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Cassie Kent has been a superhero for two years-long enough to know a cape doesn't make the world safer or simpler. Chicago is loud, chaotic, always teetering on disaster. She spends most days airborne, extinguishing literal and figurative fires. She works alone by choice, avoiding teams, politics, and especially the Guardians of the Globe. Their repeated offers and polished speeches can't shake her gut feeling: something's off. Trust, she's learned, gets people hurt.
Off-duty, her life is painfully ordinary. She lives with her older cousin Clark, who tries to carve out some normalcy-though "normal" was never on the table. School is tolerable noise and expectations; she's not popular, not invisible. Sharp-tongued, stubborn, and unapologetically herself, Cassie doesn't bother impressing anyone-especially not her annoying neighbor, Mark Grayson.
Mark is irritating in a specific way: awkward, nerdy, stubbornly convinced they're friends despite her reminders they're not. He tries too hard, asks too many questions, orbiting her life like a persistent moon. She dismisses him as background noise she'll forget after graduation.
Then Mark confesses he has powers.
One revelation shatters her carefully built walls. Mark isn't just a weird kid-he's dangerous, unpredictable, tied to a larger story neither asked for. It pulls Cassie into events she wanted no part of: uncovering the truth about Mark's father, realizing one of the world's greatest heroes might be its biggest threat, and accepting that staying sidelined isn't an option anymore.
As secrets unravel and good vs. evil blurs, Cassie must question everything-heroism, trust, herself. Working alone keeps her safe, but it won't save the world. Teaming up with people she doesn't trust may be the only way to stop what's coming.