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personal. No siblings to fight with, no overbearing parents to rebel against, no bullies at school, no sexual harassment at work. Whenever I admit these things to my friends, they all say the same thing.
    I’m lucky.
    They think I’m lucky.
    I think that’s sad, and terrifying.
    But that afternoon, it felt like the universe was making up for all my good luck all at once. I reached the roof with my legs and lungs on fire, and there I was treated to a view of ancient chimneys, exhausts, fans, antennas, satellite dishes, bird nests, and bird shit. Lots of things, none of which could help me.
    The fire escape behind me clanged and jangled as Frost hurried up the old metal steps. I could hear him grunting. I glanced down and saw the top of his head, just a smudge of black hair through the metal grating of the landings.
    I ran.
    I bolted along the side of the building, looking over the edge for something, anything. I’d only seen about a million movies and games where people escaped from the roofs of buildings just like this. There was always a clothes line or a power cable or some precariously leaning pole of some sort, or maybe just a small gap between the buildings so the hero could jump to the next building. But there were no cables or poles, and the neighboring buildings were all taller than mine. So there was nowhere to go.
    I ran to the little shed-looking thing where I figured I would find the stairs leading back inside, and grabbed the handle.
    Locked.
    Naturally.
    “Carmen Reyes Zhao!”
    I spun around. A man in a black suit was stepping off the fire escape and onto the gravel roof. He strode toward me with this dull, grim look on his face, like he chased people onto roofs every day and this was just one more lousy day at the office. And for him it probably was.
    I didn’t know what to do.
    “Hi there!” I forced a fake smile. “Sorry, but I think you’ve got the wrong Carmen Reyes Zhao.”
    “No, I don’t.”
    “Are you sure? It’s a really common name.”
    “No, it’s not.”
    My mouth moved but I didn’t know what to say. I watched his hands, slightly grateful that at least he wasn’t holding a gun.
    Hands.
    I looked down at my hands, at the black webbed fabric that the printer had made, at the thick fingers of the gloves full of experimental fibers lined with traces of rubidium.
    “Carmen Zhao, you are under arrest for multiple felony counts under the Corporate Espionage Act.”
    He was halfway to me, halfway from the fire escape to the locked door of the stairs. I still didn’t know what to do or what to say. A part of me wished I could go back in time two months and tell myself not to bother making these things. Just don’t do it, and nothing bad would have happened. But I did do it, and now something bad was happening.
    I put on the gloves.
    “Drop that!” Special Detective Frost pulled a small black pistol from inside his jacket and pointed it at me.
    I swear my heart actually stopped. I had never seen a real gun before, not that close, and never pointed at me. Instinctively, I raised my hands in front of me, as if my hands were bulletproof and could magically protect me.
    “Drop the gloves!” he shouted.
    I wanted to do it. I did. I wanted to do anything to make him stop pointing the gun at me, but I couldn’t quite move. I couldn’t tear my eyes away from that little black hole where the bullet was hiding, waiting to kill me.
    He kept marching toward me. The gun kept coming closer, and getting bigger.
    My lip shook. I was barely breathing. And then a little light caught my eye. It was a tiny green dot on the back of the gloves. It meant they were charged. They were on. They were working.
    And for some reason that I still don’t understand, I looked at the man with the gun and I said, “Lux, shield.”
    A thousand tiny lights flashed across the webbed fibers of the left glove and lanced outward in a brilliant laser show of thin violet beams. In half a second, the beams traced the shape