Heat rose off the street like the city was breathing through its teeth.
Ximena tasted it. Hot metal. Cheap cologne. Exhaust. The sour bite of sweat baked into concrete that never got to cool down. Somewhere above the crowd, drones hovered with that mosquito whine that made her jaw want to clench.
She didn't clench it.
She'd learned fast that Command officers loved any excuse to call you "unsteady."
So she stood with her shoulders squared, chin level, COS patch bright on her chest, and pretended her ribs weren't buzzing.
"Cadets stay behind the line," the Command officer said again, like repeating it enough would make the crowd listen too. His armor was matte and clean, visor down, voice clipped through a filtered speaker. "You don't touch anybody unless directed."
Ximena nodded like she was supposed to.
Behind the line. Sure.
In front of her, the protest was a living thing. A wall of bodies and signs and raised fists. People packed shoulder to shoulder between tall buildings and stacked transit decks, chanting into a canyon of glass and steel.
"NO MORE QUOTAS!"
"WE ARE NOT ASSETS!"
Someone's sign had a hand-drawn collar on it, thick black marker. Someone else had written BREACH LIES in red paint so wet it still shined.
Ximena's stomach tightened.
She'd seen a collar once up close. Real close. A Choker on a mixed squad, white uniform stained gray with alley filth, throat ring glowing dull like a warning light. The way he'd moved had been wrong—too careful, like any wrong breath might hurt.
Today was supposed to be training.
Crowd management. Evac lanes. De-escalation.
That's what her COS instructor called it.
But Command didn't bring full riot gear and disruptor rifles for "training."
Ximena shifted her weight. Her boots squeaked on a patch of old gum.
"Padilla."
Her instructor didn't look at her when he said it. He kept his eyes on the crowd, hands folded behind his back like a statue.
"Sir?"
"Don't stare at the drones," he murmured. "They'll flag you."
Ximena forced her gaze down.
The drone hum still crawled under her skin.
She checked her own kit out of habit. COS training vest. Thin plates. A bodycam clipped at the sternum. A frequency earpiece buzzing with quiet chatter she wasn't supposed to respond to unless spoken to.
Her fingers flexed once.
Then again.
Her power always wanted to show itself in the smallest things first. Not the dramatic stuff. Not the flashy. The tiny sense of motion. A twitch. A slide. A shift of pressure that didn't belong.
She hated how useful it was.
She hated how it made her feel like a snitch even when she was saving someone.
A chant surged louder.
The crowd rocked forward like a wave shoved by invisible hands. People shoved. Someone screamed. Someone laughed.
Ximena's vision caught on the edges of movement the way it always did—thin, faint directional pulls in her peripheral, like the world drew arrows when bodies started to panic.
Not a superpower you'd brag about.
But it kept her alive.
A man in the front row jumped onto a waist-high barrier and shouted into a handheld speaker. His face was red. Tears streaked down his cheeks.
"They're taking our kids—"
A Command officer moved his disruptor rifle up an inch.
Ximena's throat went dry.
Her instructor finally turned his head just slightly, like he was checking if she was still behaving.
"Breathe," he said without sound. Just lips. "Slow."
Ximena did.
In.
Out.
A drone dipped lower.
Her peripheral arrows flickered.
And then—
Something under the street moved.
Not people.
Not the crowd.
Under.
Ximena's attention snapped to a storm drain near the curb—one of those long grated slits where heat poured out like a furnace vent. The metal around it was darker than the rest, wet with condensation.
Her power whispered through her feet.
A jittery vibration.
Fast. Small. Wrong.
Like nails tapping from inside.
Ximena's skin prickled.
She took half a step forward before she remembered the line.
Her instructor's hand shot out and caught her vest strap.
"Don't."
"Sir," she hissed under her breath, barely moving her mouth. "Something's in the drain."
He didn't respond immediately.
His eyes flicked down.
Then back up.
Then he did what adults always did when a kid told them they felt something bad.
He decided it was nerves.
"We're not calling a Breach on a hunch," he said quietly. "You want Internal Compliance staring at your record? You want Command thinking COS cadets cry wolf?"
Ximena swallowed.
She hated that he was right.
She hated that the system made being cautious feel like a punishable offense.
The tapping under the drain sped up.
Like it heard them.
Her arrows flared toward the grate.
Then stopped.
Silence.
The kind that felt like a held breath.
Ximena's palms went damp inside her gloves.
Across the street, a boy in a black hoodie stood at the edge of the crowd.
He didn't chant.
Didn't wave a sign.
Just stood there with his hands in his pockets, shoulders loose, hair hanging over his eyes like he didn't care what the world did to him.
He looked tired. Not "didn't sleep last night" tired.
The kind of tired that sat in the bones.
Ximena clocked his build without meaning to—skinny, lean, about her age. Dark eyes under shadowed bangs. Caramel skin tone that looked warm under the harsh streetlight, even in the heat haze. He was watching the protest like he wanted to disappear into it.
Like he'd come just to stand near people and still be alone.
Her arrows didn't point at him.
They pointed at the drain.
A woman pushing a stroller bumped into him. She apologized without looking up. The stroller wheel clipped the curb and jolted.
The baby inside started to cry.
The boy shifted, head dipping like the sound hit him in the chest.
Ximena's breath caught.
Because the drain—
The grate bulged.
Just a fraction.
Metal flexing like it was soft.
Then it snapped back.
A Command officer's voice crackled in her earpiece, too calm.
"Hold formation. Possible agitation. Do not engage."
Possible agitation.
Ximena almost laughed.
Then the grate exploded upward.
A small thing—too small—shot out and latched onto the nearest ankle like a live staple. It was pale and wet and wrong-shaped, with too many joints. Its mouth opened like a seam tearing and clamped down.
The man it grabbed screamed so hard his voice cracked on the first note.
People surged.
Bodies slammed into each other.
A second mite—because that's what it had to be, it had to be—crawled out of the drain, then a third, then a fourth, spilling like insects from a cracked container.
"BREACH!" someone yelled.
The word hit the street like a gunshot.
Ximena's instructor finally moved.
"Breach-1!" he barked into his mic, voice sharp now. "Confirmed! Mites—storm drain—east curb!"
Command's response was instant.
Too instant.
Like they'd been waiting for permission.
"Frequency lanes up," a Command voice ordered. "Disruptors to low sweep. Crowd pressure containment."
A hum rolled through the air.
Not loud.
Not dramatic.
A pressure in the teeth. A vibration in the skull.
Ximena felt it in her eyes first, like someone pressed a thumb into her sockets.
People in the crowd didn't understand what they were hearing. They just felt wrong. They flinched. They started screaming harder.
The mites reacted like the hum was food.
They moved faster.
Ximena's arrows went wild.
Her instructor grabbed her shoulder and shoved her back into the cadet line.
"Don't break formation—Padilla—!"
A protester crashed into the barrier and fell, trampled.
Ximena's body moved before her brain gave permission.
She reached out with her power—small, precise—hooked the falling man's sleeve and yanked him sideways out of the crush.
It wasn't dramatic.
Just a tug.
But it saved him from being flattened.
Her heart spiked anyway.
The collar she didn't have still felt like it tightened.
Command officers pushed forward, shields up, forcing the crowd back. People screamed at them, swung signs, shoved hands into visors.
A Command officer slammed a baton into someone's wrist and sent the sign clattering.
"Back!" the officer shouted. "Back now!"
"YOU DID THIS!" a woman shrieked. "YOU LET IT HAPPEN!"
Ximena saw a mite scuttle up the fallen sign like it wanted the paint.
Then it jumped.
It landed on a teenager's shoulder.
The kid screamed and swatted wildly, slapping it into their own neck.
Blood sprayed.
The mite latched.
Ximena's stomach turned.
Her arrows screamed at her to move.
She pushed into the gap between two cadets and broke formation anyway.
"Padilla!" her instructor snapped, rage and fear mixed. "Get back—!"
She ignored him.
The teenager was choking on their own panic, hands clawing at the parasite thing.
Ximena slid in, grabbed the kid's wrist with one hand, and used her power with the other—not to rip, not to yank, not to do something stupid.
She applied a clean directional pull.
The mite's jaw hinge twisted. Its body snapped sideways.
It popped off the skin like a hook yanked free.
The kid staggered back, gasping, blood down their collarbone.
Ximena kicked the mite.
It skittered.
It tried to turn toward her.
A disruptor pulse hit it full.
The mite spasmed like it got yanked by invisible strings and went still.
For half a second.
Then it moved again, jittering faster, wronger.
"Low sweep isn't holding!" someone shouted.
"Crowd is too dense!"
Another grate, further down the curb, bulged.
Ximena's blood went cold.
Not just one drain.
A chain.
A planned chain.
Her instructor grabbed her by the vest and hauled her back, hard.
"Stay in the line," he hissed in her face, eyes sharp. "You want to die? You want to get tagged? You want to be adjacent on record?"
Adjacent.
The word was poison.
Ximena jerked her head toward the boy in the hoodie across the street.
He was still there.
Still quiet.
Still not running.
A stroller wheel had caught on the curb again—same woman, same baby crying, now stuck in the crush.
The woman's face went white as she saw a mite crawling toward the stroller from the curb.
The boy moved.
Not much.
Just a step.
Then another.
He didn't pull his hands out of his pockets.
But the stroller shifted.
Smooth.
Like someone gently nudged it on a perfect line through chaos.
The wheel cleared the curb.
The woman stumbled forward, eyes wide, not understanding why it suddenly moved.
The mite leapt for the stroller.
It missed.
By an inch.
Like the air itself had betrayed it.
Ximena's breath caught.
Telekinesis.
Low output. Clean. Controlled.
The boy didn't look up. Didn't show off. Didn't act like he'd done anything.
He just let the crowd swallow the woman and the baby into a safer pocket of space.
Then he went still again.
Hands in his hoodie.
Hair over his eyes.
Like he never wanted anyone to notice he existed.
A drone dipped.
Hard.
Its lens swung toward him, locking.
Ximena saw the tiny red tracking light blink.
Once.
Twice.
Her instructor saw it too.
He muttered something under his breath that sounded like a prayer.
"Command," a voice said in Ximena's earpiece, cold as a spreadsheet. "Visual on a possible Armed interaction. Tagging adjacent."
Ximena's stomach dropped.
The boy didn't even know.
He was still watching the curb like he was deciding whether to help again.
A Command officer raised his hand, two fingers extended—silent signal.
A second drone slid into position.
Triangulation.
A net was being cast without anyone screaming about it.
The crowd roared as another drain burst.
Mites spilled onto the street.
Command pushed disruptor frequency higher.
The hum got sharp. Teeth pain sharp. People dropped to their knees, vomiting, clutching their heads.
Ximena's vision blurred at the edges.
She saw the boy's shoulders tense for the first time.
Not fear.
Annoyance.
Like the world was being too loud.
His head turned slightly.
Hair still hiding his eyes.
He looked straight at the drone light for a fraction of a second.
Ximena couldn't hear what the Command officer said next over the screaming, but her earpiece delivered it clean:
"Mark him."
A pause.
Then, like sealing a coffin:
"Bring the hoodie kid in when this stabilizes."
Ximena's chest tightened.
The Breach was still spreading.
People were still dying.
And Command had already picked their next body.
The boy took one step back into the crowd—
—and the drone light stayed on him as the first mite wave hit the curb line like a living spill.