[SLTS]—❈—10:: Now I'm Pissed Off [II]

I wake with a start, and Mom hugs me 0.5 seconds later.

“Aiden,” she says with relief, doing her damnest to crush me with her recently muscled arms.

I hug her back just as hard.

Someone clears their throat.

Mom and I separate, and I look to see Armsmaster standing at the door; the door to a room which, I only notice for the first time, is either a hospital, or more likely a med bay of some sort.

“I hate to interrupt,” Armsmaster says, “but time is of the essence.”

I frown. “Time?” I ask, a little worried. “Why? Are we still under attack?”

“No,” Armsmaster says, “but the man you caught, whoever he is, he’s no mastermind. Someone sent him after you.”

“Which means someone knows about you,” Mom says. “Likely from them,” she adds, jerking her head in The Protectorate tinker’s direction. “So much for safety measures.”

Armsmaster’s lips dip in a frown, but he doesn’t disagree.

“Whoever sent the assassin needs to be caught,” Armsmaster says and my I blink in understanding.

“You want me to help you interrogate him,” I say.

Armsmaster nods. “If you’re up for it.”

Oh, I’m up for it.

I would really like to know who sent an assassin after me too.

So I can find the motherfucker and punch ‘em really fucking hard in the face.

Speaking of the assassin though, he’d hurt me, bad. Me and Mom.

I feel fine though.

I look at Mom. Her shirt is different. Gone is the blue button up she’d been shot in. Now she’s wearing a Miss Militia t-shirt that is noticeably free of bloodstains.

“Are you okay?” I ask. “You were shot.”

“I’m fine,” Mom says. “They brought a healer; he healed us both.”

Mom’s gaze flicks down to my throat as she says that. She swallows, looking as though she’s remembering the gaping hole that first bullet must have left.

I run a hand over where the memory of the pain remains, it’s smooth. Not even a scar.

“I’m fine,” I say. For both our sakes.

“Come on,” Armsmaster says.

The assassin (a tall, black man in his thirties) is in the same room that Armsmaster and I had interrogated Shadow Psycho in, sitting in the same chair, and chained with what I’m pretty sure are the same cuffs.

The only difference between the two really, is that while Shadow Stalker had practically begun frothing at the mouth in rage at the mere sight of me, this guy maintains a cool professionalism that is honestly astonishing to smell.

Like, this asshole was literally trying to kill me not even an hour ago, and yet somehow, all I get at his first sight of me, is some mild surprise, a touch of anxiety quickly tempered, and easy acceptance of his situation.

Worst of all, is the hint of amusement that comes after.

“You know you almost killed my mother, right?” I ask.

The man shrugs. “The boss considered her acceptable collateral damage,” he says.

Armsmaster’s armoured arm holding me back is what let’s me know that I’d moved.

I glare at the man, so angry I’m damn near vibrating.

“Musa,” Armsmaster says, “remember what I told you.”

No matter what, always remember that you won. You and mother are safe. It doesn’t matter what he says; you beat him.

I take a breath, forcing myself to calm down.

“Who’s your boss?” Armsmaster asks the man. “Can’t be Kaiser. Or Lung.”

The man quirks an eyebrow. “Why? Cause I’m black?”

“Yes, in the case of the first,” Armsmaster answers easily, “but for Lung it’s because I can’t imagine him hiring a non-parahuman assassin when he has Oni Lee.

“So, who’s your boss? Coil?”

*sniff* “Coil,” I confirm.

The bastard had tried to hide it, but that’s pointless against my nose.

The man’s eyes lock onto me, and he cocks his head.

“Damn, kid,” he says, genuinely impressed. “Boss wasn’t kidding. You are trouble.”

“And that’s why he sent you to kill me? Because I’m inconvenient?”

The man shrugs again. “Don’t pick the targets, kid. I just pull the trigger.”

I laugh. Once. Humourlessly. “Sure. It’s nothing personal. You’re just providing a service, right?” *sniff* “Just following orders.

“Is that what you tell yourself? That the horrible things you do aren’t your fault because someone ordered you to do them? Pathetic.”

Oh? Is that a flash of anger I smell?

I smile cruelly. “What? Don’t like the truth?”

No, he doesn’t. This is a man who’s built a perfect little bubble around himself. A bubble within which he doesn’t have to take responsibility for any of his actions.

“How did Coil get Musa’s identity?” Armsmaster asks, trying to get things back on track.

Our prisoner snorts. “Dude, you serious? The PRT leaks like a sieve, man. Everybody knows that.”

And the worst part is, he’s not kidding.

“So, what? Coil has moles in The PRT?” I ask.

And yep, Mr. Assassin certainly believes that he does.

“Who are they?” Armsmaster asks, and even before I smell the derision from Mr. Assassin, I’ve already marked the question as pointless and a waste of time.

Armsmaster can root out the moles in his organization on his own time, there’s only one thing I care about right now.

“Where is Coil?”

He knows. Or at least he knows where might be. Mr. Assassin suspects that he wouldn’t still be there now that he’s been caught.

Good enough.

I begin to list random parts of the city; when I call the right one, he’ll give it away.

By the fifth place I call, I get a hit.

“I need a map of the city,” I say.

Armsmaster holds up a hand, and a holographic map of the city appears over it.

…Why would he even build that into his suit? A part of my mind wonders.

Armsmaster catches on quickly, immediately zooming the map to the relevant part of the city.

Mr. Assassin closes his eyes, thinking that if he can’t see the place, he can’t lead me to it.

He’s not wrong. But he can’t close his ears, can he?

Armsmaster and I begin to name streets in the area, and in less than a minute, we have it; an abandoned Endbringer shelter.

Thank you, Mr. Assassin.

—❈—

Armsmaster makes precisely one attempt to talk me out of going with them.

I don’t even dignify it with a response.

The Protectorate calls in the whole team, and when they’re ready, I portal us to a nearby building that Armsmaster provides me a picture of.

According to the information we got from Mr. Assassin, we should expect anywhere from thirty to fifty enemy combatants, armed and highly trained.

We find thirty to fifty corpses, all of them killed in the same way; a single bullet to the head.

Even Coil (who turns out to be a consultant for The PRT, because why the hell not?) is dead too; a single bullet to the head. His corpse leaning back on his evil villain chair in his evil villain office in his evil villain base.

It's like they were all killed before they even realized they were being killed.

Armsmaster takes me back to The PRT HQ, and we question Mr. Assassin on if he knows of any enemies of Coil who would (or, more importantly, could) have done something like that, but he's just as clueless as everyone else.

In the end, realizing that the matter was pretty much resolved, Mom and I leave.

The PRT doesn’t let us go home though.

Our house is compromised now, they say, so they ‘nicely’ set us up in a nice hotel with an unlimited room service budget.

Mom and I spend the rest of the day together. We watch TV, talk ourselves in circles about what happened, and try to act strong for each other.

At night, when I’m in bed and Mom comes into my room to just watch me sleep, I don’t begrudge her it.

Instead, I take her hand and pull her under the covers with me. And when she hugs me, I hug her back just as tight.

Because today, I almost lost my mother, and Coil was incredibly lucky that he was already dead by the time I got to him.

—❈—

Chief Director Rebecca Costa-Brown picked up the phone on the first ring.

“I’ve walked the path,” Contessa informed her calmly.

The call ended.

Rebecca sighed in relief.

“Fucking Coil,” she muttered.