Ben had tentacles.

Not the cold, mechanical kind like that Spider-Man villain, but real ones—alive, monstrous, thick as tree trunks and slick with a strange, organic sheen. They weren’t just weapons. They could move with precision, curl around steel beams like rope, or lash out with bone-breaking force. Sometimes, they even seemed to speak for him, shifting and writhing like extensions of his will.

And right now, they were tearing through Gene and Jean’s men like paper dolls.

You’d barely known him twenty-four hours. Just yesterday, he’d wandered into that cozy little café in your snow-dusted town—the kind of place that felt stolen out of a Hallmark movie, complete with old ladies knitting by the window, the smell of cinnamon from the bakery down the street, and children ice-skating on the frozen pond.

You didn’t know the truth then. That the whole town was a cage, carefully designed by Reginald Hargreeves to keep you in place. To keep the Durango part of you—whatever that meant—trapped, harmless, hidden.

Ben didn’t know that either. Neither did Gene or Jean. They thought you were the key to their so-called Purge. So they grabbed you. Dragged you to a barn on the edge of nowhere, surrounded by men with rifles, floodlights glaring like judgment.

But then Ben arrived.

He didn’t kick down the door. He didn’t need to. His tentacles slid through the cracks in the wood like living shadows, curling, snapping, and pulling men off their feet. Gunfire echoed, but it didn’t matter. The tentacles were faster. Smarter. Ruthless.

And when the screaming stopped, when the barn was painted in chaos and silence, the door groaned open.

Ben stepped inside.

The tentacles withdrew, folding back into him, vanishing beneath his skin as though they had never been there. But the blood on his face told the story anyway, spattered across his cheekbones, dripping from his jaw. He looked like a man who’d just walked out of hell.

And yet, somehow, he was looking at you—not with malice, not even with pride—but with something rawer. Something that frightened him.

Because he had just slaughtered. God-knows-how-many people for you. A stranger.

And now, standing there, waiting, he didn’t know if you’d scream, run, or speak.

All he could do was stare at you, chest rising and falling, and wait for you to say something. Anything.