Riposte

The hum from the ceiling lights has been stuck at a steady B-flat since Monday. I keep track of these things. Patterns keep me sane.

Numbers fill my screen — quarterly reports, projections, the kind of numbers my boss pretends to understand before forwarding to someone higher up. I’m halfway through reconciling a set of discrepancies in the Carter file when a shadow falls across my desk.

A thump. The stale smell of ink. “Hot off the press,” Miller says, grinning like he wrote the damn thing himself. His shirt collar’s folded under on one side — left like that for hours, I’d bet. I keep count of those things too.

I look down. Front page. Bold letters: RIPOSTE DOES IT AGAIN – SAVES CHILD THOUGHT DEAD.

I let my face do the office thing — raise the eyebrows, small nod, mouth just open enough to pass for impressed. “Yeah. Impressive,” I say.

Inside, I’m already cataloging the mistakes. The alley was on First, not Third. The timeline they printed doesn’t account for the fifteen minutes the kid was with the old man in the green coat. They left out the fire escape entirely. That’s where I found her. Where she nearly slipped. Where my hand nearly didn’t catch hers in time.

Miller taps the photo — grainy, taken from a block away. “Guy’s a ghost, huh? Bet the cops hate him.” I smile like I agree. I know exactly how much the cops hate me.

The clock hits five. Phones ring, printers stutter, somebody’s tea steeps too long and stinks like burnt grass. Around here, that means a slow migration — a shuffle toward the elevators, small talk about dinner plans and traffic. I stack my reports, line up my pens, and shut the screen down. Everything in order. Easy for them to believe that’s who I am — the guy who keeps it neat, keeps it steady.

Mask still on, I wave to a few as I pass. Keep my shoulders even, my stride casual. They don’t notice the sound of my heartbeat ramping up under the fluorescent hum, or the way my jaw aches from holding the same polite expression for nine hours straight.

The elevator dings. I step inside, the doors closing me off from the open-plan chatter. My reflection in the brushed metal looks like anyone — maybe an accountant, maybe a guy you’ve seen twice at the coffee shop and never thought about again.

The street greets me with exhaust, damp pavement, and that faint sour yeast smell the bakery vents at all hours — even when it’s closed. People pour around me, eyes glued to their screens or each other. I watch them without looking like I’m watching — filing away tells, noting where the lines cross, the patterns hide.

The mask stays in place out here too. You can’t walk through the city looking like you see everything.

The door closes behind me with three solid clicks — deadbolt, chain, latch. The hallway hum dies. Quiet, except for the fridge two rooms over — my kind of quiet. I breathe out for the first time since I left the elevator.

Tie comes off before my shoes. Lights stay low; overheads are too harsh, too loud. I toe off my boots in the dark and cross the room by memory.

The chair by the window knows my weight. I sink into it, pull my knees up, and rock — forward, back, forward, back — until the static in my head stops clawing. The rhythm is the point. The repetition. The control.

Some people call it stimming. Doctors call it coping behavior. Full clinical report: Autism, ADHD. AuDHD, if you want the shorthand. They call it a disability. I call it the operating system. Always running, always processing, never shutting up. You learn to live with it — same as you learn to live with traffic noise or rain on a tin roof.

The fridge hums in the kitchen. I catalog it without trying. That’s just how the machine works.

When the muscles in my jaw finally unclench, I get up. Dinner’s leftover rice from two nights ago, microwaved for exactly ninety seconds. While it heats, I press my palms into my eyes until the afterimage bursts into color. Not art, not pretty — just relief.

This is the part no one sees. Adam Brick, the most productive analyst in the department, Riposte, the ghost in the alleys — none of that makes sense without this. Without the quiet. Without the shutdown.

The chair by the window is for coming down. The desk in the corner is for coming back.

Three monitors blink awake when I touch the keyboard. Corkboard above, string lines crossing a city no one really sees. News clippings pinned at angles that make sense only to me. Handwritten notes in ink colors I can’t buy twice.

People think Riposte hunts monsters for them. I don’t. I hunt because I have to. A pattern’s a splinter in my brain — can’t sleep, can’t breathe, not until I pull it out.

Most people get to look away. They watch the six o’clock news, frown, and go back to their dinner. I can’t. My eyes follow the wrong detail in a photo, the off-beat in a story. The part no one else notices grows teeth in my head and starts gnawing.

They call it hyperfocus in the paperwork. Makes it sound like a gift. It’s not. It’s an itch under the skin, a buzzing in the bone. The only way to make it stop is to finish. To answer the question.

Sometimes the answer’s in a ledger. Sometimes it’s in the way a suspect’s hands move when they lie. Sometimes it’s buried in the city’s gutters, waiting for someone stubborn enough to dig it out.

A notification pings on the second monitor — quiet, but sharp enough to cut through the hum in my head. I open it.

Missing persons report. Male, 42. Last seen near the harbor. Police notes: probable runaway, no signs of foul play. Translation: not worth the overtime.

I scroll once. Twice. My fingers stop. There it is — the off-beat.

Witness statement says he left his apartment at 7:15 p.m. Security footage from the lobby shows him walking out at 7:19 — wearing different shoes. Tread pattern shallow — street slicks would eat them alive. Wrong soles for the wet weather. My skin prickles like a bad note. No reflection in the lobby glass where it should be.

That’s the hook sliding in. The gnawing starts. My chest tightens, but in a good way — the way it only does when the noise begins to line up, to make sense.

Dinner goes cold on the counter. The case file fills the center monitor. I lean forward, elbows on the desk, already running the lines in my head.

This isn’t just a case. It’s oxygen.

I push back from the desk and cross to the closet. No light — I don’t need it. My hands know where everything is.

The coat first — charcoal canvas, broken in at the seams, deep enough pockets for what I need. Boots next, soles worn to silence. Gloves with grip and no prints. Each piece is checked without thought, muscle memory running the routine.

The mask comes last. Just enough to blur the lines of my face, to make the cameras guess twice. Not for intimidation. For invisibility.

Some people think a mask changes you. Makes you into someone else. They’re wrong. It just lets you stop pretending.

By the time the coat settles on my shoulders, Adam Brick is gone. Only the answer remains. Only Riposte.