Sarah did not take even ten minutes to turn an uncomfortable conversation with Vanessa into an official mission order. That woman had a dangerous talent for listening to an idea, giving it structure, adding three measurable objectives, and handing it back to you as if it had been her plan from the beginning.

We were on the fourth floor, in front of a table full of screens, maps, and reports that surely had enough colors to scare any responsible person.

Sarah pointed to a southern area of New Kroy with two fingers, enlarging a part of the city that I almost never saw in heroic advertisements. “Low district” she said. “Area of small shops, old buildings, workshops, low-cost housing, and irregular protection contracts. New Kroy has little presence there because most businesses can only pay for basic services or directly pay nothing.”

Nora was leaning on a chair, with her arms crossed and her blue hair falling over one shoulder. Vanessa remained near the door, as if she still had not decided whether she wanted to participate in the meeting or disappear before Sarah got us into trouble.

I looked at the map and then at Sarah. “So we are going to a zone where they do not like us much, looking for people who buy illegal things to become strong, after a guy almost broke from the inside using artificial energy.”

Sarah smiled as if she had just heard a student answer correctly. “Exactly. I am glad the summary came out without crying.”

“I am growing professionally” I answered. “Or my sense of self-preservation gave up.”

The mission was not going to be a raid or a fight, at least according to Sarah, who had a very nice way of saying things that later ended with someone throwing me against a wall. Officially we were going to do area review, civilian contact, and preliminary investigation.

Vanessa would go as discreet support in case we needed to listen to conversations that people would not say in front of agency jackets. Nora would go as area control, because if another altered superhuman appeared, someone had to prevent the low district from becoming a festival of material damage.

I would go as visible presence. That part I liked less than I should have.

“Does visible presence mean hero or billboard with legs?” I asked.

Sarah raised her gaze over her glasses. “It means there are people who might talk to you because they saw you control someone without burning their face.”

That shut my mouth for a second.

Not out of shame, but because it made sense. Very annoying when Sarah made sense.

“People in the low district do not usually trust agencies” she added. “But they can trust a little more in someone who does not seem born inside a premium contract.”

Vanessa looked at me sideways. Nora smiled.

I sighed. “How nice. My poverty is now a strategic advantage.”

Sarah touched my shoulder as she passed, too close as always. “In the heroic industry everything can become an advantage if you know how to sell it.”

That phrase would have sounded horrible coming from someone else. From Sarah it sounded like life philosophy and workplace threat.

The trip to the low district slowly took us out of the shiny New Kroy that appeared in clips, campaigns, and ads where heroes posed with perfect smiles. First the glass facades disappeared. Then the big screens.

After that the advertising drones became less frequent, the buildings became shorter, and the pavement started showing cracks that no one had considered important enough to repair. The shops had thick grilles, flickering lights, and old signs with faded colors.

Some places had agency stickers, but they were not the golden plaques I had seen in expensive zones. They were small, basic versions, almost shameful, as if protection also had poverty categories.

Vanessa walked on my left, without activating invisibility yet, but with that attention of hers that made it seem like she was already listening to conversations two streets away. Nora walked on my right, relaxed, although her eyes moved from side to side with precision. I walked in the middle, wearing my New Kroy jacket and feeling that people saw it before they saw me.

In premium zones, an agency logo made people smile, take out their phones, or ask for a photo. Here some people lowered their gaze. Others tightened their bags. A man closed half of his shop shutter when he saw us pass. How pleasant. Nothing says “welcome” like being treated as a possible walking bill.

It did not take me long to understand what Vanessa had meant. The low district did not hate heroes the same way a villain would hate heroes. It was worse. It was a tired distrust. People looked at us as if we were part of a system that always arrived late, charged first, and explained later.

A small child pointed at me from the entrance of a laundromat and said something like “that is the fire one,” but his mother gently pulled him back before he approached. That left a strange taste in my mouth. In the shopping center, children wanted photos and adults wanted clips.

Here a mother saw fire and thought of danger, fines, or damage that no one was going to pay. I could not blame her. If a famous hero destroyed a shop window in an expensive zone, there were surely insurances, lawyers, and contracts. If it happened here, maybe someone lost the business of their life.

“Do not make that face” Nora said, without looking at me.

“What face?”

“The one that says I am understanding a social injustice and my ego hurts.”

“My ego is perfect.”

Vanessa let out a low sound, almost a laugh. “It is not perfect.”

“My ego is under reconstruction” I corrected. “But thanks for the support.”

The first stop was a repair shop for smartwatches, cheap drones, and second-hand equipment. The place was called Tecno Rivas, although two letters on the sign were off, so from outside it seemed to say Te no R vas, which sounded like a poorly written threat.

Sarah had given us the place because in old reports it appeared as a point where people brought strange devices to repair or sell for parts. The owner was an older man, with a gray beard, hands stained with grease, and the look of someone who had already decided not to trust us before we even entered.

“I do not have problems” he said as soon as he saw the New Kroy logo.

“Excellent” I answered. “We are not here to charge you for having them either.”

Nora looked at me as if that line had been a risk, but the man at least did not kick us out immediately.

Vanessa stayed near a display case full of small parts, observing more than talking. I took a step forward, keeping my hands visible, because I had learned that in tense places moving your hands like an idiot could turn you into a threat before you even opened your mouth.

“We are investigating devices that promise to increase powers. We are not coming for people who bought garbage to feel better. We are coming for whoever is selling something that can kill.”

Old Rivas did not answer right away. He looked at Nora, then at Vanessa, and finally at me.

“You always say that. That you are coming for the big ones. Then you take the poor idiot who bought the device because the big one already paid to disappear.”

That sentence was so direct that even Nora stopped looking amused.

“Not this time” I said.

“And who are you to promise that?”

Good question. Support hero, ranking two hundred, ex-corporate bear, owner of a bank account that finally did not make you want to cry. I was not exactly an impressive moral authority.

But I lowered my voice a little and answered without looking away. “I am someone who not long ago also could not pay for a decent way out. If I wanted to step on desperate people to look important, I would have chosen a less dangerous profession.”

Vanessa observed me in silence. Rivas did too.

For a few seconds only the hum of an old fan and the distant sound of a motorcycle passing on the street could be heard. Then the man let out a sigh, walked to the door, and lowered the shutter a little more. Not to kick us out, but so that people outside would not see too much.

“They call them aids, pushes, awakeners, false cores, depending on who sells them” Rivas said, taking out a small metal box from under the counter. Inside were burned remains of something that looked like a broken bracelet with cables too thin to be normal.

“Most are junk. They stimulate nerves, accelerate pulses, trick the user for ten minutes and then leave them shaking for two days. But lately different things arrived. More expensive. Cleaner. People with small gifts started doing things they should not be able to do.”

Nora approached to look without touching.

“Who sells them?” Rivas smiled without humor. “If I knew that and said it out loud, tomorrow my workshop would wake up closed with me inside.”

Vanessa spoke for the first time. “Where do they get them?”

The man looked at her as if he had forgotten she was there.

That was the problem with Vanessa: even when visible, she had a talent for becoming a shadow.

“Contacts through temporary messages. Deliveries in alleys. Young intermediaries. No important person gets their hands dirty.”

I felt something tighten in my stomach. It was not a huge network revealing itself with evil logos and villain speeches. It was worse. It was a chain of small people selling pieces of disaster to other small people, while someone else, somewhere much more comfortable, counted money or data.

“And the missing buyers?” I asked.

Rivas closed the box with a slam. His face changed slightly. “Who told you about that?”

Nora and Vanessa looked at me at the same time. I did not answer. The old man understood that we were not completely blind.

He passed a hand over his beard. “Three that I know of. Maybe more. A boy who made sparks with his fingers and wanted to join an agency. A woman with mild strength who worked unloading trucks. A guy who could heat metal, nothing big. All bought new aids. All had a strange increase. All stopped appearing.”

“Was a disappearance reported?” Nora asked.

Rivas let out a dry laugh. “To whom? To the police that takes three days? To the agencies that ask first if there is an active contract?”

No one had a good answer for that. I looked at the metal box on the counter and then at the street on the other side of the half-lowered shutter. Outside, the district kept moving as if nothing had happened: people buying cheap food, motorcycles passing, children looking from narrow doors, adults working with tired backs.

Before, I would have seen that place and thought it was an ugly part of the city. Now I saw something different. A perfect market to sell desperation. Superhumans with weak gifts, workers without a future, people rejected by agencies, individuals who did not want to be famous, only to stop feeling useless.

And if any of that was connected to the artificial energy that my System had detected, then the problem was not only criminal. It was personal in a way I still did not understand.

My watch vibrated with a message from Sarah asking for an update.

I looked at Vanessa. She nodded slightly. Nora took a photo of the box without touching it. I wrote the shortest possible summary: rumors confirmed, real devices, possible missing people, buyers with low gifts.

Before sending it, I added one more line: “The low district is not hiding the problem. The problem is hunting here.”

I sent the report and saved the watch.

Rivas looked at us as if he had just decided whether to regret speaking or not. I could only think that if several buyers had disappeared after using those devices, maybe the man on the stretcher had not been an accident.

Maybe he had been one of the few who managed to return to the street before someone took him away.