The blindingly bright glare of the tactical helicopter's giant searchlight punched straight through the retina, transforming the wide, football-field-sized open-air rooftop parking deck into broad daylight. The artificial hurricane winds kicked up by the spinning rotor blades howled fiercely, sending concrete dust and small gravel flying, and whipping Jason and Leo's jacket hems into a wild frenzy.

"Jason! We're locked in the open! There's nowhere to hide!" Leo shrieked hysterically, burying his face in his hands while dropping low against the cold cement floor.

Up above, the pitch-black helicopter belonging to the Ouroboros syndicate's shadow corporation hovered low, circling slowly around the rooftop like a bird of prey sizing up its trapped meal. Framed in the wide-open cabin doorway, Commander Marcus stood tall with a firm grip on the safety harness, wearing a dark suit snapping violently in the rushing slipstream. The old man's face looked mercilessly cold, framed by a taunting, thin smirk.

"Jason, you're at the end of your rope!" Marcus's voice boomed loudly through the chopper's external loudspeaker, cutting through the deafening shriek of the jet engines. "Don't make your death any more pointless! Hand over the kid and the data drive in his hands, and I'll make sure your corpse is sent back to the military cemetery with full honors!"

Jason stood tall with his remaining reserves of strength, ignoring the searing fire burning in his right shoulder from the reopened gunshot wound. His eyes narrowed sharply onto Marcus hovering above, while his left hand clamped tightly over the scavenged assault rifle he had picked up from the floor below.

"Hear that, Leo?" Jason whispered coldly, never breaking his gaze from the chopper above them. "That's the sound of a man who thinks he's already won everything."

"But we don't have a way out, Jason!" Leo protested with a voice trembling in terror, pointing all around the open rooftop bounded by low barrier rails. "They've got a chopper, heavy weapons, and we're on a tenth-story roof! If we jump, we die. If we stay here, we get chewed up by lead!"

"We're not jumping, and we aren't staying put either," Jason replied firmly, his jaw locking. "Watch his movement. Marcus is too arrogant to land; he wants to humiliate us from up high."

Sure enough, inside the cabin, Marcus raised his right hand, giving a sharp hand signal to the door gunner seated beside a heavy-caliber Browning M2 machine gun.

"Light 'em up! Tear their cover to pieces!" Marcus barked over the internal comms mic.

Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat!

The deafening roar of heavy machine fire ripped through the night air. High-velocity, large-caliber rounds screamed blindly, hammering the concrete barrier wall where Jason and Leo took cover.

Thud! Thud! Thud!

The armor-piercing impacts chewed through the thick concrete structure with ease. Shards of white masonry blasted into the air like a bloody dust storm, showering the floor and walls around them with blinding sparks. Every bullet impact felt agonizingly close, shuddering the deck beneath their prone bodies and sending bone-chilling vibrations straight up their spines.

"Oh god! We're gonna die! We are definitely going to die here!" Leo screamed hysterically, hugging his head tight while flying concrete shrapnel grazed his cheek.

"Shut up and stay flat behind this pillar, Leo!" Jason snapped amid the roaring thunder of gunfire.

Jason knew damn well that hiding behind the crumbling concrete wall was just buying time until an execution. The chopper's heavy-caliber rounds would eventually punch straight through the thin remaining barrier. He had to move fast. Amid the rain of bullets and flying concrete, Jason's sharp eyes scanned every square inch of the parking deck, hunting for a single blind spot ignored by his pursuers.

His gaze locked onto the architectural structure at the northern tip of the roof—where the vertical parking garage tied into an old steel-truss pedestrian bridge spanning the city highway, connecting the complex directly to the long-abandoned industrial district zone.

It was dark, desolate, filled with rusted old factories and narrow alleyways untouched by the city's digital surveillance grid—the absolute perfect place to vanish, yet the most hazardous ground for anyone entering unprepared.

"Leo, look over there!" Jason shouted, pointing with his chin toward the northern edge of the roof behind a row of unlit floodlight poles.

Leo forced his head up through the lead storm, tracking the direction Jason pointed. "That old bridge? But the access gate is locked tight with a massive iron padlock!"

"We're not taking the bridge deck. Look down at the bridge's concrete substructure," Jason said swiftly, his voice radiating absolute certainty. "There's a one-meter-wide utility maintenance pipe running straight beneath the bridge's steel frame. It's an analog route completely off their chopper's radar."

"You're out of your mind, Jason!" Leo protested, his eyes blown wide. "We're supposed to walk across a tiny pipe ten meters above a highway, while your right shoulder is shot to hell and they're shooting at us from the air?!"

"We've only got two choices, Leo: die chopped to pieces on this roof right now, or take the drop and keep breathing," Jason cut in sharply, yanking the young man's arm with his left hand to force him up. "Now, run for that gap on my mark!"

Up above, the chopper's heavy machine gun stuttered to a halt for a brief reload cycle. Jason refused to waste the golden window.

"Now! Move!" Jason barked.

Jason and Leo bolted like lightning, sprinting in a low crouch across the concrete deck littered with cement debris toward the northern corner of the parking garage.

From the chopper, Marcus spotted their movement and grunted angrily. "They're trying to make for the old bridge! After them! Don't let them cross!"

Rat-tat-tat-tat!

The heavy machine gun vomited hot lead once more, chasing Jason and Leo's scrambling footsteps. Rounds slammed into the asphalt mere centimeters behind their heels, kicking up smoking craters.

"Almost there, Leo! Jump!" Jason shouted as they reached the abrupt drop-off of the concrete roof edge.

Without a second of hesitation, Jason shoved Leo forward first, sending him sliding down to land squarely on the iron maintenance pipe running beneath the old bridge truss. Jason vaulted right after, pouring in his last reserves of momentum and sheer balance despite his shredded shoulder.

Clang!

Both of them landed hard on the narrow, rusted iron pipe, clinging tightly to the bridge's steel lattice overhead, while down below, the city highway stretched quiet and empty under the dim amber glow of streetlamps.

Marcus's tactical helicopter drifted closer to the bridge's edge, sweeping its searchlight beams aggressively down beneath the bridge framework.

"They're hiding under the bridge structure, Commander!" the door gunner reported loudly. "We can't get a direct bead on them through the steel framing!"

From the cabin doorway, Marcus leaned forward, his brow furrowing in mounting fury. He stared hard into the pitch-black darkness beneath the bridge framework where Jason and Leo crept slowly away from the open zone.

"You think you can slip out of my backyard just like that, Jason?" Marcus muttered coldly, a dark threat laced in his voice as he clenched his fists tight amid the roaring rotor wash spinning wildly through the thickening night.