Redemption (Midas x Reader)

• XXIX •

I started to collect myself, first crawling across the floor on hands and knees to where my gun lay, thanking whatever higher power might exist that it had bounced away from the cell rather than toward it. After I'd secured it in my waistband Skye grabbed my arm and hoisted me to my feet.

Rox was still glaring daggers at me, and I returned her icy gaze with a similar fury brewing up from underneath my own. "You failed again, bitch," I hissed through my teeth, my voice still raspy, my throat sore. "How does it feel? Huh, Rox? To be so inept and useless that you can't even kill me when I walk right into your hands?"

"Oh she can't answer you," Skye cut in, oblivious to the rhetorical nature of the question. "And we don't call her Rox anymore, that was her agent name. She goes by Hush now."

Rox, Hush, I didn't give a shit that her name had died with her loyalty. All I cared about was how satisfying it was that I'd won. Despite two attempts on my life, here I was, standing on the free side of a set of bars, the man whom she'd tried to kill me over still pining for me from down the hall despite his own incarceration so nearby hers. I was just opening my mouth to rub it in her face when a series of distant thumps drew my attention elsewhere.

"DAD!!!" Skye called out again in exasperation. "I said I've got her!!!"

The noise continued, a steady beat that sounded almost like someone were methodically pounding on the concrete that made up the prison. I couldn't quite place it, but was beginning to come to the realization that it wasn't originating from Midas' cell once I heard what I could've sworn was a helicopter in the distance.

"Are they already back from the mission?" I asked Skye, becoming more concerned by the second, the confusion quickly turning to fear as Midas called out from down the hall, the alarm in his voice matching the silent one currently sounding in the back of my mind.

"Get her OUT of here Skye!!! NOW!!!"

But the warning came too late, as an explosion tore through the outer wall of Hush's cell, the shockwave from the blast lifting me off my feet and slamming me into the wall opposite.

Now the only sound I could hear was the ringing in my ears as I tried to lift myself from the rubble where I'd fallen, the dust from the blasted concrete floating so thickly in the hallway that my vision was obscured as well, my dulled senses isolating me from the full reality of what was occurring.

We were under attack. The explosions continued, still inaudible although I could feel the floor rumbling beneath where I lay, the sensation jarring enough to make me finally appreciate the urgency of the situation and assess my surroundings.

I pushed myself to my knees, choking on the lingering cloud of dust as I coughed and gagged, silent to my own ears. I could feel a trickle of blood dripping down the right side of my forehead, but there was too much adrenaline coursing through me to feel the cut from whence it flowed. A quick sweep of my hands across the rest of my body told me that I miraculously hadn't sustained any serious injuries despite having been tossed like a ragdoll when the bomb had gone off.

A breeze swept down the hallway, a draft from the newly created entrances, clearing the dust just enough for my eyes to focus on the mangled cell in front of me. The bars were warped, but still in place, Rox's limp body being dragged out through the blown open wall just beyond them. I froze in terror as I recognized the black outfits of the two Shadow henchmen who pulled her by the arms.