Part 3: Nowhere Left
Summary:
Riven doesn't run far. He can't. Within minutes of the rooftop ambush, he realizes something terrifying: he isn't escaping a person — he's running from a net. Blocked alleys. Black vans. Men with no insignia. He thought he could vanish into the city again. But they'd been waiting for that.
---
His legs moved before his thoughts caught up.
Down the fire escape.
Across the adjacent roof.
Over a back wall and into an alley half-choked by trash bags and metal piping.
He didn't know where to go.
He just knew where not to be.
---
The second man appeared near the loading dock.
Didn't speak.
Didn't chase.
Just stood in a casual crouch, one hand tucked into a coat pocket, the other gripping a small black case.
He was facing the wrong direction — on purpose.
A psychological play.
> Run. We'll find you again.
---
Riven turned and bolted down a side alley.
The city changed as he moved.
People blurred.
Signs became noise.
The skyline twisted into rusted fire escapes and blank brick walls.
Everything familiar bled into concrete and steam.
He kept to the edge.
Didn't take the main streets.
Used everything he'd learned in three weeks of hiding — every instinct, every bad memory from his last life.
It wasn't enough.
---
Two blocks east, another figure waited.
Female. Compact frame. Dark jacket. Bald.
She didn't step forward.
Just raised a device in one hand — not a gun, not a phone.
It blinked.
Blue.
Once.
---
Riven didn't slow down.
He turned left, took a staircase four at a time, ducked through a back kitchen of a restaurant that hadn't been open in months, vaulted a back wall, and—
Came face to face with a van.
Unmarked.
No license plate.
Engine humming.
Passenger door already swinging open.
---
He spun.
Another figure blocked the way back.
This one wasn't holding anything.
But his stance said everything Riven needed to know.
No badge.
No demand.
Just inevitability.
---
> This wasn't a chase.
This was a retrieval.
---
He bolted sideways — through a construction zone.
Climbed scaffolding like instinct.
Knocked over a stack of pipes behind him to slow the closest pursuer.
Didn't stop running until his lungs burned and the air scratched like glass.
---
When he finally collapsed, it was under a drainage tunnel behind the chemical district.
Covered in sweat.
Knees bleeding.
Hands raw from brick and wire.
They didn't follow him that far.
They didn't need to.
Because now he understood:
> They weren't hunting.
They were waiting.
And they knew exactly where he'd be next.
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