Chapter 37 - Day Meet Night

After numerous discussions that led to slightly deeper explanations of some of Mason's powers, the plan to secure the brazen crime lady became a straightforward endeavor.

When the convoy turned onto a road that placed them right next to the target skyscraper, Mason dove down and arrived at the instant Ovsanna’s vehicle also turned.

There was no fanfare, no displays of fire and certainly no verbal announcements of his arrival. He simply came to stop behind the target vehicle, dug his fingers into the bullet resistant roof and secured his hold on it.

Before her people could mount any meaningful resistance to his sudden arrival and subsequent actions, his body turned into an arrow and shot straight up, bringing the several thousand pound vehicle with it.

Glass windows’ blurred past him and the car’s frazzled inhabitants. That eventually ended when their view changed to a roof and the night sky before a jolt went through them as the car found solid ground again.

Without waiting for them to catch their breaths, Mason was beside the driver’s side door in an instant, punching the driver in the side of the head through the tempered glass.

He flashed to the other side of the vehicle and did the same to the other guard, knocking her out too. Unlike his fellow guards, the third was armored up and armed, but that did him no good as Mason threw him off the roof with a simple grab and toss.

Ovsanna obviously came next. The woman defaulted to her pistol, a Desert Eagle she pulled out of her admittedly tiny purse and fired steadily without her grip faltering.

Mason easily deprived her of the weapon and knocked her out with a palm slap to the forehead.

Not a minute later, the rooftop door opened and Kelsey and Rip joined them on the roof.

With Ovsanna slung over his shoulder, they boarded the helicopter parked on the helipad beforehand and took off, leaving behind the guards who managed to make it to the roof a few seconds too late.

At some point on the exfil, Mason broke away from the group and flew straight to the mansion where the Votnak sisters lived and ruled from. Due to Kelsey’s machinations, news of their leader’s kidnapping hadn’t reached them yet.

This allowed him to break in without resistance, snatch up Karine, the other sister, and fly away while her guards and servants watched helplessly. Being able to fly really made things unfair… for the bad guys, and Mason loved every second of it.

With the obvious problems of distance and the temperature drop of the night having come up during their discussions of the plan, a vehicle and a couple of other things had been prepared for Mason so he could make the delivery.

He found it easily despite the dead of night—nestled inside a grove of trees near a lonely road—mainly because he parked it there himself.

Upon landing with the struggling crime boss on his shoulder, he lowered her and retrieved a spray can from his inventory, spraying it in her face and silencing her verbal and physical protests.

He caught her without fail and opened the trunk of the inconspicuous family seater, retrieved a zip tie from storage again and bound her wrists with them, putting a gag in her mouth afterwards.

He sprayed her in the face again for good measure before slamming the trunk shut. It was going to be a long drive. 

Once he sat behind the wheel and got the car moving, he contacted Kelsey and Rip to give them an update.

“I’ve got her.”

“Great. We just landed at the switch point. We’ll see you at the safe house.”

“It’ll take me a while but yeah. See you too.”

Mason stayed silent on the line for a bit. 

The two heads of the crime family were in custody. Technically speaking, he had done his job. Without the constant flow of Temp V, the Votnak organization would eventually crumble, or splinter or whatever happened to crime families without their leaders to keep things running and stable.

Couldn’t he just leave things to Kelsey’s and her people and move on? This deployment had gotten real boring and dry real fast.

“Do you think she’ll talk?” He asked, referring to Ovsanna.

“Everything we have in her says she won’t.” Kelsey confirmed what he already suspected after going through the mind reader’s file. “We still have to try anyway. That’s why we need her sister.“

“Got it. Get here in one piece. Don’t fuck it up.”

“Glad I don’t have to tell you. Keep me updated.”

“Yes ma’am.”

Mason ended the call and settled into the seat and the drive, fully intent on not stopping till he arrived at his destination. And he could actually do it too because of his powers. No rest stops for him.

Alas, the universe had plans of its own. 

He may not have had the need to relieve himself or take a break, but his unwilling passenger definitely did. And she chose no better time than to let him know than during a routine police stop.

He and the team had taken this into account together, considering it was a six hour drive. That’s why he had a licence, papers and everything attesting to the fact he owned this car and was a citizen of this country.

Hell, a story on where he was going and why he was going there had been crafted. It all became useless when the officer looking over his papers heard the thump from the vehicle’s rear and locked eyes with him.

The world stilled in both their gazes for a split second before normal action resumed. The officer reached for his gun and Mason opened the car door. Guess who was faster.

Before he could take proper aim and do his job, the car door hit the officer as though the vehicle’s entire weight had been transferred at the point of impact.

He flew back and the gun left his grip, both of them tumbling and clattering to the ground respectively, only one of them feeling pain. Quickly getting out of the car and rushing to the downed officer’s side, Mason crouched down and palm slapped the groaning man before taking his radio and crushing it.

He took the man’s phone too and tossed it away, super strength ensuring he’d not find it any time soon. In order to buy himself more time, he picked up the officer, fished the keys to his cruiser from his person, and situated him in the seat before locking him inside. 

A police officer sleeping in his car? Probably weird but hey? Not like people would try to find out why.

Aware of how much little time he had left, Mason got back in the car and drove off. He didn’t go very far, just to a place secluded enough for what he had in mind. They were barely an hour from the barn anyway.

A large coat appeared in his hand once he parked the car and got out. He opened the trunk and received a kick to the chest. It hit him like a wall, yet despite how ineffective it was, Karine didn’t stop.

Mason seized one of the dainty limbs mid-motion and then the other one, using a pair of zip ties to restrain them. He ignored her continued struggles and yanked her out of the vehicles, setting her down beneath a tree and wrapping the coat around her.

Next, he returned to the open trunk and took out the can of gasoline, ignoring the woman as he doused the vehicle in the stuff. Soon, the flammable substance was all he could smell despite standing in the middle of the woods.

After emptying the can, he tossed it into the vehicle through the driver’s side window and flicked his finger after it, a tiny blue flame appearing at the last second and flying into the car.

It met with the gasoline and lit up in a blaze of orange. He turned away to find Karine still beneath the tree, the coat he wrapped around her on the ground. 

He chuckled and picked it up, just in time for a rock to clock him in the face. Shaking his head in exasperation, he pried the rock from her hands, tossed it away and gave her a slap to the forehead.

She went limp and he put the coat around her again. He picked her up and turned to the car, seizing control of the flames. 

The infusion of chi turned the blaze into a tightly controlled inferno, licking every inch of the car and reducing it to a half melted slag of metal, leather and plastic in minutes. 

Assured that his tracks had been properly covered, he took off in a flight and stayed below the treeline, zooming past the mess of trees, coiling through them at his highest speed without hitting a single one.

Well, not his highest speed since he didn’t use any flames, but it was still fast enough that when he broke through the forest a mere twenty minutes later, he spotted the abandoned ranch they were using as a safe house.

With the end in sight, he kept true and went straight for the barn, landing outside of it. Heat sense confirmed the presence of three people inside; Kelsey, Rip and Ovsanna. It had to be, from the sounds he was hearing.

In order not to ruin what they had going on, he threw Karine over his shoulder to free one of his hands and called Kelsey. The call went through and it led the woman outside the barn, where she cursed upon seeing him with the other half of the Votnak puzzle over his shoulder.

“Fuck!”

“Sorry.” Mason was genuinely apologetic as he motioned to the barn with his head. “Didn’t want to ruin any progress.”

Kelsey accepted that explanation with a huff and went back inside, urging Mason to follow. “What progress? Bring her in.”

Inside, Ovsanna sat in a metal chair, bound by chains and surrounded by tables laden with implements supposed to make her sing. Rip sat on the edge of one of the tables, tossing the hammer in his hand up and down.

Ovsanna’s face remained a stone cold mask of indifference despite all this. Not even Mason’s entry with what happened to her own blood over his shoulder managed to crack her visage.

She instead regarded them with the same static eyes, observing how they set her sister up in another chair, binding her too. After securing her properly, they waved an open tube over her sister’s nostrils and she shot up with a jolt.

Hanging back so he could watch the woman work, Mason regarded Kelsey and the two crime bosses displaying drastically different reactions to what was happening.

Unlike her sister, Karine didn’t hide her anxiety, struggling against her bonds and searching the gazes of everyone present for a way out.

“Alright. Minute’s up.” Kelsey stepped forward, hands on her thin waist. “Here’s the deal.” She focused on Karin. “Your sister’s sealed her fate. You, on the other hand, are innocent in all this and you can prove that by giving us the names of everyone your sister has charmed.”

Karine replied in heavily accented English. “Please… let me go. I don’t know anything.”

As if expecting this, Kelsey maintained eye contact with the pleading woman. 

“Nomad.”

Mason replied by standing to his full height.

“Can you go out there and dig me a grave big enough for two people?”

Displaying coordination bordering on telepathy, Rip tossed a shovel Mason’s way and the latter caught it. 

“Sure thing.” He slapped a palm against the long haft and walked out of the barn.

“Like I said,” Kelsey gave her attention to the sisters once more, noticing the subtle twitch in Ovsanna’s tightened jaws. “Your sister’s done. You… still have a chance. If you cooperate, we’ll let you go. Think about it. With her out of the picture, the family’ll be all yours. Matter of fact, I’m giving you a pretty good deal here and you’re making me beg. I don’t have to beg you for this. Ten seconds. Share a grave with your sister or have the throne to yourself. Make a decision.”

Ovsanna could no longer keep quiet. Her words came out urgent and intense, the language barrier not managing to hide her desperation in the slightest.

Over her noise, Kelsey’s voice managed to stand out. “Eight.” “Seven.” “Six…”

Meanwhile, Karine’s pain was evident as she alternated her gaze between her frantic sister and the woman counting down to her death. Each subsequent number pounded upon her skull, while her sister’s screams haunted her even though the former wasn’t dead yet.

Right before Kelsey uttered the “one,” something inside her snapped. 

“I’ll do it! I’ll do it! Okay!” 

Kelsey smiled at the utterly betrayed look Ovsanna wore, the shock having demolished the ice in her veins. 

“Finally, someone smart.” She threw a head gesture Rip’s way. He understood what that meant and went to Ovsanna, dragging the woman away by her chair. 

“Let’s get started.” Kelsey brought Karine’s attention back to herself. “About those names…”

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After dealing with the Votnak crime family and leaving Armenia, Mason came to truly understand why having supes in the military was a big deal.

All he had to do was take a step back and replay the scenarios without his involvement for everything to become clear. If not for him, Kelsey, Rip and likely more operatives would still be hard at work in Bolivia.

His inclusion in the operations didn’t just just speed up things, it changed the rules of the game. Though you could say the criminal organizations having their own supes before any world government were the first rule breakers.

That point aside, being thrown into the field didn’t just make him a force multiplier. It made him a silver bullet, a gun that could hit whatever it was aimed at regardless of the protections put in place.

The event that drove this reality home was the operation in Mexico. Apparently getting their own supe earned The Ghost Ring the undivided attention of Uncle Sam, leading to the identity and residence of their leader being rooted out.

A few hours after landing in Mexico, Mason got briefed on these two pieces of crucial information and he was sent off with a simple order: go fetch. They pointed him like a gun at the target and he delivered.

Fetch he did, as not an hour later, he returned to the hidden base with the cartel leader knocked out and tied up. It was so easy and simple, the extra few days he spent in the country putting out fires didn’t bother him much.

The Ghost Ring were really upset about their leader and they showed it in the amount of destruction they almost wrought on the populace and infrastructure. 

A criminal organization had no excuse being as well armed and armored as they were in Mason’s opinion, but hey, it’s not like voicing his thoughts would change anything.

With Mexico out of the way, Guatemala was last on the chopping board. La Bestia, his son and their organization was the next to fall to Mason and his merry band of officers and operators.

Only, the problem with that stemmed from the son’s immediate surrender. Mason had cornered the guy, caught him off guard so he could take a crack at him and really test his invulnerability.

However upon setting eyes on Mason, the boy showed fright for all of five seconds before sighing in relief and holding out both arms. 

Long story short, his social media stunts were the plan all along. He wanted to be found and he wanted to draw attention to his father’s unsavory businesses. Why?

He wanted to get away from the man. Plain and simple. The problem with that was the man would never let him get away, so he resorted to this instead of outright killing his old man even though he could.

In exchange for his freedom and a new life, he offered up piles of evidence and everything he’d dug up about his father. It was a sudden but refreshing turn of events and conclusion for everyone involved, Mason included.

That’s why after a mere three weeks of leaving the states, Mason returned with a sunny disposition and heart and soul excited to see his girl and spend at least a week doing nothing else but lay in bed with her.

With more than a pep in his step, he trotted down the steps of the private jet and powered on the phone he’d set aside for communication with Lexi.

An avalanche of notifications hit the phone and held it hostage for a few seconds. 

When he brushed the meat of them aside and zeroed in on those from Lexi, he tapped the notification and frowned at the video and text that popped up.