as much as the others.

And then—

The door slammed open with the force of a small earthquake.

Robert barreled in, headset hanging around his neck, tablet in hand, eyes wide and frantic like someone had told him the building was currently on fire.

“Dire-Wolf! We’ve got an emergency!” he barked. “Golem’s stuck, don’t ask how and Flambae is making it worse! Again don’t ask how and Punch-Up is threatening to punch the plumbing, and Sonar is filming it. We need you now.”

Enid blinked. “Golem is… stuck?”

“I SAID DON’T ASK HOW,” Robert repeated louder, already turning toward the door.

Enid sighed hard enough to fog glass. She glanced down at the half-mangled prison burrito left on her plate, the one she’d barely eaten.

Then she pushed it across the table toward Wens.

“Here. Just… take it. I’ll grab something later.”

Wens froze, grabbing her chest dramatically. “Wow. Real canteen treatment. Sharing food with a girl you barely know? That’s intimate, babes.” Then she popped a chunk in her mouth and winked. “I’ll make it up to you. Nice to meet you again, Dire-Wolf.”

Enid stood so fast her chair squeaked. “You too, Wens.”

Then she hurried out, Robert speed-walking ahead of her while shouting rapid-fire directions about clogged storm drains and Sonar’s “ethical fucking failures.”

The break room fell quiet.

For about two seconds.

Then Wens shoveled the rest of the burrito into her mouth in a way that definitely violated multiple etiquette codes and possibly a few laws of physics. “Oh my god,” she mumbled blissfully, “I love her.”

Mandy arched a brow. “So that’s my cousin, yeah,” she said softly. “She’s… been through a lot. More than she ever deserved. But she’s here. And she’s trying. That’s all that matters.”

Wens swallowed, wiped her mouth, and leaned back in her chair.

“She’s cute,” she said simply. Not teasing. Not dramatic. Just honest.

Mandy’s smile softened. “Maybe… maybe you can be a friend to her. She needs those. More than she admits.”

Wens stared at the empty plate for a moment.
At the last smear of neon-orange cheese.
At the crumbs of crushed ramen.
At the one tiny curl of noodle stuck to the lip of the plate.

She scooped it up with her finger and popped it into her mouth.

“Yeah,” she said quietly.
“Yeah. I think I can do that.”

...

The rest of Wens Valdez’s shift passed in that strange, slippery way that good days sometimes do — half-aware, half-floating, everything tinted with the faint afterglow of something unexpected. She finished her logs, joked with Richard at the front desk, argued with Chase about whose music tasted better (hers, always), and teased Doris one last time before the older woman clocked out.

By the time the sun dipped low behind the Torrance skyline, painting the world in a warm rust-gold, Wens stood at the exit swiping her badge one final time.

“Night, sweetheart,” Doris called.

Wens winked. “Night, cariño. Don’t get kidnapped by a telemarketer on the way home.”

That earned a cackle from the entire row of older clerks.
She walked out with a smirk tugging her lip.

The drive home was calmer than the morning — traffic thinned, lights dimmed, the city’s pulse steady and deep. She parked in her assigned spot under the high-rise’s garage, climbed the concrete stairwell two steps at a time, and unlocked the condo door with a lazy twist of her wrist.

The smell hit her instantly.

Warm. Savory. Comforting.

Roasted chicken with paprika and garlic.
Mashed potatoes whipped smooth and buttery.
Steamed rice with pepper and herbs.
Something green simmering quietly — broccoli, because he was always trying to keep her mortal coil from collapsing too early.

She toe’d her boots off by the door, keys clinking into the ceramic bowl, and padded into the kitchen in her socks.

Tyler stood at the stove in a soft teal shirt and gray sweatpants, curls messy, sleeves pushed up to his elbows, revealing long forearms and a few faint scars he never explained. The overhead light turned his hair into a halo of frizz. His face was boyish, fine-boned, soft around the mouth — brightened the second he heard her.

“Hey,” he said, smile blooming slow and genuine. “You’re home.”

Wens leaned in the doorway, arms folded, watching him like a mildly impressed cat. He looked… good. The kind of good that seeped into bone and loosened muscles that had been locked all day.

“Well damn,” she said, voice slipping into something low and amused. “Look at you being domestic. What’s the occasion? Did you burn down someone else’s apartment and feel guilty?”

Tyler snorted. “No arson today. Promise.”
He glanced back, cheeks puffing a little with a shy grin. “Just wanted to make dinner. You’ve been working late. Thought I’d stop you from eating Monster and sadness again.”

“First of all,” she said, crossing the kitchen to him, “Monster and sadness is a balanced meal.” She swiped a fingertip through the mashed potato, tasted it, then tilted her head. “Second of all… this is better. You’re forgiven.”

He pretended to bow. “High praise.”

They moved around each other in an easy rhythm, her setting the table, him plating food, their shoulders brushing here and there. She grabbed two glasses from the cupboard, he reached past her to snag the pepper, and she swatted at his hip without looking.

“Hands to yourself, bartender.”

“You love my hands,” he muttered.

She didn’t argue.

Dinner ended up at the small living room table facing the wall of windows. City lights glittered beyond the glass like a spill of jewelry. She curled one foot under herself, fork in one hand, phone in the other as she queued up Netflix on the TV.

“What are we watching?” Tyler asked.

“Something with ghosts and bad reenactments,” she said. “I want to feel superior to everyone involved.”

They settled on a paranormal documentary hosted by a man with too-white teeth and a dramatic whisper. The first episode opened with grainy footage of a supposedly haunted Waffle House. Wens snorted chicken through her nose.

“That’s not a haunting,” she said. “That’s just a Waffle House. They all look like that.”

Tyler laughed around a mouthful of broccoli. “You’re evil.”

He nudged her knee with his under the table. She nudged back. They fell into an easy commentary, roasting the CGI ghosts, judging the interviewees’ fashion choices, making up backstories for the blurry figures in the background.

“Okay but that guy?” Tyler pointed with his fork. “He definitely started the haunting just to get on TV.”

“He looks like he thinks crystals are a personality,” Wens said. “And that haircut is a hate crime.”

“Coming from the woman whose favorite shirt has a demon goat on it.”

“First of all, he’s a patron saint of bad decisions and a great fucking time. Respect him.”

They ate until their plates were half-scraped and they’d determined that at least three of the reenactment actors were doing porn on the side. After a while, Wens pushed her chair back and migrated to the couch, Monster can swapped out for cold water. Tyler joined her a second later, stretching, then leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, utterly absorbed in the show in that earnest way of his.

Midway through a dramatic recreation of a ghost throwing pancakes, something pinged in her brain.

“Oh! oh my god,” she said suddenly, laughing into her sleeve. “I almost forgot to tell you. I saw this girl at work today make a whole-ass prison burrito.”

Tyler blinked. “…A what?”

She twisted on the couch so she could face him properly, eyes bright. “A prison burrito. Like ramen noodles, Doritos, pork rinds, cheese, sour cream, hot sauce. She mixed it all in a bag, let it set, and it came out looking like a crime scene casserole and also tasted like heaven? I think it bypassed the food pyramid and went straight to spiritual experience.”

Tyler stared at her, scandalized. “Why would anyone—”

“I don’t know!” She threw a hand up. “But this girl just did it like muscle memory. Folded the bag, massaged it, rolled it into a damn brick—”

“You ate it?” He already knew the answer but needed to suffer through it anyway.

“Of course I ate it.”

He dropped his face into his hands. “Wens. That sounds like something that crawls out of a sewer and asks if you’ve accepted heart disease as your lord and savior.”

She grinned wickedly. “Yeah. Delicious sewer.”

He peeked at her through his fingers. “Who made it?”

“A girl named Enid, looked up her file after. New Z-Team recruit.”

“Oh. That reformed progra.?” he asked, curiosity flickering. “So she's a ex villain, criminal?”

Yeah, goes by “Dire-Wolf,” Wens said lazily. “Yeah.”

“She cool?”

The question hung there, simple and genuine. Wens felt herself hesitate, and the hesitation itself annoyed her. She didn’t usually need time to decide how she felt about people.

“…Yeah,” she said finally, voice softer than she meant it to be. “I think she might be.”

Tyler studied her, the way he always did when she let something slip like he was examining a precious object someone had accidentally dropped. Something warm and complicated flickered in his eyes. Admiration, maybe. Worry, a little. A quiet wanting to understand her more than she ever made easy.

“You made a friend,” he said gently.

She scoffed on reflex. “Relax. I just stole her food. That’s not friendship, that’s theft.”

“For you, that’s practically a love letter.”

She kicked his foot. “Shut up and watch your stupid ghost pancakes.”

He laughed, leaning back into the couch. The episode rolled on. The city hummed below them, a low electric pulse. In the kitchen, dishes waited in the sink, soaking lazily in gray water. Somewhere far away, sirens wailed and then faded.

After a while, Tyler shifted closer and just enough that their knees brushed. Not an accident. Not a push. Just a quiet line extended.

“You seem… in a good mood today,” he said, voice low enough that it didn’t compete with the TV.

Wens tilted her head, considering. “Maybe I am.”

“You want to talk about it?”

She huffed. “Since when do I talk?”

He gave her that particular smile, the one that crinkled the corners of his eyes and made him look even younger, like the world hadn’t gotten its teeth in yet. “You talk to me.”

She opened her mouth with some automatic deflection on the tip of her tongue, then closed it again. Her gaze drifted down to his hands, relaxed on his thighs. To the veins at his wrists. To his mouth.

They were close now. Closer than usual, even for them. She could feel his breath, warm and steady, smell the mix of rosemary chicken and cheap cologne and the underlying salt of his skin. It was grounding in a way that made something in her chest ache.

He was the one who leaned in first. Tyler always was.

She met him halfway.

The first kiss was soft, a gentle press, familiar, a question he already knew the answer to. Her hand slid up to the back of his neck, fingers threading into his curls, nails grazing his scalp just enough to make him inhale sharply. His hands bracketed her waist, steady, careful, like he always remembered how strong she was and did his best not to flinch from it.

The couch dipped beneath their shifting weight. Outside, the city lights blurred into smears of color against the glass. On screen, the documentary host gasped at an obviously staged door slam.

Wens laughed against Tyler’s mouth, the sound small and genuine.

“Romantic,” she murmured, lips brushing his.

He smiled into the kiss, then traced his mouth along her jaw, pausing at the hinge like he was memorizing it all over again. “You started this,” he said. “No complaining.”

“I never complain about good decisions,” she whispered.

He huffed a quiet laugh, and she felt it against her skin. She kissed him again, deeper this time, more sure. The temperature in the room seemed to tilt. The air grew thicker, threaded with the sound of their breathing and the faint soundtrack of ghost hunters losing their minds over dust motes.

Her hand slipped under the hem of his shirt, fingers splaying over warm skin, feeling the steady drum of his heartbeat beneath bone. His grip on her waist tightened, then slid up her back, palm spreading between her shoulder blades, gently guiding her down with him as he leaned back into the couch.

The world narrowed to the taste of him, to the press of his chest against hers, to the clumsy bump of their knees as they shifted to fit closer. She caught herself smiling mid-kiss, which would’ve annoyed her if it didn’t feel so stupidly good.

Tyler pulled back just enough to look at her. His pupils were blown wide, cheeks flushed, curls falling into his eyes. “Hi,” he said, a little breathless.

She rolled her eyes, fondness cracking through. “You’re such a dork.”

“You like that about me.”

“Unfortunately,” she admitted.

He kissed the confession off her lips.

Time softened its edges after that. The documentary forgot about them and rolled into another episode; neither of them noticed. The city outside dimmed into a smudge of moving lights. The sounds of traffic became a distant ocean.

Wens could feel Tyler's growing excitement pressing against her thigh. She smiled wickedly, knowing exactly what she wanted. She pushed him gently back onto the couch and dropped to her knees between his legs. Her hands teased his crotch area, feeling the hardness beneath his pants. She unzipped his pants slowly, reveling in the anticipation. His large cock sprang free, and she took a moment to admire it before wrapping her hand around the shaft and beginning to stroke him.

Tyler groaned softly, his head falling back against the couch. Wens leaned in, her breath hot against his ear. “You like that?” she whispered, her hand moving faster. She teased him for a few minutes, enjoying the power she held over him in that moment. Then, she took him into her mouth, her lips wrapping tightly around his shaft. She bobbed her head, taking him deeper with each stroke, her tongue swirling around the sensitive tip. Tyler's hands found her hair, guiding her movements, pushing her down further until she gagged slightly, tears stinging her eyes. She pulled back, a string of saliva connecting her lips to his cock, and spat on his shaft, using her hand to stroke him hard and fast. She loved it rough, and Tyler knew exactly how to give it to her.

She stood up and began to undress, her eyes never leaving his. Her nipple piercings glistened in the dim light as she revealed her breasts, and she could see the desire in Tyler's eyes intensify. She straddled him, her hands on his shoulders for support. She lined up his cock with her pussy, rubbing the tip against her wetness. She was incredibly wet, her arousal evident as she coated his cock with her juices. She took a moment to savor the sensation before slowly lowering herself onto him. They both moaned as he filled her, their bodies moving in a slow, familiar rhythm. The room was filled with the sounds of their pleasure, the city lights outside fading into the background.

The night thickened around them.
The room darkened, the TV screen casting occasional pale flashes that painted them in momentary grainy black-and-white.

And as their bodies curled closer, as the city outside throbbed on without them, the scene slid away from specifics, softening at the edges, dimming like an old reel closing down.

A perfect end to a long day.

Outside, Torrance kept its secrets.
Inside, in a high-rise condo filled with the fading smell of roasted chicken and the echoes of terrible ghost reenactments, two people clung to a small, stubborn pocket of warmth.

For tonight, it was enough.