Chapter 213 Search.

Chapter 213: 213 Search.

"Behold!" she sang, hoisting a ruggedized tablet into the air like Moses coming down the mountain with a fresh set of commandments. "Fall to your knees in worship, filthy peasants! For you are in the presence of greatness. My greatness!"

"You finished the search engine?" I asked.

"As if there was ever any doubt," Rhea scoffed, brushing a grease-stained lock of hair behind her furry dog ear as she skipped down the length of the boardroom table.

She executed a dramatic spin in front of my throne and slapped the tablet down on the wood. "Feast your eyes on my newest, smartest, most ingenious creation yet. I call it... Rhea-Search!"

I stared at the tablet, then up at her beaming face. "...Rhea-Search?"

"Get it? Because it’s me, and it researches things!" she chirped, her tail wagging hard enough to thump against the mahogany. "It’s bleeding-edge AI technology, Miles. It can scrape the entire surface and dark web for anything you ask, filter out the garbage, and hand-deliver the exact dirt you need in seconds!"

Halfway through reaching for the device, I snatched my hand back.

"An AI?" I said, instantly wary. I didn’t have a personal vendetta against artificial intelligence, sure, but in our line of work, nine out of ten homemade AIs inevitably decided to launch the nukes and exterminate humanity by Tuesday.

And honestly, if your first impression of the human race came from scraping the internet, misanthropy was a pretty logical conclusion.

Rhea snorted, waving a dismissive hand. "Oh, please. Do you really think I’m enough of an amateur to code a program that jumps straight to ’kill all meatbags’?"

"Well..."

"I’m a way better coder than that," Rhea huffed, crossing her arms beneath her chest with a smug smirk. "I didn’t build it from scratch. I mapped my own neural pathways as the baseline personality, then turned it loose on the net. This baby is a learning machine."

"So... you made a digital clone of yourself?"

"As a foundation, yeah. And it wasn’t easy, I’ll tell you that much," she said, tapping a finger against her temple right below her twitching ear. "Can you imagine trying to cram all of this raw, unadulterated genius into silicon and code? Lesser scientists would’ve wept. Fortunately for you," she sniffed, pressing a hand dramatically to her crop top, "I’m amazing."

"And remarkably humble," I deadpanned.

"Damn straight! Plus, since it’s based on me, the code is hardwired to be completely obsessed with and loyal to you. Seriously, Miles, what could possibly go wrong?"

Oof. I really wished she hadn’t phrased it like that. Saying what could go wrong in a supervillain lair was right up there with calling a ship ’unsinkable’ or asking ’is this wire live?’

Still, it was the exact tool I’d asked for. And if the tablet ever did decide to go rogue and build itself a killer robot body, the upside of controlling magnetism was that mechanical uprisings were pretty much screwed—and bolted—the second they stepped into my zip code.

There were literal scrapyards full of murder-bots that had fucked around and found out.

"Alright, let’s see what it can do," I relented, propping the tablet up on its kickstand and hitting the power button. The unit chimed softly as the screen flickered to life. "Uh... how do I start?"

"Just talk to her," Rhea said.

I cleared my throat, feeling slightly ridiculous talking to an iPad on a metal throne. "Alright. Hey, Rhea-Search."

A pixelated smiley face popped onto the center of the display.

:)

I glanced up at Rhea.

"Voice synthesis is still compiling," she said with an airy wave. "Give her a few days and she’ll be chatting your ear off. The scraper is fully operational, though. Take her for a spin!"

"Oh! Oh, me first!" Psyren piped up, instantly dropping her phone into her lap and leaning over the armrest. "Pull up shirtless pics of the boss!"

"Wait, what? No—" I started.

Too late. The display flashed, instantly pulling up a high-resolution press photo of me in the middle of a wrecked downtown street with the entire front half of my chest plate ripped clean off.

I squinted at the screen, checking my fingers in the photo just to make sure the AI hadn’t hallucinated a fake image, but no, that was real. Right—the Beast of Bengal job.

Big guy, some kind of mutated tiger-man. He’d hired me to help debut his gritty reboot, got way too enthusiastic showing off his new claws for the cameras, and shredded my favorite suit.

I’d ended up beating the absolute brakes off him in an alley before finally taking my contractual dive.

"Oooooh, mama," Psyren purred, grinning ear to ear as she zoomed in on my abs. "Saving that to the cloud."

The screen flickered again.

;)

"Alright, point taken, it works," I said, reaching out to close the image window. "Solid work, Rhea. Really."

"Told you I’d deliver," Rhea gloated, puffing her chest out. "Have fun vetting the freak show, you two! If you need me, I’ll be downstairs elbow-deep in illegal hardware!"

With a two-finger salute, she spun on her heel and bounced out of the conference room, letting the heavy doors thud shut behind her.

I shook my head with a quiet chuckle. The girl was a walking OSHA violation, no question, but her results spoke for themselves.

Time enough for appreciating my staff later, though. Right now, I had a waiting room full of problems to sort through. I pulled Glacia’s neatly handwritten roster across the table and scanned the top line.

"Alright. Glacia?" I said, tapping my earpiece. "Send in contestant number one."

"Right away, sir."

I settled back against the iron frame of my chair, lacing my fingers together over my stomach. A moment later, the oak doors swung open, and the first applicant stomped inside.

He was a big bastard, I had to give him that. Built like a brick shithouse that had been dipped in highlighter-yellow paint.

He was wearing a heavy-duty chemical hazmat suit that looked like it had survived a head-on collision with a Mad Max prop truck.

Jagged scraps of rusted scrap metal were welded to his shoulders, a thick slab of lead with a hand-painted radiation trefoil hung from his neck like a bib, and his rubber gas mask had been aggressively modified with two curved lengths of white PVC pipe jutting from the snout like giant tusks.

He marched up to the foot of the table, heavy boots thudding against the floorboards, looking like a man who actively snacked on iron it between sets.

"Ah, welcome," I said, glancing down at Glacia’s notes. "Let’s see, you must be—"

"I AM THE URANIUM WALRUS!" the guy bellowed, the rubber flaps of his gas mask vibrating violently with the volume.

"Uh-huh," I said, rubbing my ear beneath my helmet. "Right. Well, Mr. Walrus, if you—"

"ONCE!" he roared straight over me, continuing with his monologue anyway.