Chapter 203 Finn.

Chapter 203: 203 Finn.

Extraordinary.

The apex predator of the hero community. The man who could bench-press tectonic plates and outrace military jets. He stood slowly, his hair tilting in the wind, his posture radiating absolute, terrifying authority.

He didn’t speak. He simply turned his head, taking in the scene.

To anyone who didn’t know about the Override Array, the narrative here was damningly obvious.

The precinct was destroyed. The greatest heroes on the planet were scattered, broken, and unconscious.

A high-ranking official was dead. And standing in the center of the massacre was the Iron Polaris, holding an unconscious girl while his icy lieutenant stood by.

Extraordinary’s gaze locked onto the headless body of Micheal Carter. Then, his eyes slowly drifted up and locked onto me.

His jaw tightened into a block of granite. The air around his face began to visibly warp and shimmer as the temperature spiked. Deep inside his irises, two pinpricks of heat ignited, glowing.

He was charging his heat vision. And he wasn’t planning to arrest me. He was planning to execute me.

"Sir," Glacia said. Her voice didn’t waver.

She stepped directly in front of me, placing herself between my body and Extraordinary.

She raised both her hands, summoning a dense, thick wall of glacial ice, preparing to take the hit.

"We stand together."

I looked at the ice manipulator’s back. I looked down at the unconscious telepath in my arms.

They were going to die for me. Extraordinary’s heat vision would vaporize Glacia’s ice, melt through her flesh, and incinerate us all in a fraction of a second.

I couldn’t fight him. I didn’t have the strength, the metal, or the energy left to even scratch a hero of his caliber.

But I could make sure they lived.

"No, we don’t," I said.

I focused every last ounce of magnetic resonance I had left in my exhausted body. I didn’t target the environment.

I targeted the metal clasps on Glacia’s corset, the zippers on her boots, and the surgical steel piercings in Psyren’s ears (and others).

With a brutal, violent shove of magnetic repulsion, I launched both of them away from me.

Glacia let out a cry of shock as the invisible force ripped her off her feet, throwing her and the unconscious Psyren fifty yards backward, safely out of the blast radius and behind the thick cover of an overturned SWAT van.

I was completely alone in the center of the plaza.

I turned back to face Extraordinary. I widened my stance, ignored the burning agony in my chest, and raised my bruised fists. I didn’t have any metal left to manipulate.

I didn’t have a plan. But if I was going to die tonight, I was going to die on my feet, going out with a bang like a proper villain.

The glowing fire in Extraordinary’s eyes reached a blinding peak. He leaned forward, the heat radiating off his face.

The earth violently shook a second time.

A massive, eight-foot-tall figure dropped out of the sky, landing directly in the space between me and Extraordinary.

He hit the pavement with the heavy, ringing thud of solid muscle and divine armor.

He wore his billowing robes and linen that never seemed to drag. Khonsu stood tall, crossing his massive arms and staring directly back at the apex hero.

A split second later, a glowing, geometric platform of hard-light materialized in the air beside him.

Mystic stepped off the construct, her boots touching down lightly on the rubble. She looked exhausted and confused but her eyes were sharp and focused.

"Stand down, Extraordinary," Khonsu commanded.

He used his booming, divine resonance voice. The sound echoed across the ruined plaza, carrying the heavy weight of a deity’s authority.

Extraordinary paused, the heat in his eyes dimming just a fraction, though his posture remained coiled and ready to strike.

"Khonsu," Extraordinary said, his voice a low, dangerous rumble. "Move aside. This villain just slaughtered the Bureau."

"This villain," Khonsu replied, his divine voice suddenly dropping away into the lazy, casual drawl of Finn, "just did our job for us, man. You need to chill out and look at the bigger picture."

Extraordinary frowned, clearly thrown by the sudden shift in tone. "What are you talking about? Carter is dead."

"Carter was a traitor," Mystic said, stepping forward so she was next to the Egyptian avatar.

She pointed a finger at the crushed, metallic remains of the underground lab. "He built a telepathic amplifier down there. An Override Array. He was actively mind-controlling Mister Invincible, Cloudfire, and the rest of the roster... including me."

Extraordinary’s eyes darted to the unconscious form of Mister Invincible, then to the ruined bunker, and finally back to Mystic.

"Mind control? For how long?" he repeated, the heat in his eyes fading entirely.

"I honestly can’t remember. Total neural domination," Mystic confirmed. "He orchestrated the fight at the mall today to capture Polaris’s telepath, Psyren.

"He wanted to plug her into the machine and use her to forcibly enslave every independent hero in the city to create a monopoly. He used the Brain Trust to do it, and then he killed them to cover his tracks."

Khonsu gestured lazily over his shoulder at me. "Polaris here just came to get his associates back. He took down the group without dealing any lethal damage, and then he stopped the guy holding the strings.

It was messy, yeah, but it was self-defense, even the satellite. If he hadn’t shown up, you’d probably be wearing a mental collar by tomorrow morning."

Extraordinary stood in silence. The tension in the air was so thick you could have cut it with a knife.

He looked at the headless corpse of the bureaucrat, assessing the layout of the battlefield, the non-lethal containment methods used on his colleagues.

Slowly, the hero uncurled his fists.

He let out a long, heavy breath, the aggressive posture bleeding out of his shoulders.

"Is this true?" Extraordinary asked, looking directly at me.

I lowered my fists, my arms trembling with exhaustion.

"You can check the hard drives in that bunker if they survived the lift," I rasped, wiping soot from my mouth. "Or you can wait for Invincible to wake up and ask him how his head feels. But yeah. It’s true."

Extraordinary closed his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose as the reality of the situation set in. The Bureau had been compromised from the very top. The entire infrastructure of the hero community had nearly been hijacked.

"This is... a disaster," Extraordinary muttered. "The public fallout. The investigations. The power vacuum."

"Yeah, well, it’s a disaster you guys get to clean up," I said, turning away from him.

I limped across the courtyard, every step sending a fresh wave of agony through my ribs.

I reached the overturned SWAT van where Glacia was already kneeling beside Psyren. The ice manipulator looked up at me, her eyes wide with relief.

"Sir," she breathed.

"Come on," I said, gently pulling Psyren back into my arms. "Let’s get her home."

I looked back over my shoulder. Extraordinary was already moving toward Mister Invincible, checking his vitals.

Khonsu gave me a slow, respectful nod.

I nodded back. Good old Finn. I knew he’d come through when it counted.

"We won, sir," Glacia whispered again as she fell into step beside me, the freezing mist swirling around our ankles as we walked away from the ruined precinct.

"Yeah," I said, looking down at Psyren’s sleeping face as the distant wail of emergency sirens finally reached the edge of the plaza. "We won."