Chapter 187 Ultimate.

Chapter 187: 187 Ultimate.

"Of course I know about it!" I said. "Everyone in the underground knows about it!"

Rick cocked his head, his heroic frown easing slightly as he seemed to seriously consider that.

"Well... true. I suppose it is a bit of an open secret at this point. Honestly," he chuckled, shaking his head ruefully. "Heroes can be such a handful sometimes, you know?"

I slowly narrowed my eyes at Rick.

I shifted my gaze to Micheal, who had kept largely silent during this entire exchange, sitting perfectly still with his hands folded precisely over his manila folders.

"You know," I said slowly, the gears in my head suddenly clicking into place. "I was wondering... exactly how many telepaths does the BSA currently employ?"

"None," Micheal answered simply. "Heroes with psychic capabilities are statistically quite uncommon on a federal level."

"But you’re the BSA," I pressed. "Surely you’ve had a few come by over the years, looking to join up."

"On occasion," Micheal droned.

"Interesting," I said.

"Is it?" Micheal replied, his wide eyes unblinking.

"Yeah. Because it just occurred to me that Mystic has been dealing with quite a few surprising coincidences lately. We keep randomly running into each other through some reason or another. And you know? She was starting to get a bit suspicious about that too."

Rick cocked his head again, his jovial face knitting with perplexity. "Oh?"

"Yeah," I said, resting my heavy chains on the metal table. "In fact, I’m a little suspicious myself. The Five showed up through the ceiling literally right after my fight with Mystic ended. Didn’t you?"

"Yes! For I received a high-priority distress summons from her internal tracker!" Rick declared proudly.

"I bet you did," I said, watching Micheal closely. His slate-gray eyes gave away absolutely nothing.

I glanced back to Rick, then to Cloudfire, who was still leaning against the wall, looking bored.

But my eyes locked again on Cortex. The absolute brains of the Bureau. The man who had sat in a hovercraft while an S-class heroine was beaten to a pulp.

"It’s you, isn’t it?" I said, the realization settling like lead in my stomach.

Micheal blinked slowly. Once.

"Me?" he said flatly.

"Yes. You. You’re the psychic, aren’t you?"

"What psychic?"

"The hidden one," I said, leaning forward. "The one who silently sent Mystic after me. The one who was secretly puppeteering the Mind from the shadows. The one who manipulated the Brain Trust into building the Override Array in the first place. It was all you."

Micheal stared at me blankly.

For a long, agonizing moment, the room was dead silent.

Then, a faint, terrifyingly calm smile hovered on his lips. He looked down for a second, almost as if surprised to feel his own facial muscles moving, before the smile grew just a fraction wider.

"Well, well," he said softly.

He reached up and carefully took off his glasses, setting them neatly on top of his files.

And without them on, the meticulously cultivated illusion of the awkward, harmless bureaucrat instantly vanished. He sat up straighter, his posture loosening.

"This is a genuine surprise, Miles. I knew from your tactical telemetry that you were highly intelligent, but I admit, I did not calculate that you would piece the variables together quite so quickly."

"So it’s true," I said, a sinking feeling settling deep in my gut. "You really are behind all of this."

"I am the architect, yes."

"And you’ve just... hidden it? From everyone? All this time?"

"It has required a significant amount of ongoing processing power," Micheal admitted.

I looked over at Mister Invincible, and then back at Cloudfire. Neither of them had reacted to the bombshell confession happening right in front of them.

Micheal followed my gaze.

"Oh, them? I’m afraid my colleagues will not be of any assistance to you regarding this matter."

Micheal gave a tiny, almost imperceptible flick of his index finger.

Mister Invincible instantly flopped forward, his massive head banging heavily against the table with a dull thud. Over by the wall, Cloudfire’s eyes rolled back into his head, and he slumped directly onto the floor, completely unconscious.

I violently jerked back in my chair, the chains pulling taut.

Oh, fuck.

"More puppets?" I breathed, looking back at Micheal in absolute horror.

"Oh, yes. Richard is one of my absolute best integrations," Micheal said, casually reaching over and patting the invincible hero’s motionless shoulder.

"Just as the Mind had his specific operational parameters within the Brain Trust to construct the hardware I required, The Five here was the necessary heavy element needed to project visible, structural authority within the Bureau. And frankly, he has been quite handy for publicly expressing some of my more... eccentric societal urges. It allowed me to remain seamlessly in the background. Dull. Easily overlooked by threats like you. But that was all part of the necessary algorithm, Miles. All part of the plan."

I let out a harsh, disbelieving breath. "Well. I guess it was only a matter of time. Just another hyper-intelligence succumbing to the inevitable supervillain madness."

"Madness?" Micheal repeated, tilting his head slightly. "To rule the world, you mean?"

"Usually how it goes," I muttered.

Micheal stood up slowly, smoothing the wrinkles from his suit. He walked calmly toward the two-way mirror set into the wall and stared through it.

I winced, feeling a sudden, sharp throb of pressure in the base of my skull as he passively flexed his telepathic power, likely blanking out the minds of whatever federal agents were currently monitoring the interrogation.

"The world? Hardly," Micheal said, his tone perfectly reasonable. "I have absolutely zero interest in micromanaging the minds of eight billion people. I have no interest in even leading the planet politically. That kind of overt, systemic pride? That is mathematically begging to be dismantled by an external variable."

Huh.

"Then what is this about?" I demanded, pulling on the cuffs.

"Miles, do you know what I truly value?" Micheal asked, turning back to face me.

"Being a manipulative dick?" I hazarded.

"Efficiency," he corrected smoothly. "And I value heroes. True, effective heroes."

"Yeah. Clearly," I said sarcastically, nudging Mister Invincible’s massive arm with my elbow.

Ugh. His eyes were wide open, but completely glassy.

"Him?" Micheal said, looking down at the hero’s insensate body with an expression of cold, clinical disgust.

"Do you know what is genuinely fascinating, Miles? His powers are entirely his own. They are not a projection or a trick of my design. He is genuinely, biologically indestructible. Super strength. Supersonic flight. All the primary, statistical mainstays of a demigod. And do you know what Richard actually intended to do with those miraculous genetic gifts?"

"What?" I asked cautiously.

"Absolutely nothing."

I glanced up at Micheal, caught slightly off guard. "Really?"

"Oh, yes," Micheal said, and the sheer, logical disdain on his face was chilling.

"And it’s not just him," he pointed back towards Cloudfire. "That one wanted to just be batman. A billionaire vigilante with the powers to alter the direction of climate change."

He reached down, grabbed Mister Invincible by his blonde hair, and effortlessly jerked the massive man’s head off the table. Micheal glared down at the slack, drooling face.

"He was planning to work in a restaurant, Miles. Can you even fathom it? A corner deli. A deli! He is biologically impervious to high-caliber bullets. To chemical fire. To nerve poison. To a direct, localized nuclear strike. And he was perfectly content to spend the rest of his natural life making fucking ham sandwiches. Can you believe it? All that unquantifiable power, entirely wasted on mundane mediocrity."

Micheal let go of Rick’s hair. The invincible hero’s head fell heavily back onto the table with a loud bang.

"I simply could not allow that sheer inefficiency to persist," Micheal stated clinically. "For the objective good of the world, he needed to be a hero. But since his own psychological profile lacked the necessary drive, I supplied the drive for him. I made him one."

"Jesus fuck," I breathed, staring at the unassuming man in the gray suit, finding entirely new depths of disgust I’d never dreamed possible. "You’re a monster."

"You say that," Micheal replied calmly, "knowing the statistical reality of how many times they have personally saved this world? The exact number of times their physical presence in a disaster zone has saved countless civilian lives?

"Fiji would have been completely wiped off the map if not for Mister Invincible. The Klaxxon Invasion would have successfully sterilized Metro City without Cloudfire’s deliberations. The Blight Bringer would have permanently irradiated the entire eastern seaboard if not for Extraordinary.

He’s a tad more tricky as he’s not being mind controlled but see him now," he pointed at the roof. "He could move the earth and survive a solarflay but he prefers getting drunk in space."

"None of those existential threats would have been neutralized if Richard had been allowed to stay in that deli, making sandwiches for irate, fat Midwestern tourists.

"Or if the billionaire used his resources on a stupid idiotic cave that’s logically impossible.

"Power inherently comes with mathematical responsibility. A responsibility to optimize its use. I am simply ensuring that the assets are deployed for the ultimate good of the world."