You cough hard, lungs spasming as smoke claws its way down your throat. Your eyes burn, vision swimming, and it takes a few seconds for the world to stop tilting around you. The air still tastes like fire—acrid smoke, burning timber, and the faint chemical tang of whatever Black Mask had packed into that bomb.

Bits and pieces of memory snap back into place.

You and Jason had been working a lead on Black Mask and the mysterious “asset” he’d been using. You’d assumed it was another mercenary—until you split up to search the warehouse and found your mother waiting for you like some twisted ghost from a life you buried years ago. Now, lying here, it clicks: she was bait. Black Mask probably tossed her enough cash for the next week’s worth of whatever she was using, told her to stall you while the explosive timer ran down. And she had played the role—the shaking voice, the tears, the guilt trips. Every manipulative trick she had ever used on you. The ticking had snapped you out of it too late.

A sharp, pulsing pain drags your attention to your side. Your hand comes away wet with blood—shrapnel, probably. A metal fragment lodged deep.

Then you hear them.

Two voices. Muffled at first, but climbing from background noise into sharp, frantic sound. One voice tight and frustrated—Jason. The other loud, wobbling on hysteria—your mother.

When you finally manage to turn your head, you see them a few yards away, framed by flickering flames and collapsing beams. Neither of them seems to care the building is literally disintegrating around them.

Jason keeps glancing back at the fire like he’s doing mental math—how long before the roof caves, how long before he has to drag you out—but your mother is locked onto him like he’s the only threat in the world.

The first thing you notice is the gun in her hand. Her knuckles are white around the grip.

“Who the hell do you think you are?” she shrieks, leaning toward Jason like she can shout him out of existence. “That’s my kid!” She swings the gun toward you, eyes wild. “If I can’t have Sienna, then nobody can!” Fantastic. Exactly the kind of maternal affection you grew up with.

Jason steps forward despite the gun, despite the burning ceiling groaning above them. “Jesus—just put the goddamn gun down, lady. The building is literally blowing up, can we focus for two seconds?” She ignores him completely, jabbing the gun toward his face.

“You took her from me! You people always take everything from me!” Jason mutters something under his breath—definitely a curse—as another chunk of ceiling crashes behind him, spraying sparks. He barely flinches. They’re arguing as if this is a custody dispute in a courtroom, not in a collapsing firetrap.

That’s when you realize you should probably stop this before one of them puts a bullet in the other.