Chapter 284: Extraterrestrial
Alexander groaned, his hand pressing against his bruised abdomen as he forced his body up from the cracked concrete floor. Every breath felt like inhaling shards of broken glass. He wiped a streak of dark blood from his chin and looked up, his eyes locking onto the two women.
The older woman was down on her knees, clutching her chest as blood trickled from the corner of her mouth, the backlash of her prohibited technique paralyzing her muscles. Beside her, Liora stood shivering, her bare, childlike body exposed to the cold, dusty air of the ruins, her cognitive reserves spent.
Seeing Alexander approach, the older woman tried to raise her knife, her eyes wide with fear as she prepared for the worst. Both of them closed their eyes, bracing for a fatal blow from the man they had just tried to enslave.
But the blow never came.
Instead, a heavy, warm fabric was draped over Liora’s shoulders. Alexander had pulled off his high-end jacket, wrapping it around the little girl’s small frame to cover her up. He then dropped to one knee beside the bleeding woman, extending a hand.
"Are you alright?" asked Alexander, his voice rough but devoid of malice.
The woman opened her eyes, staring at him in bewilderment. "Why...? We tried to subjugate your mind. Why aren’t you killing us?"
"Honestly? I have no clue," Alexander muttered, letting out a sharp, self-deprecating chuckle that made his ribs ache. "Call it a hero complex, but I just can’t stand the sight of two beautiful women dying in a piece-of-shit place like this. We need to move. Now."
"We... we need to get out of the city limits," Liora whispered clutching the oversized jacket around herself. "They are hunting us. If we stay in this sector, we are dead."
"Then let’s get to work," said Alexander, pushing through the pain as he stood up.
He walked over to the dark corner of the room, grabbing the handles of the heavy iron chest filled with gold bars and stacking the six aluminum briefcases on top of it. Heaving the massive load with a grunt, Alexander carried the hundred million dollars worth of capital out to the executive parking lane packing the briefcases and the iron chest into the customized cargo compartments of the silver Lamborghini Temerario. He went back inside, hoisted the injured woman over his shoulder, and led Liora by the hand, sealing them both into the supercar’s leather interior before roaring out of the industrial ruins.
As the 920-horsepower engine hummed along the desolate highway heading north, Alexander glanced at the rearview mirror.
"Alright, start talking," said Alexander, keeping his eyes on the dark road ahead. "Where exactly is this ’Sandoria’ place you mentioned earlier? Because my GPS doesn’t show a matching coordinate on the entire globe."
Liora and her companion exchanged a quiet, deeply hesitant glance.
Alexander took their silence as confirmation. He remembered the restricted intelligence Marcus had given him before.
Looking at Liora’s glowing pink eyes, her supernatural hypnotic abilities, and their ignorance of local geography, everything aligned with the description.
"You two aren’t from this planet, are you?" Alexander asked bluntly, his tone turning serious as he pushed the accelerator down.
"Look, I don’t care about your politics," Alexander added, his hands firm on the steering wheel. "I just want a answer. Do extraterrestrials actually exist?"
The older woman shifted painfully against the leather seat, looking down at the young girl. "Mistress... can we truly trust this man?"
Liora looked at the oversized jacket wrapped around her small frame, then up at the back of Alexander’s head. "He extended his hand when he could have taken our lives and our wealth. I believe it is only fair we answer him."
The woman let out a weak sigh, leaning her head back. "Yes, Alexander. We are not from this world. Our homeland is Sandoria. Months ago, our sanctuary was breached, and we were forcefully taken—abducted by men with dark skin who wore incredibly loud, flashy, ostentatious clothing."
Alexander’s eyes narrowed. The description perfectly matched the high-ranking enforcers and flamboyant street bosses of Big Black.
"They kept us caged like exotic animals for months," the woman continued, her voice tightening with raw emotion. "We only managed to break out a few days ago with the help of another prisoner from our home planet. He sacrificed himself to buy us time, and we agreed to wait at that ruined safehouse for a extraction contact that never came. We don’t even know how they transported us across the stars to this planet. That is the truth."
"Thanks for being honest with me," Alexander said, his voice dropping into a respectful rumble.
But his relief was short-lived. As the Lamborghini approached the massive northern transit bridge leading out of the city limits, the bright neon lights illuminated a chaotic scene. The entire highway was blockaded. Dozens of heavily armed technical trucks and modified muscle cars were parked sideways across the lanes. It was a massive, airtight checkpoint manned by Big Black enforcers.
"Get down and don’t make a sound," Alexander commanded, his eyes darting across the armed grid.
Liora and her companion ducked into the footwells, pulling the jacket and the shadows over themselves. Alexander slowed the Temerario down, rolling the dark tinted window down just an inch as three massive, tattooed enforcers approached the supercar, their assault rifles raised.
"Road’s closed, pretty boy," the lead enforcer barked, slamming his fist against the carbon-fiber side mirror. "Nobody leaves the sector tonight. Kill the engine. We need to step inside and search every single inch of this ride."
Alexander’s face turned into an expression of pure, unadulterated arrogance. He flashed his TMC token against the glass, his eyes locking onto the enforcer with lethal intensity.
"I am a operative of TMC," Alexander hissed, his voice cutting through the engine’s low rumble like a razor blade. "Who the fuck among you piece-of-shit street thugs thinks they have the authority to search my personal vehicle? Step back before I turn this entire checkpoint into a graveyard."