Eliza tried to move her right arm. A sharp, stabbing pain shot through her shoulder. The bone was fractured.

A massive wave of foreign memories crashed into her brain. Jeri's fake smile, the cold stares of the Wyatt family, the humiliation at school. The images flashed like a high-speed projector.

Eliza clenched her jaw. She forced the dizziness down, compartmentalizing the memories of the original owner. She looked down at her pale, trembling hands—hands that had never held a gun or snapped a neck. For a brief, surreal second, the name 'Lin' echoed like a ghost from a past life, distant and unreal. The top commander was dead. But in this fragile, bleeding shell, Eliza Wyatt was very much alive.

At the top of the stairs, Spike lit a cigarette. He jerked his chin at Cletus, ordering him to go down and strip the corpse of anything valuable.

Cletus splashed down the wet steps, muttering curses under his breath. He stopped next to Eliza's body.

He crouched down. He reached out his dirty hand to rip the silver necklace from Eliza's throat.

The moment his fingers brushed her cold skin, the dead girl moved.

Eliza's uninjured left hand shot out like a striking viper. Her fingers locked onto Cletus's wrist, pressing perfectly on the pulse point to numb his arm. He was off-balance, crouching, expecting a corpse—not a counterattack. His body was already in the worst possible position to defend himself.

Cletus froze. Before he could even open his mouth to yell, Eliza used his arm as leverage and thrust her hips upward.

She wrapped both her legs tightly around Cletus's neck. Using the dead weight of her own body, she twisted violently to the right. It was a textbook ground-fighting submission, executed with the precision of someone who had drilled it ten thousand times.

A crisp, sickening crack echoed in the stairwell. Cletus's cervical spine snapped. He collapsed onto her, dead before he hit the ground.

Spike and Dwayne heard the noise from above. They yelled Cletus's name, their voices tight with sudden panic.

Eliza shoved the heavy corpse off her. She reached into Cletus's pocket and pulled out his switchblade. She flicked it open with her thumb.

She couldn't outrun them with a broken ankle and fractured ribs. She couldn't overpower two armed men with one working arm. So she wouldn't fight. She would ambush.

She ignored the screaming pain in her ribs and her broken arm. She pressed her back flat against the concrete load-bearing pillar beneath the stairs, merging with the shadows.

Spike drew his knife. He and Dwayne crept down the stairs, their eyes wide with fear.

They saw Cletus's body lying in the bloody water. Both men gasped, cursing and looking wildly around the empty landing.

Dwayne turned his back to the pillar. Eliza launched herself from the darkness like a hunting leopard.

She clamped her left hand over Dwayne's mouth. Her right hand drove the switchblade across his throat without a millisecond of hesitation.

Hot blood sprayed over her hand. Eliza coldly shoved Dwayne's dying body forward, sending him crashing into Spike to block his line of sight.

Spike lost his mind with terror. He swung his knife wildly in the air, screaming.

Eliza dropped into a low slide, dodging the frantic blade. She slammed the heavy handle of her switchblade directly into the side of Spike's knee joint.

Spike shrieked and dropped to his knees.

Eliza flipped her knife in a reverse grip. She slashed upward, cleanly severing the tendons in his right wrist. His knife clattered to the concrete.

Spike clutched his bleeding wrist, howling in the rain. He looked up at Eliza as if he were staring at a demon from hell.

Eliza stood up. She looked down at him. There was zero human warmth in her eyes, only the cold calculation of a soldier.

She ripped the dry jacket off Cletus's corpse. She used her teeth and her left hand to tie her fractured right arm tightly against her torso, immobilizing the shattered shoulder.

The faint wail of police sirens drifted through the storm. Someone in the nearby apartments had called the cops.

Eliza knew this weak body was failing. She had to evacuate immediately.

She stepped over Spike's trembling body. She walked out into the freezing rain without looking back.

The rain washed the blood from her pale face. She looked up at the winding mountain road in the distance. The fire of revenge burned quietly in her chest.

Eliza clawed her way up the muddy slope. Black dirt packed tightly beneath her fingernails.

She leaned against the rough bark of an oak tree, gasping for air. Her lungs burned as if she were breathing in broken glass.

She closed her eyes. She tried to focus her mind, attempting to awaken the biological enhancement abilities from Project Chimera.

A faint resonance hummed deep in her consciousness. But the cardiovascular system of this normal, broken girl could not handle the energy surge.

Eliza suffered a sharp, agonizing spasm that tore through her chest, forcing a wet, ragged cough from her throat. The enhancement activation failed.

She let out a low, bitter laugh. She accepted the reality that she had to rely solely on this fragile, mortal shell for now.

She ripped a strip of fabric from her ruined dress. She tied it tightly around a deep gash on her thigh to stop the bleeding.

Suddenly, a low, guttural roar tore through the silence of the rainy mountain.

It was the distinct sound of high-octane fuel burning inside a V12 engine.

Eliza's eyes sharpened, her tactical mind instantly calculating the distance and direction. A vehicle meant a way out. She couldn't wander aimlessly; she had to actively secure transport. It was her only chance to survive the night.

She forced her broken body to move, tracking the acoustic signature of the engines, gritting her teeth against the pain as she crawled over the ridge.

She actively pushed aside the dense, wet bushes, seeking her extraction point. Down in the canyon, a stretch of asphalt was lit up as bright as day.

Dozens of heavily modified supercars lined up behind a starting line. Floodlights cut through the rain.

Scantily clad grid girls and frantic, wealthy heirs partied in the downpour. This was an illegal underground street race, a playground for the elite.

In the center of the crowd stood Duval Estrada. He wore a custom-tailored black dress shirt. He held a black umbrella, his expression entirely bored.

His friend, Griffin Fletcher, pointed excitedly at a modified red Ferrari. Griffin laughed loudly, taunting Duval.

Griffin bet that Duval wouldn't dare race his stock Aston Martin against a car tuned specifically for canyon runs.

Jules Mcintosh, the son of a prominent politician, pushed his gold-rimmed glasses up his nose. He smiled and added five hundred thousand dollars to the pot.

Duval exhaled a thick cloud of cigar smoke. His eyes were dead, showing no interest in the money or the thrill.

A racer covered in neck tattoos walked over. He arrogantly flipped his middle finger right in Duval's face.

Duval's eyes instantly turned to ice. He looked at the tattooed man as if looking at a corpse.

He turned his head slightly and snapped his fingers at his special assistant, Rook Valis.

Rook immediately stepped forward. He handed over a black card. Duval spoke two words, his voice devoid of emotion: "Two million."

The crowd erupted into screams. The stakes had just hit an insane level.

Duval dropped his cigar into a puddle and crushed it beneath his leather shoe. He walked toward the pitch-black Aston Martin.

Halfway up the mountain, Eliza calmly watched the scene unfold. Her eyes locked onto the black car.

Her brain processed the information like a tactical computer. She analyzed the layout of the canyon track and the performance specs of the vehicles.

She knew her body would shut down before she walked out of these woods. She had to get in that car.

Eliza hooked her left arm into a thick vine. She slid down the steep rock face, a desperate, one-sided scramble.

She slipped into the thick brush just before the first hairpin turn of the track-the most dangerous blind spot on the mountain.

A gorgeous woman in a soaking wet bikini walked to the center of the road, standing between the two idling supercars.

She raised a black-and-white checkered flag high above her head.

Duval sat in the driver's seat. He held the steering wheel with one hand, his posture relaxed and utterly indifferent.

In the next lane, the tattooed racer slammed his foot on the gas. The Ferrari's engine screamed, trying to dominate Duval with pure noise.

The woman slashed the flag downward. Both cars launched forward like bullets fired from a gun.

The tires spun wildly on the wet asphalt, burning rubber and sending up thick clouds of white smoke.

Duval's Aston Martin utilized its superior torque. He pulled ahead by half a car length in the first three seconds.

The tattooed man cursed. He stayed right on Duval's bumper, trying to use the slipstream to gain speed for a pass.

The rain poured harder. The windshield wipers thrashed violently, but visibility dropped to near zero.

In the bushes just before the hairpin turn, Eliza stood as still as a stone statue. She didn't even breathe.

The vibration in the ground grew stronger. Blinding headlights swept across the tree trunks.

Eliza counted down in her head. Three. Two. One.

The Aston Martin approached the braking zone at one hundred and twenty miles per hour. Eliza moved.

She leaped out of the bushes like a ghost. She planted her feet directly in the center of the lane, facing the speeding machine.

Duval's pupils contracted into tiny dots.

A normal driver would have jerked the steering wheel to avoid her, sending the car rolling off the cliff. Duval's reaction was pure, selfish calculation.

He slammed the brake pedal to the floor and aggressively downshifted the transmission.

The carbon-ceramic brake rotors exploded with bright orange sparks. The entire chassis shuddered violently.

The supercar lost traction on the wet road. It began to slide sideways, hydroplaning directly toward Eliza.

Eliza stood perfectly still. She didn't blink. She stared coldly through the windshield at the man behind the wheel.

The tires shrieked. The front bumper stopped exactly one inch from Eliza's raw, blood-slicked knees.

The massive G-force threw Duval forward. The seatbelt locked, bruising his collarbone.

The tattooed man saw the obstacle. He laughed like a maniac, swerved into the oncoming lane, and blew past them, taking the lead.

Duval slowly lifted his head. Pure, murderous rage boiled in his eyes. He glared through the glass at the woman who had just cost him the race.

Eliza dragged her bleeding right leg. She limped to the driver's side window.

She raised her blood-soaked left hand and knocked hard on the bullet-resistant glass.

Duval rolled the window down. The air around him felt heavy enough to crush her lungs.

Eliza ignored his killing intent. Her voice was hoarse, but steady as steel. "Do you want to win this two-million-dollar bet?"

Duval sneered. He opened his mouth to order his security to throw her off the mountain.

Eliza looked straight into his eyes. She laid out her terms. "Let me drive. I will win it for you. The price is, you take me out of here and provide the highest level of medical care."