Chapter 158: Predator
Tony slid deeper.
He did not rush. He didn't have to. He entered Lucas the way a seasoned surgeon makes an incision — unhurried, precise, with the quiet confidence of someone who has carved open a hundred bodies and a hundred minds before this one. A patient surgeon, a master of his craft.
The vines that threaded from his jar-body into the boy's neck pulsed with a biological rhythm that felt almost like breathing. Each slow, deliberate contraction sank Tony further into Lucas's nervous system. Further into the boy's thoughts. Further into the architecture of his future.
Lucas tried to hide the shape of his plan, tried to mask his focus and intentions, but Tony tasted them anyway — as clearly as a distinct scent drifting on still air.
Waiting for a slip.
Waiting for a momentary distraction in Tony's control.
Waiting for the tether to Erica to loosen just enough that he could try something foolish, heroic, human.
Predictable.
Sweetly human.
Tony didn't give him the chance.
A thought — sharp.
A twist — surgical.
A surge of neurochemical shadow — overwhelming and absolute.
Lucas's consciousness sputtered like a candle caught in wind — then vanished entirely.
The boy's body sagged in the chair, limbs falling slack, head lolling to one side like a marionette with cut strings.
Good.
Now the real work could begin.
Freed from Lucas's resistance, Tony's vines burrowed faster, spreading with the smooth urgency of roots claiming fresh soil. He felt the spike in Lucas's heart rate, then the slow settling as Tony regulated it. Felt electricity humming through the boy's bloodstream — potential energy waiting for a master to claim it.
And then, with a final push, he slipped into Lucas's mind.
The transition was familiar. Almost comforting. A practiced ritual he had performed on shapeshifters, hunters, and humans across decades. Minds always tore the same way: like wet paper, unable to withstand his presence for long.
Lucas would be no different.
Tony pressed through the membrane of consciousness, expecting the usual psychological wreckage — panic-dreams, collapsing memories, the spiraling chaos of a mind already sensing its own death.
Instead, he found quiet.
A soft, winter morning light.
Lucas was nine again, practicing alone behind an old wooden cabin — Emily's, Tony realized — throwing awkward but determined punches at the air. The boy's breath steamed in the cold, too small for the world he was trying to stand up to, too earnest for the battle he believed he was training for.
Perfect.
Tony always began with the weakest memory in the host's mind. The fractures. The lonely places. The ones that hurt. Those broke first, and once they shattered, everything else followed.
And here it was: a young, abandoned boy trying to be strong in a world far too large for him.
Tony stepped forward with a predator's ease.
As he moved, the memory began to destabilize — automatically, instinctively. The subconscious was unraveling, retreating into fear like all hosts did.
The trees elongated into clawed silhouettes.
The pale sky bruised into darkness.
The shadows whispered every unspoken terror Lucas had ever buried deep.
Young Lucas froze — a child pinned before the oncoming collapse of his own psyche.
Perfect.
He was ready.
Tony manifested behind him, already lifting the mental blade — that conceptual slash of intention that would slice Lucas's consciousness free, leaving the body empty, unguarded, ready to be occupied.
Routine.
Effortless.
Predetermined.
He reached out.
And then—
Young Lucas turned around.
Not suddenly.
Not panicked.
Slowly.
Intentionally.
He turned as though he had heard Tony's footsteps. As though he had been waiting for them.
The boy's face was calm.
Not broken.
Not trembling.
Not collapsing, the way every other host did when they sensed him.
Just turning.
Just looking.
Their gazes met.
And Lucas's young eyes—
They glowed red.
Not frightened.
Not fragile.
Not the eyes of prey.
Burning.
Aware.
Defiant.
A cold sensation rippled through Tony's awareness — something foreign, something he had never encountered inside a host's mind.
Uncertainty.
The forest stopped twisting.
The darkness stopped whispering.
The nightmare held its breath.
And Lucas's voice — small in body but older in tone, too steady for a nine-year-old — cut through the stillness:
"You shouldn't be here."
Tony froze.
For the first time, he felt it — the tight, sinking realization that something was wrong.
This mind wasn't collapsing.
This mind wasn't yielding.
This mind was fighting.
And Lucas…
Lucas was awake.
Awake inside his own nightmare.
Watching Tony.
Tracking him.
Waiting for him.
Poised not like prey—
but like a wolf preparing to tear into the dark.