The rest of the week passes in a blur of summer freedom and paranoia. School's out, which means I suddenly have way more free time than I know what to do with, especially since I'm technically still grounded from patrols. I divide my days between training with Multiplex (who apparently doesn't believe in summer vacation), hanging out at the Music Hall, and convincing myself that every car that drives by our house twice is Kingdom surveillance.

  I reach out to the Tacony Titans, just sort of informally - hey, guys, remember that warehouse explosion? That was us. We are now getting stalked by federal agents and trying to lay low. Please keep an eye on Mayfair. They agree to help pick up some of the slack, so that's been nice. And I still have to think about, ugh, the lease. The lease!

  When I'm not doing superhero-adjacent stuff (since I'm not allowed to do actual superhero stuff), I'm playing pickup basketball at the playground with some neighborhood kids, trying to pretend I'm a normal teenager whose biggest concern is whether Amber is dating Tyler now. (She is. They've been together for like a week, which in summer-before-junior-year time is practically an engagement.)

  At home, there's this weird tension with Kate as she and her father pack up their stuff. I help her box things up when I'm around, making the most awkward small talk imaginable about her plans for the new place.

  "So, you excited about the move?" I ask while taping up a box labeled 'KITCHEN'.

  "Yeah, it'll be great," she says, not meeting my eyes. "Shorter commute for Dad."

  We both know that's not why they're moving. We both know about the mysterious benefactor who paid off their debts. We both know she spends her nights prowling the city as Soot. But we don't talk about any of that. We just tape boxes and pretend this is normal.

  By the time Saturday rolls around, I'm almost eager to get back to Multiplex's brutal training regimen. At least there, the pain makes sense.

  "Again," Multiplex says, circling me on the mat. We're forty-five minutes into what he calls "conditioning" and what I call "that thing they banned under the Geneva Convention." My shirt is soaked completely through with sweat, my lungs burning with each breath, and my legs feeling like they're made of overcooked spaghetti.

  Finally, mercifully, he calls time on the warm-up. "Get your gear on," he says, already wrapping his hands with practiced efficiency. "Three-minute rounds, one-minute breaks. No mercy today."

  I nod, too winded to waste breath on a response. As I'm lacing up my gloves, I notice Crossroads and Fury Forge have paused their own workouts on the far side of the gym and are watching with quiet interest. Great. An audience. Because what this situation really needed was additional witnesses to my humiliation.

  "Ready?" Multiplex asks, stepping into the ring we've created with training mats.

  I nod, bringing my gloves up into a guard position, weight on the balls of my feet like he taught me.

  The timer beeps, and he comes right at me.

  Immediately, I can tell something's different. He's barely aiming for my head at all. Instead, he's targeting my torso, my shoulders, my ribs — methodically working over my body with precise shots that bypass my raised guard.

  I try the jaw-clenching technique that worked so well last time, locking my neck muscles and preparing to absorb head shots, but they never come. Instead, a quick left hook catches me in the floating rib, followed by a straight right to my solar plexus that nearly doubles me over.

  "Adaptation," he says, not even breathing hard as he continues his assault. "Last week you found a counter to my head shots. So I stopped throwing them."

  I try to circle away, but he cuts off my movement with perfect footwork, delivering another punishing body blow that makes my kidneys sing with pain. It's like getting hit with a medicine ball thrown by a major league pitcher.

  "Have you done literally any work this week?" he asks, slipping past my jab like it's moving in slow motion. "You brought me one trick last weekend, and I'm already past it."

  I don't answer, partly because I'm conserving energy and partly because talking would just give him something else to counter. I can feel my regeneration working overtime, healing the deep tissue bruising almost as fast as he can cause it, but the pain doesn't disappear — it just doesn't linger as long as it should.

  Halfway through the round, I manage to land a decent counter when he overcommits to a body hook, but it's one success amid a dozen failures. By the time the timer beeps for the end of the round, my entire torso feels like one giant bruise.

  "One minute rest," he says, walking to his corner. "Then we go again."

  I gulp water, trying to catch my breath. Across the gym, I can see Crossroads watching with his arms crossed, expression unreadable. Fury Forge has set down her kettlebells entirely, giving up the pretense that she's not completely focused on our sparring session.

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  The timer beeps again.

  Round two starts much like the first ended. Multiplex has found his rhythm now, working my body with brutal efficiency. I'm defending better, keeping my elbows tucked to protect my ribs, but that just means he targets my shoulders and sternum instead. It's like he's got a mental map of exactly where it hurts most to get hit and he's methodically checking off each spot.

  "Keep moving," he instructs, even as he lands another shot to my liver that makes me wonder if I'm about to throw up my breakfast. "If you stand still, you're just a punching bag."

  I try to implement some of what he's taught me — slipping punches, using angles, looking for counters — but the gap in our skill level is so vast that even my minor successes feel like they're only happening because he's allowing them. Like when you're playing chess with a little kid and you deliberately leave your bishop unguarded so they can take it.

  Halfway through the second round, frustration boils over. I'm tired of being his punching bag, tired of feeling outclassed, tired of the pain radiating through my torso. I unleash a wild haymaker, putting every ounce of strength I have behind it. It's sloppy, telegraphed, and Multiplex sees it coming a mile away. He easily slips to the outside, and I feel his weight shift as he prepares to deliver a punishing counter to my now-exposed ribs.

  Time slows. I can see the punch coming, a brutal right hook aimed just below my armpit that's going to knock the wind out of me completely. I can see every bit of its angle, work every vector, feel already in my head the preemptive flinch response as my brain politely informs me what exactly getting hit at that speed is going to feel like. There's no time to actually react. Even if I could send the nerve impulses fast enough, I physically don't have the ability to move fast enough to stop it or dodge away from it. It's mathematical victory.

  Half planning, half instinct, half anger.

  His fist connects with a hard WHUMP — the sound of knuckles striking concrete. Multiplex hisses, bouncing backward and shaking his right hand like he just high-fived a brick wall.

  Instant Armor.

  Where his fist struck my side, a fine layer of overlapping teeth has emerged, just barely breaking the surface of my skin. They're still the familiar triangular shape of great white teeth, but they're arranged in tight, overlapping rows, perpendicular to the bone, forming a natural armor plate maybe a quarter-inch thick. It still hurts like a motherfucker, especially at the root where they anchor tight to the fat and muscle under my skin, but compared to the cannonball run I was about to take to the side it's like a gentle pat to the head.

  As Multiplex stares, the teeth crack under the impact and quickly begin to disperse into a fine white powder that drifts to the mat. My skin beneath shows several shallow cuts, more like slots than anything else, that almost immediately begin knitting themselves together.

  I slap my gloved knuckles together, feeling a surge of triumph and probably looking insufferably smug. "You like that?"

  His eyes narrow, but there's something like approval hiding behind his scowl. "Clever. Let's see if it holds up."

  The fight resumes, but the dynamic has shifted. Now, when I see a punch coming that I can't dodge, I focus on armoring up the target area. Teeth emerge from my forearms to block his jabs, from my abdomen to absorb body blows, from my shoulders to deflect hooks. That's what I've been calling it. Instant Armor.

  It's not instant instant, of course. I have to prepare - the teeth take at least three seconds to grow, and I need to clench my muscles like I'm taking a shit to force them out. I've been practicing all week, down to the point where it's become reactive, but it's still exhausting, just like the jaw defense, and it still takes at least half a second for them to actually come out. So, it's less being able to armor up at a moment's notice, and more predicting where Multiplex is going to hit next and having to start preempting him.

  I don't get it right every time. Multiplex adapts almost immediately, because of course he does. He's throwing more feints, making me waste time and energy armoring the wrong spots. I get him more than I don't, but then... I don't. And the ratio starts to slip.

  Each impact causes the teeth to shatter and flake away, but I can grow new ones almost instantly. It makes me thirsty like a m-f-er, too - I can feel my mouth getting dryer and dryer every time, although I can't exactly tell why, like... biologically. My body moves slower and slower, to the point where it starts getting frustrating, and the further this torture goes on - three minutes of hell - the harder it gets to predict where he's going to hit next. Which doesn't make sense, because I haven't taken a single head shot, I'm just... getting slower.

  And slower, and slower.

  Every armor, attack blocked or not, is like peeling microseconds off of my reaction time as a cost. I think he'd say something about my MP bar getting low. He feints a body shot that has me instinctively armoring my stomach, then switches to a lightning-fast jab that catches me square in the headgear. Fuck. My  jaw.

  The punch snaps my head back, disorienting me. My vision swims, and my legs turn to jelly. As the timer beeps marking the end of the round, my knees buckle, and I land hard on my ass, the room spinning around me like I'm on one of those teacup rides at the fair.

  Unlike last time, though, I don't pass out. I stay conscious, breathing hard, as Multiplex removes his gloves and examines his right hand. Even through the padding, his knuckles are split and bleeding where they connected with my impromptu armor.

  "Clever cheat," he says, reaching for the first aid kit to bandage his hand. "Pretty good."

  Coming from Multiplex, that's practically a standing ovation.

  Fury Forge approaches, handing me a sports drink. "That's a new one," she says. "Dermal denticles?"

  I nod, still too winded to form complete sentences. The sports drink tastes like artificial berry and salvation.

  "Shark skin," she explains to Crossroads, who's joined us. "Covered in tiny teeth-like structures. Good adaptation."

  "Can you control the density?" Crossroads asks.

  I shrug, gulping down the electrolyte-laden drink. "No," I gasp.

  "You got lucky," Multiplex says, finishing the bandage on his hand. "In a real fight, you can't rely on discovering new applications of your powers mid-combat."

  "I planned that," I breathe, trying not to let Electrolyte Fluid (Trademarked) drip down into my sports bra no matter how thirstily I destroy the bottle. "There was nothing 'new applications being discovered' about it. What do you think I've been working on all week?"

  That gets a smile out of him.

  "Are you concussed?" He asks.

  I look around, looking for the telltale sparkly lights of a concussion, the ever-familiar headrush as I feel my neural tissue stitching itself back together from a regular braincage rattling. I look around, trying to see if Nurse Sylvia is watching.

  "Nope. I'm good," I reply. Fury Forge and Crossroads both disperse as Multiplex's timer beeps again, and he helps me up, pausing to reset the timer.

  "Great. Let's push that new technique of yours until you break,"