We sneak out of the house like we used to when we were kids, back when the most rebellious thing we'd ever done was stay out past curfew to watch meteor showers from the playground. Except now we're sixteen, and instead of stargazing, we're heading to what I'm guessing is Kate's vigilante headquarters.

  The streets are empty at this hour, just the occasional car passing by, headlights cutting through the darkness before disappearing around corners. It's the strange liminal time when the night owls have gone to bed but the early birds haven't yet stirred.

  "Where exactly are we going?" I whisper as we turn onto Erdrick Street.

  "Just follow me," Kate says, her voice tight. She hasn't looked directly at me since we left the house.

  After a few more blocks, she suddenly reaches out and grabs my hand. Her palm is rough with calluses that weren't there a year ago.

  "Hold my hand and pretend we're dating so we don't look suspicious," she says.

  "What?" I sputter. "Who's even out here to see us?"

  "Just do it," she hisses. "You'd be surprised who's watching."

  I comply, feeling awkward but also strangely reassured by the physical connection. We've known each other since we were five, but this might be the first time we've held hands since elementary school when teachers would make us link up to cross the street.

  We head east, toward the river, passing through neighborhoods that get progressively more run-down. Boarded windows become more common. Empty lots appear between houses like missing teeth in a smile. Graffiti spreads across walls in elaborate patterns of tags and designs.

  Kate doesn't speak much during the walk, just occasionally murmuring directions or warnings about uneven pavement. I try asking questions a few times, but her responses are monosyllabic, so eventually I give up and just follow her lead.

  After about thirty-five minutes, we reach the edge of Tulip Street, near the waterfront. This area used to be industrial but now it's a strange mix of abandoned warehouses, vacant lots, and the occasional refurbished building trying to spark gentrification. Kate leads me toward a boarded-up row house that, at first glance, looks completely abandoned. The windows are covered with plywood, and faded graffiti marks the worn brick facade.

  "Here," she says, finally dropping my hand as we approach the back of the building. She glances around quickly, then pulls aside what looks like a permanently-affixed piece of plywood to reveal a door with a padlock. Kate produces a key from her pocket and unlocks it with practiced ease.

  "Watch your step," she warns as we enter. "And don't touch anything unless I tell you it's okay."

  The interior is pitch black until Kate switches on her phone's flashlight. The beam illuminates a narrow hallway, the walls peeling with ancient wallpaper, the floor dusty except for a clear path that's been worn through regular use. The air smells musty, with undertones of chemicals—like a cross between an abandoned building and a janitor's closet.

  Kate leads me deeper into the house, through what was once a kitchen and into what might have been a living room. Every available space—countertops, shelves, even portions of the floor—is occupied by a bizarre assortment of items. Bottles of cleaning supplies dominate: bleach, ammonia, drain cleaner, industrial-strength solvents. At least four CPAP machines sit in various states of disassembly on a folding table. A neat stack of what look like stolen pharmaceuticals occupies one corner, while stacks of cash—mostly small bills—are rubber-banded together in another.

  It's organized chaos, with clear pathways between areas and everything grouped in a system that makes sense only to Kate. The place resembles a cross between a chemistry lab, a medical supply warehouse, and a drug dealer's stash house.

  "Watch your feet here," Kate says, guiding me over what looks like a tripwire running across one doorway. "That's rigged to dump chemicals on anyone who triggers it. Not something you want on your skin, trust me. Or anywhere near you."

  "Jesus, Kate," I mutter, carefully stepping over the wire. "You're one booby trap away from becoming the villain in a Home Alone sequel."

  She doesn't laugh, just continues leading me through the maze of supplies until we reach what was once a back closet. Kate pushes aside a hanging sheet that serves as a makeshift door, revealing a small space that's been converted into a kind of headquarters.

  A corkboard covers one wall, pinned with maps of Philadelphia neighborhoods, newspaper clippings, and handwritten notes. A sleeping bag is rolled neatly in one corner, next to a plastic storage bin that I'm guessing contains clothes. A folding chair and card table make up the only furniture, the table surface covered with more notes, a laptop, and what looks like components for some kind of gas mask.

  It's the Soot-cave. And it's depressing as hell.

  Kate stands with her back to me, the flashlight pointed at the floor now, casting strange shadows up the walls. Her shoulders are rigid with tension, her head slightly bowed. She still hasn't properly looked at me since we left the house.

  "So," I say, breaking the uncomfortable silence. "This is... home base?"

  "Sometimes," she says, her voice tight. "I move around. Have a few places like this."

  "And you... what? Make smoke bombs here? Plan your attacks on the Kingdom?"

  "I don't attack the Kingdom," she says. "I disrupt their operations. There's a difference."

  "Not to them, there isn't."

  Kate finally turns around, and the sight actually makes me take a half-step back. Her face is a mess—red, blotchy, eyes swollen from clearly trying not to cry. When she speaks, her voice cracks with emotion.

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  "Can you just leave well enough alone?" she asks, the words bursting out like she's been holding them back for hours. "I was handling things. I had a system. No one was getting hurt except the bad guys."

  "Kate—"

  "No, you don't get it," she continues, her voice rising. "I have to do this. I have to."

  "Why?" I ask, genuinely confused. "Why does it have to be you?"

  Kate lets out a laugh that sounds more like a sob. "Because I'm already damned, Sam. Because it doesn't matter what happens to me."

  "What are you talking about?"

  She turns away again, her shoulders hunching defensively. "When the fire happened... when our house burned down... I died."

  "What? No, you didn't. You were in the hospital, but—"

  "I was clinically dead," she says flatly. "For three minutes and forty-two seconds. No pulse. Minimal brain activity. I was gone."

  I stare at her, trying to process this information. She'd told me she "died" during one of our conversations, but I thought she was being poetic or dramatic.

  "And I saw... something," she continues, her voice dropping to almost a whisper. "There was light, and fire, everywhere. It was beautiful and terrible and... burning. Just burning."

  A chill runs through me despite the stuffy air in the small room. "You think you saw hell?"

  Kate turns back to face me, and the raw vulnerability in her expression is startling. "I know I did. And I know that's where I'm going when I die for real."

  "That's—Kate, that's ridiculous. You were oxygen-deprived. Your brain was shutting down. People have all kinds of hallucinations in near-death experiences."

  She shakes her head stubbornly. "This wasn't a hallucination. It was real. And it makes sense, doesn't it? That I'd end up there?"

  "No! It doesn't make any sense. You're not a bad person, Kate. And you're sixteen!"

  "You don't know that," she says quietly. "You don't know me. Not really."

  I'm about to argue when a realization hits me. "Is that why you're doing all this? Being Soot? Because you think you're already damned so it doesn't matter what happens to you?"

  Kate turns away, busying herself with straightening some papers on the table. "Remember what your Pop-Pop Moe always says? About how saving one life is like saving the world?"

  I nod, confused by the apparent change of subject. "Yeah, it's from the Talmud. 'Whoever saves one life saves the world entire.'"

  "Exactly," she says, a strange intensity in her voice. "If I can save you—keep you away from the dangerous stuff—then it matters. If I can protect my dad, keep him from drinking himself to death or gambling away what little we have left..." She trails off, then straightens her shoulders. "I can be the sin eater. I can do the dirty work, take the risks."

  "That's not how it works," I protest. "You can't just... sacrifice yourself because you think you're already condemned. That's not how anything works. Not Judaism, not Christianity, not basic human decency."

  Kate gives me a look that's somewhere between pity and frustration. "It's exactly how it works, Sam. Some people are damned, and some aren't. I've seen what's waiting for me, and nothing I do now will change that. So I might as well use the time I have to protect people who still have a chance. I can be the dark hero that does what you won't. I'll kill if it's necessary. You stay light and clean. People like you."

  "People like me? Your 'light hero'?" I can't keep the incredulity from my voice.

  She actually laughs at that, a short, bitter sound. "Yeah, that's rich, right? You with your shark teeth and blood sense—the original 'light hero.' But compared to me? At least you do things openly. At least you worked with a team. I'm the one skulking around at night, robbing drug dealers, making chemical weapons in abandoned houses."

  "You're not a bad person," I repeat, more firmly this time. "You're not damned, and you're not saving my soul by taking stupid risks that could get you killed."

  "I know what I saw," she insists.

  "You saw what your oxygen-deprived brain showed you during trauma," I counter. "That's not damnation, that's neuroscience."

  "Always so rational," Kate says, shaking her head. "Even with powers, you still think everything has a logical explanation."

  "Because it does!"

  "What about powers?" she asks, her voice grinding together into a hitching squeal. "You just accept that there's a logical, rational explanation for miracles? That just so happen to come about when you need them the most? You're so naive, Sam. So... Academic."

  That gives me pause, for ten painful seconds as I wrack my brain. "I... don't know. But there is an explanation. We just don't understand it yet. Otherwise, how could Dr. Harris and Jordan and everyone there, like, study them?"

  Kate makes a dismissive gesture, like she's swatting away my argument. "The point is, I'm doing what needs to be done. I'm taking out the Kingdom's drug operations before they can spread across Northeast Philly. I'm destroying their supply chains. I'm making sure the neighborhood is safer for everyone."

  "By putting yourself in the crosshairs of an organization that just dispatched enforcers to threaten me with a gun," I point out.

  "They wouldn't have bothered with you if you hadn't been interfering," Kate shoots back. "That's the whole point of me doing this instead—to keep you out of it."

  "Well, clearly that worked out great," I say, unable to keep the sarcasm from my voice. "Now they're after both of us. It's almost like you don't understand that their history with Philly didn't start with you."

  Kate runs a hand through her hair in frustration. "I didn't ask you to make deals with them! I didn't ask you to put yourself in danger!"

  "Neither did I!" I counter. "But here we are, both neck-deep in this mess. So maybe, instead of you playing martyr based on some near-death hallucination, we should actually work together to deal with this?"

  "There's nothing to deal with," Kate says stubbornly. "I keep doing what I'm doing, you stay out of it. Simple."

  "No, not simple. Not anymore. Not now that the Kingdom has people actively hunting for Soot, with a multi-million dollar bounty on your head."

  Kate paces the small space, agitation visible in every movement. "I've been careful. I always wear the mask, the gloves. No one sees my face."

  "You think that matters against people with powers? What if they have someone who can track you by scent, or see through walls, or read minds?" I step closer to her. "Kate, these people aren't just thugs. They're organized, they're resourceful, and they've got abilities we can't predict. One of them has random, Russian roulette ESP. They might one day wake up with the right cheat codes and just know who you are. It's a ticking clock you don't have room to play against."

  She stops pacing, her expression conflicted. "So what am I supposed to do? Just let them take over the city? Let them sell drugs wherever they want? Let them shake down businesses and intimidate people?"

  "No, but there has to be a better way than you going it alone, convinced you're expendable because of some vision you had when your brain was starving for oxygen." I pause, then add more gently, "And even if you were right—even if that was hell you saw—who says you're definitely going back there?"

  Kate looks at me with genuine confusion. "What do you mean?"

  "I mean, if you believe in hell, don't you also believe in redemption? In second chances? In the possibility of forgiveness?"

  "Not for everyone," she says quietly. "Some people are just... broken inside. Bad from the start."

  The conviction in her voice breaks my heart a little. What happened to her to make her believe this about herself?

  "You're not broken, Kate," I say, trying to put all my certainty into the words. "And you're definitely not bad. You're my best friend, and you're trying to protect people, even if you're going about it in the stupidest possible way."

  "Thanks, I think," she mutters.

  "But this has to stop," I continue. "Or at least change. The Kingdom is seriously looking for you now. They're willing to pay millions to find you. And if they do..." I trail off, not wanting to complete the thought.

  Kate is quiet for a long moment, her gaze fixed on the floor.