Holly glanced at the reflective glass of a storefront as they walked, her eyes at a glance caught on two familiar figures maintaining a steady, pace behind them.
"Ryan," Holly murmured, her voice barely a breath. "Don't look back. We're being tailed."
Ryan didn't turn his head. "Scarlet and Rose?"
"Yeah. They aren't trying to hide it anymore."
The two operatives had just received direct, encrypted clearance from Grishile—an order to isolate, tail, and quietly secure Ryan specifically, keeping the deployment entirely hidden from both Bill Curt and the local precinct.
Holly took the lead, breaking into a light jog. Ryan matched her stride, their sudden shift in pace drawing annoyed glances from pedestrians on the crowded sidewalk. Behind them, Scarlet and Rose instantly adapted, their boots striking the pavement in a sync, athletic sprint as they effortlessly moved through the bustling crowd.
"This way!" Ryan called out, veering hard to the left into a dark, narrow service alley between two high-rise commercial buildings.
The moment their boots hit the concrete alleyway, the crowded street vanished behind them, and Ryan unleashed his full speed.
His legs blurred into a terrifying display of raw superhuman speed, cutting through the damp alley like a gust of wind. Holly was right on his heels, her movements nevertheless any different.
She leaped onto a rusted dump dumpster, using the momentum to spring off the brick wall, clearing a eight-foot iron chain-link fence in one clean, soaring vault.
Rolling onto the asphalt on the other side, she vaulted over a stack of wooden pallets, her parkour style fast, and completely unhindered by her casual clothes.
They sprinted down a winding secondary passage, taking two sharp turns through a labyrinth of backstreets.
"I think we lost them!" Holly gasped, catching her breath as she landed lightly off a fire escape ladder.
"Don't slow down!" Ryan warned—and his instincts proved right.
Bursting through the shadow of an overhead skybridge, Rose and Scarlet appeared, closing the gap with terrifying, relentless endurance.
As she ran, Scarlet reached beneath her jacket without the slightest hesitation drawing her custom firearm and screwing a long, sleek suppressor onto the barrel in one fluid, motion-driven action.
"They won't give up!" Ryan growled.
Reaching into his jacket, Ryan flicked his wrist, releasing the synthesized metal blade from his pocket. Driven by his invisible force the steel blade shot backward through the alley like an invisible arrow, whistling through the air straight toward Scarlet's throat.
"Left!" Rose warned, her irises flickered into a bright, predatory glint—activating her ability "Eagle's Vision". The world around her slowed into razor-sharp motion paths; she could literally see the forced wind trails and metallic trajectory of Ryan's blade slicing through the air.
With an impossible, reflex-driven head-tilt, Rose dodged the projectile by a hair's breadth.
"Dammit!" Ryan cursed under his breath, laughing bitterly at his missed strike. He snapped his fingers, redirecting the floating blade from thirty yards away, curving it back around in a vicious arc aimed directly to scar Rose's cheek.
Simultaneously, Scarlet raised her suppressed piece without breaking her sprint.
"Pfft! Pfft!"
The subsonic rounds spat from the barrel. Ryan jerked his head back as a bullet chipped the brick wall beside him, spraying concrete dust. But the second round caught Holly off guard—the suppressed bullet grazed her upper arm, tearing through her jacket sleeve and leaving a thin, burning red scratch across her skin.
"Holly!" Ryan yelled, his eyes flaring with raw anger as he pulled the metal blade back toward his palm to defend her.
"I'm fine! Focus on the gap!" Holly shouted, diving shoulder-first into a low roll to dodge another suppressed round that cracked into the asphalt behind her.
"Pass me the iron!"
Ryan didn't hesitate. As they tore through a sunlit courtyard, scattering a massive flock of gray doves into a frantic, explosion of beating wings, he snapped his fingers.
The sharp metal blade hovering near his palm collapsed in a blur of kinetic force, rolling into a dense, solid iron sphere. He hurled it backward over his shoulder.
Holly caught the heavy iron sphere mid-stride. The moment her fingers closed around the metal, a dark heavy metallic sheen surged across her skin like liquid armor. From her neck down to her boots, her entire body solidified into dense, polished iron, her clothes merging seamlessly into the metallic shell, leaving only her face exposed to maintain her vision and breathing.
They burst out of the narrow service lane and plunged into a bustling pedestrian plaza lined with outdoor cafes.
"Look out!" a man yelled, dropping his espresso cup as Ryan leaped clean over his table in a single, terrifying vault.
"Are they filming a movie?!" a woman screamed, ducking as Holly tore past, her heavy, metallic footsteps ringing out against the brick pavement like iron boots on an anvil.
Pedestrians scattered in absolute terror, knocking over metal chairs and abandoning shopping bags as the high-speed chase cut through the crowded plaza.
Then Scarlet cleared the alleyway behind them.
Without missing a beat, Scarlet raised her suppressed firearm, tracking Holly's iron-plated silhouette through the chaos.
"Pfft! Pfft! Pfft!"
The muffled cracks of the weapon echoed through the open air. The crowd instantly panicked—shrieking civilians scrambled over one another, diving behind concrete planters and smashing into display glass to escape the unseen shooter.
A heavy round caught Holly square in the shoulder, instead of ricocheting harmlessly off her dense iron skin as an ordinary lead bullet should have, the projectile bit deeply into her shoulder with a sickening, high-pitched "screech".
The impact forced a gasp of pain from Holly's throat as she stumbled forward, black smoke wafting from the impact site. She reached up, her metallic fingers brushing against her shoulder. Where the round had struck, a deep, jagged scar was etched directly into her iron skin, glowing with a faint heat that hissed against her metallic self.
Holly's eyes widened in sheer disbelief as she kept running beside Ryan. "Ryan... these aren't the usual rounds! These bastards are using a more evolved bullet alloy!"