The chopper's blades carved the air like a chainsaw through silence. Sirens wailed in the distance. On the ballroom floor below, chaos bloomed in blood and glass. But up here—on the 47th-floor balcony—Adrian and Nora stood in the eye of the storm, backs pressed together, guns drawn.
"This isn't an extraction team," Nora said, breath short.
"I know," Adrian replied grimly. "Too early. Too aggressive. It's Kaito."
A spotlight swept toward them, white-hot and merciless.
A voice came over the comm: distorted, mocking.
"You really thought I'd let you slip out? This is the end of your story, Adrian."
"And yet," Adrian muttered, "I'm still the one with the gun."
Bullets rained from the chopper. Concrete cracked. Glass shattered. Nora grabbed Adrian's arm, yanked him into a side hallway. Her heels clacked over tile—she kicked them off mid-sprint.
"We need height!" she shouted. "Rooftop access!"
"There's a maintenance stairwell," Adrian called. "Two levels up."
They ran. Through smoky halls. Past collapsed tables and scattered masquerade masks. Each step was a gamble—every turn a potential ambush.
Nora's mind raced as fast as her legs. The Blacklist had resurfaced. Kaito had burned them both. Adrian was now globally wanted. And her old codename—Vex—had been reignited like a damn flare gun.
Her past wasn't behind her anymore. It was catching up.
Fast.
---
They slammed through the rooftop door just as the chopper repositioned, rising like a metal vulture. The wind howled, pulling at their clothes. Adrian's shirt flapped open, revealing the vest under it. Nora's gown whipped around her like a crimson flame.
"There!" he shouted, pointing toward the adjacent building—shorter, maybe 30 feet across.
She gave him a look like he was crazy.
"You want us to jump?"
"No," he said, "I want us to fly. Come on."
He ran first. Without hesitation. Without looking back.
Nora cursed under her breath—and followed.
The leap was less graceful, more violent survival. She hit the next roof and rolled, the edge slicing her shoulder. Adrian pulled her up fast. No time to check wounds. The chopper spun around with a snarl.
"Move!"
---
They dropped through a roof access hatch, clattering down a ladder into an abandoned office complex. Empty desks. Flickering lights. The perfect place to vanish.
But the silence inside was louder than the chaos outside.
Adrian slammed the hatch behind them and braced it with a steel pipe.
Breathing heavily, they pressed against the wall, listening.
For a moment, nothing.
Then—voices on the floor below. Footsteps. Kaito's men were sweeping the building.
"Options?" Nora whispered.
Adrian pulled a small device from his belt—a smoke charge. "Distraction."
"And escape?"
He looked at her.
"You trust me?"
She exhaled. "Still do."
---
They moved like ghosts. Down back corridors, crawling through ductwork, skimming along blind spots. Adrian knew how to vanish, and Nora had done it most of her life. Together, they were almost myth.
But they needed more than stealth now. They needed an ally.
Adrian tapped into a hidden comm frequency.
"Dax. Come in."
Silence.
Then:
"You've got some nerve, calling me after that stunt."
"It wasn't me," Adrian growled. "Kaito burned us both."
A pause. Then Dax cursed.
"I figured something smelled. You've got a hellstorm behind you. He uploaded the Ghost file across six syndicate networks. Your bounty's trending faster than cat videos."
"Can you help us or not?"
Another pause.
"Get to Dock 9. There's a crate in the shipping yard. Code: RAVEN-ECHO. You've got ten minutes. After that, I disappear too."
Adrian looked at Nora. "We've got our exit."
She didn't ask how Dax could arrange that so quickly. She knew Dax always had a parachute. He just rarely offered to share it.
---
The rain was still falling when they slipped into the streets, faces masked, movements careful. Sirens cut through the night. The city's neon signs now displayed Adrian's face—WANTED, flashing in red.
Every step felt like walking on a landmine.
At the dockyard, they moved among stacks of cargo containers. Each metal crate loomed like a coffin. Time was running out.
"RAVEN-ECHO," Adrian muttered, scanning numbers.
"There," Nora pointed.
They sprinted toward it—just as a squad of Syndicate hunters turned the corner.
"DOWN!"
Gunfire erupted. Nora ducked behind a container as Adrian fired back. They were outgunned, outnumbered.
Then—BOOM.
A wall of fire exploded behind the attackers. One screamed. The rest scattered.
From the shadows, a figure emerged.
Dax.
"Did you miss me?"
Adrian grinned despite himself.
"Only when bullets start flying."
Dax tossed them both new IDs and a duffel bag.
"Inside the crate. It's rigged to look like an export manifest. Ship leaves in eight minutes. After that, you're on your own."
Nora gave Dax a long look. "Why help us?"
Dax shrugged. "Because I hate being played. And because if Kaito wins, he won't stop with you two. He'll burn us all."
---
Inside the crate was a false wall. Behind it—a tunnel to the loading ramp of a cargo ship.
As they crawled through, Nora finally allowed herself to breathe.
Just a little.
Adrian crawled beside her. "When we get out of this…"
"You're buying me pancakes?" she smirked.
"I was thinking more like disappearing to Iceland. Quiet place. No hitmen."
"I've always liked the cold," she murmured.
But her smile faded.
"We're not free, Adrian. Not yet."
"No. But we're not dead either."
---
As the ship pulled out into international waters, the city lights faded behind them.
On deck, Nora sat beside Adrian, wrapped in a blanket. Her arm bled lightly from the rooftop jump, and Adrian wrapped it carefully with a strip of cloth.
"This… thing between us," she said slowly. "Is it real, or is it just survival?"
He met her eyes.
"It started as survival," he admitted. "But now... it's the only thing that feels real."
She leaned her head on his shoulder.
For a while, the silence wasn't heavy. It was comforting.
Then Adrian whispered:
"Kaito made a mistake."
"What's that?"
"He turned a coder and a soldier into a war."
Nora smiled softly.
"Let's make him regret it."