Leaving the superhuman medical area did not make me feel better. That was an emotional scam no one warned me about in my provisional New Kroy contract.

One would think that after leaving behind reinforced stretchers, strange sensors, doctors with faces that said “this could explode,” and a coordinator capable of looking at you as if she were calculating your market value in real time, the normal agency hallway would feel peaceful.

But no. The hallway felt too clean, too bright, and too quiet for my taste. The white ceiling lights seemed designed so that no lie would survive long under them.

Very nice for a superhero agency. Terrible for a guy who had just hidden that a mysterious system inside his head had warned him about artificial energy before the official sensors.

I walked with my hands in my jacket pockets, trying to look relaxed. It did not work completely, but at least I no longer looked like the Oliver Clarke who would have apologized for breathing near an important room. That was also progress. Progress with cold sweat, but progress.

Vanessa walked beside me without saying anything. And that was much worse than when she spoke. When Vanessa spoke, at least I could answer, joke, pretend I had control, or use my enormous natural talent for saying something wrong at the worst moment.

When she stayed quiet, every second weighed like a question. She had her dark hair falling over her shoulders, her gray eyes fixed ahead, and that serious expression she used when she was annoyed, worried, or when she was deciding whether to hit me with words or with silence.

Personally, I preferred words. Silence did not leave visible marks, but it did more damage in the long run. Nora had stayed behind talking with one of the technicians, probably to discuss data, sensors, and the part of the report where I had done something suspiciously useful.

Sarah had locked herself into war-administrator coordinator mode, which was like a military general, but with cold coffee and a tablet. That left Vanessa and me walking alone toward the elevators. Alone, but not calm.

Never trust an invisible woman when she is too visible and too quiet.

“You are hiding something” Vanessa said at last. She did not say it like a question. She did not say it like a dramatic accusation. She said it the same way someone would say “that glass is on the table” or “if you jump off a building, the ground will probably win.”

I kept walking for half a second before answering, because my brain needed to choose between several bad options. I could tell her the truth and explain that I had a Fireman System that gave me missions, rewards, alerts, and probably future problems.

I could lie to her shamelessly and make everything worse. Or I could do what every responsible adult does when trapped between an invisible heroine and an impossible secret: tell an incomplete truth with the face of a mature person.

“Everyone hides something” I answered. Vanessa slowly turned her head toward me. Bad sign. “Oliver.”

There it was. Not my full name, but almost. When a woman like Vanessa said your name like that, it meant your margin for stupidity was shrinking dangerously.

I raised my hands a little. “I am not saying it is a good answer. I am just saying that technically it is true.”

Vanessa let out air through her nose, but she did not move away. That was already a small victory. We reached a side area of the hallway where fewer people were passing.

Through a window you could see part of the city of New Kroy, with tall buildings, floating ads from heroic agencies, screens showing mission clips, and traffic moving as if no one knew that somewhere in the city a man had almost broken from the inside trying to become stronger.

Vanessa leaned against the wall and crossed her arms. “I am not going to ask you again how you knew about the chest.” That should have relieved me. It did not. With Vanessa, when she said she was not going to ask something, it usually meant she had already decided to watch you until you gave yourself away on your own.

“Thanks” I said. “That sounds very considerate.” “It was not consideration.” “Of course. It was elegant threat.” “It was patience.” “That is worse.”

For the first time, a corner of her mouth moved slightly. It was not a complete smile, but in my current emotional situation I was going to accept any crumb of peace as if it were a premium contract.

Vanessa looked toward the window. Her reflection looked more tired than normal. “That man did not look like a villain.”

The sentence changed the weight of the conversation. We were no longer only talking about me. We were talking about the stretcher, the red-marked chest, the borrowed strength, and the body that could not pay the price.

“No” I answered. “He looked like someone who made a stupid decision.”

“Most stupid decisions have a reason behind them.”

I stayed quiet because that was annoyingly true.

Vanessa continued: “His power was low. Sarah said he had applied for training and was rejected. Probably someone offered him an easy way out.”

I looked at the city on the other side of the glass. There was a giant screen showing Solaris smiling while raising a shining hand in front of a group of fans.

Under the ad, in huge letters, it said: TRUST THAT ILLUMINATES NEW KROY. What a beautiful phrase. How expensive it must be for someone to trust you with golden typography.

“When you are at the bottom, an easy way out does not seem so stupid” I said.

I do not know why I said it so directly. Maybe because the unconscious man had reminded me too much of a possible version of myself. Maybe because Vanessa was not pressuring me, and that made it harder to hide everything behind jokes.

Or maybe because after a city decides to record you, pay you, measure you, classify you, and turn you into content, one starts to value the few conversations where not everything seems like a statistic.

“Before this, I worked at Animal Stars” I said, even though she already knew. “I wore a ridiculous costume, smiled when I wanted to die of exhaustion, and put up with children, parents, and bosses acting as if my dignity came included in the salary. If at that moment someone had told me I could pay for something to become strong, useful, or at least less miserable…”

I left the sentence there. It was not necessary to finish it.

Vanessa looked at me with less hardness. “Would you have accepted it?”

I thought about the old room, the small bed, the counted coins, the hunger disguised as savings, my sweaty face inside a bear costume. “I would like to say no” I answered. “But lying twice in a row in front of you seems dangerous.”

Vanessa lowered her gaze for an instant. Her fingers tightened slightly on the sleeve of her jacket. “In the low zones it happens a lot.”

I looked at her. “What thing?”

“People selling help.”

The word sounded too simple for what we had just seen.

Help. As if we were not talking about devices inserted into the body, artificial energy, and out-of-control superhumans, but about discounts on fast food.

“It is not always devices. Sometimes it is injections, patches, stimulants, illegal training, stolen technology, things that promise to improve a gift for a few hours. Most of them are garbage. Some make people sick. Others only steal their money.”

Vanessa made a pause and then added: “But if this worked enough to turn that man into a real threat, then we are no longer talking about normal scammers.”

I felt a cold discomfort in my back. “How do you know that?”

Vanessa looked at me with that expression of hers that said many things and explained few. “Because support heroes hear more than people think.”

That made sense. Vanessa could enter where others could not, hear conversations, see things that did not appear in nice reports. And it also meant that maybe she knew much more about the city than I imagined.

“Does Sarah know?” I asked.

“Sarah knows parts. No one knows everything.”

“That sounds healthy for an organization full of people with dangerous powers.”

“Welcome to New Kroy” she answered.

I almost laughed. Almost.

Vanessa uncrossed her arms and moved away from the wall. “There are zones where people do not talk to agencies. Not because they love criminals, but because they feel that agencies only appear when there are cameras or contracts.”

She looked again at the Solaris screen and then at me. “You could make them talk.”

I blinked. “Me?”

“Yes.”

“With my great trustworthy face?”

“With your face of someone who still remembers what it is like to have nothing.”

Ah.

That hit harder than expected. It was not a pretty compliment. It was worse. It was a true compliment.

I stayed looking at my reflection in the window. The New Kroy jacket still looked new on me, as if I was wearing it borrowed, but it no longer felt as foreign as at the beginning. My ranking was still miserable, my experience was still ridiculous compared to real heroes, and my public nickname was a marketing tragedy called flame boy.

But there were civilians who had seen me stop someone without destroying a street. There were people who had commented on my videos. There was Sarah calculating my value, Nora measuring my growth, and Vanessa telling me that maybe people from below would talk to me because I also came from there.

It was not exactly a medal, but for someone who before was replaceable by any employee with bear size, it sounded dangerously close to importance.

“Then we are going to the low zones” I said.

Vanessa studied me for a moment. “Sarah has to authorize it.”

“Sarah is going to authorize it if you present it to her as useful investigation, risk reduction, and possible public reputation improvement.”

Vanessa raised an eyebrow. “You are learning to talk like her.”

“I am worried about how much that makes me happy.”

This time Vanessa did smile, although it was brief. Then she became serious again. “Oliver, one more thing.”

Her tone made my humor hide under the rug. “You do not need to tell me everything now. But do not lie to me if that puts others in danger.”

I looked at her straight on.

That was a fairer line than I would have liked. I could not tell her about the Fireman System. Not yet. Maybe not because I did not trust her, but because I did not even understand what the hell that thing was, who had put it in my life, or why it reacted to artificial energy.

But I also did not want to become the type who hides secrets until someone ends up hurt.

“I am not going to put anyone in danger to cover myself” I said.

Vanessa held my gaze, searching for cracks in the sentence. “Promise?”

“Promise.”

It was not the whole truth. But it was enough truth to hold her gaze without lowering my head.

Vanessa’s communicator vibrated before she could say anything else. She checked it and let out a sigh. “Sarah wants to see us on the fourth floor.”

“Already?”

“She said that if we are still walking dramatically through the hallways, we can do it in the direction of her office.”

I looked at the ceiling. “That woman is scary even through messages.”

Vanessa started walking toward the elevators, and I followed her. For some reason, the hallway no longer felt as heavy as before.

I still had an enormous secret on my shoulders, a dangerous investigation ahead, and a possible network of people selling borrowed power in zones where no one trusted the agencies.

But I also had something different. A direction. A next step. And, although I was not going to say it out loud because my survival instinct was still working, having Vanessa walking beside me made everything seem a little less impossible.

When we reached the elevator, she pressed the button for the fourth floor and said without looking at me: “If Sarah sends us to the low district, do not improvise too much.”

I smiled. “Vanessa, please. Improvising is my personal brand.”

“That does not reassure me.”

“It does not reassure me either, but so far it has been profitable.”

The doors closed just as her gaze returned toward me, half threat, half worry, and I understood that the official mission report could say many things, but it was not going to say the most important thing: that the real problem was not only the artificial energy. It was discovering how many desperate people were willing to burn from the inside just to feel powerful for the first time.