This time, the chase was real. Cassie pushed the table off its legs and made a run for it. The Three Mercs sprinted for Cassie, going at full force with a speed that surpassed Derek and he was the fastest kid on the track team all four years of high school.
"You're not going anywhere," Eins shouted as she was ahead of her two companions.
"Get her!" Zwei shouted.
"We're not picking flowers," Drei said sarcastically, "Are we?"
Cassie runs through an alleyway and she cuts to the left. She knew that this was different from her father's chase in Yemen. One: She was being chased, not the other way around. Two: There were three enemies involved. Three: They run faster than her and have a good chance of catching her.
She ran into the street and she narrowly avoided getting hit by oncoming cars and made it across. The Three Mercs ran out into the street but instead of dodging the cars, they jumped over them with flexibility and strength behind their jump. They wasted less time getting across then Cassie did. They jumped over three more oncoming cars before chasing Cassie down the street.
There were no alleyways for her to run through this time so she had to stick to the sidewalk.
There was a crowd of people in front of her, a group of little children from what she guessed were on a field trip of some kind, based on the school bus parked on the sidewalk. She ran around them. The Three Mercs jumped over the children without harming any of them.
Cassie noticed this.
These aren't regular mercenaries. They're athletic, even more so than Derek and me.
She ran through a street market and there were dozens of people in her path. She pushed one pedestrian out of the way and she shouted at her in French.
The Three Mercs used advanced parkour to jump over tables and do flips over people without even touching them.
Cassie runs through a door. She shuts it on the face of Eins and she falls to the ground. Zwei and Drei reach to grab Cassie but she moves out of the way in time.
She is back in the same restaurant as before and she runs to the booth she was in from earlier. She jumps on the table and dives out the window, landing on her feet and running. She runs out into the street and gets hit by a car going at ten miles per hour. She collapses in pain but quickly shrugs it off. She runs into the next building and enters through the doors forcefully.
There was a set of stairs leading to the second floor and she ran up them. There were several doors in a hallway and Zwei suddenly materialized out of nowhere in front of the door.
"Surprise, asshole," he said.
Cassie runs through the closest door, which leads her to a room with an open window. She jumps through the window and catches herself on a pipe to the opposite building. She climbs up the pipe like she was climbing a rope in gym class.
Zwei jumps after her and climbs up the pipe after her.
When Cassie reaches the roof, there are small portions of rooftops for her to jump down and get back to the ground. That seemed to be the only logical thing to do because Eins found a way onto the roof by climbing up from the side and both mercs chased after Cassie.
Cassie leaps from rooftop to the lower section of the rooftop. When she reached the edge, the next building was within jumping distance and there was a window. She leaped for it. She crashes through the window and lands on her back. Eins and Zwei had better luck and they jumped onto handholds on the building and climbed their way in the broken window.
Cassie gets up and runs through the door leading out of the room. When she was in the hallway, there was Drei, standing in her path.
"You can't escape," Drei said, "We know your moves."
Cassie runs in the opposite direction of the hallway. She takes a right at the end and sees the three mercenaries still in hot pursuit after her.
These guys are strategists, she thought, I have to outwit them if I want to survive.
She finds a door leading to stairs and she follows them down. The Three Mercs decided to take another way down.
When Cassie reached the first floor of the building, she was in the lobby and she ran for the front door. She heard an elevator door ding and the three mercenaries come out.
They're smart as they are athletic, she thought, Given how strategic they are, they've served a long time together. If I can overpower one and threaten the others with his life, they'll leave me alone.
She runs out the door and into another street market. She runs past the people and comes to an open gate. She quickly closes it behind her and locks it with chains. Eins tried opening the gate but failed.
Where are the others?
Zwei and Drei dropped down from above from hopping over the gate. Cassie ran while Drei chased her. Zwei unlocked the gate and the chase continued. After careful thinking, Eins and Zwei take a different path.
Cassie ran into the open street with more oncoming cars. Her quick-thinking hatched a plan for her and it required timing
That tow truck will do the trick.
She ran to the sidewalk and she did a wall-run as Drei closed in on her. She jumped over his head and with her timing precision, landed on the back of a tow truck as it passed. She didn't land perfectly and hit her shoulder hard against the bottom of the truck. The tow truck was driving at thirty miles per hour and she bet her life that Drei could do the humanly impossible and run thirty miles per hour on foot.
But somehow, he did manage the impossible. Dwei had jumped onto the tow truck at the last second just seconds after Cassie jumped on. He grabbed onto a bar and climbed on. He grabbed the unaware Cassie and punched her in the back of the head. She lost her balance and went falling over the truck. Dwei grabbed Cassie by the back of her collar and yanked her back to safety. She took advantage of his kindness and kicked him in the stomach. He barely reacted and backhanded her.
"Stop fighting," he ordered forcefully, "We need you alive."
Cassie throws another punch but it was a fake, the real strike was to kick him and she kicked him in the shin instead of the face like intended. He pushes her back and she flies forward when the tow truck slowed down and she fell over the side. She rolled on the ground for a few feet but she shrugged off the pain and went running once more. She cut between an alley and Dwei was in hot pursuit. There was a fence blocking her path but she did the smart thing and she did a wall-run over the fence. She was about to run off until Zwei blocked her path. She tried running back but there was a wall blocking her path and Drei already hopped the fence.
The two mercenaries blocked off Cassie's only escape route but there was one: The wall behind her could be climbed up and over. That's exactly what she did. She wall-runs up and over the wall and the mercs copy her.
Man, this is never going to end.
She's running down another alley and just as she was about to make it out, Eins burst through a window beside her and tackled her into another. Both girls fell on their sides but Cassie was faster and whacked Eins across the face and picked herself up. She sprinted through the building she was pushed through and ran out the front door. She climbs over a parked car and leaps. It was only Eins chasing after her this time with Zwei and Drei nowhere to be seen.
"Come on, Drake," Eins shouted, "This is getting old!"
"While you're getting old, I'm getting young," Cassie quipped. She runs into another building but this time, there was a large group of people inside which concealed her presence. She runs through the doors and closes them tightly behind her. She rushes into the crowd and slows down when she feels safely surrounded.
Knowing these mercenaries, they're going to try and cut me off. I have to find a way to escape them, find a blind spot. But when I do find a blindspot, one or all of them show up. They have the advantage, they seem to know this territory like the back of their hand and their athletic abilities are phenomenal. They had to have their whole life to do something like this. Their training is far more rigorous than mine.
Cassie felt someone push into her and she went walking forwards before she stopped herself. She moved around the crowd of people and saw a set of stairs going upstairs. She headed upstairs where she would get a better vantage point and spot her enemies. She climbed up the stairs with a large group of people, laughing when they were laughing to make it look like she was with them. The crowd was quickly approaching a door with a security guard and Cassie figured that this was a sign of good luck.
When everyone started laughing over a joke told in French, Cassie laughed with them loudly. The crowd walked through the door with the security guard letting them pass. Cassie laughs and punches the security guard's cheek out of friendliness.
She was now at a party on the second floor and from what she guessed, she was at a party for rich people because everyone was dressed in class, suits, penguins, and spaghetti tops. She now realized how her luck changed.
If everyone here is dressed classy and I'm dressed in my… she looks down at her army green henley, green cargo pants, and chukka boots, I'm a fish in a barrel. But then again, the mercenaries were wearing casual clothes so they should stand out as well.
She felt someone touch her right arm and her first thought was the mercenaries but the touch wasn't firm enough to be that of a merc's.
It was the French security officer from early, the one whose cheek she pinched. He deduced that she wasn't a member of the party by her clothing and she escorted her out of the party with force. Cassie replied back in French that she left her suit in the dryer upstairs and that she should go upstairs to get it but the guard wasn't buying it. He kicked Cassie, literally, out of the party and she nearly fell down the stairs. She looked back at the guard and had half a brain to give him what Americans call 'The Bird' but she figured that it wouldn't be politically correct for some reason.
"France not being kind to you?"
Cassie turns around and sees the three mercenaries standing at the bottom of the stairs and looking up at her.
"We'll invite you to a private party at Ys if you'd like," Zwei continued, "You are VIP after all."
"No thanks, I like to limit myself to one party a week," Cassie smirked as the three mercs began ascending up the stairs.
"Don't make things more difficult," Eins said, "I mean, if we were to cause a commotion, the police would be after us and because we're Americans, we'd be put in jail."
"You're Americans?" Cassie asked Eins.
"We are," she answered.
"You have some athletic abilities," she at least complimented.
"Thank you," Zwei said, "Eins, Drei, and I each won a bronze medal in the 2032 summer and winter Olympics so our athletic abilities surpass even the great Cassie Drake's. That, and we are master strategists and it was actually our plan to get you to this party. This was the one place you could not run through without the police chasing you and it worked."
"Come with us," Eins demanded, "We won't ask a third time."
You didn't even ask.