Chapter 318 Romantic.

Chapter 318: 318 Romantic.

"Like your shirt."

"I’m really just here to see Glacia," I said, firmly keeping my hands in my pockets.

"And don’t get me wrong," Lockdown added quickly, entirely unfazed by the rejection. "It would be a real, terrible shame if she ended up remaining locked up in here, Miles. A genuine tragedy. But I feel like as the warden, I should explicitly point out that I do have completely free, unrestricted access to the conjugal visit trailers out back.

"You know, if you happen to be stopping by on a weekend and feel the need to work out a bit of... stress. And it doesn’t just have to be with her. Trust me, Miles," she breathed, leaning in a bit closer with a wildly saucy wink. "I can take it."

I cleared my throat awkwardly as Lilith clamped both hands over her mouth, visibly vibrating as she tried and failed to stifle a fit of high-pitched giggles.

Khonsu let out a loud, deeply exhausted cough.

"I believe he is here strictly in a legal capacity to see the accused," the stoic moon avatar mentioned, his voice rigid.

Lockdown frowned. She glanced back over her massive shoulder at Khonsu, thoroughly unimpressed by the interruption, before turning her bright eyes back to me.

"I’m just saying, my office doors are always open if you ever do want to visit. You know. Casually," she offered, throwing in one last suggestive wink for good measure.

You know, just to make sure, in case I hadn’t gotten the last hundred.

It was simultaneously flattering and deeply disturbing to see that she was still this interested in me.

It had been years since I had finished my sentence and walked out of Supermax, and needless to say, I wasn’t exactly thrilled with the overarching idea of returning.

"We’ll... see how things shake out with the trial," I deflected smoothly.

"We sure will," she purred, grinning wolfishly as if she’d like absolutely nothing more than to tear off my civilian clothes with her bare teeth.

Fortunately, it looked like we had finally arrived. Lockdown stopped right beside a heavily sealed metal door at the end of the cell block and turned our way.

"Here we are. You two behave yourselves in there now," she said to me and Lilith. She flashed her key card against the scanner, and a deafening series of heavy iron deadbolts clanged as they slid free from the frame.

I moved quickly past her, pausing just inside the doorway to take in the room.

It was a perfectly square, featureless box made entirely of poured cement and reinforced steel, lit by a single, obnoxiously humming fluorescent light fixture on the ceiling.

A plain metal table bolted directly to the floor, surrounded by four equally bolted metal chairs, was the only furniture.

One of those chairs was currently occupied by Chamelea.

She was still flawlessly holding her Glacia shape, now dressed in a set of pale white, oversized prison overalls.

Her hands were locked inside massive, bulky metal gauntlets that were chained directly to the table—heavy-duty suppressors designed to completely neutralize ice powers.

When the heavy door hissed open, she looked my way, and a soft, relieved smile crossed her pale face.

"Hello, sir," she said, her voice perfectly mimicking Glacia’s aristocratic tone.

"Glacia," I replied, giving her a quick, critical once-over to confirm she was physically fine.

Only when I was absolutely sure she hadn’t been roughed up in holding did I finally shift my attention to the two people sitting directly across the table from her.

One was your standard, government-issue secret service guy.

He looked like he had been built on a federal assembly line, which honestly probably wasn’t too far from the actual truth given the amount of cybernetics I was sensing humming beneath his skin.

He had a buff, squared-off build, a severe military buzz cut, a blocky jawline, and mirrored aviator glasses. He basically looked like a discount Arnold Schwarzenegger.

The other spook was dressed in the exact same immaculate black suit and tie, but she was somehow even stiffer than her cybernetic companion.

In fact, she was so incredibly rigid it looked like she was constructed entirely out of sharp angles. Even her dark hair was pointy, trimmed in a severe, asymmetrical cut like it had been measured to the exact millimeter with a ruler.

Her suit shoulders looked heavily padded, making her chest practically triangular, and she wore a pair of tinted black glasses shaped like two sharp V’s to complete the geometric ensemble.

Shit. Government spooks. Not great.

And I actually knew one of them.

It took me a split second to properly place her, but when I finally did, I drew myself up straight.

"Jane Doe," I said, keeping my voice carefully neutral. "What a surprise."

She didn’t smile. I highly doubted her facial muscles were even capable of it. Her expression was stiffer than a fresh corpse, but she did incline her angular head a fraction of an inch, her eyes completely hidden behind the V-shaped lenses.

"Good afternoon, Mister Mitchell."

Every single eye in the room immediately turned my way.

Lilith blinked, her glowing golden eyes going wide behind her designer sunglasses. "Wait, your last name is Mitchell?" she gasped, her bubbly voice completely shattering the grim tension. "That sounds so incredibly normal! Like a guy who mows lawns!"

"Yeah," I said, gritting my teeth and determined not to let the succubus derail the interrogation. I focused entirely on the spook. "What exactly are you doing here, Jane?"

"Work," she replied, her voice entirely devoid of inflection.

"What kind of work?"

"Classified work."

Lovely. She was cagier than a diver filming a shark documentary.

There were a number of bureaucratic reasons she might be sitting in this room, of course.

But dealing with the legal red tape was exactly why I had brought my "lawyer." I left the spooks to Lilith. Instead, I walked around the metal table, pulled out the chair beside Chamelea, and took a seat.

"How are you holding up?" I asked her, keeping my voice low.

"I’ve been perfectly fine, sir," Chamelea said. Her icy blue eyes drifted deliberately toward the two expressionless spooks across the table, then flicked meaningfully back to mine.

I glanced at Jane Doe, then back to the mimic, instantly catching her hidden meaning. We were being monitored, recorded, and scrutinized. We had to play our roles perfectly.

"Yeah," I said, clasping my hands together on the cold metal table. I had to be incredibly careful not to spill the beans. "I’m incredibly sorry you had to go through this. You shouldn’t be in here."

She laughed, a soft, musical sound.

"I really don’t mind, sir," she said, her posture radiating absolute, devoted loyalty. "If sitting in this room can be of vital assistance to you and the league, I would gladly do so a hundred times over."

"You shouldn’t have to take the fall for this," I said, letting a bit of genuine bitterness bleed into my voice.

She smiled gently. Despite the heavy, cumbersome metal gauntlets locked around her wrists, she reached over and softly touched my hand.

"I wanted to, sir. It was my own explicit choice to give myself up for this."

"Why?" I asked.

"Because this is my chance, sir," she observed, her voice dropping into a tone of quiet, desperate sincerity. "You are my one last chance. The peaceful life I wish to live... it simply cannot happen without you. And you firmly promised me, sir, that I could finally live for myself. That I wouldn’t ever need to fear exploitation again. That I wouldn’t have to fear the collar, or the cruel control of those who would endlessly use me."

She looked deeply into my eyes, and I realized with a sudden jolt that she wasn’t just acting.

She was using Glacia’s voice, but she was talking about her own life. Escaping her handlers.

"I do this gladly, sir," she continued softly, "for I know that a life without your protection would be sheer misery once more. I’m putting it all on the line for you, right here and now, because I truly believe in you."

Damn. She was a really, really good actor. I was actually starting to get a little choked up.

"Still..." I muttered, feeling the heavy, crushing weight of the responsibility I had taken on.

"Do you remember what you told me, sir?" she said with a little, wan smile. "You promised that you would protect me. That you would resolve this awful misunderstanding, and ensure that I was entirely safe. Was that a lie, sir?"

"Of course not," I said immediately, my voice firm.

"Then I have absolutely nothing to fear," she said, pulling her gauntleted hand back and sitting up straight. "You will get me out of here. You will fix this. Sometimes," she added with a soft, melodic laugh, "one simply needs to have a little faith in others. It’s a very hard thing to do in our world, certainly. But sometimes, one must simply take the leap."

Damn.

Well, now I was going to feel even worse if I somehow fucked this entire operation up and left her rotting in Supermax.

There was a sudden, incredibly loud honking sound from the doorway.

I glanced back over my shoulder, instantly spotting Lockdown standing just outside the threshold. The hulking, indestructible warden of the prison was actively sniffling into a tiny, lace-trimmed handkerchief.

"D-don’t mind me," the massive woman sniffled, her fanged lip quivering with genuine emotion. "It’s just... it’s just so incredibly romantic!" she sobbed, loudly bawling into the handkerchief as Khonsu stared at her in total disbelief.