Gasping for air, she groaned in a raw, muffled whisper meant only for herself. The remaining sliver of her humanity still fought back; she possessed absolutely no desire to hurt anyone, but if that shadow refused to abandon the hunt, her luxury of mercy would violently expire. As the ruthless, lethal plan crystallized in her mind, her eyes darkened, and she hissed the fatal truth through her teeth.

  "His mask..."

  She didn't target the man's armored body, but rather the vital lifeline suffocating his face. If she could violently tear that oxygen mask away, Caduta's invisible poison would flood his lungs, leaving the supposedly invincible Leader to drown in his own blood exactly where he stood. Yet, executing that move remained her absolute last resort, a final, desperate play if she found no other escape.

  That agonizing question—why he refused to shoot—that baffled her more than anything else found its violent answer in a dry, deafening crack exploding right behind her.

  Crack!

  The bullet struck the dirt mere inches from Serevia's left heel, pulverizing the concrete and kicking a cloud of dust into the freezing air. The round traveled with such lethal speed that by the time the gunshot reached her ears, the lead had already cratered the ground. It tore through the air like a screaming phantom.

  "Ah!"

  The jagged, involuntary gasp tearing from her lips was no word, but the pure, physical manifestation of sheer terror possessing her body. Her heart hammered against her ribs with devastating force the exact second that metallic crack echoed.

  The instant she reached the colossal, pitch-black entrance of the building—gaping like the mouth of a rotting cave—she hurled herself inside and plunged into the damp void. Without even granting her eyes a fraction of a second to adjust to the crushing gloom, she charged straight for the stairwell. The pale moonlight bleeding through the shattered walls painted scattered, silvery streaks across the ruins, yet the deep lungs of the building remained buried in a blind, freezing darkness simply waiting for the dawn.

  Utterly defying the agonizing burn tearing through her legs, Serevia ripped through the pitch-black shadows and began scaling the stairs. The only sounds echoing through the hollow concrete shaft were the ragged, high-pitched wheezes tearing from her throat and the frantic, heavy hammering of her boots striking the steps.

  Navigating the jagged concrete slabs forging the skeleton of the towering structure, she tucked herself into a pitch-black corner on one of the upper floors, seamlessly fusing her body with the shadows. The dead gray canvas of the dust-choked floor and shattered walls provided flawless, impenetrable camouflage; she strangled her breath and waited with the absolute stillness of a stone gargoyle. Attacking, playing the role of the predator, completely contradicted her nature; the heavy weapons anchored in her hands offered no actual confidence, only a freezing, terrifying burden. If pushed to the absolute brink, yes, she would squeeze the trigger; her primal survival instinct violently eclipsed her morality, yet the sheer thought of slaughtering a man chilled her core far deeper than the freezing wind outside. She was no ruthless monster with ice pumping through her veins, unlike the masked butcher hunting her from below. If the enforcer never laid a hand on her, she remained fully prepared to lower her barrels. This entire nightmare boiled down to pure self-defense; a desperate, bloody struggle to simply stay alive.

  The pure fury violently churning in her mind raced neck-and-neck against her terror. This pathetic, helpless nightmare, this blood-soaked hunt... Every single piece of it existed as the direct byproduct of Sarcos's rotting, merciless regime. Why did they always have to write the rules in blood? Why did the ultimate price of survival demand snuffing out another life? These jagged thoughts forced her to grind her teeth together; her absolute, venomous hatred for the system violently bled into her crushing despair.

  The rhythmic, brutal thudding echoing from below sliced through her thoughts like a physical blade. Refusing to grant Serevia even a single heartbeat to catch her breath, the man had already begun scaling the stairwell with terrifying, superhuman speed, completely unhindered by his heavy combat boots. To a seasoned predator, the sudden, absolute silence replacing the girl's frantic sprint and hammering footsteps signaled only one undeniable truth: the prey had gone to ground.

  The agonizing distance between them choked out with every passing second. The Leader swept every floor he breached with the glacial precision of a machine; his eyes violently pierced the pitch-black shadows, hunting for the absolute slightest twitch, the faintest plume of vaporized breath. He moved with terrifying speed yet remained flawlessly calculated; gliding through the levels like a phantom, he climbed higher and higher, as if actively listening for the frantic hammering of Serevia's heart buried within the lethal silence.

  Finally, when the enforcer's heavy combat boots struck the concrete of Serevia's floor, the lethal rhythm ground to an absolute halt. The ragged, wheezing voice of the girl bleeding from the shadows violently shattered the freezing air. A violently trembling terror, buried deep within the bottom of her lungs and desperately fighting to stay suppressed, laced her tone—yet that wasn't the entirety of it. A stubborn, venomous fury leaking through the cracks of her fear fused seamlessly with a razor-thin, toxic sarcasm that completely defied her pathetic, cornered reality. How she managed to forge such a lethal, contradictory cocktail in her voice while staring directly down the barrel of a gun completely defied all logic.

  A breathless, jagged voice bled from the pitch-black shadows. The words actively tore at her throat, forced out with agonizing effort.

  "I told you... I told you to stop following me! Do you not understand?"

  Serevia swallowed hard. Her lungs burned like open flames, yet she spat the final words through her teeth like pure venom explicitly designed to mask her absolute terror.

  "...Leader boy!"

  The Leader pivoted toward the exact coordinate where the voice had echoed—where the suffocating dust seamlessly fused with the darkness—moving with a mechanical, almost terrifyingly slow precision. His reflexes remained so flawlessly sharp and brutally composed that he didn't even bother to raise his weapon; he simply waited for his cornered, violently trembling prey to make a fatal mistake in the shadows. Yet, as the Leader's advanced visor and seasoned eyes swept the sector he approached, he found absolutely nothing but dead space and bare, rotting concrete walls bearing the crushing exhaustion of decades. Right in that exact split second, a faint, blurred silhouette caught in his peripheral vision slipped through the shattered, long-rotted doorway like a phantom, violently tearing across to the far side of the ruined apartment.

  The girl was fast—fueled by the desperate, explosive energy of a gazelle thrashing for its life. The man did not deny it; Serevia clearly navigated these ruins better than he, melting into the gloom with ease. But speed alone would never topple the king on this chessboard. Both recognized the glacial, undeniable truth: Serevia lacked the raw power to challenge a Leader—a killing machine whose body and gear had been perfected for slaughter, a monster that knew no pain. This was no duel; it was merely a futile thrashing to delay the inevitable—cold, absolute death.

  He marched toward the direction where the shadow had vanished, his steps hard, heavy, and absolute. His combat boots pulverized the rubble with every stride, his gaze scanning the room like a lethal radar the moment he breached the threshold. In heartbeats, he dissected the space behind the shattered walls, the deep shadows of the pillars, and the jagged gaps of the collapsed ceiling. But he found only a suffocating void, a crushing sense of abandonment. The girl had seemingly seeped into the concrete or evaporated into the air like a fever dream.

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  Just then, a faint click drifted from behind him, from the direction he had come—a sound so thin it was almost nonexistent. The rattle of a shifting stone or the scrape of a boot. The man’s shoulders drew taut; he processed the reality in a fraction of a second. She had outplayed him. She had waited for him to commit to the room, then circled behind him in the pitch-black quiet, lunging for the stairs—the only way out. As the frantic, rhythmic drumming of her descending footsteps began to echo through the hollow shaft, the Leader spun around, a flash of white-hot fury ignited by the prey slipping through his fingers.

  His voice exploded like a roar of thunder, striking the cold, moss-choked walls and swelling into a deafening command. "Stop! Do not run!" The first words tearing from his lips weren't merely a dry noise rattling in the damp dark of the stairwell; they carried the crushing weight of a falling sky, a supreme decree that choked the air like a tightening vise. His voice rang deep enough to vibrate the very foundations of the iron and stone structure, dominant enough to pulverize a human soul. The breath behind that mask wasn't just a command; it echoed through the halls like an ancient, cursed prophecy whispering that escape was a lie. The moment he spoke, even the shadows seemed to shift in obedience, the darkness itself trembling at his command.

  Hearing that voice from her blind spot on the stairs, Serevia felt the very bonds holding her skeleton together dissolve. She understood then, down to her very marrow, that what hunted her wasn't some nameless danger—he was the black cloud that had smothered this city. This wasn't just anyone speaking; he was the man who dropped an invisible guillotine on the necks of the people, whose mere gaze forced them to their knees. To Serevia, that voice sounded less like a warning and more like the final announcement of her own end.

  Yet, instead of pinning her to the spot, that crushing weight fanned the flames of her feral survival instinct. The Leader’s absolute "Stop"—a command that should have made even the thought of defiance impossible—had instead ignited a desperate rebellion. She threw herself down the stairs, taking them two or three at a time, drawing power from the rusted handrails to hurl herself toward the bottom of the pit. Even as her lungs shredded and her legs screamed in revolt, she refused to stop; submitting to the owner of that voice was no different than becoming the walking dead.

  She shrieked back into the hollow darkness, shredding the last fragments of air in her lungs so the sound would echo through the levels below. Her voice bounced off the stairwell like a desperate cry.

  "Stop! If you don't want me to run, then stop following me!"

  Her voice was jagged, cracking with terror, yet it carried the final, feral resistance of a cornered animal. The words clawed their way out of her throat.

  Her body stood on the absolute brink of total collapse. Muscle pain stabbed through her legs like knives with every step, and her vision began to cloud. Yet, her primal survival instinct violently eclipsed all logic. She found herself caught in a lose-lose hell; if she stopped, she died; if she ran, she might be shot. Still, she plunged through the darkness, hoping to find a sliver of salvation before her breath failed entirely.

  The heavy voice struck the concrete walls again, filling her ears. This time, he didn't command; he used a strange, almost persuasive tone—one that failed utterly.

  "I won't hurt you! Don't run!"

  As she threw herself down to the next level, a hysterical, breathless laugh tore from Serevia’s lips. It wasn't joy; it was the sound of her nerves snapping. She let out a bitter, lung-aching cackle.

  "Ha! You think... you think I’ll believe that?"

  Her voice came in gasps, her throat burning with sour agony.

  "After what you did back there? After you murdered all those people right in front of me? Do you think that’s possible? You’re a killer!"

  The man didn't answer. He ignored the insult, responding only with the rhythmic, unstoppable thunder of his boots. He accelerated, descending with the cold discipline of a predator closing in on its kill.

  Serevia was fading, but a fragment of strange courage—fused with the mask-plan she’d devised—froze the sharp words in the air.

  "Look... I don't want to hurt you! Stop following me!"

  As the words hung in the cold, dark void, the man above momentarily slowed his pace. He couldn't process it at first; his brain short-circuited while trying to digest the absurd threat. Beneath the black, expressionless oxygen mask, his lips curled into a toxic smile, a mix of shock and fury. Was the prey offering the predator mercy? Was a cornered rabbit telling the wolf, "I don't want to hurt you"? It was as pathetic as it was irritating.

  The distance had opened up by a floor or two thanks to Serevia's desperate lunges. They couldn't see each other; only concrete slabs and iron railings stood between them. But the silence betrayed her. Her rattling breaths and the frantic drumming of her boots were a lighthouse in the dark for the Leader. Even unseen, she remained at the end of his barrel with every sound she made.

  Then, it stopped.

  The frantic, irregular heartbeat of her footsteps cut out. Exactly thirty seconds after the echo of her last words died, the sound vanished as if severed by a blade. To the Leader, this was the most dangerous moment. Silence meant the prey had stopped—either exhausted or lying in wait. His seasoned instincts told him she was still in the building, likely a floor or two below. He softened his tread, gliding like a phantom toward the level where the last sounds had drifted, where dust motes still hung suspended in the air.

  The moment he stepped into the corridor, he sensed movement in his peripheral vision. A silhouette—Serevia’s frail, familiar shadow—darted across the dark, doorless opening at the far end of the floor. It was either an invitation or a panicked mistake. He didn't hesitate, but he didn't drop his guard. He approached the room where the shadow had vanished, his muscles coiled like a spring ready to snap.

  When he entered the room, the scene his visor scanned wasn't what he expected. This was a hollow, ruined room on the edge of a precipice, its outer facade entirely stripped away, inviting the city’s radioactive winds inside. There was no sound of breath, no tremor. Serevia was gone. The girl had seemingly evaporated into thin air. This anomaly triggered red alarms in his mind. Such a rapid disappearance was impossible, unless...

  The exact millisecond he moved to turn and abandon the room, he felt the air shift, but he was too late.

  Thud!

  A brutal kick exploded dead center of his back, right at the level of his kidneys, crushing the air in his lungs. Serevia had coiled into the dead blind spot right beside the entrance, waiting for him to commit to the room. She had poured every ounce of her strength, her terror, and her feral will to survive into that single strike. Despite his heavy, superhuman balance, the Leader staggered forward under the unexpected, pinpoint impact. His loss of balance lasted only a fraction of a second—perhaps the length of a single heartbeat.

  She knew with absolute certainty that the man before her wouldn't stay down; she knew he would recover with his terrifying agility in seconds and crush her. So, she didn't stop, and she didn't retreat. She lunged at the man as he fought to regain his footing, attacking like a cornered predator. Her target was neither his weapon nor his throat; with blind desperation, she hooked her fingers like claws and reached for that rigid, matte surface bolted to his face—the oxygen mask, the only thing keeping him alive.

  With trembling hands, she lunged for the black, vital hoses of the mask, his final lifeline. In the millisecond her fingertips brushed the straps and felt the freezing surface, time ground to a halt.

  Thud!

  The world turned pitch-black as a terrifying impact exploded dead center of her stomach.

  The Leader's elbow, driven with the speed of a hydraulic piston from point-blank range, slammed into Serevia's diaphragm like a sledgehammer. This was no ordinary strike; it was trained, lethal, and carried a force that vibrated through her very bones. Every scrap of air in her lungs was instantly crushed out of existence. Agony radiated from her stomach, through her spine, and into her brain like a bolt of lightning. Her eyes blew wide as if they would burst from their sockets, but not even a shriek could escape her lips; only a hollow, airless gag tore from her throat:

  "Ggh!..."

  Her body lost all control, catapulting backward before slamming hard onto the dusty, freezing concrete like a sack of dead weight. Her legs drew up toward her stomach, her body locking in a spasm of unbearable pain. She fought for air, her mouth opening and closing, but the cursed oxygen refused to enter her lungs.

  As she writhed in the dust, she forced her blurring eyes upward. Her eyelids felt as though they weighed tons.

  The silhouette standing before her rose like a colossal, dark monument against the pale moonlight bleeding through the shattered wall. Despite her strikes, the man hadn't even wavered. With a glacial, bone-chilling composure, he leaned down and retrieved his helmet, which had been knocked loose moments ago. With an easy, dismissive gesture, he brushed off the dust and tucked the helmet under his arm.

  He approached with the crushing weight of an inevitable end, stopping right beside her writhing body. With a sinister, fluid motion, the Leader dropped to his knees, leveling himself with Serevia’s gasping, broken face. His shadow fell over her like a dark shroud. The eyes behind that mask burned with the predatory focus of a beast locking onto its kill. The words spilling from his lips—smooth, deep, and heavy with an overwhelming authority—struck Serevia’s face like a physical weight.

  "I told you... to stop."