Vidya slammed her history book closed and arched back against her chair with her arms outstretched. It took three hours, a box of Raisinets, and two small iced teas, but her homework was finally done.

She joined her parents downstairs for dinner. They were dressed for work: Mom had just gotten home, and José was going to a meeting later, but despite that, there was a full meal spread on the table: a steaming pan of lasagna, cheesy mashed potatoes, and what looked like...shellfish? They were experimenting.

Vidya put her pager face-down on her lap, and Mom noticed it.

"I don't mind you taking missions at night," she said lightly, "but midnight is your curfew. Don't forget."

"I won't," Vidya replied. They were pretty easy-going about her job. She still caught a hint of worry every now and then—even having the most defensive superpowers would never stop parents from worrying—but they were always supportive, and she appreciated it.

She was halfway through dinner when the pager rang, vibrating right off her lap. Vidya bent down and caught it just before it hit the ground, and she resurfaced above the table with a smile. Mom shrugged, and José grinned, winking. He had been in the middle of asking about her upcoming second date with Jonah, and the wink let her know she wasn't off the hook.

Vidya shoveled the rest of the lasagna into her mouth, not wanting to end up hungry later. She chewed on the wad of pasta and ran up the stairs two steps at a time. While swallowing and drinking water and throwing a mint in her mouth, she changed into her supersuit. And, of course, she blasted music while doing so.

The current song on shuffle was Hello, which didn't fit the mood at all, but she didn't have time to change it.

Vidya opened her backyard-facing window, made sure no one was watching, and took off. The sky was a brilliant orange, and she admired it as she flew to Terry's Automotive, processing the pager message.

Gear was one of those villains that you can't believe exist. He wasn't a super, just a guy in a somewhat impressive mechanical suit. It always broke down, and although he got away every time, he left a mess of nuts and bolts and oil behind. He was a joke, basically, and a rare sighting, too, but the investigators finally figured out his identity and location. Gear was actually Terrence Matthews, and he owned a mechanic shop that was a front for his illegal machinations.

Vidya figured out what she would do as she flew there. It shouldn't be a hard mission: just avoid his spinning razors, ice up the moving parts, and he would be immobile, and then he would get arrested. Easy peasy.

But when she got there, everything was already taken care of. Police cars waited on the street outside Terry's Automotive with their lights flashing, and the cops stood around idly. The garage doors were open, black and warped at the edges. The shop itself was in shambles, everything scorched and burned and still bright-red with heat. Gear himself was being loaded into an ambulance with burns all over his arms, and bits and pieces of his mech suit were still stuck on him. He was alive but severely bruised and dazed.

And standing just outside, looking into the shop and admiring her handiwork, was Flamethrower.

Vidya's first instinct was to fly away and act as if she didn't see her, but that would be the easy way out. No one got anywhere by taking the easy way out. She swallowed her instinct and landed next to the other hero.

"This was my mission," Vidya stated. Not angry, not defensive.

Flamethrower didn't even look at her. "I happened to be in the area," she said. "Didn't know you were coming."

As expected, there was no apology. Vidya believed her, but even if Flamethrower had known that the mission was already assigned to someone else, she probably would've gone ahead and taken care of it anyway.

Vidya turned toward the shop. She felt small standing next to Flamethrower, even though she was only two inches shorter. Flamethrower had a dominating presence; even when she was quiet, even when she wasn't looking at you, it was impossible not to be intimidated.

Vidya looked into the garage...or, what used to be a garage. Her stomach twisted. This was a villain's workplace, not something sacred, but seeing it destroyed like this made her uncomfortable. Frostbite wouldn't have done this. She would've made every effort to cause minimal damage. She would've made every effort to take down Gear without hurting him.

But it was Flamethrower who completed the mission, not Frostbite, so the garage was destroyed, and Gear was on his way to a hospital.

Out of the corner of her eye, Vidya studied her. Flamethrower wasn't smiling or scowling. She stared into the garage in a calm, frightening way, but there was something odd about it. Her arms were crossed over her chest, and her eyes were narrowed. Not much, just a little, but they were narrowed, and not in an inquisitive way. It looked like she was thinking about something other than the garage, and she was conflicted about it. Maybe even upset.

"Why are you still here?" Flamethrower snapped suddenly.

There was no point in sticking around and waiting for the insults to begin. Vidya took off into the darkening sky without a word. She'd planned to visit David and Aisha later tonight, but now that Gear was taken care of—and it was probably her only mission of the day—she may as well go now.

She landed in front of David's greenhouse. The tarp blocked out any light, and she couldn't hear anything. They might not be here. Or, Aisha wasn't here, but David lived here, didn't he? He could be home.

Vidya knocked and held her breath. This was the first time she was going to them. How would they feel about that? She didn't entirely understand it herself. She just knew that she wasn't ready to go home yet, and she wanted to see them.

The door opened, and David gently pulled her inside. He didn't ask why she was here, and he didn't look surprised, either. Vidya barely got a word in before he was sitting her down on the couch between him and Aisha, who didn't take her eyes off the laptop as she said, "Fade's dead."

Vidya's jaw dropped. The laptop was displaying live news, where Fox was explaining the unknown circumstances of Fade's death and how she was the third of Celestro's heroes to be found dead. There was no denying it anymore: there was a serial killer on the loose, and they were targeting superheroes. David watched the news with his hands clasped together, his expression stoic and unsurprised. Aisha stared intently, her face scrunching up with every word out of Fox's mouth.

Vidya stood up and began pacing, completely blindsided. She'd heard about Fairy and Achilles, and although she was sad about it, she didn't know them. But Fade? She'd met Fade, she'd talked to her, and now Fade was gone.

David tilted his head, watching her walk back and forth. "You didn't know?"

"No." Vidya blinked. If Fox was revealing it now, she must've known a little while beforehand, right? So did the other Marvels already know? Was that why Flamethrower was upset?

"I'm sorry," Vidya said, looking at Aisha. "I know she was your friend."

Aisha shrugged, her jaw set. "Shit happens," she said, nonchalantly turning away from the laptop to stare at nothing. Grief hid behind the calm.

Vidya kept pacing, thinking about how she never got to learn what Talia was like when she wasn't acting rightfully jealous. Any chance of them becoming friends was long, long gone.

"Holy crap!" David exclaimed. He was still watching the broadcast, eyes wide. "Speed's dead!"

Aisha's head snapped back to the laptop, and Vidya rushed behind the couch to watch the news over their heads. This was coming from the LAPD, not from Fox: a neighbor called, reporting suspicious noises coming from Speed's apartment, and when the police got there, he was dead. No further details were being disclosed at the time, but the scene was apparently harrowing.

"Holy crap," David repeated, sinking against the couch.

Aisha turned off the laptop. "It's so weird." She shook her head. "Achilles and Fairy were one thing, but an A-lister like Fade, and now Speed, who doesn't even work for Celestro?"

"That means everyone is in danger," David murmured slowly.

"Ha." Aisha snorted. "I guess everyone has to stop making fun of Celestro for being a bunch of weakasses." She looked at Vidya. "No offense."

"None taken."

"But it will be fine, won't it?" David asked. "I'm sure Celestro and the Marvels are bending over backwards to figure this out."

Both of them looked at Vidya. Feeling put on the spot, she waved her hand dismissively. "Of course they are."

And while she truly believed that they were contorting themselves and doing everything possible to solve the case, Vidya also knew Celestro too well to think that they were doing it only out of the kindness of their hearts. It may be a matter of compassion for their dead heroes, but it was also a matter of pride—no one messed with Celestro and got away with it.

No. One.

Aisha stretched out on the couch and then jumped to her feet with a resounding clap of her hands. "Alright. Forget the overhanging threat. There's an easy job tonight, if you're all up for it."

"Define easy," David said warily.

"Just a couple of non-super fellas planning to steal a car." Aisha shrugged. "No biggie. How about we go and stop them?"

David thought about it for a moment, clearly not entirely over the news of Fade's and Speed's deaths, but he finally nodded. Then he and Aisha turned to Vidya.

Vidya hesitated before answering, thinking about what Juggernaut had said. But as she analyzed it, word for word...she eased up because he hadn't been too annoyed. Frostbite being seen working with a team that wasn't the Marvels would look bad—that was all he cared about. She doubted it mattered to him if she did things with David and Aisha unnoticed, which seemed to be their preferred style, anyway.

And besides, Aisha needed a distraction. She was grinning like a demon, but her eyes were watery, and her fists were clenched a little too tightly. Fade was her friend, and she was dead. Aisha needed this mission to cheer herself up, and Vidya would be there for her.

So she nodded. "Let's go."

_____________________

Phase knocked on the door and waited. He could hear the quiet mumbling of the antique bookstore owner above as he ransacked the shelves looking for something and the sound of things hitting the floor, but he couldn't hear anything coming from the room in front of him, the one that sat under the bookstore. Maybe River wasn't here, or she wasn't in the mood for guests.

But the door opened, if only halfway. River stood with a sharp letter opener in her hand, ready to stab with it in case an enemy had come to visit. "If it ain't the new guy," she said.

It was the same greeting as always. River was a former Celestro employee who'd left the company a few months before Phase joined the Marvels, so to her, he was always 'the new guy'. It didn't seem to matter that he'd come here at least twenty times in the past year.

"Not anymore," he said, going inside. "There's a new one."

"Oh, that's right." She shut the door behind him and stood with her back against it. "Miss Vidya Khan."

Phase looked at her sharply. "How do you know that? Her name's supposed to be kept secret."

"I'm the informant. I'm told everything." She put down her letter opener with a wink. "I know more about your team than you do."

He didn't doubt that.

Her office was small, but it wasn't like she had many 'clients', and it wasn't like there was ever more than one other person here, so it was more cozy than cramped. Phase sat down in the chair in front of her desk, his usual spot, and tapped his fingers along the armrests.

River stood behind her desk, taking off her glasses. "To what do I owe this impromptu visit?"

"Talia's dead."

She barely reacted. "I heard."

"It's possible that she died in the warehouse, so it looks like someone tried to frame Flamethrower."

"I heard."

"You're the one who told dispatch about the warehouse." Phase paused, trying not to sound accusing. "Did you know Talia was there?"

River slowly sat down in her chair, her aging knees audibly cracking as she did so. "I did not."

He blinked. "Then why did you insist the Marvels check on it? Juggernaut only sent us because you said it was important."

She went silent. For the first time, it looked like the grand informant—the one who knew everything, who catered mostly to Celestro but also to anyone who asked and who was worth anything—was missing something.

"The information was that there was a smuggling operation," she said finally. "Typical, I thought at first, but there were rumors that the product was Celestro's super-steroid, or at least a version of it. Something like that is worth careful attention."

"We didn't find any signs of that," he said. What Flamethrower found upstairs was a few crates of regular illegal drugs. Nothing noteworthy.

"Then the tip was wrong. Or it was all a set up to make me get the Marvels to the warehouse."

"So do you know anything, at all, about the murders?"

"Not a clue," she said tightly. River didn't like not knowing things.

Phase rubbed his face. They were still at square one: four deaths, no clues, no theories. Then again, if there were any theories, he doubted he'd be told. It was like River said: she knew more than he did. Things were that way for a reason, and although it might just be because he was still fairly new, it was also because Celestro had a very tight circle of trust. Knowing who was even in that circle was a mystery itself.

"Still optimistic about heroism, are you?" River asked suddenly.

Phase tried not to leave immediately. Everyone treated him like this, used this same, condescending tone. If he'd known that being a decent person made him unusual—and made fun of—in the hero community, he never would've joined. He didn't say anything and just calmly kept eye contact.

"How's Frostbite?' she asked, switching gears. "What's she like?"

"She's kind. Genuinely likes being a hero."

"Then you've done her a great disservice."

Phase closed his eyes. Somehow, someway, there was always a jab.

"The nice thing for you to have done," she continued, "since you're such a nice person, would have been to tell her to not take the job. To quit."

"She'll be fine."

"Oh." River laughed. "I'm sure she will." She stood up, flapping her hands with another laugh. "I can't believe you haven't gotten yourself killed yet."

Phase silently tapped his fingers along the armrests.

"I don't understand you," River scoffed, turning to face the wall behind her desk. "I don't understand how anyone can still believe that heroism means anything, or that there's any good in the world."

"There is."

River turned around sharply, excited by the challenge. "Is that so? Then let me break your spirit. Did you know there's a supremacist group that believes superpowers are a God-given gift, and they don't understand why God would give inferior people these gifts? Do you know how much it bothers them that half of the current Marvels are people of color? Or how about the cult in Missouri that recruits child supers for their own agenda? Or how about the secret groups of supposed heroes who actually—" She abruptly stopped, as if deciding he wasn't worth the effort, and simply smiled.

"Are you done?" Phase asked flatly.

"For today."

"I'm not an idiot," he said, shaking his head. "I know it's all a well-hidden dumpster fire. But despite that, I'm trying my best to do it right. Why does everyone give me shit for that? The only people who don't mock me are Juggernaut and Frostbite."

River's face scrunched in confusion. "What about Lady Marvel? I thought she was sensible."

"She doesn't talk to me." Besides accepting his offer of a sandwich the day Fox brought in Vidya, he couldn't remember a single conversation with Lady Marvel. Or even eye contact. It was fine. He didn't understand it, but it was fine.

"You wonder why everyone hates you," River said slowly, eyes up to the ceiling. "It's because you hold yourself to a standard they turned their backs on, or one they can't achieve. You're a reminder of what they were supposed to be." She looked at him and shrugged. "Or maybe they just find you incredibly annoying."

The last part sounded about right. Phase managed a small laugh, but it was strained. He went quiet, staring at the floor in thought. "Do you think things will ever get better?"

She scoffed. "I worked for Celestro for more than two decades, and in my experience, things always get worse."

Phase nodded. He knew River wasn't optimistic, and he'd expected nothing less than the bleak answer she'd given. He stood to go, running through the conversation in his head, and then he turned around sharply.

"Celestro's only been around for sixteen years," he said. "How could you have worked for them for more than two decades?"

River took a deep breath, her mouth curling into that wolfish smile again. "Like I said. I know more than you do. A lot more."

Phase stared at her, thrown off guard. But there was nothing else to say, not when he knew she wouldn't respond, so he left.