Get up, make breakfast, and start planning tonight's on the Rooftop Greenhouse

You swing your legs off the bed and stand, your knees popping audibly. Your body feels like it's been through a car compactor—every joint stiff, every muscle carrying the memory of yesterday's accumulated terror and exertion and release. But twelve hours of unconsciousness has done something for you. Your head is clear.

"I'm making actual food this time," you say, padding barefoot into the kitchen. The burned pan from last night sits in the sink, a charred monument to good intentions. You dump it in the trash—it's beyond saving—and pull a fresh skillet from the cabinet.

Lina follows you, still carrying her coffee, and hops up onto the counter beside the stove. She sits there with her bare legs dangling, your oversized t-shirt bunched around her thighs, watching you with an expression that hovers somewhere between amusement and proprietorship.

"Eggs?" you ask, opening the fridge.

"Scrambled. And toast if you've got bread that isn't fossilized."

You find half a loaf that passes inspection and drop two slices in the toaster. Eggs crack into a bowl, a splash of milk, salt, pepper. The mundane choreography of breakfast feels surreal after the last week of your life. You whisk the eggs with a fork, the metal tines scraping against ceramic, and pour them into the buttered skillet. They sizzle immediately, the smell filling the kitchen—warm, fatty, ordinary.

"So," you say, pushing the eggs around with a spatula. "Let's talk about tonight. Rooftop Greenhouse. What's the layout? How many people? What's the plan?"

Lina takes a long sip of her coffee, her eyes half-closing with satisfaction. When she opens them again, she shrugs one shoulder—the one where the t-shirt neckline has slipped down, exposing the curve of her collarbone and the faint tan line beneath.

"There's not much to plan, Sam. Marco's going to be there with his people. I'll handle it."

You glance at her. "That's not a plan. That's a bumper sticker."

She snorts—an actual, unguarded snort of laughter that makes her look her age for once. Twenty-three. Just a girl sitting on a kitchen counter in borrowed boxer shorts.

"Fine," she says, setting the mug down and ticking points off on her fingers. "Here's the plan. Step one: I teleport in. Step two: I kill everyone who isn't Marco. Step three: I find Marco. Step four: I make him hurt. Step five: I teleport home. Booyah." She spreads her hands wide, palms up, like a magician finishing a trick. "Done."

The toast pops. You pull it out, butter it, and slide the scrambled eggs onto two plates. You hand one to Lina, who accepts it with a murmured thanks and immediately starts eating with her fingers, picking up clumps of egg and dropping them into her mouth.

"You're eating like a raccoon," you say.

"I'm eating like someone who burned three thousand calories liquefying six brains at four in the morning. Give me a fork."

You hand her one. She stabs a chunk of egg and chews, talking around it.

"Look, I get why you're worried. But think about it." She points the fork at you. "Everything you did to me—the compound, the vibration, the helmet—all of it's been patched. Your blue compound fixed every vulnerability. The speakers at Northside? Didn't do shit. My diamond form just absorbed the frequency and moved on. Bullets never worked. Explosives never worked. Gas never worked." She takes another bite, chewing with aggressive satisfaction. "I'm exactly what I was when I walked into that first warehouse on the docks. The original killing machine. No weaknesses. No cracks."

She swallows, licks butter from her thumb, and fixes you with a look of absolute certainty.

"Marco's got, what, fifteen guys? Twenty? Doesn't matter if it's twenty or two hundred. I walk in, I light up every brain in range, and it's confetti time." She mimes an explosion with her fingers, making a soft *pshh* sound with her lips. "Then I find Marco. And Marco doesn't get the quick version. Marco gets to know exactly why it's happening. Who I am. Who Jane was. What he did to my sister."

Her voice drops on the last sentence. The playful bravado doesn't disappear—it hardens. Underneath the cocky grin, underneath the casual egg-eating, there's something ancient and cold. Grief compressed into diamond.

"I want him to feel it, Sam. I want him to know his brain is turning to soup inside his skull, and I want the last thing he sees to be Jane's face looking down at him." She pauses. "Well. My face. Same difference to him."

She bites into her toast with a sharp crack.

"Then I teleport home, take a shower, and we figure out what the rest of our lives look like. Easy."

You lean against the opposite counter, eating your own eggs, studying her. She's radiating confidence like heat off asphalt. Every word, every gesture, every casual bite of toast broadcasts the same message: *I am unstoppable and this is already over.*

"What about me?" you ask. "Where am I during all this?"

"Here," she says immediately. "Safe. Watching TV. Eating leftovers. Being alive."

"Lina—"

"No." The word comes out sharp, cutting through the kitchen like a blade. She sets her plate down beside her on the counter. "You're not coming. This isn't a discussion. You're a bio-engineer with no combat training and no powers. You step inside that greenhouse and you're just a bag of organs waiting to get punctured." Her brown eyes bore into yours. "I didn't keep you alive this long to get you killed in the last act."

She picks her plate back up and takes another enormous bite of toast, clearly considering the matter settled.