Klein stuck to the darker streets.
He chose the narrower alleys deliberately — the kind with broken lights, dumpsters lining the walls, fire escapes overhead casting ladder-shaped shadows on the pavement. With every step, threads extended silently outward from him in every direction, spreading into the surrounding dark like an invisible web. Into corners, into recessed doorways, up the fire escape rungs above.
He'd been walking about ten minutes when he turned into a dead-end alley that smelled like sour garbage and old rain.
He stopped at the entrance and pulled out his phone, putting on the performance — squinting at the screen, swiping clumsily, muttering to himself. "That's weird, the map said there's an Express Hotel around here somewhere..."
Through the threads, he felt them before he saw them.
Two figures slipping out from the shadows near the alley entrance — one left, one right, cutting off his exit. Two more rising from the clutter deeper in the dead end, the particular silhouette of people holding things they wanted to use.
Four. Surrounded front and back.
Klein let the phone-checking expression shift into a very convincing look of panic. He turned around, hands coming up to his chest, taking a half-step backward — just enough to make the bulging back pocket impossible to miss.
"W-what do you want? I don't — I don't have any money—" His voice cracked on cue.
The two blocking the entrance stepped into the dim light. Both white guys, late teens or early twenties — one tall and wiry, one shorter and built like a fireplug, both in jackets that had seen better decades. The tall one reached behind his back and produced a switchblade. It snapped open with a practiced flick, the blade catching the yellow glow of the one functioning streetlight.
"Easy, man." The stocky one grinned — a wide, yellow-toothed grin — and spread his hands like he was being reasonable. "We just noticed you looked a little lost. We're helpful guys. You give us whatever's in that pocket, we point you where you need to go. Simple transaction."
The two from the back of the alley moved up with steel pipes. The four of them arranged themselves in a loose semicircle, blocking every angle.
"I really don't — I don't have anything—" Klein pressed back against the brick wall, letting his legs go visibly unsteady, voice climbing toward a sob.
"Stop wasting time." The tall one's patience evaporated. He took a step forward, knife extended. "Take it out yourself or we do it for you. Three seconds."
The fear on Klein's face disappeared.
Not gradually — all at once, like a mask being lifted. He lowered his hands from his chest and straightened up slowly, and something in the quality of his stillness made the tall mugger's next step falter without him knowing why.
Klein's right index finger, still tucked in his jacket pocket, moved once.
Swish. Swish. Swish. Swish.
Four sounds, barely audible, almost simultaneous.
The muggers felt a sharp sting at their ankles — then a sudden, brutal pull — and then the ground came up to meet all four of them at once.
The impacts were ugly. Pipes and the switchblade clattered away across the alley floor. There was a chorus of grunts, curses, and one genuinely pained yell.
All four lay sprawled in various undignified positions, staring at their feet in disbelief.
Their ankles were bound — wrapped tight in threads so fine they were nearly invisible, but absolutely immovable. The more they pulled, the tighter the threads bit into skin.
"What the — what the hell is this?!"
"I can't — it won't—"
"It's him! Get him, it's him doing it—"
The stocky one was already reaching for the pipe that had skidded nearby, face red with fury and humiliation.
Klein stepped forward at a leisurely pace, crouched down, and picked up the switchblade. He turned it over in his fingers once.
"Cheap steel," he observed mildly.
He closed his hand around the blade.
When he opened it, the metal had been bent out of shape like modeling clay. He set the ruined thing down on the pavement with a small, almost polite click.
The reaching hand stopped. Four faces went from red to white.
Klein squatted down in front of the tall mugger, rested his elbows on his knees, and looked at him with an expression of genuine patience.
"Okay," he said pleasantly. "So. I do have something valuable on me." He patted his back pocket. "But here's the thing — this is my money. Which makes taking it unreasonable. Right?"
The tall mugger stared at him with the eyes of a man whose brain had stopped processing normally. He nodded. Fast.
"Completely unreasonable," he agreed.
"Good." Klein stood back up. "So now we talk about compensation. You attempted to rob me. That caused me distress. Emotional damage. Loss of a perfectly good evening." He looked down the line of them. "Wallets out. Phones. Watches, jewelry, whatever you've got. All of it. Don't make me ask twice."
A silence.
Klein raised one finger.
"Ah—!"
The threads tightened. Just once, just briefly. A warning.
Four wallets hit the ground. Three phones followed. A peeling digital watch. Two gold-plated necklaces that were probably worth eight dollars combined.
Klein crouched, collected everything into the canvas bag he'd brought, and checked the wallets. He counted the cash from all four.
"Not even two hundred dollars total." He looked up. "You're out here robbing people and this is what you're working with?"
He stuffed the cash in the bag and dropped the empty wallets back on the ground.
"Big bro—" the stocky one started, voice pitched two registers higher than before. "You got the money. Can you just — please—"
"Let you go?" Klein tilted his head like he was genuinely considering it.
Then he shrugged. "Sure. A deal's a deal."
His fingers moved again.
The threads unwound — loosening smoothly, retracting back to his fingertips and vanishing. The four muggers sat up slowly, like men who'd been told the electric fence was off and didn't entirely believe it.
Klein stood, slung the canvas bag over his shoulder, and looked down at them one last time.
"Next time pick a different neighborhood," he said, not unkindly.
Then he turned and walked back out of the alley, hands in his pockets, footsteps unhurried.
Behind him he could hear the scramble of four people getting to their feet and moving very fast in the opposite direction.
He emerged onto the street and let out a slow breath.
Finally. Some actual return on investment.
He checked the bag. Phones he could resell. The necklaces too, probably, even at melt value. Plus the cash. Not exactly a fortune, but it was a start.
Klein glanced at the deeper alleys branching off both sides of the street, shadows layered on shadows, the occasional distant sound that might have been anything.
"Economics," he muttered to himself with a dry smile, "has a much slower ROI than this."
He adjusted the bag on his shoulder and kept walking.
The night was still young.
[End of Chapter 8]
Show Some By Powerstones
Next BONUS CHAPTER at 200 powerstones