Chapter 113 Contract.

Chapter 113: 113 Contract.

"Keep your comms open, Miles," Lacey called after me. "If I spot any on the feeds, I’ll let you know."

I paused with my hand on the heavy acoustic door, then pushed through without a word.

Would she? That was a highly debatable question. I sighed, running a hand through my hair as I descended the VIP stairwell.

Even though everything was going according to schedule right now I couldn’t shake off the dreadful feeling in my bones. Maybe all this assassination and mad scientist talks were finally getting to me.

I made it an intentional plan to stay away from the crazies of this world but they seemed to be drawn to me like a—oh I get it now—magnet.

Fucking hell, I hated Delirium. If I ever got my hands on that cyborg freak, I was going to make him regret every single ounce of stress he’d put me and my girls through.

I wasn’t typically a man who enjoyed drawing out the pain of his enemies.

And I’d had a lot of enemies over the years, villains with grudges,capes with grudges, Streeters with grudges, hell even civvies with grudges.

Something about me tossing his Corvette that wasn’t insured and dude literally tracked me down to get me to pay for damages. I didn’t of course, didn’t get the obsession with a car until I got the Crown.

Now she’s my baby, but that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t crush Delirium and his band of incest abominations.

I preferred to hit them with a sedan and call it a day. But for Delirium? I could make an exception, and I’d probably love every minute of it.

And it was only a matter of time now. Soon enough, Rhea was going to crack the encrypted coordinates we’d pulled from his abandoned zoo lab, and then the hunter would become the hunted.

Feeling marginally better at the thought of manually crushing Delirium’s mechanical windpipe, I slipped past the inner security checkpoints and entered the main auditorium of the Omnidome.

The space had been radically transformed. Gone were the standard bleachers and combat rings. In their place was a sprawling, ultra-exclusive movie premiere setup.

Rows of plush VIP seating filled the floor, sectioned off by velvet ropes and glowing floor-strips.

The crowd was a buzzing mix of high-society elites in tailored suits, influencers holding up their phones, and contest-winning superfans practically hyperventilating with excitement.

The main event was the cinematic debut of the Superstars’ new blockbuster, but this was Firefly Industries—they didn’t just press ’play’ on a projector.

They turned it into a spectacle of an grand spectacles.

Huge, IMAX-scale screens loomed all around the central stage, cycling flawlessly between live feeds of the crowd, cinematic trailers, and blatantly aggressive subliminal advertising.

Banners bearing the massive Firefly logo were draped between digital posters of A-list heroes hawking energy drinks, designer colognes, and luxury cars.

The corporate machinery was running at maximum efficiency.

Not surprising, Lacey pulled all the stop and that’s what kept her in the game, she knew exactly how to do her job with panache.

That—and the obvious was she looked and looked at me—was why I never really thought about working with anyone else.

I circled the back of the auditorium, walking along the darkened margins of the room, my eyes scanning the crowd and the exits.

I wasn’t going to leave anything to chance tonight. I’d learned my lesson the hard way during Glacia’s botched debut at the art gallery.

As I cruised through the shadows, I let my powers expand, stretching my magnetic field over the VIPs and the raving superfans near the front.

The ambient metal in the room resonated against my mind like the ping of a submarine’s sonar.

There was a massive amount of it, that was for damn sure.

Expensive watches, platinum jewelry, titanium piercings, thousands of smartphones, camera rigs, and designer belt buckles. But no concealed firearms or explosives that I could sense.

I noted the security presence was heavy. A few of the guards posted at the emergency exits were clearly Steves, but the bulk of them were elite Firefly contractors.

A few of the bigger guys in suits were likely loaded with low-level powers or cybernetic countermeasures just in case the crowd got a little too rowdy.

I didn’t necessarily trust Lacey as a person, but when it came to the bottom line, I knew she’d do whatever it took to protect Firefly’s investment.

Having a flagship movie premiere turn into a genuine bloodbath was very bad for stock prices. She needed a massive PR win tonight, which meant she wasn’t leaving any room for error.

And neither was I.

I leaned against the brass railing near the back as the live pre-show kicked off.

A hype-group called the Devil’s Details took the stage to warm up the crowd.

It wasn’t entirely my style—which is highly ironic, considering you’d think a guy named Polaris would be heavily into heavy metal. But honestly, if the music didn’t contain at least 14% actual zinc, I had no business with it.

Still, I could appreciate their stagecraft. They had that great spiked-leather, face-paint, and steroid-abusing aesthetic that the crowd absolutely loved to see get humiliated by pretty heroines.

Hell, with how this city worked, they might actually be literal demons on a work visa. I wondered if Edna sponsored them.

I shook my head as their set ended and they cleared out. Firefly roadies swarmed the stage, resetting the pyrotechnics, and the energy in the auditorium shifted. The anticipation spiked.

The lights dropped, and the Superstars finally made their entrance.

The crowd’s reaction was deafening. Even the jaded elites in the VIP section were on their feet cheering as Wraith, Beeatrix, and Phoenix rose from the floor on hydraulic lifts and launched into their opening musical number.

I had to admit, they were pretty damn good. Excellent choreography, perfect vocal synchronization, and their heavily branded, hyper-stylized costumes immediately signaled to the audience exactly who the protagonists of this narrative were.

In this industry, foreshadowing was everything. Having funky, multi-colored hair wasn’t enough to make you a main character anymore; your average barista had that.

To be a top-tier hero, you needed an undeniable, highly marketable presence.

I moved down to the ground floor, leaning against the cold concrete wall right by the primary VIP exit. It gave me a perfect tactical vantage point over the entire crowd.

Once again, I let my powers stretch out, doing a secondary sweep of the auditorium while the audience was distracted by the performance.

It was mostly the same as before. Lots of high-end jewelry, camera batteries, and smartphones. I picked up the faint, intricate signatures of a few cybernetic prosthetics, but they felt cosmetic or medical.

Nothing inherently dangerous.

Except for that one.

I zeroed in on the idiot. Well, well. What did we have here? He looked like a cyberpunk reject who had wandered into the wrong VIP section.

Bulky, sporting aggressive spiked hair, cheap tattoos, and some kind of tactical visor pulled over his eyes.

I pushed off the wall and wove through the crowd of influencers to get a better look, tuning my magnetic senses directly onto him.