The industrial fan groaned above the boys' locker room, its rusted blades chopping the stench of mildew and teenage sweat into jagged fragments. Leo stared at his reflection in the cracked mirror – eighteen again, but wearing forty years' worth of ghosts in those hollow eyes. The black bracelet clung to his wrist like a lover's corpse, its runes squirming faintly under fluorescent light.
"Yo, Mutt!" A familiar voice ricocheted off chipped tiles. Brad Carson's letterman jacket squeaked as he leaned against the urinals, flanked by twin Neanderthals Leo vaguely recalled dying in a meth lab explosion… last timeline? This timeline?
The baseball bat tapped rhythmically against Brad's Jordans. "Heard you cried at your mommy's funeral. Wanna reenact it?"
Leo's fingernails bit crescent moons into his palms. Count the floor tiles. Breathe through your mouth. Don't let them smell the fear. But the old mantra crumbled as his nostrils flared – sudden, violent clarity.
He could taste their bloodstreams.
Brad's pulsed with synthetic testosterone and Adderall. The twins reeked of nicotine gum and something fungal, rotting between their molars. But beneath it all hummed a darker thread – the same metallic tang from the vagrant's scars.
"What's wrong, Mutt? Gonna piss your –"
The world fractured into hyperfocus.
Leo saw the sweat bead forming near Brad's hairline. Heard the twin on the left shift weight to his right foot a millisecond before lunging. Felt the vibrations of Coach Wilson's footsteps three corridors away.
When the bat swung, time turned gelatinous.
Wood splintered against Leo's forearm. Or rather, through it – except instead of pain, white-hot electricity crawled up his nerves. Brad's smirk died as Leo's fingers closed around the bat's neck, crushing ashwood to pulp.
"You…" Brad stumbled back into a dripping sink. "What the hell are –"
Leo's vision bled amber.
He was moving without moving, a spectator in his own flesh. His fist connected with Brad's jaw. Bone crunched like stale breadsticks. The twins came at him howling, but their fists might as well have been marshmallows.
Too easy. The thought slithered through his synapses, cold and alien. Break the big one's knee. Bite the skinny one's throat. Paint these walls –
"LEO!"
Reality snapped back with the shrillness of fire alarms.
Brad lay whimpering in a puddle of urine and bloodied molars. The twins' arms bent at impossible angles. And there, in the doorway – Jessica Marlowe, AP Bio partner, debate team captain, the girl who'd ghosted him after Mom's funeral. Her chemistry textbook lay forgotten at her feet.
The bracelet pulsed.
Leo fled.
Rain lashed the abandoned carousel in Prospect Park, its chipped horses frozen mid-gallop under the bleeding moon. Leo hunched behind Dante's Inferno-themed chariot, watching rainwater swirl pink down his trembling hands.
Not healing. The bullet wound (when had he been shot?) above his left hip knit itself closed with audible pops. Changing.
His phone buzzed – seven missed calls from Dad's lab. Ignoring it, he scrolled to a photo from better days: Mom smiling under the Coney Island Ferris wheel, her sundress fluttering. The timestamp read July 4th, 2003.
Three years before the "accident."
Two years before Dad started locking the basement.
A howl split the night, too guttural for any NYC coyote. Leo's hackles rose as shadows detached from the maintenance shed. Not dogs. Not quite.
The Doberman's eyes reflected crimson. Its companion – some Rottweiler mix – dripped viscous saliva that sizzled where it struck pavement. But worst were their collars: glowing runes matching his bracelet.
"Good puppies," crooned a voice from the carousel's upper deck.
The vagrant leaned against a cracked mirror, peeling a tangerine with blackened nails. Rain slid off him like he was carved from obsidian.
"You." Leo bared teeth that felt suddenly too sharp. "What did you do to me?"
The old man spat a seed. It sprouted mid-air, tendrils whipping before crumbling to ash. "Merely returned what your bloodline stole."
Memories erupted – Dad's lab freezer stacked with silver vials. Mom's midnight screams before the ambulance came. The way they'd never let him visit her hospital room.
"Your father's 'research' required certain… sacrifices." The vagrant tapped his rune-scarred temple. "Pity he chose the wrong god to play with."
The Doberman lunged.
Leo's body moved on instincts not wholly human. He sidestepped, grabbing the beast's collar. The runes blistered his palm, but the dog yelped louder – its flesh smoking where he made contact.
"Fascinating." The vagrant leaned forward as Leo dispatched the second hound with a kick that shattered ribs. "The bracelet's accepting you faster than –"
Twin red dots appeared on his chest.
The sniper round took the vagrant through the throat. He collapsed gurgling, but his eyes burned with manic triumph as black ooze bubbled from the wound.
"Target contained," crackled a voice through the rain. "Secure the asset."
Men in black tactical gear emerged from the downpour, their face shields reflecting Leo's feral snarl. The lead operative's patch showed a wolf's head crossed with double helixes.
But it was the insignia on their van doors that froze Leo's blood – the same logo from Dad's lab coats.
Nightwatch Genetics.
As the tranq dart pierced his neck, Leo's fading vision caught a glimpse of the van's interior. Suspended in a fluid-filled tank was a boy with his face, chest stitched with glowing runes.
Then darkness.