WHEN THE BUILDING was considered stable, a team went inside and found explosives lining the support pillars of the underground levels. They never detonated, thanks to a certain someone jumping out of a window to stop them. I didn't know if it made me feel better, that shutting down the countdown hadn't been pointless, or worse, because Lex's threat was real and not just a joke.

My arm wasn't broken, just very cut up. All the random stitches of different shapes and sizes made it look like part of Frankenstein's monster. Call me morbid, but I thought it looked kind of cool. Mom didn't feel the same way. She freaked out when she saw it and probably wouldn't stop freaking out until the cuts were healed, which could take a while.

I poked my head out of my bedroom door. I could hear her shuffling around in the kitchen, opening and closing the cabinets with more force than usual. Normally, she'd be humming to herself; sometimes it was an actual song, but most of the time it was a catchy ad jingle. Today there was nothing.

I swallowed, calculating the risk. If I made a run for it and left for school, she wouldn't be able to catch me, but she'd be waiting for me to come home with her arms crossed and an eyebrow raised and a lecture prepared. The entire school day would be spent in dread of that moment, and I couldn't handle it.

And then there was Option B: eat breakfast and talk about it. There was at least a fifty-percent chance she'd let me go, but not after trying to convince me to stay.

I walked out quietly and sat down at the table, putting my backpack underneath the chair so it wouldn't be the first thing she saw. I tugged a bowl and a cereal box toward me, and she turned around, her eyes narrowing.

"Is there a backpack under your chair?"

I blinked. "Um..."

"Seriously?" She shook her head. "You're not going to school today. I think you can afford a day off."

"I can't," I said, too aware that I sounded like a whiny five-year-old. "I missed the movie yesterday, and missing school today would make it look even more suspicious."

"To who, Peter? Who would get suspicious?" She waved around a piece of toast incredulously. "Ben already knows, and there's no one remotely close to finding out." She paused just before taking a bite. "Is there?"

I poured cereal into my bowl, nervously tapping the edges of the box. "Dana."

"Dana? Really? How?"

"There was that time I snuck out of her house and acted all weird about it. And she saw me with Kavanagh one day, too."

"Oh." She frowned and nudged the milk toward me.

"There's no way she's close to the truth, but she's suspecting something," I said.

"Suspecting something isn't the same as suspecting the truth, though," Mom said, handing me a spoon. "What did Kavanagh say?"

"He didn't say anything. I think he wants me to decide."

Mom sighed and rubbed her temples, getting butter on the edges of her eyebrows. "Are you sure you're well enough to go?"

I perked up. "Is that your way of saying that I have your permission?"

"Peter. Answer the question."

I nodded and spooned my breakfast into my mouth as fast as I could. I'd already missed the bus and couldn't afford to be late. "I feel fine."

"Alright." She sighed again. "Then yes, you have my permission."

☆

I pulled my sleeves over my hands, trying to ignore the weird looks my classmates were giving me. Our school-issued gym uniform was a bright-green, half-sleeved shirt that said Wilson Terriers in tacky, bold print. Since my monster arm made wearing short sleeves a problem, I'd worn a school sweatshirt instead. Same bright green, same tacky print. But for whatever reason, that was what the kids were irked about instead of the fact that we were stuck sitting on the gym floor listening to a guest speaker talk about finances.

That painfully boring lecture was the longest hour of my life, and the speaker's voice droned on in my head while the academic team sat together in the library for lunch. Equity. Retirement Plan. Advisor. As annoying as it was, it was better than the other thoughts buried in the back of my mind. I let the team down. That was the statement that fluttered in between financial advice.

When I'd tried to apologize to Fei about missing the movie, she dismissed me with a wave of her hand and a shake of her head, assuring me that it was okay. But now she was stabbing her salad hard enough to bend the tines of her fork, and I knew she was still mad. Still, I knew Fei well, and I knew that she didn't hold grudges. Hopefully, this would be no exception.

The conversation inevitably turned over to Lex. David, the new sophomore, was emphatically waving his fork in the air as he talked. "I mean, he's from Chicago. Said it himself. Probably some mob guy."

"Why would a mob guy want to take down a building in New York?" Ayomikun said, leaning back in her chair to get away from his fork. "That's just dumb."

"Who cares?" I asked, hoping I sounded as nonchalant as I was trying to be. My cuts, which hadn't hurt all morning, now flared up in pain. "It's not our problem."

Kevin raised an eyebrow. "Uh, he shut down Manhattan. Maybe he'll shut down Queens, too."

"No one cares about Queens," Ben said, shaking his head. "Do you ever see those travel websites promoting Queens? Most people don't even know that New York City has four other boroughs. Manhattan's the only one flashy enough to get attention."

I knew that he was trying to nudge the conversation in another direction, but it wouldn't work, and we both knew it. Who would rather talk about travel websites than a flashy new supervillain? Still, I appreciated the effort, and I gently kicked his foot under the table to let him know that I was thankful.

"It's all Red's fault," Fei said, sounding exasperated. "I love the guy, but did he really think it was a good idea to show up in Chicago?"

My throat went dry. Yes. He did.

Kevin frowned. "I guess that's true."

"It was pretty dumb," David said, nodding. He glanced at me. This was the first time we'd met, and I could tell he was trying to form a friendship. "What do you think?" he asked, and the genuine curiosity in his eyes was so innocent, it hurt.

"Yeah," I said quietly, rubbing my left arm and feeling the bumpy stitches. "It was incredibly stupid."

☆

"I'm sorry."

"It's okay," I said as I pulled books out of my locker, but I didn't look up. "They're right."

Ben shuffled his feet uncomfortably, running his thumbs up and down the straps of his backpack. "It's just...I know that it hurt. And I'm sorry about that."

"It's okay," I repeated, mumbling this time.

The dismissal bell had rung two minutes ago, and the hallways were already empty. The team had practice today, and everybody was already upstairs in the library, waiting, but I took my time transferring things between my locker and my backpack. I needed a little more time to cheer up before facing my friends again. I wasn't really that upset. Just embarrassed. I knew I'd screwed up, but hearing it from someone else's mouth affected me more than I wanted to admit.

And I knew it would only get worse in the coming days. The news outlets were already buzzing about Lex, but soon they would wheedle enough information out of the city administration, and then they'd start talking about how Red stupidly stopped a robbery in Illinois and brought Lex here.

I slammed my locker door shut when my phone buzzed. Kavanagh had texted me an address. 26 Federal Plaza, New York, NY—also known as the FBI's New York office. I leaned against my locker, sliding further and further down onto the floor as I read the rest of the text. I was to go there immediately after school, and they expected me to start heading there right now. Unless I was dying or saving someone, there was no valid excuse for me not to go.

"Something wrong?" Ben asked. "You just melted onto the floor."

I shoved my phone back into my pocket and stood up, every movement sluggish. "I can't go to practice today."

"That's okay."

"Fei's going to be livid."

"It's still okay." Ben put a hand on my shoulder before backing down the hallway. "Good luck with...whatever it is that you're doing."

I watched him head into the staircase, and once the door had closed behind him, I left, wondering why he wasn't sick of me yet.

It took me a good twenty minutes to get to Federal Plaza, and another five minutes to convince the agent standing outside that I wasn't just a punk kid trying to pull a prank. He let me in once I mentioned Kavanagh, but even then, he eyed me warily as I went through the doors. The receptionist handed me a guest badge with this year's school photo on it and told me to go to the sixth floor, Office C.

In the elevator, I took a deep breath and shook my hands to relieve some tension. Even though the FBI was responsible for overseeing me, I'd never been called to their building. In-person meetings with Kavanagh were wherever he decided to show up. Never in an office in a building as high-security as this. This was serious, and I suddenly wished that I wasn't wearing sneakers that had Sharpie scribbles all over the edges.

I found Office C and put my ear to the door. Three voices: one was Jenny, one was Kavanagh, and I didn't recognize the third. I expected them to be cursing my name and the idiotic things I'd done, but they were just talking about coffee.

They all fell silent, and the third voice said, "I can see your feet under the door. Come in."

I stepped inside. Kavanagh was standing by the window and pulling down the blinds. Jenny was seated on an ottoman with her laptop closed on her lap, and she gave me a small smile. Standing in the middle of the room was a man I'd never seen before, staring at me.

"You're Red?" he asked.

"Yeah..." It came out more like a question than an answer.

He blinked and turned to Kavanagh. "When you said kid, I thought you were exaggerating, but this...this an actual kid!"

"I'm sixteen," I piped up. "And I'm more than capable of what I'm doing."

His eyes narrowed. "I wasn't questioning your capability. I was questioning our morality."

Kavanagh ignored that and flipped on the lights once the blinds were down. "Peter, this is Agent Hunter Nichols. He is investigating Lex in Chicago, and—"

"Was," Nichols interrupted. "I was investigating Lex in Chicago. And now," he paused to look me up and down. "I'm here."

I didn't know what to say. When I'd first met Kavanagh, he was probably annoyed that he'd been assigned to a teenager who'd gotten superpowers by accident. Even so, he'd made an effort to be calm and friendly and make me as comfortable with him as possible. Agent Nichols, however, looked and sounded like he wanted to strangle me, and he made no effort to hide it.

"So you're here to help me?" I asked.

"We're here to help each other." Nichols shoved his hands deep into his pockets and sat down on the armrest of a sofa. "Lex has been active for nearly a year. Random things—bank robberies, some mafia ties, the occasional thievery from a factory here and there. We haven't figured out what he's striving for, but apparently he's taken an interest in you."

It sounded like an accusation. Kavanagh glared at Nichols, and Nichols glared at Kavanagh. For my sake, I hoped they got along better than it seemed.

"So tell me what you know," Nichols said.

"I stopped a robbery in Chicago and got one of his henchmen caught. He told me he was angry about it, but he didn't tell me what the money was for or why it was so important. And he didn't say much in the building, either, about what the point of it all was."

"Hm." Nichols picked up his coffee cup from the table. "Fighting you can't be the only reason he's here."

"It's New York," Kavanagh said. "A great playground for illicit activities. Maybe he wanted a change of scenery and someone to fight. That could be reason enough."

Nichols nodded. He'd cooled off a little, thankfully. "Okay. Just tell me the details of your first encounter with Lex."

"Well..." I trailed off. It wasn't that long ago, but now that Nichols was staring at me expectantly, my mind went blank, and I grasped for the details in chronological order. "He threw a car at me. I think. I didn't actually see him throw it."

"And?"

"And...he threw a fake grenade. Told me that I messed with his plans in Chicago, so he decided to come here and see how well I would do protecting New York. And he vanished. Oh, and he took off his mask, too, which was kind of surprising—"

Nichols spit out his coffee. "He showed you his face?"

"You...haven't seen his face?" I asked.

"He never takes his mask off. If we had his face on camera, we would've found his real identity by now."

"My mask..." Another detail of that night floated by, and I quickly shrugged off my backpack and threw things out as I looked for my suit, which was buried at the bottom. "I recorded that encounter. His face should be on the video."

Jenny sprang up, opening her laptop. She plugged in my suit and started running through the files, looking for the recording of that night. I regretted that I hadn't recorded the encounter in the building, too, though I wasn't sure I even could have, considering that most of my suit wasn't there. The building's cameras had been disabled before the explosions, too, so that option was out.

Nichols didn't get up to look. He swirled his cup around, and I could tell that we were thinking the same thing. If Lex was so careful not to show his face in Chicago...then why show it to me? Was it possible that he'd made a mistake?

Jenny clicked on a file, and static filled the screen. She frowned.

"I swear I recorded it," I said.

"You did," she murmured, pulling up the file data. "The recording is definitely there."

I stood in silence. The anticipation in the air hung heavy, and I felt like whatever was coming next, it wasn't good.

Jenny inhaled sharply and turned around to face me. "Your suit did start recording, but it experienced interference that changed the video feed to static."

"Interference from...Lex?"

Jenny nodded grimly. "I didn't think that was possible, but I guess he's smarter than we thought. I'll have to add in some safeguards."

"He messed with my suit," I said, stunned. "And I didn't even notice."

"It's not your fault," Kavanagh said. "You tried to record it."

"He messed with my suit," I repeated, shaking my head. "He could've done so much more damage if he wanted to. He could've taken off my mask when I was under the pillar."

"Lex likes to play games," Nichols said. "He's careful and powerful. There's so much we don't know about him, including whether or not he even has superpowers."

I raised an eyebrow. "He vanished."

"That could be technology," Jenny said. "There's no way to know for sure unless we catch him."

I sat down. "So where does that leave us?"

"You continue with your regular superhero activities," Nichols said. "Jenny said she'd work on your suit. Kavanagh and I will..."

"We'll get to that later," Kavanagh said. "For now, that's all. You should go home and take it easy tonight. You need a break."

I bit the inside of my cheek, my skin buzzing. My identity could've been revealed. My suit had been messed with. A building almost went down. Taking down Lex was going to take work, and I was anxious and ready and angry.

He liked to play games? Fine. This city was my playground, and I was going to win this challenge.

So, how do we feel about Nichols? About Lex messing with Peter's suit?

Any predictions?