Two years of quiet discipline had turned Mason into a master of his own power.
At fourteen, holding back was no longer an effort; it was a subconscious reflex.
He had spent his nights slipping out of his bedroom window, pushing his body into the upper atmosphere where the air was thin and the only witness was the moon.
Flying felt less like a superpower and more like remembering a forgotten limb.
It was instinctual, a steady pull in his solar plexus that allowed him to treat gravity like a suggestion.
He wasn’t fast enough to cross the globe in seconds, not yet, but he could navigate the clouds with a grace that felt entirely surreal.
It was his birthday, a day he usually treated with relative normalcy, but the atmosphere in the house had been light that morning.
Elena had been humming as she made breakfast, and David had given him a knowing look before heading to work.
‘They’re definitely planning something,’ Mason thought as he sat through his final period of history.
‘Probably another “safety” gift.
A lead-lined backpack or a bunker-grade watch.’
He didn’t mind.
The genuine effort they put into his normalcy was the only thing that kept him anchored.
Elena arrived home three hours early.
She had a cake in the backseat and a smuggled bottle of expensive wine hidden in her bag.
She wanted the house to be perfect before David brought Mason home from school.
As she stepped through the front door, the silence of the house hit her first.
It wasn’t the peaceful quiet of an empty home; it was the hollow, jagged silence of a place that had been violated.
She dropped her keys.
The living room was a disaster.
The reinforced coffee table had been flipped, and the floorboards David had bolted down were splintered.
‘Not the government.
Not supes,’ she thought, her heart hammering against her ribs.
This is desperate.’
She reached for the small, high-voltage taser she kept in her pocket, but she never got the chance to arm it.
“Look at this,” a voice rasped from the kitchen.
“The lady of the house is early.”
Elena spun around, but she wasn’t facing a man at a normal distance.
A hand, pale, veiny, and grotesquely long, shot out from around the corner.
The arm stretched like a piece of chewed taffy, crossing ten feet of space in a heartbeat.
The fingers wrapped around her throat, slamming her back against the wall with enough force to crack the plaster.
A man stepped into view.
He was thin, with greasy hair and the frantic eyes of a junkie looking for a score.
Behind him stood a larger man holding a duffel bag filled with their electronics.
“You picked a bad day to skip work, lady,” the thin man said.
His arm didn’t retract.
It stayed extended, his hand pulsing with a sickly, elastic strength.
This wasn’t a world class villain; he was a ‘bottom-feeder,’ one of the thousands of low-level powered thugs who used their minor gifts to terrorize civilians.
“We were looking for the safe,” the large man grunted, tossing a laptop into the bag.
“This house is built like a fortress.
You got gold buried in the basement or something?”
Elena struggled, her boots kicking against the wall.
She couldn’t breathe, let alone speak.
Her eyes darted to the photos on the mantle, photos of Mason.
‘Keep them away from the basement,’ she thought through the haze of oxygen deprivation.
‘Don’t let them be here when Mason gets home.’
“Quiet down,” the stretcher hissed, his second arm elongating to pin her wrists above her head.
If the house is this reinforced, the safe has to be high-end.
He’s gonna open it for us, or I’m gonna see how far your neck can stretch before it snaps.”
A few miles away, David’s truck turned onto their street.
Mason sat in the passenger seat, staring out the window.
“You’re quiet today, Mase,” David said, reaching over to ruffle his son’s hair.
“Fourteen is a big one.
You feel any different?”
Mason leaned his head against the glass.
‘I feel like I could punch a hole through the sky, Dad.’
“Just hungry,” Mason said with a small smile.
“Mom’s making the roast, right?”
“Better,” David grinned, accelerating as they approached the driveway.
“She’s got a few surprises waiting for you at the house.
I think today is going to be a day you’ll never forget.”
Mason looked at the house as it came into view.
His brow furrowed.
The rhythm was wrong.
He could hear his mother’s heartbeat, but it wasn’t the steady, calm pulse of someone decorating a cake.
It was fast, erratic and weak.
And there were two other heartbeats.
Heavier.
Jagged.
Mason’s hand tightened on the door handle, the plastic beginning to groan under his grip.
‘Something’s in the house.’