Story code: ST-000026
Part 2: The Final Boss
The piercing screech of the auto shop’s emergency bay alarm felt like a physical blow, shattering the quiet sanctuary of the front office. Marcus shoved past Silas, his hand instinctually dropping to the heavy steel of his sidearm as he kicked the hallway door open. He expected the worst-a coordinated hit by the Navarro cartel, a tactical raid by a federal strike team, men with suppressed rifles and Kevlar.
Instead, as he burst onto the concrete floor of the main garage, he found three teenagers sprinting between his hydraulic lifts. One was holding a phone on a motorized gimbal, while another wildly sprayed neon pink paint across the gleaming Snap-on toolboxes Marcus had imported from Germany. They were shrieking with laughter, entirely unbothered by the deafening alarm.
Silas lunged forward, his massive hands reaching to crush the kid with the spray can, but Marcus grabbed his lieutenant’s shoulder, his grip like a vise.
“Cameras,” Marcus yelled over the siren, pointing to the glowing lenses.
If Silas broke a teenager’s jaw on a high-definition live stream, the twenty-year veneer of Marcus’s legitimate enterprise would evaporate by morning. Marcus couldn’t shoot them. He couldn’t even beat them. The rules of engagement he had perfected over decades were useless against adversaries who wanted to be attacked on camera.
Marcus pivoted, striding to the heavy electrical panel on the far wall. He punched the glass covering the emergency switch, ignoring the sting on his knuckles, and yanked the master breaker down. The alarm died instantly. The overhead fluorescents shut off, plunging the garage into absolute darkness.
Without their lighting, the teenagers panicked. Their frantic, giggling shouts turned into confused yelps. Marcus heard the heavy scuff of their sneakers as they blindly scrambled out the open side door and into the alleyway.
“Leave them,” Marcus ordered, his voice echoing in the sudden, ringing silence of the dark garage. He tossed his keys to Silas. “Get the truck. Now.”
Silas didn’t hesitate. A moment later, the deep roar of Marcus’s armored SUV echoed through the bay. Marcus climbed into the passenger seat, his eyes glued to the cracked smartphone Silas had left on the dashboard.
The live stream from his mother’s house was still running. The heavy steel crowbar hadn’t smashed the window yet. The teenager with the bleached dreadlocks was pacing the porch, violently hyping up the crowd, milking the agonizing suspense. A digital counter on the screen read fifty thousand viewers. Emojis of fire and skulls flooded the chat, obscuring the bottom half of the video. The kid was shouting that if they hit ten thousand new subscribers, he would put the crowbar through the glass.
“Drive faster,” Marcus said, his voice a low, dangerous rasp.
Silas took the corners of the industrial district at sixty miles an hour, the heavy SUV leaning hard on its suspension. Marcus calculated the distance. Four miles. Usually a ten-minute drive. He stared at the screen, watching the digital subscription counter tick upward with terrifying speed. Nine thousand. Nine thousand two hundred.
They hit the residential limits of his mother’s neighborhood, and Silas slammed on the brakes.
The street was impassable. Cars were parked at jagged angles across the manicured lawns. A sea of teenagers clogged the asphalt, lit by the eerie, synchronized glow of hundreds of smartphone screens. It looked like a music festival had been airdropped into the quiet, affluent suburb.
Marcus didn’t wait for Silas to put the vehicle in park. He shoved the heavy door open and stepped out into the humid night air. The smell of cheap vape smoke, trampled earth, and exhaust fumes assaulted him. He moved toward the house, his broad shoulders cutting a path through the throng.
For twenty years, Marcus’s mere presence had been enough to clear a room. Rival enforcers lowered their eyes when he walked past. But these kids didn’t know the rules. They didn’t care about the tailored cut of his suit or the cold, dead focus in his eyes. They bumped into him, shoved past him, and blew thick clouds of synthetic strawberry smoke into his face. They were completely insulated by their screens, a hive mind operating on pure dopamine.
Marcus reached the edge of his mother’s property. The iron railing he had painted himself last summer was bent. The ceramic frog planter was shattered into jagged pieces of painted clay. The front yard was a muddy, trampled pit.
On the porch, the dreadlocked teenager raised the crowbar again. The digital counter must have hit its goal. The crowd around Marcus began to chant in a deafening, unified roar.
Marcus didn’t run. Running was a loss of control. He surged up the wooden steps with terrifying, mechanical purpose, grabbing the teenager by the collar of his neon jacket. With one violent jerk, Marcus yanked the kid backward, tearing the crowbar from his grip and tossing it into the azalea bushes.
The crowd gasped. A ripple of silence washed over the front yard, followed immediately by the blinding flash of a hundred camera lights locking onto Marcus.
The dreadlocked kid didn’t look terrified. He looked ecstatic. He scrambled to his feet, shoving his gimbal-mounted phone inches from Marcus’s face.
“He’s here! The final boss is here!” the kid screamed into his lapel mic, spit flying from his lips. “I told you guys! Marcus the mechanic!”
Marcus froze. The kid knew his name.
“Let’s see how the big boss handles an eviction!” the teenager yelled, pivoting the camera toward the front door.
The deadbolts clicked. Marcus felt the blood drain from his face as the heavy wooden door swung inward. His mother stood in the threshold, clutching her floral bathrobe, her frail hands trembling as she squinted blindly into the blinding wall of LED lights.
Before Marcus could shield her, the teenager pulled a thick, manila envelope from his jacket and shoved it toward the camera lens.
“You think this house is clean?” the kid shouted to the internet. “Let’s show the world what’s buried under the floorboards!”
In the distance, cutting through the murmurs of the flash mob, Marcus heard the unmistakable, approaching wail of multiple police sirens.