Adam stepped back.
The other two boys moved instantly, splitting apart and flanking him from both sides. They raised their fists, and Adam watched through his enhanced eyes as energy began gathering around their hands.
It was weaker than the tall boy's. Their coating was thinner, patchier—barely a shimmer compared to the solid wrap the leader had formed. But what struck Adam more was the waste. The energy leaking out of their systems was absurd. Thick streams of it bled from their cores, scattering through their bodies without direction, flooding into muscles that didn't need it, pooling in their torsos before barely trickling to their hands.
They had the same fist-sized flames as the leader. The same source. But their control was even worse.
Adam processed all of this in under a second.
Then his brain hit a wall.
It was too much. The enhanced eyes were feeding him a torrent of information—three separate energy systems, each with their own flow patterns, muscle movements, positioning, angles. His vision was working at a level his mind couldn't keep up with. Details overlapped. Predictions collided. His thoughts stuttered.
I can see everything. But I can't think fast enough to use it.
The tall boy was still hunched over but recovering. The two flankers were closing in. Adam had seconds.
He took one deep breath.
He had succeeded at everything he'd attempted today. Not because he was trained. Not because he was skilled. But because he was desperate, and for some reason he didn't yet understand, the energy responded to his desperation as if it had been waiting for him to ask.
So he asked again.
Adam reached for the flame one more time and pulled a thread—not to his lungs, not to his eyes—but straight up. To his brain.
The connection was instantaneous.
Not fast. Not quick. Instant. The thread didn't crawl or drift. It snapped into place like a magnet finding iron, bridging the gap between his core and his skull in a single motion.
Adam's thoughts exploded.
The information overload vanished. Everything his eyes were feeding him—every energy flow, every muscle twitch, every angle and trajectory—organized itself into clean, precise streams of data. His mind didn't just process it. It sorted it. Prioritized it. Discarded what was irrelevant and highlighted what mattered.
It was like upgrading from a calculator to a supercomputer.
This is—
Adam glanced down at his core with his enhanced eyes. The flame was smaller than his thumb now. A dying ember. He had almost nothing left.
But his brain was already working. Not in the slow, deliberate way he was used to thinking. It was racing ahead of him—analyzing the situation, mapping escape routes, calculating probabilities. And most importantly, it was doing something his eyes alone couldn't.
It was finding weaknesses.
The tall boy pushed himself upright. His face was twisted with anger. He charged at Adam, right fist cocked back, energy gathering around his knuckles.
Before Adam could consciously decide what to do, his brain had already sent the instruction.
It wasn't a thought. It was more like a notification—a piece of information delivered directly to his body. His center of gravity is high. He's running in a straight line. His guard is completely open below the waist.
Adam didn't punch. He didn't kick in the traditional sense.
He simply raised his foot and placed it in the tall boy's path.
The timing was precise. The boy's momentum carried him straight into it. Adam's foot connected with the space between his legs.
The effect was immediate.
The tall boy's eyes went wide. His mouth opened but no sound came out for a full second. Then a high-pitched noise escaped his throat. His hands dropped from their fighting stance and clutched at his groin. His energy coating shattered—the shimmer around his fists scattered like sparks, and the messy flow inside his body collapsed entirely.
He crumpled to the ground, curling into a ball.
The other two boys froze.
For a moment, nobody moved. The tall boy groaned on the grass, his face buried in the dirt.
Then one of the remaining two—the stockier one—snapped out of it. His face flushed red with rage.
"You—" He stepped forward, fists raised, energy flickering around his knuckles. "You dare? You slum insect!"
He broke into a run.
Adam's eyes shifted to him. His brain responded before the boy had taken three steps.
He's right-foot dominant. His stride is uneven—longer on the left, shorter on the right. When his right foot lands, his balance shifts forward. That's the opening.
Adam lowered the foot that had struck the tall boy. He shifted his weight to his other leg and extended it out—low, angled, positioned exactly where the stocky boy's right foot would land on his next stride.
The boy's foot came down on Adam's.
Adam pressed down with a sharp, controlled push.
The boy's ankle buckled. His momentum did the rest. He pitched forward, arms flailing, and slammed face-first into the grass. His energy coating fizzled out on impact.
Adam stood between two fallen boys. His face was drenched in sweat. His body was shaking.
He looked at the third boy.
The third boy—the smallest of the three—stared at Adam with wide eyes. He raised both hands in front of his chest, palms out.
"Don't—" His voice cracked. "Don't do anything to me."
Adam didn't respond. He didn't nod. He didn't smile.
He turned and ran.
His feet hit the grass, then the dirt, then the rough path that led back toward the outskirts of the slum. He didn't look behind him. He didn't slow down.
As he ran, he severed the connections. First the brain. Then the eyes.
The effect was immediate and brutal.
His vision snapped back to normal—the energy layer vanished, the world became ordinary again. His thoughts slowed from a torrent to a trickle. The supercomputer shut down, and what replaced it was a dull, pounding ache that spread from the center of his skull outward, pressing against the inside of his forehead like a fist.
Adam stumbled but didn't stop. The headache was bad—worse than anything he'd felt since arriving in this body. It felt like his brain had been running at ten times its capacity and was now paying the price.
He gritted his teeth and kept running.