"Fine." She cleaned her blood-soaked hands on her lab coat.
"Come here. Let's go, team!" Max exclaimed and gave her a high five.
"Thanks, Olivia, by the way. That thing almost . . . oh," she added before suddenly changing her expression.
Olivia's eyes went wide; she was too focused on the monster, and the dim light didn't help her to recognize what was in front of her. "Me estás jodiendo! Conchuda de mierda!" The girl insulted Ange in Spanish.
Ange stood in silence for a second, thinking before nodding a few times. "Oh! You are Insight! Long time no see!" She waved one hand to her.
"Just to make things clear, I'm totally sorry about what I did to Miguel," the woman added, her tone honest and a little bit awkward.
Max could see Olivia gritting her teeth so hard they seemed about to break as thick veins began to bulge in her neck. The girl's gaze quickly scanned the room, surely searching for something to bash Ange's head.
"But hey, he got a lovely pension from the state. Retiring at age 12? That is really nice, and they put him back together without a problem. At least he got something nice out of the whole deal, right?" The socially inept villain tried to calm the situation, only to accidentally throw more fuel on the fire.
Lacking something to turn Ange into a bloody pulp, Olivia just flipped a finger at her. "Anda a hacerte cojer por un negro, puta," she muttered and took a deep breath, trying to calm herself.
Max didn't need to read her mind to feel the hate oozing from those words.
Olivia looked at Max like he was the physical embodiment of trash. "You know who she is," she didn't ask; she accused Max of that.
"You can read minds?" The man asked even if that wasn't necessary.
"Similar," Olivia added with a dry tone.
"My power is called . . . Absolute Reading. I can read into things; it is similar to a kind of mind reading, but the details are not important now," the woman added and rolled her eyes.
"She is trying to do better," Max said and tried to think of normal things or more important ones. However, Olivia's outfit made that task incredibly hard.
"Give me the vaccine now. Then we can talk about a way out of this hellhole," she demanded.
"Hey, just try not to be that mad at her," the man tried to somehow stabilize that situation.
Olivia scoffed at the notion. "She skinned and disemboweled my friend while he was ALIVE, and she kept him alive for a week, covering the whole interior of a shipping container! Able to see and feel everything!" The woman spoke with pure vitriol in her voice.
Before Max could answer, she kept talking. "She even sent me videos about it, trying to bait me into a trap!" Olivia exclaimed, coiling her fingers and trying to keep them from forming a fist.
"Sorry, but I think I have gained the right to be a little bit mad with her and even have the ridiculous idea that she owes me something," she finally said, sarcastic and clearly offended by the man's suggestion.
Max took a deep breath and nodded. "Right, Ange was anathema . . ." he mumbled. The accusation was nothing crazy or exaggerated, taking into consideration that woman's track record.
"Look, I would like to work with you since, well . . . the more the merrier, and your power seems to be extremely useful, and I know she is honest with her apology. That is the only reason why I can tolerate her," Olivia said, reading Max's questions before he could even ask them.
The woman took a deep breath. "Also, we need her powers and my hacking skills to even get closer to getting out of this place," she added as her body relaxed from the initial shock.
"Wait, you can also read machines' minds?" Max finally managed to get a proper verbal question.
"I cannot read what is not there in the first place, but I can read the small clues people left behind. Finding a password to enter a terminal makes it easier for me to see how much the keys are worn out. With that clue, I can read the history of the keyword and figure out how many words there were written on them," Olivia explained, her tone cold and methodical but with a dash of smugness at the end, showing pride in her power.
"Then my power can read the list and understand not only the meaning of each string of that but also analyze why they were used," she finished, a small smile forming on her lips.
"That sounds incredibly broken," Max said; for him, that was just a bullshit level of power.
She nodded. "It is; that is why I can read people's minds by just seeing micro facial expressions or hearing a word or two and even dig into their memories for more information," Olivia added with a smug smile.
Then the girl made a step ahead, making clear how much more comfortable just bragging about her skills was. "Even if this world has a completely different language, I will be able to speak it fluently in minutes," Olivia finally said, waiting for Max to just follow her around like a minion. After all, she had crafted her explanation exactly to get that effect.
"Hmmmm, yes, that is extremely impressive, but that also means that you don't have any pure offensive power, right?" Max asked, knowing full well that the woman was trying to manipulate him. The young man knew full well that if Olivia became the group leader, his life was in danger since, of all the members until now, he was the most expendable.
The main reason why getting the position of team leader was a possibility was that he was the only neutral party in the team. That made him the best mediator between the two and gave him some power. However, the second that another person joined the group with the same capacity, he would lose that advantage, forcing him to cement his position now.
Olivia was taken aback, attributing her failure to the initial outburst of anger. "Well . . . technically," she mumbled.
"So you need us to survive as much as we need you," Max added, and Olivia let out a deep sigh and shook her head.
"Tsk . . . I preferred when the goons only asked for more money instead of more questions," the girl muttered, rolling her eyes and giving up.
"Well, it seems that we need to work together to survive. I love having you on the team, but please try not to kill Ange," the man suggested, his tone firm but slightly smiling to super.
"You are the first person that I know who tells me not to kill that girl. Listen up, rookie, you are new to this, but I was a super since I was 10. I have 15 years of experience dealing with all kinds of bullshit, and yes . . . I was technically a villain, but with more reason. Listen to this advice. Never trust anybody," Olivia answered, changing her tactics or trying to be honest; Max could not decide which of the two.
She made a small pause and looked him directly in the eyes. "Not because people are evil or they will betray you, but because they will hurt you trying to protect you or make you happy," the woman said from personal experience.
Max nodded. "I . . . understand your point, but—" he was cut mid-sentence.
"You find her hot, I get it," Olivia said, not letting him finish the sentence again.
"Wait, I—" Max mumbled before getting interrupted again, getting annoyed by the woman's quirk.
"And you find me equally hotter than her even if my ass and tits are bigger and better shaped. Yes, I am feeling insulted by that, and yes, I may be interested in blowing off some steam in the future with you," Olivia explained and squinted her eyes, showing anger but also interest.
The man could not lie to himself. That ass and those tits were enticing, and he wasn't the kind of person that was monogamous. After all, with his powers, stamina, endurance, and other attributes needed for dealing with multiple supers at the same time could achieve it.
Max was now sure she had changed tactics to try to seduce him. "Wait a second, are you trying to manipulate me?" He asked, getting a step closer to her, showing that he had a spine but also not so close that the tainted blood could get on her.
"Manipulating a rookie with a lot of potential out of danger for his own good? Nah, I would never do something like that; it is like my least favorite thing to do," the woman added with a sarcastic tone.
"Hey. . . guys? The deer stopped melting," Ange said with a surprised tone, more focused on the corpse than the two arguing.