He heard a woman shriek in panic while a man shouted in horror. He recognized the woman as Susan and knew the man was her friend trying to court her. After recovering from her initial bout of shock, Susan got up and stared at him. She opened her mouth, ready to say something but didn't. They stared for a while before she tumbled backwards and collapsed on the floor. Her face was pale and her eyes were wide as a saucer. She coughed and crawled as she used an armchair to lift herself up. Sitting down, she turned and looked at him with horror on her face.
"The noise on the tenth floor. Was that you?"
He didn't respond but paced around the room rather slowly. Her own apartment was rather spacious. Roughly five times the size of his. It was split into five sections with each section basically its own unit. There was a bedroom, kitchen with bathroom, a dining room that tripled as a living room and a gaming room, a study room, and a work room. The study room had scientific literature, real estate, and other things she was interested in. The work room had multiple monitors where she conducted her real estate, presumably. It also had a mini gym inside where she could work out instead of wasting time going outside. The bedroom was neatly set unlike the other areas. The gaming room wasn't really a gaming room but more like a board room. She didn't play video games but enjoyed bringing friends over to play dungeons and dragons. She told him all this was she introduced him to the building as well as his own apartment.
He went into the gym and located a barbell with 500 pounds worth of weights. He didn't do anything fancy. Didn't step into proper position. Just bent his knees, grabbed the edge, and stood back up again. Normally, if holding a barbell at the edge, meant that the weight would double itself instead of redistributing the load. This was the effect he wanted to achieve so he stood still holding a one thousand pound dumbbell for god knows how long. He didn't get tired, accumulate fatigue, nor stress over how he was carrying too much. He just looked at Susan like he was doing something trivial.
She forgot to breathe for a full minute. Then when she was about to pass out, finally breathed out.
"Financial troubles? You solved the issue? Did you already give money to the Pearhuts for repair? That's all then. You're free to go"
They were orders but it was more like she gave up saying it. From her point of view, he was a small and skinny kid who could lift three times what those monsters at the gym could do. They were strong but bulky and slow. They didn't offer much protection against a real threat but he could. If she chased off such a goldmine, it would do more harm then good. What was a little rotten milk over her own safety? As long as he dealt with it and didn't involve her, maybe he could continue to deal with future threats in exchange for her ignorance.
He nodded and left but not before taking a quick look at the man who shivered in recoil and smiled amicably at him. The man maybe had some status but in front of such a monster who could intimidate this terrifying girl, physically and mentally, was fully aware of their own limitations.
He nodded before leaving. He went back up to the tenth floor into his apartment. It had been one minute since he left. Megan was still cooking breakfast and didn't notice him. He looked where he normally put his vials and walked over. The table itself was perfectly fine, somehow. However, the syringes and almost every vial was shattered. Inside each syringe was a solution that came from an idea he thought of. It took him the entirety of his freshman and sophomore years to come up with them. He turned the ideas into serums in his junior year. It was supposed to be something with a tiny effect of what he had been going for. In his current, last year as a senior, he was amplifying that effect, to turn his idea into a reality. Of course, he knew the result ahead of time. Nothing. He just needed something to show for his work. Any kind of tangible result that could be measured. That was all for naught now. When he was thrown out the window, in an attempt to preserve his life, his arms smashed through all of it. The chaos didn't fly anywhere but was injected into him as a result of physics.
He knew it was a harmless mixture but was uncomfortable knowing something unknown had saturated every cell of his body. At best they were supposed to be something similar to super weak steroids or a super dose of vitamin c. EoR was different though. He had no idea what the effect of it was. It wasn't a university project. Not really. It was a fringe theory he combined from different sources on the internet when he was bored. He put a chemical twist on it and that was it. It had some kind of reaction. The internet was smart after all.
—
It hit him like a truck, metaphorically. His chest felt like it had caved inwards, but it didn't. There was some kind of physical sensation similar to that. It was like an air bubble that formed out of nowhere and then popped, causing all the resulting air to rush in to fill the gap. Then it traveled out the bottom of his heart and circulated through his veins. It wasn't painful but odd. He noticed it first on the wall. A fly was flapping its wings. He noticed the veins on its tiny frail wings made out of some thin cloth. He blinked. No, it was just a layer of membrane. The arteries carried blood enough for it to sustain itself in the air. He counted at least 500 flaps. Then it took off and flew left, then right in slow motion. It zigged and zagged, unsure where to go next.
Then he smelt the meat and so did it. It turned and flew towards the putrid aroma. The meat was still being cured by the sunshine. It was meant to be some kind of dinner Megan would make for them when he got home. She suggested it would be fun doing it naked. He would wrap his arms around her stomach and kiss her on the shoulders when she started to do her thing. The fly was gong to ruin that so he had to do something about it.
He saw the knife before he felt it. It rotated forward from the bottom his view. It seemed to curve towards the fly. There was a slight humming sound as the metal sliced through the air. The fly noticed it because it tried to alter its path. Superhuman strength against superhuman speed. The fingers missed the fly entirely.