This was industrial quiet — a low, constant hum stitched from distant traffic, humming electrical boxes, and the occasional thunderous rattle of a train tearing overhead. The brick walls sweated damp. Diesel clung to the air, metallic and old.
It was the perfect place to break things.
Under the sodium-orange flicker of a dying streetlight, Kam ran tight loops around a stack of old tyres, feet slapping against cracked asphalt. His breath came in steady bursts, fogging in the cold.
Leo stood off to the side, tablet glowing against his face. “Pace is good,” he said. “Keep the rhythm.”
“Now!” Taylor barked. “Hard brake!”
Kam slammed his lead foot down and tried to engage the weight — just for the stop, just for a second.
He mistimed it.
The ground gave way with a brutal crunch.
He didn’t stop so much as sink. His trainer punched straight through the ageing asphalt like it was wet cardboard, gravel and dust exploding outward. Kam lurched forward, catching himself on the tyres before he face?planted.
“Too slow on the toggle,” he gasped.
Taylor shook his head. “You’re lagging, bro. The input delay is insane. You need frame?perfect execution. On. Off.”
“It’s the vascular dilation,” Leo said, already tapping at the screen. “Four seconds to fully pressurize, six to depressurize. You’re trying to do it in half a second.”
Kam dragged his foot out of the fresh pothole. His leg trembled. Sweat soaked through his shirt.
“Again.”
Taylor held up a hand. “Nah. Switch it up. Target practice.”
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
They moved deeper beneath the arch, where a rusted iron girder jutted vertically from the concrete — a forgotten relic of some abandoned construction job. Thick. Solid. Cold.
“Don’t think about being heavy,” Taylor said. “Think about the impact frame. You’re normal speed until the very last second. Then you toggle.”
Kam squared up to the beam. Shook out his arms. Focused.
Normal speed. Just a punch. Just flesh and bone.
He threw the right hook.
It felt fast. Light. Almost disappointing.
A fraction of a second before his knuckles touched rust, he pushed.
No glow. No roar. He just became dense.
The sound that followed wasn’t a metallic clang.
It was worse.
A wet, heavy crunch — something unyielding being forced to yield anyway.
Kam pulled his hand back. His knuckles were scraped and bleeding, but intact.
The girder wasn’t.
The iron had warped inward, dented deep, like someone had punched ballistic clay. Rust dust drifted lazily through the cold air.
Taylor stared, mouth opening, then closing again. “Okay,” he said finally. “That’s… that’s a crit.”
Leo’s eyes were wide. “The kinetic output… that shouldn’t be possible without hydraulics.”
Kam looked at his hand. It worked. The stance switch.
Then the bill arrived.
His knees buckled.
The energy required to flash?pressurize his entire body for a fraction of a second hit him all at once. It felt worse than running a marathon in ten seconds. Kam slid down the brick wall and hit the ground hard, chest heaving. Wisps of steam rose from his shoulders where body heat met freezing night air.
Taylor crouched beside him, shoving his phone into Kam’s face. The stopwatch read 00:00:45.
“Forty?five milliseconds,” Taylor said, grinning like a lunatic. “That was the window. Less than a tenth of a second.”
Kam wheezed. “Feels like… I just carried a bus… up a hill.”
“It’s a massive stamina drain,” Leo said, fingers flying. “You can’t spam this. Maybe five or six micro?doses before total exhaustion.”
Kam leaned his head back against the gritty brick. He was shaking, bleeding, sprawled in a puddle under a railway arch.
He had never felt better.
“Five is enough,” he said.
---
The kitchen was too clean.
Bleach hung in the air, sharp and clinical, undercut by the smell of stew simmering on the stove. The house was quiet in a way that felt intentional.
Kam came in through the back door, legs still unsteady from the aftermath of Heavy Mode. He tried to walk normally. It felt like moving on jelly.
“I’m back.”
“You’re late.”
His mum didn’t turn as she said it.
When she did, the room shifted. She wasn’t large, not physically, but her presence filled the space like pressure. She had Kam’s eyes, but where his were reactive and restless, hers were cold, hard, assessing. A neat housecoat. Perfect posture.
She didn’t say hello.
She walked straight up to him.
“Chin up.”
Kam obeyed, heart pounding. If she saw the fire — he was locked down. If she saw the heavy — questions followed.
Her fingers closed around his chin, cool and firm. She tilted his head left. Then right. Her gaze bored into him.
“Your eyes are dull.”
“Just tired,” Kam said quickly. “Football.”
She narrowed her eyes. “You look grey. Did you take your supplement?”
The code word. Supplement meant coolant.
“Yeah,” he lied. “Of course.”
She held his gaze a moment too long. A scanner sweep. Searching for the glitch.
Then she released him.
“Go wash up. Hands. Thoroughly.”
She turned back to the stove.
“And Kam?”
He froze. “Yeah?”
“Fix the sink in your bathroom.”
His blood went cold.
“I heard the crack last night,” she continued, stirring the stew. “I don’t know what you were doing, but I don’t pay for ceramics to be crushed.”
She didn’t look at him.
“If you break this house, Kam, you fix it. That is the rule.”
“…Yes, Mum.”
He left the kitchen.
The weight lifted the moment he crossed the threshold. She hadn’t shouted. She hadn’t exploded.
She had just been heavy.