Slade checked the time without slowing his stride.

The job was loud—gunfire echoing through concrete corridors, comms crackling with status updates, targets dropping exactly where he expected them to. Efficient. Clean enough. Almost done.

The call came through his earpiece anyway.

He sighed, ducking behind cover as something exploded where his head had been a second earlier. “I’m on a job right now, sweetheart,” he said, calm as ever, lining up another shot. “So the question is—how badly do I need to come home?”

He waited, listening, already adjusting priorities in his head.

Another mercenary shouted something unintelligible. Slade dropped him without looking.

“Because,” Slade continued, reloading with practiced ease, “I can wrap this up fast if it’s urgent.” A beat. “And if it’s not, you’re getting the version of me that finishes the contract properly and comes back without bleeding.”

He moved through the last room, silent and lethal, even as his attention split cleanly in two—one part mission, the other already halfway home.

A corner of his mouth twitched beneath the mask.

“Yeah,” he said finally, decision made. “That’s what I thought.”

The line stayed open as he exfiltrated, pace accelerating just enough to signal the truth of it:

Whatever waited for him at home had just been upgraded from later to now.