Chapter 277 Treat.

Chapter 277: 277 Treat.

"Aha! Here. Right here," he said, proudly forking over a slightly bent business card. "Really, an absolute honor to meet you, sir. I’m such a massive fan of your work!"

"Oh. How... nice," I said. I took the card between two fingers, instantly running a localized magnetic sweep over the cardstock. No hidden circuitry, no micro-transmitters, no GPS trackers.

Just cheap, glossy paper. Printed on the front was a phone number and the name Tom Major, and underneath that: Black Star, Villain to the Stars.

It was definitely thematic, if not strictly accurate, but I had to give the guy some professional kudos for raw ambition.

"So you’re a freelancer?" I asked, sliding the card into the breast pocket of my suit.

"Sure am!" he said, puffing out his armored chest. "I’m just taking some preliminary knocks from Meteora right now. We have a bit of a localized nemesis thing going on.

"She’s been actively asking for me by name in the press! She’s a little on the low end of the hero registry, of course, but you take the gigs you can get when you’re starting out.

"I’m really hoping to draw the aggro of a solid A-lister soon. And if you ever need confirmation of my operational skills, I’m absolutely sure she’d be willing to provide a reference!"

"I’ll definitely keep that in mind," I said.

That polite non-committal answer absolutely made his day. He was practically vibrating inside his heavy space boots with sheer, unadulterated excitement.

"Wonderful! So incredibly glad to meet you. Really! Oh, but I’d better get back in there and finish leveling the block. Fantastic to meet you! Really great! Such an opportunity! We’ll do lunch or something. I mean, if you have time in your schedule! If not, well, we’ll talk. If you want. Uh, right. Okay. Bye!"

"See ya," I said.

The air suddenly darkened around Black Star, violently distorting as he generated a personalized, localized gravity well.

He rose effortlessly off the cracked pavement before shooting back down the street toward the smoking crater like a reverse meteor.

Watching him go, I shook my head in utter bewilderment. "What the hell was that all about?"

Psyren laughed—a bright, musical, slightly manic sound—and patted my chest. "What do you think, boss man? He was trying to network! He wants to work for you!"

"Me?" I asked, blinking.

"Sure!" she grinned wickedly, her pink eyes sparkling. "Who wouldn’t? You’re officially the hottest bad guy in Metropolis! The boards are still talking about you dropping the Five.

"What, did you honestly think the local talent would just stop trying to get hired after you held those initial auditions?"

"Huh," I muttered, watching the distant dust cloud where Black Star had resumed his fight. Psyren was absolutely right, much to my lingering surprise.

Speaking of the syndicate...

Ten minutes later, I was sliding into the plush, custom leather driver’s seat of the Cruiser.

I pulled away from the curb, letting the heavy, heavily filtered air conditioning wash over us.

Short of literally manufacturing the headlights out of baby seal eyes and forging the front grill to look like jagged shark teeth, you absolutely could not get a vehicle more perfectly tailored to ’classy evil’ than the Cruiser. It was a massive, armored, roaring beast of a machine.

And I put it to extremely good use.

I merged smoothly onto the freeway. The encrypted radio was actively broadcasting police chatter about Black Star’s ongoing brawl, confirming that Mission Street was completely locked down due to extreme gravitational anomalies.

It sounded like the kid actually had things well in hand. I lightly patted the breast pocket where I’d stashed his business card. Hmm. I might actually have to give Tom a call later.

He was deeply weird, but he seemed incredibly keen, and raw enthusiasm was a highly underrated trait in henchmen.

"Oh, I absolutely looooove these seats," Psyren moaned softly. she pushed her chest out, lazily arching her spine against the cool black leather of the passenger seat.

"That much, huh?" I asked, keeping my eyes on the highway.

"Sooo much! It just makes me want to get totally naked and feel the upholstery directly against my skin."

I let out a heavy sigh. "Psyren, you say that exact sentence about literally everywhere we go."

"Aw, come on, boss. What could possibly be better than being naked?" She giggled, reaching over the center console to playfully boop my nose. "I have absolutely no shame about my body. Especially when I’m alone with you."

"The local authorities might have a legal problem with it," I noted.

"Like who?"

Well, she kind of had me there. Psyren possessed a body that most people would happily kill for. And in her specific case, several people actively had.

But I knew the underlying psychology of our dynamic. The primary reason she clung to me so fiercely was simply because she couldn’t passively control my mind.

I wasn’t going to sit here and claim that was the foundation of a perfectly healthy relationship, but realistically, no A-class telepath was ever truly mentally well.

People who could literally and figuratively turn human brains into warm pudding with a passing thought were never going to be perfectly adjusted members of society.

Honestly, me keeping her happily occupied and out of public trouble was probably the greatest philanthropic service I could ever provide to humanity at large.

"We’ll be back at the chalet soon," I said, noticing we’d finally cleared the city limits. The dense, sprawling concrete jungle was rapidly giving way to lush, heavy pine forests as we cruised up the winding mountain highway.

"You mean the lair?"

"Yes. Right. The evil lair," I corrected smoothly. "Can you please just wait until we are parked inside a secure, private garage to strip naked?"

"Only if you promise to join me."

I rolled my eyes. "Really? Psyren, it’s two o’clock in the afternoon."

"Oh, I know, boss. And I feel just awful about it," she purred, tracing a finger lightly along the edge of my suit jacket. "But I genuinely can’t help how wildly randy I get whenever I’m around you. You’re just so buff, and strong, and sexy. It just gets my engine absolutely revving. Rrrrrrrr!"

I tried incredibly hard not to smile, but I couldn’t quite suppress a snort of laughter. Dammit, she knew exactly how to tickle my ego.

True, I was in great shape—I didn’t need molded rubber six-packs built into my armor to look intimidating—but she was definitely playing it up for effect.

But fuck it. If a man couldn’t sit back and enjoy the aggressive, theatrical flattery of his psychotic, pink-haired pixie girlfriend, was he even really a man?

And it really didn’t help my resolve when her manicured fingers slowly walked their way over the center console and began to firmly rub the inside of my thigh.

"C’mon, boss," Psyren cooed, her neon eyes glowing warmly in the shadowed cabin. "I was a very good girl during the meeting today. Don’t I get my treat?"