Super Secret | Half Hero Book 2 [ON HOLD]

Chapter 8: Matching Tattoos

Instinctively I dropped to the floor as a thunderous blast discharged, ripping the walls open, or at least, that's what it sounded like. The detonation reverberated through the studs of the building.

"I said don't shoot, a-hole!" I muttered through the ringing in my battered ears.

Rolling toward my assailant, I collided with his padded shins to shove him to the ground. We tussled in the rolling smoke, neither of us able to gain the upper hand. He was covered in head to toe black (as one might expect when encountering a ninja, I suppose), with a small slit for his eyes and a bulbous mask over his chin.

He swung a thick arm at my neck and I tucked to avoid the blow, using his backswing to drive my heel into his shoulder. The man grunted and shifted to recalibrate, but realized (a second too late) that I'd ripped the strap of his hefty gun off during our scuffle.

My gas mask made it difficult to time the precision of my blows, so I scooped up his weapon while ducking his next punch. It was a complicated contraption with several valves, buttons, lights, and levers that probably required proper training to operate.

Instead, I charged to knock him out cold with the butt of his oddly priapic gun. His weapon was much heavier than it looked and longer than my arm, which didn't make it easy to sling around like a badass, but it got the job done.

"What would Mac do?" I asked myself out loud while stepping on the napping ninja's back (to be sure he wouldn't get up.) "C'mon! What would Mac do?"

I knelt down and set the gun aside to frisk him for some kind of identification. Tethered to his waist was a generic white keycard like the one Galen used to operate the elevators.

"Finders keepers!" I whispered triumphantly. "Losers sleepers, I guess?"

Since it would probably come in handy (and he wasn't using it anymore), I pulled the retractable chord until it snapped and pocketed the entire mess. Then, I spotted pay dirt.

Around his beefy wrist was a slender device that could potentially shed some light on what the hell was going on. With a swift yank, the synthetic band of his smartwatch snapped. After a lot of inept finger fumbling, I realized his thumbprint was required to access the home screen.

"That's my hotdog grandma!" The man unexpectedly groaned to life as I was tugging off his fitted glove in the soupy fog.

Kicking both my feet up over my waist, I scissored my legs around his neck to choke him out between my thighs.

"Hey!" I cried while his hands clasped urgently on anything he could find, which unfortunately was my crotch. "No fondling Granny!"

I used my fist to deliver a precise blow to his temple while squeezing my legs to increase the pressure as he gradually thrashed back to sleep. To be sure he wouldn't get up again, I hooked my nails into the seam of his plastic-covered eye slit. The material covering his body was dense, like some kind of poly-knit armor. With a throaty yowl, I ripped his mask apart to expose his lily-white skin.

I'd accidentally clawed his face with my ragged nails, pulling down his lower lip to flash a tattoo on the inside flesh that read: C.E. 

Either this guy was so stupid that he needed to have his initials permanently branded on his face (who forgets their own name?!), or those letters meant something else.

Exposure to the gas made his body go limp, which gave me time to access the messaging application on the watch. Sadly, it took far longer than it should for someone my age. I'd never been rich enough to own a smartwatch, so I was mostly swiping and tapping on the micro-thin screen like a cat chasing a laser.