Chapter 193 Community.

Chapter 193: 193 Community.

"So how you wanna play this," I said conversationally, my voice echoing slightly off the damp cement walls.

The shapeshifter watched me warily from where she hung.

I had magnetically fused a pair of heavy iron shackles to the ceiling, stringing her up by her wrists, mob-style.

Her toes barely brushed the grated drain in the center of the floor. Good. Let her sweat a bit.

We were alone in the depths of the chalet. I didn’t want the girls to see what I was going to do. Or worse, have Lilith enthusiastically try to join in with whatever spiked implements she carried in her designer purse.

I hadn’t done this kind of wet work in a long, long time. Back then, Casper typically handled the actual torture while I just stood in the background and made sure the blood didn’t splatter onto his tailored suits.

I paced around the cold, bare room thoughtfully. Who knew what Captain Zero had originally used this sub-basement for? I tried not to think about it too much. That lingering, chemical tang of industrial antiseptic always implied some very, very bad things.

Which made it quite fitting for tonight, I supposed.

"I’m not a bad man," I said again, stopping in front of a stainless steel medical tray I’d wheeled in. "Really, I’m not. I’d much prefer not to do this. However," I said, picking up a heavy, glass-and-steel syringe. "Somewhat ironically, when you kidnapped Psyren, you took away my primary non-invasive interrogator. I’d honestly just love to pluck the information right out of your brain with a telepath. But since I no longer have one on staff, we’re going to need to go with Plan B."

"What are you going to do?" she hissed. Despite her attempt to keep her scaly face locked in a sneer, I could hear the faint, high tremor in her voice.

"I’m not entirely sure," I said, turning back to her. "I suppose it really depends on how far you’re going to make me go. I don’t actually have a lot of personal experience with the whole ’torture’ thing. I’m a mercenary, not a psycho."

I stepped up to her, flicking the side of the glass syringe with my fingernail. Inside, a thick, heavy bead of liquid silver sloshed against the glass. A highly conductive, magnetized mercury alloy I usually used for repairing the micro-servos in my armor.

"Then again," I said softly, grabbing her scaly forearm to hold it steady. "I’ve rarely been fucked with to such a degree. So I think we’re both about to have a real learning experience, don’t you? Unless you’d like to get something off your chest right now? Like where the fuck Psyren is?"

"I talk, I die," she spat, baring jagged teeth.

"Wrong," I said smoothly, uncapping the needle. "You talk, and maybe I have enough time to take Micheal down, and you can walk out of here a free... whatever you want to be."

Before she could yank her arm away, I jammed the thick needle directly into the bulging blue vein in the crook of her elbow and depressed the plunger, emptying the heavy liquid metal into her bloodstream.

She gasped, her body going rigid against the chains as the cold, toxic sludge hit her system.

"But if you don’t talk," I added, taking a step back and slowly raising my armored hand.

I engaged my magnetic field, visualizing the exact density and shape of the mercury alloy now racing through her circulatory system. I caught hold of it with my powers, stopping it dead in its tracks just past her bicep.

The shapeshifter let out a strangled, panicked noise as her vein visibly bulged beneath her scaly skin, the heavy metal pooling unnaturally.

I slowly turned my wrist, guiding the concentrated ball of mercury upward.

She began to thrash wildly against the hanging chains, her yellow eyes bugging out in absolute terror as she felt the heavy, metallic mass forcefully dragging its way up through her shoulder, tearing at the delicate lining of her veins.

"I can push this right up into your cranium," I told her, my voice dropping to a dead, clinical monotone as I guided the mercury up into her neck. Her carotid artery pulsed violently, the skin stretching taut over the lump of liquid metal. "I can build the pressure inside your skull until it mirrors a massive, agonizing aneurysm in real-time. I can hold it there right on the edge of a stroke for hours. I can rupture every blood vessel in your brain one by one. I want to give you a chance. So talk!"

"I... I..." she gagged, her face flushing a deep, bruised purple as the magnetic pressure clamped down on her blood flow.

"And if you don’t, I’ll let it pop, heal you just enough to keep you breathing, and hand you over to Rhea. I’m sure she has some chemical burns she’d love to test on you. Or hell," I mused, pushing the mercury just a fraction of an inch higher. "Maybe I’ll have Lilith come down here. I’m sure a literal succubus from the seven rings knows all kinds of fun, eternity-lasting ways to squeeze the info out of you. And she really liked Psyren. So give it up, you bastard! Where is she?!"

"I-in the Bureau!" the shapeshifter shrieked, her voice cracking as tears of pure agony streamed down her scaly cheeks.

Dammit! I had a sinking feeling that was where he was hiding her.

"Where?" I growled. I stopped the upward progression of the metal, holding it suspended just beneath her jawline.

"U-underneath! There’s a... a black-site lab down there! It’s... it’s where Micheal stored the Override Array!"

"You mean he already has it set up?"

"Hrrrk!" she wheezed as she violently dry-heaved, the pressure in her neck suffocating her.

Oh, right. I lowered my hand a fraction, pulling the localized ball of mercury back down into her shoulder so she could actually breathe. The shapeshifter gasped hungrily, sucking in frantic, ragged breaths of the antiseptic air.

"Y-yes," she sobbed, hanging limply from the chains. "He had it... had it moved down there a week ago. Then he used his telekinesis to make the Brain Trust slaughter each other to hide the evidence of its construction."

"And they’re going to strap Psyren into that thing," I said, mostly to myself, the sheer, horrifying reality of it setting in.

Dammit! I should have guessed Micheal wouldn’t have spilled the beans about his grand master plan if he didn’t already have every single piece perfectly locked in place on the board. No wonder he let me walk out of the Bureau lobby with such little fuss. He already had his amplifier.

Don’t get me wrong, it was a flawless tactical plan. A real villainous masterstroke of a move, and I’d honestly be applauding his logistics if he’d grabbed literally any other telepath on the eastern seaboard. But that smug, gray-suited bastard chose the wrong woman to hook up to his fucking machine.

"And what exactly were you supposed to do?" I demanded, glaring up at her.

The shapeshifter’s skin flushed an even deeper shade of bruised purple, humiliation mixing with her lingering terror.

"I... I..."

"No, wait, let me guess," I interrupted smoothly. "You were supposed to seamlessly mimic her and accompany us to wherever it was we decided to run and hide. You’d play the traumatized victim, and all the while you’d be actively feeding Micheal our GPS coordinates and operational plans.

"Then, once he had the Array fully calibrated with the real Psyren, he’d send either a wet-work team or a squad of mind-wiped A-list heroes to kill us in our sleep. Wiping us out and clearing the very last witnesses to his little coup. Or, even better! You’d covertly assassinate me yourself and make it look like an accident. How am I doing so far?"

My prisoner looked away, refusing to meet my eyes.

"Um... pretty good," she admitted weakly.

I growled, violently rubbing the front of my visor with my free hand.

Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck! Just perfect. Just goddamn perfect! Well, my choices were rapidly narrowing from a handful of shitty options down to exactly one.

I had to assault the Bureau of Superpowered Affairs.

Great.

Just wonderful.

I didn’t like it. Like, at all. I’d never willingly fought federal heroes I wasn’t being explicitly paid by a corporate sponsor to fight. And not only because it was bad for my Q-rating. You assault a hero stronghold without it being a sanctioned PR stunt, and all of a sudden you’re completely fair game for every justice society, vigilante friend group, and league of costumed jackasses looking to score some easy clout.

I would have much rather just packed up the chalet, ran away, and started over in a new tax bracket somewhere in South America. Cowardly? Eh, maybe. But I wanted a peaceful, highly profitable life, not a daily game of cat-and-missile with the US military. I got enough grief from the local streeters; I didn’t need the S-class pros hunting me down for sport.

But Micheal had Psyren. And there was absolutely no way in hell I was letting him get away with it.

"Don’t go anywhere," I told the hanging shapeshifter dryly as I turned on my heel and left the room.

I stepped out into the hallway, sealing the heavy reinforced door shut behind me, completely ignoring the muffled sobbing from the other side.

Waiting out in the corridor were Rhea, Glacia, and Lilith. Glacia had been leaning aristocratically against the concrete wall, but she jolted to attention the moment the door clicked shut.

"Sir!" Glacia said, hurrying over, the air chilling around her in anticipation. "What did the creature—"

"Micheal has Psyren locked in a black-site sub-basement beneath the Bureau," I said flatly, not stopping as I marched past them toward the stairs. "And he is currently hooking her up to the Override Array in order to forcibly take telepathic control of Metro City’s entire hero population."

"Oh," Glacia said softly.

She blinked. Then her eyes widened in dawning, icy horror. "Ohhhhh."

And oh was fucking right. Metro City wasn’t just home to overpriced seafood, self-important media conglomerates, and abysmal local governance. It was the statistical hub of the nation, playing host to hundreds of registered heroes and villains.

And if Micheal managed to successfully boot up the Override Array, I’d soon have to fight through literally the entire city’s superhuman community just to get Psyren back.