2025-11-20 23:32:51The Iron Bridge rose from the mist like a skeleton of a forgotten titan—rusted beams curving over a black river, bolts missing, planks rotting, metal groaning each time the wind touched it. No one used it anymore. Not even criminals. It was a dead landmark in a dying part of the city.
Which made it perfect for someone desperate.
Someone like Adrian Kelevra.
His boots sank into wet mud as he approached the bridge’s entrance. The rain—cold and thin—draped the night in silver, dripping down his bruised face and soaking through his torn clothes. He hadn’t slept in two days. He hadn’t eaten in one.
Every breath burned his ribs.
Every step felt like dragging broken glass.
But he kept moving.
He had to.
Behind him, somewhere in the maze of alleys and docks, the city pulsed with violence. Gangs whispered his name. Syndicates sent scouts to hunt him. Mercenaries had already taken shots at him. Even the homeless who once nodded respectfully now hid their faces whenever he passed.
The whole city wanted him dead.
And the Iron Bridge was the only path out of the Old Harbor District.
Adrian stopped at the foot of the bridge.
No footsteps.
No vehicle noises.
No metal clicks.
Just the river below, breathing like something alive.
Maybe I got lucky, he thought.
But something inside him—the new instinct, the thing that kept flaring at the edge of his senses—twisted sharply. A warning. A whisper.
Danger.
He turned slowly.
The fog thickened behind him, crawling toward the bridge. He felt eyes in the mist but saw nothing. His breathing quickened.
He stepped onto the first beam.
It groaned under his weight.
A drop of rust fell, hitting the water far below with a soft splash.
Adrian moved carefully, walking along the narrow middle path where the boards were still mostly intact. The further he went, the darker it became. The city lights behind him faded. Ahead, only a faint blue glow lingered at the far end of the bridge.
Thunder rumbled.
He kept moving.
Fifty meters in.
Sixty.
He paused.
Something was wrong.
The air felt too still.
Too intentional.
Too… waiting.
His heartbeat thudded unevenly.
Then—
Click.
A spotlight slammed on from the left tower of the bridge, blinding him.
Adrian shielded his eyes—
BAM—!
A second spotlight.
A third.
A fourth.
One by one, lights exploded to life until the entire stretch of the bridge was lit like a stage.
And Adrian was in the center of it.
A voice echoed from somewhere above:
“Target confirmed. Fire.”
The world erupted.
Gunfire hammered from both sides of the bridge—short bursts, controlled formation, military precision. Adrian threw himself sideways, sliding across wet metal as bullets shredded the planks where he had just stood. Sparks flew. Rust exploded in clouds.
He ducked behind a rusted support beam, chest heaving.
This was no gang ambush.
This was military-level coordination.
A firing squad.
Someone wasn’t sending random killers anymore.
Someone wanted him erased.
A bullet struck the beam beside his head, metal vibrating violently. Adrian flinched and peered through a gap.
Shapes moved on the left walk—eight men in black armor, rifles raised, advancing in perfect line formation. On the right walkway, another seven.
Fifteen men.
At least.
And he had… no weapon.
Adrian swallowed hard.
He pressed his back against the beam, tightening every muscle in his body.
Think.
Move.
Before they surround you.
But thinking wasn’t helping. Panic clawed at him. His hands trembled. His breath came hard and uneven.
More shots peppered the beam.
Metal shrapnel nicked his cheek, blood dripping down his jaw.
He needed a miracle.
Instead, he got instinct.
A sharp, electric pulse stabbed the base of his skull—
Move right now!
Adrian trusted it.
He dove to the right just as another volley ripped through the beam, turning it into Swiss cheese. He hit the walkway hard, the boards cracking under his weight.
More bullets.
He rolled.
Slid.
Dodged without thinking.
Every step, every tilt of his head, every shift of his weight felt guided—like invisible hands tugging him away from death a millisecond before bullets reached him.
He leaped across a missing section of planks, landing poorly but staying upright.
The shooters shouted:
“Target moving!”
“Cut him off!”
“Use thermal!”
A red dot danced across his shoulder.
Sniper—
Instinct flared: Get down now!
Adrian dropped to his stomach—
CRACK—!
A sniper round obliterated the plank he had been standing on, sending splinters into the air.
He crawled forward, lungs burning, hands slipping on wet metal.
The firing squad advanced.
Closer.
Closer.
He reached the middle arch—the highest part of the bridge.
Below him the river churned, black and freezing, slamming against the rocks. Jumping meant death. Staying meant death.
The shooters fanned out.
Adrian stood, breathing hard.
Enough running.
He grabbed a loose metal pipe from the ground—rusted, bent, barely useful.
But it was something.
The men reached him on both sides.
“Adrian Kelevra!” their leader shouted. “You are ordered to kneel! Do it now and your death will be quick.”
Adrian laughed bitterly.
“Kneeling never saved anyone.”
The leader raised his hand.
“Fire.”
Adrian didn’t think.
He ran toward the bullets.
They lit the air in front of him, small bursts of flame and death—but he felt the angles before they came, leaning left, ducking right, using the curve of the arch and the narrow beams to make himself a harder target.
A shot grazed his arm.
Another clipped his thigh.
Pain exploded through him—but he kept moving.
He swung the pipe like a club, smashing a rifle out of the nearest attacker’s hands. Another soldier lunged; Adrian ducked, grabbed the man’s vest, and hurled him over the railing.
The man screamed as he fell into the darkness below.
Two more rushed from the right.
Adrian blocked one rifle with his pipe and elbowed the second man in the throat. The first attacker slammed him across the jaw with the butt of his rifle—white stars flashing in Adrian’s vision—but Adrian headbutted him brutally, breaking the man’s nose.
More men climbed the arch.
Too many.
He was being closed in.
Pinned.
Trapped.
A bullet tore across his shoulder blade, spinning him around. Adrian staggered to the edge of the bridge, gripping the railing to stay upright.
Blood dripped down his arm, over his hand, onto the rusted beam.
The firing squad adjusted their aim.
The leader lifted his voice above the rain.
“You survived longer than expected. But this is the end.”
Adrian stared at them—fifteen rifles pointed at him.
No weapon.
No backup.
No escape.
Except… one.
He looked down at the river.
Dark.
Freezing.
Raging.
Suicidal.
But maybe less suicidal than staying on the bridge.
His heart hammered.
His breath shook.
His vision blurred with pain.
He whispered to himself:
“Don’t think. Just jump.”
The leader shouted:
“Fire!”
Adrian vaulted over the railing.
Bullets sliced past his back—
And the world vanished beneath him.
The wind roared.
The river rose.
He fell like a stone swallowed by the night.
Then—
CRASH—!
Water smashed into him like concrete.
Cold tore through him with vicious teeth.
His lungs seized.
His ribs imploded in agony.
His vision exploded into red and black.
He sank.
Deeper.
Colder.
Farther.
His instincts screamed—but underwater, there was no air left to obey them with.
And as darkness swallowed him, one final thought flickered:
This time… I might not come back.
---
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Chapter 146 — Silent Expansion
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Ch. 145 — First Counterstrike
The safehouse was meant to be invisible.No flags. No signatures. No patterns the Imperium could read. A hollowed logistics node buried beneath a shuttered desalination plant, its heat masked, its signal footprint drowned in industrial noise. The Black Hand had used it twice—never long enough to matter.Which was exactly why Adrian had chosen it.The attack came just before dawn.Not with chaos, not with bravado—but with discipline.Power cut first. Clean. Surgical. The kind of blackout that slid in quietly, like a held breath. Backup generators kicked on a half-second later, exactly as designed. Motion sensors woke. Doors sealed. The safehouse went from sleep to alert in a single, fluid transition.Three seconds after that, the outer wall folded inward.Not exploded. Folded.Shaped charges—precise, minimal, professional—peeled steel away from concrete without collapsing the structure. Smoke rolled in low and fast, engineered to confuse optics, not lungs. Figures moved through it with
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Ch. 143 — Weapon Ghosts
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Ch. 142 — Casino Silence
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Ch. 141 — The Drug Route Burn
The corridor had a name on maps that never existed.The Spine.It ran like a dark artery through ports, highways, storage depots, and river crossings—feeding five cities, dozens of syndicates, and a thousand smaller dealers who never knew where the poison truly came from. Cash flowed one way. Destruction flowed the other.Adrian stood over a projected map in the mobile underground base as the Spine pulsed in red. Every node glowed. Every route branched. Every weakness had already been measured.“Time,” he said.No speeches. No countdowns. Just a word.Across three time zones, the Black Hand moved.At the eastern port, night cranes froze mid-swing as power died in precise sections—never the whole grid, never enough to trigger emergency alarms. Containers were opened not with explosives, but with keys copied weeks earlier. Inside were sealed drums and vacuum-packed bricks stamped with chemical codes instead of names.Black Hand operatives worked in silence. Masks. Gloves. Neutralizing a
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