The trigger sank, but the muzzle emitted only but a small click. A wheezing laugh ripped from Shaw, who doubled over, bracing his knees. The gun was nothing but a toy, and Shaw knew that. Waited for his trick to come to fruition.

"I would commend you for your bravery and grit," Shaw said, pointing the tip of his cane down at Thirteen. "But you are simply too young to understand how this world works."

Thirteen stared Death in the face, fingers curling against the walkway floor's diamond rails. His teeth ground against each other. Shaw would shoot him. An electric shock would travel through Thirteen's limbs, gripping and shaking them until the current shorted the circuit in his brain. Then, he'd plop backwards, dead. Knowing Shaw, he'd probably tune it to the highest setting. He would never risk letting Thirteen survive.

It was fine, though. Thirteen meant when he said Shaw should have let him die with his mother. He didn't ask for a second life, nor did he want it. They could only go against fate as long as they did, and Thirteen was okay with that.

So, he kept his eyes open even as Shaw's finger twitched against the body of his cane. Somewhere there lay the trigger. Thirteen kept his eyes open even as the cane's tip whirred. With it being so close, he could hear the mechanisms click and labor to deliver the shot that would deliver him to the end. He kept his eyes open, because he couldn't bear giving Shaw the one thing the tycoon craved from all his victims—fear.

Thirteen was afraid—of death and what came after, but it wouldn't make it beyond his pounding heart and constricting chest. He'd take that fear to his grave.

A blue bolt tore off the wire mesh lining the inside of the diamond tip. Thirteen scrambled backward just as another gunshot rang inside the entire hall. Electric sparks zipped past Thirteen's ear, punching a glowing hole into the railing inches from his fingertips. Shaw staggered against the railing, a bright, crimson stain spreading from his shoulder. Who...

Shaw's knees hit the ground, showing Thirteen who stood behind. Jacqueline Shaw. Smoke curled from the muzzle of her unremarkable gun. The red paint on her lips was barely smudged, which Thirteen noticed when she blew a deep exhale.

Her father turned to her. "Ma chérie, why?" The confusion in his voice was evident, but something Thirteen didn't understand. He could kill millions of people, but his daughter couldn't kill him?

Jaq's eyes, ones mirroring her father's, squinted. "Who knows?" she said. "Maybe I do have the heart of a killer."

She fired. And again. Blood streaked in the air, Thirteen getting droplets across his face and boots when the once-great billionaire tumbled forward. A smoking hole in the temple gave way to a steady stream of blood dripping past the walkway and painting the room's floor in unpredictable, crimson swirls.

"And then, it's over," Jaq said with a sigh. Not a strand in her brushed blond hair was out of place even as she strode past her father's corpse and bent over to Thirteen, offering him her hand. "Get up. Let's get out of here."

Thirteen had his questions, but there was a time for everything. He accepted Jaq's hand, and together, they walked down the walkway. Towards their freedom.

Markel nibbled at the edge of a pastry that tasted like butter. He found it while snooping at the company pantry long after they wandered around Primeva's main headquarters on their own. There were jars of powdered coffee, but all he went for were the packets of pastry arranged on a neat, wooden tray. Whoever arranged these deserved to be the next owner of Primeva.

Light streamed from the nearby window, dousing him and the teal plastic table where his feet rested on. The pastry came and went, and the wrapper crunched when he crumpled it. He turned back to the counter, eyes landing on another type of snack. That one had a yellow packaging, betraying its contents with a bright, manipulated image. He shrugged and snatched one. It tasted like dry cardboard, but the sugar it contained could set him up for life.

He was about to take another bite when shadows danced from the glass panels lining the way to the pantry. Jocasta's voice floated through, bantering with Ji-yeon. Two more footsteps joined them, all on their way towards him.

"Yeah, and I saw on these weird ads that they're selling paint? For the face?" Ji-yeon was saying when they rounded the bend and came across him. Everyone stopped on their tracks. He bit into his pastry. "Oh, it's just you."

Leave it to Ji-yeon to never fail to tell him how displeased she was at seeing him. He continued eating. Jocasta's tall shadow fell over him as she snatched the treat from his hands and shoved the rest into her mouth. He opened his mouth to complain, but Jocasta—with her mouth brimming with the thing—grated, "What the fuck is that?" She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. "It tastes like nothing!"

"You brought it upon yourself, genius," Markel replied, throwing the yellow wrapper into the steady pile he was making on the table. The others rounded the oddly-shaped surface, taking empty seats farthest from the clutter. "I never asked you to steal my meal."

Jocasta licked her lips and collapsed to the seat next to him. "That's not a proper meal," she said. "You ought to eat anything other than putrid sweets."

Markel stuck a lip out. "I like them," he said. "I don't really like other things."

"Seriously." She rolled her eyes. "What am I going to do with you? If you want to be healthy and live up to a hundred, you've got to eat real stuff."

"Primeva will disagree with you there," Markel answered. "With their products flooding the market—all those modified organisms that produce the best yield or whatever—nothing is 'real'."

Jocasta threw her hands up in surrender. "I hate arguing with a whiz. They always have a word for everything," she said. "You know that's not what I meant."

"Exactly," Markel answered with a wink. "But we're not anywhere near dinner or breakfast, so I'm eating these."

To prove his point, he opened another packet and sank next to her. In the light, her white hair sparkled like fresh snow on Genevan streets. Streaks of dust, blood, and thin scratches lined her skin, but she was otherwise unharmed.

"What happened with Dishari?" Markel asked, diverting the conversation away from his eating habits. "And how did you get Ji-yeon back up?"

Jocasta opened her mouth, but a different voice commanded Markel's attention. "I'm right here, man," Ji-yeon said. "I woke up on my own. Shaw probably didn't get the settings right. He hit me with a light dose. Could barely feel it."

Really? Why did she pass out like a tranqed horse, then? Jocasta crossed her arms. "I neutralized Dishari when Shaw keeled over," she said. "I think she realized his promise isn't going to come true."

"Slate was the same," Alon interjected. "The moment the old man died, she just...morphed back to her original face and stared at me."

"Was it blackmail, then?" Markel said, learning the word through his numerous contact with the cartel he found in the deeper parts of the internet. "Do you think Shaw's got something on them?"

"Best to ask them ourselves," Kevan said. "Or at least, get me within their periphery. I doubt Shaw has had enough time to erase such memories from their minds. But if I were to say my take on it—maybe they stayed because Shaw didn't give them any other way out."

"I don't really care what their reasoning was." Ji-yeon leaned back against her seat, making the brittle plastic creak. "I just don't want anything to do with them. Once a traitor, always a traitor."

"I am a traitor," Markel blurted. Everyone whirled to him with a confused expression on their faces. It was almost comical. "There's no guarantee that I'll continue staying by your side. I do what's best for me, and for no one else's."

Jocasta snorted. "You know..." She wagged a finger in his face. "You really need to work on your personal philosophy. And your habits. You have a habit of not acting on what you say, and saying what you don't act upon. It's becoming annoying."

Markel could have snapped and told her she was nosing in, but maybe her words had enough merit. If he was only concerned for himself, he wouldn't have stayed back when he gained access to the control panel. He would have ran first. That way, the growing bruise on his cheek, the patches of hurts and aches all over, and the mental strain the past few months had been wouldn't have embedded themselves onto him. He wouldn't have chased Shaw up the walkway and tried to stop the man from escaping. Lastly, Markel wouldn't have taken every path he had taken if he only thought about himself.

What was he supposed to do with that?

"Good, you're all here." Jaq's voice rang from beyond the bend. Markel looked away from his companions to find Shaw's daughter walking towards them. Her trench coat dangled by her shins and crunched against the seat when she sank into it. A weak clatter resounded atop the laminated surface when she plopped a single tablet on it.

"Check the accounts declared in that," she said, jerking her chin at them. Markel tentatively took it, glancing at her every now and then. He opened it and scrolled through the list. That was a lot. "I compiled all of the assets and portfolios my father and grandfather had amassed over the decades. As you can see, it's enough to last me a number of lifetimes. I wouldn't know what to do with all of these even if I tried."

"And?" Markel prodded. "I have a feeling there's a catch."

"I'm giving it all to you," Jaq said. She shrugged, rolling her hands in the air. "Technically, my father's will leaves me every estate he has ever touched, including Primeva and the Shaw Group. But I don't plan on engaging in all that political and business drama. Denny is still in the dark about all of this. He thinks I'm on a vacation trip with my family right now. If I turn up to be the heiress to a multi billion business empire, he might just have a heart attack."

Markel inclined his head at her. "What are you planning to do about the prosecution?" he asked. "Shaw dying inside his own company will surely raise some concerns."

Jaq averted her eyes, proving his point. "You haven't thought about this, have you?" he concluded. Her silence was enough to implicate her. "Here's a better plan: you take on the mantle, cooperate with the investigation, but we split the accounts and manage them from the shadows. Primeva needn't go down. It's a good vision. Just used in the wrong way."

"That's how my family was able to survive all this time," Jaq said with a sharp exhale. "They think they're doing the world so much good it gives them merit to commit crimes on the side. A little, at first, and sooner than you thought, they were trafficking children from all over, sticking them into bioengineering experiments, and forcing them to kill each other for the sake of some research questions. I will not go down the same path. It is best to start anew and forget this ever happened."

Markel hummed. "Forgetting the past is the same thing as repeating it," he said. "We won't be like the Primeva of the past, but we might as well use all this money to make the world a better place to live in. If not for others, then for us. Money is power, and it's now on our hands. What better use for it than this?"

He once told Shaw he wasn't there to save people, and that he merely helped them survive. If there was some saving in line with his actions, it'd be quite a bonus.

"What, you'd like to be superheroes?" Jaq said.

"We're literally biologically-enhanced humans," Markel replied. "There's got to be more of us out there, and we need to get them before any international investigation somethings find their existence."

"Abetting crime, you mean." Jaq narrowed her eyes. "Covering up wrongdoing is the same thing as doing it."

Markel rolled his shoulders. "No, no," he said. "We'll reveal everything your father did, but we'll do it in such a way that wouldn't implicate us nor the portfolios we hold. We keep the money, and the world can go on dispensing its justice."

He could see the wheels in Jaq's head turning. "How do you propose we do that?" she asked. Ah, she was sold.

Markel glanced at the others who were reduced to silently following their whole tirade. "What do you say?" he said. "Up for another adventure?"

Jocasta scoffed. "With you around? It sure as hell would be exciting."

"As long as I can wreck stuff, I'm up," Ji-yeon said with a manic smirk.

Kevan raised a finger. "I literally have nothing else to do, so why not?" Which Alon seconded with an approving hum and a nod.

"Well, Jacqueline Shaw." Markel turned to the girl with his own conspiratorial smile. "How do you feel about doing a little blunder on the side?"

Jaq chuckled. "Thought you'd never ask," she said. "Denny had better be ready for this. What's the plan?"

Markel set the tablet on the table. "First, we cover up the murder."