Chapter 316 Her.

Chapter 316: 316 Her.

Every villain in the industry absolutely dreaded Supermax.

As I parked the Crown in the sprawling visitor lot and stepped out onto the pavement, I took a long, hard look at the facility, feeling my stomach tie itself into a familiar, reflexive knot of dread.

The place was built like an unholy hybrid between a doomsday bunker and a medieval fortress. It was a monolithic, sprawling mass of grey, windowless cement that looked like a 1960s brutalist architect’s absolute wildest fantasy.

Designed from the ground up during the height of the Cold War specifically to house super-powered threats, the perimeter was entirely unforgiving.

First came the towering fences of electrified barbed wire, followed by a dry moat, then a sheer, smooth concrete wall.

Watchtowers pierced the sky at regular intervals, bristling with automated, high-caliber security turrets that absolutely would not hesitate to open fire on anything that didn’t broadcast the right clearance codes.

Fortunately, unlike the Bureau’s main headquarters, Supermax wasn’t tucked away in some nausea-inducing pocket dimension, so the morning drive out here had actually been fairly decent.

And for the tier of villains where concrete and automated turrets simply weren’t enough of a deterrent, the prison supplemented its defenses with heavily armed drone patrols, baseline human guards in mechanized riot gear, and even a handful of full-time, registered supers on the payroll.

Setting aside that rumored black-site prison they allegedly built on the dark side of the moon—which no government official would ever legally admit existed—Supermax was definitively the most secure holding facility on the planet. And for damn good reason.

Inside those grey walls sat some of the most insanely powerful, deeply psychotic capes ever taken alive.

If a rogue had a specific power set that let them punch through a regular state penitentiary like the walls were made of wet cardboard, or if the local asylum had simply run out of padded cells again, they got shipped straight to Supermax.

For a little while, anyway.

Because the dirty, open secret about maximum-security super prisons is that they only operated as a revolving door for a very specific, corporate reason.

And it honestly wasn’t because villains kept violently busting out on their own. Actual, unassisted breakouts happened significantly less often than the movies would have you believe.

No. The real reason the cells never stayed full was because the heroes actively bailed them out.

Well, the heroes’ brand managers and PR firms, anyway.

The simple market reality was that the viewing public absolutely loved seeing a popular hero fight a really good, established villain again and again.

A reliable, highly marketable nemesis was incredibly hard to come by in this business.

So, even though someone like Humongous the World Eater absolutely should never be let out to wander Fourth Avenue and mingle with polite society, hero managers would routinely step in.

They’d quietly hire the best corporate lawyers, accidentally "misplace" exceptional pieces of evidence, and occasionally instruct their A-list clients to execute an arrest with just enough procedural errors that the villain’s legal counsel could eventually wiggle them right back out of the penal system.

It was all meticulously orchestrated just so the hero could fight the bad guy again next fiscal quarter and secure another massive, multi-million-dollar brand deal.

And the administration at Supermax didn’t care. Why should they? Their sole municipal job was just to keep villains from violently breaking out through the ceiling.

If the state formally sent the paperwork to open the cell door, the warden didn’t give a single shit. It was just one less mouth to feed, house, and potentially get torched by during the inevitable summer cellblock riots.

So yeah, knowing exactly how the sausage was made didn’t make me look forward to this visit any more.

"You ready for this?" I asked Lilith, leaning against the hood of the Crown.

"I am super-duper ready, Milesyyyy!" Lilith cheered, practically bouncing on the toes of her heels. Her spade-tipped tail wagged in a frantic, happy blur behind her.

Well, she was certainly dressed for the part, even if her bubbly, hyperactive energy completely betrayed the aesthetic.

She was absolutely weaponizing the sexy-lawyer trope, wearing a high pencil skirt that showed off her long crimson legs and a tailored blouse that was cut fashionably low.

Her fitted blazer hugged her chest perfectly, and the entire ensemble was topped with a chic, wide-brimmed designer chapeau that had been meticulously tailored with two reinforced holes to accommodate her demonic horns.

Heavily tinted black sunglasses and a thick fur collar framing her face gave her the exact visual aura of an untouchable, high-powered executive—at least until she giggled.

She looked completely ravishing, of course. And hopefully, the visual contrast of a high-fashion succubus bouncing off the walls would be enough to throw the interrogators off their rhythm.

"Let’s go," I said, locking the car and starting toward the main pedestrian gate.

The automated sentry post outside the outer perimeter scanned our IDs and buzzed us into the sterile foyer.

I had intentionally left my heavy iron bracers and anklets locked in the trunk of the car before walking up, but the utter lack of metal on my skin left me feeling deeply, uncomfortably exposed.

After a highly invasive, thoroughly professional pat-down, we were finally handed a pair of visitor passes by a guard dressed in such heavy, bulky riot gear that he looked completely prepared to fight off a Tyranid invasion.

"Eww, it completely clashes with my outfit!" Lilith whined dramatically. She peered over the rim of her sunglasses with glowing golden eyes, holding the cheap plastic lanyard by the very tips of her manicured fingers.

"Just bear it for today," I muttered, slipping my own pass over my head.

"Ooooh, fine! But only because I’m being a super-professional lawyer today!" Lilith beamed, finally slipping it over her horns.

The armored guard wordlessly ushered us through a heavy, reinforced metal blast door that slammed completely shut behind us with a deafening, echoing bang.

We navigated through several more identical security checkpoints, heading deeper and deeper into the subterranean complex, until we finally found ourselves deposited in a sterile, brightly lit, white-tiled waiting room.

There was another security desk situated behind a thick wall of blast-proof glass, and sitting on a cheap plastic chair right in the middle of the room was Khonsu.

The moon avatar was in his full costume—though, to be fair, I couldn’t actually remember a time when he wasn’t. His expression was carefully, rigidly blank as the heavy doors hissed open and we stepped through.

"Miles," he said levelly, standing up.

"Finn," I replied, matching his completely neutral tone.

"Polaris," he corrected himself, stiffening slightly for some reason.

"Khonsu," I said, looking him dead in the eye and dropping the pleasantries. "What exactly happened in there?"

"She acted quite wisely," he admitted, crossing his arms. "The moment we brought your villainess into the facility and began the formal booking process, she completely locked down. She absolutely refused to say a single word without the direct presence of her retained legal counsel. Thus, we called you."

"Amazing," I remarked dryly. "You’d almost think she didn’t blindly trust the system."

"There’s really no need for that kind of attitude," Khonsu said with a heavy sigh. He dropped his arms, deflating a bit from his rigid, professional hero disguise. "I like this absolute mess no better than you do, man. But a licensed cape is dead on camera. I have a sworn job to do, and I have to do it without an ounce of favoritism. Justice must be seen to be done."

"Well, the actual justice isn’t going to be found sitting in this concrete box. Can you just show us in now?"

"Her legal counsel is the absolute only person who can be with her in the interrogation room during the official questioning," Khonsu stated, pointing a gloved finger at Lilith.

"And not me?" I asked, my eyes narrowing.

"I genuinely tried to get you clearance, but they said no."

I really didn’t like the heavy emphasis he put on the word ’they.’ Or the uncomfortable, apologetic grimace that immediately followed it.

"So I’m just supposed to sit on my hands out here?" I asked.

"You are permitted to briefly speak with her in private before the recording starts, but absolutely not during the questioning," Khonsu explained stiffly.

"And no one’s tried to illegally read her mind while she’s been sitting in holding?" I asked, keeping my voice carefully casual.

"Of course not," Khonsu replied instantly, sighing again as if the mere suggestion was exhausting.

I was almost mad that they hadn’t tried. If they had actually brought a licensed telepath in to do a deep scan, we probably could have thrown the entire murder case out instantly on a massive civil rights violation.

There had been a ridiculous amount of federal legal hoop-jumping when verified, high-level psychics first started making themselves known in the super community.

The historical odds were that telepaths had actually been around for centuries, but they were either tragically burned as witches, or the various governments of the world had just been quietly snapping them up for black-ops work.

But you simply couldn’t hide the physical presence of mind-readers forever.

When the 1970s rolled around and the FBI discovered that a bunch of high-profile, weirdo cults were actually being operated by literal, super-powered brainwashers, the legislation took a much sharper, panicked turn.

Especially when it was inevitably leaked to the press that a substantial handful of sitting politicians had been mentally tampered with over the years.

Let me tell you, absolutely nothing motivates a bloated legislative body faster than the terrifying realization that they might actually be voting for something without getting a lobbying check for it.

Because of that panic, there were currently a massive, draconian number of constitutional restrictions on exactly what federal agencies could and couldn’t do using psychics in a legal setting.

Of course, the system was regularly and covertly abused by the alphabet agencies. But since a SWAT team hadn’t immediately kicked down the front door of the chalet to find the real Glacia, the odds were incredibly high that they hadn’t actually tried to scan Chamelea yet.

And why would they bother? As far as the feds were concerned, they already had their prime suspect dead to rights on 4K video.

There was absolutely no bureaucratic need to dig any deeper and risk a mistrial. It seemed things weren’t quite as entirely terrible as I had feared.

"Well, look exactly who it is!"

Oh, no.

Feeling my stomach instantly drop straight through the linoleum floor, I turned very, very slowly to see exactly who had just confidently strolled through the triple-reinforced metal doors behind the security glass.

"Lockdown," I said, my voice entirely devoid of joy.

The legendary warden of Supermax smiled broadly. She crossed her massively powerful arms over her chest and looked happily down at me.

She was easily a good head taller than me, and everyone else currently standing in the room.

I just realised something. At six foot three I was the shortest person in this room. What the fuck?

Her body was powerfully, densely bulked with sheer muscle, but in a way that was undeniably, intimidatingly attractive.

Thick, heavy metal chains had been carefully wrapped around her massive biceps like industrial bracelets, and thick, reinforced armor plating was seamlessly integrated into her uniform, making her look exactly like a walking Abrams tank—thankfully sans the ridiculous comic-book boob window.

Not that she actually needed the metal plating. She was a renowned brute-class cape, pretty much entirely indestructible, as many an A-list villain had painfully learned while trying to stage a prison riot.

Her bright red hair was cut into a severe, practical short crop, her eyes were bright and entirely too eager, and her wide smile revealed a set of distinctly sharpened fangs.

"Miles! Please, there is absolutely no need to be so incredibly formal with me. Call me Jessica," she said affably, sauntering directly toward me with a sway in her hips that made the floorboards creak.

Khonsu and Lilith both slowly turned their heads, giving me utterly startled, deeply questioning looks.

"You actually know her?" the moon avatar asked, pointing a heavily judging finger directly at my chest.

"Yeah," I groaned, wanting nothing more than for the concrete floor to open up and swallow me whole.