CHAPTER 33: TRUST
The diner on Forty-Fourth Street opened at six in the morning.
Karen was there when I arrived at six-fifteen, tucked into our usual booth, coffee cup in front of her. From the look of it, the coffee had gone cold a while ago. She'd probably been here since the doors unlocked, unable to sleep, trying to make sense of what she'd witnessed.
I slid into the seat across from her. The vinyl squeaked under my weight.
"Start talking," she said.
No preamble. No pleasantries. Just those two words, delivered with the same investigative intensity she brought to her work on Fisk.
"I don't know where to begin."
"The beginning. When did this happen to you?"
I took a breath. Organized my thoughts. The truth—or as much of it as I could safely share.
"A few months ago, I was in an accident." Not quite a lie. Waking up in a new body felt like an accident, even if it wasn't one in the conventional sense. "When I recovered, I was different. I didn't understand it at first. Thought maybe it was adrenaline, shock, something medical."
"But it wasn't."
"No." I met her eyes. "When I'm facing multiple attackers—people who want to hurt me, genuinely threaten me—I get stronger. Faster. More durable. The more dangerous they are, the more I... change."
Karen's expression didn't shift. She was processing, filing information, building a mental model.
"Like a superhero."
"Like a person with a weird problem." I attempted a smile. It felt hollow. "I'm still figuring out the limits. Still learning what I can and can't do. Claire—she's a nurse, she's been helping me understand the medical side. But there's no manual for this."
"The night at Union Allied." Karen's voice sharpened. "The men who attacked me in my apartment. You said someone else intervened."
"Someone did." Matt. But I couldn't say that. "I wasn't there for that one."
"But you were attacked too. Around the same time. I remember you being hurt."
"Three guys. Corporate hitmen. It was the first time my abilities activated." The memory of that fight was still vivid—the confusion, the surge of power, the crash afterward that left me helpless for hours. "I didn't know what was happening. I just knew I had to survive."
Karen was quiet for a long moment. The diner's background noise filled the silence—coffee percolating, plates clattering, the morning crowd trickling in for their pre-work eggs and toast.
"Have you ever used this to hurt innocent people?"
"No." Absolute certainty. "Never."
"To help Hell's Kitchen?"
"Every chance I get."
She studied my face, looking for deception. Looking for the lie beneath the truth. I let her look. Whatever she found there, it would decide whether I had an ally or an enemy.
"Matt's like you, isn't he?" The question came quietly, almost gentle. "Different."
I didn't answer. Couldn't. That was Matt's secret to keep or reveal.
Karen nodded anyway, as if my silence confirmed everything she'd suspected. "I've wondered. The bruises. The disappearances. The way he seems to know things he shouldn't know."
"That's not my story to tell."
"I know." She picked up her cold coffee, took a sip, grimaced at the taste. "But it helps. Knowing there's more than one of you. That I'm not the only one who's seen behind the curtain."
The waitress came by. We ordered fresh coffee, eggs for Karen, toast for me. Normal things. Morning ritual things that had nothing to do with superpowers and secrets and the weight of what had passed between us.
When the waitress left, Karen reached across the table and squeezed my hand.
"You scared the hell out of me," she said.
"I scared the hell out of myself."
She laughed. The sound was unexpected—bright and genuine and full of something that felt like relief. Like the tension of the past twelve hours had finally found an outlet.
"Thank you," she said. "For last night. For protecting me. For telling me the truth."
"Most of the truth. There are things I can't—"
"I know." She squeezed my hand again. "I've kept secrets too. Sometimes you have to, until you're ready to share them." A pause. "I won't tell anyone. About you or what you can do. That's your story to control."
The food arrived. We ate in companionable silence, the kind of quiet that happens when two people have passed through something difficult together and come out the other side.
"So," Karen said finally, pushing her empty plate away. "Superheroes are real."
"Just people with weird problems," I repeated.
She smiled. "Hell of a weird problem."
We left the diner together, stepping out into the cold December morning. The sky was gray, threatening snow, the kind of winter day that made Hell's Kitchen feel smaller and more intimate.
Karen squeezed my arm before heading toward the office.
"We're going to take Fisk down," she said. "You, me, Matt, Foggy, Ben. All of us together. And your weird problem?" A flash of that investigative intensity, focused and determined. "It's going to help."
She walked away. I watched her go, feeling something shift in my chest. Not quite hope—something more complicated than that. But close.
The circle was getting larger. Claire, Karen, eventually others. The weight of secrets redistributing across more shoulders.
It felt like the start of something stronger.
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