The fierce night wind howled, carrying the stinging scent of sulfur and chemical dust from the ruins of an old fertilizer plant in the suburban industrial zone. Behind crumbling concrete walls choked with thick moss, Jason and Leo slipped inside through the rusted generator room ventilation window.

The moment he landed on the filthy cement floor of the factory, Jason staggered backward. The former operative's breathing came heavy, ragged, and shallow. His right shoulder throbbed with excruciating agony; the makeshift cloth bandage Leo had fashioned back in the subway station was now completely soaked through with fresh blood bleeding straight through his tactical jacket. Jason's face was deathly pale under the dim light filtering through holes in the wall.

"Jason! You're badly hurt. The bleeding hasn't stopped," Leo whispered anxiously, steadying Jason's frame to keep him from collapsing to the floor. The young man clutched his data laptop tightly against his chest with his free left hand, his eyes staring fearfully at the drops of blood staining the cement floor.

Jason shook his head slowly, pushing himself upright with his remaining reserves of strength and ironclad will. He clenched his teeth against a stabbing pain that pierced straight through to his shoulder blade. "I'm fine, Leo... We aren't safe yet. Marcus and his men aren't going to let us go easily. This place... this place is going to be our battlefield."

Leo swept his gaze across the vast, dark expanse of the factory interior, choked with a labyrinth of giant pipes, abandoned chemical reactor engines, and scattered stacks of rusted metal drums. The atmosphere inside the factory felt deeply suffocating, like the belly of a giant iron beast ready to swallow them alive.

"A battlefield?" Leo squeaked with a voice trembling in terror. "But Jason, there's only two of us. And your condition... you can barely stand straight. How on earth are we supposed to fight off a whole hit squad in a place this big?"

Jason looked down at the young man with a gaze that was razor-sharp yet calm. "We aren't going to fight them with raw force, Leo. We're going to use our heads. In a tight, dark space like this, squad size means nothing if they don't know where their prey is hiding."

Even though Jason's physical frame hovered on the brink of collapse, his tactical instincts and decades of experience as a black-ops operative had never faded an inch. He knew damn well that, wounded and out of ammunition, the only way to survive was to apply the tenets of urban guerrilla warfare. He had to turn every inch of this old factory into a lethal maze for his pursuers.

"Listen to my instructions, Leo," Jason spoke in a raspy yet fully commanding voice. "We don't have much time. They're bound to track my blood trail right to the front gate. Grab the small infrared flashlight from my vest pocket and act as our scout. Find a high perch on the second-floor catwalk of the reactor engine. Make sure you keep eyes on the primary entryway from there."

"But... but what are you going to do down here alone, Jason?" Leo asked, his eyes wide with panic.

"I'm going to prepare a proper welcome for our old friends from Ouroboros," Jason flashed a faint, cynical grin—the cold smirk of a seasoned hunter. "Move now, Leo. Time's short!"

Without a word of argument, Leo nodded fast. The young man broke into a low crouch, scrambling up the rusted iron stairs leading to the second tier of the reactor framework, holding the compact infrared light to monitor the surroundings in the gloom.

Meanwhile, Jason began moving deliberately on his final reserves of physical strength. Relying on his fully functional left arm, he set to work rigging a series of simple yet devastating tactical traps around the primary entryway and the narrow corridors of the chemical plant.

First, at the threshold of the half-ruined eastern gate, Jason strung an invisible, ultra-thin steel wire ankle-high, rigging it covertly to a pile of old tin cans packed with rusted nails and bolts sitting on an overhead metal shelf—an early acoustic tripwire alarm that would clatter loudly if brushed against.

Second, along the main corridor leading to the reactor bay, Jason positioned several production-leftover chemical drums with their lids loosened, running a stripped electrical trigger wire from the old power generator panel straight across a puddle of water on the floor. Anyone stepping blindly into that puddle would instantly trigger a high-voltage short circuit.

"Good..." Jason muttered softly, wiping cold sweat from his brow with the back of his left hand while chest heaving to fight off the blinding throb in his shoulder. He crawled slowly toward the reactor hallway where Leo was stationed, vanishing into the deep shadows of a massive chemical cylinder.

Outside the factory, the night grew pitch-black. A chilling gust of wind brought the drone of heavy vehicle engines halting in the industrial park's front yard.

Thud... thud...

The factory's main gates were breached from the outside with a violent crash. A six-man elite hit squad (Hunter Squad) under the Ouroboros syndicate's banner—outfitted in full tactical gear, short-barreled assault rifles, and night-vision goggles—spilled silently and in synchronized formation into the factory building.

"Alpha Unit entering. Sector main is visually clear, but thermal reads and fresh blood trails indicate recent movement here," the squad leader's voice hissed sharply through their internal comms mic. "Break into sweep formation. Find that target dead or alive!"

Up on the second level, hidden behind the dark framework of the reactor machinery, Leo held his breath tight. Through the tiny infrared lens in his hand, he watched the six black-clad silhouettes step one by one into the facility, sweeping weapon muzzles across every dark corner. Leo's heart hammered wildly like it wanted to burst from his ribs, his hands clamping onto the laptop in his lap until his knuckles turned bone-white.

Clang! Clang! Clang!

Suddenly, the jarring clatter of tin cans and rusted nails echoed piercingly across the eastern gate threshold. One of the hit squad members had accidentally clipped Jason's low-slung steel tripwire!

"Warning! Tripwire tripped in the eastern sector!" the squad leader barked through sharp hand signals. "Stay sharp! The target's inside this building!"

The mercenaries instantly dropped low, shouldering their assault rifles and scattering swiftly to comb through the dark corridors of the abandoned chemical plant. The rhythmic crunch of their tactical boots drew closer and closer to the very hallway where Jason and Leo were concealed.

Deep within the shadows of the reactor corridor, Jason closed his eyes for a heartbeat, drawing in a long breath to dull his shoulder agony, before snapping his eyes open with a flash of razor-sharp, calculated focus.

The real game of cat-and-mouse had just begun.