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“Uh, well... a lot happened, so, uh... I’m not sure what you wanna know...”

<“You got into a fight, didn’t you? Is everyone okay? What was the fight even about?”>

And suddenly, Colt found himself listening to Hector stumble his way through an explanation of events. To say that it took longer than necessary would be an understatement, but after several agonizing minutes, Gina was up to speed. More or less.

<“Okay. So. The guy who was fighting Karkash is dead, and you don’t know who he was?”>

“Y-yeah. But we think that, um... that he, uh... was, ah... er, well, uh--”

“Hector, I swear by the goddess’s tits, if you don’t finish that sentence in the next five seconds, I’m gonna drive this car into a fucking tree.”

Shockingly, that didn’t seem to do much for Hector’s composure. He merely flushed red and fell painfully silent.

Colt instantly felt like a piece of shit. That was decidedly not the reaction from Hector he had been going for.

Garovel floated in front of the windshield and glared at him. The reaper’s face wasn’t visible, but somehow, that didn’t seem to matter.

‘Great,’ said Bohwanox privately. ‘Amazingly helpful, Colt. Not like the kid’s been through anything traumatic lately. Not like he’s helped us out at all or could use any kind of encouragement from perhaps his only living friend in the entire world right now. I’m sure there’s nothing you could--’

‘I get it! Fuck!’ He looked at Hector in the mirror, who was nowhere close to making eye contact again. “Look, um. I didn’t mean to, um. Uh. I’m--mm. S-sorry, I wasn’t...”

‘You’re killing me with this irony right now,’ said Bohwanox.

‘Aw, fuck! I’m an asshole!’

‘At least you acknowledge it.’

<“Hello?”> said Gina. <“Uh. You still there?”>

Colt decided to just fill in for Hector. “Yeah, we’re here. The guy from earlier, we suspect he was a member of Abolish. A traitor.”