My Milf Conqueror System novel Chapter 115

Chapter 115: The Analog Mind

[Ethan’s POV]

The alleys of Sector 4 were a labyrinth of broken concrete, rotting garbage, and suffocating darkness.

I pulled Claire around a sharp corner, my boots splashing through a deep puddle of stagnant water. Behind us, the shouts of the Lupii thugs echoed off the brick walls, accompanied by the sweeping, erratic beams of their flashlights. They knew the terrain better than we did. They were hunting in their own backyard.

"Keep your head down," I hissed, pressing Claire against the cold, wet brick of a narrow alcove.

I peeked around the edge. Two men were jogging down the main thoroughfare, sweeping their lights across the doorways. One of them was holding a heavy, short-barreled shotgun.

...

Flashback - Sixteen Months Ago

The rain in upstate New York was freezing, turning the Aegis Solutions tactical training ground into a sea of mud.

I was lying flat on my stomach beneath the rusted chassis of an old pickup truck, my breathing shallow, my muscles screaming from exhaustion. I had been running for three hours.

Footsteps crunched in the gravel nearby.

"You run like a civilian, Ethan," a voice called out. It wasn’t Darius this time. It was Graves, a former SAS operative and one of the lead instructors we had inherited when Vanguard absorbed Aegis. He was walking casually through the mud, a thermal monocular in his hand.

"Civilians run away from the threat," Graves continued, his boots stopping three feet from my face. "They run in straight lines. They panic. They look for the fastest route out. And that makes them entirely predictable."

Graves crouched down, peering under the truck. He didn’t even need the thermal optics. He had tracked my footprints.

"If you are being hunted by a superior force, you do not outrun them," Graves said, his voice a calm, clinical rasp. "You out-think them. You break their line of sight, you change your elevation, and you become part of the concrete. You let them run right past you. Evasion isn’t about speed. It’s about geometry."

...

Present Time

I pulled my head back from the edge of the brick wall. The Lupii were getting closer. Running down the alley would just put us in their line of sight. We needed to change our geometry.

I looked up. The fire escape of the adjacent tenement building had collapsed, but the rusted iron ladder was dangling about nine feet off the ground.

"Up," I whispered to Claire, pointing at the ladder.

I holstered my Glock, laced my fingers together to form a step, and braced myself against the wall. Claire didn’t hesitate. She stepped into my hands, and I hoisted her upward with a sharp grunt of effort. She grabbed the rusted iron rung, her boots scrambling against the wet brick until she pulled herself onto the landing.

I took a few steps back, took a running start, and jumped, catching the bottom rung. The metal groaned in protest, raining flakes of rust into my eyes, but it held. I hauled myself up just as the beams of the Lupii flashlights swept into the alley below.

Claire and I pressed ourselves flat against the iron grating of the landing, holding our breath.

"Where did they go?" one of the thugs growled in Romanian, his flashlight beam cutting through the rain just inches below our boots.

"Check the basements," the man with the shotgun ordered. "They couldn’t have gotten far. The boss wants the American’s head, and he wants the people who helped him."

They jogged past us, their heavy footsteps fading into the storm.

I let out a slow, controlled exhale. "Come on. We need to get off the street."

We climbed two more flights of the fire escape until we found a window with a shattered pane. I reached through, unlatched the lock, and pushed the heavy wooden frame up. We slipped inside, dropping into the pitch-black interior of an abandoned apartment.

The air inside was stale, smelling of mildew and old dust. I drew my flashlight and swept the room. Stripped floorboards, peeling wallpaper, and a few pieces of broken furniture. It was empty.

"We’re clear," I said, moving to the window and pulling the rotting curtains shut to block any light from spilling out into the street.

I turned back to see Claire already sitting on the floor, her back against the wall. She was soaked to the bone, her blonde braid plastered to her neck, but she wasn’t resting. She had the reinforced briefcase open on her lap.

She pulled out the battered laptop and pressed the power button. The screen remained dead.

VERIFYCAPTCHA_LABELVerify