Episode-763
Chapter : 1525
"What do we do?"
"We wait for the dawn," Lloyd said. "And we hope Ken is already gone."
----
Five miles away, in the secondary safe house, Ken Park was not gone. He was fighting.
The escape hadn't been clean. The Chimera prototype, the boy with the mechanical claw, had recovered faster than expected. He had tracked them. He had followed the scent of Risa.
He had crashed through the door of the safe house just as Ken was packing the final bag.
Now, the small room was a war zone. Furniture was smashed. The walls were scarred with green fire and claw marks.
Jasmin was in the bedroom, barricaded behind a dresser with Risa.
Ken stood in the main room, facing the monster. He was bleeding from a dozen cuts. His left arm hung uselessly at his side, the shoulder dislocated.
The Chimera stood by the door. His skin was smoking. One of his eyes was damaged, flickering. But he didn't seem to care.
"Target located," the boy droned. "Obstacle... persistent."
"I'm not an obstacle," Ken growled, shifting his grip on his knife. "I'm a wall."
The boy raised his claw. "Demolish."
He charged.
Ken didn't dodge. He couldn't. He was too slow with one arm.
He roared and met the charge. He ducked under the claw and slammed his body into the boy's chest.
CRACK.
They crashed into the wall. Plaster rained down.
The boy grabbed Ken by the throat. He lifted him off the ground.
"Termination," the boy said. The green fire flared in his palm, aiming for Ken’s face.
Ken couldn't break the grip. He was strong, but the Chimera was a machine.
"Jasmin!" Ken choked out. "Run!"
"No!" Jasmin screamed from the bedroom.
She burst out. She wasn't holding Risa. She was holding a heavy iron skillet.
She didn't look like a mouse. She looked like a queen. Her skin shimmered. Diamond.
She swung the skillet with both hands.
CLANG!
She hit the Chimera in the back of the head. The skillet bent around his skull.
The boy staggered. He dropped Ken. He turned, his mechanical neck whirring.
"Secondary target," he said. "Hostile."
He backhanded Jasmin.
It was a casual blow, but it had the force of a wrecking ball.
Jasmin flew across the room. She hit the wall and slid down. She didn't move.
"Jia!" Ken screamed.
The rage that filled him was cold and absolute. He forgot the pain. He forgot the mission.
He looked at the monster that had hurt her.
"You," Ken whispered. "Are. Dead."
He reached into his pocket. He pulled out a small, red crystal. A Mana-Bomb. A suicide weapon Lloyd had given him for "absolute emergencies."
He didn't throw it. He clenched it in his fist.
He charged.
The Chimera raised his claw.
Ken tackled him. He drove him to the ground. He wrapped his legs around the boy's torso. He pinned the mechanical arm.
He held the crystal against the boy's chest, right over the glowing core of runes.
"Game over," Ken said.
He crushed the crystal.
BOOM.
The safe house exploded in a flash of red light. The walls blew out. The roof collapsed.
Silence fell over the ruins.
From the rubble, a hand emerged. It was diamond.
Jasmin coughed, pushing debris off herself. She was bruised, bleeding, but alive. Her diamond skin had saved her from the blast and the impact.
She looked around frantically. "Ken! Ken!"
She saw him.
He was lying under a beam. He was still. His clothes were burned. His skin was scorched.
But the Chimera was gone. Blown to pieces.
Jasmin crawled to him. She checked his pulse.
It was faint. Weak. But it was there.
"You idiot," she sobbed. "You big, stupid idiot."
She grabbed his good arm. She pulled. She dragged him out of the rubble.
She ran back to the bedroom. The closet had protected Risa. The girl was curled up, terrified but unharmed.
"Come on," Jasmin said, her voice shaking. "We have to go."
She supported Ken on one side, held Risa's hand on the other.
She limped into the alley. Into the night.
They were alive. They had the girl. But the cost... the cost was high.
And in the distance, she could hear the sirens of the Obsidian Eye getting closer.
Chapter : 1526
The rain in Saber had turned from a drizzle into a deluge, washing the soot and grime of the city into the gutters. It should have been a cleansing rain, but to Jasmin, it felt like the sky was weeping for them. She trudged through the mud of a narrow alleyway, the weight of Ken Park’s massive arm heavy across her shoulders.
Ken was a mountain of a man, but right now, the mountain was crumbling. His breathing was ragged, a wet, hitching sound that terrified her. The makeshift bandage on his shoulder was soaked through with dark blood, and his skin was gray and clammy. Yet, he kept moving. One foot in front of the other, driven by a will that defied biology.
Clutched in Jasmin’s other hand was Risa’s small, cold hand. The girl was in shock, stumbling along blindly, her eyes wide and unseeing. Following close behind were the three other children they had managed to pull from the cages—two boys and another girl, all emaciated, all terrified, moving like ghosts in the shadows.
"We need... cover," Ken rasped, his voice barely audible over the drumming rain. "Patrols... closing in."
Jasmin looked around frantically. They were in the lower slums, a maze of rotting wood and crumbling stone. The festival lights were distant memories here. Here, there was only darkness.
"The backup safe house," Jasmin whispered. "Lloyd rented an attic three streets over. We can make it."
"No," Ken grunted. He stopped, leaning heavily against a wet brick wall. He tilted his head, listening with instincts honed by a lifetime of war. "Listen."
Jasmin strained her ears. At first, she heard only the rain. Then, she heard it.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
The rhythmic, heavy tread of armored boots. Lots of them. And not just the erratic steps of the City Watch. This was the disciplined march of the Obsidian Eye.
"They are boxing us in," Ken said grimly. "Sector sweep. They know we are here."
Jasmin felt a surge of panic. She reached up to her ear, where a small, rough piece of rock was taped. It was another one of Lloyd’s inventions—a communication stone, shaved down and embedded with a vibration rune. It acted like an earpiece, transmitting sound directly into the skull bone.
"Doctor?" Jasmin whispered, touching the stone. "Doctor, are you there?"
Static buzzed in her head, followed by the calm, slightly bored voice of Lloyd Ferrum.
"I am here, Jia. Though currently, I am pretending to be a terrified victim of political incompetence while sitting on a very uncomfortable velvet chair. What is your status?"
"It's bad," Jasmin said, her voice trembling. "Ken is hurt. Badly. We have the package—Risa and three others. But the streets are swarming. The Obsidian Eye is everywhere. We can't get to the attic."
"Do not go to the attic," Lloyd’s voice turned sharp. "I am monitoring the city guard frequencies. They found the attic ten minutes ago. If you go there, you walk into a cage."
Jasmin’s blood ran cold. "Then where? The gates?"
"Sealed," Lloyd said. "Cassius has locked down the city. Nothing bigger than a rat gets out tonight. They have mana-scanners at every exit and aerial patrols circling the walls. If you try to leave, they will spot you."
"We are trapped," Jasmin said, looking at the shivering children and the bleeding giant beside her. "We are trapped in the middle of the city with four fugitive children and a dying man."
"Ken is not dying," Lloyd said, though his voice held a trace of worry. "He is too stubborn to die. Put him on."
Jasmin pressed her ear against Ken’s. "It's him."
"Kasim," Lloyd said. "Report."
"Combat effectiveness... thirty percent," Ken grunted. "Chimera prototype destroyed. But... collateral damage high. I can hold a choke point for... five minutes. Maybe ten. You need to get them out."
"Don't talk like a martyr, it's annoying," Lloyd snapped. "I am looking at the map in my head. You are in the Tannery District?"
"Yes."
"You are surrounded," Lloyd stated flatly. "The net is tightening. They are driving you toward the river, where they have a kill team waiting. You have no exit vector."
"Then we fight," Ken said, his hand moving to his knife.
"No," Lloyd said. "You fight, you die. And Risa dies. And then I have to explain to my father why his favorite bodyguard is dead, which will be very awkward. We need a radical solution."