The moment the doorknob began to turn, Lohan activated [Structural Stability] combined with [Selective Viscosity] on his hands and feet.
With a fluid, silent movement, he leaped to the side wall and scaled up to the ceiling, securing himself in the darkest corner of the small entryway, just above the line of sight of anyone entering.
Simultaneously, he activated [Umbral Mimicry] and [Pigment Mimicry], causing his dark skin and clothing to seem to "drink in" the dim light of the hallway, turning him into a blur indistinguishable from the moldy support beams of the ceiling.
Through Instinctive Perception, he felt the vibration of the air as the door finally gave way, swinging open with a sharp click.
Five figures entered in single file, moving with a coordination that Lohan recognized as similar to that of Lower Zone gangs.
They wore cheap polymer overcoats and heavy filtering masks, but what caught Lohan’s attention was the weaponry they carried: vibro-knives and what appeared to be short-range kinetic pistols.
The men entered quickly, splitting up to cover the tiny apartment, the makeshift kitchen, the bathroom, and the sleeping area.
"Empty?" a man with a hoarse voice whispered, lowering his kinetic pistol after kicking the bathroom door open. "Where the hell is the brat? The heat sensors outside indicated that someone had been here less than five minutes ago."
"Maybe he jumped out the window," replied another, with a cosmetic scar crossing the visor of his mask. "But who cares? The important thing is that we got in. To be honest, I expected this building’s security system to be a bigger pain to bypass."
The third man, who appeared to be the technician and was holding a data decoder, let out a muffled laugh.
"Lucky for us that the basic security measures were disabled," he muttered, putting the device away. "Without the neural lockdown protocol and the silent intrusion alarm activated, our job was so easy I could do this every day."
Stuck to the ceiling, a few feet above them, Lohan felt a restless flutter in his chest. His eyebrows furrowed in confusion.
’What do you mean, disabled?’
He thought, feeling mana coursing faster through his veins.
He knew that only the tenant or someone with administrator privileges to the building’s central system could turn off those defenses. Thinking about who might have such privileges, only one possibility came to mind... Oscar.
The intruders began ransacking the apartment with such aggression that they didn’t care about damaging anything inside.
Drawers were ripped out, the old mattress was slashed by vibrating knives, and the refrigerator, which Lohan had barely managed to keep running, was thrown to the floor with a crash.
"Hurry up! Look for the money!" the hoarse-voiced man commanded, ignoring the equivalent of hundreds of credits’ worth of valuable nutrient solutions inside the refrigerator. "The client was very clear. He said the kid who lived here has changed a lot in the last few weeks, and with all this news about that new game changing people so much, there’s probably an Elysium helmet in here."
The man with the scar stopped tearing at the pillows and looked at the leader.
"But why would the client be so sure the money would be here physically? In the Lower Zone, nobody keeps credits at home if they don’t want to get their throat slit."
"Because the client said that brat now acts like a little punk, probably doing illegal stuff too..." The leader replied, kicking a pile of Lohan’s college textbooks. "Just imagine... having the nerve to set up a scheme right here, in the heart of the Asphyxia Gang’s territory, without paying our protection fee? Who does he think he is?"
Lohan, watching everything from above, felt the sinister, predatory smile grow even wider on his face.
The final piece of the puzzle fell into place.
The "client" was either Oscar, trying to get revenge for the humiliation he’d suffered from being knocked out, or perhaps someone from the college like Julian Neal, who had the resources to hire local scum to test his limits.
Lohan was tracking every move of the five men as they ransacked and practically destroyed the apartment without a care.
To his Level 12 reflexes, which had faced so many truly powerful monsters, these Asphyxia Gang henchmen seemed to move in slow motion.
They thought they were breaking into a defenseless student’s room, unaware of what awaited them on the ceiling.
"If we don’t find the money, the client said we can ’process’ the kid himself." The gang leader said, pulling a pair of restraint cuffs from his waist. "If he really is a Player, he’ll have to tell us where his helmet is hidden, and from what I’ve heard, the bodies of genetically enhanced Players are worth a fortune in underground labs. If he’s not here, we’ll wait for him to come back...."
"Boss, I found the helmet!" Suddenly, an excited shout rang out, drawing the attention of the five men in that direction, and Lohan took it as the perfect cue.
The only thing worth protecting in that apartment was his Elysium Helmet, so with that found, Lohan had to step in to protect the valuable object, and best of all, the five men were distracted at the perfect moment for it!
Seeing those hands, dirty with grease and stimulants, touching his "ticket to Elysium," which he had cared for so tenderly, made the heart in Lohan’s human chest beat with an aggressive rhythm.
’You’ve just signed your own death warrant...’ Lohan thought, deactivating the Selective Viscosity that kept him glued to the support beams.
In the millisecond Lohan broke free from the ceiling, he felt the first conflict of instincts.
His brain, now conditioned to operate as Halon, the Slime, expected him to simply "collapse" or expand like a heavy gelatinous mass to envelop all five targets at once. In his mind, he was already projecting tentacles and preparing Efficient Digestion to convert the intruders into biomass.
However, as he fell, gravity acted upon his human body.
Lohan felt the weight of his 1.81 meters and the rigidity of his bones, which, though strengthened by Level 12 Grind, were still restrictive compared to the insane malleability of a Slime he was accustomed to.
In midair, he had to force his Structural Stability to coordinate his movements and regain control of his own body while still in free fall.
Instead of liquefying to cushion the fall, he had to align his vertebrae and prepare his body’s tendons while aiming at the henchman holding the helmet, the hoarse-voiced man who had previously been ransacking the bathroom.