Chapter 120 Air.

Chapter 120: 120 Air.

The city fell away beneath us, replaced by a sprawling sea of dark, mountainous forest.

Every burst of speed from my thrusters sent a fresh jolt of agony radiating through my broken ribs, but I didn’t care. I couldn’t afford to hesitate. No time.

A flash of freezing blue suddenly lit up the night on the face of the mountain.

Oh, that wasn’t good. That wasn’t good at all.

I rounded the slope and killed my forward momentum, hovering in midair as sheer horror gripped me. The chalet was under a full-scale siege.

Huge, jagged sheets of permafrost formed massive barricades around the compound—Glacia’s work, no doubt. The manor’s windows were shuttered with heavy steel plates like a bunker on lockdown.

Pillars of razor-sharp ice impaled grotesque mutant monsters across the lawn, but the real threat was in the air.

A heavily armored tilt-rotor aircraft hovered just out of range of Glacia’s attacks, the thumping of its twin propellers deafening.

Painted pitch-black with toxic-green highlights, its spotlights swept across the grounds, illuminating a horde of leaping, toad-like throggs as they surged toward the manor.

Here and there, I spotted the sparking, shattered remains of Rhea’s builder-bots. Delirium’s chrome warbots marched over their metal corpses, unleashing bursts from heavy flamethrowers to melt breaches in the icy walls.

Glacia floated high above the front entrance, glowing like a wrathful winter star.

Her arms were raised, summoning winds that screamed with unnatural, icy cold, keeping the aircraft at bay while she rained searing white rays down on the advancing creatures. But I could see her faltering.

My chest tightened, a cold fury overriding the pain in my ribs. Delirium. That arrogant, cyborg bastard. He was going to pay for this.

I swooped low, touching down violently near the reinforced front doors and releasing Psyren.

"Sir!" Glacia gasped. She drifted down, the roaring winds dying instantly. She didn’t look good. Her pale face was flushed a feverish red, her chest heaving as she dragged in ragged breaths.

Even her descent was wobbly, and when her boots hit the snow-covered grass, she staggered. "You’re... you’re back," she panted.

"I am. Fall back, Glacia, you did good," I said, stepping past her. I looked at my psychic protégé and nodded toward the advancing horde of mutants. "Psyren? Can you do something about the ugly ones?"

"Thought you’d never ask, boss," she giggled, reaching up and pulling off her dampening headphones.

Instantly, a heavy, suffocating pressure washed over the lawn. I felt a sharp throb in my skull, like someone had just tightened a vice grip directly onto my frontal lobe.

A low, vibrating hum filled the air, tinting the shadows a faint, hallucinogenic neon pink.

Motes of dust, snow, and small rocks defied gravity, rising from the ground as Psyren smirked and threw her arms wide open. Her eyes pulsed with glowing, hypnotic pink hearts.

"Hello, boys!" she cried, her voice carrying a layered, resonant frequency that vibrated right through the stone and metal around us. "Who wants to be my new best friend?"

The effect was instantaneous and deeply unsettling. The entire vanguard of throggs—massive, hulking amphibian nightmares with razor-sharp teeth and claws meant for tearing steel—froze dead in their tracks.

Their heavy weapons slipped from their gnarled fingers, clattering uselessly to the grass.

They stared up at her, their slitted yellow eyes dilating until they were wide and glossy. Vicious, guttural snarls melted into slack-jawed, dopey grins.

Thick strings of drool sizzled on the snow as the bloodthirsty monsters completely forgot the siege, utterly enraptured by the petite, pink-haired girl standing before them.

She had turned a terrifying mutant strike-force into a crowd of mindless, adoring fanboys in a matter of seconds.

Which made it wonderfully convenient for me to focus on the things without brains.

Through the breach in the ice walls, Delirium’s chrome warbots continued their advance in fascist lockstep, their heavy weapons leveling at us.

I raised my hand, pushing past my exhaustion, and sent my magnetic powers surging directly into their chassis.

I bypassed their armor entirely, resonating strictly with the delicate internal circuitry.

Almost too easy. With a vicious, twisting jerk of my wrist, I wrenched their internal components apart.

Showers of blue sparks exploded from the androids. The mechanical monsters slumped simultaneously, going completely inert like a cyber-plague had just severed their nervous systems.

In a cascading wave, they toppled forward, crashing heavily to the lawn. A few twitched pathetically, sparks hissing from their locked joints.

I turned my attention from the scrap metal on the lawn and looked up at the black aircraft.

Even as I locked eyes on the cockpit, the pilot frantically tilted the rotors, trying to pull up and retreat into the safety of the dark sky.

"Oh, no you don’t," I growled, pointing my armored hand directly at the hull. My magnetic field slammed into the aircraft, seizing it in an invisible, unbreakable vice.

The aircraft halted in mid-air. The massive rotors whined in protest, the engines screaming as they strained against my hold.

I widened my stance, boots digging into the dirt, feeling the massive pull of the machine’s thrust fighting my grip. But there was no escaping me.

Time to make him pay.

I pulled my arm back, and the aircraft came with it, reeled out of the sky toward me like a thrashing marlin on a heavy line.

Engines howling, the pilot realized he couldn’t break free and opted for a desperate final stand. The nose-mounted rotary Gatling gun swiveled, locking right onto me.

That might have been a serious problem for anyone else. I just raised my free hand.

The cannon roared, chattering violently as a storm of heavy-caliber depleted rounds rained down on us. But they never hit.

The bullets swerved sharply inches from my face, ricocheting off a localized magnetic dome and punching massive, smoking craters into the lawn all around me, Glacia, and Psyren.

I stood perfectly still, letting him expend his entire payload. I watched the rotating barrels glow a furious cherry-red before finally spinning down with a series of hollow clicks as the ammo drums ran dry.

What I wouldn’t give to see the look of absolute despair on that pilot’s face right now.

Ah, well. This was still my favorite part.

I couldn’t suppress a grim smile as I suddenly closed my fist.

The heavy metal rotors groaned and shrieked, instantly crushing inward like a stepped-on beer can.

Explosions blew out the sides of the engine nacelles, violently jostling the burning chassis.

I held the ruined aircraft aloft for one hot, agonizing second—just long enough for the occupants to feel a fleeting, desperate twinge of hope that maybe, just maybe, I was going to let them down easy.

And then I dropped it.

The massive machine plummeted out of the sky like a stone, hitting the center of the lawn in a deafening explosion of fire, twisted fuselage, and aviation fuel that illuminated the entire mountain in a brilliant orange flash.

Ah. That felt good.

"Miles!"