The chemistry lab reeked of sulfur and adolescent desperation. Leo pressed his forehead against the cold fume hood, listening to the second hand of the wall clock scrape its way toward 3:15pm. Five minutes until Brad Carson's crew would "accidentally" bump into him by the lockers. Again.
The bracelet throbbed.
He'd been charting its pulse patterns since homeroom – 67 beats per minute during Mrs. Kowalski's calculus drone, spiking to 114 when Jessica Marlowe's strawberry shampoo wafted by. Now, as the final bell's dying screech echoed through the halls, it hammered at 153 bpm.
Like it's excited.
"Yo, Mutt!" Brad's shadow fell across the periodic table poster, distorted by the greenish glow of emergency exit signs. "Heard you've been sniffing around my girl."
Jessica stood half-hidden behind the twins, her knuckles white around a Bio textbook. The scent hit Leo first – fear-sweat and Shalimar perfume, undercut by something medicinal. Propranolol. Beta blockers. He'd stolen those pills for Mom during her last…
The aluminum bat tapped Leo's cheek. "What's wrong? Cat got your –"
Metal shrieked.
Leo stared at his hand gripping the bat's neck. Brad's smirk froze as the alloy tubing crumpled like soda cans under a truck tire. Frost patterns bloomed where Leo's fingers touched the metal, the bracelet's runes glowing faintly through his sleeve.
"What the actual f–"
Leo moved.
The world fractured into snapshots – Brad's Adam's apple bobbing, a molar dislodging in slow motion, Jessica's textbook hitting the floor with pages splayed like broken wings. Something primal purred in his marrow as the twin's nose cartilage crunched under his palm.
More, the voice slithered through his synapses. Break the kneecaps. Taste the arteries.
"STOP!" Jessica's scream pierced the red haze.
Brad lay twitching in a pool of piss and bloodied molars. One twin curled fetal around shattered ribs. The other stared at his own hand protruding from the broken aquarium – glass shards glittering among dying guppies.
The bracelet's pulse syncopated with Leo's racing heart.
He fled toward the woods behind the football field, the taste of copper flooding his mouth. Not blood. Pennies. Mom's coffin lowering into the ground as rain melted the cheap gold plating on the handles.
Dusk painted the forest in bruise tones. Leo crouched under a lightning-split oak, retching up bile and half-digested cafeteria fries. His phone buzzed – thirteen missed calls from "Nightwatch Genetics" and one voicemail from Dad's lab assistant:
"Your father's… specimens are becoming agitated. We need your blood samples before –"
Delete.
Moonlight filtered through dead pines, casting cage-bar shadows. The bracelet's runes squirmed against his skin, whispering in a language that made his molars ache. He scraped them against tree bark until sap bled black.
"They'll come for you now."
Leo spun. The vagrant leaned against a lichen-covered boulder, peeling a rotting tangerine with nails like obsidian shards. "Your little display broke the masquerade."
"What masquerade?" Leo's voice came out raspier than intended.
The old man spat seeds that sprouted mid-air before withering. "The lie that separates their world from ours." He gestured with the fruit's rancid flesh. "Your father's employers have been breeding hunters since Salem. Now they'll either cage you or crack you open for parts."
A twig snapped.
Six figures emerged from the gloaming – three in SWAT gear, three in lab coats. The lead scientist adjusted night vision goggles, her voice crisp through the respirator: "Subject X-07, you're contaminating the experiment."
Leo's nostrils flared. Under the sterile alcohol scent, he caught the vagrant's signature rot-moss stench… coming from the scientists.
The bracelet burned.
"Run, cub." The vagrant's teeth glinted sharp as surgical steel. "I'll entertain our guests."
As Leo crashed through the underbrush, inhuman shrieks erupted behind him. Not human. Not animal. Something that chittered like cicadas and roared like subway trains braking.
He didn't stop until reaching the abandoned ranger station. Inside, Polaroids papered the walls – missing hikers, mangled livestock, a shadowy figure with glowing eyes that matched Leo's new reflection.
The last photo froze his blood.
Dad stood smiling beside a containment tank, arm around a boy with Leo's face... and the vagrant's rune scars.