Chapter 175 Fine.

Chapter 175: 175 Fine.

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

"Empty?" I repeated, my brow furrowing beneath my helmet. "What are you talking about? The brain is right here," I said, tapping the reinforced glass like a kid at a depressing aquarium.

"No, yeah, I know it’s physically there, boss. But there’s no mind in it. It’s just... a brain. It’s like someone surgically stripped it of absolutely everything. There isn’t even an echo of a thought."

"What?"

I grabbed the jar from her before realizing exactly how stupid that was. What was I going to do? Shake it like a Magic 8-Ball and see if a supervillain monologue popped out?

"But... it literally just talked to me. Very arrogantly, mind you," I said, staring into the bubbling green fluid.

"Some things that talk are still utterly brainless, sir," Glacia noted in a completely deadpan, aristocratic tone.

"Har har," I muttered.

This wasn’t adding up. What the fuck was actually going on here?

"Sir? Might it be possible he wiped his own mind to protect his secrets?" Glacia suggested, her tone shifting back to tactical analysis.

"Maybe..." I said slowly.

That wasn’t completely unheard of in our line of work. And any man paranoid enough to rig his own multi-million-dollar lair to violently explode with him inside it might just have a dead-man’s switch hooked directly to his own cerebral cortex.

Still, I didn’t like it. It felt entirely too neat.

I sighed, rubbing my visor. "We’ll take it back to the chalet. Rhea? Maybe you can run a deep-tissue scan on it and see if you can find any micro-implants or residual data."

"Sounds like a fun Friday night, Miles! I can’t wait to get my hands on that head," Rhea chirped over the comms.

"Yeah, sure," I said. "And in the meantime, I—"

I trailed off, the hairs on the back of my neck suddenly standing straight up.

The air pressure in the dry flood channel abruptly plummeted, making my ears pop. The ambient light around us warped and distorted, the concrete walls bending as if we were looking through a funhouse mirror.

Aw, hell.

I shoved the glass terrarium back into Glacia’s hands and took a protective step forward, my magnetic fields flaring to life.

A swirling, hypnotic mandala of crackling red energy tore open in the air just a few yards away.

The crimson aura bled into reality until a figure simply stepped through the tear, floating gracefully a few inches above the cracked cement.

Mystic.

She straightened up, brushing a speck of dust off her elegant, flowing coat, and fixed me with a look that was equal parts piercing suspicion and deep, morbid amusement.

"Polaris," Mystic said, her voice smooth. "It seems I run into you quite often these days. You always seem to be standing at the exact epicenter of a localized disasters."

"Fancy that," I said, forcing a casual tone.

She tilted her head, her glowing eyes drifting past me to the massive, billowing cloud of dust rising from the collapsed underground bank a few blocks away.

"Would you mind explaining this?" Her eyes were glowing again and yet still tired. "I’m sure you have a convenient explanation for all this."

"Mole people?" I ventured.

"The Bureau has a strict, heavily litigated non-aggression pact with the Underground Kingdom," Mystic replied, her lips curving into a very faint, knowing smirk.

Right. Forgot about that one.

"Sir?" Glacia whispered in a frosty undertone from directly behind me. "I am fully prepared to freeze her in a block of absolute zero on your mark."

"Let me handle this," I hissed back over my shoulder, before turning my attention back to the magician.

"Look. There was an... incident underground," I explained, gesturing vaguely at the dust cloud. "A rogue villain’s lair blew up."

"It blew up?" Mystic repeated, an amused crimson spark dancing between her fingertips.

"He blew it up. Self-destructed. Bam," I said, smacking a gauntleted fist into my open palm for emphasis. "Just blew the whole place down right on top of me. I’m sorry about... all this," I added, gesturing to the cracked cement and the structural damage. "But really, it’s not that bad considering the alternative."

"You are merely fortunate you did not emerge in a highly populated residential area," she noted.

Which was... well, entirely true.

Though it was hardly uncommon for specific city blocks to be rapidly evacuated right before a super-brawl broke out. But that was usually because a professional villain like me was managing the collateral.

Most actual rogue villains didn’t give a damn if they crushed a couple hundred civilians. In fact, most of them factored it into the PR budget.

But her arrival suddenly made me realize something else.

"What are you even doing here anyway?" I asked, narrowing my eyes.

"Whatever do you mean?" Mystic replied, folding her arms.

"I mean, how did you get here so incredibly fast? The underground grid just collapsed maybe ninety seconds ago. There’s no one around who could have called the Bureau that quickly. How did you know exactly where to open a portal?"

Mystic didn’t answer right away.

Her expression remained perfectly composed, but her eyes locked onto mine.

"I have no reason to answer that," she said at length, her tone dropping into something far more enigmatic.

"Just seems a bit suspicious," I pointed out.

"I find your continued survival at the scene of these ’accidents’ far more suspicious, Polaris," she replied softly.

Well. She definitely had me there.

"Look," I said, dropping my hands to my sides in a gesture of surrender. "We can do this one of two ways. You can arrest me, drag me all the way down to the Hall of Heroes, and process me.

"But once your forensics team investigates the ruins down there, you’ll find out I was telling the absolute truth, and I might just sue the Bureau for false imprisonment. Or..."

"Or?" Mystic prompted, her red aura flaring with genuine curiosity.

"Or we grab lunch and just... talk this out. Hm? My treat. Anywhere you want. How about that?"

Mystic gave me a perplexed look, her glowing eyes narrowing slowly as she processed the sheer audacity of a supervillain offering to buy an S-class heroine a sandwich to avoid jail time.

I shifted my feet, the metal in my suit humming. Was I really going to have to fight a reality-warper today?

Finally, the faint smirk returned to Mystic’s face, and she gave a slow, deliberate nod.

"Very well," she said. "But not lunch. We will have dinner. With my associate. And we will... discuss this matter in depth."

Damn.

I really didn’t want to give her more time to think about this or analyze the situation, but I could hardly say no at this point without triggering a fight I wasn’t prepped for.

"Fine," I said, sighing heavily.

"And you will give me... that," she added, pointing a slender finger directly at the glass terrarium.

I glanced back at the empty brain in Glacia’s hands.

Fuck!

That was literally the only solid lead I had pulled from the rubble.

"I..." I started, trying to find an excuse.

"Or are you actively trying to hide critical evidence from the Bureau, Polaris?" she demanded, her voice dropping its amused tone and adopting a razor-sharp edge.

Shit. There was absolutely no way out of that one.

I looked back at Glacia. The ice-manipulator’s jaw tightened in visible frustration, but she dutifully handed over the Mind’s jar.

I took it, walking the few paces over to Mystic, and reluctantly held it out.

I didn’t even get to hand it to her. A ribbon of telekinetic red energy snapped out from Mystic’s hand, wrapping effortlessly around the glass jar and floating it over to her.

She plucked it out of the air, eyeing the gray matter suspended within the green fluid. Her eyes narrowed subtly as she analyzed it, before tucking it securely under her arm.

"Tonight. Scan Da Navya," Mystic commanded, naming one of the most absurdly exclusive, high-end restaurants in the city. "You will meet us there, or I will come find you myself, and we can continue this fascinating conversation through the reinforced bars of a holding cell."

"Fine. Whatever," I said, sighing in defeat.

Dammit. Just when things actually seemed to be looking up, too.