Chapter 1617:


    “Number Three!” The remaining operative witnessed the execution and snapped,posure shattering in an instant. “You killed him! You killed Number Three! I’ll tear you apart!” His empty firearm ttered to the ground as he abandoned it, his hand diving to his boot to rip free a concealed de. Madness overtook his features, twisting them beyond recognition. “You think you can survive this? Die!”


    He lunged forward with reckless abandon, charging straight at Maia as her boots hit the ground. The knife gleamed beneath the floodlights, its tip aligned with lethal intent — aimed directly for her heart.


    She had justpleted the disarm and execution, her bnce not yet fully recovered. The sudden counterattack gave her no time to reset. Her body recoiled on instinct, stumbling backward until her spine mmed hard against the truck’s unforgiving metal exterior.


    She was trapped.


    In that razor-thin instant where death loomed close enough to touch, Chris unleashed a roar that tore straight through the air. “I’ll kill you.” The sound detonated in the narrow space, rebounding off metal walls and closing in from all sides.


    Scarlet fury ignited in his eyes, every fiber of his body drawn to its limit like a bowstring on the verge of snapping. Heunched himself forward without hesitation, bursting from the side in a reckless charge, his momentum driven by nothing but raw, violent intent.


    Sanity had long since abandoned the covert operative gripping the knife. He no longer cared whether he lived or died. The attack existed for one purpose alone — Maia’s death, even if it demanded his own.


    Chris felt his heartbeat falter, the rhythm copsing into silence. Fear mped down hard inside him. He was terrified that if he arrived even a fraction toote, that shing de would be buried deep in her body. He could ept countless risks, even those that threatened everything — but not this. Never her.


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    Yet at the center of it all stood Maia, and within her perception, reality had fractured into something unrecognizable.


    The world did not move as it should. Time dragged, heavy and distorted. She saw everything — the operative’s twisted, animalistic snarl, dust driftingzily in the dagger’s wake, even the naked fear expanding in Chris’s pupils. Each detail lingered, suspended and endless before her eyes.


    Her body had entered its most primitive state, driven by pure survival instinct. Thought vanished. In its ce remained only rity, sharp and absolute.


    Within those frozen, merciless seconds, her mind assembled its response with mechanical precision.


    Retreat? Behind her, the steel wall sealed off any path backward.


    Evade? There was no room, no margin. A single miscalction would open her throat before she could recover.


    There was no alternative left to consider. She would have to meet the attack head-on.


    A sudden chill settled into her eyes — hard and merciless, the unmistakable focus of someone who had faced death before and walked away from it.


    She did not recoil. She did not hesitate.


    Instead, her heel struck the steel wall behind her with brutal force. The impact rang out sharp and violent, and using the recoil, she propelled herself forward — her body snapping into motion like a round fired from a chamber, driving straight toward the iing operative.


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