Despite the ice-cold terror coursing through her veins, the young girl did not make the fatal mistake of whipping around on pure reflex. Even though her instincts screamed at her to freeze, she forced her absolute will, taking one or two heavy, calculated steps as if she hadn't noticed a single thing and was simply continuing on her way. That sound trailing behind her... That rhythmic, heavy thud of combat boots blending into the howling wind—a sound she couldn't even be certain she heard—tracked her every footfall with the absolute loyalty of a shadow.
One more step...
Serevia crushed the cold metal grips in her palms until her knuckles turned bone-white. She dug her nails almost deep enough to pierce her own flesh, desperately drawing strength from the physical weight of the weapons. Yet, she masterfully masked this lethal tension, letting her shoulders slump and keeping her posture entirely loose. She knew the feral laws of these streets by heart; if she made even the slightest sudden movement to startle that invisible lion behind her or trigger its threat response, the predator wouldn't hesitate to bare its fangs and devour the prey in a single, violent strike. Absolute calm served as her only armor right now.
Her lungs were already choked with Caduta's toxic, rusted air, making the performance completely effortless. Suddenly, she doubled over as if a violent, rattling coughing fit was actively tearing her throat apart from the inside. Putting on a flawless act of a body completely giving out, she let herself drop uncontrollably to the dirt; her knees slammed hard into the freezing ground as she collapsed. Even though she hung her head, wrapped her arms tightly around her stomach, and played the part of someone desperately fighting for air, she actively locked every single sense, every raw nerve ending, onto the entity right behind her.
Though she couldn't see it, her razor-sharp logic and feral instincts whispered a single, absolute truth: the silhouette breathing down her neck still stood perfectly upright. The owner of those military boots towered over her with the glacial composure of an executioner, silently watching this "pathetic" girl crumpled on the ground.
As she dialed up the violent intensity of her coughing fit to an utterly convincing degree, the ragged, agonized wheezing tearing from her throat echoed through the dead silence of the street. Even as her doubled-over body violently shuddered under the strain of the fake attack on her lungs, she never let her fingers loosen their iron grip on the freezing metal concealed in her palms for even a fraction of a second. This was no simple parlor trick; this was a profound, masterful performance executed on the razor-thin line between life and death. And Serevia was an accomplished enough liar to flawlessly carry this role on Sarcos's merciless stage.
Crumpled on her knees, she painted the perfect picture of defenseless prey; yet she kept her muscles pulled as taut as a primed explosive, and her mind operated with the absolute, crystal clarity of a grandmaster. The exact second she felt no lethal strike coming from the pitch-black shadow behind her, sensing the deadly silence remained entirely unbroken over her collapsed form, she decided to violently seize control of the moment.
Her body snapped loose like a released bowstring. Without ever breaking her crouch, she whipped around sharply on her heel with a feral, gravity-defying agility. The maneuver exploded with such sudden, unpredictable speed that before the man behind her could even process the assault to counter it, Serevia launched her leg like a whip tearing through the air. The heavy, rigid sole of her boot smashed directly into the vulnerable nerve cluster between his shin and his knee, striking with a brutal, bone-rattling crack.
Though the strike lacked the devastating force to fell the massive man, it proved enough to shatter his balance. The soldier staggered back on his combat boots, his disciplined posture fracturing for a split second. In that fleeting window, Serevia slid forward with feral agility to tear open the distance. When she snapped her head up, she locked eyes with the face illuminated by the moonlight.
Her eyes blew wide with absolute shock and terror at the sight before her. The figure standing there was no ordinary sentry or patrol grunt. The gleam of the rank insignias on his shoulders, the advanced oxygen mask suffocating his face, and the cold blue light bleeding from his visor screamed his identity: this was the Leader, the very same cold-blooded butcher who had orchestrated the massacre in the square and scythed people down without blinking.
A massive question mark, far heavier than her fear, sprouted in her mind like a venomous vine. Why? Why had this glacial executioner, who had just massacred dozens in the square without a shred of hesitation, waited behind Serevia like a silent shadow? Why hadn't he simply put a bullet in the back of the neck of this "pathetic," crumpled girl during her most vulnerable second and finished the job? He hadn't killed her; he had only watched. Such waiting totally defied logic for a man so entirely devoid of mercy, and this pitch-black unknown terrified Serevia infinitely more than the guns themselves.
The shockwave paralyzing her mind violently shattered under the brutal slap of her survival instinct. Driving her hands into the muddy dirt, Serevia launched herself to her feet like a cornered animal, fueled by a feral cocktail of panic and fury. As the freezing air scorched her lungs, she vomited a raw, uncontrolled shriek tearing straight from her throat, hurling it right at the man's soulless mask:
"Stay back! Stop following me!"
Her voice carried no smooth or dismissive tone; it was the primal, desperate roar of someone entirely out of breath, her words violently cracking with terror. Spit flew into the air as the syllables tore from her lips. She didn't wait for an answer, nor did she even dare stick around to witness the man's next move. The absolute second the sentence left her mouth, she spun sharply on her heels and violently threw herself back into the pitch-black depths of the street.
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"Damn it, damn it!"
She hissed to herself, violently wedging the curses between her ragged breaths as she broke into a sprint. Her legs shuddered, but the sheer terror of death whipped her from behind. The bloody slaughter she had just witnessed in the square, those bullet-riddled bodies, clung to her mind like a frozen film reel. If she stopped, if she even slowed down, she would instantly become the next victim. She absolutely refused to become the next corpse laid out on those freezing stones with glassy, unblinking eyes. Without throwing a single glance over her shoulder, she tore through the darkness, running purely to survive.
She didn't stop. She couldn't stop.
The rhythmic, heavy crunch of those damned combat boots pulverizing the snow behind her hadn't ceased for a single heartbeat. The fact that the man had recovered so violently fast from her kick made him resemble a wound-up machine of death far more than flesh and blood. Even with her mind utterly clouded by terror, Serevia couldn't stop a second question from violently tearing through her thoughts: why?
With so many corpses littering the square, with absolute command over his troops to orchestrate the cleanup, why the hell had he hunted down a single girl in this derelict alleyway? Clearly, the monster behind that mask hadn't fed enough; he craved blood, he demanded a hunt. But Serevia had absolutely no intention of becoming the next name on that slaughter list, nor did she plan on bleeding out over those freezing stones. That sheer defiance pumped fresh, violent power into her exhausting legs; even as her lungs burned like fire, she pushed her speed even harder.
Mid-sprint, she jerked her head slightly over her shoulder, threw the heavy weapons in her hands into the air, and violently shook the barrels at the darkness tracking her. She roared with a ragged wheeze that actively tore her lungs apart.
"Stop following me! Stay the fuck back! I swear I'll shoot! Don't come any closer!"
Her voice sounded less like a calculated threat and far more like the ugly, desperate noise of a cornered beast fighting for its life. She gasped violently for air, spitting into the freezing wind, but her message rang absolute and clear: the prey was fully prepared to bare its fangs.
The first of those terrifying questions gnawing at her mind violently echoed in her skull once more, blending with the heavy, rhythmic crunch of the combat boots: why was she still alive? She knew the man tracking her was no ordinary soldier; he was a flawless executioner who never missed a shot, a butcher who orchestrated massacres without blinking an eye. From that distance, especially with her back entirely exposed and defenseless, he could have effortlessly shattered Serevia's head like a melon. Yet, he didn't. He refused to pull the trigger, refused to even level his barrel, choosing instead to shadow her with that suffocating, sinister silence. This realization sent a freezing sweat cascading down Serevia's spine; she remained alive not due to the man's incompetence, but through his deliberate, calculated choice, and this pitch-black uncertainty terrified her far more than death itself. Like a sadistic cat reveling in playing with its prey, he seemed to simply wait for her to exhaust herself and collapse into the dirt.
They ran...
They plunged deeper into the endless, labyrinthine streets of Mixtum in a relentless pursuit. Serevia ran as utterly exhausted prey, her lungs pushed to the absolute brink of collapse, feeling every breath slice her throat like a rusted razor blade. Her legs no longer obeyed her commands; they moved involuntarily, violently whipped forward only by her primal terror of death. Meanwhile, that damned shadow tracking her, that tireless beast, advanced at a pace that entirely defied the laws of physics. He moved as if forged not from flesh and bone, but from pure, relentless steel and absolute fury; he never gasped for air, he never staggered—he simply kept coming. It was a completely hopeless struggle, no different than a violently exhausted gazelle desperately thrashing to outrun the breathing lion resting right against the nape of its neck.
In that exact, shattering moment when she finally realized that merely running would never be enough, that she would never tear open the distance between them, a reckless desperation completely consumed her. Without breaking the frantic rhythm of her sprint, she violently swung the heavy Sarcos weapon in her right hand backward beneath her armpit in a sudden, feral maneuver that brutally tested the absolute limits of her balance. Her strike carried the raw, reflexive grace of someone raised entirely in the streets, yet pure, unadulterated panic served as its true fuel.
Without a single second of thought, lacking even the fraction of a heartbeat required to aim, she violently squeezed the trigger.
Crack! Crack!
The massive recoil of the weapon violently jolted her wrist, nearly ripping it out of its socket, as two blind bullets shredded the dead silence of the night. The rounds flew wildly off target; one obliterated the plaster of a crumbling building nearby and kicked up a thick cloud of dust, while the other vanished into the pitch-black sky like a stray, whistling phantom. It was an entirely expected failure for someone who had never held a gun in her life, someone who had only ever known the stench of gunpowder from the wrong end of a barrel. Nevertheless, that deafening roar and the devastating, vibrating power she felt surging through her hands ignited a frail spark of defiance against the crushing despair consuming Serevia. The silver lining might have been blood-red, but it remained absolute truth: she had missed, but at the very least, she had fired back. She no longer ran as a pathetic victim; she ran as prey fully prepared to bare its teeth.
Her focus frayed with the fired bullets and sanded down with every freezing breath she swallowed; the filthy air flooding her lungs tore through her chest like shattered glass. The cold sliced down her windpipe like a physical blade. Just ahead in her rapidly blurring field of vision, she spotted a colossal skeleton violently rising from the darkness. It was an abandoned construction site, thrusting its half-finished concrete bones and rusted iron rebar straight into the sky. It stood as one of those phantom structures left over from the era before the rebellion, completely frozen in time... Yet to Serevia, in that exact second, it materialized as the absolute, singular escape hatch hidden in the pitch-black night.
Without a single second of hesitation, fueling her sprint with the absolute last drop of power left in her legs, she violently altered her route and charged straight into the concrete ruins.
