The People's Everyday Liquor, a Special Counter to the X-Gene
Riptide tried to use his power.
The military-grade blast-resistant glass was at least four centimeters thick, set in a single cast-steel frame.
The electronic lock panel glowed blue. It required a fingerprint and a six-digit code, and a warning sign stood beside it.
Unauthorized opening would trigger a C4 self-destruct device.
His younger brother lay on an iron bed three meters behind the door.
Riptide spread his hands, cyclones gathering in his palms, and an image flashed through his mind.
When Anton was twelve, he had chased after him, holding up a crayon drawing and shouting.
"Big brother, look at the tornado I drew!"
That drawing was still tucked away at the very bottom of his backpack.
The colored-pencil strokes had long since been rubbed smudged, but the crooked signature in the corner was still there: Anton Quist.
Back then.
Fuck back then.
The cyclones gathering in Riptide's palms began to grow.
"Hey, hey, hey! Don't move, I'll do it!"
Sing Sing reached behind his waist and drew his Pig Butchering Knife.
Riptide's face turned green.
"Even armor-piercing rounds can't get through this door! You're taking a..."
He looked down at the knife and struggled for words for two seconds.
"You're going to hack at it with a meat knife?"
Sing Sing shot him a sidelong glance that clearly said, Watch and learn, kid.
A black rubber seal ran along the junction between the tempered glass and the steel doorframe.
Beneath the seal was the physical fastening mechanism: the lock bolt.
The electronic lock's bolt was made of alloy, but there was an unavoidable engineering gap where it slotted into the doorframe.
Nothing in this world fitted together absolutely perfectly; there was always a gap.
Find the gap, and you could pry it out.
Sing Sing braced his left hand against the top of the doorframe to steady himself, then gripped the knife in his right and slipped the thin tip of the blade along the edge of the seal.
The tip touched metal.
He closed his eyes.
The Pig Butchering Knife's blade slid into the gap, less than two millimeters wide, and paused when it met the side of the bolt.
Sing Sing adjusted the angle, sliding the blade along the bolt's curved surface to the base of the catch.
Click.
The military electronic lock panel popped off the doorframe and clattered to the floor, a length of wire still attached.
The blast door sprang open a crack.
There was no explosion.
The C4 was triggered by unauthorized activation of the panel, and Sing Sing hadn't touched the panel at all.
He had physically pried out the entire lock mechanism.
Riptide stared, dumbfounded.
Sing Sing slipped the Pig Butchering Knife back behind his waist.
"Same principle as deboning pork ribs at the market. Find the joint and give it a gentle flick."
"That's an alloy lock bolt..."
"Pork bones are hard too. Ever cut one?"
Riptide hadn't. He had barely even set foot in a kitchen in his life.
The two slipped into the cell.
Riptide rushed to the iron bed, taking three steps in two, and gripped his brother's shoulders with both hands, his voice trembling.
"Anton! It's me! Your brother!"
Anton's eyes remained closed, and he didn't respond.
The patterns on his arms were still writhing slowly.
Riptide reached for the metal cuff on his wrist and tried to pry it open. It was cast from refined steel, with a press-lock mechanism that required a special tool to open.
"Anton, can you hear me? Wake up!"
Anton's eyelids twitched, then suddenly flew open.
Something was wrong with his eyes.
His pupils and irises were covered by a layer of silver-gray inorganic matter, and his gaze was unfocused.
"Anton!"
A shriek answered him.
The refined-steel cuffs on the bed were torn apart, and Anton's right fist slammed into Riptide's chest.
Riptide smashed into the wall three meters away, leaving a dent in it.
He slid to the floor, blood seeping from the corner of his mouth, and couldn't catch his breath for a long moment.
He tried to stand, but his knees trembled twice, and his palm was cut bloody by shards of glass as he pushed himself up, only managing to raise his upper body.
Anton flipped off the iron bed and stood up. The silver patterns on his arms had spread to his neck and were creeping up his face.
The screen of the data panel at the head of the bed had shattered, not from a blow, but from an explosion inside.
The medical monitors on the wall burst one after another, scattering shards of glass and circuit boards across the floor.
The fluorescent tubes on the ceiling exploded into powder, their filaments glowing red and twisting together.
An unstable magnetic field.
The X-Genes forcibly implanted in Anton were running out of control, and the rejection reaction had triggered some kind of magnetic interference.
An alarm blared.
Red warning lights began to rotate, flashing and staining the entire corridor blood-red.
A rapid drum of footsteps approached from a distance.
Anton's silver-gray pupils locked onto Sing Sing.
No recognition, no judgment, only the urge to attack, driven by his rampaging genes.
He lunged at Sing Sing.
He was fast. Magnetic ripples surrounded his mutated fist, and as it cut through the air, metal fragments rose from the floor and flew toward Sing Sing with it.
Sing Sing didn't dodge. He pulled out a half-full bottle of Red Star Erguotou and caught Anton's incoming wrist with his left hand.
The bones dug painfully into his palm. The kid's forearm was already nearly as hard as metal.
He raised the bottle in his right hand, tilted his head back, and took a huge mouthful.
His cheeks bulged to their limit.
Anton's left fist followed. Sing Sing tilted his head aside to dodge, leaned close to Anton's face, and spat with a puff.
A cloud of liquor mist sprayed over Anton's face.
The strong liquor, atomized in his mouth, was propelled by a long breath of inner qi, driving the alcohol droplets straight into Anton's nose and mouth.
An extreme burn.
The fiery bite of the Erguotou, mixed with the hot inner qi, shot straight to the top of his head.
The alcohol irritated the lining of his nose, triggering a violent physiological stress reflex.
Anton's silver-gray pupils contracted, and his facial muscles spasmed twice.
"Achoo!" The metallic patterns spread much more slowly.
After the second sneeze, the silver-gray sheen on his skin began to dim.
"Achoo!!"
The third sneeze was so powerful that it jolted Anton himself two steps backward.
The whites of his eyes rolled upward, and he fell stiffly backward.
His body, weighing over 140 jin, slapped against the ground, and the back of his head bounced once against the floor.
He was out cold.
Sing Sing shook the liquor from his hand and looked down at the now-empty bottle of Erguotou in his arms.
"What a waste. I was going to save some to drink on the way."
Illustration
Riptide pushed himself up from the base of the wall and limped over, clutching his chest, then looked at his unconscious brother on the floor.
Snot and liquor covered Anton's face, but his breathing was steady.
"Did you just... spray baijiu in his face?"
"Erguotou."
Sing Sing corrected him.
"The people's everyday liquor. Those gene suppressants of yours in the United States cost millions and don't work, but this does."
Riptide was silent for a moment, then gave him a thumbs-up.
"Awesome!"
Sing Sing crouched down to check Anton's pulse and temperature, his mind racing.
Inner qi mixed with alcohol could interrupt the rampage, but only temporarily.
If the root cause of this X-Gene rejection reaction wasn't resolved, the next episode would be even worse.
They needed a professional to deal with it.
Da Vinci might have a solution, but that would have to wait until they got back.
The footsteps outside in the corridor were already close.
Sing Sing hoisted Anton onto his right shoulder and drew his Pig Butchering Knife with his left hand.
With a man weighing over 140 jin on his shoulder, his back didn't even bend.
Back when he sold pork, he had made several trips every day carrying half a pig from the cold storage room to the chopping block. A whole pig weighed over 200 jin.