Chapter 110 Dead.

Chapter 110: 110 Dead.

"Beautiful," I said, descending silently past the disabled security grid and drifting toward the heavy blast door at the end of the tunnel.

A pair of snub-nosed autocannons tracked me for a fraction of a second before Rhea’s bypass loop fully kicked in, causing their targeting lasers to die out.

Rhea’s handiwork was flawless. The blast door itself, however, was stubbornly analog.

I reached out with my powers, feeling the heavy iron deadbolts buried deep within the reinforced frame. Easy enough. I gave it a sharp magnetic twist, and the heavy door groaned open, granting me access to the lower cavern.

I was in.

I found myself in what used to be the zoo’s subterranean Reptile House, though it had been grotesquely renovated.

Industrial lamps lined the stalactites along the ceiling, casting a sickly, fluorescent green glow over the entire facility.

Even through the filters, I could pick up the faint, rancid ghost of swamp water, and rotting meat.

Recalling the biological horrors Delirium had sicked on me aboard the Nights ship, I had a pretty good idea what these pens had been holding.

But there were dozens of them down here. More than I’d fought on the boat. So where were the monsters?

"What do you see, Miles?" Rhea’s voice crackled in my ear.

"Empty cages so far," I murmured, drifting inches above the floor. "Nothing moving. Hold on."

I swept the cavern with my powers. I wasn’t getting any heartbeats or moving metal, just the dull hum of machines.

I floated deeper into the facility, my senses dialed up to eleven.

I poked my head into a few of the side caverns. A much of labs with blood, guts and things I don’t know were everywhere, but still, no active personnel.

I couldn’t sense anywhere near the amount of cybernetics I’d seen on Delirium when he’d projected his hologram at the chalet, but I kept moving forward.

Finally, I reached the humming epicenter of the hideout. Another heavy door blocked the way. I felt it out with my powers—no booby traps—and slid the locks back, gliding inside.

I was in the heart of the laboratory. It reminded me a bit of Patty’s old setup under the paint factory, but infinitely more menacing. The green veins of light running through the black metal gave the whole place an alien atmosphere.

I moved slowly, tense, fully prepared to rip the iron out of the blood of anything that flinched. But I was getting nothing. Up ahead, a bank of monitors glowed.

I landed softly and walked up to the workstation. A simple chair in front of several old computer monitors, but the things in those monitors was concerning to say the least.

Every single monitor was keyed to various social media feeds, live streams, and paparazzi footage of the Superstars. Phoenix, Beeatrix, and Wraith were in a dozen photos and videos. Seems Delirium was a hardcore fanboy.

At least, I hoped that was all it was. The man himself, however, was nowhere to be found.

"Shit," I muttered.

"Anything, Miles?" Rhea asked.

"Delirium’s long gone," I said, doing a final visual sweep of the lab. "Looks like he cleared out a while ago."

"Any idea where?"

"None. But I don’t like this setup," I said. "I’m at his primary terminal, though. Want me to patch you in?"

"Hell yes. Plug me in. Let’s see what this creep left behind."

I pulled another hacking transmitter from my pockets and slammed it onto the control console. Cables shot out of the device, sinking into Delirium’s data ports with a shower of sparks.

Over the comms, I could hear the frantic, rapid-fire clacking of Rhea’s keyboard.

"Hmmm... ah, Delirium, you paranoid freak. Always using the same encryption architecture. Alright, I’m routing through his localized firewall and... aw, dammit."

"What?"

"He wiped the active drives, Miles. Looks like he packed up his primary research and moved to a different bolthole. The last outgoing transmission was logged a few days ago."

"Can you recover it?"

"I can pull the holo-log from the cache, but we’ll only get his end of the call. He always uses unidirectional holo-discs for his shady clients to prevent back-tracing. We can hear him, but not the person on the other end."

"Better than nothing," I said. "Bring it up."

"Compiling now... and... got it."

The circular projector in the center of the console hummed to life. A faint blue light flickered, coalescing into the holographic bust of Delirium.

Just seeing the guy’s smug, cybernetically enhanced face made me want to put a magnetic fist through the console.

"Well," Delirium’s hologram drawled, his voice echoing lazily in the empty cavern. "I am so glad you responded. Have you considered my offer further?"

There was a long pause as he listened to the phantom client on the other end.

"Naturally," Delirium said, spreading his hands in a placating gesture. "I’d never dream of forcing you to do anything. But the compensation is astronomical. Just a single life. Is that really such a massive ask? Don’t you deserve the security I’m offering after everything you’ve endured? It would make life so much easier for everyone involved."

He waited again, then chuckled, a dry, rasping sound. "Ah, yes. Not to worry. Thirty million will buy an incredible amount of silence, and absolute safety. I’ll even set you up with my off-grid contacts. I know specialists who can make someone vanish permanently... even from Firefly’s watchful eyes."

Firefly?

Now that was interesting. I leaned in closer, my eyes narrowing against the harsh glare of the monitors.

"Yes, it may seem quite generous of me, I agree," Delirium continued, practically oozing smug arrogance. "But I fear the man has become... something of a chronic thorn in my side. And it would be wonderfully beneficial to be rid of him before he disrupts my timeline further. Money is, of course, no object for my company. So really... who’d miss a mere punching bag of a freelance villain, hm?"

Well. There was absolutely no question who he was talking about now. But thirty mil? Jesus. I must have gotten significantly further under his skin than I realized.

"Excellent," Delirium said to the unseen traitor. He interlaced his fingers, leaning forward with a vicious, triumphant grin. "So glad we could reach an understanding. The funds will be transferred to an offshore account the absolute second his death is visually confirmed. Rest assured, my friend, you have made the right decision. Goodbye."

The hologram collapsed into a shower of static and faded out.

I leaned back, exhaling a heavy breath. "Damn," I muttered.

"Yeah. Heavy stuff. But it’s not a total loss, boss," Rhea’s voice chirped in my ear, sounding incredibly proud of herself.

"It’s not?"

"Nope! Looks like Delirium didn’t have time to scrub the deep archives. I just found a cache of encrypted files detailing his other regional safehouses. He’s bound to be hiding in one of them."

I couldn’t help but grin. "Rhea, you absolute genius. I could kiss you."

"I’m holding you to that, boss," she giggled, sounding more animated than she had all week. "But it’s gonna take some time. He buried these files under military-grade encryption. He was always super fucking paranoid. Did you know he actually installed automated turrets in the employee bathrooms back at his old lab?"

"Why? Was he afraid a hero would ambush him on the toilet?"

Rhea cackled. "Oh, you bet! And he was right to be paranoid. Everybody on the payroll actively plotted to murder him."

"Sounds completely justified to me," I noted. "Do you have the data packet downloaded?"

"Damn straight, Miles. Bring that transmitter back to the chalet, and I’ll crack the locations by morning."

"Love it," I said. I reached out, grabbed the transmitter, and yanked it off the console. The cables retracted with a sharp hiss.

I pocketed the device, turned around, and headed back toward the heavy blast doors.

Only to stop dead in my tracks.

Standing perfectly still in the center of the archway, blocking the only exit, was a towering silhouette.

It was the sentry I’d bypassed earlier.

Its sleek, synthetic chassis reflected the sickly green light of the laboratory, and its optics flared a sudden, piercing, hostile red as they locked directly onto me.

I reached out instinctively with my powers, trying to seize its internal gears, trying to crush its metallic skeleton.

Nothing. Not a single magnetic vibration. It was a complete dead zone.

The robot’s arm shifted, a heavy energy cannon sliding out of its forearm with a menacing mechanical whine.

Well, shit. So much for the stealth approach.