As Silas said this.

  Dante and Ronan looked at him, confused. They followed his gaze. Silas was looking straight up at the towering, three-story apartment building right next to them.

  Knowing exactly what Silas was thinking, Dante and Mason shared a deeply frustrated, terrified look. Their expressions clearly said: Are you serious? Why does he always come up with the most bizarre, dangerous ideas?

  Before they could stop him, Silas stepped out of the alley. He didn't climb. He simply leaped.

  With terrifying, explosive power, Silas bounded up the side of the building. His enhanced muscles propelled him upward in massive, gravity-defying arcs. He kicked off a heavy windowsill, grabbed a metal drainage pipe, and vaulted himself over the roof's ledge in a matter of seconds.

  No one watching him would ever call him human. In no time at all, Silas was standing at the very top of the building. He looked down over the edge, gesturing for the others to follow him up.

  Down in the alley, Dante, Mason, and Ronan just stared up at him in awe.

  Dante swallowed hard. In his mind, the terrifying reality of the math finally clicked. I think Silas completely overlooked the fact that our enhancements were based on our original baselines, Dante thought.

  Silas was already incredibly athletic before the silver dust. And after getting that insane 1.9x biological multiplier on top of his already superior foundation, Silas had become practically a god compared to them. Dante remembered the test scores from the dirt track earlier that morning. They had all run the 100-meter dash. Dante had clocked an incredible 9.8 seconds. Ronan hit 10 seconds flat. Mason crossed at 10.4. But Silas? Silas had torn through the dirt track in an impossible 6.6 seconds. The human world record was 9.58.

  It was the same with their raw strength. Dante had curled 28 kilograms. Ronan curled 26. Mason managed 18. Silas had effortlessly curled 40 kilograms per arm without even breaking a sweat. His intense physical training prior to the mutation had given him a massive, insurmountable advantage. And now, he was doing inhuman parkour without even realizing how impossible it still was for the rest of them.

  "Let's just go," Ronan sighed.

  The three of them began the arduous task of climbing the outside of the building. They had to use the small ledges, window frames, and protruding bricks to haul themselves up. Even with their enhanced strength, they weren't coordinated enough to leap like Silas.

  It took them five exhausting minutes to finally reach the roof.

  Silas looked at them, genuinely confused as they pulled themselves over the ledge, panting heavily. "We all powered up," Silas said, tilting his head. "How is it still so hard for you guys?"

  Dante glared at him, his chest heaving. "Just shut up, you dumbass. And tell us what the situation looks like from up here. You weren't just slacking off while we climbed, right?"

  Silas smirked and pointed across the dark rooftops. "I found a way in."

  "What is it?" Ronan asked, catching his breath.

  "We are going to have to roof-hop," Silas explained, tracing a path through the air. "We stay above the guards' sightlines. We keep moving across these connected apartment buildings until we reach that flat roof over there—right above the portal zone. Then, we just jump down."

  Mason's eyes widened. "Jump? You mean jump down from a third-floor roof?!"

  "Yup," Silas nodded casually.

  "No jumping," Dante said immediately, shaking his head. "We will climb down slowly."

  "I tested my bone density earlier," Silas argued. "I can drop from a second-story height just fine, no damage. You guys are forgetting that our durability and endurance were also boosted. It's not just a flat multiplier; it becomes exponential when you combine the muscle density with the bone strength."

  "We are not doing that," Ronan agreed firmly with Dante. "We climb down. That isn't changing."

  Silas rolled his eyes. "Fine. I was just giving you the fastest option."

  They moved out, leaping quietly from one building to the next. Their enhanced leg strength made clearing the gaps between the rooftops surprisingly easy. Finally, they reached their destination—a flat roof directly overlooking the quarantined street where the portal was hidden.

  Dante, Mason, and Ronan immediately moved to the edge and began carefully climbing down the brickwork and drainpipes. Silas didn't wait. He stepped right off the edge of the roof.

  He dropped like a stone, landing perfectly on a first-floor balcony. Without pausing, he vaulted over the railing and dropped the rest of the way to the asphalt below. He landed in a crouch, completely uninjured. He stood up and looked back up at the other three, who were still awkwardly climbing down the wall.

  Dante looked down at Silas from the second-story pipe. He was incredibly annoyed. Why is this guy so reckless? Dante thought, grinding his teeth.

  Ronan, clinging to the bricks next to Dante, chuckled quietly. "Well. He actually put in the work on his body before all this happened. So he can manage it. Maybe we could have done that too, if we hadn't been so lazy."

  That comment hit Dante and Mason with a harsh reality check, especially Mason. Their powers were amazing, but they still had real limits.

  They reached the ground a few seconds later, their boots touching the asphalt quietly. They stayed in the shadows, carefully avoiding the sweeping beams of the military floodlights. They began roaming around the cordoned-off street, their eyes scanning the dark air for the familiar, rippling distortion of the entrance.

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  They stuck to the long, stretching shadows of the late afternoon, roaming the quarantined street for a long while, but they couldn't find anything. There was no rippling air, no red sky bleeding through, and no strange threshold.

  Silas let out a frustrated breath. "Fuck it." If he couldn't find the portal with his eyes, he was just going to brute-force it.

  "Stay here," Silas whispered to the others.

  He stepped out of the shadows and began running. Using his enhanced speed, he blurred across the empty street, covering every square inch of the asphalt in a systematic grid. He moved so fast he was practically a phantom in the fading evening light, hoping that if he just ran through the exact right spot, he would clip the distortion and cross over. The others could then follow him in.

  But it was no use. He ran back to the alley, panting slightly, his face twisted in deep annoyance.

  "Maybe it really disappeared," Dante whispered, keeping an eye on the distant guards who were patrolling under the orange glow of the 5 PM sun.

  "How does a whole dimension just disappear?" Ronan questioned, frowning.

  "The government has been here for hours," Mason pointed out. "Maybe they did something to close it. Or maybe the portal just ended on its own after a certain amount of time."

  Silas leaned against the brick wall, thinking it over. The first part made a lot more sense. If the portal had simply vanished the moment they escaped yesterday, there would be no reason for the military to lock this entire residential block down with armed guards and hazmat suits. The government had clearly found something, and they had somehow contained it.

  Realizing that the whole incredibly dangerous trip had been a total waste, Silas sighed. "Let's get out of here."

  They turned around to leave the way they came.

  Suddenly, a loud, jarring ringtone pierced the quiet alleyway. It was Silas's phone.

  Everyone froze. Sheer panic spiked in their chests.

  A hundred yards away, two special ops guards snapped their rifles up, their heads whipping toward the shadowed alley. "Hey! Who's over there?!" one of them yelled, jogging forward.

  Silas frantically shoved his hand into his pocket and muted the phone. "Run!" he hissed.

  They sprinted back toward the towering apartment building. But this time, Silas didn't expect them to climb on their own. The guards were already running toward their position, shouting into their radios.

  Silas leaped straight up to the second-floor fire escape. He spun around, leaning over the metal railing, and reached his hand down. Dante jumped. Silas grabbed him by the forearm and effortlessly yanked him up, hauling his cousin's entire body weight over the railing like he was tossing a light duffel bag.

  Mason jumped next. Silas hauled him up in a split second.

  "Up! Go up!" Silas ordered them, leaping to the third-floor roof edge.

  He leaned back down just as the heavy boots of the guards echoed into the alley below. Ronan jumped, his fingers barely grazing the roofline. Silas grabbed Ronan's heavy jacket with one hand and pulled hard, hoisting him directly upward.

  Just as Ronan's chest cleared the ledge, one of the special ops officers rounded the corner and looked up, spotting them perfectly silhouetted against the bright evening sky.

  "Freeze! Stay right where you are!" the officer roared, raising his assault rifle.

  Silas didn't even hesitate. He saw the officer's finger tighten on the trigger. With a brutal yank, Silas dragged Ronan the rest of the way up, throwing his own body weight backward to pull his friend away from the exposed edge.

  BANG! The gunshot echoed violently through the quiet neighborhood. A chunk of brick and mortar exploded right where Ronan's head had been a fraction of a second earlier.

  "Go, go, go!" Silas yelled, scrambling to his feet.

  They ran like their lives depended on it. With their enhanced muscles firing on pure adrenaline, they bounded across the rooftops at terrifying speeds. The officers down below yelled and cursed, but there was absolutely no way normal humans could follow them. The four of them were moving across the skyline in broad daylight, too fast to be tracked.

  Within minutes, they had cleared the quarantine zone. They dropped down into the streets, sprinted to their two hidden motorcycles, and tore out of the neighborhood.

  They didn't stop driving until they were miles away, finally pulling the two bikes into the crowded parking lot of a busy convenience store bustling with the early evening rush. They killed the engines. For a long moment, the only sound was their heavy, frantic breathing.

  "Holy shit," Dante gasped, gripping his handlebars so tightly his knuckles were white. "We barely survived that."

  "We really shouldn't have come," Mason groaned from the passenger seat of Dante's bike, resting his forehead heavily against Dante's shoulder. "They literally shot at us! With real bullets!"

  "It's alright," Ronan said from the back of Silas's bike, trying to steady his own racing heart. "We got out okay. That's all that matters."

  Silas pulled his helmet off, shaking his head. "Who the hell even called?"

  He pulled his phone out of his pocket and tapped the screen. The missed call notification popped up. It was Rhia.

  The moment Silas read her name, something incredible happened. The terrifying, adrenaline-fueled tension completely evaporated from his body. Like a physical switch had been flipped, the cold, reckless thrill-seeker vanished. His sharp, dangerous eyes softened. A gentle, deeply affectionate smile spread across his face, completely erasing the arrogance that had been there just moments before.

  He instantly hit the callback button and lifted the phone to his ear.

  Sitting on the two bikes, Dante, Mason, and Ronan just stared at him in utter disbelief. They watched this reckless, egoistic, self-centered bastard instantly transform into a harmless, domesticated pet just because his girlfriend's name flashed on a screen.

  He is completely hopeless, Dante thought, sharing a dumbfounded look with the others. He's a tamed beast.

  Silas completely ignored his friends, turning slightly as the call connected.

  "Rhia?" Silas said, his voice dropping into a smooth, incredibly soft tone.

  "Silas! Why didn't you answer?" Rhia's voice came through the speaker, laced with a familiar, possessive worry. "Are you alright? I got a weird feeling and had to call."

  "I wasn't," Silas admitted smoothly, a charming smile playing on his lips. "But now I am. Just hearing your voice makes all my problems go away."

  On the other side of the line, Rhia let out a long, exaggerated sigh. But Silas could hear the smile in her voice. "You are so hopelessly cheesy," she teased, though the worry hadn't entirely left her tone. "What are you even doing out right now, Silas? I thought you were resting. Please tell me you aren't doing anything dangerous again."

  Silas glanced over his shoulder at his three friends, who were all visibly exhausted and currently recovering from being shot at by military operatives just ten minutes ago.

  "No, nothing dangerous," Silas lied effortlessly, turning back around. "I'm just out hanging with the guys right now. Getting some fresh air."

  "You need to be careful," she pressed gently. "Promise me."

  "I'm always careful when I belong to you," Silas replied, leaning back against his motorcycle seat as the sun began to set. "I'll call you as soon as I get home, alright? I promise."

  "You better," Rhia said, her tone softening with affection. "I'll be waiting."

  "Always. See you, Rhia."

  Silas lowered the phone and hung up, the soft smile still lingering on his face. He slipped the phone back into his pocket and finally turned around to face his friends.

  Dante, Mason, and Ronan were all staring at him with completely deadpan, judgmental expressions.

  Silas cleared his throat, his face instantly hardening back into his usual, arrogant self. "What?"

  "Nothing," Dante muttered, shaking his head as he fired his motorcycle's engine back up. "Let's just go home."

  The ride back to Silas’s house was quiet, the roar of the motorcycle engines filling the tense air. But inside Silas’s mind, the gears were turning at a million miles an hour. He was analyzing everything. The threshold. The red sky. The silver ash. The centipede. The sudden appearance of the exit.

  By the time they pulled the bikes into the driveway and cut the engines, Silas had formulated a theory. As they walked through the front door and locked it behind them, Silas turned to face the group.