Seeing this, John grit his teeth, stepped forward, and grabbed his arm.
“Dad, let me go.”
“No!
You have to stay here with your mother!”
Jonathan shook off his hand.
His voice was torn into fragments by the wind, but John heard every single word crystal clear.
“You don’t know the folks in town.
Only I know where they’d be…
Stay here and take care of your mother.
Open the storm cellar door and take her down.”
Without wasting any motion, Jonathan pulled open the truck door, and the engine roared to life.
The old pickup’s engine coughed twice in the storm before roaring to life.
Jonathan leaned out of the window, giving John one last look.
“I’ll be right back.”
The pickup roared out of the farm, its taillights growing dimmer in the grayish-white wall of wind until they were swallowed by the gloom.
Martha yelled something behind him, but he couldn’t hear it clearly.
He was listening to sounds from further away—
The rumble of the pickup’s engine, the town’s siren, the screech of Old Mike’s sheet-metal roof being ripped off.
And Jonathan’s heartbeat.
The sound he had heard the very first time he was lifted out of the spaceship in this life.
Amidst the howling wind, the siren, and the tearing of sheet metal, it remained as steady as an old clock.
But he couldn’t put his mind at ease.
Now, he had to monitor this heartbeat with absolute focus.
The super-hearing that, in his past life, had only been used to read people’s emotions by their heartbeats’ vibrations…
now condensed into a nail, driving itself deep into the terrain ahead.
Just then, the wind direction suddenly shifted.
For some unknown reason, the center of the tornado began to drift toward the town.
The massive gray column, hundreds of meters in diameter, was slowly advancing toward downtown Smallville, dragging up dirt, straw, and countless sheet-metal roofs along the way.
Under the vision provided by his super-vision, John could see everything in its path—
Utility poles were uprooted.
Transformers exploded, sending out sparks of blue and white electricity that flickered eerily against the dark green sky.
“No…
No way.
Ordinary people can’t withstand the force of a tornado!”
Trying to take Jonathan from me…
Absolutely impossible!
To hell with that damn promise!
John looked back deeply at his mother, Martha, and made up his mind.
Then, squatting down with his arms crossed, recalling his old posture for gathering power, he took flight.
Run?
Jump?
It was flight!
For the first time in his eighteen years, he was flying completely without restraint.
He had promised Jonathan not to use his abilities in public.
But Jonathan wasn’t in front of him now.
He could only hear Jonathan’s heartbeat drifting further and further away into the storm.
Distance meant risk.
He absolutely could not accept risk—not even a fraction of a percent.
Behind him, Martha watched from the porch as he rapidly ascended from the ground, her hair whipping wildly in the wind, her face deathly pale.
She simply watched her son fly, her lips trembling.
“No…”
John didn’t hear her.
He had already plunged into the storm at maximum speed.
The town square’s market had already been reduced to ruins.
Sunshades were uprooted, folding tables and chairs tumbled through the air, and a pickup truck lay flipped on its side in front of the post office.
John darted back and forth along the edge of the storm for about two minutes.
During this time, he dragged five people out from collapsed awnings and overturned vehicles, tapped them unconscious, and tossed them into the school’s basement.
[A skill John developed himself: 100% stun rate.]
Then, with his hands behind his back, he shot up into the air.
John’s eyes snapped open in the wind.
When pieces of straw struck his eyeballs, they were instantly deflected by an invisible forcefield.
“—”
He pushed his super-hearing to its absolute limit, sweeping the area to locate Jonathan’s heartbeat.
And then, he heard it.
The rumble of the old pickup’s engine, near the gas station on the far west side of town.
That gas station…
The very gas station where he and Jonathan had weathered another storm fourteen years ago.
At this moment, Jonathan was pushing the last car away from the gas pumps.
Sitting inside was the current owner, Young Ford, son of the former owner, Old Ford.
Jonathan stuffed him into the car, then turned and ran back.
He was looking for Yellow.
The mischievous dog hadn’t followed the pickup; instead, he was tied to a post at the gas station, barking frantically toward the approaching tornado.
Jonathan quickly ran to the post and squatted down to untie the rope.
His fingers were trembling.
The wind was too powerful—so strong that even an old farmer who had worked the fields for forty years couldn’t keep his hands steady.
To make matters worse, the damn rope was pulled tight by the wind, the knot jammed solid.
With no other choice, Jonathan scrambled to find a pair of shears in his truck to snip the rope.
The next second, Yellow leaped into his arms, tail tucked between his legs, shivering uncontrollably.
But Jonathan couldn’t get back up.
The funnel cloud was less than a hundred meters away.
He could see the grayish-white wall violently shredding the wheat fields.
The water tower overlooking the fields was uprooted, spinning twice in the air before being ripped to shreds.
The air pressure was so low his ears rang, the sheer force pinning his knees to the concrete.
*Whoosh—*
At that moment, the boom of a broken sound barrier suddenly erupted in midair.
Jonathan seemed to sense something and snapped his head up.
Through the approaching funnel of wind, he spotted John flying at breakneck speed, his eyes blazing with a crimson glow.
Yes.
His son was cutting straight through the heart of the storm, moving at a speed that defied belief.
*BOOM!*
In the next second, another sonic boom echoed.
John slammed onto the ground right in front of Jonathan, the shockwave cracking the concrete beneath his feet.
“You…”
John was fast.
Without a word, he hoisted Jonathan up and locked an arm around his waist.
“John, no!
Put me down, get out of here!
Don’t let them see you—”
“Shut the hell up!”
This was the first time in his life John had ever yelled at Jonathan like this.
His voice was shredded by the wind.
But he knew Jonathan heard him, and his grip tightened.
“John!
You can’t expose yourself.
You promised me!”
“I.
Don’t.
Give.
Damn!”
John glared at him, lifting him off his feet and tucking him under his arm.
With his other hand, he scooped up Yellow.
*Thud!*
With a powerful leap, his feet launched off the ground, leaving a shallow crater in the dirt.
At that moment, the edge of the funnel swept past his back, ripping the gas station’s canopy clean off and shattering it to pieces behind him.
John had a thought, and coated Jonathan and Yellow in a transparent bio-forcefield.
Then, holding the man and the dog, he sliced straight through the edge of the storm, carving a swift white streak across the sky.
In less than three seconds.
They had crossed the town, soared over the flattened wheat fields, and touched down safely at the entrance of their own storm cellar.
Martha, who had been waiting anxiously, rushed forward, pulling Jonathan and Yellow inside, then turning to grab John.
“Get inside, quick!”
“I’ll grab the first-aid kit—”
John shut the storm doors and ran down into the cellar.
He thrust the first-aid kit into Martha’s hands and squatted down to check Jonathan’s injuries.
He was indeed hurt.
There was a fresh gash on his forehead.
It wasn’t deep, but blood was smeared all over his face.
With trembling fingers, Martha opened the kit and pulled out some gauze.
Jonathan leaned against the wall, panting heavily, his eyes locked onto John.
“You flew just now, didn’t you?”
“I know.”
“But you broke our promise.”
“Jonathan!
Stop with this bullshit…
I can keep my promises, but that doesn’t include standing by when you’re about to fucking die!”
“You can ask anything else of me, but not this!”
Jonathan stared at him.
There was no blame in those brown eyes.
No anger, no “What if you were exposed?”
They were only filled with a deeper, unspeakable gravity.
It was the look of a father realizing his son would rather break fourteen years of silence than watch him die—a feeling beyond words.
“But you shouldn’t have—”
“I said, not this!”
John pressed the gauze roughly onto Jonathan’s forehead, his fingers staining with blood.
“You can teach me to hide like a turtle, and you can teach me to numb myself into believing I’m just some ordinary farm kid…
but you never taught me to just fucking stand by and watch you die.
You never taught me that because you couldn’t do it either!
So by the same logic, neither can I.”
Jonathan fell silent for a long time.
Beside them, Martha cut a piece of medical tape.
Her hands were still shaking, but she made a clean cut.
Outside, the wind continued to howl.
Martha’s trembling fingers pressed the tape down, securing the gauze on Jonathan’s forehead.
The bleeding stopped.
She exhaled a long breath.
Her body seemed to go completely limp as she leaned back against the wall and closed her eyes.
John let out a sigh of relief as well.
He released his grip on the gauze and took half a step back.
Leaning his back against the cold concrete wall of the cellar, his heart still hammered in his ears.
“Ugh…”
Yet, without warning, Jonathan collapsed straight forward.
Without a single sign of warning.