The bright morning sunlight filtered through the window blinds.

  Silas was abruptly forced awake by a sharp, shattering sound echoing down the hallway. He groaned, burying his face deeper into his pillow, barely opening his eyes. He wondered groggily what on earth had made that noise.

  Then, he heard it again. Crash. Now completely aware that it was the sound of thick glass shattering against the kitchen tiles, Silas let out an annoyed sigh. He threw the blanket off to go see what had happened.

  He jumped off his bed—but something went terribly wrong.

  He pushed off the mattress, and his body launched forward with unexpected, aggressive force. He stumbled hard, flying across the room. He slammed his shoulder into the bedroom wall and barely missed cracking his head against the sharp edge of his desk.

  Silas blinked, rubbing his head in confusion. I applied way too much force to that jump, he thought, shaking off the weird dizziness.

  He walked out of his room, still half-asleep, and dragged his feet down the hallway. He stopped at the entrance to the kitchen.

  Dante and Ronan were standing frozen in the middle of the room. Two or three heavy drinking glasses lay completely shattered on the floor, surrounded by a large puddle of spilled water.

  Silas looked to the left. Mason was standing near the bathroom door, staring blankly at his own hand. He was holding a plastic toothbrush that had been snapped perfectly in half.

  Silas made a deeply annoyed face. His expression clearly laid out his exact thoughts: What the fuck are these guys doing first thing in the morning?

  He let out a heavy, exhausted sigh. "Clean it all up," Silas muttered, rubbing his eyes. "And don't cause anymore ruckus. I'm going back to sleep."

  He turned around to head back to his room.

  "Silas, wait," Dante said, his voice unusually tight. "Something is wrong."

  Silas, who was barely keeping himself awake, looked back over his shoulder without turning his body. He was clearly not in the mood for any nonsense.

  Without saying a word, Dante reached onto the counter. He grabbed another thick, heavy-duty glass. He squeezed his fist.

  With a sharp crunch, the thick glass shattered into dozens of pieces in his bare hand. The shards rained down onto the wet floor.

  Now, Silas was genuinely pissed. "What the fuck are you doing?!" Silas yelled, his sleepiness instantly vanishing.

  "How did a glass that thick break so easily?" Dante asked. His voice was trembling as he looked at his completely uninjured palm. "I barely even squeezed it."

  "What does that have anything to do with the fact that you just broke it deliberately?!" Silas snapped.

  Furious, Silas took a heavy step toward Dante. But as his foot hit the floor, he was completely shocked.

  His balance was entirely off. His leg muscles fired with a dense, heavy, unnatural power. He launched his body way too far forward, tripping clumsily over his own feet. He was going to fall. His face was about to drop right into the pile of jagged, broken glass shards on the floor.

  Acting on pure instinct, Silas threw both of his hands down to brace for the impact. His palms landed directly on top of the sharpest glass shards.

  Fuck, Silas cursed in his mind, squeezing his eyes shut. I shouldn't have gotten up worried for these idiots.

  He hit the floor hard. But there was no piercing pain. No blood.

  Instead, he heard the shards crunch and grind against the floor tiles beneath him. Silas slowly opened his eyes. He had regained his balance in a crouched position. He lifted his hands, fully expecting to see deep, gaping cuts.

  He had no injuries. The skin on his palms was completely unbroken.

  The glass shards beneath his hands had simply cracked and ground into smaller, duller pieces under his shifting weight. His muscle density and skin toughness had clearly increased dramatically overnight.

  He slowly looked up at the others.

  "Told you," Dante whispered.

  Silas's eyes widened. He instantly remembered how he had jumped way too far off his bed a few minutes ago. And then, he remembered the mutated leaf and the silver dust from last night.

  He scrambled off the floor and ran frantically back to his room. He threw his shirt off, standing in just his shorts in front of his full-length mirror. He stared at his reflection, turning from side to side.

  There was absolutely no visual change. His muscles weren't noticeably larger. There was no visible mutation whatsoever.

  He hurriedly went through his desk drawers, finding his heavy-duty metal grip strength trainer. He squeezed it. He pushed past his normal limit, feeling the thick steel coil resist.

  Snap. The heavy metal spring broke clean in half.

  His strength wasn't magic, but it was incredibly, physically dense. Silas walked back out to the hallway. He looked at Mason, Dante, and Ronan.

  "Everyone, listen to me," Silas said, his voice deadly serious. "Hold everything gently. Do not apply any unnecessary force to anything. And clean up the mess you just caused."

  Silas went back to his room and put his clothes back on. He walked over to the heavy metal pull-up bar securely mounted to the wall of his bedroom. Before the mutation, Silas was already in great shape. He could do about forty strict pull-ups before his arms gave out.

  He jumped up, grabbed the bar, and started pulling.

  He hit forty, and his muscles barely burned. He kept going. Fifty. Seventy. Ninety.

  He finally stopped at exactly one hundred. He dropped to the floor, breathing heavily and sweating. But the most shocking part was the recovery. His stamina replenished much quicker than a normal human. Within a minute or two, his breathing was completely steady again.

  He grabbed the free weights he kept in his room. Lifting them, he could clearly feel a massive difference. He was seeing roughly a 1.5x to 2x improvement in his raw lifting capability.

  He walked back out to the living room. "We need to test your limits as well."

  For the next four hours, they went outside to a secluded dirt area to properly test their speed, endurance, and strength. Silas was amazed by what his body could accomplish. When he ran at maximum speed, he could clearly feel the massive biological boost. He wasn't even fazed by running distances that used to leave him completely winded.

  After all the rigorous tests were done, they sat down in the grass to calculate the results.

  Dante saw a 1.4x overall improvement. His strength, speed, and stamina were noticeably better, and his energy replenished far faster compared to before.

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  Mason saw a slightly lower 1.35x overall improvement.

  Ronan got a very solid 1.7x overall boost to his physical abilities.

  But Silas had absorbed the massive brunt of the mutation. He had a 1.9x overall boost in all his physical abilities. His body was operating at roughly two times the capacity of a properly trained human athlete.

  As they headed back inside the house, Silas couldn't shake one final question. Did my cells mutate to heal, too?

  When he got back to his room, Silas grabbed his sharp pocket knife. He really, desperately hoped for this. He pressed the blade to the back of his hand and made a quick, shallow cut. A thin line of red blood instantly welled up.

  Silas stared at it, holding his breath, waiting for the flesh to knit itself back together.

  But just like his experiment last night, nothing happened. The blood kept dripping slowly down his skin.

  Silas let out a heavy, disappointed sigh. He grabbed a tissue and wiped the blood away, feeling a deep sadness settle in his chest. His physical limits had doubled, but his biology was still entirely mortal. He had no regeneration ability at all.

  Maybe my regeneration did get a boost, he reasoned with himself. Maybe I heal twice as fast as a normal human now, just like my muscles. But it's definitely not instantaneous. It's not a superhuman healing factor. If a monster tore my arm off again, I would still bleed to death.

  Wanting to be thorough, Silas decided to test his senses next. He walked over to his window. He stared out into the street, trying to focus his eyes on the tiny text of a distant street sign. It was still blurry.

  He closed his eyes and strained his ears, trying to pick up the distant hum of traffic or the footsteps of his neighbors. Nothing.

  He took a deep breath through his nose. He couldn't smell anything out of the ordinary. Just the fresh dog shit on the road. Deeply annoyed, he closed the window instantly. His eyesight, his hearing, and his smell were all exactly the same as yesterday.

  The mutation was purely physical. It only affected his muscle fibers, his bone density, and his raw stamina.

  Silas put a small bandage over the cut on his hand and walked back out to the living room to join the others. Mason was sitting on the couch, staring at the notepad where they had calculated their biological multipliers. He looked incredibly annoyed.

  "Why exactly did you get the massive boost, while I got the absolute least?" Mason asked, crossing his arms and glaring at Silas.

  Silas leaned against the wall. He offered Mason a teasing, arrogant smirk. "Maybe because you're the weakest out of all of us," Silas joked, flexing his arm slightly. "And I am clearly the strongest."

  Mason didn't laugh. His eyes narrowed.

  "Or," Mason said coldly, his voice completely serious, "maybe my body is just the most resistant to the mutation. And you are the least."

  The smirk instantly vanished from Silas's face. The room went dead silent.

  That comment hit Silas like a physical blow. A cold wave of genuine concern washed over him. What if Mason is right? Silas thought, his heart suddenly racing. What if my immune system is too weak to fight off the alien dust? If my cells are accepting the mutation this easily... what else is going to happen to my body?

  A heavy, suffocating paranoia began to creep into his chest.

  Seeing the dark tension suddenly ruining the room, Ronan quickly stepped in to lighten the mood.

  "Alright, enough of that depressing biology talk," Ronan said loudly, clapping his hands together. He pulled out his phone and waved it. "I just ordered a massive amount of takeout for us. It will arrive in a little while." Ronan rubbed his stomach, letting out an exaggerated groan. "And I am hungry as fuck. So let's clean this place up quickly before the food gets here."

  Silas blinked, pulling himself out of his dark thoughts. "Yeah," Silas agreed quietly, pushing himself off the wall. "Let's clean up."

  They all got to work, picking up the heavy weights and putting Silas's hall and room back in order. But Silas didn't say another word. Even as he effortlessly lifted the heavy iron plates, Mason's terrifying theory echoed endlessly in his head.

  Most resistant. Least resistant. The fear lingered in his mind the entire time.

  Soon, the heavy knock of the delivery driver echoed through the house. They grabbed the food, sat down in the living room, and started eating in relative silence. The adrenaline from the morning's physical testing was finally wearing off, leaving them all starving.

  Ronan pulled his phone out between bites, scrolling rapidly. He was still searching for any news about the portal or the strange silver ash from yesterday.

  Suddenly, he stopped chewing. "Guys," Ronan said, his voice dropping. "Look at this."

  He turned his phone around. It was a live local news broadcast.

  The government had completely locked down the entire residential colony they had driven through yesterday. Heavy barricades were erected, and men in full hazmat suits were patrolling the perimeter. The headline flashing across the bottom of the screen read: SEVERE RADIATION LEAK. ENTRY STRICTLY PROHIBITED. The news anchor explained that a localized radiation hazard had been detected, making the area incredibly dangerous. Armed personnel had been put on duty to stop anyone from getting close until the situation was "contained."

  Dante scoffed, slamming his fork down onto the table. "That is complete bullshit," Dante said angrily. "That was nothing like radiation. The government is lying to the general public to cover up the truth."

  Dante turned toward Silas. "What should we do? We need to know exactly what happened to us, but they're hiding the entire area."

  Silas didn't answer. He was staring blankly at his half-eaten food, completely lost in his own dark thoughts. Mason's terrifying theory from earlier was still echoing in his mind. Least resistant to the mutation. He was analyzing every terrifying possibility of how this alien biology could affect him. What if his cells degraded? What if he lost his mind? What would become of him if things went horribly wrong?

  "Silas," Dante called out, waving a hand in front of his face. "Hey!"

  Silas blinked hard, snapping back to reality. He looked around the room, disoriented. "Sorry. What were you guys talking about?"

  Ronan glared across the table at Mason. He looked genuinely pissed off, knowing exactly why Silas was zoning out in fear.

  "Don't look at me like that," Mason defended himself, shifting uncomfortably under Ronan's glare. "Silas provoked me first! I just told him about a scientific possibility."

  Silas ran a hand through his hair, ignoring the argument. He looked at Dante. "Should we go back to that place?"

  Ronan thought about it for a few seconds. He slowly nodded. "I think it's a good idea. We know where the portal is now. And with our new enhanced abilities, we can easily outrun those monsters if things go bad."

  "What if there are stronger ones?" Mason argued, looking nervous. "What if there are terrifying things in there that are faster than us?"

  "Then I will go alone," Silas said firmly. He looked at the three of them. His voice left no room for argument. "I need to know what is happening to me. I can't just leave it be."

  Three massive things were driving Silas back to the nightmare. First, his intensely curious, scientific mind simply had to know the truth. Second, a deep, creeping fear of what was currently happening inside his own body. And most importantly—he needed to understand this threat because if this mutation spread, his family and the people he loved could get caught in it and be killed.

  Silas stood up, abandoning the rest of his food. "You guys stay here and rest for today," Silas said. "I'll go check it out."

  Ronan immediately stood up, his chair scraping loudly against the floor. "I'm tagging along."

  "I'm infiltrating a heavily guarded quarantine zone," Silas warned him. "Since the government is locking it down with armed guards, getting inside is going to be incredibly hard."

  Dante stood up next, crossing his arms. "That's exactly why we should watch each other's backs."

  Mason stayed seated. He looked at the three of them like they were crazy. "Why do you guys need to do something so unbelievably reckless?" Mason groaned.

  Dante and Ronan just stared at him. Their silent, heavy glare clearly told him he didn't have a choice. They weren't leaving him behind, and he wasn't staying alone.

  While Silas went to his room to change into darker, more practical clothes, Mason finally let out a defeated sigh. "Fine," Mason grumbled, standing up.

  A few minutes later, Silas walked back into the living room. He shoved his phone deep into his pocket, keeping his head down.

  "Think carefully before we walk out this door," Silas said quietly. "This might get really dangerous."

  He looked up and saw Dante, Mason, and Ronan fully dressed and waiting by the door.

  Silas sighed. "Are you guys absolutely sure?"

  "Well, I am," Ronan said confidently.

  "I can't just leave you alone knowing what stupid shit you'll probably do," Dante added.

  Mason rubbed his temples. "I am being forced."

  All three of them stared at Mason for a long moment.

  "Okay, fine," Mason admitted, looking away. "It's mostly because you guys are going."

  He was clearly lying to save face. Knowing how terrifying the monsters were, Mason really didn't want to go back. But he also knew convincing his friends to stay home was completely impossible.

  "Let's leave, then," Silas said.

  He walked over to Daisy's bowl and poured her a fresh scoop of food. He knelt down, giving her a gentle, lingering pat on the head. "We might be late, girl," he whispered to her.

  He stood up and walked out the door. He knew that even if the worst happened and he didn't make it back, Daisy would be safe. She knew how to push the back door open, and his tight-knit neighborhood would take care of her until his parents returned from their trip.

  But Silas didn't plan on dying. With his new physical abilities, he knew he could just turn and run if things got too heavy. Plus, they already knew exactly where the exit portal was.

  They got on their motorcycles and drove toward the quarantine zone. They parked the bikes a few blocks away, hiding them behind an old convenience store, and moved the rest of the way on foot. They crept through a narrow alleyway, peering around a brick corner.

  The main entrance to the residential colony was completely blocked off. There were heavily armed guards, military transport trucks, and special ops personnel swarming the perimeter. High-powered floodlights illuminated the streets.

  "We really can't get in," Dante whispered, pressing his back against the brick wall. "There's no blind spot in their patrol route."

  "Who said?" Silas replied smoothly. "There's a massive blind spot."