Chapter 10: The Loft
The red door was exactly where she'd said it would be.
I stood on Redmond Street with my hand raised to knock, spatial awareness mapping the stairwell behind the door—fourteen steps, landing at the top, another door leading to the loft proper. The Chinese restaurant below smelled like sesame oil and old grease. A handwritten sign in the window advertised a lunch special I was four hours too late for.
My hand stayed in the air. Not hesitation. Just one last moment to catalogue what I was walking into.
The Undersiders. Teenage villains. Coil's pawns, though they didn't know it yet. In the web serial, Taylor had joined them thinking she was going undercover, and by the time she realized she belonged with them, the pretense had become truth.
I wasn't Taylor. I didn't have her powers or her potential or her story. But I had something none of them had: I knew what was coming. Leviathan. The Slaughterhouse Nine. Gold Morning.
I needed allies. The Undersiders needed someone who could take hits.
The math was simple.
I knocked.
Lisa opened the door with a grin that showed too many teeth.
"You made it." She stepped back, gesturing me up the stairs. "I was starting to wonder if you'd chicken out."
"I don't chicken out."
"No," she said, studying me as I climbed. "You really don't, do you? That's what makes you interesting."
The loft was larger than I'd imagined. Open floor plan, mismatched furniture that had clearly been scavenged from different decades, a kitchen area in one corner and a cluster of couches and screens in another. The descriptions from the web serial had been accurate, but accuracy wasn't the same as presence.
Brian Laborn stood by the window, arms crossed, watching my approach with the quiet intensity of someone who'd learned not to trust easily. He was bigger in person—not just tall, but solid, built like someone who knew how to use his body as a weapon. His expression gave nothing away.
Alec sprawled across a couch like a cat who'd claimed the best sunbeam, one leg hanging over the armrest. He looked up when I entered, assessed me in two seconds, and went back to his phone with the dismissive efficiency of someone who'd already decided I wasn't worth his attention.
Rachel sat on the floor near the kitchen, surrounded by three dogs who tracked my entrance with predator focus. She didn't look up at all. Her attention was on the largest dog—Brutus, I remembered—who was gnawing on something that might have been a rope toy or might have been something I didn't want to think about.
"Everyone," Lisa announced, "meet the mystery man. Mystery man, meet everyone."
"Evan," I said. "Or we can skip the names entirely if that's how this works."
Brian pushed off from the window. "Names are fine for now. Lisa says you have something useful to offer."
"I do."
"She also says you survived a fight with Lung. Walked out of the fire when you should have been ash."
I met his eyes. "That's true too."
"How?"
The question hung in the air. Lisa was watching me with the particular intensity that meant her power was working, pulling threads from my body language and tone and microexpressions. I could feel it—not literally, but in the quality of her attention. She was reading me like a book, and I was a book written in a language she'd never encountered.
"I come back," I said. "When I die, I resurrect. Twelve hours later, nearest safe zone, body restored. I don't have offensive powers, but I can take hits that would kill anyone else and be back in the fight by the next day."
Silence. Brian's expression didn't change, but his posture shifted—the subtle recalibration of someone reassessing threat levels.
"Prove it," Rachel said without looking up.
"I'm not dying on command. But Lisa saw me take fire from Lung. She can confirm I was there, that I went down, and that I answered my phone the next morning."
Lisa tilted her head. "He's telling the truth about the resurrection. My power is... struggling with the details, but the core claim is accurate." She paused. "There's more going on than he's saying, though."
"There usually is." Brian stepped closer, close enough that I had to look up slightly to meet his eyes. "What do you want from us?"
"Affiliation. Work. A team that can use what I offer while I build toward something more dangerous."
"And what are you building toward?"
I thought about Leviathan. About the Slaughterhouse Nine. About the cascade of catastrophes that would turn this city into a warzone and then a graveyard.
"Survival," I said. "Mine and everyone I can manage to protect."
Brian studied me for a long moment. Then he turned to Lisa. "Assessment?"
Lisa's expression was complicated—curiosity and caution in equal measure. "He's useful. Potentially very useful. But he's hiding something significant. His knowledge patterns are wrong. He reacts to things before he should know they're important."
"Dangerous?"
"To us? Unknown. To himself? Definitely." She smiled, but there was no humor in it. "I recommend a trial period. Keep him close, see how he performs, and watch what he does when he thinks no one's looking."
Brian nodded. Turned back to me.
"Trial run," he said. "You prove yourself, you're in. You disappoint us or compromise the team, you're out. Clear?"
"Crystal."
He extended his hand. I took it—firm grip, measured pressure, the handshake of someone who didn't trust easily but was willing to give me a chance.
Behind us, Brutus whined.
I looked down. The dog had abandoned his toy and was sniffing my hand, his massive head pushing past Brian's leg to reach me. The whine came again—not aggressive, not playful. Something else.
"Brutus." Rachel's voice was sharp. "Back."
The dog retreated, but his eyes stayed on me. Tracking something I couldn't see.
"That's new," Alec said from the couch. "He usually just ignores people."
Lisa's expression sharpened. "Animals can sense things humans miss. Death leaves traces."
I pulled my hand back. The phantom warmth of Lung's fire flickered at the edge of my awareness—faint, almost gone, but present.
"Noted," Brian said. "We'll debrief tomorrow, go over patrol routes and comms protocol. For now, go home. Get some rest. You'll need it."
I nodded and turned toward the stairs.
"Evan." Lisa's voice stopped me at the door. "One more thing."
"Yeah?"
"Whatever you're hiding—and you are hiding something—I'm going to figure it out. It's what I do." She smiled, sharp and knowing. "Just wanted you to know the rules upfront."
"Appreciated," I said. "And Lisa? Whatever you figure out, remember: I'm on your side. That's the part that matters."
I walked down the stairs and out into the afternoon light.
The drive home took twenty minutes. I spent most of it cataloguing the meeting, filing away observations and implications.
Brian was exactly what the web serial described: professional, protective, carrying the weight of leadership on shoulders that were too young for it. He'd give me a fair shot, but he'd cut me loose without hesitation if I compromised the team.
Lisa was more dangerous in person than on the page. Her power wasn't just inference—it was seeing, the kind of perception that found patterns in chaos and truth in lies. She'd read something wrong in me during those eleven seconds of silence, and she wasn't going to let it go.
Rachel was Rachel. Hostile, direct, more interested in her dogs than in people. I'd earn her respect through action or not at all.
Alec... Alec was the wild card. Bored, detached, the emotional armor of someone who'd survived things I didn't want to imagine. In the serial, he'd died saving his sister. Right now, he was just a teenager on a couch, watching the world with eyes that had seen too much.
And me. What did they see when they looked at me?
A stranger who'd charged a dragon and survived. A resource with useful limitations. A mystery that Lisa was already working to solve.
I pulled into the Hebert driveway and sat in the truck for a moment, hands on the wheel.
The first meeting was done. The trial period started tomorrow. And somewhere in that loft, Lisa was probably already pulling threads—looking for the seams in my story, the contradictions in my behavior, the truth I couldn't afford to give her.
I'd have to be careful. Very careful.
But I'd also have to be valuable. Useful enough that they kept me around despite the questions, competent enough that Brian saw an asset instead of a liability.
Tomorrow. Patrol routes and comms protocol.
Tomorrow, I'd start earning my place on a team of villains who would become the closest thing I had to family in this world.
I got out of the truck and went inside to make dinner.
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