"Ah!"
The scream was not the dull, rhythmic sound of a nightmare, but a sharp, visceral sound that sheared through the artificial tranquility of the suburban night. It was an alarm bell, piercing and immediate, and it tore through the silk-lined comfort of Zhou Yi's deepest sleep.
Dazed and disoriented, the sixteen-year-old boy instinctively flinched, rolling off the edge of his expensive memory-foam mattress. He landed on the hardwood floor with a bone-jarring thud that did more to wake him than the scream itself.
Zhou Yi swore under his breath, the remnants of his former life—a life where he was a successful, cynical man—clinging to the edges of his consciousness. Eight years had passed since his reincarnation, and he was finally settling into the peaceful rhythm of this second chance, only for it to be violently interrupted.
He rubbed the sleep from his eyes, pushing up the sleeves of his cotton pajamas. That scream had ruined a rare moment of peace, a precious slice of vacation calm that he seldom afforded himself.
The man he used to be was calculating and methodical; the boy he was now was simply annoyed. He needed to find the source of the noise and, with the immense, weary patience of a teenager who also happens to be the unspoken man of the house, teach the culprit a harsh lesson in respecting silence.
"Ah!" The shrill sound cut again, closer this time, laced with an undeniable tremor of pure terror.
Zhou Yi's annoyance instantly evaporated, replaced by a cold, sharp dread. That wasn't the sound of an ordinary scare. He strode out of his bedroom, his bare feet silent on the polished floor, and moved swiftly toward the other end of the hall, where a smaller door was adorned with a faded, well-loved teddy bear swinging gently on a hook.
He slammed his fist against the wood, the impact loud and authoritative. "Sharice Ferguson! If you don't give me a satisfactory explanation for that noise, I swear I'll tell Mom it was you who broke the plasma TV!" he barked, deliberately injecting humor into his command, but his voice was already laced with anxiety. He needed a normal, mundane answer—a bad dream, a dropped toy—anything but the escalating terror he heard.
"Don't come in! Just… go away!" A girl's voice, thick with ragged sobs and panic, muffled the response.
The desperation in those words ignited a volatile fuse in Zhou Yi's pragmatic mind. Go away? Never. He might be detached from the superficialities of his teen life, but his little half-sister was the center of his current existence, a shining anchor he had found in this strange second life.
"Sharice, what in God's name happened? Open this door right now. I'm your brother, and you need to let me see what's wrong!" He pounded the door again, harder.
"No! Please, no, go away! I don't want you to see me like this." The crying surged, then immediately choked off, followed by the deep whoosh of a quilt being pulled tight over a head. She was hiding, trying to vanish from reality itself.
A flood of worried hypotheses rushed through Zhou Yi's mind: Did she fall? Is she hurt? Was there an intruder? The adults, his mother, Zhou Lan, and the few staff they employed, were all gone, likely already swallowed by the morning rush of Los Angeles business. It was just him and Sharice. The responsibility, the heavy mantle of protector, settled onto his shoulders, driving out any thought of privacy or rules.
To hell with boundaries.
He grabbed the brass door handle with both hands. It was the expensive, heavy kind that locked firmly. He didn't bother with logic or finesse. With a sudden, explosive surge of adrenaline—or something far more primal—Zhou Yi wrenched the door.
The brass fixture groaned, the simple lock mechanism shearing with a tearing sound that was quickly drowned out by the wood splintering around the jamb. The tightly secured door burst inward, slamming against the adjacent wall.
The room was a classic teenage girl's sanctuary, a colorful explosion of dolls and plush toys. But now, that sanctuary was a disaster area. Beloved stuffed animals were strewn across the carpet, abandoned as their owner fled.
Sharice, normally a vibrant eleven-year-old with a mop of light brown hair, was curled into a trembling, insignificant ball beneath a thick duvet.
Zhou Yi strode to the bed, his heart hammering against his ribs. "Sweetheart, tell me what happened, Sharice. Everything is fine. Just tell me." He reached for the quilt, his hand steady despite the fear churning in his gut.
He pulled the cover back.
The sight stole his breath, erasing every memory of stock markets and past lives, leaving only the terrifying present.
"What in the actual hell…" Zhou Yi whispered, the surprise and shock so profound it became a low, animalistic gasp.
The familiar sister he knew was gone, replaced by something beautiful, alien, and deeply afraid. Sharice's previously light brown hair was now a shocking, saturated shade of wine-red, falling in perfect, glossy waves. Her eyes, normally a bright, clear blue, were now a luminous, alien emerald green, surrounded by delicate, naturally formed, bioluminescent patterns that looked like runes drawn by starlight.
But the final, staggering detail—the one that hammered home the complete impossibility of the moment—was her ears. They had elongated, sharpened into delicate, pointed elven ears, curving up from her head in an impossible, graceful arch.
My half-sister is an elf. A goddess. Something completely unreal. Zhou Yi clung to the absurdity, trying to use it as a shield against the truth he already knew. This is not an elf. This is not a fairy tale.
The television, which he had left chattering in the living room, provided the terrifying, immediate answer. As if on cue, a loud, impassioned voice cut through the silence of the shattered door.
"We must believe that mutants, a species lurking among humanity, are a potential threat to all people worldwide. Their superpowers not only disrupt the balance of nature but also pose a grave potential risk to our public safety and societal stability. We urge every American citizen to be vigilant about mutants around them…"
On the screen, a stern-faced military spokesperson spewed rhetoric to a clamoring mass of reporters. Zhou Yi, who had always dismissed these broadcasts as harmless, paranoid noise—just part of the bizarre comic book background of this reborn world—now felt a cold, furious repulsion. Threat? He looked down at the trembling, crying child in his arms, her body shaking like a leaf. How could this terrified little girl be a threat to anyone?
His anger hardened into granite-like resolve. He settled Sharice carefully in his lap, stroking her crimson hair and keeping his expression calm, a mask of control for her sake.
His mother, Zhou Lan, rushed in at that moment, her face a pale canvas of shock and confusion as she took in the ruined door, the crying child, and the impossible transformation.
Zhou Yi met his mother's panicked gaze with a steady, determined stare. He spoke, not as her son, but as the patriarch of the family, his voice low and devoid of youthful uncertainty.
"Mom, the facts are simple, even if they are terrifying. Sharice is a mutant. And regardless of what that military propaganda says, she is our family, the only family that matters. For her safety, for her future, we have to disappear. We have to be in New York."
Zhou Lan was a striking Chinese-American woman, younger than her years and fiercely independent. Her history was one of loss and resilience. She had first lost Zhou Yi's biological father—a Chinese military officer who made the classic mistake of promising to return after his last mission—leaving her to raise Zhou Yi alone for eight years.
Then came the brief, comfortable marriage to Anthony Ferguson, a Los Angeles banker who gave them Sharice before being taken by a plane crash. Despite the heartache, Zhou Lan had been left financially secure thanks to her high-paying career in fashion, Anthony's inheritance, and a massive insurance payout.
But it was Zhou Yi's intervention in their finances that gave them true freedom. Leveraging his memories from his previous life, he had given his mother stock advice that had multiplied their wealth exponentially, moving them far beyond mere comfort.
Money was not a problem. Security was.
"I know the need to move is paramount, Yi," Zhou Lan said, her voice strained as she gently touched Sharice's glowing hair. "But why New York? Couldn't we find a remote, quiet place out west, somewhere they won't look?"
Zhou Yi sighed, shaking his head. "Hiding her forever is a prison sentence, Mom. It's what they want us to do. Sharice needs to learn how to exist in the world, not fear it. We can't just stick her in a rural hideout. She needs acceptance, and more importantly, she needs control."
He paused, letting his gaze sweep over the devastation in the room.
"There is only one place for her. I want to take her to Professor Charles' Xavier School for Gifted Youngsters in Westchester. It's the only place designed to teach children like her to adapt, control their abilities, and live alongside normal people. It is the clearest path to a real life for her."
The name—Xavier School—hung in the air, a beacon of desperate hope and impossible risk. Zhou Lan understood immediately that this was not a whim; it was a carefully calculated tactical move. Her son, barely sixteen, had already planned their escape and her daughter's future.
Since Sharice's birth, Zhou Yi had naturally assumed the role of the protective, steady influence—a brother who carried the emotional weight of a father. Zhou Lan often felt her son possessed a maturity and insight that surpassed any adult she knew.
She looked at her children—the brave, resolute boy and the terrified, transformed girl—and her decision was instantaneous.
"Alright, Yi. If that is the best path for your sister, then that is what we do." Zhou Lan opened her arms, gently scooping the distraught Sharice out of Zhou Yi's lap.
"Ah, my poor little bird. Don't be afraid. Your mother and your brother will shield you from all of it. Come. We'll sleep now, and when the sun rises, everything will begin to change for the better."
Zhou Lan guided Sharice out, her footsteps heavy with maternal love and the fear of the unknown. As the door to their room clicked shut, muffling the terrified sobs, Zhou Yi slowly turned his attention back to the blaring television.
The military spokesman was still droning on about threat levels and potential risks. Zhou Yi watched the man's smug, ignorant face for a silent beat. Then, his hand clenched involuntarily, a surge of pure, blinding heat erupting from his core—a familiar, suppressed energy that he usually kept locked down tighter than a vault.
CRUNCH.
The plastic television remote, still clutched in his fist, shattered into a thousand useless fragments. Shards of plastic and splintered circuits rained down onto the pristine carpet.
Zhou Yi didn't flinch, didn't even acknowledge the mess. He stared at the newly dark, reflecting screen, the reflection of his own face a mask of cold fury. His eyes, usually an unremarkable brown, seemed to hold a fleeting, internal scintillation of gold.
"Mutants, X-Men, the Brotherhood… you've all just become my problem," he muttered into the heavy silence of the room. "And I promise you, no one is going to destroy the family and the life I fought to get back."
The urgency was now absolute. The world had just officially become a battlefield, and he would not wait for the enemy to fire the first shot.
Zhou Yi moved with the terrifying efficiency of a man enacting a well-rehearsed plan. He immediately began liquidating the less stable parts of their portfolio. The bulk of his technological stock holdings were gone in a matter of hours, converted into massive amounts of readily accessible cash.
He kept only token shares in established giants like Stark Industries and Oscorp, a move to hedge risks and maintain a passive presence in the two companies he knew would shape the future of this world.
With the finances settled, he contacted a trusted, high-end real estate agent. Within twenty-four hours, he had purchased not one, but two beautiful, adjacent luxury apartments on New York's Upper East Side, mere blocks from Central Park.
The cost was astronomical, even with their new wealth, but he didn't care. They needed to move quickly, and they needed to blend into a place where extreme wealth was the norm, not the exception.
The last hurdle was the journey itself. A commercial flight was impossible. Even a routine security check would instantly expose Sharice's now distinct features, potentially alerting the very government agencies that the military spokesman had represented. Zhou Yi couldn't risk the military getting their hands on his sister as a "subject."
He decided on the slowest, most secure option: a luxury caravan (RV). It offered complete privacy, ample space for the long journey across the continent, and allowed him to bypass all major transportation checkpoints. It was agonizingly slow, but its safety and self-contained nature made it the perfect shield.
With the logistical nightmare solved, the emotional farewells proved nonexistent. Sharice was too traumatized to see her friends. Zhou Lan, whose career in high fashion was niche and whose social circle was superficial, had no deep ties to cut. And Zhou Yi?
With the memories of his past life as a guiding ghost, he had always felt a detached weariness toward the acquaintances of his youth. He was ready to burn that entire circle to the ground without a second thought; they were non-essential assets in his grand strategy.
The caravan was stocked, the apartments secured, and the past was ready to be abandoned.
When the sun finally crested the horizon, painting the sky with the violent colors of the new dawn, the long-time neighbors of the Ferguson-Zhou family would wake to find an unusual quiet. They might be surprised to find the house next door suddenly empty, but few would truly mourn.
For the corrupt and complacent youth of the neighborhood, it was simply a profound, quiet relief that the impossibly mature and successful Zhou Yi—the boy they could never measure up against—was finally gone.
They had vanished, driven by fear and fueled by the secret, terrifying power that Zhou Yi had just learned he could barely contain. Their odyssey to the city of mutants had begun.