Chapter 174 Empty.

Chapter 174: 174 Empty.

"That’ll do," I said, reaching up with both hands.

I stretched my magnetic fields outward, piercing the heavy brickwork. It took a second to sift through the mess, but then I felt it—the distinct crunch of old iron piping vibrating with the intense pressure of actively rushing water. Ha, got it!

The Mind must have just boarded it up when he excavated the lair, which worked out perfectly for me.

I wrapped a magnetic vice around the old iron and violently yanked with all my might.

A deep, structural groan echoed through the chamber.

The Ooze was almost on me, its sizzling green tentacles lashing out. I jerked my leg back, but a stray glob swiped my heel, the armored plating instantly hissing and blackening under the acid.

Come on, baby. Come on!

With a deafening crack, the massive iron pipe burst through the masonry, twisting like a metal snake right toward the bubbling Ooze.

A high-pressure torrent of municipal runoff blasted down onto the acidic slime.

It was exactly like turning a fire hydrant on a massive plate of radioactive Jell-O.

The force of the water splattered the Ooze across the floor, its gelatinous mass squirming and bubbling as it desperately tried to reform. But basic chemistry was a bitch.

The rushing water instantly diluted the acid, washing the monster down into a harmless, green puddle that drained rapidly through the iron floor grates.

"There," I said, dropping my hold on the pipe and turning my attention back to the elevated platform.

The Mind had apparently given up on trying to manually pry open his jammed escape chute.

I raised a hand, and dozens of jagged metal shards from the ruined blast door lifted into the air around me like a halo of daggers. "Now, about that chat."

The brain let out a rattling sigh through his speakers as the gorilla body rose back to its full height. "Pity. But you... can’t blame me for trying."

"Yeah, I kinda can," I replied, and flicked my fingers forward.

The metal shards ripped through the air with the shriek of a jet engine. They slammed into the primate body with enough kinetic force to throw the massive gorilla backward, pinning him cleanly to the far brick wall.

Heavy steel bolts impaled his hands, chest, and legs, locking him in place.

"Now," I said, floating up to eye level with the trapped mastermind. "About that talk."

"I am afraid we... don’t have... the time..."

"What are—"

A sudden, piercing spike of pain throbbed directly in the center of my skull. I winced, my lift wavering for a split second.

Then, I looked up as a series of heavy, concussive booms echoed from the upper levels.

"Thermite explosives," the Mind rasped, his voice completely devoid of panic. "In the load-bearing supports. We will be buried together, you and I. An... unfortunate end... to this little play..."

Son of a bitch actually hit the self-destruct!

But like hell I was letting some B-list mad scientist bury me in the sewers.

I reached out with my powers and violently grabbed the Mind’s glass dome. There was a thick bundle of cybernetic circuitry connecting the terrarium to the gorilla’s spinal column, and I tore it right out of the neck with a sickening mechanical crunch.

The glass jar flew into my grasp. I tucked it tightly under my arm like a football and magnetically repelled my armor back into the center of the room.

Above me, the domed ceiling was already starting to aggressively crack, massive chunks of Victorian stonework giving way.

I pointed my free hand straight down, wrapping my powers around the jammed escape hatch. Where raw gorilla strength had failed, high-end electromagnetism succeeded. I ripped the heavy steel plug clean off its hinges and tossed it aside.

Not a moment too soon.

I dove headfirst down the chute just as the ceiling caved in, burying the command room in hundreds of tons of crushing debris, severing pipes and detonating the mainframes.

The escape tunnel bent sharply, and I flew through it, letting my magnetic fields propel me forward like a bullet in a railgun.

Behind me, the passage was already collapsing. Cracks spider-webbed through the concrete walls, chasing me, overtaking me as the tunnel gave way in a roaring avalanche of earth and steel.

Faster. Faster!

I banked hard around corners, my armor scraping sparks off the walls.

Almost. Almost!

Daylight suddenly bled in ahead, filtering through a heavy metal storm grate.

I didn’t even slow down. I slammed my powers into the grate, blowing it entirely off its mountings and sending it hurtling through the air.

I burst out of the tunnel like a cork from a champagne bottle, riding a massive, billowing cloud of dust and debris right out into the open air.

I threw my momentum in reverse, grinding to a halt mid-air and waving away the choking dust cloud as it settled.

I took stock of my surroundings. I was floating directly over a massive, sun-baked cement flood channel. The pipe I’d just explosively evacuated had once discharged into it, but the whole aqueduct was bone dry.

A heavy rumble shook the ground, and I looked up the concrete bank to see a massive plume of dust rising into the sky a few blocks away, marking the collapsed grave of the Mind’s subterranean lair.

Well. That wasn’t ideal for urban planning.

"Boss!"

The shout pulled my attention skyward, just in time to see Glacia descending on a swirling rush of freezing air, holding Psyren tightly in her arms.

"Hey, girls," I said as the pair touched down gracefully on the concrete. "How’s it—oof!"

I grunted as both Psyren and Glacia immediately threw their arms around me, hugging me tight against my armored chest.

"Sir!" Glacia gasped, her usual aristocratic composure completely cracking. "I am so glad you are alright!"

"Holy fuck, boss! That was crazy! The whole block just dropped!" Psyren yelled, squeezing my waist.

I awkwardly patted them both on the head. Having people genuinely this worried about my physical safety was a bit new to me. My specific brand of villainy had been a solo act for so long, this level of syndicate camaraderie felt... odd.

Not bad. Just very different.

"Miles, I just want you to know I’m hugging an anime body pillow in solidarity right now since, ya know, I’m not physically there," Rhea chimed in my ear.

"Noted," I said dryly, gently easing Glacia and Psyren back so I could actually breathe. "And hey, it wasn’t a total loss. Look what I brought back from the rubble."

I held out the glass terrarium.

Psyren instantly recoiled, her nose wrinkling in disgust. "Ew! Gross!"

Glacia, completely unsurprisingly given the fact she’d probably seen far worse biological horrors while living with her supervillain father, just leaned forward, her icy blue eyes narrowing as she glared at the gray matter floating in the jar.

"So this is the Mind? The last vestige of the Brain Trust?" she asked coldly.

"That he is," I confirmed.

"And we’re going to make sure it stays that way. Not to mention, we’re going to find out exactly where he hid that fucking machine of his. Psyren?"

"Do I gotta be gentle?" the pink-haired psychic asked, cracking her knuckles.

"The asshole just tried to bury me alive under a million tons of concrete. Strip his mind down to the brain stem if you have to," I ordered, handing the jar over to her.

"Oh, boss, you really know how to make a girl happy," Psyren giggled darkly.

She grabbed the glass, her demeanor shifting instantly. Bright pink, neon hearts flared to life in her pupils, and I felt the sudden, oppressive pressure of her psychic aura aching faintly in the back of my skull as she dove.

But almost as quickly as it began, Psyren’s sadistic smile completely vanished. Her face pinched into a deep, frustrated look of absolute confusion.

"Boss?" she said, blinking the pink glow away. "It’s... empty."