I Possess the SSS Skill: Future Sight-Chapter 53: Safe Haven

"Why didn’t you fight them?!" Eva screamed. "You’re a pure S-rank! You could get us out!"

"If I did, I would be classified as a terrorist alongside you, and a civil war would erupt in the Golden Sector that would destroy half the city," Kirion said with deadly bitterness.

"Alexander gave me a choice: either I officially sign your execution order... or be executed with you. To protect what remains of the honorable people in my division... I had to sign your condemnation papers."

"You... you cowardly traitor!" Aiden shouted, breaking down.

Valisera laughed—a blood-choked cough.

"Don’t blame him, Aiden. Kirion chose the logical solution. Staying alive is better than dying with a team of fools. You’re a smart coward, Kirion."

"Forgive me, Valisera," Kirion said, his voice choking.

"You don’t have time. The room locks will open in thirty seconds. Bravo and Charlie teams—your colleagues who ate with you yesterday—are standing in the corridor now with heavy weapons to carry out the execution."

Kirion fell silent for a second, then added one final sentence—a sentence carrying all the suppressed rage he couldn’t unleash on Alexander:

"Stay alive. Escape to the bottom of hell. Stay alive... then come back and burn them all."

The connection cut.

The five of us—and the torn girl on the floor—remained in complete silence.

We were no longer just fugitives from a gang.

We were government prey.

Legitimate targets for every sniper, every mercenary, and every ambitious officer seeking promotion by killing Alpha Team—the terrorists.

The evacuation alarm wailed.

"What do we do?" Damian asked, his good hand trembling as it gripped the heavy machine gun.

"They’ll breach in twenty seconds. If we fight them... we’ll be killing our friends! FBI agents! We’ll confirm the terrorism charge!"

"Friends?" Eva spat on the ground, her black eyes burning with madness and survival instinct.

"Friends don’t stand behind a door with heavy Eitra weapons to tear you apart! The FBI is over for me!"

Eva raised her sniper rifle, aiming directly at the double wooden door.

Sia drew her twin daggers, her cold eyes devoid of mercy.

"We’re wolves, aren’t we? A wolf doesn’t die in a cage."

Aiden pulled out two submachine pistols, crying in a hysterical mix of laughter and despair.

"Goodbye my retirement salary! Goodbye my reputation! I’ll kill you all, you bastards!"

And me... the Black Joker, the weak recruit Kyle Valtier.

I stood in the corner, drawing my ordinary Glock pistol.

Inside me, dark comedy reached its peak.

What a sick twist of fate! I joined the intelligence agency to take refuge with them—only for them to become the most wanted fugitives in the world, and now I’m entangled with them as a terrorist accomplice! Damn my luck—like a fly caught in a spider’s web!

But... there was no time for regret.

I looked at Valisera lying on the floor.

"Sia!" I shouted sharply, forgetting my timid act.

"Carry Valisera! Eva, Damian, Aiden—provide covering fire! We need to reach the maintenance elevators at the end of the eastern corridor!"

They all looked at me in shock for a second. The insignificant recruit giving orders?

"Do what this cunning rat says!" Valisera coughed, trying to stand with Sia’s help.

"He’s the only one here with experience in being hunted in the sewers!"

Click!

BOOM!

The double wooden doors exploded inward under a breaching charge.

White smoke filled the entrance.

Through the smoke emerged twenty agents from Bravo and Charlie teams.

They wore Eitra riot armor, carried transparent energy shields, and assault rifles charged with the light of death.

"Alpha Team! Drop your weapons and get on the ground! Any movement will be met with immediate lethal force!"

The Bravo Team leader shouted through a loudspeaker—a man we had coffee with just yesterday morning.

Eva looked at him through her sniper scope.

"Damn you, Richard..." she muttered.

BAM!

The armor-piercing sniper round fired.

It didn’t target his head—she couldn’t execute an old friend so easily.

Instead, she aimed at his energy shield and right knee joint.

The shield shattered like thin glass, and the bullet pierced his knee.

"AAAAAGH!" Richard collapsed screaming.

"Open fire! Kill the terrorists!" his deputy shouted.

And hell erupted in the central wing of Magical Intelligence.

Tatatatatat!

Eitra rounds tore through the lounge. White marble walls, luxurious paintings, and display screens—all shattered into flying debris.

"Advance!" Damian roared, stepping out from behind the couch, firing his heavy machine gun with one hand.

His bullets were infused with lightning Eitra.

Each impact sent electric shocks that paralyzed three or four agents at once.

He moved forward like an enraged tank, ignoring bullets bouncing off his armor or grazing his flesh.

Sia supported Valisera with her left arm, while her right cast "Spears of Light."

Golden Eitra lances pierced the air, pinning enemy shields to walls and striking shoulders to disable weapons without killing.

She fought with astonishing surgical precision.

Aiden ran while crying, firing wildly—but his bullets were infused with "Illusion Eitra," causing agents to see multiple copies of us and shoot empty walls.

And me... I ran behind them.

I wasn’t firing my ordinary pistol.

I pretended fear, clinging to walls, screaming like a rookie.

But in the shadows, beneath the chaos, I carefully used the skill [Shadow Rend].

When a Bravo sniper aimed at Sia’s head from behind, I focused on his shadow stretched across the wall.

Slice.

Invisible shadow Eitra severed his Achilles tendon.

The sniper collapsed screaming, clutching his torn leg as his shot went wild into the ceiling.

When three agents tried to flank Damian, I used their shadows to deliver a hidden "spatial kick" to their knees, causing them to trip and crash into each other like dominoes—only to be electrocuted by Damian’s lightning.

I intervened like a phantom.

Protecting them from certain death—while ensuring neither Alpha Team nor the surveillance cameras noticed that the weak recruit was manipulating the physics of battle.

The corridor was long, drenched in blood and shattered glass.

Fighting former comrades drained Alpha Team’s souls more than their bodies.

Every bullet they fired severed another bond with their city—and confirmed the charge of treason.

At last, we reached the heavy maintenance elevators at the end of the eastern corridor.

"Aiden! Hack the panel!" Eva shouted, covering our backs and sniping weapons out of enemy hands with precision.

Aiden knelt before the control panel, connecting wires from his tablet.

"Damn it! The system is encrypted at S-level! I can’t crack it in less than ten minutes!"

"We don’t have ten seconds!" Damian roared, reloading for the fourth time as agents flooded in from every adjacent corridor like enraged ants.

I looked at the steel elevator doors.

"Move back!" Valisera shouted.

She was gasping, her face pale as chalk, bleeding heavily from her waist and shoulder. Yet she raised her good hand.

"Don’t do it! You’ll die from Eitra depletion!" Sia cried.

Valisera didn’t listen. She clenched her fingers tightly.

CRUSH!

Focused gravity slammed into the ten-inch-thick steel doors.

They warped inward like tin, then tore off their hinges and fell into the dark elevator shaft with a thunderous crash.

"Jump!" Valisera ordered before staggering—caught just in time by Sia.

We didn’t hesitate.

One by one, we jumped into the dark shaft, grabbing the massive steel cables and sliding down.

The drop was enormous.

We descended dozens of floors, our hands burning from friction, until we reached the bottom: the underground service level.

[ Service and Sewer Floor ]

We landed in foul, cold water up to our ankles.

"Hurry! They’ll seal the main sewer gates!" Damian shouted, pointing toward a dark tunnel reeking of decay.

We ran.

We ran like wounded prey through the suffocating darkness of the sewers.

Alpha Team—the elite who, just hours ago, dined like royalty at "Blood Orchid"—were now running through filth and waste, hunted by the entire world.

Eva cursed endlessly in rage and humiliation.

Aiden gasped from exhaustion.

Damian bit his lip, enduring the pain in his arm.

Valisera was barely conscious in Sia’s arms.

When we finally stopped in a temporarily blocked side tunnel to catch our breath...

Silence enveloped us.

The silence of absolute defeat.

No spare weapons.

No money. Our accounts were frozen.

Our faces displayed on every screen as terrorists.

The FBI was hunting us. The Volders were waiting. The hospital was preparing for a "mass harvest," as I had deduced from Alexander’s plan—and we had no way to stop them.

"It’s over..." Aiden whispered, collapsing to his knees in the filthy water.

"We’re homeless. We have nowhere to go. We’ll die here like plague-ridden rats."

I looked at them all.

At this broken elite, stripped of all pride and arrogance.

Down here, S-rank or A-rank meant nothing.

At the bottom of the city, survival didn’t belong to the strongest... but to those most accustomed to filth.

And being a sewer rat... was my specialty.

I stepped forward, standing in the middle of them.

I dropped the posture of the frightened recruit, straightened my back, and raised my head with a cold, sharp, dark gaze.

The gaze of the Black Joker.

"Stop whining," I said in a calm, rough voice—completely different from the one they had heard over the past days.

They all lifted their heads and stared at me in shock.

The tone, the body language, the terrifying confidence... this was not Kyle the recruit.

"You’re in my territory now," I continued with a faint, mocking smile.

"I know a safe place. Elysium’s cameras won’t find us, and the FBI’s hounds won’t reach us. But..."

I glanced at their torn clothes and blood-covered bodies.

"I warn you. It’s not a five-star hotel. And you probably won’t like its owner."

"Who?" Eva asked, her voice trembling.

"Where are you taking us?"

My smile widened.

"To my idiot friend—the conspiracy-obsessed one. We’re going to visit Zak."