The air inside the truck cabin suddenly felt thick.
Mason didn’t move, but the atmosphere around him seemed to drop ten degrees.
‘Two heartbeats that don’t belong.
One is fast, frantic.
The other is slow, heavy.
And Mom…
her heart is a frantic bird hitting the cage bars.’
“Dad, stop the truck,” Mason said.
His voice was a flat line, devoid of the fourteen-year-old pitch he usually maintained.
David glanced at him, his foot hovering over the brake.
“Mase?
What’s—”
“Mom’s in trouble.
There are two men in the house.
One of them isn’t normal.”
David didn’t ask how he knew.
He didn’t waste time with disbelief.
He’d spent fourteen years waiting for the other shoe to drop.
He pulled the truck to the curb three houses down, his knuckles white on the steering wheel.
“We go in quiet,” Mason whispered, his eyes fixed on the front door.
‘I can hear them.
They’re in the kitchen.
They think they’re in control.’ “If I fly in there or tear the roof off, the neighbors see everything.
We enter normally.
I’m just a kid.
You’re just a dad.
We let them think they have the upper hand until we’re close enough to finish it.”
David swallowed hard, nodding.
He reached into the glove box and pulled out a heavy maglite, the only weapon a ‘normal’ dad would have.
“I’m right behind you, son.”
The mess in the living room was even worse up close, overturned chairs, broken glass, the scent of copper and adrenaline.
“Elena?” David called out, his voice shaking with a genuine terror that served the act perfectly.
“El, we’re home!
Mason’s with me!”
“In here, big guy,” a raspy voice drifted from the kitchen.
They walked into the kitchen and stopped.
The scene was a nightmare.
The large man was leaning against the counter, a jagged kitchen knife in one hand and a duffel bag in the other.
But he wasn’t the threat.
The other one, the thin, pale freak, was standing by the pantry.
His arms were stretched out like hideous, muscular snakes.
One hand was clamped tight around Elena’s throat, hoisting her slightly off the ground so she had to stand on her tiptoes to keep from choking.
“Don’t move,” the stretcher hissed.
“You must be the husband.
You built this place like a vault.
We know there’s a safe.
Open it, or I start peeling her skin back.”
“There is no safe!” David shouted, his hands raised.
“Look at the house, we’re HVAC and retail!
Please, just take the electronics and go.
We won’t call the police.
Just let her go.”
“Liars,” the large man grunted, stepping closer to David.
“Nobody puts tank plating in a basement for fun.”
The thin man with the elastic limbs looked at Mason, a predatory grin spreading across his face.
“Kid’s kind of quiet.
Maybe he needs to see what happens when Daddy doesn’t cooperate.”
He didn’t just tighten the grip on Elena’s neck, making her let out a strangled, wet gasp.
His other arm, coiled like a serpent, slithered down. Find the original chapter at g.com.
The elongated fingers began to wander over her, a disgusting, lingering touch that made Elena’s eyes widen in absolute horror and shame.
‘Die,’ a voice whispered in the back of Mason’s mind.
It was the Saiyan speaking.
There was no holding back on this one.
Mason didn’t run.
He didn’t move in a way the human eye could process.
To David and the large robber, Mason simply vanished from the spot where he stood.
A thunderclap of displaced air shattered every window in the kitchen.
Before the thin man could even blink, Mason was standing inches from his face.
The golden-green aura didn’t just glow; it roared, a physical weight that pinned the air to the floor.
Mason grabbed the two elongated arms.
He didn’t pull with his muscles; he pulled with the core of a star.
Rrip.
The sound was like wet canvas tearing.
The thin man didn’t even have time to scream before his elastic limbs were separated from his shoulders in a spray of hot, dark red.
The severed arms flopped onto the linoleum like dying fish.
The robber’s mouth opened, a silent ‘O’ of shock, but he never got the sound out.
Mason’s fist moved in a blur of kinetic violence.
The punch didn’t just hit the man’s chest; it deleted it.
Mason’s arm went straight through the center of the man’s torso, emerging out the back in a shower of bone fragments and pulverized organs.
The force of the blow was so concentrated that the body didn’t even fly back—it just hung there on Mason’s arm for a fraction of a second, a hollowed-out husk.
Mason retracted his arm, and the corpse slumped into a heap of meat and wet fabric.
The kitchen went silent, save for the sound of blood dripping from Mason’s hand onto the tile.
The large man with the knife dropped his weapon, his knees hitting the floor as he stared at the fourteen-year-old boy who was currently covered in the remains of his partner.
‘I told you,’ Mason thought, his breathing steady, his eyes glowing with a cold, terrifying light.
‘In this world, being second place is a death sentence.’
He turned his head slowly toward the second robber.
“Your turn.”