Chapter 210 Frostbite.

Chapter 210: 210 Frostbite.

"Glacia!" I gasped, gesturing back toward the wrought-iron gates. "What the hell is going on out there?"

"Isn’t it marvelous, sir?" she asked. Her icy blue eyes were shining, her chest puffed up with unmistakable pride—which was honestly pretty distracting in that skintight white bodysuit of hers.

Still, not even Glacia’s curves could sidetrack me from the absolute circus unfolding thirty feet away.

"Marvelous?" I repeated, staring at her. "What is? Did the state asylum organize a field trip to my front lawn?"

Glacia let out a soft, aristocratic laugh. "Of course not, sir. Those are hopeful recruits."

"Recruits? Recruits for what?"

"Why, for your evil syndicate, sir," Glacia said brightly.

I gaped at her. "They... what?"

"They are perhaps a bit overzealous in their presentation," Glacia admitted, giving a polite nod toward the mob currently pressing their faces against the perimeter fence. "But once word spread of how you single-handedly dismantled the BSA, a horde of aspiring villains migrated up the mountain to pledge their service. They are all eager to bow to your dark vision and enact whatever nefarious campaigns you see fit."

I slapped both hands over my face and dragged them down my cheeks.

Oh, my God.

Lacey had warned me, and it was already happening. It all made a horrible, terrible kind of sense. Fuuuuuuck. I knew taking down the Bureau was going to bite me in the ass eventually; I just hadn’t expected it to happen before I even finished digesting my lunch.

I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised. Breaking into the villain business was brutal.

Most solo amateurs either got thrown into a federal holding cell on day one or got their ribs caved in by an overeager streeter looking for clout.

And breaking into the corporate-sponsored, villain-for-hire circuit was like trying to get drafted into the pros without a college career—no reputable hero agency was willing to trust a choreographed fight to an untested rookie.

That said, taking one look at the lunatics outside my gate, I had serious doubts any of them were looking to sign NDAs and throw fixed fights for insurance payouts.

Odds were, most of these freaks thought I was gearing up to conquer the Eastern Seaboard and grind the government beneath my iron heel, hoping I’d toss them a few flyover states as a signing bonus.

And unfortunately, villains like that tended to take rejection very poorly.

When it came to the underworld, you generally dealt with two sharp extremes.

On one end, you had the unhinged mad scientists; on the other, you had the superpowered thugs whose life ambitions boiled down to getting rich quick and kicking puppies.

There was almost no middle ground—less of a bell curve and more of a barbell. And ’brilliant’ didn’t necessarily translate to common sense.

Plenty of evil geniuses could fold the fabric of spacetime inside a toaster, yet couldn’t be trusted with anything sharper than a plastic spoon in polite company.

Both camps operated on the exact same primitive philosophy: might makes right, and they were the mighty.

If I walked over to that gate and explained that Polaris’s Proxies was actually in the lucrative business of losing on camera, they’d riot. I’d only just finished cleaning up the mess from the last megalomaniac who tried to ruin my life.

I really didn’t need a battle royale breaking out on my driveway. You can only fertilize the flowerbeds with so many bodies before the county starts asking awkward questions.

What the hell was I supposed to do?

I let out a long groan. There was a very good reason I’d operated solo for most of my career, and this headache was right at the top of the list.

Still, there was no sense whining about it.

First things first, I needed to disperse this crowd before some trigger-happy idiot decided the best way to catch my eye was to start slaughtering the other applicants. With a group like this, it was only a matter of minutes.

"Alright," I said slowly, rubbing my temples. "Okay. Here’s how we’re going to play this. Glacia, grab a clipboard and take down everyone’s aliases and contact info. Tell them that I’ll... I’ll be holding formal auditions over the coming weeks, and we’ll reach out with scheduled time slots so they can demonstrate their capabilities."

Glacia’s brow furrowed slightly. "Individual auditions, sir? Would it not be far more efficient to simply instruct them to fight to the death on the road, and recruit whoever remains standing?"

Ah, right. I kept forgetting that Glacia had been raised by Captain Zero. That exact ’Hunger Games’ recruitment strategy was probably standard HR procedure in her childhood home.

"Normally, sure," I hedged smoothly. "But think about the logistics. Some of those people out there might have non-combat specialties. It would be a massive waste of talent if we told a world-class hacker to fistfight a guy who turns his knuckles into chainsaws."

Glacia’s eyes widened as the logic clicked into place. "Ah. Of course, sir! I understand completely. Forgive my shortsightedness." She placed a firm, slender hand on my shoulder, her expression instantly locking into pure, solemn dedication. "Do not worry, sir. As your second-in-command, I shall ensure your administrative directives are carried out to the letter."

"Uh, right. Great. Go get ’em."

She offered me one last radiant smile, spun on her heel, and marched purposefully toward the front gate, her white cape billowing behind her.

"Attention!" Glacia’s voice rang out, sharp and biting as an arctic gale. A wave of palpable frost rolled through the iron bars, snapping the chattering mob into immediate, shivering silence. "The Iron Polaris will be conducting formal evaluations over the coming weeks for those wishing to pledge themselves to his banner! You will form an orderly single-file line at once. I shall record your designations and contact frequencies to notify you of your appointed trial!"

"Hraaaa!"

A massive, eight-foot cross between a swamp alligator and a heavyweight pro-wrestler shoved his way to the front of the pack, jabbing a thick, claw-tipped finger through the iron bars at her.

"And just who the hell are you supposed to be, frostbite?!"