Chapter 311 Unkillable.

Chapter 311: 311 Unkillable.

"And if she did..."

Vanessa grimaced, her anger briefly giving way to stark understanding. "Yes," she said quietly. "The rest of The Order would come for her."

I nodded. Because that was, in fact, the entire point of The New Order. Just one seated member of the Council of Nine was bad enough to cause billions in property damage, but they weren’t stupid.

They knew that if the S-list heroes of the world ever decided to stop playing by the media rules and actually ganged up, individual villains wouldn’t stand a chance.

The corporate solution? The Order.

It was essentially the world’s most heavily armed, deeply psychotic labor union. They didn’t band together to cooperate on conquering the world or to share their schemes.

Oh, no. Members of The Order got along about as well as a sack of wet cats.

Every villain thought they were one solid mystic relic or tech patent away from grinding civilization under their boot, and they absolutely hated the idea of anyone else snatching that market share.

But the one thing they all unanimously agreed upon was a policy of mutually assured destruction.

If a villain went after a hero during a sanctioned gig, they were fair game for a good, standard thwarting.

But if outside parties interfered more than The Order liked, or a sanctioned hero crossed the line and actually killed a dues-paying member? The full, ungodly weight of the organization slammed down on them.

They wouldn’t just kill the hero. They’d kill their family, their pets, burn down their childhood home, salt the earth, resurrect the hero with dark magic, and kill them again just to make a point.

If Mystic tried to intervene in Jester’s business, The Order would declare open war.

But family? Family was a bureaucratic loophole.

I eyed Vanessa over the rim of my mug. I kind of hated myself for exploiting this, but she was my absolute best bet for heavy backup.

Villains understood the messy dynamics of family. Half the capes in this industry only put on a mask because they resented a popular sibling or had overachieving parents.

Envy is a fantastic motivator, and when you take a rebellious teenager and hand them the power to level a city block, career paths take an interesting turn.

Which was exactly why I’d hoped I could rope Vanessa into this mess.

And it looked like I’d been right.

"So I can count on you?" I asked.

"To ruin my father’s castle? To dismantle his rotting empire in an inferno of blood, fire, and wrath? To destroy everything he’s built right before his eyes and make him weep over the ashes?" Vanessa hissed. A terrifying, borderline lunatic grin spread across her face, her silver ankh earrings jingling as she leaned over the sticky table. "Oh, yes. You can completely count on me, Polaris. I’ll help. I’ll beat him to death with my own two hands!"

"Um, good. Sounds... great," I said, carefully setting my coffee down.

Well, she was definitely on board. That was a bonus. But I was seriously starting to wonder if she had gotten into the hero business out of a genuine, altruistic desire to save people, or if her entire career was just an elaborate, highly publicized way to royally piss off her dad.

Either way, her daddy issues were about to save my life.

"First things first," I said, pulling a paper napkin over and uncapping a pen. "I need every piece of information you have. Layout of the castle. Defenses. The hired muscle he keeps on the payroll. Security passcodes. Whatever you’ve got."

She nodded sharply, her eyes gleaming. "Of course. I have a number of blueprints and documents I’ve been compiling for years."

"You do?"

"Naturally," Vanessa said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. "It has always been my long-term intention to one day return to my father’s estate and violently purge the evil that he infests this world with."

"Wonderful. Then give me the details, please."

We spent over an hour mapping it all out, and while she was incredibly thorough, a heavy sense of foreboding settled in my gut.

I knew Jester’s defenses would be expensive. You didn’t get a seat on the Council of Nine if you were easy to assassinate.

But Jester was the oldest member on the board, and his security was a nightmare blend of high-end corporate tech and ancient blood magic.

It was deeply depressing hearing her rattle off the myriad ways Jester had set up to liquidate intruders. Pitfalls, bound demons, automated plasma turrets, hallway-spanning curses.

Not to mention, I had a sinking feeling that half of what she was giving me was already out of date. Jester loved rotating his security vendors.

But buried in the mess of death traps, there was one genuinely useful piece of intel.

"The main energy shield only comes down when my father explicitly wills it," Vanessa explained, tracing a circle on the napkin with a dark fingernail. "Otherwise, it’s constantly active and will instantly vaporize any physical matter that tries to cross the threshold.

"But it has a fatal flaw. It physically must be lowered whenever someone enters or exits the perimeter."

"Is that right?" I said, leaning in. Aha. Now we were talking. "Then, would it be possible for a small team to slip inside the perimeter during that window?"

She nodded. "Oh, yes. It’s happened before. Never for long, unfortunately. There are countless secondary systems in place, not to mention the actual guards and henchmen patrolling the grounds.

"But it is technically possible to breach the gate. Though, you’d also have to find a way to blind the external thermal and magical sensors."

"Could those be jammed?"

"Possibly," she admitted, looking skeptical. "But it would require severe, overwhelming environmental interference to blind both the tech and the wards simultaneously."

"Something like, say, a freak blizzard?" I suggested.

"It would have to be incredibly violent."

"Don’t worry about that," I said, a small smirk tugging at my mouth as I thought about how utterly furious Glacia had been this morning. "I have it on very good authority that the weather is going to be absolutely terrible that day."

She shrugged, leaning back against the vinyl booth. "If you say so." Her expression darkened again, and she frowned across the table at me. "But there is one other thing you need to know."

"Yes?"

Vanessa picked up a fresh napkin and started wringing it between her hands.

She bit her lower lip, stealing uncertain, almost nervous glances my way. Under the heavy eyeliner and the bat-clips, it was actually kind of cute.

"Look," she started, her voice dropping a fraction. "I think you’re a bastard."

"Ah, well—"

"A crooked corporate schemer and a coward."

"I—"

"A scum-sucking grifter who thrives on disorder. A man who rejoices in playing the villain, who LARPs cruelty for the cameras, and glorifies menace, destruction, and pain to impressionable fools who happily eat it up on pay-per-view."

"Okay, yeah," I interrupted, holding up a hand. "I think I get the general picture."

"But..." she said, squirming slightly in her seat, looking like the words physically tasted bad. "Well. You’re not the... absolute worst guy I’ve ever met. I will admit that much."

"Thanks," I said dryly. "Really. Put that on my gravestone."

"You know exactly what I mean," she snapped with an angry gesture. Her lips pinched in frustration, her bracelets jingling as she crossed her arms. "Look. I probably shouldn’t say anything.

"In fact, I should probably just let you walk in there, get yourself killed, and take one more villain off the board. And gods know I genuinely hope you do tremendous property damage on your way out. But you know you can’t win this, right?"

"I can’t?"

"No," she said, and there was a heavy, chilling finality in her voice. "You can’t. Believe me, Miles. I’ve spent years of my life researching ways to try and kill my father. I’ve spent countless sleepless nights poring over classified corporate files and arcane tomes, desperately searching for a way to melt him into nothing."

"Seems like a healthy hobby," I observed.

She nodded, completely immune to the sarcasm. "So when I tell you that you don’t stand a chance in hell of killing him, I mean it. There is no physical or magical way to do it. No one has ever succeeded in figuring out how.

"They’ve stabbed him through the heart. They’ve burned him to ash. They’ve dropped him into a live volcano. Strike teams have blasted him with ray weapons. Heroes have punched him with the force of a speeding train. And nothing."

She leaned across the table, her dark eyes locking onto mine.

"Nothing has stuck. Nothing has slowed him down. The Jester is completely, utterly unkillable."