Turn 4 of 10

Sign the license and ask about medical coverage

The pen feels lighter than it should as you uncap it, the plastic barrel clicking with a sound too small for what it represents. You sign your name where Sera's used to be, the ink drying quickly on the cheap paper. Devon Ojo, twenty-four, gravity manipulator, assuming liabilities.

"Medical coverage," you say, setting the pen down with deliberate care. "You mentioned A-listers get Guild coverage. What does the Rook get?"

Mars retrieves the form, her eyes moving across your signature with the efficiency of someone who has witnessed ten thousand commitments. She slides it into a scanner that hums and blinks, and the machine's acceptance chime sounds like a door unlocking somewhere distant.

"The Rook gets the same pamphlet Sera got," Mars says. "Same phone number. Same voicemail system that takes messages and returns them never." She opens a drawer, retrieves a slim envelope, and pushes it across the table. Inside, you find a card with a printed list of clinics that accept "hero-adjacent emergency rates," which turn out to be only slightly worse than standard robbery.

"The A-listers are billboards," she continues, her voice carrying that particular flatness of someone who has explained injustice too many times to pretend it surprises her anymore. "They sell cereal and insurance and the idea that someone is watching. You are infrastructure. You are the person who shows up when the billboard is busy with a photoshoot. And infrastructure does not get dental."

She stands, the motion revealing a stiffness in her left hip that she doesn't acknowledge.

"Your predecessor broke three ribs six months ago. She taped them herself and kept patrolling because the alternative was explaining to an emergency room how she got injured fighting someone called The Understudy in a condemned textile mill. The Guild has a fund for anonymous treatment, but accessing it requires forms she couldn't file without exposing her brother."

Mars gathers the remaining seven folders, their edges tapping together like a dealer shuffling cards.

"The costume is in a locker downstairs. The key to that's in your envelope. The apartment key you have. And the cat—" she checks her phone one last time, "—has apparently developed opinions about kibble brands."

She pauses at the door, her hand on the handle, her back to you. Forty years of second-stringers, you remember. Forty years of watching people inherit unfinished lives.

"The Understudy doesn't know the mask changed hands yet," she says, not turning. "That ignorance is your only advantage. Use it before it expires."