The world exploded into chaos.
Bullets tore through the air, sparks flying as they hit metal beams and crumbling concrete walls.
Elias moved instinctively — ducking, rolling, firing back.
Sophia fought like a demon — cool, calculating, precise.
Every shot she fired hit its mark.
Callum, trembling but determined, provided cover fire from behind the crates, his shaky hands surprisingly steady when it mattered most.
Adrian, smirking arrogantly, barked orders at Kane's men, weaving between the crates like a ghost.
---
Elias finally pinned Adrian behind a forklift.
"Why, Adrian?" Elias shouted over the gunfire.
Adrian laughed bitterly.
"Why not?!" he yelled back.
"You think you're special, Elias? Some hero? No one gave me anything! I had to survive however I could!"
"You chose to betray everyone who ever cared about you!" Elias roared.
"You left me no choice!" Adrian snapped, face contorted with rage.
"You had every choice!" Elias growled, charging forward.
The two collided in a brutal fistfight — no fancy moves, no mercy.
Just years of betrayal, grief, and brotherhood unraveling at once.
---
Sophia (22, hacker and ex-black ops agent, tan skin, short dark hair, slim and athletic, with a sharp jawline and equally sharp tongue) ducked behind a pillar, reloading.
She caught sight of Callum, pinned down.
"CALLUM! MOVE LEFT!" she barked.
He scrambled just in time, a bullet grazing his sleeve but missing flesh.
Sophia gritted her teeth, popped out, and downed two men with clean headshots.
---
Elias wrestled Adrian to the ground, both bloodied and breathless.
The watch on Elias's wrist glowed faintly, feeding him adrenaline and enhanced strength — one of his earlier rewards.
Adrian tried to pull a knife.
Too slow.
Elias slammed his fist into Adrian's wrist, disarming him.
"I trusted you," Elias hissed.
Adrian chuckled weakly, blood dripping from his lip.
"That's your mistake."
Sirens wailed in the distance — the real authorities, finally tipped off by Sophia's earlier hacking.
Adrian's face shifted from defiant to terrified.
He knew he wouldn't escape this time.
Kane's men scattered like roaches.
Sophia sprinted to Elias's side.
"We have to go! Leave him!"
Elias stood over Adrian for one agonizing second.
The boy he once knew… was gone.
He turned his back and ran.
---
Breathless, wounded, but alive.
They slid into an old van Callum hotwired.
As they tore away from the crumbling factory, Sophia looked at Elias in the rearview mirror.
"You okay?"
Elias didn't answer right away.
When he finally spoke, his voice was rough.
"I don't know if I'll ever be okay."
---
Sophia patched up Elias's cuts in a dimly lit kitchen.
Callum snored on the couch, exhausted.
Sophia hesitated, then touched Elias's shoulder.
"You made the right choice. Letting him live."
Elias gave a hollow laugh.
"Feels like losing anyway."
She sat down beside him, shoulder to shoulder.
"You lost a traitor. Not a brother."
He didn't answer.
Outside, the night deepened.
The world moved on.
But inside Elias's heart, something had cracked beyond easy repair.
And he knew…
this was only the beginning.
---