Run

The city cursed behind him—sirens wailing like banshees in blistering hot chase of his silhouette, rebounding off the steel and glass concrete jungle. Marcus did not glance back over his shoulder. He simply ran.

What was started as a routine chore was intended to be quick and clandestine. Take the envelope. Drop it. Melt away. This was Manhattan's clandestine world of golden rule of couriers. No inquiry made. No glancing. Just go on.

But curiosity? That is a deadly weapon.

Two hours before, Marcus had been sitting in a dirty Brooklyn diner drinking a bitter cup of coffee, staring at the crumpled envelope on the counter. Rico, his snitch, had yelled at him. "Drop it. Don't get smart."

But Marcus was tired—tired of being the nameless delivery boy in the sweatshirt, swallowed up in subway swarms, inconsequential. He had to know why this job was a balancing act. Why did this envelope cost a man his life?

So he disobeyed. He opened it.

Inside, he discovered a USB thumb drive and a picture—a blonde, green-eyed woman, standing next to a little child, barely more than five. He didn't recognize them, but something in the picture struck him for a gut blow. It was too intimate, too holy to have been transferred from the hands of strangers.

He brought it to a deserted café with open Wi-Fi and inserted the drive into his burner laptop.

And that's when the storm broke.

The files were wrapped in encryption. But the moment he tried to break them open, someone else caught wind of it. His computer crashed. The lights in the café flickered. And two black SUVs outside slammed to a halt.

That's when Marcus ran.

And now he was defacing 6th Avenue, the city blurring before him, not so much from fear—but from awareness. Spinning surveillance cameras. Police radios scrolling his description. Drones buzzing by overhead. Eyes were on every corner.

He jumped over a subway turnstile and vanished in the crowd.

He had one option left: Kayla.

A journalist and the only person he was able to trust, Kayla had a nose for stories no other reporter would touch with a ten-foot pole—government surveillance, corporate cover-ups, cyber-spying—and if anyone could decipher the code on the flash drive, it was her.

Huffing and sweating, Marcus pounded on the door of her Queens apartment as the sun dropped below the horizon. Kayla opened it, startled.

"Marcus? What is it?"

"No time to explain," he growled, pushing her aside. "Just take a gander at this."

Within seconds, Kayla had the flash drive in and screen loaded with lines of text and eye-piercing warnings. Her expression shifted from confusion to horror as she peeled off the encryption.

"This. this is military-grade," she gasped. "Whatever you uncovered—this is the real thing."

"What's on it?" Marcus asked.

Her voice dropped. “A list. Hundreds of names. Journalists. Activists. Civilians. All marked.”

She pointed to the photo. “That woman? She blew the whistle on a pharmaceutical company’s illegal testing program. Her kid was taken. She disappeared shortly after.”

Marcus stared at the data. It wasn’t just evidence. It was a digital death sentence—undeniable proof of targeted eliminations.

Kayla stood up, tense. “If they know we’ve seen this, they’ll come for us.”

They already are," Marcus said.

The building darkened a second later.A humming hum shook through the walls—an electromagnetic shockwave.All electronics went on hold.

"RUN!" Kayla cried.

They sprinted down the fire escape, cutting between alleys as searchlight sliced through the sky. Helicopters thundered overhead. Checkpoints sealed off the streets. It was no longer pursuit anymore. It was a manhunt citywide.

As they ducked into shadows, Marcus realized the truth about the country he lived in.

It wasn’t about liberty or rights anymore. It was about surveillance. Control. Silencing truth with silence itself.He had what it took to bring everything into the light.

At an underground hacker hub in the Bronx, Kayla connected to a secure satellite feed. “I can upload everything,” she said. “But once it’s out there, we’re ghosts.”

Marcus waited not at all. "I already am. Let the world see."

Kayla clicked Upload All.

There was silence.

Then: Upload Complete. Mirrored to 12 servers. Leaked to 42 news sources.

The room was filled with the muted roar of revolution.

They lost that night.

But the world changed tomorrow. Streets jammed with protesters. News anchors tried to spin it—then fought. The truth had broken out.

Marcus and Kayla merged with the shadows. No longer just messengers—now insurgents of defiance.

For sometimes, to stand still is to yield.

And sometimes the only means of resisting. is fleeing.