Chapter 15: THE SKEPTIC
The coffee shop was in Astoria—neutral ground, her choice, a place with exposed brick and baristas who looked like they'd rather be writing screenplays. I arrived fifteen minutes early, ordered something complicated to justify taking up table space, and watched the door.
Nadia Kazan walked in at exactly the agreed time. Not early, not late. Precise.
She was younger than I expected from her photo—late twenties, maybe early thirties, with dark hair pulled back in a practical ponytail and the kind of sharp eyes that made you feel like she was taking notes even when her hands were empty. She spotted me immediately, crossed the room without hesitation, and sat down across from me with her phone already on the table.
"Recording this," she said. Not a question.
"Okay."
"You're the extras coordinator. Harley Vaughn. The shield guy."
"That's me."
She studied my face the way Marcus Webb had during the interview—but where Marcus had been looking for a story, Nadia was looking for lies.
"I've watched that footage frame by frame," she said. "The impact analysis, the trajectory, the way your body moved when he hit you. You should be dead. A Rank 1 V-enhanced individual—even a low-tier one—generates force equivalent to a car crash. The prop shield you were carrying had a tensile strength rating of maybe 200 newtons. He hit you with approximately 8,000."
She paused. Let the numbers sink in.
"So my question is simple: why aren't you dead?"
This was the interview I'd been dreading.
Not because Nadia was hostile—hostility I could work with, could redirect into something useful. But because she was precise. She dealt in facts, not narratives. And the facts didn't add up.
"The shield absorbed more than the video shows," I said. "It shattered, but the impact wasn't direct. The angle was off—he was swinging wild, not centered. And I was already moving backward when he connected."
"Moving backward at what speed? You weigh approximately 180 pounds. The force differential—"
"I don't know the math." I kept my voice calm. Open. "I know what I felt. It hurt. I flew. I got up because I didn't have a choice."
"Most people wouldn't have gotten up."
"Most people haven't trained to take falls for a living."
That stopped her for a moment. She wrote something in a small notebook—actual paper, not a phone app.
"Stunt coordinator background," she said. "That's in your employee file."
"You got my employee file?"
"I got a lot of things." No apology. No explanation. "Your employment history shows you worked as a stunt double for three years before transitioning to coordination. Roll training. Impact absorption. Breakfall techniques."
"Right."
"So your theory is that professional stunt training let you survive a superhuman impact?"
"My theory is that a combination of factors—the shield, the angle, the training, and a lot of luck—added up to something that looks more impressive than it was."
She wrote something else. Then she looked up, and her eyes were harder than before.
"You know what I think?"
"Tell me."
"I think you're lying. Not about everything—the stunt training is real, the fear in the footage is real—but something doesn't add up. And I'm going to find out what it is."
[NARRATIVE FRICTION DETECTED]
[SOURCE: NADIA KAZAN SUBSCRIBER BASE (EST. 180,000 ACTIVE)]
[FRICTION COEFFICIENT: 4.2%]
[WARNING: SUSTAINED SKEPTICISM FROM THIS DEMOGRAPHIC WILL DEGRADE BP GENERATION]
The system warning flickered at the edge of my vision. I processed it without looking away from Nadia's face.
Her audience wasn't huge—not compared to the millions who'd seen the viral footage—but it was influential. Opinion-makers. Fact-checkers. The kind of people other people trusted to verify claims. If she published doubt, it would ripple outward. Erode the foundation I was building.
"She's a weapon," I realized. "Not mine. Not Vought's. Just a weapon pointed at whoever she decides deserves it."
"Can I ask you something?" I said.
"You can ask."
"Why do you care? Not about Vought—I've read your work, I know why you care about that. But why me specifically? I'm one guy who did one thing. Why does it matter if my survival is explainable or not?"
She set down her pen. For the first time, something in her expression shifted.
"Because people believe in you," she said. "That video you posted—the one where you turned down Vought—it has four million views. #StandUpLikeVaughn is still trending. People are talking about you like you're something special. Like you're a symbol."
"And you think that's dangerous?"
"I think symbols that can't be verified are dangerous, yes." She leaned forward. "I've seen what happens when people believe in things they can't prove. QAnon. Anti-vaxxers. The whole Compound V conspiracy before it turned out to be true. Belief without evidence is how people get hurt."
"Even when the belief is in something good?"
"Especially then." Her voice softened slightly. "Good symbols that turn out to be fake do more damage than obvious villains. They teach people that hope is a scam."
I walked home on the subway, which gave me time to think.
Nadia Kazan wasn't like anyone I'd met in this world. She wasn't intimidated by the footage, wasn't charmed by the narrative, wasn't moved by the emotional appeal. She looked at the same evidence everyone else had seen and saw holes instead of heroism.
And she was right.
Not about the specific lie she suspected—she thought I was hiding Compound V or some secret enhancement—but about the fundamental truth underneath. Something didn't add up. I shouldn't have survived that hit. The explanation I'd given her was plausible but incomplete, and she knew it.
"She's the first person in this world I can't predict," I thought, watching the tunnel lights strobe past the window. "No meta-knowledge. No character sheet. Just a person I have to figure out the hard way."
The system offered statistics but no guidance. The Reputation Dashboard showed her subscriber base generating steady Narrative Friction—a constant drag on my BP generation, small but measurable.
[NARRATIVE FRICTION SCORE: 4.7%]
[BP GENERATION: 44.1/hr (REDUCED FROM 47.3/hr)]
A few percentage points. Barely noticeable in the short term. But sustained skepticism would compound. If Nadia published something—a debunking article, a fraud expose, anything that gave ammunition to the doubters—the friction could spike to catastrophic levels.
"I can't charm her," I realized. "I can't out-investigate her. I can't discredit her without proving her point."
The only option was consistency. If she dug into my story and found nothing contradictory—no secret Compound V, no hidden backers, no evidence of fraud—her skepticism might eventually convert to grudging respect. Not belief, maybe. But not active opposition either.
And if she found something...
I pushed the thought away. One problem at a time.
[BP: 1,647 | LS: 235]
[PRESENCE SUB-VALUE: 38]
["SUPER DURABILITY" SEED: 6,412 BELIEVERS (THRESHOLD: ~10,000)]
The numbers were still climbing. Despite Nadia's friction, despite Ashley's hostility, the momentum I'd built over the past week was carrying me forward. The street-level work in Washington Heights. The public refusal. The Watchdog interview. All of it added up.
But 6,412 wasn't 10,000. And until "super durability" crystallized into an actual power, I was still baseline human. Still fragile. Still one bad encounter away from death.
I remembered the V-enhanced man on 48th Street. The way his fist had shattered the shield. The way my ribs had cracked on the food cart. The system had recorded it all, turned it into belief points and legend saturation, but the pain had been real. The fear had been real.
"This body is still mortal," I thought. "The system can make people believe I'm durable, but belief doesn't stop bullets."
Not yet, anyway.
My phone buzzed. A text from a number I'd saved yesterday: Mr. Reyes, the bodega owner from Washington Heights.
Mr. Reyes: Neighborhood wants to do something for you. Small gathering. Nothing fancy. You interested?
I stared at the message for a long time.
The system would love it—a community event, organic witnesses, the kind of grassroots validation that fed the "anti-Vought hero" archetype. But something about it felt different. Not strategic. Not calculated.
Just people who wanted to say thank you.
I thought about the elderly woman whose groceries I'd carried. The kids who'd stopped splashing in the broken hydrant to watch me work. Mr. Reyes and his free coffee that tasted like burned regret.
They didn't know about the system. They didn't know about the belief points or the crystallization thresholds or the careful calculations I made with every public appearance. They just saw a guy who'd fixed a hydrant and turned down Vought.
"When did that become unusual?" I wondered. "When did basic decency become a brand?"
I typed a reply: I'd like that. Let me know when and where.
Then I put the phone down and looked at the Reputation Dashboard one more time.
["SUPER DURABILITY" — 6,412 believers]
[3,588 believers to crystallization threshold]
Three thousand five hundred and eighty-eight people. That's what stood between me and an actual power. Three thousand five hundred and eighty-eight people who needed to believe I was tougher than human.
Nadia Kazan was trying to prove I wasn't.
Ashley Barrett was plotting whatever came next.
And somewhere in the system's architecture, a number was ticking upward, one belief at a time.
"Keep moving," I told myself. "Keep being seen. Keep being consistent."
The alternative was standing still. And standing still, in this world, was the same as dying.
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