Chapter 149 Commodity.

Chapter 149: 149 Commodity.

"I see," was all she said.

She reached into the pristine pocket of her suit jacket, retrieved a small card, and slid it across the scarred wood of the table.

"Well, should you remember something, you can reach me here," Jane said smoothly. "Your country appreciates your assistance."

"Yeah, okay," I said, picking up the card. I turned it over in my hand. Matte black on both sides, featuring absolutely nothing but a phone number in stark white text. Probably a burner. No agency seal, no name.

And printed in Calibri, of all things. Jesus. Budget cuts were really hitting the black-ops divisions hard.

"I’ll keep it in mind," I said.

"That is all we ask," Jane replied, rising from the booth in one fluid, mechanical motion. She turned on her heel, her sharp shoes clicking across the floorboards. She opened the heavy bar door barely a crack, slipping out and vanishing into the night like a shadow.

I leaned back against the vinyl booth, exhaling a long, heavy breath. Yeesh. Déjà vu. I flipped the burner card between my fingers, reading the sterile number again and again.

Well. Looked like the feds were officially sniffing around my operation again.

I was really going to need that drink now.

And apparently, I needed a second one, because no sooner had I polished off the first bottle than a fresh, sweating one was suddenly deposited on the table in front of me. I looked at it in surprise, then glanced up to see McLaren towering over the booth.

"Oh. Thanks," I said.

"No problem," McLaren grunted. He leaned over the table, his gravelly voice dropping so it wouldn’t carry. "You alright?"

"Yeah," I said, grabbing the fresh bottle and pulling it close. "Just your usual spook stuff. Probably doing a routine threat assessment or trying to scare me straight."

"Hope it didn’t rattle you."

I waved him off dismissively. "It’d take more than a sharp suit and a bad font choice to get to me."

McLaren nodded, the leathery mass of scar tissue that was his face contorting into an approving grin before he turned and headed back to the bar.

He was a genuinely good guy, despite the fact that his resume technically included a mass of rats.

I didn’t blame him. And hell, he ran the best villain bar in the city, so all was forgiven.

Unfortunately, my peace was destined to be short-lived. I was about to have a second guest interrupt my drinking. I only realized it when a familiar, unkempt figure slouched out of the shadows and flopped heavily into the seat across from me.

Normally, I hated sharing my table with anyone, especially immediately after being interrogated by a federal agent. But I’d always make an exception for Steve.

Steve Smith, better known in the underworld as Multiplier.

He was arguably the best henchman in the business, even if he permanently looked like a hungover college student who had just rolled out of a dumpster.

Slouching, his clothes baggy and mismatched, his expression lazy, and his eyes perpetually half-lidded like he was on the verge of passing out.

The last time I’d seen him, I had technically left him (or rather, a half-dozen of his copies) locked in a cell at Supermax during Glacia’s re-debut.

I really should have checked in with Lacey to make sure she got him out through whatever corporate legal channels. Not that Steve usually held a grudge about that kind of thing.

He could just dispel the clones if they got stuck—but still, it was the principle of the thing.

For some unknown, deeply misplaced reason, Steve respected the hell out of me, no matter how much I tried to keep our relationship strictly transactional.

But tonight, something was off. Steve usually carried himself like a wet sack of laundry, but right now, there was a rigid tension coiled tight in his shoulders.

Instead of lolling back in the vinyl seat, Steve leaned aggressively forward, folding his arms on the table. He pulled his ratty baseball cap down low over his mismatched eyes.

"Eyyyy, Miles," Steve muttered.

"Steve," I said, giving him a measured nod. "What’s going on?"

Steve took off his hat, violently running his fingers through his mussed hair before blowing out a heavy breath. His head swiveled, his eyes darting around the bar to ensure nobody was listening before he leaned in even closer. "Glad I caught you, man. I was on the verge of calling you up. Arranging a sit-down. But I’m glad I don’t gotta do the whole formal thing. Needed to talk to you. Talk to you bad."

I pulled my bottle closer and took a slow pull of it, barely even tasting the hops. So much for a relaxing night out. "Yeah?" I asked. "What about?"

"You know I got my hands in a lot of pies, man? A lot of hands in a lot of pies."

I nodded. I knew. Steve didn’t just farm his duplicates out to me. He rented himself out to dozens of jobs, crews, and industries across the coast. Fucked if I knew half of what his clones were up to on any given Tuesday, but it kept his bank account full. "Yeah," I said. "And?"

"Well," Steve said, his voice dropping to a harsh whisper. "I got a couple of ’me’s’ planted around in certain places. Guys are always looking for reliable muscle, you get me? So, I get one of me hired into most of the big players’ groups. The small-timers, too. Anywhere that looks lively."

"Must pay well," I noted.

"Money ain’t the point, man. Not at all. It’s about the information. You gotta get it right from the source, see?" Steve said, tapping a finger aggressively against his temple.

"You’re acting as an information broker now?"

He shook his head rapidly. "Nah, man. Nah. Nothing like that. Ain’t in the business of selling secrets. I only go in for one specific kind of information. And that’s anything to do with my sister."

"Come again?" I asked, narrowing my eyes.

Steve leaned in so close I could smell the stale beer and cheap cologne radiating off his jacket. But I ignored it as his tone shifted, growing low, fierce, and deadly serious. "My sister. Psyren’s a good girl, man."

Well, considering she actively enjoyed scrambling people’s synapses and starting riots, that was a highly debatable point. But I wasn’t about to argue parenting with her older brother.

"Right," I said smoothly.

"But she’s powerful, ya know?" Steve continued, his jaw tightening. "Real powerful. And that kinda power, man? People’d love to get their hands on it. And on her."

Steve didn’t need to explain that to me. Anyone who’d spent more than a week in the superhuman community knew exactly how dangerous—and how ruthlessly exploited—psychics could be.

Whether it was extracting corporate secrets from governments, brainwashing captured heroes, or just serving as a glorified walking lie-detector, mental powers were the ultimate commodity.

Which was usually a spectacularly raw deal for the psychics themselves, seeing as their personal opinions on the matter rarely factored into their employment contracts.

Once a mad scientist got their hooks into a telepath, they rarely ever let them go.

A fate, evidently, that Steve had been systematically working to ensure his sister never suffered.

I leaned back slowly, a wave of profound understanding washing over me as I realized the sheer, staggering lengths Steve was willing to go to to protect her.

"You’ve been infiltrating villain organizations," I said, keeping my voice dead level. "You’ve been seeding your clones into their henchmen pools just to keep tabs on them, in case any of them ever plotted to make a move on Psyren."

"She’s my little sister, man," Steve said with a rough, helpless shrug. "What else is a big bro supposed to do?"

God damn.

I already respected Steve as a professional, but we were suddenly reaching entirely new heights with that tidbit of information.

The lazy, perpetually hungover slacker was secretly running a one-man, city-wide intelligence agency strictly to keep his sister safe.

But my quiet admiration could wait. If Steve was this worked up, his spy network had just tripped an alarm.

"What do you have?" I asked.