“Damn,” Keiko said as she walked out the front door, “I need an excuse to fire that thing more often.”

Brie was with her, both wearing casual clothes rather than anything that might be linked to their criminal identities. At least she seemed to have caught the fact that Ashe’s mom was with them. The last thing they needed was for a handle to be casually dropped and out the whole group.

“Is Inferno here?” Ashe asked, hoping to head off any accidental name dropping.

Brie paused, frowning in confusion for a moment before she caught sight of Ashe’s mom, who had their prisoner in a pair of cuffs and was currently doing a search for hidden weapons. That she had found two knives and a hidden pistol said it was well worth it, and that a strip search would probably follow if they would be holding him for any length of time.

“Not at the moment,” Keiko said, eyes flicking to the prisoner.

“Injuries or…casualties?” Ashe asked hesitantly.

Keiko looked at Brie who shook her head. “Nothing fatal so far. We lucked out that the defensive measures worked and everyone stuck to the emergency plans. Those that got hurt are getting first aid inside.”

Ashe breathed a sigh of relief, at least she wouldn’t have the deaths of more girls on her conscience. She would need to check in with everyone regardless, assuming she could shake her mom from following. Most of the girls knew to keep to the polite fiction that she wasn’t Inferno, but some of the younger girls didn’t fully grasp the tact needed to keep it from strangers.

“Make sure the injured get any medical attention they need,” Crystal added. “Some of the girls are illegal, or runaways which means we have to be careful about hospitals.”

She’d said the last part to Ashe’s mom, who was watching them with narrowed eyes. There was little doubt in Ashe’s mind that her mom was catching on to certain things, but how much remained to be seen. Regardless, if she wasn’t going to ask questions, Ashe wasn’t going to volunteer information.

“Alright, let’s secure the area then get inside,” Ashe said. “We can interrogate the prisoner there.”

“What do you mean by interrogate?” Mom asked, suspicion lacing her voice.

“You’re the one who agreed to come with us,” Ashe said. “You can complain once the threat has been dealt with, but like it or not, you’re an accomplice to everything that happened here.”

“You’re right,” Mom said. “So you may as well deal me in.”

Ashe blinked, her eyes flickering to her girlfriend who now sported a slack jaw.

“And when it’s done?” Keiko demanded. “Some of us have records, some are as we mentioned illegal. What about identities? Inferno isn’t the only one working with us. We have Riptide and Hanabi as well. Will you spill everything to your loving wife and see everyone arrested?”

“Depends on the situation,” Mom said sharply. “I’m here because Ashe insists on throwing herself into danger again and again. I’m going to make sure my daughter survives, everything else is a secondary concern.”

Ashe considered her mom for a moment, then nodded. “Very well. Bring the prisoner to the basement, we have work to do and I want answers. Crystal, contact your uncle, see if he’s got any new information. I want Jason and Todd with him if possible. Regardless of how much of an ass he is, he’ll keep the kid safe.”

“Okay,” Crystal said, pulling her phone out before she stepped aside to make the call.

Ashe turned her attention back to the others. “Brie, go check on those injured, if any need a hospital run, take care of it. Go for the one in Rosewood, just to be safe.” Even if it did mean driving past that eyesore of a Patriot megachurch. “It’s less likely to have ties to any of our current enemies. Keiko, with us.”

Ashe grabbed the man by his arm and pulled their prisoner along, Keiko smiled in bemusement as Ashe walked past and fell in step with her. Ashe’s mom took a moment, but was soon moving with them as well. The man was less than cooperative when they moved through the lobby, more than one girl sitting in some of the chairs, clutching rifles as they glared at the prisoner.

The man thrashed and Ashe didn’t hesitate, kicking out the back of his knee as she slammed him to the ground. He continued to kick despite that and Ashe leaned in close.

“Stop struggling, or I leave you to the girls, and trust me, they are far more sadistic than I am.”

As if to punctuate that, one of the girls grabbed her bag and produced some sort of serrated clamp that Ashe really didn’t want to know the proper use of. The merc swallowed heavily and Ashe hauled the now much more cooperative man back to his feet and took him down into the basement, though she had to resist the temptation to let him trip on the way down.

She took him down the hall and into one of the side rooms that was currently empty save for a single chair. She hadn’t expected to need to question someone on site, but she wanted to be prepared. Her mom followed her in, face deceptively neutral. Ashe recognized it as her ‘I am not okay but need to pretend I am’ face. She’d seen it a few times, most recently in the wake of Kendall’s murder.

A murder that might now end up being pointless if her mom figured things out. Well, not pointless, there was no promise that Kendall wouldn’t tell everyone who she was, and it was a minor miracle that her mom hadn’t figured out that it was Inferno that shot her friend. Opting to put that behind her, Ashe forced the man into the chair, which had a gaping hole in the center.

Ashe wasted little time, securing his arms behind the back before locking his feet in place. Once that was done she took a step back and crossed her arms. She’d never tortured someone before, and she wasn’t sure she actually had it in her. Keiko returned a moment later, briefcase in hand.

Unlike her, Hanabi had tortured people and knew what she was doing. She moved over to the small side table and set up the case, removing a few tools that were only in there to intimidate, or at least she hoped so. One of the items she recognized from a tour of a medieval torture museum that would not be a pleasant way to die.

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Just as she was rounding out the display, Crystal joined them. “Preston picked up Jason and Todd earlier and is taking him to my uncle. They should be safe.”

Hopefully, because there was always the chance he was the one manipulating everything and this was all his ploy for some unknown purpose. There wasn’t much Ashe could do about that, and she had to hold out hope that his devotion to family would win out over whatever scheme he was running.

“That’s one less worry then,” Ashe said softly before clearing her throat and stepping up to their prisoner. “Now, I’m only going to ask a question once. If you refuse to answer, or I have reason to believe you lied, well, my friend here is going to get creative.”

“Dimitri, Samara.”

Keiko snorted, walking over with a pair of clamps. “That’s cute,” she said, moving behind him. She fidgeted there for a moment, then jerked and the man screamed before he could cut it off and school his features. “Never fails to get a reaction. Ten seconds before I do another.”

The seconds counted down and Keiko was true to her word, though the man’s scream was greatly reduced from the first. Keiko sighed, and pulled another tool from her kit and after a moment, the man was screaming again.

Ashe’s stomach turned as she watched, but she didn’t dare look away. Though, she did keep glancing towards her mom out of the corner of her eye as the man squirmed and fought. She was clearly uncomfortable, but was unwilling to be the one to break the silence, or undermine the situation. Ashe couldn’t be sure which it was, and asking would only show the mercenary that they were divided.

“Enough,” Ashe said. Keiko paused in her work. “He clearly isn’t going to be swayed by normal pain.”

The man glared defiantly at her, and she forced a smirk to her face that she certainly didn’t feel. Ashe then walked over to the table, looking over the macabre collection of tools and picked one that looked like a citrus squeezer. When Ashe walked back, she handed it to Keiko.

“Start with one,” she said coldly.

Keiko nodded and got to work while Ashe settled in, the churning of her stomach only growing worse as the man finally began to talk.

***

The torture session had lasted nearly an hour, and Ashe had moved to her apartment in the building where she was currently emptying the contents of her stomach in the restroom. The things she had seen, had stood by while they were inflicted on a man all to get him to talk… It was too much. Of course he only knew the basics of their employer. Some rich guy throwing money at their organization to do jobs in the city on demand.

That still implicated far too many people, and it didn’t even have to be a man behind it all. Ashe had a feeling that everything was connected, but she couldn’t figure out how. Worse, she was afraid that if she didn’t figure out what game was being played, she would end up following someone else’s script rather than her own.

She rinsed her mouth out in the sink and spit, letting the toilet flush as she did. Washing her face, she looked in the mirror. She recognized herself, but there was something different from what she had seen months ago. The innocence was gone, replaced by a hard edge tempered by her own experiences. It was unsettling, but this was who she had become. What life had forged her into.

She grabbed a towel and dried her face before exiting, just another thing to delay the conversation to come.

“Time to face the music,” Ashe muttered, tossing the towel back on the rack before squaring her shoulders.

She stepped out, opening the door and moved back to the living room. Her mom was sitting on the couch, the TV showing the news. It was covering the ongoing hostilities as they continued to escalate. Alejandro had attacked a Patriot run church in Antioch, setting it ablaze, likely in retaliation for the story that followed. The police had raided Yessina’s bar following the cleanup of one of her brothels in the wake of the Patriot’s attack, and the woman herself had been arrested.

That was surprising, Ashe had taken a gamble that she wasn’t sure would pan out, but if she was in custody, Keiko’s errand might still bear fruit. Depending on how long she was locked up, the Viuda might start looking for new leadership, which meant a whole different mess to deal with in the near future.

“The city may as well be on fire,” Ashe said, taking a seat next to her mom. “I knew something like this was looming, but didn’t expect it to go down like this.”

Her mom didn’t answer, she just continued to stare at the screen as more scenes of violence showed, and even an interview with her mother played out, though just the footnotes version. Everything was a mess, and Ashe knew it would get worse before it managed to get better.

“You know,” her mom finally voiced, almost shocking her with the intrusion of sound. “I wish I could ask how it came to this. I wish there was something I could point to and rail against that wasn’t my own powerlessness. But I can’t, we let those men walk despite everything, and you couldn’t stomach that.”

Ashe sat in silence, trying to ignore the encroaching dread that was filling her stomach, the insurmountable guilt that killing Kendall was all for nothing. Her mom knew, or had put together enough pieces that she understood Ashe wasn’t some bit player in whatever operation was going on at the apartments.

Crystal’s admission to owning them probably played a small role in that, but she wasn’t going to hold it against her girlfriend for getting ahead of a potential problem.

“You did what was needed to stop them, getting your toes wet in the process,” Mom said with a frown of concentration. “Several things make sense now, in retrospect. Like that gun you bought. Crime does pay, despite what people say.”

Ashe nodded mutely, letting her mom work through it. She couldn’t find words even if she wanted them. No, all she wanted was to run away from it all, to disappear and never deal with the problem in front of her.

“You were done when the last body was found. But by then you had other responsibilities, things that tied you to that life that you couldn’t walk away from. You understand why it is so hard to walk away once caught up. Each action just adds to the anchor around your neck.”

“You aren’t wrong,” Ashe said, her voice barely a whisper. “The worst part of it though? I’d do it all again in a heartbeat.”

Her mom’s gaze snapped to her, eyes wide and jaw slack. Ashe couldn’t help the chuckle at seeing her normally unflappable mom completely flummoxed.

“You saw Brie when we got here,” Ashe asked, getting a reluctant nod from her mom. “She was one of the girls we rescued that night. That fucker had abused her, more than once. When the police let him go, he was free to hurt others. I think that was the moment any faith I had left in the system died, when I realized what he had been allowed to do to her.”

Ashe hated throwing that in her mom’s face, but it needed to be said. That moment had stuck with her through the worst of it, embedded itself deep in her mind. A reminder of what happened when monsters were allowed to get away. Ashe gasped when she suddenly found herself enveloped in a bone crushing hug, and her mom wept against her. She wasn’t sure what she was supposed to do, so she did the only thing she could think of, she hugged her back.

“I wish I could say it wasn’t that simple,” Mom said. “I really do, but there is no excuse that comforts the victim when the justice system fails. We can say that it’s innocent until proven guilty. We can wail about everyone’s rights, but in the end? Nobody is ever completely happy. They were caught dead to rights trying to kidnap you, but we had to let them walk regardless. If I’d known, I would have put a bullet in them myself and to hell with the consequences.”

Ashe couldn’t help the almost manic laugh that followed. “You know, Crystal said something similar, when she realized what they had done.”

A wet snort rumbled against her shoulder, followed by faint chuckling. “I knew I liked that girl for a reason.”

They stayed like that for several minutes, just savoring the moment. Ashe didn’t want it to end, because that would mean confronting the ugly truth. Her mom knew she was a criminal, understood why she had done it all, and more importantly, wasn’t trying to immediately arrest her. That still begged a question, one that needed to be answered before Ashe could relax fully. She gently extricated herself from her mom’s grip, wet eyes looking back at her as her mom wiped the still falling tears away.

“So,” Ashe said, trying, and failing, to school her expression as she looked across the divide at her mom. “Where does this leave us?”