Morning found me before I went looking for it. Sunlight knifed through the bent blinds and drew barcode stripes across my face. For a heartbeat, I reached for muscle memory that wasn't mine—alarm clock, snooze, commute—and remembered all over again that the old life had rolled under a truck and didn't roll back. New body, new name, MCU timestamp stamped on the wall calendar, a system in my skull, and a Spartan in the corner who could outstare a statue.
Alpha-01 stood exactly where I'd left him, weight fractionally on his left heel, hands loose at his sides, attention in that specific not-looking way soldiers master. The air tasted like dust warmed by sunlight and drying pasta—the ghost of Carmen's ziti still doing victory laps in the apartment.
"You seriously didn't move all night?" I asked, scrubbing a palm over sleep and grit.
"Correct, Commander. My duty is to watch over you."
"Lucky for you, I don't sleepwalk. We'd both need therapy."
Silence. The fan changed keys to register its disapproval.
I swung my legs out, floorboards cool under my feet, and did a quick body check. The engine still ran clean—no aches, no stiffness. I pulled the blinds up and let New York say good morning the only way it knows: horns playing tag, someone laughing too loud on the sidewalk, a dog that thought it owned the block telling pigeons their application had been denied. Hell of a thing to wake up inside a Marvel establishing shot.
My stomach made an executive decision. I padded to the fridge, hoping it had sobered up overnight. It had not. When I cracked the milk, the smell hit me like a punch in the face, a combination of "barn" and "regret."
"Okay," I coughed, jamming it back in and slamming the door. "We respect the dead."
"Recommendation?" Alpha-01 asked.
"Recommendation: breakfast that doesn't require a tetanus shot. Which means we go out." I grabbed the keys from the chipped bowl by the door and twirled them. "You ever driven?"
"I am trained in vehicle operation," he said, precise as a manual.
"Good. Because parallel parking in Manhattan is a mini-boss."
Wheels, Points, and the Celebrity Curve
The sedan waiting at the curb had the proud posture of a beater that refused to retire. The paint had lost a long, honest argument with the sun. The upholstery smelled like coffee and old decisions. I loved it instantly. The key turned on the second try; the engine coughed like a smoker, cleared its throat, and decided to cooperate.
Alpha-01 took the passenger seat like a sentry at a narrow gate—back straight, knees at perfect angles, hands resting on his thighs. He adjusted the side mirror two degrees; then again, one degree back. Micro-trait: his eyes checked exits before his head did.
"You know you look like I kidnapped you," I said, buckling in. "Blink twice if you're in distress."
"I am here to protect you."
"I know. Maybe fake-laugh at one of my jokes someday. For morale."
The sedan rolled into traffic and joined the city's endless argument with itself. Cabs played chicken. A bus signaled and then changed lanes as if the signal had been merely a courtesy to its conscience. I found the rhythm quicker than I had any right to—this body's reaction time making tight spaces feel like reasonable invitations.
While my hands drove, my head worked the scoreboard.
System, I thought, without moving my mouth. Point economics. Do I get a bigger payout for helping, say, Pepper Potts, than I do for helping a random guy with groceries?
The HUD slid into place like a thought that had been warming itself nearby.
Answer: Yes. The narrative relevance of a beneficiary multiplies point awards. Named figures in this world yield higher returns—the scope of impact further scales the totals (e.g., many civilians are helped at once). Ethical modifiers apply.
I whistled under my breath. "A celebrity curve," I muttered. "Help a background extra, get pocket change; help someone with a Wikipedia page, hit a jackpot. And crowd scenes are coupon multipliers."
Clarifying Note: Multipliers are informative, not prescriptive. Treating people as point sources can reduce the ethical multiplier and may incur penalties.
"Nice try," I said aloud, smiling without teeth. "You take away the cold min-max and then tempt me with it anyway. You'd make a great casino."
Alpha-01's gaze moved from the mirror to my profile. "A casino?"
"House always wins," I said. "Moral here: don't turn people into loot drops."
I let the line hang in the air until I felt it take hold. The review I'd given myself last night—don't flatten stakes, don't let the commander + phalanx fantasy make me lazy—was still fresh. This world was full of named characters and story anchors, but my neighborhood didn't care about billing order. A baby stroller rolling into traffic would not ask to see my list of cameos before deciding to be a problem.
"Next question." I tapped the wheel. "Cost of expansion. What's it take to get Alpha-02 on deck?"
Numbers populated in clean white.
Summon Spartan-II (baseline): 500 points
Training Overlay (complete): 1,500 points
Total: 2,000 points per soldier
I didn't swerve, but my grip adjusted. "Pricey squad goals. Copy."
"Do you require me to take control of the vehicle?" Alpha-01 asked in the same tone he might have used to offer me a tourniquet.
"I'm good. Just recalibrating how long it'll take to build a fireteam." Two thousand points wasn't a tax; it was a governor, the system's way of keeping me out of autopilot. "Okay. Strategy stands. Start small. Stack wins. Build infrastructure before I build an army."
We passed a mural of Stark Industries iconography that someone had lovingly vandalized with a halo and a tail. A kid in a Spider-Man T-shirt jumped over a puddle and declared victory to no one. Two guys on a stoop argued about the Yankees vs. Mets, as if the fate of the multiverse depended on their ERA.
"Set destination for breakfast and trouble," I said. "We're going to Hell's Kitchen."
Alpha-01 angled his head a millimeter. "Understood."
"You have no idea what that means."
"No."
"Picture a neighborhood with high civilian density, tight alleys, and a rumor mill that works faster than S.H.I.E.L.D. comms. There are plenty of small fires to put out—fewer cameras than in Midtown. Also, if the Devil of Hell's Kitchen exists in this timeline, we don't step on his toes. He punches for cardio."
Alpha-01 filed that away without comment. The system chimed in my head, an unobtrusive ding you could ignore if you were busy.
Advisory: Increased attention risk when patterns emerge. Repeated interventions in the same district may draw interest from law enforcement agencies (e.g., the NYPD), organized crime groups (e.g., the Wilson Fisk network), or national security agencies (e.g., S.H.I.E.L.D., led by Phil Coulson / Nick Fury). Mitigate with variance, proxies, and community embedding.
"Copy," I said. "We don't become a pattern."
The First Brake Check (Cost, Not Catastrophe)
It happened three blocks into Hell's Kitchen, as it inevitably did. A delivery truck nosed into a crosswalk like a dog testing a fence, and a stroller lost the fight with a sidewalk seam, rolling backward. The woman pushing it grabbed for a bag in the under-basket, fumbled, and realized too late. The stroller's cheap plastic wheel hopped off the curb and started down the slope toward the street.
Everything in me went cold and high like a struck note. The memory of my own curb, my own mistake, the horn—that wasn't a video file; it was a body file. My foot hit the brake too hard; the sedan let out a squeal. The world telescoped to stroller/truck/distance, numbers flashing in a language older than math.
Alpha-01 had his door open before the car had fully stopped. He moved like water finds downhill—no drama, perfect economy. Two long strides. A hand on the stroller handle. A twist that used momentum, not muscle. He rolled the baby smoothly enough that it didn't even wake. He braced it with his shin, looked both ways, and lifted the front wheels back up onto the sidewalk with the sort of gentleness that gives you faith in people you've known for ten minutes.
The mother's mouth was an O. She turned scarlet under the rush and cried once—one syllable, shock and gratitude antique as cities. "Oh!"
Alpha-01 stepped back as if he'd intruded and didn't mean to. "Your wheel needs a washer," he said, not unkindly, and pointed. "Here."
"I—thank you—thank you—" She rocked the stroller with one shaky hand, checked the baby (still asleep), then looked up at me in the driver's seat like I'd done something. People like to assign credit even when the universe doesn't.
"Good save," I managed, voice too bright. The horn from that day was suddenly too close to my eardrums.
The system chimed.
Direct Assistance: +1 (adult)
Indirect Assistance: +1 (infant)
Collateral Risk Avoided: +1
Streak (First Hour): +1 bonus
The numbers landed and meant less than the breath I pulled in and shoved out. I unclenched my hands from the wheel and peeled my fingers off the leather one by one.
Alpha-01 returned to the passenger seat and closed the door gently. He didn't comment on anything, which is how you respect a man who's swallowing a ghost.
"You all right?" he asked after a beat.
"Yeah," I said, because the truthful answer—that one woke something up; give me a minute—was more intimacy than our morning needed. "Let's eat."
Diner Rules (and a Micro-Trait)
We settled on a diner with metal trim like a silver bullet and a smell that said coffee had been brewing since the Reagan administration. Servers moved like professionals who'd outlived fashion. A radio played Springsteen like a talisman. Behind the counter, a TV looped Tony Stark footage with the volume off. "I am Iron Man," his lips said on mute every three minutes, as if repetition could make it less obscene or more holy.
We took a corner booth that offered sightlines to both door and kitchen—Alpha-01's choice, confirmed by a one-degree shift of relief in his shoulders when he sat. Micro-trait: he arranged his fork and knife parallel to the table edge, then nudged the knife handle until it aligned precisely with the salt shaker. Not compulsion—calibration.
A waitress who had opinions about everything set down water and a coffee mug that had earned its chips. Her name tag said MAE. Her eyebrows asked the menu question; her mouth said, "You look new."
"Passing through," I said. "What do you recommend if a man hasn't made good choices yet today and wants to start?"
"Eggs, bacon, toast," she said, writing before I finished. "Coffee that puts hair on your soul. For your friend?"
Alpha-01 glanced at me as if to check whether he had preferences. "The same," he said. Then, as if remembering something he'd learned twelve minutes ago, he added: "Please."
Mae winked like we'd done a trick together. "You're fine," she said, which in diner means I like you enough to talk about the life you have, so you want to. She poured.
While we ate, the citcame came in waves. A courier wolfed down pancakes in two minutes flat and left a tip that suggested gratitude and hurry. A man with a briefcase read the Daily Bugle and tried not to appear as though he was enjoying an editorial that was definitely not kind to vigilantes. A kid stared at the pie carousel as if it were a museum exhibit on the lost art of happiness.
Alpha-01 watched without watching. He took exactly one sugar packet, tore it neatly, and put half in his coffee; then he folded the empty packet into a perfect square. Micro-trait number three: he tapped the folded square twice with his forefinger before he moved on.
"So," I said, because silence would do what silence does and invite thoughts I could save for when I wasn't holding a knife and a memory, "Hell's Kitchen. The lay of the land."
"High civilian density," he said. "Narrow streets. Mixed-income housing. Significant small-business presence. Multiple gang signifiers within three blocks. Graffiti suggests territorial competition. One camera at the corner bodega is non-functional. Two at the ATM, operational. Three fire escapes without proper ladders."
I smiled into my toast. "You're going to be very useful."
He didn't preen. He did note the exit a third time.
We weren't the only ones doing math in that diner. At the far end of the counter, two guys in work jackets that didn't fit their hands talked too quietly for anyone who wasn't me. The system helpfully lowered the room's noise floor by a hair—not magic, just enhanced focus—and the words separated.
"…same as last time," the taller one said, scratching a neck tattoo he'd gotten a decade before his judgment arrived. "Cash on Wednesday, or the grease trap gets shut down for 'violations.'"
The other snorted. "City's full of violations."
"Told him the Kingpin doesn't like waiting." He sounded like he liked saying it, like the word fit in his mouth better than his real job ever had. "He'll pay."
"Or else what?" said the short one, but it was theater. They both knew what. People don't keep their doors oiled in Hell's Kitchen without a reason.
I sipped coffee hot enough to sandblast a conscience. Wilson Fisk's shadow reached farther than headlines yet because the MCU cameras were still waiting for better lighting, but shadows don't care about cinematography. Okay. An opportunity with two in-built problems: 1) It would be delicious to flex, and 2) flexing was how you got S.H.I.E.L.D. and NYPD on a first-name basis you didn't want.
"Options," I said softly, like a man thinking about pie.
"Observe," Alpha-01 said without looking up. "Document. Prevent harm. Leave a trail that does not lead to us."
"See?" I told my coffee. "Useful."
We paid. I left a tip that was more than my wallet liked and less than Mae deserved. As we stood, she leaned in like she was adjusting the ketchup. "If you boys are walking west," she said in a tone that had learned to be casual, "use Tenth. They're doing something on Eleventh. Sirens all morning."
"Appreciate it," I said, which in New York means you just told me exactly enough.
The Racket (Stakes, Not Victory Lap)
We found the bodega that he not-quite-workers had discussed without trying. In these neighborhoods, fear makes a weather pattern; you can feel where the pressure drops. The owner, thirty, tired, eyes that had done too much math, watched the door with the attention of a father listening for a baby not to cough. The bell jingled when we entered. The air smelled like coffee grinds, cat litter, and the candy that turns tongues blue.
"Two waters," I said, putting cash where he could see it. "And a phone card."
He handed them over like his mind had just told his hands what to do while it thought about something else. Alpha-01's gaze drifted over the security monitor above the counter, noted the "REC" light that wasn't, and moved on.
The two from the diner arrived precisely on time, because extortionists are punctual if nothing else. They walked in as if they belonged more than the customers did and leaned their elbows on the counter in a way that suggested the counter belonged to them. The owner swallowed and did not look at me. The taller one made a show of rearranging the gum display.
"Wednesday," he said. "Like Mass."
"We had a slow week," the owner tried, voice the texture of paper towels. "Tourists are—"
The tall one's palm slapped the counter. Not hard. Hard enough. "The Kingpin doesn't care about tourists. He cares about schedules."
Alpha-01 didn't shift. His fingers flexed once, then stilled. I felt my own shoulders move toward action—and stopped them with a sentence I'd written on the inside of my skull last night. We do not escalate when a flex will do. We do not make a mess that others must clean.
I set the waters on the counter with a loud clack, like a man who wasn't listening. "You got a bathroom code?"
The shorter one turned halfway, the sort of glance you give someone you might have to include in your story later. "Clients only," he said, because petty power loves lines.
"I am a client," I said, showing the bottle. "Look, I don't want to explode on your canned goods. Do us all a favor."
The owner, God bless him, saw the lifeline and threw it away. "Two-three-four," he said, quickly. "Back left."
"Hero," I said, and shouldered past the taller man in a way that gave him a decision: make a scene over nothing, or keep the performative dominance on script. He chose the script. I went through the beaded curtain and didn't go to the bathroom.
Back room. Mop bucket, sink, and door to the alley that would trip every fire code in the borough. Stacks of toilet paper like a fort that had lost its garrison. I listened. The system took an imprint of the men's voices and generated a frequency graph, much like a helpful nerd. It could timestamp; it couldn't testify in court. But I could. And I had a phone with a camera that made a potato look like Ansel Adams, but audio is forgiving when the content is incriminating.
I recorded thirty seconds of dialogue that included the words "protection," "schedule," and "Kingpin." I recorded the sound of the owner counting bills with hands that shook. I recorded Tall's amusement when a receipt was not offered.
Then I turned the water on in the sink, flushed the toilet to sell the fiction, and came back out, zipping up like a man with no idea about narrative beats. Tall smirked at him, because smirking is free. I held up one of the waters. "You boys look parched," I said pleasantly. "Hot day."
Short rolled his eyes. Tall looked at me long enough to give himself away—he wanted to teach a lesson and was deciding whether I was worth it. Alpha-01 tracked the angle of Tall's shoulder, the distribution of weight in Short's stance, the way fear and boredom smelled together, and didn't move.
"Mind your business," Tall said, with that particular cadence: words rehearsed in a mirror until they felt like authority.
"I'm trying," I said. "But your business is loud."
The owner risked a glance. It landed on Alpha-01's hands, on the scars that hadn't yet had time to be made but looked like a man had earned them. The glance said, 'Please don't make this worse,' and 'Please stop this,' in the same breath.
"Okay," I said softly, turning to the owner as if there were no other people in the room. "What's your name?"
He hesitated. "Patel."
"Mr. Patel," I said, deliberately formal. "I'm Shane. Would you like me to stand here while you call the number on the business card I'm about to give you?"
I pulled a card from my wallet that had just been created in the time it takes a system to say ding—a white rectangle with a phone number that would route to a borrowed voicemail and a name that wasn't mine but would be for exactly long enough: Community Repairs, No Cost, No Questions. The back read: Legal Aid Clinic—Wednesdays, with a time and address I knew from a sign two blocks back. (If Matt Murdock wasn't behind that clinic in this universe, someone like him was. And if no one like him was, I could become the kind of problem until there was.)
Patel's eyes went glassy with the kind of gratitude that makes you feel like a thief. "Yes," he said.
Tall's head swiveled. "What are you—"
"Present," I said. "Witness. Cameras are down; we both know it. Call the clinic, Mr. Patel." I kept my voice steady and my hands open. "Tell them you'd like to talk about predatory business practices. Use those words. They like those words."
Short moved. Alpha-01 moved faster—just a half-step into his space, not contact, the kind of adjustment that makes violence suddenly look like poor time management. Short reconsidered and chose to scratch his ear.
Tall's hand slipped toward his jacket, then stopped. He looked at Alpha-01, at me, at Patel, at the emptiness where a quiet room had been, and made the correct choice: he laughed, ugly. "You think a clinic is going to help?" He tapped the counter with two lifted fingers. "Thursday," he told Patel, as if he were doing a hiccup, precisely repeating it. "And if you're thinking of getting brave, try a different hobby."
They left with shoulders too square and a bell jingle that sounded like a threat. The door closed. The room breathed again.
Patel's hands shook so hard that the money sounded like rain. He set it down. I slid the phone back and showed him the recording. "If you want this file, it's yours. If you don't, it's deleted."
He looked like he wanted three things at once: to hand me everything and ask for nothing, to throw me out of his store and pretend this never happened, to sit down. He chose to sit down. "I can't fight them," he said, voice small.
"Don't," I said. "You don't fight supply chains with a baseball bat. You fight with paperwork, allies, and daylight." I pointed at the dead security camera. "Tomorrow we come back and put a real one up. No charge. Today, you go to the clinic and ask about filing a complaint. And you tell them you have a recording."
He swallowed. "You're not a cop."
"Not even a little." I took a breath. Time to pay a cost, or this would just be a feel-good scene with no stakes. "But you should call one anyway," I said. "Right now. Make a report. When they ask for your name, give it. When they ask for mine, give 'Shane.' When they ask for a statement, give it. If they ask about the recording, say you have one."
Patel's eyes widened. "They will know you."
"They'll know someone stood here," I said. "That's fine. They'll also know someone is watching. And if they file it correctly and it connects to other reports, patterns emerge. Patterns bring heat. Heat makes the big man annoyed. Annoyed men make mistakes."
I put my number down again—this one, the real one, the system had generated for me. "If you get blowback, call. If you get nothing, call. If you get brave, call. I'll keep showing up in ways that don't put you in the blast radius."
Patel nodded once, a small, exhausted bow. "Thank you."
"Thank me when you sell out of lottery tickets," I said. "That'll mean you're still here."
We stepped into the sunlight. The system chimed a cluster of notes.
Assistance (Business Owner): +7
Deterrence (Non-violent): +3
Documentation (Actionable): +4
Ethical Multiplier: +1 (witness present, agency respected)
Heat: +1 (NYPD incident potential)
Attention: +0.1 (Local Org network)
Not a landslide. Not a headline. A beginning.
"Cost?" Alpha-01 said as we walked, eyes on the reflection in the window glass across the street, because reflections tell you what corners won't.
"Heat plus one." I exhaled. "Cops get our description, maybe run it against a database that doesn't have us in it, because we're convenient nobodies. Fisk's people make a note that Patel had company. Next time we vary patterns: different shop, different day, different us."
"Understood."
"And next time," I added, flexing my right hand and noticing the sting, "I don't palm a broken candy rack spike when I lean on a counter."
Alpha-01 stopped me in the lee of a mailbox and took my hand like a medic, not a friend. He'd already palmed a Band-Aid from somewhere; it appeared, neat as a card trick. "You are bleeding."
"Look at me, paying stakes." I grinned, thin. "The house is pleased."
He raised his eyes. "The house?"
The system. The universe. Tak,'e you'r pick."
"Unders,'tood," he said, but the way he said it—half a second slower—said he was filing "jokes as stress relief" under Commander: Behavioral Patterns.
Parking Tickets and Patterns
The sedan had acquired a bright rectangle of paper that meant New York loved us in a specific way—alternate side. I'd parked on the wrong half of a living Tetris game and lost.
"Welcome to resource strain," I said, flicking the ticket with two fingers. "Small cost, big lesson." I slid it into the glove box. "We pay it. We don't build a legend out of ignoring rules that keep streets clean."
Alpha-01 angled his head. "You intend to comply."
"We pick our battles. And garbage day wins."
The system chimed, drier than usual.
Financial Penalty: −1 (ticket)
Compliance (Civic): +1 (multiplier retained)
"See?" I told Alpha-01. "Even the HUD likes it when I pay parking tickets."
We did not loop back to Patel's bodega. We varied the pattern, like good boys, and walked three blocks, where the neighborhood's hum shifted—from fear to fatigue. I bought a roll of quarters, because laundry is logistics, and borrowed a Sharpie to draw a quick map on a napkin: three bodegas, two diners, one bar with a neon sign that predated the Avengers, one law clinic flyer, one playground with a loose bolt on the slide ladder.
Alpha-01 watched the playground like a hawk watches a field, not because children needed us but because the world sometimes does.
"We're not rescuing anyone today," I said, primarily for me. "We are embedding."
"Copy."
"Tomorrow, cameras. The day after, hinges. The week after, borrow two volunteers for a block clean-up and pretend it's because we like sunshine. Meanwhile, we gather names like we gather screws. We monitor NYPD patrol patterns and identify which stores have panic buttons. We establish contacts at a clinic, a church, and a community board. We do infrastructure. No capes."
The car's radio cracked to life when we got in, catching a news brief mid-sentence: "…Stark Industries announced a new clean energy initiative…" The anchor's tone straddled the line between admiration and skepticism, as if it had partners on both sides. Somewhere across town, Pepper Potts was probably managing a crisis in heels. Somewhere in a windowless room, Nick Fury was being patient on purpose. Somewhere in a nicer suit than mine, Phil Coulson was knocking politely on a door that didn't want to open.
"Big names mean big gains," I said, letting the truth touch air and then be corrected. "But we don't chase them. We let our work pull us where we're needed."
Alpha-01 looked out at Hell's Kitchen under the noon light—graffiti and grit and old churches and new scaffolding. "Understood."
"Also," I added, because the review I'd given myself required interiority, and it turns out that interiority sometimes sounds like a confession, "the stroller got to me."
He didn't pretend he hadn't seen. "The horn," he said, even though he hadn't heard mine.
"Yeah." I focused on the road. "We put that one in a box for later. For now, we drive."
A Lawyer With a Cane (Or Maybe Just a Guy)
On Tenth, a man with a cane stepped off the curb and stopped, listening like the air had a story to tell. He wore round glasses and a suit that had known better days. His head tilts slightly toward our engine as if he could hear that the timing belt was going to fail in six months. He smiled, a small and private smile.
I did not say 'Matt Murdock' out loud because saying names conjures up weight. I let him be a man on the street who navigated the city as if it spoke his language. The system did not chime, because sometimes the world is not a quest marker. Sometimes it's just a man with a cane moving through lunchtime traffic, and you honor that by not making it about you.
Debrief (Lines and Lines Again)
Back at the apartment, the fan had decided to attempt a new noise. I fixed the bracket with a screwdriver and a promise. We recorded a debrief like a pair of nerds who had met in a strategy forum.
"Positives," I said, writing with a Sharpie on the back of a pizza flyer, because we don't always get the whiteboard we deserve. "Patel's shop stabilized today. Documentation captured. Clinic referral engaged. Witness line respected. No violence, no property damage."
"Negatives," Alpha-01 said, picking up the cadence. "Ticket. Minor injury. Potential investigative interest."
"Mitigations," I added. "Vary patterns. Introduce third parties. Empower locals. Use tools before fists. No capes."
He nodded. The Training tab ticked to 7%, slow and honest. He reached for the casserole dish without being asked and cleaned it as if he knew kitchens had rules. Micro-trait: he dried the dish and aligned it on the counter with the edge, then tapped it twice before stepping away.
"You know," I said, leaning against the sink, "if we keep working the neighborhood like this, S.H.I.E.L.D. might decide we're a 'local asset.'"
"Is that undesirable?"
"I prefer to be a local myth," I said. "Less paperwork. Fewer NDAs."
The system chimed once, like a grin.
Advisory:S.H.I.E.L.D. correlation +0.02 (background awareness).
Note: Phil Coulson has a talent for finding myth.
"Yeah," I said. "I've seen the movies."
I wrote LINES on the pizza flyer in letters big enough to argue with.
We do not escalate when a flex will do.
We do not make messes that we expect others to clean.
We do not turn people into point drops.
We do not show up where cameras want us; we show up where people need us.
We pick our battles, and sometimes the struggle is a parking ticket.
"Repeat them back," I said.
He did, voice steady, something in it catching at number three, like the sentence had snagged on a burr in his gut. Good. Let it snag. That's how rules become bones.
I flopped onto the bed and let my body remember it had done a day. The ceiling cracks looked less like a map and more like lines waiting for ink to be applied. The Points tab sat at 125—not fireworks, not failure. Enough to remind me that progression systems are marathons disguised as slot machines. Enough to make a plan around.
"Tomorrow," I said into the fan's commentary, "we buy a proper fridge."
Alpha-01 nodded. "And a camera."
"And a camera," I agreed. "And hinges. And maybe a bag of cement to fix that playground ladder."
"And gloves."
"And gloves." I closed my eyes.
"You are mortal," the system reminded me, not unkindly.
"Good," I said. "Keeps me honest."
A breeze moved through the blinds like a rumor. Somewhere down the hall, Carmen laughed at a joke that had been a long time coming. Somewhere across town, Tony Stark stood in front of a model of a tower he hadn't built yet and told a room full of powerful men that he didn't want to share. Somewhere in a much darker room, Wilson Fisk signed a document without looking at it, because the men he had paid knew where to apply pressure. Somewhere on a bench, a man with round glasses listened to the city and smiled because the world had blinked and he'd felt it.
Me? I lay on a bed that wasn't mine yet and made a list that would make it so.
Hell's Kitchen had been introduced. It said, 'Earn your place. '
I intended to. Without capes. Without headlines. With screws, cameras, eggs over easy, and a Spartan who aligned knives with salt shakers and tapped them twice.
Tomorrow, we'd drive the same streets and pretend they were new, because keeping them new was the point.
And if the Avengers were a storm building on the horizon, we'd be the ones fixing windows before the rain.