The metal shutter, it turned out, could not be punched into submission.
Adrian spent forty minutes learning this. He crouched on a stepladder outside Kowalski's Corner Market, shivering in the December wind, holding a borrowed drill and a bent aluminum track. The extortionists had kicked the shutter off its rails back in October. The landlord didn't care. And Adrian was rapidly discovering that his Six Eyes—which let him see the microscopic warp in the steel from twelve feet away—did absolutely nothing to help him actually fix it.
Seeing the problem and knowing the trade were two entirely different skill trees.
"Left," Mr. Kowalski called from the sidewalk, arms folded over a pastrami-stained apron. "No. Your left."
"That is my left."
"Then the shutter is wrong."
Adrian sighed through his nose. He pushed a thin, perfectly controlled skin of cursed energy into his forearms and clamped his hands down, holding the track immovably straight while the screw drove in. It was, by a wide margin, the most precise application of cursed energy reinforcement he had ever pulled off.
Three months ago, he was fighting for his life against Grade 3 spirits. Today, he was functioning as a very expensive human vice grip.
Somewhere out there is an anomaly that could level a city, he thought, and I am currently taking orders from a man in an apron.
The last screw bit into the metal. Adrian let go, and the shutter rolled down the rails with a smooth, satisfying rattle, hitting the pavement flush.
"Huh," Mr. Kowalski said. He crouched down, running a thumb along the seamless seal. "Not a gap you could slide a card through."
"That's the point."
"The last guy left a gap you could slide a cat through." Kowalski straightened up and, with great ceremony, pulled a paper-wrapped bundle from his pocket. "Sandwiches, as agreed."
It was pastrami on rye, still warm. Adrian took a bite right there on the sidewalk and briefly reconsidered every fight he had ever taken for free.
A woman with a stroller walked past, gave the repaired shutter an appreciative look, and nodded at him. A kid on a scooter zoomed by and yelled, "Hey! Shutter guy!"
Adrian didn't know how to feel about that.
He'd ditched the blindfold weeks ago. On his off-days, he wore a knit cap and cheap tinted glasses to spare Sophia the accidental attention. On this block, he wasn't a vigilante. He wasn't on a SHIELD watchlist. He wasn't the guy who threw people through walls.
He was the shutter guy. It wasn't a bad gig.
The Christmas tree was Sophia's idea, and it was a terrible tree.
Four feet tall, aggressively lopsided, and bought for nineteen bucks because Sophia had ruthlessly negotiated the price down. She'd carried it up the stairs herself and jammed it into the corner by the corkboard, where its crooked top leaned toward their hazard map like it was trying to eavesdrop.
"A-minus," she said, for the fourth time today.
"I know."
"In organic chemistry."
"I know. You told me twice on the stairs."
"I'm going to be insufferable about it until spring."
"I have high durability," Adrian deadpanned. "I'll survive."
She threw a pinecone at him. He caught it without looking. She made a noise of pure offense.
They decorated it with a dollar-store box of cheap plastic balls and tinsel while an old radio hummed in the background. As Sophia stood on a chair to fix the cardboard star, Adrian realized something. This was the first time in months they weren't braced for impact. No bandages on the table. No burner phones waiting for an emergency text.
Settled, he thought. It was a dangerous word, but he didn't hate it.
Someone knocked on the door. Twice. Evenly.
Sophia paused. "That's not a Tuesday knock."
"It's Reyes," Adrian said. His Six Eyes had already scanned the landing. There was a steady heartbeat, with zero aggression.
When Sophia opened the door, Reyes stood in the hallway holding a small cardboard box. It was his first time at the apartment. Every other meeting had been in parking garages or late-night diners.
"I don't want to intrude," Reyes said, his eyes scanning the patchwork apartment.
"You aren't," Sophia said, pulling the door wide. "We have sparkling cider. I'm told the bubbles make it fancy."
Reyes stepped inside. His stiff posture eased just a fraction when he saw the tragic little tree. He held out the box.
"I brought these," he said. Inside, coiled in tissue paper, was a heavy string of old-school, fat-bulb Christmas lights. Red, green, and a faded blue.
"They were Maria's," Reyes said, his voice quiet. "She hated white lights. Said they looked like a hospital. I haven't had anyone to put them up for, so... it seemed like a waste."
Sophia took the box like it was made of glass. "They're perfect."
Within minutes, Sophia had the hardened DODC agent sitting on their floor, patiently testing dead bulbs while she swapped them out. She had a terrifying talent for making anything feel normal.
Later, over cups of cider, Reyes shifted back into agent mode. "Voss is going to Washington."
Adrian looked up. "Promoted?"
"Reassigned. We all know it's a polite word for exiled. Anomaly Zero's file got shoved into a drawer labeled 'structural instability.' The sensors haven't picked up a spike in eleven weeks."
"That's good," Sophia said carefully.
"It is," Reyes agreed, turning his cup. "But in my line of work, 'nothing' usually just means it hasn't exploded yet."
Adrian stayed quiet. He could feel it. Deep down, beneath the metaphorical floorboards of his soul, the seal was holding. Anomaly Zero was a second, dormant pulse beating a half-second behind his own.
"It's asleep," Adrian said. "I'd know if it woke up."
Reyes studied him, nodded once, and stood up. He refused a second glass of cider and paused in the doorway.
"Thank you," he said to the room. Then he walked down the stairs, and the door clicked shut.
Sophia stared at the tree. The faded blue lights glowed a little dimmer than the rest.
"We're keeping those on all winter," she decided.
"Agreed."
The radio had been swapped for their small, muted TV. Adrian was drying a coffee mug when a breaking news banner caught his eye.
It was aerial footage of Midtown. Scaffolding wrapped around the scarred, half-rebuilt spire of Stark Tower. Tony Stark stood at a podium, looking unbothered by a hundred flashing cameras.
"—confirmed today that the rebuilt tower will serve as a permanent base for the Avengers," the anchor was saying. "Mr. Stark, will the team be officially moving in?"
"They'll be renting," Stark fired back with a razor-sharp grin. "At a very reasonable rate. Pepper's drawing up the lease."
The press laughed. Adrian didn't.
He stared at the screen, looking at the man who had no idea what was coming. The Ultron project. The falling city. The long, brutal war over the Stones. He knew the shape of it all, and he couldn't warn a single person without sounding like a lunatic or painting a massive target on his own back.
Not yet, he reminded himself. Get stronger first.
Then, his vision glitched.
No sound. No grand flash of light. Just a pale, semi-transparent rectangle sliding into his periphery. It used the exact same flat, impersonal font as the very first day the System arrived.
[NOTICE: BASELINE ESTABLISHED.]
Adrian froze. The coffee mug in his hand trembled.
He waited for the rest. A stat block. A level-up notification. A new quest. But nothing came. The text just hovered there for three seconds, offering zero context, before dissolving into thin air.
"Adrian?"
Sophia was watching him from the kitchen, a dish towel slung over her shoulder.