The marina's packed. Not just busy, but shoulder-to-shoulder, people-moving-in-herds packed. The whole place smells like saltwater, gasoline, and burnt weed, and there's enough noise that my ears keep trying to tune out the wrong sounds--like the way some of the boats creak when they move in the current or the distant hum of a container ship's horn.
This isn't what I expected. I was bracing for something grimy, tense, maybe a little desperate--like one of those handshake deals in a back alley where nobody makes eye contact. But this? It's got all the charm of a pop-up street market. Card tables and folding chairs are scattered across the dock, each station marked by a little handwritten sign in Sharpie.
FREE JUMP DISTRIBUTION
BECOME A VENDOR--SEE US FOR DETAILS
SAMPLES AVAILABLE--ASK NICELY
Rogue Wave's guys are playing the part, too. They're handing out boxes like they're running a food drive, chatting up dealers like old friends, making sure nobody's feeling rushed or stressed. I watch a guy in a puffer vest and sunglasses pass a pre-rolled joint to one of the handlers while they both chuckle over something I can't hear. The whole thing is weirdly... organized. Polished.
It's a business conference for drug dealers.
And I'm standing right in the middle of it.
I pull my hoodie down a little further and adjust my mask. It's just a black fabric thing, cheap and nondescript. It makes me blend in about as well as I can, which isn't much, considering I still look like a teenage girl walking solo through a marina full of grown men making felony deals. But nobody's paying me much attention. There's too much going on, too many other faces, and the general rule of places like this seems to be: if you don't act like a problem, nobody makes you a problem.
In my ear, I catch a bit of static before Tasha's voice kicks in. "Alright, I'm logged in. PPD chatter's running normal so far, no mobilization. Looks like we still have time."
"Copy," I mutter under my breath.
Tasha's back at the music hall, sitting in front of a secondhand police scanner and a laptop with five tabs open. She's our early-warning system. If the cops decide to roll in before we're ready, she'll be the first to know.
Amelia's hanging way back, somewhere near the entrance to the marina, parked by a stack of cargo crates like she's waiting for someone to pick her up. She's got a first-aid kit slung over one shoulder and a taser clipped to her belt. If something goes sideways, she's our emergency exit.
Jordan and Lily are... busy. Their plan is secret, even from me, which makes me nervous as hell, but they swore up and down that it was foolproof, so fine. They better not get caught doing something stupid.
Which just leaves me. Unmasked. Alone. Posing as a dealer.
I keep moving, slow and casual, scanning faces as I go. Most of these people are nobodies. Street dealers, runners, middlemen. People trying to make a living, whether that means moving Jump or just staying in the game long enough to buy their way out. I don't have the luxury of seeing them all as villains. I know better than that.
Still, some of them are dangerous. Some of them don't see a difference between "getting by" and "burning everything down." And some of them, if they realized who I was, would have me in a chokehold before I could even think about fighting back.
So, you know. No pressure.
I pause by one of the tables and pretend to read the sign, mostly so I can keep listening. The guy behind it--some scruffy dude in an old Phillies hoodie--is chatting up a dealer who looks about my age, maybe a little older. She's got a sleek black jacket, a Bluetooth earpiece, and that kind of tired, skeptical look that says she's been in this game long enough to know when someone's feeding her a line.
I don't catch the first part of their conversation, but I do catch her response:
"--not stupid, dude. No such thing as free. What's the catch?"
Phillies Hoodie laughs like she just asked him if water's wet. "No catch. You take a box, you sell it, you keep the cash. If you like the business, you come back and sign up for regular shipments. You work on your own terms. That's it."
She folds her arms. "And if I decide I don't like the business?"
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He shrugs. "Then you walk away. No hard feelings."
She doesn't believe him. I don't believe him either.
But she takes the box.
I start moving again before Phillies Hoodie decides to notice me standing around. I follow the dealer as she steps away, watching the way she tucks the box under her arm like she's not sure if it's about to bite her.
I don't mean to talk to her. I really don't. But before I can talk myself out of it, my mouth opens.
"That your first time?"
She glances up at me, startled, like she didn't realize I was there. Then her eyes narrow. "What?"
"With Jump," I say, nodding at the box. "First time selling?"
She stares at me, weighing whether I'm a cop or just annoying. Finally, she exhales sharply. "First time selling this, yeah."
I nod like I knew that already, even though I didn't. "It's weird, right?"
She makes a face. "Weird how?"
I gesture vaguely at the whole scene. "All this. The setup. The 'free' product. The little cardboard signs. It's like, I dunno... a PTA fundraiser. But for super-drugs."
She snorts. "Yeah. You're not wrong." She shifts her grip on the box, frowning down at it. "Honestly, I don't even know if I wanna sell this shit. I just needed to see for myself."
"See what?"
"If it's legit."
I tilt my head. "And?"
She exhales through her nose. "Looks legit. Which is worse, honestly. Means they're serious. And when people get serious, people get hurt."
I don't have an answer for that.
So I don't try to give one. Instead, I just nod, let the silence sit for a second, and keep moving.
There's too much to take in all at once, but I try. I weave through the crowd, head down, ears open, watching the way things run.
It's methodical. That's what makes it so weird.
People aren't pushing, aren't rushing to grab what they can. They're waiting in loose, uneven lines, some making conversation, some quiet. The guys running the tables--goons, low-level but competent--are keeping things moving smoothly. There's a system to it, even if it looks casual. A box gets handed off, a nod gets exchanged, and then the next person steps up. Like clockwork.
No shouting. No scrambling. No paranoia.
At least... not from the ones in charge.
I notice the outliers after a few minutes. The people hanging too far back, looking around too much, hands in pockets. Some of them are just nervous, unsure about all this. Others are watching like I'm watching--scoping things out, looking for angles. Could be cops. Could be other players seeing if this is worth muscling in on. Could just be people like me, looking for answers.
I slow down by another table, pretending to check my phone while I listen in. The guy manning it is maybe twenty, Hispanic, buzzed hair, wiry. He's not handing out boxes--he's standing just behind the action, leaning against a crate, scanning the crowd with the sharp, wary energy of someone who's seen deals go south before.
I don't know why I talk to him. Maybe because he looks like he knows what's really going on here. Maybe because I need to talk to someone who isn't part of my team, just to ground myself.
Or maybe because he looks about as skeptical as I feel.
"You buyin' or sellin'?" he asks before I can even open my mouth. His voice is low, not unfriendly, just cautious.
"Neither," I say. "Just looking."
He snorts. "Everybody's here for something."
I shrug. "Guess I haven't figured out what yet."
He eyes me, like he's trying to decide if I'm wasting his time or worth humoring. Then he tilts his head toward the distribution tables. "You ever seen anything like this before?"
I shake my head.
"Yeah," he mutters. "Me neither."
There's a pause. We both watch a dealer in a gray hoodie walk off with a box, tucking it under his arm like it's a carton of off-brand cigarettes. The guy next to me exhales sharply through his nose.
"They want us to think it's easy," he says, mostly to himself. "That's how they get you."
I glance at him. "You don't buy the sales pitch?"
He lets out a short, humorless laugh. "You kidding? It's too smooth. Too friendly. That's not how this works."
He shifts his weight, rubbing his thumb over his knuckles like a nervous tic. "I've been doing this since I was fifteen," he mutters. "Never seen an operation run this clean. Means one of two things: either they're just that good, or they're setting up something worse."
"Or both," I say.
His mouth quirks in something that's not quite a smile. "Yeah. Or both."
Another pause.
I chew the inside of my cheek, then ask, "You ever deal Jump before?"
His face darkens, just a little. "Not really. Sold other shit, back when I needed to. But Jump? Nah. That's a whole different thing." He nods toward the boxes.
I let that sit for a second. Then, I ask the question I probably shouldn't.
"Why are you here, then?"
He hesitates. It's the first time he looks at me fully, his eyes sharp, scanning like he's trying to figure out exactly what my deal is.
Then he shrugs. "Same reason as you, I guess."
I raise an eyebrow. "And what's that?"
He exhales through his nose again, glancing back toward the tables. "Trying to figure out if I'm better off walking away."
And for a second, I wonder--if I had been a different kind of kid, if I had made different choices, if I hadn't been forced into this whole superhero thing--would I be standing where he is? Would I be looking at this setup, weighing the odds, trying to figure out if I could make this work for me?
It's not a comfortable thought.
"Anyway," he says, pushing off the crate. "If you're looking to get in, pick a table. If you're looking to get out, you better do it before shit gets weird."
I glance at him. "You expecting it to?"
He gives me a flat look. "It's drugs."
I nod, more to myself than to him, and pull my mask down for half a second to rub at my nose. The air's thick with smoke--cigarettes, weed, whatever else people are burning--and it's making my sinuses feel like they've been lined with sandpaper.
I barely get the fabric back up before I hear--
"Wait--"
I glance up.
The guy's staring at me now, eyes narrowed, head tilted just slightly like he's trying to line up a picture in his head. His nose twitches. His face scrunches
"...Ain't you that girl who got stomped by a superhero at prom?"
I freeze.