Chapter 43 Sludge.

Chapter 43: 43 Sludge.

"Master..." William’s watery wheeze rattled through the glass. "The Master... is... Captain Zero..."

The temperature in the dusty workshop felt like it plummeted forty degrees in a single second.

A heavy, suffocating silence dropped over us.

Patty’s perpetual bounce vanished as she stiffened against the workbench.

Psyren’s playful, manic expression locked into something rigid, her luminous pink glare widening with genuine shock.

Even Steve seemed to lose his easygoing slouch, his thick fingers catching his glasses just as they began slipping down the bridge of his nose.

Captain Zero.

Jesus Christ.

In our line of work, there are garden-variety rogues, there are dangerous metahumans, and then there are walking extinction events.

Captain Zero wasn’t just a villain—he was a catastrophe with a pulse.

As one of the foundational pillars of the Council of Nine, he had survived decades in a cutthroat syndicate where the life expectancy was usually measured in months. You didn’t reach his age in the Order just by being ruthless; you did it by being an unstoppable force of nature.

This was the monster who had plunged Western Europe into a catastrophic artificial ice age, burying entire metropolitan grids under permafrost and racking up a body count in the millions.

He was the sole reason global superpowers treated the Arctic circle like an untouchable sovereign no-man’s-land, leaving his crystalline fortress completely unmolested because every battalion sent to breach it had ended up preserved as frozen statuary.

Nobody picked a fight with Captain Zero unless they had an entire international coalition of capes backing them up—and even then, half of them never came home.

And Glacia called him Dad.

"Hold up, my man," Steve mumbled, breaking the dead quiet with a raspy exhale. "Are you telling me you actually had zero clue about who her old man was?"

"None," I said flatly, the bitter truth tasting like copper on my tongue. "Not a damn clue."

Cryokinetics weren’t exactly a rarity in this city.

Between freak cryogenic lab mishaps, ancient winter curses, mutant biology, or any two-bit tech nerd who managed to cobble together a liquid-nitrogen cannon, the cold-theme market was practically oversaturated.

There was no obvious reason to connect a rookie villainess to the undisputed king of absolute zero.

Yet the moment the name left William’s mouth, every single bizarre detail about her fell into sharp, terrifying alignment.

The total absence of personal history. The sterile, vacant penthouse devoid of a single photograph or sentimental scrap of junk.

The complete void where her street smarts should have been. And, most tellingly, why Lacey had signed her so aggressively before immediately dumping her into the street.

I glared down at the swirl of dark, cereal-flecked slime coating the interior of the glass. "Why did the Captain drag her back? What was the play at the museum?"

"Had... had to be done," William slurred, his consciousness drifting on the edges of Psyren’s mental grip. "Polaris... refused the Order’s summons. Master couldn’t just... stroll into town... without starting a war. The museum hit was orchestrated... heroes hired to pin her down... so the Master could snatch her clean."

A cold pit opened in my gut.

The old man by the exhibits—the one with the frostbitten glare that had sent an instinctual alarm ringing through my skull. It had been him the whole time.

"And when she slipped the leash?" I demanded.

"Tell the nice man, sweetie," Psyren purred, her psychic resonance vibrating the glass until it hummed. "Give him every dirty detail."

William’s slack jaw melted further into the black muck, tiny pink hearts pulsing lazily inside his liquefied pupils. "Master went straight to Razer... made his position clear. If the agency backed her... if they stood in his way... he’d turn their entire corporate headquarters into a glacier."

Even across world the mob still wanted me. Who else could say that?

But I shook the thought off immediately. That explained Lacey’s sudden, sweaty panic. She was a corporate suit through and through.

She’d gladly market a legendary legacy villain for an easy profit margin, but the moment Captain Zero threatened to freeze her bottom line—and her actual flesh—she dropped Glacia like a live grenade.

"So," Patty said, her voice cutting through the hum of the factory as she leaned across the paint mixer. "What’s the move, Miles?"

I rubbed my temples, feeling the beginnings of an absolute sledgehammer of a headache pounding behind my eyes.

The sane move—the play that any self-respecting villain with a basic instinct for self-preservation would make—was to walk out those doors, toss William into a river, and vanish to a new zip code.

I operated in the realm of petty heists, magnetic trickery, and getting into telegraphed fistfights with local vigilantes.

I spent my weekends dodging stun-batons, not going toe-to-toe with living natural disasters whose names were carved onto mass graves.

Taking on Captain Zero was grade-A suicidal lunacy.

The fifth rule of villainy is simple: never panic, and never take a fight where the math doesn’t work. But another, unwritten rule sat heavy in the back of my throat.

Zero had already sent an assassin to my doorstep. If I packed my bags and ran, all I was doing was waiting around for him to dispatch a hitman who didn’t fit inside a cider jug.

Besides, she had looked me in the eye and asked for my help.

I took a slow, steadying breath and let my hands drop to my sides. "Where is he keeping her?"

Steve stared at me like I’d just announced I was going to juggle live landmines. "Bro. No way. Tell me you’re not actually thinking about raiding an Order stronghold. You’re completely unhinged, Miles!"

"Maybe," I muttered. "Or maybe I just hate looking over my shoulder every five minutes waiting for an ice lance through the spine."

"See? That’s what makes you adorable," Patty chirped, driving an elbow lightly into my ribs.

"Oh, totally," Psyren chimed in, a wicked, knowing smirk curling across her face. "It’s all cold tactical logic, boss. Definitely has nothing to do with that bruised hero complex whenever someone messes with your girl."

"Keep talking and you can walk home," I told her without looking over. "Just pry the location out of his liquefied skull."

"Whatever you say, big guy," Psyren giggled, leaning back in until her neon-pink bangs brushed the rim of the container.

Her pupils flared with blinding, hypnotic light as she locked eyes with the floating sludge. "Alright, puddle-boy. Let’s quit playing hard to get. Where is the Master hiding?"