Chapter 237 Cube.

Chapter 237: 237 Cube.

"Are you?" I asked, leaning back against the leather of my chair.

Psyren pursed her lips, puffing out her cheeks as she gave a careless shrug. "I mean, she’s telling the truth, sure. Her brain isn’t hiding any secret assassination plots right this second. But do you really think bringing a mimic into the house is a smart play? They literally make a living being two-faced."

I waved my hand over the desk. The jagged metal shards I had ripped out of the mahogany smoothly floated back down, slotting themselves seamlessly into the gouges they had left.

I ran a quick magnetic weld over the seams, smoothing the surface flat.

"Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. I’ll think about it before I make a call," I told her. "But let’s be honest with ourselves, Psyren. We run an evil organization. By definition, we are not exactly pulling from a talent pool of morally upstanding citizens. At best, we get the ones who made a few massive mistakes and need a second chance to earn a paycheck without looking over their shoulder. I know I needed one when I got out of prison."

"I guess," Psyren muttered, kicking her boots against the table leg. Then, a slow, highly dangerous smirk crept across her face. "But are you absolutely sure you don’t want me rummaging around inside her head? I can guarantee she’ll be completely loyal to you if I do. I’m getting really good at the deep-tissue rewiring."

"Tempting," I said dryly. "But still no."

Psyren sighed, flopping dramatically backward in her chair with a heavy pout. "You know? Sometimes, you can be a real stick in the mud, bossman."

"Guilty as charged," I said. "But look at it this way. If I do hire her, and she actually decides to stab me in the back later... then you have my full permission to fry her brain like a sunny-side-up egg."

Psyren instantly perked up, her eyes widening. "Really?"

"Absolutely," I promised.

Psyren squealed, launching herself out of her chair. She threw her arms around my neck, planting a loud, enthusiastic kiss right on the cheek of my helmet. "Aw, thanks, boss! You always know exactly what to say to a girl."

I chuckled, gently easing her off my armor and pointing her back to her seat. "Sure, sure. Keep it in your pants, killer. No promises on the hire yet anyway. Besides, we still have a whole waiting room of weirdos to get through today." I reached up and tapped the side of my helmet. "Glacia? Send in the next one."

Glacia acknowledged over the earpiece, and moments later, the heavy oak doors swung open.

The next hour was an absolute slog. It was the usual parade of delusional amateurs and washed-up brawlers who didn’t understand that villainy was a business, not a free pass to act like a lunatic.

I rejected a guy whose entire gimmick involved throwing weaponized boomerangs, and immediately bounced another applicant who claimed he could control dairy products. This was exactly why I hated the HR side of the job.

It wasn’t until about halfway through the afternoon that a particular candidate walked through the doors and made me sit up straight.

She strode into the conference room with a slow, intensely cocky swing of her hips.

Her outfit was bizarre—a loose, heavy black-and-white gown that vaguely reminded me of those historical pilgrim villages they forced elementary school kids to tour on field trips.

Over the dress, she wore a heavy hooded cloak that doubled as a cape, and emblazoned right across her chest was a massive, stylized red ’S’.

Adding to the incredibly strange aesthetic was a dark tattoo inked across the back of her left hand. It depicted a snake tightly coiled around a wooden staff.

Interesting. Not the usual spandex-and-pad-armor crowd.

"Take a seat," I said, gesturing to the chair.

"Sure," she replied. Her voice was raspy, carrying an odd, echoing resonance.

She took the seat, but she didn’t break eye contact. She gave me this heavy, unblinking glare, like she was actively trying to nail my shoulders to the back of my chair using only her pupils.

It was a remarkably weak intimidation tactic if that was what she was going for.

I’d taken death glares from some of the most ruthless mob bosses in the city, but I had to admit, she was definitely in the running for raw intensity.

Once she settled into the leather, I cleared my throat.

"So," I began, folding my hands neatly in front of me on the table. "Why do you think you’d be a solid fit for our organization? Do you have any noteworthy heroes who’ve thwarted you in the past? Maybe some elaborate, high-profile schemes we might have caught on the evening news?"

She didn’t answer the question. She slowly tilted her head, her gaze never wavering from my visor.

"Do you know who I am?"

"Uh..." I looked down, flipping through the stack of paperwork Glacia had provided. "The Scarlet Letter, right?"

"No. And yet, yes."

I scrutinized her closely. That was not an encouraging smile she was wearing right now.

It was the sort of jagged, unnatural smile you’d expect to find on something that lived deep in a cave where daylight never reached.

"Uh-huh," I muttered. I shifted uncomfortably in my seat. Was the air conditioning failing? It was suddenly getting incredibly warm in the room. "So..."

"You possess something I want."

"A job with a dental plan?"

"Not that," she snapped, her voice dropping an octave.

Down on the floorboards, Nibbles suddenly sat straight up. The mutant frog-shark let out a low, vibrating growl, the jagged fins along his back flaring defensively.

That was alarming in its own right. For a literal abomination against nature to get uneasy, something had to be seriously, fundamentally wrong in the room.

And it was definitely getting hot. The ambient temperature was skyrocketing.

I could see Scarlet’s face starting to flush an angry, unnatural pink. The skin around her lips was physically cracking, drying out like baked clay.

I cut a quick glance over to Psyren. The telepath wasn’t lounging anymore. She was gripping the armrests of her chair, looking at Scarlet with deep perplexity and rising alarm. The psychic couldn’t get a read.

Not a good sign.

"Then what do you want?" I asked, feeling a bead of sweat itch its way down the back of my neck.

Better safe than sorry. I didn’t make any sudden moves, but I let my powers bleed out and fill the room.

I locked onto every single iron nail in the floorboards, the steel hinges on the doors, and the heavy metal frame of the table between us.

I set them all humming with resonant, invisible tension, ready to turn the room into a blender at a moment’s notice.

"If it’s one of the girls working here—" I started.

"I care nothing for your mortal trollops," she hissed.

"Trollops!" Psyren gasped, drawing herself up with a highly offended huff.

"Wasn’t your entire namesake a book about adultery?" I pointed out to Scarlet, keeping my tone perfectly conversational.

"Do not play word games with me, human!" she roared.

She slammed both her hands down onto the mahogany. As she rose from her chair, her eyes flashed, the pupils narrowing into vertical, reptilian slits.

Her fingernails suddenly elongated, hardening into jagged, blackened claws that gouged deep, smoking trenches directly into the polished wood of the table.

"I am not some puny, insignificant mortal creature come to play your pathetic little game of heroes and foes!"

I frowned beneath my helmet. This sort of violent outburst was hardly unexpected during a villain interview, but every instinct in my gut told me this was drastically different from the usual omnicidal weirdos coming in to try and measure themselves against my reputation.

"Who are you, really?" I demanded, bracing my boots against the floor.

She smiled, and yep, those were definitely fangs.

The glamour completely dropped. Her skin turned a blistering, unnatural red. Deep fissures cracked open across her face and neck, revealing raw, molten magma burning just beneath the surface.

The snake-and-staff tattoo on the back of her hand began to glow like a freshly stoked branding iron. The heavy hood of her cloak was pushed back as thick, twisted ram horns erupted from her skull.

The stench of sulfur and burning wood instantly flooded the room.

Hoo boy. Looked like I was dealing with a literal demon.

Great. Fantastic. Lilith was going to be thrilled she missed this.

"I am Legion!" the demon hissed, her voice overlapping with a dozen different, echoing tones. "Master of true evil! Destroyer of ancient nations! Corrupter of the countless masses! I am all, and I am everything. And I will have the Horadrix Cube!"