The comms sparked and the other line turned to static. Mika fished it out of his ear and squashed it underfoot. "What did you do?" he demanded, staring Andra down even though she did the same to him. "Unhand them. It's me you want."

Andra raised an eyebrow. She looked like a child mocking adults about not knowing where something was even though she's the one who hid it. "Are you now?" she tapped a hand on her chin. If not for her ash-gray hair, Mika would have pegged her to be somewhere in her twenties. Which was annoying, having one's mother look younger than them. "Last I checked, it's not just you who had the gall to infiltrate my home."

Before Mika could say anything, Andra clapped her hands. Lights flashed to life, as well as the dark screens mounted to the walls. The glass showed him three panels trained on each of his crew. Camreen's pink hair spilled over the backrest of the folded seat in front of her. Her portscreen lay leagues away from her reach. Figures in all-black struggled to hold Kabe against the wheel who squirmed under their grip with a venom Mika never knew the amicable guy was capable of. Laien, still mimicking Mika, was being ushered out of a coffee shop and forced to sit down on one of the outdoor tables.

The common thread? They're looking through the screen as though they saw Mika and hated him for it. But...why?

"Looks like your friends have something to say, don't you think?" Andra tittered in his ear. "Let's hear it, shall we?"

He whirled to her. "What do you want?" he asked, forging his tone into a detailed edge. If she was but mere paper, he'd be the one to cut her in half. "Surely it's not me to come crawling back to you."

"You need to pay for your crimes, son," she answered. "Starting from the grave error you made to your friends."

Mika opened his mouth to say something, but his words died down at how ridiculous this all was. What did he even do?

A flash of red in Laien's screens was followed by a brief beep. "You can't have spared a minute to tell us she's your mother?" they said. "She's the reason why all of this happened to us, why we're stuck in the ruts we're in."

"And is that supposed to be my concern?" Mika narrowed his eyes. His crew—his friends, as he had come to think of them—talked like Mika was the one who plunged them into a pot load of shit and not the region's crooked system. Or this woman standing beside him with not an ounce of remorse on her lasered face. "Last I checked, you all agreed to this mission despite knowing who the spearhead was."

"By using Ida's price!" Camreen screamed through the messy veil of pink hair. The seat distorted most of her words. "Had we known you're connected to her, we wouldn't have chosen to work with you at all!"

Anger ran deep, and when it did, there's nothing that can pull it out. "That's exactly why I didn't tell you," Mika balled his fists to his sides. "You pathetic fools. I am not my mother. You of all people should know that."

Before he chose Camreen, Laien, and Kabe for his team, he made sure he knew everything about them. Dhan-bernu was the first casualty of the Aledetri Progression, and it was Andra Monaldi who launched the activity at the completion of the code. If not for Andra's meddling, Laien would never have to spend their childhood in extreme poverty and filth. Their family would still be alive.

Verne Stormack, Camreen's previous employer before Ida, was a long-time affiliate of the Monaldi Group, both in paper and in shady business. The Dara debacle stemmed when Stormack attempted to cross Andra by stealing her businesses. Andra retaliated by using Dara to spy on Stormack, unaware of her connection to the Scarlet Shadow. One thing led to another, and Stormack used Camreen's sister as a scapegoat to save his face and his money.

And Kabe...

Cadet Juno Lekzov, a promising soldier in the world of private security. When employed by Blackcross, she was dispatched at random to Andra Monaldi's guard detail on the tycoon's way to the Cyan House to seal the deal in developing the rest of the country with the Republic itself. On her way back, terrorists funded by her opponents open-fired. One of the casualties had been Cadet Lekzov. No one knew she left a lover and tons of debt when Blackcross refused to take accountability, but Mika knew. Kabe turned to a life of crime to pay his debts back and avoid going to prison.

That's how they met. As people victimized by Andra Monaldi, they would have turned on the ZENITH and the Monaldi group sooner or later. They would have found out his connection to her, and used it to bring him down. Had he not gotten them to his side, he would have had to face danger from front and back, with his mother still finding ways to draw him out of the murky waters to prosecute him. He couldn't afford to deal with Ida's own people chucking stones at him in order to attack Andra Monaldi thinking it would hurt her.

But even if they shared blood, they didn't share the same ideals or the same lives. Mika whirled to Andra who tried so hard to play innocent. "Are you really prepared to do everything to get me and maintain your image longer? Rest assured, I don't want to have anything to do with you as much as you don't want it with me. I won't tarnish your reputation, if that's what you feared. No one has to know about our relationship, and I wish it so," he frowned when a realization clicked at the back of his head. "You're the client, aren't you?"

Andra scoffed as if she hadn't heard of that word before, much less it being thrown at her in accusation. "Client? Why would I get help from the likes of you?"

"Or would you have preferred to be remembered for conspiring with them instead?" a new voice joined the fray. Mika whipped towards a middle-aged man throwing the doors to Andra's office with such abandon, as if he already owned the place. Dressed in a knitted vest thrown over a long sleeve shirt and tight trousers, he looked like the neighborhood salaryman. Except he wasn't. Because Mika recognized his dark, slicked-back hair, thick wired glasses, and long stubble.

This was Janos Kairon, Andra Monaldi's long-time rival.

The relationship seemed to be one-sided since Andra's annoyed expression didn't twitch even as Janos ambled next to her and threw his hands apart as if he's expecting a hug or presenting himself as a stale surprise.

"What are you doing here?" Andra said, her tone languid but not distressed. She still thought she could destroy him with a flick, but Mika assumed things have changed now.

"You're the client?" Mika asked, interrupting the reunion between the prick and an even bigger prick (whoever they applied to was variable).

Janos regarded him behind the glare of his lenses. In this day and age, those who wear corrective lenses were either the stupid or those who thought it was an effective fashion statement. "The one and only," he said. "Has your little brain worked out the reason yet? I know you're smart enough for that."

"What are you trying to pull, Kairon?" Anda demanded, sparing Mika the trouble of having to ask himself. Truthfully, he had little to no interest in what Janos wanted. Now that he had delivered the target to his client, he had to think about how to one up everyone in this game. And to do that, he needed to understand who he was really facing.

Janos rolled his shoulders. He was close enough for Mika to pick out the individual frayed tufts of his vest. "There's no way I'm winning the next election when you suddenly had the gall to announce your candidacy in Sen Valtro," he spat. Oh, was that the reason for the symposium? Huh. "I had to think of a better way to get them off your development bonanza. And what better way to do it than getting the code for myself?"

"And that's why you hired us," Mika interjected. "You wouldn't have to lift a finger. You could just employ the best thieves around."

A malicious glint passed across Janos' eyes. "I know a conceited soul when I see one," he said. "You're not the best. You're just one of the disposables I can use to my heart's wishes until you're no longer useful. Then, I can leave you to rot."

Mika's hands drifted to the EM pistol slotted in his belt with the remaining bulbs. He didn't put it past Janos to notice the slight shift. "What are you going to do with it?" he asked. "You're going to build more houses?"

Janos scoffed. He looked anywhere but at Mika's hand resting on a weapon. "I'm going to use it to expand on Aledetri's military," he said. "Before you say it's impossible, I'll need you to understand what the code is—it's nothing but a code! Which means I can rewrite everything and leave just the basic principles of interpreting human thought waves and making them come true. I can bypass every clause, every limitation. I can make it mine, thanks to you."

Andra's nostrils flared. "How dare you—"

She lunged, manicured nails hooked into claws in a brave attempt to strip Janos' face off his head. Mika opened his mouth to warn her about the bulk he spotted by the politician's belt the moment he turned to intercept her. Too late. Janos' hand clamped around Andra's wrist. He twisted her arm and slammed her, cheek-first, against her own desk. Mika turned to the holograms to find the data had finished transferring ages ago.

"See that?" Janos' grin tore his lips into thin lines of glee. "You will help me build huge, huge missiles! Tanks! I can provide an entire country with guns. It'll be glorious!"

Yeah, trigger-happy men would be as glorious as a can of sewer sludge.

"You filth. Scum of the earth," Andra hissed, her hair in disarray over her desk. "That's now why I wrote the code. It should be for creation, not destruction."

Janos yanked her away from the desk and made her face the screens. "Look at what your ambition had done, then," he said. Mika's friends watched the entire exchange still under the force of Andra's men. Or maybe they weren't Andra's anymore, but Janos'. The sneaky slug had it in him. "Because of you, these people turned to the shadows just to survive, including your own son. Oh, what a life to live, Monaldi!"

"We are the scum of the earth, so why not have fun while we're at it?!" Janos screamed in manic glee. "Give me the code on paper so I wouldn't have to steal it under your nose and get my hands dirty."

Andra's answer was absolute. "Go to hell, loser."

Janos drew the knife from behind. Mika whipped the EM pistol from his belt and pointed it to the politician before he could slit Andra's throat. "Unhand her," Mika said.

A wheezing laugh ripped from Janos' throat. His grip on the blade never wavered beneath Andra's chin. He propped the woman in front of him, using her as a human shield. "Go on. Shoot. You need to shoot through her if you want to reach me. You don't want to kill your own mother, do you?" He taunted. "Also, before you think there's a way around this, I have mechanisms in place to implicate you and your mother if I die here."

He paused as if struck by a thought. "Well, I can also kill this wench right here and blame it all on you," he said. "The truth is malleable if you have the power."

"And since you're still under contract, you will do everything I tell you. You don't want to disappoint Ida Widdman," Janos leveled his gaze as a challenge at Mika. "So, after every choice pointing you to killing Andra Monaldi, what would it be?"

Mika met the challenge head on. "Since you insist," he said. "I have no intention of being her son again."

He took in his mother's shocked expression tinged with the realization she was just betrayed. Then, he pulled the trigger.