Chapter 215 Arc.

Chapter 215: 215 Arc.

And the ones who weren’t violent psychopaths were just bitter assholes.

"Alright," I said, scanning the file of the girl sitting at the far end of the mahogany table. According to Glacia’s clipboard, she went by the alias Brutaliteen. "Walk me through it. Why do you want to get into supervillainy?"

"Because fuck heroes!" she barked, slapping both palms flat on the wood.

Off to a stellar start.

"Okay," I said, leaning back against my iron backrest. "Care to elaborate on that a little?"

Brutaliteen leaned over the table, glaring at me through a cheap domino mask as she jabbed an accusing finger into the wood. "Cape culture is nothing more than the armed enforcement wing of the ruling class! They’re hyper-capitalist attack dogs protecting corporate real estate and generational wealth!

"Have you ever stopped to ask yourself why half the roster flies around in multi-million-dollar power armor? A working-class citizen can’t afford military-grade titanium! It’s an institutionalized protection racket designed to crush revolutionaries and keep the marginalized under the boot!"

Ughhhh. I could practically feel my brain leaking out of my ears as she launched into what was clearly a rejected poli-sci thesis paper. I cut my eyes over to the tablet propped up beside my elbow. Rhea-Search had already pulled up a dozen local news stills showing her screaming into a megaphone at various downtown protests. Fantastic. A college activist with a cape.

"Uh-huh. Got it," I said, slicing straight through her third paragraph. "Well, I think we’ve heard plenty to make a decision. Appreciate you making the drive up the mountain. Don’t call us, we’ll call you."

Brutaliteen scoffed, yanking her thrift-store cape around her shoulders as she stood up. "Whatever! Sellout!" she spat, storming out the double doors.

"She seems fun at parties," Psyren remarked, not looking up from her nails.

"Delightful," I said dryly, crossing another name off the legal pad. And we were barely halfway down the page.

Worse than the political lecturers, though, were the aspiring backstabbers.

Putting together an outfit like mine took serious legwork. It took capital, logistics, and connections.

Sure, I’d basically been backed into a corner and forced to start this syndicate to stay alive, but I was still the guy doing the heavy lifting to keep the lights on.

Most low-level bad guys didn’t have the patience for that kind of grind. The second they got their hands on a superpower, they just wanted to rob a liquor store or settle a score with their ex-wife. Budgeting for an underground bunker, a payroll, and an orbital death ray? Forget it.

For guys like that, it was way easier to sign on with an established boss, wait until his back was turned, and pull a coup that would make Starscream proud.

Which, hey, was a classic trope for a reason. Every once in a blue moon, some ambitious lieutenant actually pulled it off through dumb luck or raw firepower. It never lasted, though. Ambition was a terrible substitute for management skills, and stolen syndicates almost always crashed and burned within a month—sometimes literally, if the headquarters happened to be a flying helicarrier.

My job today was making sure none of those opportunists made it past the lobby.

"Thanks for coming in. We’ll be in touch by the end of the week," I told our final applicant of the afternoon, a guy calling himself Flashman.

"I eagerly await your recognition of my supreme might!" he declared, puffing out his chest. His aerodynamic, sequined bodysuit caught the overhead lights like a disco ball as he strutted out of the boardroom.

The second the heavy latch clicked shut behind him, I let my head drop forward, banging my helmeted forehead against the table.

"God Almighty," I groaned into the mahogany. I rolled my head sideways to look at Psyren. "Give me the damage."

"Oh, hundred percent a snake," she said with a lazy smirk. "Spent the whole ten minutes fantasizing about shoving a knife through your ribs and taking your chair. Also spent a solid three minutes picturing me chained to his bedpost while he forced you to watch from the closet."

I grimaced, sitting back up and rubbing the back of my neck. "Charming. Sorry you had to wade through that sewage."

Psyren let out a bright giggle. "Oh, please, bossman. If I threw a fit every time some creep in spandex imagined tying me up, I’d never leave the house. Besides, only one guy on the planet has clearance for that," she purred, sliding her boot over to rub her calf against my shin. "And I’m already on his payroll."

I snorted, reaching over to give her shoulder a grateful squeeze. "Still, solid work today. Saved me a lot of future headaches."

"Anytime, boss," she cooed, leaning her weight against my arm like an affectionate cat. "So, what’s on the docket now?"

I glanced at the clock on the wall. "Well," I said, shoving my chair back and getting to my feet, "I’m starving, and we’re officially out of applicants for the day. How about we grab some lunch and—"

I froze mid-step.

What the hell was that?

I hadn’t even been actively scanning the perimeter, but my magnetic sense suddenly twanged so hard my teeth buzzed. It felt like someone had just plucked a high-tension cable inside my skull. Thousands of tons of refined metal had just entered my outer range, moving high and fast.

I whipped around, staring up through the ceiling plaster.

Something was coming. Something massive.

"Boss?" Psyren asked, her playful expression vanishing as she picked up on my tension.

"We’ve got company. The bad kind," I bit out.

I didn’t waste another second. I bolted out of the conference room and down the main hall. As I passed one of the tall gothic windows in the corridor, I cut a look outside.

The clear afternoon sky was vanishing. A wall of pitch-black storm clouds was rolling over the mountain ridge, spreading across the horizon like crude oil poured into a swimming pool.

Deep, bass-heavy thunder rattled the windowpanes, and jagged forks of unnatural, sickly venom-colored lightning tore through the gloom.

Yeah, that wasn’t the weather channel’s doing.

I jammed a finger against my earpiece. "Rhea!"

"Miles! Are you seeing the radar right now?!" she gasped over the line, her voice tight with panic. "Something just dropped out of the upper atmosphere! I don’t know how it cloaked itself past my sensors, but the mass readings are off the charts!"

"Spin up the primary death ray," I ordered, keeping my voice dead level. "Get the capacitors to full charge, but do not touch the trigger until I give you the word. Copy?"

"C-copy. On it!"

Her breathing steadied the second I gave her a concrete task. Good. Panic was contagious in a foxhole, if the boss sounded like he had a plan, the crew kept their heads on straight.

Even if my current plan began and ended with go outside and look up.

I hit the double doors of the foyer at a dead run, shoving them open and stepping out onto the front stone porch just as unnatural night swallowed the mountainside. Above the estate, the low-hanging clouds churned like boiling tar.

Then, the center of the vortex split wide open.

I wasn’t sure what I’d been bracing myself to see—a military dreadnought, maybe, or an alien mothership—but I definitely hadn’t put money on a medieval castle dropping out of the stratosphere.

And it wasn’t some crumbling historic ruin, either. The masonry was razor-sharp, a sprawling fortress of dark stone sitting atop a jagged mountain peak that had been ripped straight out of the crust of the earth.

Massive domes of riveted iron bulged from the raw rock like metal blisters, while towering stained-glass windows flared with eerie, radioactive light from within.

The storm clouds clung to its underside like a cushion, carrying the fortress forward.

As the shadow of the rock swallowed the chalet, the deafening, mournful chords of a giant pipe organ boomed across the valley.

I stood there on the steps, staring up at the flying citadel as it settled into a stationary hover directly over my yard.

And just like that, I got the distinct, sinking feeling that my week was about to turn into a whole fucking arc.