My sister did not, in fact, want to go pre-war old school vigilante with me, so I was in this partially alone. I had tried to convince her to stop being such a stick in the mud, to get out of her bedroom for once and away from her tablet so she could actually get some field experience. Without hesitation, she reminded me that she was Scion’s sidekick, and field experience was all she ever got nowadays after school, anyway. Besides, something-something legality issues if anyone from the Protectorate finds out that she’s breaking the law. So fine, I’ll do the heavy lifting tonight.

I have less to lose, anyway. Without a license, the most I would get is arrested. If they catch me.

Which they won’t. The lines are blurry for what it means to be a vigilante. I mean, I can lift up a car and grab a football for a kid, and that’s perfectly fine. But dress up in sneakers, a tracksuit, a compression shirt, and a black baseball hat and threaten a guy with a fist to his face, and suddenly I’m the bad guy? What’s the difference if I’m still doing good? Mom would probably give me a lecture, and dad would probably have me postpone my next attempt at getting my license if they ever find me back at the crime scene right now, but I’ve got no other choice.

I can’t sleep knowing that there’s someone out there with that kind of power. Someone who looked like she just couldn’t give a damn about the bodies she burned or the lives she just desecrated. Someone who killed all those people for no freaking reason in the slightest, only ‘cause she got punched. Slices of heaven like Saints borough just don’t have problems like this. But nowhere should have problems like this. People like her get put in holes very, very deep inside whatever blacksite the Protectorate’s dart landed on. If I grab her, then I can do them all a favor and dump her on their front steps, gagged and tied up and in a very small ball to make their lives easier. Who knows, maybe your girl can finally get some props for doing the right thing and I can skip the entrance exam and start straight away with the whole superhero gig. Officially, this time, and not how I’m doing it right now.

“She went into the alleyway a few stores past the Easy Mart,” Jade says through my earphones. I hear typing, then she adds: “I really need a better look at the alleyway and not the police tape right now, Kacey.”

I was standing just past the police line, and with most of the media gone, and Alice nowhere to be found, the street was deathly silent again. This air of fear hung in the gusty ocean wind slipping past the skyscrapers, and I’m not all that surprised. Stuff like this isn’t normal for the people who live and work here. Stores never shut early and people go on walks for however long they want and whenever they want because they know that some thug isn’t going to rob them at gunpoint. Tonight isn’t like any other night. There are blood stains on the concrete, and chalk outlines of the boys who had been removed from the scene, too. The salon was closed, and so was the barber shop and the clothing store, the tiny Italian restaurant and the cramped family antique store down the road, too.

I wasn’t in a costume. I was in black sweatpants, sneakers, and a cropped tee that let’s the wind get close to my skin. In my genius thinking, I figured that dressing like a normal person instead of a vigilante would make it seem that I was just a concerned citizen doing some intensive searching, instead of a maniac wearing all black.

“Yeah,” I mutter to her. “I know, but…I just wanted to get a better look at this place. If there’s—”

“Kacey,” she says flatly. “There’s nothing more to find there. We need to track her down. It’s already been an hour, and someone like her can get anywhere in an hour. The more time we waste, the further away she’ll get.”

I hate when she makes sense, because it rarely ever matters what you’re feeling deep down.

Jade doesn’t really care, or maybe she does and her powers overrule her emotions. Why else is she helping me out tonight? Any other day, she would have gone to bed and told me I should let the professionals handle it.

For once she seems kinda invested, and as I turn on the crime scene and walk away, it feels sickeningly good that I actually have her onboard for one of my ideas for once. My phone is in my pocket, and my earphones pick up what she’s typing, and almost everything she’s scribbling down. She gave me a tiny camera I can put on a pair of sunglasses hanging off my collar, something that some other junior hero gave her as some kind of gift.

My sister and I might live in the same house, but we barely ever live the same lives.

I finally reach the alleyway where the pink-haired girl vanished into, and the click of typing suddenly stops as I stand in front of it, making my shadow stretch far inside the grimy little passageway. It’s crammed between a brick-laden shoe store, and a Chinese restaurant that’s still open despite what just happened a few blocks away. A few customers are still inside, chewing on their food as muted televisions pump out whatever breaking news they can. Good. It means I can snoop around looking for…I’ve got no clue, because the investigation and searching part of my resume is the weakest out of anyone in my family. I can see and hear and smell things that a dog wouldn’t even be able to dream of, but that doesn’t really mean it gives me a freebie in knowing what I should be looking for.

Because she left no tracks behind. No flip flop marks on the ground, and no scent clinging to the air.

Just a pink wrapper floating on a greasy puddle right in front of me.

“Unless you’re seeing something I’m not,” I say, “it looks like she was never even close to here.”

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“Look down.”

I sigh a little and crouch, and that’s when I see…some more of absolutely nothing. “Is there—”

“Soot,” she says. “It’s faint, and it shed off as she walked here. Then it suddenly stops.”

I squint at the ground, and lo and behold, as I trace my fingertips against the concrete, I find a layer of it sticking to my fingers. I bring them to my nose (after checking over my shoulder, just in case someone wonders why some kid is sniffing her fingers in an alleyway), and the stink of fire burns itself into my throat. Then I have it, the trail leading into the alleyway. I stand, walk slowly, almost tracing her footsteps one at a time, as if I could kind of see where exactly it was that she was walking. And then all of a sudden, getting two footsteps deep into the dark, the trail vanishes, and so does the stench. I step back, and it returns, and of course, when I step forward, it’s gone.

Jade says it first: “Teleporter.”

I helpfully add, “But, like, we would have also seen them on the security feeds.”

And I’m pretty sure there isn’t some invisible barrier in front of me, separating myself from wherever it is that the pink-haired girl went. I did, admittedly, wave my hand out in front of me, just in case, and found nothing but air. If there had been a teleporter here, then she was as good as gone. Could be in the next state over, depending on the Category we were dealing with, too. You let her get away. I stay crouched, low to the ground, and the cobbles underneath me splinter a little when I shift. Staring into the dark alley, I hear her voice, see those images and smell a stench I wouldn’t have even thought I’d ever have to inhale. I’d woken up in that store, right there next to Phil.

Or what had been left of him. I had found his eyeballs melting right out of his skull, sputtering and spitting at me like oil right out of a fucking pan. But I shake my head, pinch myself, and try to live in the now, the here, before my stomach can get any tighter and my thoughts any worse. I massage my eyes and pinch the bridge of my nose, because Jade has been talking (rambling, more like) for the better part of a few minutes about what happens next. Something about cross referencing her face in police databases, something else about not even finding that.

“It’s like we’re dealing with a ghost,” she mutters. “She’s got no previous record available online.”

I stand, getting the ache out of my knees. “Shouldn’t be too hard to find. She’s got bright pink hair.”

“This city’s got millions of people in it, and I’m willing to bet that a few thousand have the same hair.”

“Jade,” I say, putting on my big sister voice—the one I know will at least make her stop typing or using me as a mule for whatever it is that she wants to find out. “She’s a Baysider. A girl like her is only ever in one place.”

A pause, a long stretch of silence, and then she quietly says, “That’s a one in a million chance. It’s a—”

“Waste?” I say, finishing her sentence as I walk into the alley. There’s glowing purple graffiti and old war effort posters—the things must be way older than I am—trying to survive under the paint and the grime covering the brick walls. “Look, sis. You might be the professional here, but I’m the one who can probably stop a semi truck with nothing but a shoulder check. If you’re worried about me, I’ll be fine. Besides, Santa Freya’s got all kinds of parties going on right now. You ask enough people the right questions, and you’re gonna end up with answers.”

“Do you even know what kind of people you’ll be dealing with?” she asks, her voice pitching slightly, maybe because she’s actually afraid for me for once, but…come on, what’s the worst that could happen to me? “There are gangs down there that operate on those streets like any organization on Wall Street would. You’re looking for someone who massacred dozens of people for no discernable reason, hunting them without a plan. You step out of Saints, it’s a free for all. Just…maybe this is a bad idea. It is a bad idea. Just come back home and—”

“Cold feet?” I ask her quietly, standing at the end of the alley. Silence. “Think I can’t handle it?”

“You know that’s not what I’m saying.”

“Then you also know that I’m not gonna go to sleep tonight without doing something.”

“Then if you’re gonna do something, be smart, Kacey.”

I smile thinly. “That’s what you’re here for, to make my impulsive decisions look good later.”

“There are people there who can hurt you,” she says, and this time I don’t hear any typing or scribbling, just her breathing and her tense voice that fills my ears. “Gangsters who can very easily turn you into a casualty.”

You sound just like the rest of ‘em.

“And they’re the same guys who are bound to know something. I ask questions, they give me answers.”

“You’ve got to be stupid if you think that’s how it works.”

“Yeah, well, they didn’t think I was good enough for their Patriot License, anyway, so what’s better than proving your bosses right about me, hey?” I say, my voice light, cheery, so bright that I hope she winces. Jade pauses, and is about to speak until I continue. “Not gonna go there with my phone on, ‘cause mom and dad are probably gonna track it. If I’m not back in an hour, then…don’t touch any of my stuff.” With that, I shut it down.

I stare at the black screen, and then slide it into my back pocket. My stomach is in knots, but for too many reasons for me to really count. If this is stupid, then I’m not a superhero. Saint’s is never gonna need saving, let’s be honest. Besides, the Protectorate said it themselves. I wasn’t good enough. Strong, fast, durable, sure, but I wasn’t enough of a hero for them. Not enough sparkle and pizzazz either to at least be a media jockey. Jade hadn’t saved anyone yet. All she ever does is follow Scion around when the guy isn’t partying, so you know what I really think?

I think it’s time for All-Star to make her proper debut, and when will it be better than right now? What, when I get some order in a case file telling me about some guy who jay walked? Come on, that’s not what being a hero is about. Being a hero, I figured, is exploding out of the alleyway so suddenly that it shakes the ground and makes a car alarm go off. I’m cutting through the clear night sky toward the coastline, fast enough to not let my phone or Saint’s or my sister get into my head, and honestly, what’s the worst that can happen? Tonight sucks.

It really can’t get any worse than it is right now.