Ch19. Survival

A vein pulsed in Mason's forehead when he heard Johan's words.

The huge blond man came closer, almost touching him, grabbed Johan by the collar of his shirt, and lifted him into the air as if Johan were a rag doll.

"What happened, Reed boy?" Mason smiled, a wide, cruel smile.

The four henchmen of the absurdly large man stood up.

"Did you happen to get caught stealing these new clothes? Oh..." Mason paused, his eyes slightly wide.

Johan felt as if Mason's iron grip on his collar had loosened very slightly.

"Who did you kill...?"

The question made Johan wince very slightly.

"Nobody." He replied.

"HA!" Mason let out a genuine laugh. "Don't give me that, kid. With all that blood on your back, you can't just have walked out of a butcher's shop!"

Mason's cronies started laughing immediately after the blond laughed at his own joke.

"Now talk, seriously, who did you kill? Are you finally ready to be one of us?"

Johan felt a jumble of emotions emerge in his heart.

Anger.

Contempt.

Resentment.

But most of all...

Disgust.

"Not even in your wettest dreams..." Johan smiled, a smile as genuine as Mason's.

Before the huge man could even understand the meaning behind Johan's words, the latter took the opportunity to raise his arms and slam his elbows into the inside of Mason's elbows, which came very close to Johan's face, without control of his movements due to the sudden attack.

As if rehearsed, Johan threw his head back and, as if he himself were a battering ram, brought the full weight of his head down in a sudden, brutal blow to Mason's nose.

Johan felt Mason's hands loosen and release his collar immediately, seeing red as blood exploded from his nose.

"Fuck you, you filthy supremacist!"

"Ha... Ha..." Mason laughed, his goons surrounding Johan. "Clever... Very clever... But all that cleverness ends here! Finish him off!"

'Shit...' Johan closed his eyes tightly, knowing what was coming next.

His body, however, acted on its own, on pure instinct.

It wasn't pretty, let alone heroic.

No.

It wasn't as if, in the next moment, Johan had managed to unearth some unknown ability from the core of his being.

However, he didn't do badly against Mason and his henchmen.

With a very fluid movement, Johan threw himself down, opening his eyes at the last second to see a size 42 foot coming, fast, towards his face.

Leaning over a little more, with the last few centimeters separating him from the ground, feeling the sole of that combat boot scrape against his cheek, Johan threw one of his feet hard against the attacker's leg.

Immediately afterwards, the sound of something breaking could be heard.

One of the attackers was on the ground, his leg bent at a strange angle.

The other three, along with Mason, kicked Johan at the same time, and he was only able to fend off two of them.

Two combat boots crashed painfully into his ribs and thigh, making stars explode before the young man's eyes.

Johan turned around immediately, trying to escape the barrage of kicks, managing to grab one of his legs at the last moment, still groggy from the pain.

A subtle movement of his legs was enough to make the man fall.

Rolling over him, Johan got up with some difficulty, stepping on his fallen opponent's head and turning towards Mason and his two remaining henchmen.

Johan raised his arms, in an awkward fighting stance, with one fist a little higher than it should have been, and the other a little lower.

His face was completely exposed, and one move from Mason, if he was lucky, would be enough to end the fight right then and there.

Thinking of exactly that, Mason moved closer, launching his fist like a lightning bolt towards Johan's chin.

"YOU'RE DEAD, KID!"

The next instant, however, Johan was no longer there.

In as fluid a movement as his weakened legs and fractured ribs allowed, Johan dodged the big man's punch by a few millimeters, moving under Mason's outstretched arm and ending up exactly behind the leader of that group.

On the other side of the corridor, in one of the other cells, a middle-aged man was sitting on his bunk watching the unbridled struggle for survival unfold.

A strange grin appeared on his lips as Johan fought desperately for his life.

The moment Johan positioned himself behind Mason, however, one of the henchmen who was still standing managed to sneak up unnoticed and grab Johan under the arms, preventing him from using his arms freely.

'Son of a bitch!' Johan then raised his foot and stomped as hard as he could on the foot of the henchman holding him.

Feeling the stabbing pain, even though his feet were protected by his combat boots, the henchman let go of Johan, who immediately threw an elbow at his chin.

And another of Mason's henchmen went down.

Mason turned around while the action was still going on, and without giving Johan time to react, charged like a furious bull at the young man, who crashed violently into the bars of the cell, more stars exploding in his field of vision as he felt his chest fill with heat.

It wasn't a positive warmth, however.

Johan knew that if he kept dragging out this fight for much longer than he already had, one of his broken ribs would end up puncturing his lungs.

And that would be the end of him.

Johan then took as deep a breath as he could and crouched down, seeing Mason's massive fist pass exactly where, less than a second before, his head had been.

And with one precise movement, Johan made his clenched fist collide with...

With...

Mason's face contorted into an unrecognizable grimace as his nerve endings sent the message to his supremacist brain that one of the most sensitive parts of his body had been injured.

A high-pitched scream escaped the big blond man's throat, and a few moments later he was on the ground, talking thin.

Johan hit the last attacker in the face with his elbow, and he went down, giving Johan enough time to kick Mason hard in the head, finally knocking the blond giant unconscious.

In the cell opposite Johan's, the middle-aged man had a hungry gleam in his eyes and a smile full of murderous delight on his lips.

Outside the cell, several guards watched the end of the fight.

Then they unlocked the cell and started beating Johan like there was no tomorrow...