Chum

"Yeah, no, you're right," I say, nodding. "This is...this is pretty serious. We need to figure out what the hell is going on, and fast. Before this Rogue Wave asshole can cause any more damage."

Connor raises his hand hesitantly, like a kid in class who's not quite sure if they've grasped the lesson. "So, uh...what exactly is our plan here? I mean, it's not like we can just go around the city shouting 'Rogue Wave' at random jumpheads and see who tries to kill us, right?"

"Well, why not?" Derek retorts, clearly 100% serious. "Seems like a pretty efficient way to smoke out the bad guys to me. Hell, get some sort of broad spectrum audio and see what happens. Instantly find out who's compromised."

I groan, burying my face in my hands. "No, no, absolutely not. We are not running around playing Russian Roulette with potentially brainwashed drug dealers, that's just asking for trouble."

Tasha nods in agreement, already pulling out her phone and tapping away at the screen. "Sam's right. We need to be smart about this. I'm gonna see if I can dig up any info on this 'Rogue Wave' character online, see if there's any chatter or rumors floating around that might give us a lead."

I nod along, but purse my lips. "I don't know if you're gonna find anything. All I know how to do on a phone is check my grades and accidentally open six hundred tabs of random articles I'm never going to read but I'm hoarding because I think they'll be useful in a conversation topic someday," I pause, trying to reorder my thoughts. "But I feel like if they were caught on a camera somewhere then like, all this mind controlled brainwashing stuff... wouldn't be needed? Why rely on that when you can just like, get someone to blink lights in a window or put a dead drop in a park or something?"

"Baby," Jordan says, smiling, shaking their head. "The difference between tradecraft and like, street level shit is kind of night and day. Guys on the street just use burner phones and stuff. No reason to make it complicated."

"It's a balance," Tasha says, sagely. "You don't want easily trackable digital records, but you also don't want to make it so arcane and obtuse that your couriers and shit just fuck up and forget their orders."

"I don't know, some of my least favorite things to do are remembering a list of shit when someone tells me to verbally," I reply, thinking about how sometimes, my mom will tell me to do a shopping run and give me like seven things and only five slots will be available in my head so I have to either write it down or forget things. "I always keep a notebook with me when I go to the store," And I pat my hip for emphasis, where indeed there is a little memo pad and a little golf pencil floating around in the pockets of my cargo shorts.

"See, you want to avoid that if possible," Derek cuts in, gesturing to my pockets. "Physical records, man. Nothing beats a face-to-face conversation for sensitive shit."

"Wait, really?" Maggie asks, looking genuinely surprised. "I thought everyone just used, like, that one app that deletes your messages as soon as they've been seen?"

Tasha starts guffawing loudly. "Oh, poor thang," She says, barely choking out the words between great peals of belly laughter.

Connor, however, doesn't seem satisfied by this tangent. "Okay, but like...what are we actually gonna do? We can't just sit around with our thumbs up our asses waiting for Tasha to magically find some secret villain lair on Google Maps or some shit."

Which, credit to Connor, I had about fifty percent mentally checked out of the conversation already, but his words ground me back in. He's right - we're just sort of going around in circles, and I'm part of the problem there. I frown to myself, drumming my fingers on my knee as I ponder our options. It's true, we can't just go charging in blind, but we also can't afford to just sit on our hands and do nothing while the Kingdom and Rogue Wave and whatever other alphabet soup villain groups are out there continue to wreak havoc.

"Well, we keep our ear to the ground, for one," Jordan says, shrugging. "Scuttlebutt will circulate eventually, it always does. If there is a new player in town, people will notice something. And we work our contacts, our CIs, see if anyone's picked up on anything weird going on."

"We could also try to triangulate potential targets based on the map we found," I suggest, pointing to the haphazard scattering of red circles and lines decorating the slightly crumpled paper. "Maybe stake out some of the more likely spots, see if we can catch any suspicious activity in the act."

Derek snorts derisively. "What, like a bunch of teenagers playing dress-up are gonna blend in at the goddamn docks or City Hall? Good fucking luck with that."

I shoot him a glare. "I'm not saying we go in guns blazing, asshole. Just...keep an eye out. Watch for patterns, anything that seems out of place. We might get lucky and spot something the cops or the feds have missed."

"Yeah, because they're gonna be real grateful for our help," Jordan snarks. But I know underneath it all, they're already mentally cataloguing potential vantage points and escape routes for each location. They really do always have three exit strategies ready to go, the rascal.

Tasha sighs, setting aside her phone for the moment. "Alright, It's a start, at least. Better than nothing. I'll keep digging on my end, see if any of my usual sources have heard any rumblings about new players in town, 'metanet' included" She air-quotes 'metanet', as if to say, the internet but for superheroes.

Connor looks around at all of us, a determined set to his jaw. "Maybe I can ask the Phreaks," he mumbles, clenching his face up. "Wait, shit, they're all in jail. Fuck!"

"No, don't- you shouldn't," I say, quickly, putting a hand on his forearm. "Because of the jail, yes."

Jordan nods in agreement, their expression softening a bit. "Sam's right, Stretch. You've got a real shot at a fresh start here, and we don't want to jeopardize that. Let us handle the dirty work for once, yeah?"

Connor looks like he wants to argue, but after a long moment, he just sighs and nods, conceding the point. "Yeah, yeah, alright. I guess I'm not much use to anyone if I'm back in juvie or some shit."

Maggie reaches over to give his hand a quick, reassuring squeeze. "Hey, you're plenty useful just by being here and having our backs. Don't sell yourself short, mister."

"What if there's a way we can be proactive?" Derek says, setting his own jaw.

"Big words coming from you," I say, earning another withering glare. "Elaborate,"

"Can't you... I don't know, hack into the police radio or some shit? You're a hacker, right, kid?" Derek says, his gaze lowering on Jordan's extremely aggravated all of a sudden looking face.

Jordan lets out a noise of pure frustration, throwing their hands up in the air. "For fuck's sake, that's not how hacking works! I can't just magically tap into secure communications with a few keystrokes, this isn't some bullshit TV show!"

"Yeah, Derek, I know the media does a bad job of portraying computers," Tasha chimes in, looking a little flushed like she's trying to hold back from laughing. "But you can't just hax0r into 'the matrix' or whatever."

"How did you do that with your voice," Connor asks off to the side.

"It's all social engineering and throwing massive amounts of computational power at a problem until you get lucky," Jordan says, deflating a little as they start actually, legitimately explaining. For the briefest of moments I can hear the pain in their voice. "Phishing, spoofing, tailgating into buildings. The human stuff. Most systems are pretty well hardened against remote attacks these days. Didn't I explain this to you when we did the chip spoofing for the Sparkplug operation?"

"I wasn't paying attention," Derek responds, picking his ear with his pinky.

"So what can you do?" Connor asks, sounding genuinely curious.

"I mean, I'm good at coding and pretty handy with hardware too," Jordan says, some of the fire leaving their voice. "Built my own custom rig and everything. But I'm not about to go breaking into government databases or some shit. That's a one-way ticket to federal fuck-me-in-the-ass prison. And ever since supervillains who can read radio waves started popping up, police radio scanners have gotten crazy encrypted at every step of the way."

Maggie screws up her mouth. "Can you decrypt?"

Jordan rolls their eyes. "Sure, if you can get me the encrypted data in the first place. Which, again, not really in the cards unless one of you wants to go physically steal a cop's phone or computer or whatever." And then, the corner of their mouth turns up slightly, because the idea of doing such a thing has entered their brain and they don't 100% hate the idea.

"They'd prob'ly catch me before I made it five feet outside the building," Derek says, shaking his head. "Cop sense tingles around me. I'm their kryptonite."

There's this lull in the conversation and I really don't have anything to add to the meat of it, so I'm just content to let everyone sort of noodle in their own heads for a while. Jordan is checking their phone, Maggie is fiddling with her bag, Derek is... brooding. I think. He has kind of a resting brood face. Connor is sitting upside down on the couch with his legs hanging over the back, Tasha is back to clacking away at her laptop doing who knows what, though by the reflection in her eyes - I am sitting across from her and can kind of see her screen - I think she might be looking at, like, anatomy diagrams or bacterial cultures or some shit. Such a little scientist, that one.

Eventually, the silence is broken by Connor letting out this really big yawn, the kind that sort of reverberates through his entire body and makes his legs kick out a little bit. "Man, I am straight up Jonesing for a Slurpee right now," he says, completely apropos of nothing.

"Wait, really?" I ask, blinking rapidly a couple times as my brain tries to shift gears from contemplating the intricacies of our current predicament to the sudden topic of frozen sugary drinks.

He just shrugs, grinning lazily. "Yeah, I don't know. Something about all this heavy shit just makes me crave pure corn syrup and artificial flavoring, you know?"

"It's 40 degrees outside," Derek says flatly. "And snowing. You wanna go to fucking 7-Eleven in this weather?"

Connor just shrugs again. "I want an ICEE, dawg."

Jordan lets out a snort of laughter. "Christ, you're a strange one, Stretch. But fuck it, I could actually go for one too. Sam, you in?"

And I know I shouldn't. I know we have more important things to worry about, that we should be focusing all our energy on unraveling this Rogue Wave mystery and figuring out the Kingdom's next move. But goddamn if the idea of just...taking a break, even for a little while, isn't so incredibly tempting.

"Yeah, alright, fuck it," I say, pushing myself up off the couch with a grunt. "Let's go get ourselves some diabetes in a cup."

But before we can get anywhere, my blood sense lights up. Someone bleeding - bad, but coagulated. Everyone pays attention when I perk up like that. "Someone's at the door," I say, before they actually get there.

BAM, BAM, BAM

"Sam?" Jordan asks, looking out the window. "One of yours, right?"

I peek out over Jordan's side.

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