The bite of tobacco mingled with something even more acrid, bringing tears to Evan's eyes.
Outside the blanket, laughter erupted.
"Ha ha ha ha!"
"Let the disease-ridden boy have a taste of smoked meat!"
The laughter echoed through the marble hall, shrill and grating.
Under the blanket, Evan's eyes were red, their whites streaked with blood.
It wasn't the smoke.
It was rage.
With a Physique of 1.003, he was no match for three American football players.
Their thick arms crossed around him like ropes pulled tight. Every time he struggled, greater strength forced him back.
But angry as he was, his mind kept working.
The twenty-nine-year-old soul from Earth had been around the block. He had plenty of experience with street fights.
He had even spent some time training in No-Holds-Barred Fighting.
As he struggled, he had worked out roughly where the three stood and which way each was applying force.
His arms were pinned. He couldn't put any strength into them.
But he could move his hands.
The next instant, his right hand searched the cramped space. His fingertips found something soft and round.
He grabbed it.
Then he twisted hard.
"Aaaaaah!"
A gut-wrenching scream burst from his right. It rose so high it nearly changed pitch, like Tom Cat with his tail stepped on.
A gap opened in the ring of arms around him. The pressure on his right vanished.
Evan didn't hesitate.
He raised his right foot and brought the hard heel of the Leather Shoes Old Tom had just repaired down on the foot of the man to his left.
He drove his full weight, and all his anger, into that one point.
"Damn it! My shoe! My foot!"
Another scream.
Two men let go. The hold broke completely.
Evan seized the opening, opened his mouth, and let out a beastlike howl from deep in his chest.
"Awooo!"
It hardly sounded as though it came from a human throat.
It was shrill, crazed, and recklessly aggressive.
This was a No-Holds-Barred Fighting technique: in a street fight, a sufficiently deranged howl could make an opponent back off more effectively than a punch.
Normal people didn't make a sound like that. Only someone truly crazy, someone with nothing to lose, would.
The howl worked even better than Evan had expected.
The brain damage from the drug trial seemed to have left something loose in his head. There was no menace in the sound.
Instead, it was eerie and utterly mad.
The last man's arms went slack.
Evan ripped off the blanket. Cold air and light rushed in together.
Static had made his hair stand on end. His face was flushed, his eyes bloodshot. He looked like a demon fresh out of hell.
He seemed to have slipped into some strange state. Words spilled from his mouth beyond his control.
"Hee hee... I have to survive..."
His gaze locked onto Lebon.
The blond young man in the pale blue shirt was crouched two steps away, still clutching the copper tube. His lips hovered at its opening, and the smile had yet to leave his face.
Evan raised his heavy bookbag with both hands and swung it at Lebon's head like a hammer.
"Hee hee..."
The chemistry textbook, physics textbook, Notebook, and metal pencil case inside weighed at least ten pounds together.
Thud!
A dull impact.
The bottom of the bag struck Lebon square in the forehead.
The copper tube flew from his hand and bounced twice across the marble floor with a clatter.
Lebon gave a short scream and crouched, both hands pressed to his forehead. Blood seeped between his fingers.
Behind Evan, Thompson flew into a rage and strode forward.
Evan turned to face him.
Then he did something nobody expected.
He gave a forceful cough deep in his throat, brought up a thick wad of phlegm, and spat it straight at Thompson's face.
The stringy, sticky mass smacked onto Thompson's right cheek.
"Welcome to the French Pox Boy Club. Heh heh heh..."
Evan's voice was strange and absurd. His face was red, his eyes wide, and a twisted smile hung on his lips.
He looked less like an eighteen-year-old university student than one of the desperate men in Gooding Street's alleys who would stop at nothing.
Thompson's face went white.
Not from pain. From fear.
Syphilis. French Pox. The cursed...
The words exploded in his head like a Bomb.
He came from a middle-class family, attended a prestigious university, and was a rising American football star. He was his whole family's pride.
If he caught that Disease, even if it was only a rumor, everything he had would be over.
He hurried backward, scrubbing frantically at his face with one hand while holding the other out in front of him.
Evan gave him no chance to recover.
He stepped forward, drove from his hips, and sprang off his right leg into a General Yu Flying Kick, planting his foot squarely in Thompson's stomach.
Powered by a Physique of 1.003, the kick hit far harder than anyone would expect from a sickly man.
Thompson's wall-like body staggered back three steps. His heel caught the edge of a stair.
He fell backward onto the staircase, his tailbone striking the corner of a marble step with a heavy thump.
All four of them were hurt.
One lay curled on the floor, clutching his groin, face deathly pale and lips trembling too badly to make a sound.
Another limped backward, holding his foot.
Lebon crouched with a hand over his bleeding forehead, tears and blood running together down his face.
Thompson lay on the steps, wiping his cheek, disbelief all over his face.
The entire hall fell deathly silent.
Everyone was stunned.
The students who had been laughing moments ago stood open-mouthed, as if someone had pressed pause.
Evan stood in the middle of the hall, his chest heaving and his breathing heavy.
He bent to pick up his fallen bookbag, opened an outer pocket, and drew a Fountain Pen with his right hand and a steel Compass with his left.
The pen tip and the Compass's point glinted coldly under the hall lights.
Holding them both, he turned toward Lebon, who was clutching his forehead and trying to stand.
"I'll give you two more red buffs!"
He didn't speak loudly, but he forced every word through his teeth, his intent to kill plain to hear.
Lebon looked up. Through the blood between his fingers, he saw Evan's face.
He saw the bloodshot eyes, flushed cheeks, twisted smile, and two sharp objects gleaming in Evan's hands.
He didn't see a classmate. He saw a madman who might stab someone to death at any moment.
A dark wet patch spread across Lebon's crotch.
He let out a wavering wail, scrambled to his feet, and fled. As he ran, his gold-plated collar pin sprang loose.
It landed on the marble with a ding. He stepped on it, sending it skidding far away.
Evan chased him two steps, then stopped and turned toward Thompson on the stairs.
The rising American football star met his eyes.
In that instant, Thompson saw something in Evan's gaze that chilled his spine.
It wasn't anger. He had seen anger before.
It was something deeper, more primal: a cornered beast that no longer cared whether it lived, only whether it could tear a chunk of flesh from its enemy before it died.
He had come to bully a sickly man for fun.
He hadn't come to fight for his life.
He had a bright future ahead of him: an American football scholarship, his father's business, his Family's expectations.
He couldn't throw all that away over a madman.
Thompson scrambled up from the steps and ran. His heavy footsteps pounded down the corridor as he shouted.
"Arkham's gone mad! The Arkhamite's gone berserk again!"
His voice faded until it disappeared around the corner.
The other two, one clutching his groin and the other his foot, had used the time Evan spent chasing Lebon and Thompson to scramble away.
Only Evan remained in the middle of the hall.
He stood there with the Fountain Pen in his right hand and the Compass in his left, his chest heaving.
Sweat slid down his forehead and dripped onto the marble floor.
He turned to face the students still standing stunned in the hall.
Men and women, some in three-piece suits, others wearing tie clips—all of them stared at him, shock and fear written in their eyes.
"Stay the fuck away from me from now on."
Evan's voice was hoarse but strong, bouncing between the marble walls.
"Four against one, and you still couldn't win. Useless, every one of you."
Several girls burst into tears at his shout and retreated behind the crowd with their hands over their mouths.
The boys took a step back too. None dared meet his eyes.
Hurried footsteps came from the far end of the corridor.
Several teachers had finally arrived.
They rushed into the hall and found it in disarray.
A torn blanket, a copper tube, a gold-plated collar pin, and several trampled textbooks lay scattered across the floor.
Drops of blood marked the marble from the center of the hall to the corridor corner.
And in the middle of the hall stood a lone, thin young man in a patched jacket.
There was blood on both his hands. He held a Fountain Pen in his right and a Compass in his left. His face was flushed, his breathing heavy, and his eyes still bloodshot.
"You there! Put down those weapons, now!"
The teacher at the front barked the order, unmistakable tension in his voice.
Evan raised his hands on instinct.
Within seconds, his expression had settled. Still panting, he said,
"There's been a misunderstanding, sir. These aren't weapons. They're stationery."
His voice was steady and clear, even a little polite.
"Besides, I'm the one who was being bullied."