Morgan is in the living room with Arthur and Helen. They are winding down from dinner and their program is interrupted with Invincible and Atom Eve fighting a monster downtown. I wonder Morgan thought... He calls Amber. Helen playfully asks if he is talking to a girl from school. Morgan covers the phone with his hand (he knows Amber can still hear) and replies, "Why yes, Yes I am." Without missing a beat Arthur asks is she pretty? Morgan immediately responds "Of course she's pretty, I wouldn't be talking to her if she wasn't." He tells Amber to hold on, he's going to leave the room because it's too noisy and I can't hear you. Morgan hopes the exchange with his 'parents' has the desired effect on Amber. It does, is this a capture stone perhaps?
Dinner had been one of Helen's experiments—a chicken recipe from some cooking blog she'd annotated with her own notes in the margin. Morgan had done his usual mid‑tier prep work: chopping, stirring, taste‑testing, being mildly astonished that "home‑cooked" was becoming a default instead of a rare treat.
Now they were in the living room, the three of them sunk into well‑worn spots on the couch and armchair, the TV droning in front of them. Some crime procedural, the kind where detectives always had snappy one‑liners and the lab results came back in under five minutes.
"…and that's why you don't wear suede to a crime scene," the fictional detective quipped, right before the screen cut abruptly to a blinking red banner.
SPECIAL REPORT.
The audio snapped over to live news. A shaky helicopter feed filled the screen: downtown, night, streets lit by flickering lamps and the flashing reds and blues of emergency vehicles. A hulking, multi‑limbed monster—something between a mutated crustacean and a demolition crew—was rampaging through traffic, cars scattering like toys.
Two figures danced around it in the air.
Invincible. Atom Eve.
Mark slammed into the creature's shoulder, bouncing off with enough force to crater the side of a nearby building. Eve followed, pink constructs wrapping around one of its arms, trying to pin it.
"I wonder," Morgan murmured, leaning forward.
Arthur muted the TV but didn't turn it off. The three of them watched the silent chaos unfold: Eve blasting the beast back, Mark catching a falling bus, debris raining down in shimmering arcs.
"How often does this happen?" Morgan asked, even though he already knew the answer in broad strokes.
"Often enough," Arthur said, voice dry. "Too often lately."
Helen shook her head. "I swear, there are more monsters now than when we were your age," she said. "Or maybe they just put them on TV more."
"Ratings," Arthur said.
Morgan's phone buzzed in his pocket.
He glanced at the screen.
Amber: You seeing this?
He smiled despite the destruction on‑screen.
Morgan: Yeah. Live‑action disaster movie.
He hesitated for a heartbeat, then hit the call button instead of typing more.
The line clicked. "Hey," Amber said. The sound of crowd noise bled through—she was either near a TV in a common room or somewhere public.
"Hey," Morgan said. "You watching the city get rearranged?"
Helen's head turned. Her expression slid into a teasing grin. "Ooh," she said. "Is that a girl from school?"
Morgan covered the bottom of the phone with his hand, not bothering to muffle his amusement. He knew full well Amber could still hear him.
"Why yes," he said, giving Helen a look that was all mock dignity. "Yes I am."
Without missing a beat, Arthur asked, perfectly straight‑faced, "Is she pretty?"
Morgan didn't even think about it.
"Of course she's pretty," he said. "I wouldn't be talking to her if she wasn't."
Amber laughed in his ear, the sound bright and surprised.
Helen made an approving "hmm" and nudged him lightly with her foot. "Good taste," she said.
Morgan rolled his eyes with theatrical exasperation, then lifted the phone back to his ear properly.
"Sorry," he said to Amber. "It's too noisy in here, I can't hear you. Give me a sec, I'm going to step out."
He didn't rush the exit. He got up, ruffled Helen's shoulder lightly in passing, and clapped a hand on the back of Arthur's chair as he went by.
"I'll be in the hall," he said. "Try not to let the world end without me."
"No promises," Arthur said.
Morgan slipped into the hallway, closing the living room door most of the way behind him. The sounds of the muted TV and Helen's soft commentary dropped to a murmur.
He leaned against the wall, phone back to his ear. "Okay," he said. "I'm all yours. What's up?"
Amber was still chuckling. "Wow," she said. "Bold."
"What, admitting you're pretty?" he said. "Feels pretty objective from this side."
"I meant calling me with your foster parents right there," she said. "Most guys would, I don't know, hide in their room first. Or pretend they were talking to a friend about a math assignment."
"Math's not that exciting," he said. "And they're not that scary."
"They sounded…nice," she said, the word careful, like she didn't quite trust it. "Like, actual people. Not props."
"They are," he said. "It's weird. In a good way."
She was quiet for a second.
"So they know about me now," she said. "In the vaguest possible sense."
"Only that you exist," he said. "No names, no social security numbers, no list of your crimes against cafeteria food. Just 'girl from school' and 'pretty.'"
"'Wouldn't be talking to her if she wasn't,'" she quoted, amusement shading into something softer. "That line going to your head yet?"
"A little," he admitted. "That okay?"
"Yeah," she said. "It's…okay."
He let that sit for a moment, letting the warmth of it settle.
"So," he said, shifting the topic before it got too heavy, "back to our regularly scheduled programming: Invincible and Atom Eve versus oversized calamari. Any bets?"
"On them winning?" she said. "Always. On how much of the city they break in the process? Also always."
"Occupational hazard," he said. "Structural damage as a love language."
She snorted. "That's messed up."
"You're not wrong," he said.
As they talked—about the fight, about the fair, about how one of the career booths had tried to sell her on a loyalty oath disguised as a scholarship—Morgan allowed himself to imagine, just for a moment, what Amber had heard back in the living room.
A boy who didn't hesitate to call her. A home with adults who teased instead of criticized. A casual, easy admission that yes, he was talking to a girl he found pretty, and no, he wasn't ashamed of it.
Capture stone, he thought.
Not in the possessive sense. In the Go sense Arthur had drilled into him: not every stone was about killing territory. Some were about securing life. Creating shapes that couldn't be easily cut off.
If Amber felt, even for a second, like his connection to her was rooted in something stable—a home that didn't treat her like a problem, a boy who wasn't sneaking her into the margins of his life—that was a kind of leverage that had nothing to do with power levels.
On the other end of the line, Amber was smiling. He could hear it.
"So," she said eventually, "I guess if you're calling me during monster attacks, that means I'm officially in your contacts as something other than 'Obstacle #1.'"
"You were never an obstacle," he said. "More like…a strategic opportunity."
"That's worse," she laughed.
"Then I'll stick with 'person I like talking to while the city's on fire,'" he said. "Catchier, anyway."
"Longer, too," she said. "But I'll allow it."
In the living room, the silent news feed showed Invincible and Atom Eve finally bringing the monster down, sirens flaring around them. Helen and Arthur watched, exchanging a look that said they were cataloguing every frame.
In the hallway, Morgan watched a different kind of battle unfold—not between heroes and monsters, but between the scripts this universe had written and the new moves he kept choosing to make.
Another stone on the board.
And this one, he suspected, was very much alive.
Amber ended the call with Morgan just as the news feed cut from the toppled monster to shaky street‑level footage: paramedics rushing in, reporters shouting questions, a quick glimpse of Invincible lifting a crushed car like it was made of tin.
She stared at the TV for a second longer, phone still warm in her hand.
He'd just called. Casually. With his foster parents in the room, teasing him about "a girl from school." No embarrassment, no "I'll call you later when no one can hear."
It shouldn't have felt as rare as it did.
There was a knock at the front door.
Her mom called from the kitchen, "Amber? Mark's here!"
Of course he is, she thought.
She pushed off the couch and crossed the small living room, still half‑watching the muted footage over her shoulder. She opened the door.
Mark stood on the porch, hair mussed, a faint smear of soot on his cheek. His jacket was zipped up, but it didn't hide the way he held himself—a little too stiff, a little too careful, like he was making sure nothing hurt that shouldn't.
"Hey," he said, giving an awkward little wave. "You, uh…saw?"
Amber stepped aside to let him in. "Yeah," she said. "Kind of hard to miss a giant lobster thing on Main Street."
"It was more like a crab," he said automatically, then winced. "Sorry. Not important."
She closed the door behind him. The TV showed Invincible from a distance, waving once at the crowd before taking off. Someone had drawn a crude heart around his paused image with a graphic overlay.
"You okay?" she asked, turning back to Mark.
"Yeah," he said too quickly. "Totally fine. Just—thought I'd check on you. Make sure you weren't, you know…in the blast radius."
Amber folded her arms. "I was in the blast radius of my couch," she said. "Thanks for the concern, though."
He gave a half‑smile, then glanced at her phone still in her hand. "Talking to someone?" he asked.
"Yeah," she said. "A friend. From the other school. We were watching the news."
He nodded, looking a little relieved it wasn't something heavier. "Right. Makes sense."
She studied him.
He's trying, she thought. He really is. He shows up after fights. He checks in. He cares.
But he also looks like he's carrying three other conversations in his head—none of which I'm invited to.
"How bad was it?" she asked, nodding toward the screen.
"Bad," he said, then corrected himself. "Could've been worse. Eve did most of the heavy lifting. I just…caught stuff."
The announcer on TV replayed a slow‑motion shot of Invincible bracing under a falling bus, muscles straining.
"'Just' caught stuff," Amber repeated. "Mark, you caught a bus."
He shrugged, eyes dropping. "Yeah, well. That's kind of the job."
There it was again—that weight, that careful distance. The way he talked around things, even when he was standing right in front of her.
She thought, unbidden, of Morgan in her ear saying, I'm all yours. What's up? No hesitation, no deflection.
She pushed that aside, focusing on the boy in front of her.
"You look tired," she said.
He huffed a weak laugh. "Monsters don't schedule around homework."
"Or social lives," she said.
He winced a little, and she knew she'd hit a nerve.
"Hey," he said. "About…before. At the fair. With that guy. I didn't mean to—"
"To make it weird?" she supplied.
"Yeah," he said. "I just…didn't expect you to, uh…give him your number."
She raised an eyebrow. "You were listening."
"I have ears," he said quickly. "And eyes. And…a brain that sometimes puts things together too late."
"He's a friend," Amber said. "We talk. That's allowed, you know."
"I know," Mark said. "I'm not—jealous, or anything."
She gave him a look that said, Sure.
"Okay, maybe a little," he admitted, hands spread. "But not in a 'you're not allowed' way. Just in a 'I don't know what I'm doing and I don't want to screw this up' way."
"This," she repeated.
"Us," he said, finally saying the word. "Whatever this is. I like you. I want to be around you. I also…disappear a lot. And show up after the fact. And I can't really explain why, and that's not fair to you."
The TV cut to a replay of Atom Eve putting up a shield around a cluster of civilians. The caption read: LOCAL HEROES SAVE DOZENS.
Amber watched the pink dome rise on screen, then drop.
"You're right," she said quietly. "It's not."
He flinched, just a little.
"But," she added, "I also know you're not sneaking off to vape under the bleachers. You're out there getting hit by things that should kill you. So I'm…trying to be patient." She met his eyes. "I just need you to meet me halfway when you can."
He swallowed. "I'm trying," he said. "I really am. I just can't…tell you everything."
"I'm not asking for everything," she said. "I'm asking for something. Like maybe a text before you vanish instead of after you show up on the news."
He managed a small, genuine smile. "I can probably do that."
"Good," she said. "Because I have other friends who call me in the middle of monster attacks just to talk."
He blinked. "That…guy? From Lincoln?"
"Yeah," she said. "He called. With his foster parents teasing him in the background. It was…" She searched for the word. "Normal. Like boring, domestic normal. I forgot how much I missed that."
Mark looked down, then back up, that heaviness in the air settling around them again—not hostile, just dense.
"I want that for you," he said, softly. "Even if I can't always be the one to give it."
That, more than anything, disarmed her.
She stepped a little closer. "Maybe you don't have to choose," she said. "Maybe you can be the guy who catches buses and the guy who texts to say, 'Hey, I'm going to be late because a mutant crab is wrecking downtown.'"
He snorted. "That's a long text."
"I believe in you," she said.
He smiled then, more fully. "Okay," he said. "I'll…try to do better. Starting now."
He pulled out his phone, thumb hovering over the screen. "If a monster shows up during career day, I'll text you first."
"Consider this a binding verbal contract," she said.
He nodded toward the TV. "In the meantime…you want to watch the replay? I can give you the 'behind the scenes' commentary. Like, 'this is where I almost threw up,' and 'this is where I lost my shoe.'"
She snorted. "You lost your shoe?"
"It's a long story," he said. "Involving acid spit and very poor grip."
"Now I have to hear it," she said.
They moved back toward the couch.
Amber sat down, the weight in the room still there but tempered by something warmer. She was aware, in the back of her mind, of another boy in another part of the city, leaning against a hallway wall with his phone, laughing at some comment she'd made.
She didn't know yet how either story would play out.
But as Mark started narrating the silent footage with self‑deprecating commentary—"Right there, that's where Eve saved me from being turned into paste, remind me to thank her again"—Amber thought:
The board's getting crowded.
And I'm not sure anyone realizes how many games are happening at once.