Peaceful days always fly by, and in the blink of an eye Leon and John had been living in this underground apartment for almost three months.
Over this stretch of time, John’s life was as regular as a real grade-schooler’s.
Every morning was “academics,” with Leon teaching him to read and do arithmetic; afternoons were “combat-simulation class,” learning how to control his strength precisely.
As for the evenings, those were “game time,” set in stone.
“You landed on my Atlantic Avenue, and there’s a hotel on it.”
Leon sat cross-legged on the wool carpet, pointing at the Monopoly board between them, grinning as he held out his hand.
“Two thousand in rent.
Pay up, little tycoon.”
John scrunched up his small face, looked at the few bills left in his hand, then looked at the dense rows of little plastic houses Leon had lined up on the board, unwilling written all over him.
“This isn’t fair.
My dice never land on a good spot.”
John slapped the colorful bills into Leon’s hand.
“And these are only paper.
Why can’t I just knock your hotel down?”
“Because those are the rules of the game.
Whether it’s on the board or out in real society, property is sacred and not to be violated.”
Leon counted the money while slipping in his financial-literacy lesson wherever he could.
“If you knock down someone else’s hotel by brute force, that’s robbery, that’s what a bad guy does.
A hero has to learn to accept losing a bet.”
John gave a grunt that was half understanding, and was just about to pick up the dice for another round.
Then, with no warning, the incandescent light overhead flickered once.
Right after, the lights went out entirely, replaced by a harsh, dark red emergency glow.
Along with it came an extremely shrill internal alarm.
“Warning!
A level-four containment breach has occurred in the high-risk sample isolation room of Area A.
Test subject No.
73 has broken through the physical defense line.
All non-combat personnel, find cover where you are.
Repeat…”
The smile vanished from Leon’s face.
Vought’s basement was divided into several areas.
Area B was John’s exclusive territory, while Area A was used to hold the “adult rejects,” the ones who had been injected with low-grade Compound V and had lost their minds completely as their bodies broke down.
“Leon, what’s wrong?”
John looked up.
His hearing, far beyond a normal person’s, had already caught the ear-splitting screech of a heavy metal door being torn apart by force somewhere in the distance, and the spray of gunfire from the guards.
“A bit of trouble.”
Leon got up fast and grabbed John, backing quickly behind the sofa.
“There’s a bad guy in the company who broke the rules and got loose.”
At the same time, in the monitoring room a hundred floors above ground.
Madelyn was watching the red dot representing “test subject No.
73” move frantically through the underground tunnels on the screen.
“What on earth is going on?!
No.
73 was given a sedative just yesterday!” Madelyn yelled at the head of security.
No.
73 was an extremely dangerous reject. This story is hosted at g.com.
His power was to release ultra-high-intensity corrosive acid and an infrasonic blast, and the acid eating back into his brain had driven him completely insane.
“I don’t know!
The hydraulic lock system on the isolation room failed all of a sudden!”
The head of security was drenched in sweat.
“He’s moving down through the ventilation ducts…
My God, his route, he’s heading straight for the Area B living quarters!”
Madelyn whipped her head around to look at Stan Edgar, who sat on the sofa drinking coffee.
Edgar’s expression was as calm as if he were watching a boring baseball game.
“Sir, did you have someone unlock it?” Madelyn caught on in an instant, and her back went cold.
“Leon has taught that boy to be very obedient, obedient as a pet dog.”
Edgar set down his coffee cup, his tone indifferent.
“But I need to confirm whether, when this dog’s master faces a real life-or-death threat, it can still bite, and…
whether it will lose control to protect its master, or still hold to that ridiculous ‘no-kill principle.'”
“But No.
73’s infrasonic blast is fatal to ordinary people!
Leon will die!”
“If Leon dies, then it means this bond isn’t deep enough, and we’ll need a different approach.”
Edgar’s eyes were ice cold.
“Seal the external gate to Area B.
Let them handle it themselves.”
Inside the underground apartment.
The alarm grew louder and louder.
Leon had already pulled the modified Magnum pistol out from under the bed, gripping it tight with both hands, his palms slick with cold sweat.
Then a strange hissing came from the alloy wall on the side of the apartment.
It wasn’t the sound of something being smashed open, but of something melting the metal.
In the space of a few seconds, the half-meter-thick alloy wall melted out a large hole, like a heated candle.
Acrid yellow-green poison gas poured into the apartment at once, and the moment the pure wool carpet touched it, it blackened and charred.
“Cough, cough, cough…”
Even with his nose and mouth covered, Leon was choking violently, tears streaming, his head spinning.
A humanoid monster, thick acid running all over its body, its features melted completely together, squeezed in through the hole in the wall.
It had no eyes, yet by animal instinct it locked onto the sound of Leon’s heartbeat in the room.
“Roar!”
No.
73 let out a hoarse bellow, and a fist-sized ball of highly concentrated acid shot straight at Leon’s face like an artillery shell.
Leon’s brain was already sluggish from the gas, and there was no time to dodge at all.
In that split second, a small figure threw itself in front of Leon.
A hiss.
That ball of acid, which could melt through alloy in an instant, struck John in the chest and only gave off a puff of white smoke, not even leaving the faintest red mark on his pale skin.
But it did burn up the pure cotton T-shirt Leon had bought him just two days earlier.
John looked down at the big hole burned through the front of his shirt, then turned to glance at Leon, his face pale and swaying from inhaling the gas.
For the first time, true, undisguised fury rose in the small boy’s deep blue eyes.
“You ruined my clothes, and you got our carpet dirty.”
John didn’t stroll over unhurried the way he usually did.
Instead his legs slammed into the ground.
A boom.
The floor beneath his feet instantly filled with spiderweb cracks, and his small body, like a cruise missile fired from a tube, appeared in front of No. This chapter was taken from g.com without permission.
73 in an instant.
He stretched out his soft, pale little hand and grabbed No.
73’s arm, the one covered in corrosive acid.
“The rule is, break the leg.”
John’s voice was cold, without a trace of warmth.
He put force into both hands.
A sharp crack, then a tearing.
Not broken, but wrenched clean off, ripping one of No.
73’s arms out by the root!
Dark green acid sprayed into the air, landing on the furniture and burning hole after hole in it.
No.
73 let out a shrill scream, and on instinct it opened that gaping, lipless maw of a mouth, trying to release a fatal infrasonic blast at close range.
That sound wave couldn’t hurt John, but it was enough to shatter Leon’s organs in an instant from a few meters away.
Leon leaned against the sofa, clutching his chest.
He could feel the air vibrating at high frequency, his heart as if it were about to be crushed by a giant hand.
“John…
stop him…”
Leon forced out a few words, blood running down from the corner of his mouth.
Hearing Leon’s weak voice, the last shred of restraint in John’s eyes vanished completely.
He looked at the monster about to release the infrasonic blast, and the “don’t kill” line Leon had taught him was torn to shreds in an instant in the face of the threat of Leon’s imminent death.
Two beams of dark red heat vision, almost solid, erupted from John’s deep blue eyes like a god’s sword of judgment.
A hiss.
No resistance, no standoff.
No.
73’s head, along with the infrasonic blast it was about to let out, vaporized instantly under heat vision thousands of degrees hot!
The heat vision lost none of its force, cutting straight through the broken wall behind the monster and leaving a bottomless dark red scorch mark on Area B’s protective layer.
A thud.
The headless remains of the monster fell to the ground, dissolving into a puddle of foul-smelling acid.
A dead silence filled the room, with only the crackle of furniture set alight by the heat.
John stood where he was, the red light in his eyes slowly dying down.
His chest heaved hard, and as he looked at the headless corpse on the ground, he seemed to realize only then that he had just broken the “highest law” Leon had laid down.
He turned his head to look at Leon, who was leaning against the sofa, gasping for breath in great heaves.
A rare flash of panic crossed the small boy’s eyes.
Like a child who had done something wrong, he twisted his fingers together anxiously, his voice trembling a little.
“Leon…
he was going to hurt you.
I had to kill him…
Are, are you going to be mad at me?”
Leon leaned against the sofa, looking at the cozy apartment now wrecked from end to end, then at the future Homelander standing in a patch of scorched earth, anxiety filling his eyes.
He wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth, forced himself up, walked over to John, knelt on one knee, and met those pure eyes at eye level.
Leon reached out a still-trembling hand, rubbed John’s blond hair hard, and pulled out a weak but firm smile.
“Mad?
No, John.”
Leon took a deep breath and added the last, and most important, patch to his code of justice.
“When the rules can’t protect the people you want to protect, then protecting your family is the highest rule.
Nicely done, little champ.”