Stick to the Boardwalk.

My mind kept returning to that phrase, spoken in my mom's voice. It wasn't some sage lesson, just something she'd occasionally tell when I was younger. Over the years it'd become a rule, and it was one I'd never broken.

Until now, I thought, as my feet took me away from the Boardwalk. Into the city, breaking the rules.

Considering it was still broad daylight, and that I'd taken the bus for most of my journey, it felt pretty pathetic that my brain was making such a big deal out of this. Just nerves. I palmed the can of pepper spray in my coat's pocket, pulled up my scarf. It protected half my face from the February winds, as well as potential onlookers. I was more concerned with the latter.

I wasn't a cape. I didn't have a costume. But today, I'd find my power, and that meant I couldn't be recognized.

At least, I thought it was my power, the feeling that was currently pointing me at the northern part of the Docks. If it wasn't my power... no, I'd stressed over that possibility plenty already. I was committed now. Whatever it was, I needed to know what it kept going into the Docks for. I wasn't sure what my worst case scenario was, but ever since it'd appeared in my head two weeks ago, more than a few scary ideas had come to mind. Was my power hurting people?

I hadn't heard of any trouble, and my dad hadn't brought up anything. Nothing out of the ordinary had happened to me either, unless I counted Sophia sending some boys after me to duct tape me to a telephone pole, which I didn't. I was having some weird dreams, dreams that slipped away as soon as I woke up, but I wasn't sure if that was relevant, or even when they'd started.

Insects and spiders. White doors and gold light. Weird how those last two were the nightmares.

In any case, I needed to investigate, and skipping afternoon classes to do it during daylight felt like a good compromise between necessity and self-preservation. I'd started exercising last week, and while I wasn't fit, I could at least avoid tripping like some horror movie victim. Wrapped in my heavy coat, I walked on.

I'd read up on things over the last weeks, and I knew this wasn't how powers normally worked – as much as there could be anything normal about powers anyways. It was supposed to be instinctive. I did have some intuition about my power, it was just that the controls I felt didn't seem to control anything.

What I could do was spread an energy between four... options? No, a little more personal than that. Presences maybe. I didn't know what they were, and I struggled to even describe the difference. Distinct but overlapping, separated by a distance that I wanted to call time, but not time in any unit or direction I could visualize. I could invest energy into one, or multiple, or none, but every combination I'd tested gave me a variation of nothing. The most I got was when I focused on one, which let me know where it was. But even then, nothing happened. There was nothing to see, or hear, or feel.

The first presence – first because it felt the youngest – usually stayed close to me, not doing anything. It felt light, unburdened, though fragile.

The second was... older, bigger, frustrated, and the most active. It went into the Docks whenever I let it, and I got the sense it was doing something there. Confirming that was my goal for today.

The third was sharp, though sad. It usually stayed around me like the first, though once, I'd woken up in the middle of the night and sensed it halfway across the city. I'd stopped giving it free rein after that, but I couldn't be sure how often I'd missed it. Frankly, I was more concerned with the third than anything, but unlike the second, it wasn't consistent enough to investigate.

There was a fourth. I hadn't experimented with it. It said enough that I'd rather chase the second presence into ABB territory than test the fourth in the safety of my home. It felt wrong, like it would cost me something. Something I couldn't take back.

The state of the city got worse with each block I passed. The buildings were in noticeable disrepair, and the people on the street got progressively more drunk or drugged, or more dangerous. I had to skip a street to avoid a group in red and green.

Gradually, the city became quieter, the streets emptier. Was that normal? These parts were neglected by the city – I doubted the surroundings buildings even had power – but this shouldn't have been one of the completely deserted neighborhoods. Shouldn't there be some cars around? People?

It was hard to tell if my worries were warranted. Anxiety had been my life for over a year now, and over the last few weeks, it'd noticed that constant worry colored my thoughts on pretty much everything. I didn't think I was wrong... but I'd come this far.

My objective was inside, no, on top of a two-story building. I circled around into an alley and found a fire escape that led right up to the rooftop I needed. Suspiciously convenient. Unless whatever I was chasing couldn't fly either.

I hesitated as I climbed. What did I hope – or fear – to find? The presence felt more solid now than before, so I should at least see something. It shouldn't hide. If it was going to go that far to avoid me, it could've easily fled. I climbed the final steps.

It didn't hide. She didn't.

The woman stood at the center of the rooftop, tall, her back straight, facing at an angle away from me. She wore a costume in mottled blacks and grays – a hood, a cape-shawl and a ragged semi-dress, with some kind of suit underneath, armored with edged panels. Soft cloth hiding sharp edges.

She turned when the rooftop gravel crunched beneath my feet, her movement too calm to suggest I'd surprised her. Her hood concealed her face in unnatural shadow, completely opaque. Some kind of effect?

I opened my mouth, searched for words, came up empty. What was I supposed to say, or do? I'd set out to find the something on the other end of my power, and I'd found a someoneinstead. What was she? Had my power made her? Or had it connected to someone who already existed? I didn't recognize her, but she did seem like the kind of cape who didn't want to be seen.

'Are you my power?' almost escaped my mouth, but if she could return an intelligent answer, she was obviously more than just a power. A person. And if I had as little control over my power as I was starting to fear, I didn't want to be rude.

She broke the silence first. "This isn't a safe neighborhood. Why did you come?"

"I... was curious," I ventured. It seemed neutral enough. "And I had to know what you were doing. If it wasn't something—"

"Criminal?"

"Dangerous."

"You thought I might be dangerous, so you made it a reason to seek me out." Her voice wasn't mocking, but I could definitely hear a raised eyebrow.

"That's not—" I cut myself off. "I didn't – don't – think you're dangerous to me."

"Right." She turned away, gaze aimed in the direction of a distant building, a tower of some kind. "And? I can guess what you were afraid to find. What did you hope for?"

An eerie echo of the question I'd asked myself a minute ago. I hadn't had an answer, then. Or perhaps I'd thought finding anything would be good enough? I shook my head. "I'm not sure."

She kept quiet for a few long moments. "I'll be honest on your behalf, then. You came here to find something that was yours, because that feeling inside your head has become something you look forward to. It's why you signed up for first aid classes, why you started exercising. I won't call it hope, but it's been something to focus on, distract yourself with. A promise of power and an escape to work toward."

She knows me. That thought occurred to me before any thoughts of denial, even if I couldn't find myself in her words completely. I considered things, weighed my response. "Okay. Maybe that's fair. But you could've been hurting people. Maybe I should've done something else, but I wasn't lying."

"You weren't. It wouldn't feel that way. That's how rationalization works." Her words stung, a dismissal from someone I'd presumed to be on my side. But her voice was more resigned than anything. Sad, even. "You came to find out what I was doing. Okay. The tower I'm looking at – it's an old tourist shop, now occupied by Merchants. Skidmark is parceling out heroin to his dealers."

Drugs. Goosebumps rose on my arms, unrelated to the cold. Drugs had always spooked me. Going to school at Winslow, I'd seen enough classmates stop coming to school because of them, either directly, or because they got caught up in their parents' addiction. More than the immediate anxiety addicts gave me, drugs struck me as black holes of fucked-up-ness, sucking in the addict and anyone close by. Was she here to stop it?

My power pointed in another direction, arm unwavering, small claws on her fingertips. "Lung, currently showing his face in an ABB office. One of seven I've found."

More directions followed.

"Oni Lee, sharpening his knives. Lives above a grocer."

"Three of four Undersiders, in the loft of an old welding factory."

"Trainwreck, skulking around the trainyards. Less destitute than he'd want you to believe."

"Über and Leet. Playing games."

"Squealer's workshop."

"Independents you couldn't have heard of. Independents I'd never heard of until a week ago."

"Hundreds of unpowered criminals working for the Merchants or the ABB, some desperate, some depraved."

Did she intend to scare me, illustrate how I was surrounded by villains, that I'd been stupid to come here? No. Her report was too matter-of-fact, like finding the locations of half the town's villains was utterly trivial, instead of information the Protectorate would respect and thank her for.

That spooked me in an entirely different way.

"Are you going to arrest them?" Or scouting out the competition?

That too-dark hood faced me once more. "No. I stop what I can't leave alone, but capes are chain reactions waiting to happen. I take out the ABB, the Empire expands into the Docks instead. That's a problem to Coil, and he might do something drastic to prevent the Empire from getting a foothold. I need to be in a position to mitigate the damage when I start making big moves."

When, not if. How far ahead was she looking? And how did she know this city so well? It shouldn't have been more than two weeks since she started existing, and I hadn't even activated her every day. Were the four presences one and the same? Four versions of one? That felt right and wrong at the same time.

"Some of the smaller parties are employed by Coil, and I can't afford to provoke him yet," she continued. "The others... I could remove them without collateral damage, maybe, but even if I do, they'll be replaced. So long as there's money to be made, desperate people to work for villains, there will be gangs."

"I... I'm not sure I believe that." Or maybe I just didn't want to believe it. It felt... defeatist, just accepting the state of the city as a given. "Can't the heroes—"

"They can't. Won't. They're an institution too hindered by asinine bureaucracy and image, too attached to a status quo that's little more than an illusion at this point. A balance that lets the ABB conscript fucking middle schoolers into prostitution." For all the fury communicated through my power, her voice was almost even, her body didn't tremble, she didn't ball a fist. "The heroes can't even keep gang violence out of downtown. They won't spare time for the Docks. You know the city neglects the area."

I knew. I remembered it clearly – my dad on the phone with the mayor's office, his revival projects being canceled, layoffs instead of promised jobs. The first time I saw him lose his temper.

"I could though. Remove them." She stared at her open palm, seeing something I couldn't. "I could get rid of the drugs, the prostitution, the sex slavery, the conscription. The fear. And I could keep getting rid of it."

"You'd fix the city?" My voice wavered. I had a sense of where this conversation was going. She could. Not she will.

"It can't be fixed. Fixing doesn't work. But as I am, I have enough power for positive change. And I think you know why I haven't already started."

Because of me. I couldn't work the words past the lump in my throat. Because she only exists when Ilet her.

I felt constricted, hollow, like my heart had left my body. And it was that crushing disappointment that let me admit it. I'd come out here to become a hero. To find my power, learn what it was, see if I could use it. Selfishness wrapped in good intentions.

I'd found my power. And all she wants from me is to stay out of her business.

It was so fucking unfair. I'd made preparations, hoping something would go my way for once in my life. Like an idiot, I'd dreamed about finding a way to maybe invest my energy in myself, like Dauntless, and give myself the ability to fly, to be powerful. To be someone who mattered.

Instead, my power had given me a slave. And I couldn't even blame her for wanting to be free.