The mission is supposed to be easy. Mika and his gang of real-estate crooks only have to infiltrate a high-rise building and steal secret codes for a client. But the building is the ZENITH, the most fortified residential tower around, the codes are...
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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."
