When he heard those words, John moved.
He didn’t take any kind of fighting stance, and he didn’t fire his heat vision.
He just set his short little legs in their soft-soled shoes into motion and walked lightly toward the muscle monster that stood over two meters tall.
The monster looked at this kid who didn’t know any better and let out a cruel sneer, swinging a fist two sizes bigger than a stewpot down hard at John’s head.
In the observation room, Madelyn even shut her eyes on reflex.
A deafening, muffled boom exploded across the testing floor, and a visible shockwave instantly knocked over several heavy testing instruments around them.
Leon was shoved back several steps by the blast of air before he managed to steady himself.
When the smoke and dust cleared, Edgar’s pupils contracted sharply in the observation room.
In the center of the testing floor, that small figure was still standing firmly in place, not a single hair out of order.
John had only put out one soft, pale little hand, and he had caught the monster’s full-force punch, a punch that could have smashed through a car.
A flicker of disbelieving panic crossed the monster’s eyes.
He fought desperately to pull his hand back, only to find his fist locked as if a hydraulic clamp had bitten down on it, not budging an inch.
John tilted his head up slightly, looking at this towering thing so much taller than himself, his clear voice without the slightest ripple of emotion.
“Leon said you have to follow the rules.”
Before the words were out, John’s little hand gave a violent twist.
A sharp crack.
The sound of bones shattering set teeth on edge.
The monster’s entire right arm was wrenched into a twisted cruller shape, white shards of bone breaking through the dark red skin and exposed to the air.
“Aaaagh!!!”
The monster let out a shrill scream, its huge body buckling and dropping to its knees from the agony.
But John’s “sentence” wasn’t over yet.
He didn’t use any flashy power.
He simply lifted his right foot, aimed at the monster’s left knee, and stepped down casually.
Another bone-chilling crack.
The monster’s left leg instantly bent backward at a bizarre angle, completely losing all ability to move, and it collapsed to the ground like a heap of mud, able to do nothing but wail in pain.
A dead silence fell over the testing floor, leaving only the monster’s screams echoing.
John pulled his foot back, glanced at the bad guy still twitching on the ground, then turned around and walked back to Leon with a light, brisk step, like a grade-schooler who had finished his homework and was waiting for his parents’ praise.
John lifted his face, his deep blue eyes shining with a hope for praise.
“He’s stopped now.
He can never go robbing or killing people again.”
Leon looked at the monster on the ground, a sight too gruesome to take in, a thing that would live out the rest of its life on a feeding tube, and swallowed hard.
This was a lot more than stopped.
This was sending someone straight to hell.
But he forced down the shock in his chest, reached out, and rubbed John’s blond hair with fingertips that trembled a little.
“Nicely done, little hero.
You followed the rules we set perfectly.”
In the second-floor observation room.
Madelyn watched the scene below, her face pale.
She knew John was strong, but seeing with her own eyes the way he had settled the fight, so brutal and yet…
so controlled, still left her shaken.
“No heat vision to cut the opponent in half, no losing control and wrecking the place, and he even needed an order from that researcher before he made a move.”
Stan Edgar looked at Leon and John below, and a satisfied curve slowly rose at the corner of his mouth.
“A sharp knife isn’t frightening.
What’s frightening is a knife that develops a mind of its own.
But it seems Mr.
Leon has successfully fitted a perfect sheath onto this knife.”
Edgar turned and straightened the tie of his suit.
“Give him top-level clearance.
Have him set up a separate living quarters in Area B.
From today, no one but him is permitted to interfere with the boy’s education.”
After the test in Area C, Leon’s standing took a rocket-like leap.
Stan Edgar was a capitalist who cared about efficiency above all else.
When he said to grant top clearance, the logistics department didn’t dare drag its feet for a second.
In just two days, an independent living area of nearly two hundred square meters had been cleared out deep inside Area B.
It was no longer the kind of maddening, pure-white sterile room, but had been set up as an apartment in the rich style of an eighties American middle-class home.
There was a living room with thick carpet, a leather sofa, a twenty-one-inch Sony console color TV, and even an open kitchen with an oven and a double-door refrigerator.
“All right, little guy, welcome to our new home.”
Leon pushed open the high-strength alloy door disguised as an ordinary wooden one and made a gesture for John beside him to come in.
John stood in the doorway and didn’t go in right away.
His deep blue eyes swept quickly over every corner of the room, as if a little overwhelmed by a space suddenly stuffed with all kinds of colors and objects.
For the past six years, his world had been nothing but a stretch of pure white.
“Try stepping on it.” Leon pointed at the dark red wool carpet on the floor.
John cautiously put out one foot and stepped onto the soft pile.
The feeling, as if his sole could sink right into it, made him pause for a second, and then he walked all the way in, even unable to resist bouncing lightly twice in place.
“This is a lot more comfortable than that mat.” John gave his fair assessment.
“It’s called a carpet.
The main point of it is so you can run around barefoot without catching a chill.”
Leon went to the kitchen and opened the brand-new refrigerator.
The logistics department had already packed it full of all kinds of fresh ingredients, fruit, and a whole row of Coca-Cola.
Leon took out a chilled can and tossed it to John, who was still studying the sofa.
John caught it cleanly and hooked the pull tab with one hand.
With a crisp pop of escaping bubbles, he took a big, practiced gulp.
“Leon, are we going to live here from now on?”
John held the cola and walked over to the heavy color TV, reaching out to touch the cold glass screen.
“Yes.
No more nutrient paste, and no more getting your blood drawn for those boring tests every day.”
Leon leaned against the kitchen counter.
“As long as you don’t tear the place apart, this is our private territory.
Same old rule: bad guys break things, good guys take care of the furniture.”
“I understand.” John immediately pulled back the finger he’d been about to use to pick at the seam of the TV casing.
Then Leon walked over and pressed the TV’s power switch.
The screen flickered a few times, and with a faint electrical hum, the picture lit up.
It was the afternoon cartoon slot just then, and the TV was playing Transformers, the show that had swept across America in the eighties.
Along with that classic line, “Autobots, transform and roll out,” giant mechanical life-forms crashed and opened fire on the screen.