Chapter 123 Pay.

Chapter 123: 123 Pay.

"Do what you can!" I shouted.

Psyren scowled, then looked at the horde of toad-like monsters all over the lawn, who were still staring at her in rapt adoration.

"Attack!" Psyren shouted, her voice ringing in the air, amplified by a heavy wave of psychic force.

As one, the throggs burst into motion, turning on their former master in a vicious, wart-covered mob.

Delirium howled as their razor-sharp teeth bit into his flesh, but he simply tore them off in bloody chunks as he continued to grow.

His flesh was remolding and swirling together almost like a thick, bubbling liquid. He was forming jagged bone-horns, massive claws, and extra limbs with every passing moment.

"Rhea! What the fuck is happening?" I demanded as I sent a return-to-sender barrage of his own depleted uranium bullets at him. They sank into his expanding mass without any noticeable effect.

"He used the mutagen!" she gasped, her eyes wide with terror.

"Cliffnotes version!" I demanded.

"It’s a rapid regenerator serum! It was designed as an immortality drug, but we never got it right. It always caused horrible, unpredictable mutations. I left before we could fix the genetic decay. He’ll just keep regenerating and growing until the serum runs out of juice!"

"Well, how long will that take?"

"At this rate? A month!"

Well, shit. That wasn’t good at all.

But wait.

Wait...

I looked up toward the roof of the chalet. "What about the Octoporian? Can you use the main gun in that sphere to hit him hard enough to make it stop?"

"I um... maybe!" Rhea said, brightening for a fraction of a second before the panic returned. "The central sphere has a heavy plasma emitter, but it’ll need time to charge up. And the outer armor isn’t installed yet, Miles! The framework is completely exposed! One good hit from him and the whole machine will shatter into a million pieces!"

"Well, get inside and start charging it!" I yelled over the deafening roar of the mutating monster. "I’ll build it some armor and hold him off until you’re ready!"

Rhea’s expression firmed. She nodded tightly, then suddenly grabbed me by the sides of my helmet, pulled me down, and kissed me hard on the mouth through the open faceplate.

My mind went completely blank, absolute fireworks bursting behind my eyes. The sheer ferocity of her kiss genuinely shocked me.

I’d kissed Rhea many times before, but the desperate, fiery passion she was putting into it at that moment put all those other times to shame.

She pulled back, and I swore I could hear our lips pop apart from the force of the suction. "Don’t die," she gasped, her amber eyes wide.

"Uh... okay," my completely frazzled brain managed to respond.

Rhea let out a breathy, nervous giggle, then turned and raced back into the chalet, the heavy doors whirring shut behind her. I watched her go, actually swaying a little where I stood. Holy fuck. That was...

"Sir!"

Oh, right. The massive, regenerating kaiju forming on my front lawn.

I should probably do something about that.

I spun around just as Delirium howled, effortlessly throwing aside the last of the surviving throggs. Four massive arms tipped in scythe-like claws slammed into the earth as he reared up.

The fucker was already bigger than a goddamn toolshed and was showing absolutely no signs of slowing down.

"Glacia?" I barked. "Buy me some time. Psyren? Give him the mother of all fucking headaches."

"Yes, sir!" Glacia said, rising high into the air on a swirling vortex of freezing wind.

"Got an idea, boss?" Psyren called out over the chaos.

"Yeah. But I need time to put it together."

"You’ll get it," Psyren said with a wink, then turned her glowing pink eyes back to the monster that used to be Dr. Delirium.

I exhaled. I didn’t want to put the girls in direct danger, but I needed a couple of minutes to pull this off.

I pushed my focus entirely into my center, stretching out my arms.

I forced myself to block out the horrific howl from Delirium’s newly formed, triple-jawed mouth as Glacia sent a concentrated ray of absolute zero up his left arm.

Even as the monster turned to swat her out of the sky, he stumbled, his massive head thrashing as Psyren drove a telepathic spike of pure mental anguish directly into his mutating frontal cortex.

I paid them no attention. All my focus was here.

I stretched my magnetic field upward, connecting with the massive, unfinished Octoporian hovering over the ballroom roof.

Rhea had told me it was designed for me—a self-correcting magnetic guidance system optimized for my powers. I reached out and felt the machine’s matrix click into my mind.

She was right. The framework was totally bare. Delicate circuitry, exposed servos, and fragile sensory arrays were just hanging out in the open.

I couldn’t let Delirium touch it.

I widened my stance, my hands tightening into fists. All across the grounds, metal began to vibrate, humming in violent answer to my power. I pulled my arms up, and from everywhere, it came.

Smashed android components. Heavy titanium chunks of the ruined tilt-rotor aircraft. The thick metal security shutters, tearing completely free of the chalet’s windows and soaring into the sky.

I disassembled the remaining chrome warbots with a few sharp, magnetic twists, stripping their heavy armor plating and sending it flying up to the roof in a swirling metallic tornado.

I fed a massive burst of power to my boots, launching myself into the air and hovering right beneath the Octoporian’s central sphere.

Like a master blacksmith working at the speed of thought, I guided the scrap metal into place.

Heavy aircraft fuselage slammed into the Octoporian’s exposed core, bending and locking together to form a crude, jagged shell.

Warbot armor wrapped tightly around the eight massive mechanical tentacles, twisting into heavily articulated plating.

I slotted myself securely into a hollowed-out alcove of aircraft paneling right beneath the main sphere, acting as the physical conduit between the machine and the scrap armor I’d just bolted onto it.

I opened my eyes. Through the jagged gaps in my new junk-metal plating, I beheld the monster.

I slowly moved my arms, and above and around me, the Octoporian’s eight massive, newly-armored tentacles shifted in perfect synchronization.

My magnetic powers eased every motion, fusing my intent with Rhea’s engineering.

The metal groaned and shrieked—assembling an impromptu mech-suit out of scrap iron and a half-finished doomsday device was bound to be a little stiff.

I gritted my teeth at the mental strain I was currently giving myself. Wouldn’t take long before my brain gave out.

It had been a long, long time since I’d manipulated this much raw mass.

I hadn’t tried anything on this scale since I took that special deal to fight Colossus, and they’d wanted a giant robot for the finale. Given he could grow giant too and it was a wasted power set for a hero in a major city.

But given the sheer mental exhaustion, the difficulty of holding it all together, and the unavoidable property damage, I rarely ever did it. Nobody could afford my rates for this kind of heavy lifting.

But today? This was on the house. It was the perfect thing to make Delirium pay.