"Hey, handsome. You're dancing like you're attending a funeral."
A crisp, teasing voice sliced through the heavy metal track, a low-frequency rumble that should have drowned out any other sound. Ethan Chen froze, then turned his head. A girl was leaning against a soot-covered metal pillar not far from him. She was clad in a shimmering, sequined slip dress that caught the fractured light, and her short, dark-green hair shimmered with a metallic luster under the frantic strobe lights.
"The name's Sloane," she said, stepping forward with an effortless, predatory grace. She looked Ethan up and down, her gaze lingering on his frame with a spark of undisguised flirtation. "You're a new face. I've never seen someone in Bay Ridge with... with that kind of scholarly vibe before."
"I'm just... not used to the music here," Ethan lied.
His pulse was already betrayal. Beneath his skin, his body was already involuntarily twitching to the beat. That latent power buried in his bone marrow was beginning to stir, agitated by the chaotic, high-decibel environment.
Sloane didn't wait for an invitation. She hooked her arm around his neck, the scent of her perfume mixing with the sharp tang of alcohol as she pulled him into the epicenter of the mosh pit.
"Then stop trying to get used to it with your head," she whispered into his ear. "Use your body."
In the suffocating press of the crowd, Ethan felt the raw tension of the opposite sex for the first time. The boundaries of their bodies blurred in time with the frantic drums. To his shock, Ethan realized his reaction speed was borderline supernatural—he could predict Sloane's every move, every shift in her weight, guiding her into a perfect rhythmic flow a split second before their skin even touched.
He was intoxicated by this newfound sense of control—until the foul, nauseating stench of stale whiskey shattered the harmony.
A hulking Caucasian man, standing at least six feet tall, tore through the crowd like a runaway freight train. His face was a roadmap of scars and broken capillaries, his brawny arms covered in grotesque tattoos of venomous spiders. He gripped a half-empty whiskey bottle like a club.
"Sloane! I've been looking for you all damn night!" The giant's hand shot out, clamping around Sloane's wrist with such brutal force that she let out a sharp cry of pain.
"Let me go, Caleb! You're drunk as a pig, get lost!" Sloane thrashed, but the man's strength was mountainous.
"You're coming with me, you little bitch! You still owe me for that last round of drinks!" Caleb let out a gutteral roar, shoving aside two young men who tried to intervene, sending them sprawling across the sticky floor.
Marcus surged forward, trying to pry Caleb's fingers loose. "Whoa, take it easy, man! We're all just here to have a good—"
"Get lost, you little chick!" Caleb backhanded Marcus with a casual flick of his wrist. Marcus went reeling, his boots skidding across the floor as he nearly slammed into the sharp edge of the bar.
At that moment, Ethan felt it—an invisible, searing current rising from the soles of his feet. A familiar "magma" ignited in his gut, exploding outward and racing through every nerve ending.
"Let her go."
His voice wasn't loud, but it possessed a terrifying clarity that bypassed the heavy metal screaming from the speakers.
Caleb froze, looking down at the Asian boy who stood a full head shorter than him. He let out a jagged, mocking laugh. His free hand curled into a fist the size of a mallet, and he swung it directly at Ethan's face with killing intent.
"Die, kid!"
In Ethan's retinas, time suffered a microscopic fracture.
He didn't dodge. Instead, he took a single, precise step forward—a movement so fluid it felt like it had been rehearsed ten thousand times in a past life. He could see the air currents swirling around Caleb's knuckles; he could even smell the rank booze radiating from the man's pores.
THUD!
The sound of dull meat hitting meat echoed.
The crowd expected a bloodbath with Ethan's skull shattered. Instead, Ethan took a sharp breath, his left palm snapping upward with the speed of a cobra. He caught Caleb's full-force punch with effortless ease. His feet were nailed to the floorboards like ancient oak roots. He didn't budge an inch.
"What the..." The drunken haze cleared from Caleb's eyes instantly, replaced by a flicker of primal confusion.
Ethan gave him no time to think. He coiled his right leg, exhaled a sharp burst of air, and channeled an explosive wave of force from his quads through his core, terminating in his right elbow.
A clean, surgical horizontal elbow strike.
The blow slammed into Caleb's jaw with the force of a wrecking ball. The two-hundred-pound man was launched backward like a kite with a snapped string, smashing through two wooden tables. Splinters and glass showered the floor as the giant collapsed into a heap.
The entire bar fell into a graveyard silence.
Sloane covered her mouth, her eyes wide with shock at the "scholarly" boy. Marcus's jaw hit the floor. "E... since when did you start training in MMA?"
Ethan stood there, his chest heaving. The skin on his back was beginning to burn with a frenzied heat. The thrill of toppling the giant didn't bring relief—it brought horror. He realized he had used less than thirty percent of his strength.
In the wreckage, Caleb groaned and wobbled to his feet. He spat out a broken tooth slick with blood, his eyes burning with a rage that had completely incinerated his reason.
"You... you little... mongrel..."
His hand didn't reach for the bottle this time. It slipped toward the small of his back.
"NO!" Sloane screamed.
A cold, obsidian glint of metal reflected the strobe lights. A black Glock 17 was pulled from Caleb's waistband, the barrel trembling as it leveled at Ethan's chest.
"Now... why don't you show me another dance move?" Caleb's finger tightened on the trigger.
In that heartbeat, the agony in Ethan's back reached a crescendo. He heard a roar in his veins—something that Aunt Linda had kept bound in iron chains for fourteen years was finally snapping under the shadow of death.
BANG!