Maggie is the first one to say it out loud.

"I'm losing my goddamn mind."

You said it first, sister. Just kidding. I said it first.

There's a brief pause where I hear her mom yelling something in the background, and then a muffled, "Sorry, sorry--I'm losing my gosh darn mind," like that actually makes a difference.

"You're turbo-grounded," I remind her, flopped sideways on my bed, phone balanced on my stomach, earphones in. "You're not even supposed to be on HIRC right now. What, did you break into your router settings again?"

"I'm a political prisoner," Maggie declares, which is not an answer. "They're denying me the right to free speech."

"They're denying you the right to commit crimes," Jordan corrects, their voice scratchy over the mic. "Because, and I cannot stress this enough, you did get arrested."

"Was it a crime crime, though? Or was it just, like, a technicality?" Maggie argues, and I hear some rustling on her end. She's probably on her bed, upside down, tossing a stress ball at the ceiling or something. "Like jaywalking. They only arrested me because they could."

"They arrested you because you violated city ordinance abolishing the idea of vigilantism," Jordan reminds her. "A fascist ordinance, but an ordinance nonetheless."

"Okay, but in my defense, that was--"

Lily cuts in before Maggie can get the rest out. "We can argue about this later, but right now, Argus Corps?"

And just like that, the frustration that's been simmering under my ribs all day ignites again.

"Yeah, let's talk about Argus Corps," I say, pushing up on my elbows. "Let's talk about how Maya Richardson somehow managed to rehabilitate Patriot's image enough to shove him back onto a stage without the entire city throwing rotten fruit at him. Let's talk about how she got Miasma standing next to him like we're all just supposed to accept that now. I don't give a shit about those other two but I'm sure I'll hate them soon enough."

"That's what's really throwing me," Jordan says, and I can hear the frown in their voice. "Miasma's not a sellout. He's a paranoid wreck with a righteous streak a mile wide. And now he's standing behind Maya Richardson?"

"And Patriot," I say again, just to make sure we're all on the same page about how stupid this is.

There's another silence. The kind that comes when everyone's thinking the same thing but nobody really wants to be the first to say it. Eventually, Maggie exhales, long and frustrated.

"Okay, just--explain it to me," she says. "Like I'm a dumbass. I thought Miasma hated the whole apparatus. I thought he was all about tearing down the system anarchist style or whatever?"

"He doesn't just hate the apparatus," Jordan says, rubbing the bridge of their nose. "He's got a whole universe of things he hates. Cops. The government. Capitalists. Communists. People who drink the wrong brand of bottled water. You name it, he's got a conspiracy theory about it."

"Yeah, but his thing was anti-corruption," I say. "Like, aggressively. Diane's notes mentioned that he once went on an entire two-year one-man campaign exposing coverups for fun. He practically had a scoreboard. I don't get how you go from 'I will personally tear down every institution with my bare hands' to 'sign me up for the fascist goon squad' in less than a year."

"Maybe he didn't have a choice," Lily suggests. "What if they threatened him? Or blackmailed him? Maybe they're holding something over his head."

"Like what?" I ask, because I cannot fathom a world where Joshua Pleasants, Miasma, would let himself get bullied into submission by anyone, let alone Patriot and Maya Richardson. "What do you even threaten a guy like that with? He lost everything already. He has no family, no money, no official identity. You can't ruin his career because he doesn't have one. He's already a fugitive. His entire thing is burning bridges and never looking back."

Jordan hums like they're considering it. "It's weird, yeah," they admit. "Even after the NSRA thing. I mean, we know that was a setup now, but the damage was real. They gutted his reputation. He can't show his face anywhere without getting flagged. But if that was enough to break him, why now? Why suddenly pop up, perfectly rehabilitated, standing next to Patriot like nothing ever happened?"

"Maybe he actually believes in it," Maggie says, repeating Jordan's earlier theory. "Maybe they just found a way to sell it to him in a way he could swallow. He's all about prevention, right? About stopping bad things before they happen?"

"Bullshit," Jordan says, unconvincingly.

I press my fingers into my temple, frustration bubbling under my ribs. "I swear to G-d," I mutter, "if they got him with the 'if you don't, someone worse will' speech, I'm gonna scream."

"That's what's scary about it, though," Jordan says, tone thoughtful. "Miasma's not stupid. He's actually really smart. And he's careful. He doesn't just get swept up in things. If he's in, it's because he wants to be in."

"I mean, I wouldn't call him 'careful'," I mumble.

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Lily makes a distressed noise. "But he knows what Patriot is! He knows what this looks like!"

"And maybe he doesn't care," Jordan says. "Or maybe he does, but not in the way we expect. Maybe he's keeping an eye on them and this is like 4d chess that we're not prepared for."

I chew on my lip, watching the slow crawl of my laptop screen as I flip between tabs. My email inbox is still empty. No new responses. I have so many Freedom of Information requests pending and none of them are ever going to get approved.

"Whatever the reason," I say, "it's still bad. Like, really bad. You heard the language Maya was using."

Maggie groans. "Yeah. 'Philadelphia is under siege,' blah blah blah, 'we must take decisive action.' I swear to Christ, every fascist on the planet reads from the same f--freakin' playbook."

There's a brief pause while her mom yells at her again for swearing and for taking Christ's name in vain, and then she comes back on, sounding only slightly winded.

"It's not even subtle," I say. "They're framing it like an invasion. Like the city's been 'compromised' and they have to 'take it back.'" I make air quotes with my fingers even though no one can see me. "It's not about fighting crime, it's about occupying territory."

"Which means they're going to be looking for excuses," Jordan says, voice tight. "Maya's got a very clear idea of what she thinks Philadelphia should look like."

"They're gonna burn it out," I say, stomach twisting. There's another heavy silence.

"Okay," Lily says, voice small. "So what do we do?"

I look at my laptop screen again. At the empty inbox. At the paused press conference video, Maya's face frozen mid-sentence. At Patriot, standing behind her, looking every inch the perfect soldier.

"Jordan," I say, because I need to get it out before I start overthinking it. "Jordan. I'm mad and I want to do something about it."

Jordan hums, unbothered, like this is a normal and expected statement from me. Which, okay, fair. "Yeah?"

"Yeah," I say. "Isn't there anything we can actually dig up about Argus Corps? This didn't just come out of nowhere. They have, like... paperwork, right?"

"Of course they do," Jordan says, already typing. I can hear the clack clack clack of their keyboard over the voice chat. "Every registered superhuman team has public filings. It's a government thing. They want accountability or whatever. You don't even need to FOIA it."

I stare at my inbox, full of unopened Freedom of Information Act request responses, all politely informing me that my inquiries have been denied or are pending review for an indeterminate period of time.

"...Right," I say. "Totally knew that."

Jordan drops the link in chat unceremoniously, like a cat dropping a dead mouse at your feet.

"You're kidding," I say.

"Nope," they say. "Maya actually filed this. She didn't just wake up one day and decide she could start a superhuman black ops unit--she had to put it on paper. At least, if she wanted it to be recognized."

I click the link immediately. It's a municipal site, the kind of thing that looks like it hasn't been updated since the early 2000s, complete with a broken header image and a sidebar that's about fifty pixels too wide. But the PDF is real. It's right there.

I open it.

I skim the first few paragraphs, already feeling my blood pressure rising. Proactive deterrence. Immediate and overwhelming consequences. Intelligence-led operations targeting key nodes in illicit superhuman infrastructure.

"Jesus Christ," I mutter.

"What?" Lily asks. I can hear the distant sound of a spoon clinking against a mug on her end.

"This is actually worse than I thought," I say. "Like, I knew it was going to be bad, but I didn't know they were just gonna say the quiet part this loud."

"Give me the highlights," Maggie says. "I'm reading like, an elementary school speed right now. It's been a long day of playing video games while pretending not to play video games."

Jordan beats me to it, reading out the paragraphs to Maggie, sentence-by-sentence, bit by bit. "They're not even pretending this is about anything but control. It's not crime-fighting. It's 'neutralizing' and 'deterring' anyone they think is a problem."

"Neutralizing?" Maggie repeats, voice going sharp. "Like... neutralizing-neutralizing?"

"They're being very careful about their wording," Jordan says. "But yeah. They're setting up something that exists to take out 'threats' before they happen. The implication here is that they will just straight up be killing people. Which is... great."

Lily lets out a long breath. "God."

Jordan keeps scrolling. "Oh, wow, look at this--controversy mitigation. They knew people were gonna freak out about this, so they put a whole PR strategy in the filing."

Maggie groans. "God, they workshopped the hell out of this. They couldn't just say 'extrajudicial force' so they put it in fancy corporate jargon."

"They even have a whole section about rehabilitation," Jordan says, and I can hear the disgust in their voice. "They're selling this as Patriot's redemption arc."

"Oh, come the fuck on," I say, shoving my hair out of my face. "I can't believe they're seriously trying to rehab him. After everything. I'm gonna fucking kill someone."

"It's not just him," Jordan says. "They're doing the same thing for all of them. Turbo Jett, Captain Devil, Miasma."

I chew my lip. Miasma still doesn't make sense. We keep scrolling, picking out the most stomach-churning lines and throwing them back and forth. Strict Operational Transparency. Proactive deterrence ensures known offenders face immediate and overwhelming consequences. Civilian Oversight Panel.

It's all carefully tailored to make something that is fundamentally horrifying sound reasonable, if you don't know what to look for. I start to feel sick.

"We need to get eyes on their attached files," I say. "The stuff about their oversight. The reinstatement petitions. They didn't put that in the public doc."

"Good luck with that," Jordan says. "They'd need to be FOIA'd, and that takes months. Even if they weren't just gonna bury it."

I glare at my inbox, full of pending FOIA requests I am never going to get responses to.

Maggie sighs. "Great. So we just have to sit here and watch this happen."

"We could put something together," Lily says, hesitant. "A statement, maybe? A press thing?"

"Sure, we could get, like, two visitors on our website, dubya-dubya-dubya dot auditors dot pa dot ph," Maggie says. "Real effective."

Jordan makes a frustrated noise. "We need more than just being mad about it. We need to rip this apart. Abort it. Like, abortion style."

"Gross," Lily squeals.

I keep scrolling, rereading parts I already read. The words blur together--Registered Superhuman Entity Organization (RSO)... preemptive security... Office of Municipal Superhuman Affairs...

Then I stop. I squint. Scroll back up. My fingers curl tight around my mouse.

"Wait," I say. "Hold on. Hold the fuck on."

"What?" Jordan asks.

I don't answer immediately. I'm staring at a name, highlighted in my head like a neon sign.

Katherine Huang, Esq.

That's Aaron's lawyer. "That's Aaron's lawyer," I hear myself saying unconsciously, loud enough to be heard. I feel my pulse in my ears.

"Wait, hold on," Jordan says again. "Tremont & Fairfax. She works for Tremont & Fairfax. Why's a New York lawyer filing out this random paperwork?"