Chapter 24

Note: This is not a horror story, it’s supposed to be an action thriller. Enjoy! 😀

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The first thing Elias noticed was the silence.

Not the kind that came with peace. The kind that came after screaming.

He stood in the center of the abandoned subway platform, rainwater dripping from his torn jacket. The emergency lights flickered red, illuminating the scene at his feet.

A pool of blood spread across the cracked concrete.

In its reflection, he saw his own face—bruised, exhausted, and staring back with the same question burning in his mind.

What happened here?

Then his earpiece crackled.

“Elias,” his handler whispered urgently. “The package wasn’t recovered. The assassin is still in the station.”

A metallic clang echoed through the tunnels.

Elias’s hand tightened around his pistol.

He remembered fragments: the exchange gone wrong, masked men emerging from the darkness, the young woman he’d been ordered to protect shoving a flash drive into his hand before disappearing into the chaos.

“Don’t let them have it,” she’d said.

Footsteps.

Fast.

He spun just as a knife sliced through the air where his throat had been a second earlier. The attacker moved like a shadow, striking again and again, forcing Elias backward toward the tracks.

Gunshots thundered through the station.

One missed.

One shattered a light overhead.

The last found its mark.

The assassin collapsed beside him, blood spreading to join the crimson stain already coating the floor.

Breathing hard, Elias looked down at the flash drive clenched in his fist.

The pool of blood beneath his boots wasn’t the end of the story.

It was the beginning.

Because hidden inside that tiny piece of metal was proof that some of the most powerful people in the country had built their empires on murder.

And now they knew exactly who had it.

Above the station, sirens wailed.

Elias wiped the blood from his face and stepped into the darkness of the tunnel.

By sunrise, the entire city would be hunting him.

And if he failed—

There would be oceans of blood to follow the pool he left behind.