There is a special sort of exhaustion that comes from doing something good and finding that it has cost you a bearer.
He counted the saucers in the sock at two a.m. Five left. The gravy boat had gone entirely, a small drift of white dust at the bottom, and the teacup with the lipstick stain had a hairline fracture of its own. He sat on the edge of the tub with the sock in his lap and thought: I have about a dozen more rescues in me, and then I'll need to raid a thrift store.
The absurdity of it cheered him a little. It didn't help him sleep.
He gave up at four. He put on a hooded sweatshirt and a pair of Owen's oldest jeans, took the fire escape up to the roof, and sat with his back against the chimney, in the pale gray, pre-dawn quiet, listening to the city think.
Jackson Heights from above was another country. The building rooftops ran together in a long uneven plain: water tanks, satellite dishes, rusted antennae, clotheslines strung between chimneys. Someone had put a lawn chair up here and abandoned it. Someone else had planted tomatoes in a row of paint buckets. Far off, the towers of Manhattan stood in a haze of gold and gray, and closer, the elevated tracks of the 7 glittered like a scar.
He let the sense drift out, gently, gingerly, a breath at a time. It felt good to use it without a crisis. Eleven meters. Fourteen. Sixteen, and then, with a small, careful push, eighteen, across the roof, over the edge, into the street below. He felt a stray cat on a fire escape. He felt a delivery truck rumbling toward its route. He felt, on the next roof over, forty feet away, something that he had not felt before.
It was not a person, or a car, or an animal. It was a movement, a small, quick, weightless thing that flitted along the edge of a building like a bird. It came to a stop on a chimney. It crouched.
Dev opened his eyes.
Across the gap, on the roof of the building next door, a figure in red and blue sat balanced on the top of a brick chimney with one knee drawn up, looking at nothing in particular. It was small, lean, sharp-edged, and wearing a full-face mask with white eyes. From here it looked like a piece of the sunrise.
Oh, Dev thought.
Oh, come on.
He'd meant to be calm about this. He'd meant, when it eventually happened, to nod and say something dignified and forget it had happened. What actually came out of his mouth was a strangled little sound that he was fairly sure was the beginning of a shriek.
The masked figure's head turned.
"Uh," said a young voice, across the gap. "Hi?"
"Hi," said Dev.
"Sorry. I didn't think anyone was up here." A pause. "It's, like, four in the morning."
"It's four-thirty."
"Right. Wow. That's earlier than I thought."
They regarded each other. A pigeon landed on the gutter between them, examined the situation, and left.
"Are you okay?" the kid said. "You kind of screamed."
"I didn't scream. It was a cough."
"It sounded like a scream."
"It was a dignified scream."
"Okay." The kid seemed to weigh this. "I'll allow it."
The kid crossed the gap in a single leap, not swinging, just going, the way a cat goes from a chair to a shelf, and landed lightly on the edge of Dev's roof with one gloved hand on the parapet. He crouched there, balanced on his toes, an impossible economy of motion, and looked at Dev with the blank white eyes of the mask.
"You're the guy from the warehouse," he said.
Dev's stomach dropped. "What?"
"Second Street. Last night. I got there like a minute after you left." The mask tilted. "There were three people sitting in the alley telling the firefighters about a guy in glasses who said he was an adjuster. They said you were a hero, and that you disappeared."
"I'm not a hero. I'm just—"
"An adjuster," the kid said. "Yeah, they said. That's a weird cover story."
"It's not a cover story. It's my job."
"Okay." A pause. "That's even weirder."
Dev choked on a laugh. It set off a cough. The kid, to his credit, waited politely for it to finish.
"You should drink water," the kid observed. "You sound like a chimney."
"I've been told."
"I'm not trying to be rude. It's just, there was a lot of smoke and, like..." He gestured at the air. "It's not good for you."
"It wasn't good for anybody."
"Right." The kid was quiet for a moment. When he spoke again, his voice had lost some of its lightness. "Somebody cut the latch on that door."
"I noticed."
"The FDNY guys said it was a cut. They found the bar. But it wasn't broken when they got there." The mask turned toward Dev, unblinking. "It was fixed. Like, perfect. Not a scratch on it."
Oh no.
"Someone must have repaired it," Dev said, with all the innocence he could scrape together. "Before the fire started."
"They said it was cut, like, that night."
"A bad batch of steel."
"Uh-huh." The kid sounded delighted. "You are a terrible liar. It's amazing."
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"I keep hearing that."
"I like it. It's honest." He sat down on the parapet, feet dangling over the edge, entirely unbothered by the four-story drop. "I'm not going to ask. I've got, like, a rule. If somebody does something good and doesn't want a thing said about it, I don't say the thing."
"That's a good rule."
"Yeah, it's from a guy I know." A beat. "Who's dead. So, y'know. Living by it."
There was a small, weighted silence, in which Dev understood something he had known all along in a comic-book way and had never understood in any other.
He's a kid, he thought. He's about seventeen. He's wearing a mask, and he's sitting on a ledge at four in the morning, and he's alone.
"I'm sorry," he said.
"It's okay. It's a long story." The kid turned his head. "Anyway. I was following that van. The gray one. The M-with-a-line."
"You saw it?"
"It's not the first time. It's been at, like, four fires in Queens since June. Every time, it's parked around the corner before the alarm goes off. I've been trying to get a plate, a name, anything. But the guys who drive it are super careful. And Damage Control has them on some kind of list. They're, like, cleared."
"Preferred vendor," Dev said.
"What?"
"It's an insurance term. Never mind." He rubbed his eyes. "I've been tracking them too. On paper. Their arrival times don't match the incident times. I think they know."
"You think they start them."
"I don't know. I can't prove it."
"Right." The kid was quiet. Then, more softly, "I'm not sure I can either. Nobody believes me. The cops say I'm a menace, the Bugle's convinced I'm in on it, and every time I get close to something, it just—" He made a small, frustrated gesture, like a ball vanishing. "Poof. Gone."
Dev looked at the small, tense line of his shoulders. He looked at the gaps in the suit, the frayed cuff, the patch on one knee. He noticed for the first time that the kid's hands were shaking a little. Not from cold.
NOTICE. URGENCY: LOW. DISTANCE: 3 M.
He blinked.
He's hungry, said the thread, in the sure, uninformative way of a compass. He's really hungry.
He had the bag of leftovers. He'd forgotten. It was in his sweatshirt pocket, where he'd stuffed it Sunday night, a crushed foil bundle that had accompanied him to work twice and never made it to the fridge. He pulled it out and unwrapped it. Inside was Carol Calloway's last remaining pair of almond cookies, slightly squashed, sugar-dusted, and smelling absurdly of home.
"Here."
The kid stared at it. "What is it?"
"Cookies. My mother made them. I've been carrying them around for two days."
"That's... really nice, but I can't just—"
"You can. I'm bad at eating. Someone should."
There was a pause. The white eyes of the mask were unreadable. Then, quietly, the kid said, "You don't have to."
"I know."
He took one. He lifted the bottom edge of the mask with a gloved hand, up to his nose, and bit into it with the fierce, unselfconscious gratitude of the very young. His shoulders dropped.
"Oh my god," he said, through a mouthful. "Oh my god."
"Good?"
"This is the best thing that's happened to me all week." He swallowed. "That's not a joke. I've had, like, a week."
"I believe you."
"My aunt makes these," the kid said, more quietly. "Kind of. Not the same. They're a different type of almond. But..." He stopped. "Sorry. I'm being weird."
"You're not being weird."
"I'm sitting on a roof eating a stranger's cookies."
"It's a good roof."
The kid laughed. It was a genuine one, quick and startled, and it went on a beat too long, as if he'd forgotten how. He finished the cookies in four bites and lowered the mask and sat there for a moment, swinging his heels, looking at the city.
"Thanks," he said. "Really."
"Any time."
The thing with the cable happened while he was leaving.
The sun had cleared the tops of the towers. The roof was gilded, warm, ordinary. The kid stood up, brushed the crumbs off his gloves, and gave a small two-fingered salute.
"I gotta go. I've got, uh, school." A beat. "I've got a lot of school."
"Good luck."
"You too. Be careful, okay? Those guys..." He trailed off. "Just, don't get in their way."
"You are."
"I have practice."
"You're a kid."
"I'm a kid with practice." He turned toward the edge of the roof. "And, y'know. Web-shooters."
He raised his wrist and fired. A thin white line snapped across the gap and stuck to a cable that ran between the two buildings, an old thick black television cable, sagging under the weight of ten years of neglect. He grabbed it, and swung.
The cable, unequal to the task, snapped.
It went with a dry, cracking twang and a small, tearful cry from the kid. Dev heard the sudden hard thwip of another line firing, and a scuffle on the far roof, and a very clear, very young voice saying "Ow." The end of the cable fell and hit the wall with a crash and lay there, thrashing like a severed snake, sparking faintly.
A very long silence followed.
"I'm okay," called the kid, from somewhere in the direction of a dumpster.
"Are you sure?"
"Yeah. I just—" A groan. "That cable wasn't rated for me. That's, like, the thing with cables."
"You broke someone's cable."
"I know. It's the third one this month. Somebody's going to lose their Wi-Fi and they're going to hate me."
Dev looked at the broken cable. It ran across the gap for maybe fifteen feet, a length he could hold in one hand if he spooled it up. He looked at the sock, the last five saucers in his pocket, the sore ridge of his wrist.
This is a stupid thing to spend a saucer on.
It's someone's cable.
He crossed the roof, and picked up the frayed end, and walked to the edge. The other half hung from the far parapet like a limp thread. He held the two ends together and closed his eyes and thought whole, with the peculiar, unhurried patience of a man threading a needle.
The cable hummed. The frayed copper ends reached for each other. They knit, twisting, in a fast pale flicker, and the black sheath closed over the seam like skin over a scar. When Dev opened his eyes, the cable stretched intact from one building to the other.
The wear came in his ankle, a stiff, sharp ache. He shoved his hand into the sock, and a saucer sighed to powder, and the ache faded.
He looked up. The kid was standing on the far roof, mask on, gloves at his sides, staring at him with an expression that couldn't possibly be read and could definitely be felt.
"Did you just," the kid said, "fix that?"
"No."
"You did. I saw. That was a cable. It was broken. And now it's not."
"Optical illusion."
"That's not a thing."
"It's a very good one."
The kid crossed the gap in a single leap. He landed in a crouch in front of Dev and stayed there, absolutely still. His head was tilted. His voice, when it came, was hushed. "Okay. I'm going to ask. I know I said I wouldn't. But I can't not. Are you a mutant?"
"I'm an insurance adjuster."
"That's not a power."
"You'd be surprised."
"Is it..." The kid searched for words. "Is it like a power? Like, do you have to be a mutant to be an adjuster?"
Dev stared at him for a moment. Then he began to laugh, helplessly, in the sunlight, leaning on the chimney with his hand pressed to his ribs.
"It's a very long story," he managed.
"I like long stories."
"Another time."
"Promise?"
"I'll try." He wiped his eyes. "What's your name?"
"I can't say."
"Right. Of course. Sorry."
"But," said the kid, "people call me—" He paused. He cleared his throat, and lowered his voice, with the gravity of a boy who has been rehearsing this in mirrors. "The friendly neighborhood one."
"That's very brave."
"It's a bit of a mouthful."
"It's fine. It suits you." Dev put out a hand. "I'm Owen."
The kid looked at it for a moment. He took it. His grip was firm, warm, and very slightly damp with nerves.
"Nice to meet you, Owen." A beat. "Thanks for the cookies. Tell your mom they're the best."
"I will."
He fired a line, and swung, and was gone.
Dev stood on the roof in the early sun with the cable humming softly overhead, a little stiff, a little sore, and feeling, absurdly, that he had just shaken hands with a piece of the future.
VERIFICATION COMPLETE.
BENEFICIAL ACT: SUSTENANCE PROVIDED TO A FATIGUED MINOR (UNSOLICITED).
COST TO CLAIMANT: PERSONAL PROPERTY, TIME.
MOTIVE: CLEAN.
MERIT AWARDED: +3.
MERIT: 125 / 100.
"Three," Dev said, out loud, to the empty sky. "For that."
THE LEDGER NOTES THAT THE MINOR IS CATEGORIZED UNDER THE TERMS AS A PERSON OF SIGNIFICANT FUTURE RISK.
THE LEDGER FURTHER NOTES THAT THIS DOES NOT AFFECT THE AWARD.
"Significant future risk?"
THE LEDGER DOES NOT CHARACTERIZE OTHER PERSONS.
"That's a bad answer."
IT IS THE ANSWER.
He shook his head and went to find breakfast.