p • r • e • s • s • u • r • e

Somebody's Daughter

"This'd better be good, I just passed up a hot date."

General Ross doesn't laugh on the other ends, but his aged voice crackles over the speakers in Tony's helmet.

"Good isn't quite the word I'd use."

"Did they not introduce you to humour in the Human Societal Assimilation course?"

Silence.

Okay fuck you Ross, that was funny.

"Alright, what do we got?"

"Male, Caucasian, mid forties. Can't give you all the details, but we had an agent on him. She went dark, and coincidentally, so did all the cameras in the building."

"How many?"

"Sixteen, three children."

Well shit.

"Armed?"

"We have no idea."

"Just a reminder, it's called the Central What Agency?"

"Just get him and get out, okay?"

"Right. Well, I'm here-wanna say goodbye on three?" He jokes.

The line goes dead.

Okay then.

Tony lands inside the police barrier just outside the front door to the law firm, the address Ross's people had given him.

Random cops start yelling at him, and he melts back his mask to give them a look.

"Really?"

Tony turns and waltzes in the first set of glass doors, only to find the second one locked. So he knocks.

"Hello? Anybody home?"

A sweaty guy with a neck beard holding an AR-15 looks up to see him and points it at Tony's head.

A bullet goes straight through the glass and bounces off his armour, still leaving a sizeable dent.

"Oh come on, there's no need to be impolite."

The engineer sighs and blasts the door open and steps through, broken glass crunching underfoot.

The guy with the gun starts sweating even more and points his gun at one of the hostages.

Shit.

Tony follows the long barrel of the gun where it pokes against the soft skin of a little girl.

Shit...

"Do you want her to end up like that?"

The man shouts, nodding toward a woman lying dead on the ground. A badge lay on the ground next to her hand with a bullet shot cleanly through.

Must've been the agent they sent after him...

Tony frowns.

"Alright, fine."

He considers using the missiles in his shoulder panel like he did that one time in Gulmira, but realises quickly that if the man sees them, he'll shoot the kid.

Probably.

"Step away, slowly!" The man shouts, prodding the little girl in the ribs with his firearm. She sobs.

Fuck...

The girl looks like a blonde Morgan, and it's all Tony can do not to march on up and beat the shit out of the guy.