Stuck in an Island with Twelve Beautiful Women
Chapter 851 - 853

Chapter 851: Chapter 853

He turned a corner and found a metal door with a keypad. No camera, but the keypad had fresh smudges. He didn’t hesitate. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a tool Elias had given him, a small device that could mimic keystrokes once calibrated. He attached it to the pad, waited for the light to turn green, and stepped inside.

The room beyond was colder. A concrete box filled with monitors, maps pinned to the walls, and several black cases stacked against a desk. In the center, chained to a chair, sat Liam. His head hung low, but he was breathing. Jude moved quickly, checking the boy’s pulse and cutting the restraints. Liam stirred, eyes fluttering open in confusion and fear. Jude didn’t speak. He motioned for silence and helped the boy to his feet. They moved fast, but not fast enough.

The alarm blared.

Jude spun around, gun drawn, as the door slammed shut behind them. A voice crackled through the speakers, distorted but familiar. "You’re early, Jude. I wasn’t ready to play yet."

Jude grabbed Liam and pulled him behind cover as a section of the wall slid open, revealing a corridor filled with red light. Footsteps thundered toward them. He fired once, twice, warning shots. It bought them a few seconds. He tossed Liam a flashlight and pointed toward the vent near the ceiling. "Climb. Now."

Liam didn’t argue. He scrambled up with the desperation of someone who had tasted death and didn’t want seconds. Jude covered him until the boy disappeared, then turned and ran in the opposite direction, drawing the pursuit away. He darted down the hallway, dodging through doors and sliding over debris until he reached the boiler room. He ducked inside and waited.

The door burst open moments later. Two men entered, rifles raised. Jude dropped from the overhead pipe and took the first down with a blow to the neck. The second fired, grazing Jude’s shoulder. Pain exploded through him, but he didn’t stop. He rammed into the man, slamming him into the boiler. The rifle clattered to the floor. Jude grabbed it and knocked the man out with the butt.

He didn’t waste time. He found the emergency ladder and climbed to the upper level. Liam was waiting at the edge, trembling, but alive. They fled across the rooftops, breath ragged and hearts pounding, until the factory was just a silhouette in the distance. Only then did they stop.

Jude collapsed against a vent, clutching his bleeding shoulder. Liam sat beside him, silent. After several minutes, the boy finally spoke. "Why... why are they after you?"

Jude didn’t answer right away. He looked up at the sky, now brightening with the morning sun. "Because I know what they did. And they know I won’t let it stay buried."

Liam looked down. "I heard them talking. They said you were one of them once. That you left. That you betrayed them."

"I did," Jude said. "And I’d do it again."

Back at Elias’ place, Jude stitched his wound with shaking hands while Liam sat in the corner, wrapped in a blanket. Elias had arrived ten minutes after they called. His expression was grim. "They’re getting bolder."

"They’re not just chasing me anymore," Jude said. "They’re hunting anyone I try to protect."

Elias handed him a drink. "We need to get ahead of them. Find out who’s funding this. Who’s giving them cover."

"I have a name. Lynx. She’s involved. And she knows I’m coming."

Elias nodded. "We track her. We shut it down."

"No," Jude said. "We don’t shut it down. We burn it."

The next few days were a blur of planning, surveillance, and movement. Liam was taken to a safe house under guard. Elias tapped into old networks, calling in favors. Jude followed the trail of Lynx, real name: Clarissa Vale. Ex-intelligence. Presumed dead. Reemerged six months ago under multiple aliases. Last seen in the outer districts, near the docks.

That’s where they went next.

The docks were a maze of shipping containers and loading cranes. Fog rolled in thick and heavy, cloaking movement in all directions. Jude and Elias moved like ghosts, scanning for signs. Eventually, they found what they were looking for, a container fitted with reinforced doors, guards stationed nearby with earpieces and bored expressions.

"We go in loud?" Elias asked.

"No," Jude said. "We go in smart."

They waited for the shift change, then created a distraction, an explosion two blocks down that sent the guards running. Jude and Elias slipped inside. The interior of the container was like a war room, monitors, maps, weapons. But no Lynx. Just data.

Jude copied everything to a drive, heart pounding as he saw names, operations, and timelines. This wasn’t just about revenge. It was bigger. It was a reformation. A resurrection of something they had dismantled years ago.

"We need to move," Elias said. "They’ll be back any minute."

Jude nodded, but his eyes stayed fixed on one screen, a live feed of a different location. A room. A woman. Lynx.

She was looking directly into the camera, lips moving.

And then the feed cut.

Jude grabbed the drive, and they fled.

That night, the city burned.

A coordinated series of attacks across multiple locations tied to former operatives. Jude’s face was on the news again, labeled a suspect, a traitor, a danger. He watched it from a basement beneath a bookstore, flanked by Elias and three others they had once trusted.

"She’s making her move," Elias said.

"She already made it," Jude replied. "Now it’s our turn."

And as the rain returned, washing the streets in silence and ash, Jude loaded his weapon and stood.

He wasn’t fighting for justice anymore.

He was fighting to erase the nightmare before it became reality again.

The rain hadn’t stopped for hours, and the sky above Leonork seemed to mourn with its steady, relentless weeping. Jude moved through the narrow alleyways with his hood low and his face shadowed, his shoulder still aching from the graze at the factory, but his steps sure and steady. The flash drive he’d taken from the shipping container weighed heavily in his pocket, not in physical weight, but in the gravity of the names and locations it contained. He hadn’t slept since the night he and Elias retrieved it. Too much was at stake now, and if he let his guard down even for a moment, everything could fall apart.