Manhattan Square Park was empty except for pigeons and New York's usual walking around. Jay stared at his phone screen, reading Caliban's message for the third time: People are getting restless. Come now.

  Simple words. Not so simple when they made his chest feel like someone had packed it with ice.

  His hands had gone completely steady for the first time in weeks. That should have worried him more than it did.

  "Bobby!" The edge in his voice made a jogger stumble mid-stride. "I need Maria and Linda on Masque's vitals and location. Constant monitoring. Any change, I want to know immediately."

  Bobby looked up from sorting their gear, those weathered cop eyes taking Jay in with the kind of assessment that made criminals confess without being asked. "You sound different."

  "Do I?" Jay scrolled through contacts on his burner phone. "I'm calling in a favor first."

  The phone rang twice before a familiar voice picked up, all lazy confidence and street-smart swagger. "?Jay? Bit early for blood theft, cabrón, or you just missing my pretty face?"

  Xabi. If there was anyone in this city who could get intel on the Hellfire Club without ending up as wall decoration, it was him.

  "Someone took one of my people. I need you to scope out the Hellfire Club, and I need it quiet."

  The silence stretched just long enough for Jay to count three heartbeats. When Xabi spoke again, his usual playful tone had gone sharp. "órale, one of your people? You sound different, hermano. Like someone stepped on your tail."

  "Can you help or not?"

  "Sí, claro. Better than bleeding old pendejos dry anyway. Give me a few hours, eh?"

  Jay hung up and caught Bobby staring at him like he'd grown a second head.

  "What?"

  "Nothing." Bobby threw their empty pizza boxes in the trash with the careful movements of someone who'd learned not to waste energy. "Just... 'one of my people' sounded different coming out of your mouth. More like you actually meant it."

  Jay shrugged, but something had gone tight in his chest. A week ago, he would have said 'asset' or 'network member.' Corporate speak. Distance. Now the phrase felt natural. Protective.

  Possessive in a way that should have worried him, but didn't.

  "Have we confirmed the moles?"

  "Three confirmed Hellfire contacts, but there's overlap with SHIELD and X-Men connections too." Bobby pulled out his tablet, data streaming across the screen in neat columns. "Someone's playing multiple angles. Classic intelligence work—create so much noise you can't tell who's working for whom."

  "How many suspects total?"

  "Five. All Morlocks, all with different motivations, but we couldn't narrow it down further without..." He gestured vaguely at Jay's head. "Without your particular methods."

  Jay studied the data, feeling that familiar analytical calm settling over him like armor. It was the same feeling he'd had planning the Masque confrontation—cold, clear, absolutely certain of what needed to be done.

  The feeling that scared other people. The feeling that had never scared him.

  "We'll need the masks for this. Get Power Broker and Lasso ready."

  Bobby nodded and headed for their equipment cache. Jay was already running inventory: voice modulator, modified costume that made him look more imposing in the tunnels, and most importantly, the psychological distance that came with wearing someone else's face.

  His phone buzzed. Domino's number.

  For a moment, he considered letting it go to voicemail. Then, on pure impulse, he answered.

  "Hey, Domino. You free for dinner tonight?"

  Complete silence.

  He could practically hear her brain processing that question through the roundabout logic she used to navigate the world.

  Finally, "Are you asking me out right now? Wasn't I supposed to be your lucky mascot, not your dinner date?"

  "Maybe."

  She laughed—like dice hitting felt. "You know what? Sure. This should be interesting. Either you're having a breakdown, or you're finally getting your priorities straight. Either way, I want a front-row seat."

  After hanging up, Jay caught Bobby staring at him, somewhere between amused and concerned.

  "You know, when I said you should go on dates, I didn't mean—"

  "Right now, while hunting traitors, I know." Jay waved him off, but something had loosened in his chest.

  "I was gonna say I'm proud of you, but—"

  "Butt out, old man."

  Bobby held up his hands in mock surrender. "Fair enough. Just don't blame me when she shoots you for being late because you were busy terrorizing someone."

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  "She'd probably find that charming."

  "That's what worries me."

  The Morlock tunnels felt different with the mask on. Heavier. Like the weight of authority had settled on Jay's shoulders and changed how he moved through the world.

  Jay adjusted the Power Broker voice modulator as they descended through maintenance corridors that hadn't seen city workers in decades.

  The costume changed how he held himself, how others looked at him. The Power Broker wasn't just Jay with better equipment—he was someone else entirely. Someone who made hard choices and lived with the consequences.

  The main chamber buzzed with nervous energy. Children peeked around corners before being shooed back by watchful parents. Elderly Morlocks gathered in worried clusters. The usual background hum of daily life had been replaced by tense whispers and the sound of weapons being checked.

  Five chairs sat in a semicircle under harsh flood lamps that cast stark shadows across faces ranging from defiant to terrified.

  The Morlock leadership formed a loose perimeter. Callisto at the center with her arms crossed, reading the room's tension with enhanced senses. Sack's massive, radiation-scarred form loomed on her left. Beautiful Dreamer's ethereal presence drifted on her right, cigarette smoke curling around her like something alive.

  "Power Broker." Callisto stepped forward. "They're ready."

  Jay studied the suspects with clinical detachment. Three of them couldn't meet his masked gaze, their body language screaming guilt. A woman with gills and shark-like features stared back with pure defiance—the kind that said she'd rather die than bend. An older man with crystalline skin that caught and fractured the harsh light just looked tired. Bone-deep exhausted in the way that came from carrying shame too long.

  The voice modulator, the narrowed vision, the way others looked at him—it all created distance. Jay could feel guilt, could second-guess himself. The Power Broker simply acted.

  When he spoke, his voice carried the electronic distortion that had become his signature in these tunnels.

  "Look at me."

  The words came out quietly, but he let Kilgrave's stolen ability flow into them. It honestly felt like swallowing poison, the viral component circulating under his skin, repulsive and wrong but undeniably effective. All five heads turned in perfect unison, eyes glazing with artificial compliance.

  He hated using it. He hated how easy it was. He hated how right it felt when he needed answers and didn't have time for games.

  "Tell me why you betrayed your people."

  The first three spoke in overlapping confessions: "Money." "Surface lives." "The Hellfire Club promised integration, not just tolerance."

  The woman with gills fought the compulsion, her enhanced physiology giving her some resistance. When she finally spoke, her voice carried more venom than submission. "I didn't betray anyone. Storm was our real leader before she handed the position back to Callisto. Then you showed up, taking authority you never earned, making decisions for people whose struggles you've never lived."

  'Fair point,' Jay thought but didn't say.

  But it was the crystalline man whose words cut deepest. His voice carried the weight of a father's desperate love. "SHIELD offered to pay for my wife's surgery. The kind that costs more than I'll make in ten lifetimes. All I had to do was report on activities and... provide information about the Power Broker's methods and capabilities."

  The old Jay would have focused on the betrayal. This Jay couldn't stop thinking about the desperation that had led to it.

  "Beautiful Dreamer," he said, his modulated voice carrying absolute authority. "Adjust their memories. Remove operational knowledge and details of this interrogation. Replace it with confusion about recent events."

  Beautiful Dreamer stepped forward, already drawing on her cigarette to induce the dream-smoke necessary for her memory manipulation. Her power took hold of the first suspect smoothly, but then Jay felt something else.

  The lightest brush against his own mind. A whisper of compulsion-

  His mental shields slammed up automatically.

  Jay's hand was around her throat before conscious thought caught up with instinct. He lifted her just enough that her toes barely touched the ground, his power suppression ability severing her telepathic connection like a blade through silk.

  The chamber went absolutely silent. Even breathing seemed to stop.

  "Never," Jay said, his voice carrying the kind of quiet menace that was somehow worse than shouting, "try that again."

  He set her down with deliberate gentleness that was somehow more threatening than violence would have been. Beautiful Dreamer's hands shook as she nodded understanding.

  "Finish the memory work. Just that. Nothing else."

  She completed the task in silence, her usual ethereal confidence replaced by stark awareness of how quickly mercy could become judgment.

  After the suspects were led away—the three guilty of simple greed to face exile, the father to face community service until his debt was worked off, the defiant woman released with a warning—Jay addressed the crowd that had gathered.

  "Masque has been taken by the Hellfire Club."

  His voice carried through the chamber without needing amplification. He had practice that came from years of making yourself heard in rooms full of people who didn't want to listen.

  "They've infiltrated us. Bought our people. Turned them against each other."

  The crowd leaned forward, drawn by gravity in his words.

  "Every one of you came here because the surface world decided you didn't matter. You built something better down here, a real community, a place where being different wasn't a crime. The Hellfire Club wants to destroy that. They want to prove that you're still victims, still powerless, still at the mercy of people who see you as things rather than people."

  His gaze swept the chamber, making eye contact with faces that had learned to expect disappointment from authority figures.

  "They took Masque to send a message; that they can reach into your home and take anyone they want. They took your children's future. Your right to exist peacefully."

  His voice rose, carrying conviction that could start revolutions or end them.

  "But you're not victims. Not anymore. You're a community that's survived everything the world threw at you and built something worth protecting. Masque might be a scumbag who caused you harm and suffering—but he's ours to punish. And no one gets to just take what's ours."

  Hands rose throughout the crowd. Ordinary Morlocks ready to fight for one of their own.

  This, Jay realized, was what leadership actually looked like.

  "Callisto," Jay said, tension crackling in his voice like livewire, "hit them directly. Loud and visible, but clean—no civilians get hurt."

  "Direct assault?" Callisto's scarred face hardened into something that could cut glass. "That's not how we operate. We survive by staying invisible."

  "Invisibility didn't protect Masque." The words came out sharper than Jay intended. "Sometimes you have to make noise to be heard."

  "And sometimes noise gets people killed," she shot back. "These are my people's lives you're risking."

  "They're their own people who choose to do this."

  The statement hung in the air between them like a challenge.

  "Caliban," Jay called out, "I need tracking on all their mutants. Every enhanced individual in that building, I want to know their positions."

  His comm unit buzzed with an incoming transmission. Xabi's voice came through crystal clear: "Got what you need, mate. Three floors above ground, but the basement's showing unusual activity—can't enter due to biometric locks. Heavy security for a social club, and you wouldn't believe the membership list I managed to peek at."

  Jay looked around the chamber. Strike teams forming. Caliban's pale features tightened in concentration as his tracking abilities reached out across the city. Morlocks who'd spent years hiding now preparing for a fight they'd chosen rather than one forced on them.

  "Tell me everything," Jay said into the comm.