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The Reluctant Hero
The Reluctant Hero
And under it all, something else. A stillness that didn’t fit. No breeze. No car engines. No distant train. Just the soft, steady thud of her own heartbeat. Something was off.
She picked up the pace. The sound of her heels on the wet pavement felt too loud. It was like she was drawing a map with every step.
That’s when he stepped out from the alley. Silent. Smooth. One of those guys you don’t hear until he wants you to. The kind that makes you think of basements and regrets.
No words. Just a gun, sleek, black, silenced. It caught the dim light like a secret flicking its tongue.
He was already aiming before she even saw him, but then his foot slipped.
Wet pavement. Maybe oil, maybe rain. Didn’t matter. It was enough. He stumbled just as the shot went off. Pfft.
Not a bang. More like breath through clenched teeth.
It still hit. Her shoulder lit up like fire under ice. She stumbled, grabbing for the wound, fingers coming away red and slick.
She gasped, staggered sideways, and nearly fell to the sidewalk.
She looked up. Saw him, his hat low, his coat soaked, his face buried in shadow. And he kept coming. Slow. Steady. Professional. The kind of man who didn’t quit until the job was done.
Then someone else moved.
Behind her. A blur from a doorway she hadn’t noticed. No warning, no words, just motion and intent.
The second man hit the gunman like a train. No finesse. No form. Just raw, desperate muscle.
The pistol clattered to the pavement, skidding into the gutter.
Elena dropped to her knees. The pain surged and throbbed, hot and dizzying. Her vision tunneled. She blinked hard, tried to breathe. Everything felt heavy, her coat, her body, the air.
The two figures fought in the alley, locked in a dirty, silent brawl. No fancy moves, just elbows and fists and bone on bone. One of them slammed the other into a dumpster with a sound like an empty coffin. The assassin tried to rise, slipped again. A final blow dropped him. Hard. No twitch. No breath. Just a heap of wet clothes and violence. Then it was quiet again.
The second man turned. Dropped beside her. Face drawn, soaked, but steady. Eyes like the kind that had seen too much and still came back for more. He peeled her hand away from the wound, grimaced, and tore a strip from his own shirt. Wrapped it around her shoulder with practiced hands.
“You’re gonna make it,” he said. Voice rough, urgent. “But we can’t stay here.”
She swallowed hard. Tried to form words. “Who… are you?”
He didn’t blink. “Nobody.” A glance to the alley. “For now, that’s enough.”
Meet The President
Meet The President
President Malcolm Malone stood in front of the mirror like a man negotiating with destiny. Tall and broad-shouldered, with perfectly coiffed silver hair and piercing gray eyes, he carried the kind of presence that filled a room before he spoke. Early sixties, every inch of him polished—from the razor-pressed lapels of his dark suit to the shine on his cufflinks. The lights were too bright, the suit too perfect, and the face staring back too convinced of its own myth.
He tilted his head, just slightly. The silver hair didn’t move. Neither did the expression.
“Presidential,” he muttered. “Damn near majestic.”
Malone turned, finger-gunned his own reflection.
“America’s favorite leader,” he said to nobody.
The door opened. Elise Thorne walked in with all the warmth of a power outage. In her mid-fifties, sharply dressed in a tailored navy suit, platinum blonde hair pinned in a tight chignon, she exuded control with every step. Pale gray eyes that rarely blinked scanned the room like targeting systems. Cold, calculating, and ruthlessly efficient, she moved like a chess piece nobody saw coming—a queen cloaked in bureaucratic formality, and every bit as dangerous.
“You ready?” she asked, her voice filed down to the edge of a blade.
Malone lit up like a storefront sign. “Thorney! There she is. My secret weapon. You know, the chess one. Not the horse—the scary one.”
“The queen.”
“Right! Queen. That’s you. I’m the king. Dynamic duo.”
“What do you want me to say out there?” Thorne asked, tone flat.
“Easy. Tell ’em I’m great. Strong. Tough on security. Toss in ‘firewalls’—makes people feel like there’s a digital wall between them and the scary stuff.”
Thorne’s smile was the kind you give a man walking backward toward a cliff.
The First Escape
The First Escape
They were being herded, Jack realized, pinned toward the only open track. Behind him, a black tank car squatted, FLAMMABLE warning glowing faintly red. A perfect cork in the bottle.
Remezov’s voice sliced through the chaos. “Left side, Jack, now!”
No more options. Jack grabbed a grenade from his pocket, yanked the pin, and skipped it under the tank car. One metallic clink. A rising whistle. Thunder.
Orange fire punched the night sky. The blast lifted Jack off his feet, gravel scraping his palms as he skidded. Silence swallowed everything for a heartbeat, then the ringing came, then screams, and the tortured sound of metal imploding.
Heat licked his face. Shrapnel sang overhead. Somewhere amid the flames, a figure lay sprawled, but guilt would have to wait. Thirty seconds, maybe less, before the hunters regrouped.
“Get to the train! Go!” Jack rasped.
They sprinted. Wu fired blind to slow the pursuit; Elena kept her head down and her legs pumping. The slow-rolling freight loomed—rust-stained, but moving, salvation on steel wheels.
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