Chapter 87 Acquaintances.

Chapter 87: 87 Acquaintances.

The full moon hung over Metropolis as a thin layer of mist rolled in from the water, creeping between the warehouses and swallowing the edges of stacked shipping containers.

Eventually, I reached Pier Nine, pulled my Crown into a parking spot, and killed the engine. I had barely stepped out before the rear doors opened and Glacia and Psyren climbed out after me.

I turned toward them with a sigh, still not entirely convinced this had been a good idea. Taking them along hadn’t exactly been part of the original plan.

In fact, bringing two powerful women into a meeting with a man like Delirium sounded like the kind of decision that would eventually end with something exploding, but apparently I’d been outnumbered before I’d even left the house.

"Sir, you cannot seriously intend to meet this man by yourself," Glacia had insisted when she’d caught me preparing to leave. "You would be placing yourself at an unnecessary disadvantage."

"Yeah, and I could mess with his head," Psyren had added, squeezing herself in on my other side. "If I get a chance, I might be able to make this Delirium guy forget all about Rhea. Wouldn’t that be nice?"

It hadn’t exactly been my first thought, but she wasn’t wrong. If Psyren could get inside Delirium’s head and convince him to forget about us and Rhea entirely, that would save everyone a whole lot of trouble.

Even if she couldn’t make him completely let go, nudging him in the right direction might be enough to get Rhea out without things turning bloody.

Of course, there was always the other option.

If Delirium refused to cooperate, I’d kill him.

I reached back into the Crown and pulled out the sledgehammer I’d brought along, giving it a quick heft before using my magnetic powers to take most of the weight off it. The familiar pull of the weapon felt reassuring in my hand.

I wasn’t exactly fond of killing people. Unless they were vegan.

I’d left the mobstar life behind, after all. These days I was a villain for hire, and killing wasn’t part of the job unless circumstances got particularly ugly.

Unfortunately, I’d had enough experience with it to know that sometimes circumstances did exactly that.

Streeters had come after me before, both during jobs and outside of them, and there were only so many times you could try talking someone down before self-defense became the only option.

I’d tried giving people the benefit of the doubt, just like I’d done with Divina, but not everyone knew when to walk away. Sometimes things escalated too far, and when they did, I put the bastard responsible into the ground.

It wasn’t pleasant, but when the person coming after you could spit acid or crush a steel girder with their mind, morality became a lot easier to weigh when it was your own life sitting on the scale.

There was still one line I hadn’t crossed, though.

I’d never killed a hero I’d been hired to fight.

That rule existed for a reason. Killing a hero wasn’t just bad for business; it turned you from a professional villain into an actual fucking problem.

No corporation was going to keep hiring someone who might permanently remove the heroes they’d spent years building into brands.

There were contracts, sponsorships, marketing campaigns, merchandise, entire careers built around those people.

Killing one of them meant burning all of that investment to the ground.

It also meant every moderate hero who might otherwise have ignored you suddenly had a reason to come looking, followed by the police, government agencies, and anyone else who happened to have a personal grudge.

And if some of the undead decided to get involved, there was a very real possibility of someone literally picking a bone with me.

I didn’t need that kind of stress.

Which was how I’d somehow ended up here, standing on a dark dock at night and preparing to walk into what was essentially a deathmatch, accompanied by my two beautiful villainesses.

They’d both dressed for the occasion, although in completely different ways.

Glacia looked like she’d stepped out of some ridiculously expensive winter-themed gala, wearing an elegant white gown trimmed with fox fur around the collar and edges, with diamond earrings catching the moonlight whenever she moved.

Psyren had gone in the complete opposite direction. She wore a leather jacket decorated with skull-shaped epaulettes and enough random badges to make it look like she’d raided a punk store, leaving the zipper open over a tank top that exposed her slender stomach.

Me? I had on my usual suit. Mob Habits.

Nothing particularly fancy. Just appropriate enough for someone who was probably about to put a few people down tonight, whether I actually wanted to or not.

I’d rather avoid killing anyone, but if the choice came down to becoming Polaris again or ending up dead, I already knew which option I was picking.

With Glacia and Psyren on either side of me, though, I had to admit I felt a little like James Bond.

Well, not quite.

More like one of Batman’s villains without the terrible terrible backstories and all the mental illnesses.

Bad comparison.

"Alright," I said, slipping an arm through each of theirs. "Let’s get this over with."

The three of us headed down the dark alley together, and it didn’t take long before I spotted where we were supposed to be going.

A massive tanker sat at the far end of the pier, its boarding ramp lowered onto the dock.

It looked old, rusty, and completely unremarkable from the outside, but the moment I got close enough, the metal started singing to my powers.

I could feel the ship.

The sensation crawled across my skin as the magnetic fields within the enormous vessel resonated with me, a faint vibration running through my bones.

There was an absurd amount of iron and steel packed into the thing, enough that for a moment it felt like the ship itself was drowning out everything around us.

But there were other metals in there too.

Gold.

Platinum.

A few other valuable metals scattered somewhere around the middle of the ship.

Yeah. This was definitely the place.

The two men standing at the bottom of the ramp confirmed it.

They were clearly some of Arman’s people, and judging by the way they immediately looked toward Psyren and Glacia, they’d already been informed that I wouldn’t be arriving alone.

Psyren noticed them staring and immediately pressed herself against my side, fluttering her eyelashes at the two men.

"Miles," I said, gesturing at myself. "And... acquaintances."

"Oh, we’re much more than ’acquaintances’," Psyren purred, resting her head against my shoulder. "We’re his nasty girls."

Glacia nodded solemnly.

"We are exceptionally terrible," she added, her expression completely devoid of emotion. "Our morality is questionable under most circumstances."

The two guards exchanged a look that lasted just a little too long.

"Uh... right," one of them finally said, his face looking like someone had carved it out of a brick. He gestured toward the ramp. "This way."

He started up. Glacia leaned toward me as we followed.

"Did I perform adequately, sir?" she whispered.

"Oh, yeah," Psyren giggled from my other side. "You absolutely nailed it."

Glacia’s face lit up, and she practically preened at the compliment.

I just sighed.

Hoo boy. This was going to be a long fucking night.

We stepped onto the deck, and from the outside, the tanker looked exactly like the kind of ordinary freighter nobody would ever bother looking twice at.

But as we moved farther in, my powers started giving me a much clearer picture of what was beneath the surface.

I could feel the empty spaces inside the ship, the hollow sections that didn’t belong in a vessel like this.

The layout was wrong compared to what I’d expect from an ordinary freighter, with entire sections seemingly designed for something other than hauling cargo.

It didn’t take a genius to figure out what. This ship had hosted Night fights before.

But there it was. The bottom.

I wasn’t surprised. The ship itself was more or less a lobby, the real thing happened miles below the surface.

Arman could bury its ownership beneath layers of shell companies, false names, and dummy corporations, and for all I knew the official paperwork probably claimed the damn thing had been stolen.

It probably didn’t even stay in one place for very long.

Night fights weren’t exactly the sort of event you advertised on a billboard. You needed an invitation, a connection, and enough money to make sure nobody asked too many questions.

Under different circumstances, I might have felt privileged to be here.

Instead, I was already thinking about how soon I could take a shower.

The guard led us through a doorway and down into the ship, where the sounds of music and conversation gradually became louder.

By the time we reached the bottom, a smooth jazz melody was drifting through the corridors, mixed with the low murmur of dozens of voices.

Then we reached a massive metal door. Two more stone-skinned guards stood on either side of it, looking every bit as welcoming as the first pair.

One of them reached for the door.

As the heavy slab swung open, I caught the first glimpse of whatever waited beyond it.

Gee. I wonder what’s behind that?