"And that's when Gina said that Tommy likes her, but I don't think he does, because JJ said that Tommy's been sneaking around behind the school with―"

"Kaede, what have I told you about gossip? Besides, you and your friends are too young to 'like' anyone. That should wait until you're older."

"Daaaad, I'm almost ten!"

"I know. But that kind of stuff is for teenagers."

Kaede considered, then clearly dismissed the idea as stupid. "Whatever. If you don't want to listen, fine."

Kotetsu sighed. "Go on."

"You don't―"

"Tommy's been sneaking around the back of the school with Estrid from second period, but she's telling everyone she's dating someone from the lacrosse team. I pay attention."

"Okay! So then Mrs. Grant came out behind the school and said, what is that?"

"What was it?" Kotetsu asked. Then, the rest of his brain caught up, and he heard the panic in Kaede's voice.

Instinctively he jumped in front of her, searching for any threat, any danger to his daughter. Nothing leaped out at them from the shadows. "What was it?"

Kaede pointed a shaking finger.

A crumpled figure was draped half on the stairs to Kotetsu's apartment, half on the floor. It tried to rise, then slumped down entirely on the ground. Pale hair, now matted with dirt and grime, singed at some ends, covered the man's face. One of his legs was folded under him at an unnatural angle. He'd gotten free of the blindfold and cuffs somehow, but the collar still blinked around his neck.

"Kaede, go get Antonio."

"Daddy, he's a NEXT," she whispered, eyes wide as saucers.

"Do as I say."

"We've got to call the―"

The figure's head shot up. Kotetsu swallowed. "Kaede, listen to Daddy. Run inside, get Antonio, and don't pick up the phone. Do it now."

It was the sharpest tone he'd ever used with her, and she positively flew inside. That taken care of, Kotetsu approached the figure on the ground slowly, trying to seem as nonthreatening as possible. "My name is Kotetsu," he volunteered. "What's yours?"

Usually when someone said that a person's eyes smoldered, they were speaking figuratively. Not now. The man's eyes flared with blue-green flames.

Kotetsu looked around, trying to ensure that there was no one close. The man looked young, fragile. If he'd been a slave all or most of his life, it was possible he'd have trouble with the language. Slowly and clearly, he said, "I'm not going to hurt you."

The pale eyes burned. Kotetsu knew without a doubt that had he been in any condition to do so, the man would have run. He had the look of a runner.

"Look, you can't go anywhere like that, and you know it," Kotetsu said practically, waving to the man's leg. "And if you don't get that collar off, they'll track you in two hours, tops."

"And if I go with you?"

The man's voice was ragged, as though he'd been screaming for a long time, but still composed. Kotetsu had been wrong; he clearly had no trouble with the language, and spoke it like a native.

Kotetsu sidled closer, again looking over both shoulders. "I can get that collar off."

The fire vanished from the man's eyes. With it gone, they looked hungry, desperate. "If this is a trick," he warned, "I'll..."

"I know you're powerful," Kotetsu assured him. "Come on, we need to get you inside."

"I can't walk. My leg is broken."

Kaede reappeared in the doorway, hiding behind Antonio's bulk. "Kaede, sweetie, go upstairs and shut your door. Antonio, come help me with him?"

Antonio scooped up the crumpled figure as if he were no more than a child, for all his long limbs and lean muscles.

Feeling paranoid, knowing he wasn't, Kotetsu took another look around the street before shutting the door and locking all the bolts.

Antonio didn't need Kotetsu to tell him where to go. He carried the NEXT to the first sublevel, something that would have been a basement if it were less well-appointed and furnished. There were a few cot beds, a sofa, a refrigerator, and a heavy steel door above, complete with state-of-the-art locking mechanisms.

"What is this place?"

"This is my basement. You like it?"

"It looks like a hostel."

"I like to be a good host. Here, put him down on the bed."

Antonio complied, being as gentle as possible with the wounded leg. He gave the man a sideways look, a question clearly worrying him.

"Yes," Kotetsu said before he could ask, "He's the one that's probably all over the news. Take the necessary precautions, then call Ivan, would you?"

"Sure thing. You need anything else?" Unspoken was the question of whether Kotetsu wanted backup. Sometimes, NEXT who had been enslaved and poorly treated lashed out at anyone, even those who weren't trying to hurt them.

"I'm fine. You go ahead. Make sure Kaede doesn't start trying to listen at doors again."

The NEXT watched Antonio leave the basement. As soon as the heavy door slammed, he said quietly, "He's a slave."

"He wears a collar. Doesn't mean he's a slave."

"Then what?"

Kotetsu shrugged. "He's family."

"You don't chain your family like a dog."

Kotetsu shrugged again, annoyed. "You want to know his life story, ask him." He reached for the man's collar.

Fire exploded out of the man's eyes. Kotetsu, who had been expecting something of the sort, dove under the bed. "Hey!" he yelled, annoyed. "Knock it off, I'm trying to help!"

The flames died away. "What are you going to do about my collar?"

"I was going to take it off you," Kotetsu grumbled, climbing out from under the bed. "If you don't want me to―"

"It's impossible."

"It should be impossible for you to use your powers with the collar on," Kotetsu pointed out. "But you're doing it."

The man was silent for a moment. Then, softly, he said, "I'm not a normal NEXT."

"That's right. Legend's son, aren't you?"

The man froze.

Kotetsu left the collar alone for now, focusing on the man's leg instead. "Hmm, definitely broken. I can splint this up, but you'll have to keep off it for a few weeks."

"You called him Legend."

"Yes."

"Not Patient Zero."

Kotetsu avoided the man's eyes, focusing instead on cleaning the wound around the break. "He was never Patient Zero in my mind."

He worked in silence, cleaning and stitching up the wound, which had apparently been made by a blade of some kind. The break wasn't a direct result, which made it easier when Kotetsu had to straighten out the leg. "This is going to hurt," he warned, and activated his powers.

The man's eyes went wide, but he said nothing as Kotetsu used his superhuman strength to straighten out the bone, line up the pieces without having to wrench the leg apart.

The man underneath him went paler than usual and retched, but didn't complain. When Kotetsu looked up, there was a thin trail of blood dripping from the man's hand, which he'd clenched so tightly his fingernails cut into his palm.

Take his mind off the pain. Tell him the story, so he'll trust you. Kotetsu kept his voice carefully neutral as he talked. "I met your father when I was ten. I'd always kept quiet about my powers, but you know how they can be. They exploded sometimes. My mother got hurt, once or twice, but she didn't tell anyone. I was outside once when it happened, and some part-time slavers noticed me. They followed me until I was alone and stopped glowing, then slapped me with the Arestium. They must have been scared that I still had powers, because they beat me nearly unconscious.

"That's when Mr. Legend found us. That was back when we still thought we could turn it around, you know? That's what he told me. He said we could turn it around. Said that if we weren't afraid, people would come to believe in us."

"He was wrong." There was betrayal, bitterness in the man's tone, and Kotetsu couldn't blame him.

"Maybe. Maybe too many of us were afraid." He gave a sad little smile. "I was. Maybe if I'd have followed his lead back then, others would have joined up, too. There was a man I knew a few years ago who still thought we could turn it around."

"What happened to him?"

"Captured. Sold. As a Class-H, like you. Didn't go for as much, since he wasn't Mr. Legend's son. I think he belongs to a CEO in Midtown. Shows him off at parties."

Kotetsu remembered the look on Keith's face when he'd been dragged off the auction block. The reassuring, trusting smile was gone, replaced with confusion and despair. "He was wrong."

"Or maybe he would have succeeded, if you'd helped him." There was no accusation in the man's voice, just a statement of fact.

Kotetsu's voice hardened. "I knew a man who did fire like you. He called me a coward, too."

"Knew?"

"He didn't want to be taken alive. Rushed a barricade, trying to get out of the city. They shot him."

They'd shot him a lot. Kotetsu had turned off the TV before Kaede could see. She hadn't recognized the flaming warrior as her Dad's friend Nathan, but that wasn't the kind of trauma he wanted her to go through.

"People die. My father said it's better to die doing what you believe than live in fear."

Kotetsu wrapped soft cloth bandages around the man's leg, then hardened them with painted plaster. "I have a daughter to protect."

"He had a son."

"She doesn't have anyone else."

"So you hide behind her."

"You don't know what I've done!"

The man let out a humorless laugh. "You smuggle slaves out of the city. You try to free them. You go to a comfortable job where you make enough money to customize your sublet into a safe house, and come home at night and kiss your daughter on the head, and tell yourself you're doing good in the world, and you walk by the slave markets on your way home from work and try not to meet anyone's eyes."

"You saw me?"

The man shook his head. "You recognized me. You said I was Legend's son. The only place you would have seen me was at the Market, since you weren't sure what was on TV."

Kotetsu wanted to protest that he didn't usually walk that way, hadn't walked that way since they'd sold Karina, but knew that wouldn't make it any better. "Look," he finally said, "my powers only last for five minutes, and they're about to run out. Do you want me to get that collar off, or do you want me to throw you back into the street? I'm not having the police break down my door."

"You can't let me go. I know your secret."

Kotetsu narrowed his eyes, leaning closer. "I'm offering to help you. Don't repay me by threatening my family."

The pale man held his gaze for a second, then looked away. "Do it, then."

The Arestium was strong, but Kotetsu gripped hard. Putting all his strength into the blow, he snapped the collar in half, throwing the pieces to the side.

The blue glow faded from his skin, and he felt the familiar drain of returning to normal. "All right. Now, what happens next is up to you. You can stay here as long as you need, to recover, but I won't force you to stay. This isn't a prison."

"What if I don't want to stay?"

"Then you can leave. Try to escape on your own. I know you've done that before." Under the collar were old scars, crisscrossing the pale neck with faded lines. "Or, you can wait until your leg heals, and I can try and get you out of the city."

"How?"

"I have a friend who knows the Free NEXT, out past the walls. He's good at getting passports."

"Why doesn't your large friend go out and join them?"

Kotetsu frowned. "You ask a lot of questions for someone who won't give me his name."

There was a silent war going on in the other man's head, he could tell. He knew it; the desire to trust, to reach out a hand, even with the memory of being slapped away and betrayed in the past. That was how Mr. Legend had died, Kotetsu had heard. He'd tried to free a captive NEXT who had turned out to be an undercover policeman, and been ambushed. That had only been a few years after he'd saved Kotetsu.

The man came to a decision. "Yuri. Yuri Petrov."

"Thank you. Hey, can you use that flame to destroy the collar? Otherwise it makes a horrible noise in the trash compactor, and I can never be sure if it's deactivated."

Yuri raised a contemptuous eyebrow. "You think I can't?"

"No, I'm asking if you can."

In the blink of an eye, Yuri swept out a hand and pointed at the halves of the collar. They twisted, contorted in a way that metal usually didn't, wreathed in blue-green flame that looked hotter than anything Nathan had ever produced, before melting into puddles on the floor.

"Wow. Nicely done."

"Have I impressed you, Mr. Kotetsu?"

"You've proven me right. I thought you were dangerous."

Yuri smiled thinly. "You were right."