The Reincarnated Hitman

"I see," Liam let out as he closed the laptop and stood up.

He walked towards the floor-to-ceiling glass in his room, his thoughts absent from his face.

He stood there with both hands in his pockets, gazing at the city below him as he seriously went over what he just heard.

Apparently, not only were Liam’s parents working for a branch of the HA, but they were also responsible for researching anomalies.

What kinds of anomalies?

Liam had no idea, since they didn’t reveal it just yet.

What they did tell him, however, was that they had discovered something. Because of it, they believed they might be in danger, which was why they had recorded the video.

His parents had refused to tell him what they had discovered... at least not until they were certain he was ready to bear that burden.

How would they know he was ready?

This task was entrusted to another, someone they trusted quite a lot.

Apparently, what they found out was within one of the two locked folders in the drive, and that person held the password to one.

And they wouldn’t hand it over until they were certain that Liam was ready.

The name of this trusted person, however, made Liam chuckle. After all, he had been just a few feet away from them at the amusement park a few days ago.

Dr. Crew.

The very same man who had created the amplifier tech and who was now in the hands of the Splinters.

He had chosen to ignore the man being kidnapped since he was uninterested in interfering with the plot of the comic, but it seems that had come back to bite him.

"What a funny twist of fate," Liam muttered with another chuckle, "I guess we’ll have to rescue him."

To do that, needed information on the Splinters’ base of operations, which, unlike the Argent Ring’s, was never covered in the comic.

It was information that would be almost impossible to acquire right now, especially since the Splinters might be lying low for a while.

"This feels like an incoming headache," Liam said as he continued looking out the window.

Given that the information was enough to put his parents in danger, that meant finding out what it was would only be the first of his headaches.

He stepped away from the window, walked back to his bed, retrieved the USB drive, and placed it inside a hidden compartment.

"Now then," he walked towards his door, "let’s gather some information, shall we?"

***

Meanwhile, at the side of a cliff at an unknown location was a house that seemed to be floating above the water.

In what seemed like a large meeting room within said house sat five people, each with different clothes of the same colors: black, purple and white.

The cracked skull on their outfits was an indication of who they were.

The Splinters.

Four of the five people were focused on the fifth, a man with a cracked skull mask on his face.

Their leader.

From his demeanor, one could tell that he wasn’t in the greatest of moods.

Fortunately, it was not due to Titan’s or even Erode’s and Hypnos’ failures; rather, it was due to the holographic image on the table in front of him.

"I thought the Splinters were now a group of their own," one of the newest Splinters asked.

It was a man with messy black hair and eyes; on his face was a skull paint that looked similar to the leader’s.

The rest of the group just silently looked at him without a word before turning back to their leader.

The leader’s eyes moved from the holographic image to the man that had just spoken.

"W-wait, I was just asking—" he tried taking his words back; unfortunately, it was too late.

The air around him suddenly felt heavier, making him feel as if some sort of invisible wall was closing in on him.

He didn’t even get them a chance to scream before his entire body suddenly folded into a cube.... literally.

The rest of the Splinters watched without a change in their expressions as the man’s form shrank as seconds passed until he was only a piece of cube-shaped meat.

"Clean this mess," the leader said, and a maid suddenly appeared in the room.

She had a blank expression as she picked up the human turned cube with a gloved hand and gently placed it inside a small trash bag.

She then disappeared after that, leaving the four in silence again.

"We have been assigned a mission by the Ring," the Splinters’ leader finally spoke up, but it was obvious enough that he was unsatisfied with his own words.

The Splinters were a group that had broken away from the Argent Ring to establish their own organization.

Unfortunately, the leader of the Ring still had enough hold over the leader of the Splinters, and he decided to use that hold to turn the Splinters into their errand dogs.

And their task this time was to deal with someone the Ring described as a growing thorn.

The white-haired mercenary was displayed on the hologram before them.

Titan had immediately recognized the white hair, as the kid had left quite an impression on him.

Even the yellow-haired kid that the Ring had, so generously, sold to them, had immediately recognized the man on the hologram.

But neither said anything else, or they risked losing their lives on the spot.

Apparently, the Ring wanted him dead because he had one of their precious lab rats, and he had also taken out a member of the group.

And as long as he remained alive, they believed that he’d be a constant thorn in their side, especially given that he seemed unafraid to accept any contract.

The Ring itself wasn’t handling this because they didn’t want the spotlight on them.

They had survived this long because they remained hidden from the HA... A single slip-up could put them on their radar, and that wouldn’t be good for business.

So the Splinters were the ones assigned to handle this.