Chapter 158 Simple.

Chapter 158: 158 Simple.

"What... what?" Doctor Green gasped.

"Forget allllll about me," Psyren said. "I know," she sighed, her voice dripping with mock sympathy. "I know it’s gonna be suuuuper hard. Just painfully difficult. I know you don’t want to. I know how obsessed with me you are. How beautiful I am. But I need you to do it."

"But... I... my..." Green choked out, his eyes wide as he stared into hers, the neon pink hearts thrumming vibrantly in Psyren’s pupils.

"Do it for me," Psyren crooned, gently stroking his mossy cheek as her glowing eyes bored into his, hammering down his mental defenses with every pulse of her power. "I know you love me. Obsess about me. Want me. Need me. But if you truly love me, you’ll let me go. So your goddess is ordering you. Commanding you. Give in. Give it up. Forget all about me. Everything. If anyone mentions me, you won’t think about it. If you see my name, you’ll pass it by. If you see my picture, you’ll draw a complete blank."

Green shuddered violently in the iron grip.

"And you’ll forget all about the Override Array," Psyren whispered.

"But... but my... my harvest..." Green gasped, his voice weakening.

Psyren giggled viciously. "Whoops! All gone. Forgotten. As soon as we leave, you’ll compost all your blueprints. Delete the files. You’ll never think of it again. You won’t even dream of it. You’ll think you spent the time you were developing it... hmmm... ah! You spent that time in Portland, planting a community garden for underprivileged hipsters."

"I... I did?" Green said, his eyes going painfully dim.

"Oh, yeah," Psyren said, her grin widening, her eyes pulsing with overwhelming power. "Would I lie to you?"

The sight was both incredibly disturbing and highly encouraging.

If Psyren ever did decide to go full rogue and strike out as a solo villain, the world would be in a very bad place. And there was certainly no shortage of syndicates who’d love to have her on their payroll.

Those recruitment offers she’d been getting were not going to stop anytime soon, that much I knew from experience.

Everyone in the industry wanted a heavy-hitting psychic on their side, and Psyren being who she was would absolutely not lack for simps.

Seriously, there was a reason most villainesses dressed in skintight leather, and it wasn’t just for aerodynamic mobility. Wear that stuff when out recruiting new henchmen, and you’d have to beat them off with a stick.

But while erasing his mind was the primary objective, there was something else we needed from him first.

"See if he knows anything about where The Mind is hiding," I said.

"Oooh, good call, boss. How about it, big boy?" Psyren said, again turning her compulsive gaze to the broken botanist. "What do you know about him?"

"The... the Master... Mind is..."

"Tell me," Psyren crooned, her eyes throbbing with absolute command. "Tell me everything."

"I... I don’t... kn-know..."

"Nothing, babe? Have you got nothing else for me? Your darling? Your obsession? Your gorgeous goddess of a psychic queen?"

"He... he moved the servers... cut... cut the hardlines... don’t know... anything moooore," Green moaned, a line of drool slipping from his lips.

Tsk. Well, it was enough for a start, at any rate. "Finish him up," I instructed her.

"You got it, boss," Psyren said with a sharp wink at me, then turned the full, crushing force of her powers back onto Green.

I leaned on the handle of my sledgehammer while Psyren did her work, which didn’t take long. She drilled into Green’s brain as thoroughly as a parasite, tearing up the roots of his memories and planting weeds in their place.

It was almost a shame not to make him suffer a bit more physically for putting a target on my crew. But I was trying to set an example of operational efficiency.

I shook the thought off as Psyren finally released Green’s head, letting it loll backward like his neck was made of rubber. His pupils were blown wide, still faintly throbbing with residual pink light.

"All done!" she chirped, wiping her hands on her pants with a look of extreme disgust. "Ugh! His brain was like sticking your hand into a wet compost heap. Gross!"

"Great job, Psyren," I said, eyeing Green’s completely vacant face. The guy looked like he’d been huffing his own experimental pollen. "Will he remember any of this?"

"Nah, bossman. Not a thing!" she said brightly. "He’ll be locked in a trance for hours. And by the time he wakes up, he’ll think it was all a really weird dream about heirloom tomatoes."

"What about the localized ice age in his atrium?" I asked, jerking a thumb toward the shattered doors behind us.

"You’d be amazed how well the human brain rationalizes things when it’s missing puzzle pieces," Psyren said dismissively.

She was right about that. With a wave of my hand, I released the magnetic lock on the giant iron fist. The rusted metal unspooled, and Doctor Green flopped unceremoniously into the dirt, giggling to himself with a horrific, dreamy grin on his face.

Yeesh.

"Let’s get out of here," I said.

"Of course, sir," Glacia said, stepping primly to my side.

"You got it, bossman!" Psyren giggled, suddenly appearing at my other side and pressing against my arm coyly.

I rolled my eyes under my helmet, but hey. If two gorgeous, highly lethal supervillainesses wanted to walk arm-in-arm with me out of an enemy stronghold, I wasn’t going to complain. Flanked by the two beauties, I made my way back through the ruined doors and into the main conservatory.

It was like walking into an arctic tundra, complete with copious amounts of jagged icicles hanging from the shattered glass roof.

Freezing air swirled through the humid jungle, thick layers of frost coating the hydroponic vats and curling up along the brick walls.

I could practically trace the exact course of Glacia’s battle in the great, jagged pillars of ice—especially since several of them contained Verdant Thralls.

The massive plant-monsters were frozen solid mid-stride, trapped like prehistoric beasts waiting for some idiot paleontologist to thaw them out. I passed a couple of them, eyeing their frozen, splintered maws through the warped ice.

"Good work," I told Glacia, genuinely meaning it.

"Thank you, sir," Glacia said, her chin lifting with aristocratic pride. "I did exactly as you demonstrated to me in training, and I am glad my efforts have borne fruit."

"I’ll say," I noted as we reached the front of the room. I magnetically ripped the heavy iron bay doors open the rest of the way, ducking under the frame and relaxing slightly once we were back outside.

I sighed, stretching my shoulders as the localized winter gave way to the warm afternoon sunlight.

I kept my eye out, but it looked like our little brawl in the greenhouse hadn’t drawn any municipal or gang attention. Which worked perfectly for me. In and out. Quick, violent, and quiet.

I just hoped dealing with The Mind was going to be that simple.