Chapter 184 Call.

Chapter 184: 184 Call.

I needed a distraction. I needed a game-ender. I couldn’t out-muscle an S-class founder in a test of pure stamina.

My eyes darted frantically around the ruined warehouse, scanning the wreckage behind her. And then, I saw it.

Sitting half-buried under a collapsed scaffolding was the display table Rhea had been drooling over earlier. The vintage nineteen-fifties tech.

If there was one fundamental law of physics that even S-class magic struggled to bypass, it was thermodynamics. You can’t cast complex reality-warping spells if your brain’s synapses are literally too cold to fire.

I couldn’t just pull the gun to me—Mystic would intercept it instantly. I had to create an opening.

I kept my left arm raised, holding the desperate magnetic block against her scythe, and subtly dropped my right hand toward the floor, sending a thin, incredibly precise thread of magnetism slithering through the rubble.

I didn’t aim for the freeze ray. I aimed for the massive, dormant piece of British engineering sitting in the display bay directly behind her.

With a violent jerk of my hand, I magnetically hot-wired the processor of the Modular Raytheon Kill-Bot.

The massive, heavily armored mech roared to life with a deafening metallic screech.

Its optical sensors flared a violent red, its joints hissing as I forcefully puppeteered its massive frame.

I made the ten-ton robot lunge forward, its hammer-fist swinging in a devastating haymaker aimed squarely at the back of Mystic’s head.

The S-class heroine sensed the massive displacement of air. She instantly prioritized the larger physical threat.

She dropped the pressure on my shield, whirling around with terrifying speed.

She caught the Kill-Bot’s massive steel fist with her bare, glowing hand, her magic halting the ten-ton punch dead in its tracks.

With an irritated hum, she clenched her fist, and the entire multi-million-dollar mech violently crumpled in on itself like a crushed soda can, exploding in a shower of sparks and hydraulic fluid.

But that single, split-second distraction was all I needed.

The moment she turned her back, I violently yanked the vintage freeze ray out of the rubble. It flew through the air and slapped perfectly into my waiting right gauntlet.

I didn’t bother looking for the trigger. I bypassed the internal mechanics entirely.

I sent a massive, highly unstable surge of localized magnetism directly into the weapon’s volatile cryo-battery, intentionally overcharging the containment cell well past its safety limits.

Mystic turned back toward me, her eyes spinning with lethal code.

"Chill out," I gasped.

The freeze ray detonated in my hand.

A blinding, roaring torrent of absolute-zero liquid nitrogen and highly compressed blast erupted from the spiraling glass muzzle. The beam hit Mystic point-blank, squarely in the chest.

Her magic flared, desperately trying to construct a shield to block the attack, but the sheer, overwhelming volume of super-cooled energy was too much, too fast.

The constructs physically shattered like glass as the temperature plummeted to impossible depths.

The roaring blue beam engulfed her entirely.

When the gun in my hand finally sputtered and died, melting into useless, frozen slag, I dropped it to the floor.

I fell to one knee, my chest heaving, my breath pluming in the suddenly freezing air. Every muscle in my body felt like it had been run through a meat grinder.

I looked up.

Mystic was frozen solid. She was trapped inside a massive, jagged glacier of pristine blue ice, perfectly suspended in the exact center of the ruined black market.

She wasn’t dead, but the mind-control algorithm couldn’t pilot a body whose nervous system was currently hovering near absolute zero.

"Holy shit," I groaned, rolling my agonizingly sore shoulder and spitting a wad of blood onto the concrete.

Goddamn, that was a close one.

She had absolutely almost had me. If that freeze ray had been a dud, I’d currently be a fine red paste smeared across the Metro Mega Mall.

I slowly forced myself to my feet, my armour heavily dented and scorched. I needed to get out of here before Arman’s boys decided to get brave, or worse, before the ice started to thaw.

"FREEZE! STAND DOWN IMMEDIATELY!"

Oh, for the love of God.

I looked up toward the massive, jagged crater I had torn in the ceiling.

The heavy, suffocating presence of absolute power descended upon the warehouse like a weight.

Through the dust and the ruined concrete, the founding members of the Bureau of Superpowered Affairs drifted down from the mall above.

They didn’t look like they were here to talk—which was a terrible terrible sign. They looked like they were here to go to war.

Mister Invincible led the descent, dropping through the hole like a solid tungsten block.

He hit the floor with a localized tremor, his massive arms crossed, his usually bright face twisted into a mask of pure, unadulterated fury.

Right beside him, Cloudfire descended on twin jets of white-hot plasma, his bespoke tactical suit humming with lethal energy.

The billionaire playboy looked entirely devoid of his usual arrogant charm, his hands were already glowing with the devastating heat of a miniature sun.

Khonsu floated down gently behind them, his ancient linen wraps unfurling like the wings of an avenging angel.

And finally, Cortex lowered himself into the room, sitting cross-legged on a hovering platform, his unblinking eyes analyzing the destruction.

Fucking hell. This was literally the absolute worst-case scenario.

I took a slow breath, glancing at the frozen, defeated form of Mystic, and then back up at the four S-class heroes surrounding me.

I was a known supervillain, standing in the middle of an illegal black-market arms bazaar, standing directly over the frozen, battered body of their sole female founder.

Yeah. This looked really, really bad.

"So," I said, slowly raising my hands, keeping my palms open to show I wasn’t drawing a weapon. "I know exactly how this looks. But—"

"Step away from Mystic and surrender your powers immediately, Polaris," Rick demanded, his voice booming with enough force to rattle my teeth. "Unless you want a fight. Do you?" he added, his fists clenching, looking entirely too eager for an excuse to cave my chest in.

"No. Look—"

"We will not repeat ourselves, Polaris." Khonsu said, guessing I’d run out on the free-trail friendship.

But hell if I was going back to jail. "This is a massive misunderstanding. She attacked me first! She was being mind-controlled! Look at her eyes!"

"We will not ask again. Surrender at once!" Cloudfire shouted, the plasma in his hands flaring bright enough to cast harsh shadows across the rubble.

"And if I say no?" I asked, my voice dropping its placating tone.

Rick glared down at me, his massive chest heaving. Khonsu’s magical wraps began to swirl aggressively around the room, sealing off the exits.

The heroes looked entirely ready to start something, and I scanned them grimly, my tactical mind racing.

Could I fight my way out of this?

Maybe.

The Bureau was undisputedly the strongest organized super-group on the planet.

But with Mystic currently on ice, and considering the sheer, astronomical volume of military-grade metal currently sitting in this subterranean warehouse, I could probably make a very, very destructive go of it.

Or, at the very least, I could cover a villainous retreat. The fact that most of them were wearing or heavily utilizing a fair bit of metal on their costumes would only make things easier for me.

I did something I hadn’t done in a long time, I unclipped my hair, scratching my scrap and hoping the air to head was enough for the fumes I was working on.

I let my hands drop slightly. The magnetic fields in the room answered my silent call.