The Hero crossed her arms. “I thought I told you to come in costume,” she said.

Emily froze. “Um,” she said before looking for words. “You . . . didn’t?”

She had the impression Melanie was frowning, though there was no way to tell with most of her face hidden behind a visor. She reached down and Emily tensed until she pulled out a phone from a small pocket sewn just below her holster.

The light from the cell illuminated the alley for a bit and reflected off the opaque lens covering Melanie’s face. “Huh. I didn’t. My bad.”

“Oh, okay,” Emily said.

“You a big-shot Hero?” Teddy asked.

Melanie snorted. “I guess so. You never heard of Melaton?”

Emily knew her. Well, as much as she knew any celebrity. The Hero showed up in commercials for sportswear and there had been a controversy when Melaton knocked out a crowd of reporters.

“Uh . . .” Emily said.

Melaton sighed. “All right, kid, I figured you might be of some help. Handshake said you were okay, for the most part. And we’re both after the same jerkwad.”

“You mean going after Homie?” Emily asked.

“Pretty much,” Melaton said. “Tell me right now, you in or not?”

“I . . . I don’t know what you’re planning on doing,” Emily said.

The Hero grumbled under her breath, then nodded. “Yeah, okay, fair. I have a plan.”

The silence after that lasted a few long beats until Teddy decided to fill it. “Yeah, what is it?” she asked.

“I’m going to find Homie, and then I’m going to give him some nightmares.”

“That’s . . . your plan?” Emily asked.

“Got a problem with it?”

That was not, in Emily’s opinion, a plan. It was barely an outline! She put more planning into buying cereal—she didn’t want the cashier to think she was too childish buying the tasty kinds, or too much of a prude if she bought the sort of cereal that was too healthy. “N-no, no problem,” Emily lied.

“If you want to come along, I could use a bit of help, especially powered help.”

Emily considered it. “What will we do if we find the hard drive?”

Melaton shrugged a shoulder. “We can give it to Handshake for some cash.”

“It has a lot of . . . bad things on it.”

“I’d be all for giving it to the fat pigs in charge, but there’s some information on there about me, you know?” Melaton said.

“I, yeah,” Emily said. “I think, maybe, if you don’t mind, we could destroy it?”

The Hero’s jaw twisted one way, then the other. “Yeah, we could do that. We’ll see. You coming?”