Outside, a white van pulled up to the entrance and the n shoved her inside with rough, practiced efficiency.
And suddenly the entire situation clicked together inside Stan’s mind with cold, brutal clarity.
She’d been drugged.
That explained the sweating. The collapsing legs. The sluggish movents. The fear.
She hadn’t recoiled from Stan because he had done anything threatening.
She’d recoiled because she was terrified, half-incapacitated, and incapable of distinguishing between danger and safety anymore.
Stan turned sharply toward the street.
He didn’t have ti to retrieve the Huracán. The car was still at the service center, and even if it wasn’t, following a kidnapping in a matte-black Lamborghini would be the exact opposite of subtle. It’ll attract way too much attention.
The van had already begun pulling away.
Stan stepped to the curb and flagged down the nearest taxi.
The mont it stopped, he got in and pointed toward the departing vehicle.
"Follow that white van," he said calmly. "Keep your distance. There’s money in it for you."
The driver glanced at the van, sensed both the urgency and the promise of cash, and imdiately pulled into traffic after it.
The van traveled toward the edge of the district before finally stopping in front of an abandoned building.
It was the kind of place every city had hidden sowhere in its forgotten corners, derelict, empty, isolated. The sort of building chosen specifically because nobody ever ca near it.
The n dragged the woman out of the van and hauled her inside.
Stan paid the taxi driver, told him to leave, then approached the building on foot, keeping close to the surrounding structures and out of sight of the broken windows.
A door slamd shut sowhere inside.
Then voices followed.
"Leave alone, you animals!" the woman scread. Her voice sounded hoarse, panicked, but still defiant. "What do you even gain from this? Let go!"
"Scream all you want," a rough male voice replied. "Nobody’s coming. Nobody even knows you’re here."
"You want money?" she cried desperately. "I have money. I’ll give you whatever you want. Please, just let go, "
"Money?" the man laughed harshly. "We’ll take the money. Then we’ll take the rest of what we ca for."
Stan’s expression went completely still.
He moved toward the entrance and found a narrow gap beside one of the boarded windows.
Looking through it, he assessed the situation instantly.
Five n.
The woman was bound on the floor, wrists tied behind her back. Her clothing had been partially torn, exposing intimate areas, tears streaked down her face, and the lingering effects of whatever drug they had given her still left her weak and disoriented.
One of the n was already moving toward her with intentions that needed no explanation.
Stan analyzed the room in seconds.
Positions. Distances. No visible firearms. Limited space. Five opponents.
He had handled worse odds before, at Neon Pulse, at the Wanhai Grand. As long as none of them pulled out a gun before he closed the distance, the outco was not seriously in doubt.
Stan inhaled slowly.
Then he stepped forward.
"Stop."
At the sa mont, he drove his shoulder and palm into the door with a single focused burst of force.
The lock exploded apart.
tal snapped.
The fra splintered.
The entire door slamd violently against the wall with a crack that echoed through the building.
Everyone inside froze.
Stan himself paused for half a second.
That should not have happened.
He knew the system had been strengthening him. His baseline physical ability had been climbing steadily since it activated, and he was already lifting weights that would have sounded ridiculous two weeks ago.
But this was different.
An iron lock wasn’t a barbell.
And yet he had torn through it like rotten wood.
The realization registered quietly in the back of his mind before he pushed it aside. There would be ti to think about it later.
Right now, five n were staring at him in shock from inside the wrecked doorway, their expressions slowly shifting from confusion to the dawning realization that the isolated room they had chosen for privacy had just stopped being secure.
On the floor, the woman lifted her head weakly.
Her wrists were bound behind her back. Her bare feet scraped against the concrete as she struggled to move. Her hair was disheveled, her face streaked with tears and fear.
But the mont she saw Stan standing there, tall, calm, frad by the shattered doorway, sothing changed in her expression.
Hope.
She dragged herself desperately across the floor toward him.
"Help ..." she choked out. "Please... help ..."
She had spent years believing n were, at best, selfish obstacles and, at worst, predators waiting for an opportunity.
The past hour had only reinforced that belief.
And yet the man standing in the doorway had just broken through an iron-locked door to reach her.
For the first ti in years, a crack appeared in the certainty she’d built her worldview around.
Maybe she had been wrong about all of them.
Stan stepped fully into the room.
His gaze settled on the five n.
"You picked the wrong building," he said quietly.
"And the wrong ti."
In that mont, Alia Don realized sothing her entire adult life had taught her was impossible:
There were good n in the world.
And one of them was standing in the shattered doorway of an abandoned building, having co for her when nobody else would.
He was her savior.
There was simply no other word for it.
Stan, anwhile, was assessing the room with cold, steady clarity.
The apprehension was there, the natural tension any sane person felt before walking into a fight, but beneath it was sothing else entirely.
Curiosity.
He knew the system had been strengthening him. Breaking through the door had already proven that his physical growth had gone far beyond what his recent gym sessions alone could explain.
Part of him genuinely wanted to know where the ceiling was now.
More importantly, none of the n had drawn weapons.
That single detail simplified everything.
No firearms ant the situation beca straightforward mathematics, and the numbers were overwhelmingly in his favor.
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