The locker room smelled like sweat and cheap body spray, the kind of aggressive chemical cocktail that happened when twenty teenage boys tried to cover up ninety minutes of getting absolutely demolished by the number one Hero in America.

I pulled my shirt over my head and tossed it toward my bag, missing by approximately three feet because my arms still felt like overcooked noodles. Radiant’s "fun 1v3 capture the flag" exercise had been approximately as fun as getting hit by a truck that smiled at you while it ran you over.

The man moved like physics had personally apologized to him and agreed to look the other way. Every time I thought I had a read on his positioning, he was already somewhere else, golden light trailing behind him like a taunt made visible.

"That was educational," Caden announced from somewhere behind me, his voice carrying the specific exhaustion of someone who had just discovered new muscles to be sore in. "I learned that I am bad at everything."

"You learned that Radiant is unfairly good at everything," Marco corrected, peeling off his training gear with the weary resignation of a man who had seen too much. "Different lesson."

"Same outcome. My body hurts and my pride is wounded."

I grabbed a towel and headed toward the showers, passing Percy’s locker on the way. The guy was sitting on the bench with his uniform half-changed, staring at his notebook with an intensity that suggested the notebook owed him money. His pen was moving, but not writing. Just tapping. The same spot, over and over, a rhythmic pattern that had nothing to do with whatever data he was supposed to be recording.

I stopped.

Percy Mendoza distracted was unusual. Percy Mendoza distracted enough to stop documenting was unprecedented. The guy had literally written notes during a fire drill last week because he wanted to track evacuation efficiency metrics.

"Hey." I dropped onto the bench beside him. "You good?"

Percy blinked, the pen stopping mid-tap. "Hmm?"

"You’ve been staring at that page for three minutes without writing anything. That’s like, a Percy emergency."

"Oh." He looked down at his notebook, then back up at me, then at some middle distance that existed approximately six feet past my left shoulder. "Yes. Fine. Just processing."

"Processing what?"

The pen started tapping again. "Did you notice anything unusual about Radiant’s departure?"

I thought back to the end of the training session. Radiant had gathered us in the center of the field, delivered approximately ninety seconds of feedback that somehow made getting obliterated feel like a privilege, then flashed that movie-star grin and said—

"Now watch how a hero moves!" His voice had carried across the entire training ground, bright and warm and completely confident in a way that made you want to follow him into traffic. Then he’d taken off running toward the east gate, not jogging, not walking, full sprint, and the displacement from his movement had generated a wind strong enough to push my hair back from my face. "Like he’s got somewhere to be!"

He’d been gone before anyone could respond. Just golden light and a breeze that smelled faintly like ozone and impossibly good cologne.

"I mean, yeah, he left fast," I said, pulling myself back to the present. "But he’s Radiant. The guy probably has eleven commitments before lunch and another forty before dinner. He’s still doing hero work on top of teaching, right? Emergency response calls, agency obligations, whatever charity thing he’s got scheduled this week."

Percy’s pen stopped. "He checked his phone three times during the exercise."

"So?"

"Radiant never checks his phone during training. I’ve documented fourteen sessions since the semester started. Not once has he interrupted instruction to look at a personal device. His commitment to presence is one of his documented teaching strengths." The pen resumed tapping. "Today he checked it three times. The third time, his expression changed for approximately 0.4 seconds before he reset to baseline. Then he accelerated the exercise conclusion by an estimated seven minutes."

I processed this information. "Okay, that’s weirdly specific, but maybe he had a hot date."

Percy stared at me.

"What? The man looks like that." I gestured vaguely in the direction Radiant had disappeared. "You think the number one Hero in America doesn’t have options? Someone probably texted him with an offer he couldn’t refuse."

"That seems statistically improbable as an explanation for the observed behavioral deviation."

"Percy. Buddy." I put my hand on his shoulder. "Sometimes people leave places quickly because they have plans that involve another person and minimal clothing. It’s not a conspiracy. It’s being hot and having a social life."

His expression didn’t change, but something in his posture shifted. The analytical tension was still there, but underneath it was something else. Something that looked almost like concern.

"The deviation from established patterns suggests an unplanned variable," he said, but the conviction had drained out of it. "Though I acknowledge your alternative hypothesis is technically possible."

"It’s not an alternative hypothesis, it’s called being a human being with a pulse." I squeezed his shoulder once, then let go. "Radiant’s fine. He’s probably fine-er than anyone else on this planet. The guy could fight a building and the building would beg for mercy."

Percy nodded slowly, but he still hadn’t started writing again. His pen was just hovering over the page, waiting for something that wasn’t coming.

I recognized that look. I’d seen it in mirrors during bad nights when the weight of the System and the deception and the seventeen different women whose lives I was actively complicating pressed down hard enough to make breathing feel like work. Percy wasn’t worried about Radiant’s schedule. He was using Radiant’s schedule as something to think about that wasn’t whatever was actually bothering him.

Time to redirect.

"So," I said, keeping my voice casual in a way that was absolutely calculated. "When are you gonna ask out Rina?"

Percy’s pen clattered to the floor.

His face went through approximately seven colors in two seconds, cycling from its usual pale baseline through pink, red, crimson, and a shade I could only describe as emergency tomato. His mouth opened. Closed. Opened again. No sound came out.

"I—that’s—the statistical parameters of—romantic engagement requires—the documentation of mutual interest indicators is—"

"Percy."

"—and the margin of error on interpreting social cues in cross-gender interactions is approximately—"

"Percy."

"—which makes any conclusion about reciprocal attraction fundamentally unreliable without—"

"PERCY."

He stopped. Breathed. Looked at me with the expression of a man who had just been hit by a truck he didn’t see coming, which was ironic given that I was reasonably certain Rina had been sending signals so obvious you could have seen them from space.

"How did you know," he said, very quietly.

"Because I have eyes. And because you’ve been sitting next to her in every class that doesn’t have assigned seating since day two. And because the last time she laughed at something you said, you documented the specific acoustic properties of her laugh in your notebook like it was experimental data."