Chapter Ten

Trigger was very cold. His suit did little to help with insulation; movement was the most effective thing for that but at the moment, he was hanging upside down from a beam on the ceiling. "The Bahamas don't happen to have a thermoscrambling chip, do they?"

"Focus, apprentice," Slade's growl came loud and clear through the com-device in Trigger's ear. "Do you need reminding?"

"No sir," Trigger said cheerfully, swinging down from the beam and landing in an almost soundless crouch. "Do you need reminding about why it's so much easier to work in warmer environments?"

"Keep your sass to yourself," Slade snarled.

Trigger grinned beneath his mask. "Yes sir." It had been four months since Leng had saved him from the T.O.I., and in that time he had come to enjoy working for Slade. What wasn't to like about his new life? Slade had never raised a hand against him except in combat training, he wasn't being starved or made to drink dishwater, and best of all, he was treated like an actual human being. He brushed his limp brown hair back off of his forehead and looked around. He had an hour to work with; he had already disabled the security cameras and now it was time to play a little game with the guards.

The cameras began to move again, their connection back online, and Trigger turned them off again with a single press of a button on the remote in his hand.

"What are you doing?" Slade asked, exasperated.

"If they think their connection is spotty, they're less likely to come looking for me," Trigger answered in a low voice. "Their heat's already out—they should be expecting other systems to flicker on and off. Otherwise they're stupid." Taking his master's silence as a go-ahead, he flicked the power a few more times before tucking the remote into the pocket on the side of his calf before beginning to creep toward the vault door. Making sure that the security cameras were indeed off and staying that way, Trigger drew the sword from the sheath on his back and used the razor-sharp tip to begin unscrewing the combination pad, setting it carefully onto the ground so it wouldn't clatter. He replaced the sword and took out a Swiss Army Knife from the small leather pouch on his hip. Despite all of Slade's professional equipment, there was still nothing more helpful in a pinch than the red-cased tool. He flicked the scissors out and began to snip wires. The vault door creaked and swung open just enough for Trigger to squeeze his slender frame inside.

"And here we have our chip," Trigger murmured, pacing lightly forward and gazing down at an object the size of a fingernail resting securely in a glass case.

"Get it and get out of there." Slade told him.

Trigger nodded and shifted his balance onto one leg, unbuckling the pocket on the outside of his left calf and withdrawing a slingshot and a crushed bullet. Sliding the bullet into the leather pad, Trigger gripped the handle, drew back, and fired. The glass shattered and before the fragments had finished smashing to the floor, Trigger had grabbed the chip and bolted. As he ran, he unhooked the bullwhip from his belt, flew up a metal staircase, and snapped the leather so that the tongue coiled around the same bar he had dropped from. The alarm had barely begun to shrill by the time Trigger had scrambled up the whip, resecured it at his belt, and kicked his way through a ceiling panel. He pressed his stomach to the bottom of the air vent he came in through and began to army-crawl through the ducts, hissing softly as the freezing metal seeped through his suit and made goosebumps prickle along his skin.

"Your speed is improving," Slade noted.

"I learn from the best," Trigger replied. He squirmed out of the air vent and dropped to the ground, not bothering to replace the grating he had removed earlier. "The getaway is clear?"

"So long as you hurry," Slade answered.

Trigger began to run, practically flying through the corridors. A guard turned the corner and raised his gun, but he didn't have time to so much as aim before Trigger's steel-toed boots cracked against his kneecaps, sending him down with a scream. It took barely another second for Trigger to neatly jog the man's memory with the butt of his gun before he sprinted away again.

"Where you running?" Demanded a voice from behind him.

"Straight to jail," replied another.

Trigger stopped and turned to see five people—barely older than he was—standing in the hallway with almost rehearsed poses. "I know you," he said, raising an eyebrow. "A wanna-be superhero, a failed science experiment, two alien prostitutes, and..." His eyes landed on a boy with solidly green skin and pointed ears. "And a swamp demon. What a fun crowd! I'd love to stick around, but if your carnival act will excuse me, I have to go."

"Damn right you have to go," the robot-man growled, one of his blue and white arms converting neatly into what could be best described as a portable cannon. "You have to go down."

Trigger cocked his head and smiled beneath the mask. "Correction, Sparky. I have to go up." He raised the gun to his shoulder and fired two rounds in quick succession, shooting the lights out and plunging the hallway into pitch darkness. Going up was a ruse: Trigger smashed through a glass pane with his shoulder and promptly threw himself out the window. There was a warehouse roof below him and he rolled smoothly forward, moving directly from a crouch to a run.

"Stop!" He heard the weirdos behind him giving chase and rolled his eyes; like he was going to give himself up just because he was told to. Besides, he had broken out of every jail cell he had been put into—his record was seven minutes and four seconds—and he doubted that the city prison would be more secure than something that Slade built. "Stop him, Slade's got another one!"

That stunned Trigger so much that he nearly tripped and fell. Another one?

One of the scantily-clad girls streaked in front of him, holding up a fist blazing with green light, the same color as her large eyes. Her long red hair hung to the middle of her back. "You will apologize for those insults," she said in a high voice.

Don't let them have anything to use against you—pretend you didn't hear that comment about Slade. So Trigger laughed. "No I won't." He yanked the bullwhip from his belt and struck out with it, catching her around the waist and spinning her out of his way, ignoring her cry of pain. He saw their reflection in the glass window of a business in front of him and twisted neatly out of the path of a powerful sonic blast that made the roof beneath his feet shake. "Slade! Fight or flight?"

"Have I trained you to run from danger?" Slade asked calmly.

"When I can't overcome it, yes. These are anomalies and I don't know if I can take them on my own!"

"Then use your head, apprentice!" Slade snapped, and the connection went dead.

Trigger took this literally—the youth with the fancy costume and the cape jumped at him and Trigger grabbed him around the throat and headbutted him in the face, channeling an angry bull. Hoping to have broken his nose with that hit—his own head was throbbing because of it—he turned to run and was bowled over by a literal angry bull. Solid green and snorting, its hooves sent sparks flying as it pawed the metal roof with a bloodcurdlingly shrill scraping sound. Trigger scrambled to get up but before he could get further than all fours, he was slammed back down by a bony knee between his shoulder blades.

"Alien prostitute, am I?" A deadly calm voice snarled in his ear—it was the girl in the dark blue cloak.

"Aren't you?" Trigger asked innocently. Hearing pounding feet rushing toward him, he knew that he had only seconds. One of his hands was free and he snatched the knife from the sheath on his thigh and jabbed with it, opening a long but shallow cut on her thigh. She recoiled and he bucked beneath her, throwing her offbalance, before leaping to his feet and bolting. The green kid cut him off, changing his form from a bull to a large green dog. Teeth bared, ropes of saliva glistening from its slavering jaws, hackles standing stiffer than soldiers.

Trigger froze, heart jumping in his chest.

"Don't like dogs, kid?" The robot asked from behind him. The other four had formed a ring around him, trapping him. "Get bit when you were little?"

"Did you?" Trigger responded waspishly. "No, not a dog—you'd have to have been put through a ten-foot cheese grater to need that extensive of repairs. Or has some mad scientist let his pet project out to play?"

A blast from that cannon-arm shot at Trigger's head and he dropped to the ground. The blast hit the redheaded girl and knocked her out of the air.

"Cyborg!" The boy with the cape yelled and Trigger saw his chance. He whipped the sword from the sheath across his back and swung it like a baseball bat, making the others jump out of the way to avoid being neatly split in half. He leaped over the fallen alien girl and used their distraction to pull one last thing from a pocket on his suit: a smoke bomb. He smashed it on the ground and thick black clouds exploded forward, obscuring the entire roof as he darted away.

"I would appreciate it if you would let me know if there's a chance I'll be apprehended by Robin Hood and his band of Merry Mutants," Trigger snapped, dropping the chip into Slade's waiting palm.

To his astonishment, Slade laughed.

"Damn, so you are capable of human emotion," Trigger mumbled.

"Did you know that his name is Robin?" Slade asked, turning that weirdly expressionless eye on him.

Trigger shook his head mutely, taking off his mask. It had the consistency of tough plastic, covering his nose and mouth, but it was easy to breathe with it on and it would only flex outward: it lessened the probability of broken bones. It clattered slightly as he dropped it on the table and sank wearily down into the chair. "Who were they?"

"Nobody that you need to concern yourself with," Slade answered, examining the chip as he started to walk past the table.

"He was green, half of him was metal, and she was from space," Trigger argued back. "Tell me, Slade."

Slade stopped and turned his head slowly and Trigger imagined him raising an eyebrow beneath his mask.

"Please," Trigger amended. "They know you."

Slade gave what sounded almost like a noise of amusement and contempt, beginning to walk again. "We do have a history," he conceded.

"They said—" Trigger swallowed, running his fingers through his limp brown hair. "They said that you had 'another one.'"

Slade stopped for the second time. "Did they." It wasn't a question.

Trigger nodded very slowly. "Who are they?" He asked again, his voice barely more than a whisper. "Another one of what?"