Slowly, he stepped forward. Too close. Close enough to intimidate. Most people would have backed away. Evelyn didn't move.

They bolted out of the motel room and sprinted down the rain-slicked exterior walkway. Tires screeched as three black SUVs tore into the motel parking lot, headlights blinding them. Men in tactical gear poured out, opening fire immediately.

Bullets chewed through the cheap stucco walls and shattered the wooden railings around them. Elias pushed Clara down a rusted metal stairwell, returning suppressive fire to keep the Hounds pinned behind their vehicles.

"Where are we going?" Clara screamed over the deafening roar of gunfire.

"Subway!" Elias yelled, pointing toward a chain-link fence at the back of the property.

They ran through the muddy alleyway, Elias vaulting the fence with effortless grace before turning to pull Clara over. A bullet grazed his leather jacket, tearing a chunk of the material away, but he didn't even flinch. He hauled her over the top just as the mercenaries rounded the corner.

They crashed through the heavy emergency exit doors of an abandoned subway maintenance tunnel. The air instantly turned cold and smelled of damp earth and rust. Elias barricaded the heavy iron door with a rusted steel pipe, buying them a few precious minutes.

They plunged deeper into the darkness of the tunnels, navigating by the faint glow of Elias’s tactical flashlight. The sounds of the pursuit faded, muffled by tons of concrete and earth above them.

Clara leaned against the damp wall, gasping for air, her lungs burning. She looked at Elias, who wasn't even breathing heavily. He was scanning the tunnel, his eyes cold and calculating.

"You do this for a living?" Clara asked, wiping mud from her face.

"I used to," Elias replied, checking his ammunition. "I thought I left it behind. But men like Thorne... they don't let you retire. They pull you back in."

"I have the data, but it's encrypted with a rolling cipher. I need a terminal with high processing power to unlock it before we can dump it online," Clara explained, her mind shifting back to the mission.

Elias nodded slowly in the darkness. "I know a guy. A tech broker who operates in the underground. His name is Jax. He runs a speakeasy down here in the old prohibition tunnels. But he’s a mercenary at heart. We have to be careful."