The black SUV didn't give up. It stayed glued to their tail like a predator that knew its prey was panicking.
Lance's teeth clenched as he juggled focus between the road, the rearview mirror, and the uneven pulse of gunfire cracking behind them. Each bullet that pinged off the car was a reminder: this wasn't a game.
"Next exit's coming up," Dani said sharply. "We're heading into the industrial district. Less traffic, more shadows."
Lance nodded, heart racing. "Great. Shadows and murderers. Perfect combo."
The exit ramp loomed ahead, slick and tight. Lance took it wide, tires scraping against concrete barriers as he struggled to keep control of the battered Corolla.
The SUV roared behind, following every swerve, every desperate acceleration.
They plunged into a maze of warehouses and shipping containers—dark hulks lining the cracked asphalt like silent sentinels.
"Stop here," Dani ordered, pointing at a narrow alley barely wide enough for the Corolla.
Lance slowed, heart hammering in his throat, and pulled the car into the gloom.
The world outside seemed to pause for a heartbeat.
Inside the car, the noise dropped away to a heavy silence broken only by the ragged breathing of its two human occupants—and the soft, steady snore of Dario, completely unbothered by the chaos.
Dani's gaze locked on Lance. "We can't keep running. We need to figure out what's in that milk—and fast."
Lance let out a shaky breath, the adrenaline still roaring but his mind forcing itself to catch up.
"Alright," he said quietly, voice a notch steadier than before. "Tell me everything."
Dani's eyes softened, just a little. "Okay. But first... we wait. They won't give up so easily."
Lance nodded, swallowing the knot of fear in his throat.
Outside, shadows crept closer. Inside, two strangers braced for what came next.
The engine ticked as it cooled, the hum of the chase replaced by the steady drip of silence. Outside, the alley stretched like a dark vein, shadows pooling in corners and beneath rusted fire escapes. Somewhere, a distant siren wailed faintly.
Inside the cramped Corolla, Lance finally let his hands fall from the wheel. His chest rose and fell unevenly, the adrenaline still pulsing through his veins like electricity.
Dani leaned back against the seat, eyes hooded but restless. She reached into her pocket and pulled out a crumpled pack of gum, offering one to Lance without looking.
He shook his head.
"We're... alive," Lance said, the words tasting strange and fragile. "For now."
Dani's lips twitched. "That's the nicest thing anyone's said to me in hours."
Lance forced a dry chuckle. "Look, I don't do this sort of thing. I reboot laptops. Fix printers. I'm not exactly a secret agent or whatever you're claiming to be."
Her gaze snapped to him, sharp and tired.
"I know," she said. "That's why they picked you. The perfect nobody. Easy to disappear, easy to blame."
Lance stared at the milk jug between them—the innocuous white plastic jug that might just be the most dangerous thing on the planet.
"So," he said, voice low. "What's actually in there? What is this thing?"
Dani's fingers clenched briefly on the dashboard.
"I don't know," she admitted. "Not really. It's... not like anything I've ever seen. It's alive, but not alive. Like it thinks, but not like a person."
Lance swallowed.
"You mean like... some kind of alien thing?"
She hesitated.
"Maybe. It's symbiotic, I think. It bonds. Changes the host in ways that nobody understands. Scary stuff."
The word hung heavy in the air.
"How bad?"
Dani's eyes flickered with something like fear.
"Bad enough that the people chasing us would rather see half the city burn than let it get out."
Lance glanced down at Dario, who was curled up, blissfully ignorant, snoring softly as if the world's end was just another bad dream.
The contrast struck him hard.
"This thing," Lance said quietly, "it's not just a weapon. It's a nightmare we don't even know how to fight."
Dani nodded.
"And now," she said, voice dropping, "it's inside you."
Lance blinked, the weight of that sinking in like a stone.
His mind screamed to run through a thousand what-ifs. But all he could do was breathe.
Lance stared at the milk jug again, its smooth plastic surface almost absurd in its normalcy. Somehow, it felt like a cruel joke—a mundane object now tethered to the kind of nightmare he'd only half-believed existed in movies.
He felt a strange tightness in his chest, a pressure that wasn't quite fear and wasn't quite panic. It was more like the slow sinking feeling of being unmoored—like every small, safe thing he'd built his life around was cracking away beneath him.
He wasn't just scared of dying. That felt too simple. What terrified him was the way everything he understood about himself was suddenly irrelevant.
He'd always thought of himself as the background guy, sure. The IT guy who quietly fixed problems without ever making waves. But beneath that, Lance realized, was a fragile kind of control—a belief that as long as he stuck to routines, kept his head down, life wouldn't demand anything too wild.
Now, that control was gone.
And worse—he wasn't even sure who he was without it.
Am I someone who can survive this? The question echoed relentlessly in his mind.
But survival wasn't just about running from bullets or outrunning shadows.
It was about who he was underneath all that noise.
Could he be the kind of person who didn't freeze when everything exploded? Could he be the guy who faced this without falling apart?
He wasn't sure.
Because part of him wanted to curl up somewhere dark, pretend none of this was real, and hope it all went away.
And another part—the part that surprised him—wanted to fight. Not for glory or some heroic story, but simply to make sure Dario had a future free of nightmares.
He shook his head, trying to clear the fog.
The weight of the unknown settled in his gut like a stone. There was no manual for this. No precedent for a guy like him to suddenly carry the fate of something too dangerous to understand.
He glanced at Dani, at the set of her jaw and the fierce, raw edge in her eyes. She was fighting her own demons.
Maybe that was all they had: two broken people thrown together by chaos, trying to make sense of a world gone sideways.
And somehow, that had to be enough.