(AFK WORM) CHAPTER NINE

It became something of a strange routine, the way her days divided themselves so neatly between the mundane and the dangerous.

In the mornings, Shemira was Annette Hebert again, or close enough that the distinction no longer felt like a lie she had to consciously maintain. She lectured on English literature to rows of half-interested students, graded essays in the quiet corners of the faculty lounge, and drank far too much bad coffee while skimming news articles that had nothing to do with poetry and everything to do with gangs, arrests, and the ever-present cape scene. 

In the afternoons, she returned home to Danny and Taylor, to shared meals and easy conversations, to the slow and careful reconstruction of a family that had already been fractured once and was now, cautiously, knitting itself back together.

And in the spaces between, when she had an empty office or a half hour to herself, she researched the ABB.

Information was not hard to come by. Their territory was well known, their crimes reported often enough in the local papers, and there was enough grainy footage on PHO caught by phones before someone realized they should be running instead of recording. She read about extortion rings, human trafficking, protection rackets, and the quiet disappearances that never quite made the headlines. 

Lung’s name appeared again and again, always paired with the same grim descriptors and warnings, while Oni Lee was spoken of in a more hushed manner. He was the blade in the dark, the one who appeared without warning and vanished just as quickly, leaving bodies behind whenever the ABB needed to make an example.

She read it all with a calm that surprised her.

It wasn't because she felt detached, but because part of her already understood this kind of cruelty. Esperia had been no kinder, merely more honest about the monsters it produced. Here, the violence wore human faces and pretended to be better than mere beasts, but the end result was the same. Innocents suffered, and the powerful justified it.

The research was slow work, but it was necessary. If she was going to act at all, she needed to understand the scene she would be stepping into.

Despite all that, and the stress it created in her, she did not neglect her family.

Apart from the single, unspoken awkwardness between her and Danny, their lives continued much as they had before. They still woke before dawn for their morning jogs, Danny grumbling good-naturedly while Taylor pretended she was not enjoying herself far more than she ever would have admitted aloud. They still spent their evenings together, sometimes going out for simple dinners when everyone had the energy, other times staying in with old movies and bowls of popcorn balanced precariously on their laps.

The house felt warmer now, fuller in a way it had not been for some time, and in those moments when Taylor laughed freely or Danny smiled at her across the table, the weight in Shemira’s chest eased.

It helped, she realized, more than she had expected.

The constant motion of family life dulled the sharpest edges of her grief, made the distance between this world and the one she had lost feel bearable, if not small now. She did not forget Niru or Damian. She knew she never would. But the ache no longer consumed every breath, and that, in itself, felt like a small mercy.

If only the same could be said for her magic.

For all the time she spent reading about the ABB and thinking about what she might one day do, she was no closer to truly understanding her power. It was there, she knew that much, a distant pressure she could sense if she focused. But it refused to answer her call the way it had in the alley. No matter how much she concentrated or how carefully she tried, it remained distant, as though separated from her by some invisible barrier.

It frustrated her.

It wasn't because she feared it, but because she sensed that she was missing something fundamental. Magic, in Esperia, had always responded to intent and need. Power flowed where it was required. Here, it felt as though her magic was waiting for permission, or perhaps for the right conditions to be met.

She had no desire to seek out another dying man to test that theory.

The spirit orb already bound to her was more than enough, its presence a constant reminder of the cost of her power and the responsibility she now carried. She refused to wish for more death simply to understand herself better. That path led somewhere she was unwilling to go.

But conflict did not have to mean death, or even lead to it.

She found herself thinking back to lectures she had half-listened to over the years, conversations overheard in passing, and articles she had skimmed while pretending not to be interested. Parahuman Studies was not her field, but it was impossible to live in Brockton Bay without absorbing some of its theories. One idea, in particular, surfaced again and again.

Powers grew stronger under pressure.

Stress, danger, and emotional intensity pushed parahumans beyond limits they did not know they had. It was a commonly accepted theory, and one that resonated uncomfortably well with her own experience. Her magic had revealed itself in the presence of death, when the boundary between worlds had thinned, and not in meditation or study or any form of comfort.

Perhaps she did not need another corpse.

Perhaps she only needed to place herself in danger.

The thought unsettled her, not least because it contradicted the caution she had promised herself only days before. She had sworn to wait, to prepare, to understand her abilities before acting, and to ensure that nothing she did could ever be traced back to her family. Yet the more she considered it, the more it made a grim sort of sense. If her power required conflict to surface again, then avoiding the cape scene entirely would only leave her stagnant.

That did not mean she intended to be reckless.

She would start small. 

Brockton Bay was full of criminals who operated beneath the notice of capes, men and women who were dangerous to civilians but insignificant in the larger balance of power. Thieves, muggers, and low-level bottom feeders who thought themselves untouchable because the police were stretched too thin to deal with them. Confronting them would carry risk, but it would not place her directly in the path of monsters like Lung or Oni Lee.

An experiment, nothing more.

And the city offered no shortage of candidates.

She knew where to find them, too. There were streets even locals avoided after dark, certain alleys that saw more unsavory traffic at night than they ever did during the day. She had passed them countless times without truly seeing them, just another resident who knew better than to linger.

Now, she found herself paying attention.

As she walked home one evening, the spirit orb hovering unseen at her side, Shemira felt a familiar tug in her chest. It was faint but insistent, drawing her attention toward a cluster of streets just a few blocks off her usual route. Her steps slowed as understanding settled in, her heartbeat quickening despite herself.

Unwilling test subjects, indeed.

She did not turn toward them yet.

Not tonight, at least. 

But as she continued on toward home, her thoughts drifted away from essays and lectures and even the ABB. They lingered instead on the coming conflict, on the moment when she would step into danger by choice rather than chance.

And she suspected that when she did, her magic would be waiting eagerly for her.