[POV Shift: Lin Meng]
CRUNCH.
The sound was not a roar. It was a wet, metallic, tearing sound, like a giant opening a massive can of food.
Lin Meng was pressed flat against the living room wall, her 16 year old body trying to become one with the drywall. Her heart was a hummingbird, a frantic, painful, thud-thud-thud against her ribs that was so loud, she was sure it could hear.
She was peeking through a one-centimeter gap in the window blinds, her breath held, her lungs burning.
The streetlights were out. The power to the whole neighborhood was dead. The only light came from the strobing, distant, useless red-and-blue flashes of police cars that were too terrified to get any closer.
He was... it... was out there.
She saw it. Their neighbor, Mr. Wei's, brand-new sedan, the one he waxed every Sunday, was in the middle of the street.
The tiger, the monster from the TV, was on top of it.
It wasn't just attacking the car. It was playing with it. Like a 2,000-pound housecat with a broken mouse. She watched, her mind unable to process it, as the beast grabbed the car's bumper in its foot-long, white fangs and, with a casual, bored twist of its massive head, ripped the entire front end of the vehicle off. Metal screamed.
"Meng-meng! Get away from the window!"
Her father's voice was a harsh, terrified whisper.
She couldn't move. She was paralyzed. This was the Level 5 monster. This was the beast that had eaten the "A-Team" guards on TV. And it was on her street.
She wasn't alone.
On the other side of the room, by the hallway to the kitchen, her mother, Jia Li, was pressed against the wall. Her face was ashen, her eyes wide and white in the strobing, dark room. She was holding her largest, heaviest kitchen cleaver, the one she used for chopping bones. She was sobbing, but it was a silent, desperate, frantic kind of weeping, her entire body shaking.
"Wen..." she whimpered, her eyes locked on the front door. "Wen... call the police again..."
"The line is dead, Jia Li," her father, Lin Wen, said.
He was standing by the front door. The door that was already rattling in its frame from the concussive force of the monster's movements outside.
He was the last line of defense.
He was holding a golf club. A 7-iron.
He held it like a baseball bat, his Mortal Root body planted in a desperate, trembling, unyielding stance between the flimsy wood of the door and the family behind him. His knuckles were white.
"Dad..." Lin Meng finally whispered, her voice a broken croak.
"Get... get behind me, Jia Li," her father ordered, his voice cracking, but his command absolute. "Both of you. Into the kitchen. Now."
Lin Meng looked at her own hands. They were shaking.
She was an Awakened. She was [Level 1: Iron Skin]. She had a [Level 3: Inferior Root]. She had punched a hole in her own drywall. She was talented. She was her brother's sister.
But as she looked at the monster outside, the one that had just casually torn a car in half, her "power" felt like what it was. A joke. A wet paper bag in a hurricane.
She had called her brother. She had heard the roar. He was a Level 2 "Hero," but he was in the city. He was an hour away. He couldn't save them.
They were alone.
The sound of rending metal suddenly stopped.
The street fell into a new, heavy, predatory silence.
Lin Meng's heart, which had been in her throat, now dropped into her stomach.
"What...?" her father whispered, his eyes darting.
Lin Meng, her terror overriding her father's command, looked back through the blinds.
The tiger was no longer on the car. It was standing in the middle of the street, perfectly still. Its massive, nine-foot-tall head was raised, sniffing the air.
It had smelled them.
It smelled the fear. It smelled the three, warm, soft, mortal bodies, huddled in a flimsy, wooden box.
It turned.
Its massive head, which had been focused on the wreckage, swiveled.
The crimson, glowing, intelligent eyes... they locked onto the blinds.
They locked... directly... onto her.
Lin Meng didn't even have time to gasp. She just stopped breathing.
The monster knew they were there.
It took a step. Then another. It was no longer rampaging. It was stalking.
Thud...Thud...Thud...
The sound of its massive, padded paws on the asphalt was a slow, deliberate, death-knell. It was the only sound in the world.
It padded, with a terrifying, liquid grace, off the street.
It was on their front lawn.
"Wen..." her mother whimpered again, her voice a dying breath.
"Get... back..." her father breathed, his knuckles white, as he raised the golf club.
The tiger was at the front porch. It was so close, she could smell the hot, coppery-blood-and-wet-fur smell of it.
It lowered its head, its massive, crimson eyes peering right into the living room window, and it snorted.
A cloud of hot, sulfurous breath fogged the glass.
It knew they were in there.