Chapter 13 Jackson #2
“The one thing the brass didn’t know about.” Vargas unzips the pouch. Inside sits a drive. It looks ancient—thick, encased in titanium, with a proprietary connection port I haven’t seen in a decade. “The Root Seed.”
Talia moves closer, hovering over it. “What does it do?”
“It’s a hard erase,” Vargas says. “When we built the original architecture, I didn’t trust the software guys.
Code is slippery. So I built a hardware backdoor.
A kill switch buried in the kernel level of the system.
If you plug this directly into the primary server bank, it doesn’t just delete the data.
It fries the logic boards. Physical destruction via voltage overload. ”
“A suicide pill,” Talia whispers.
“Exactly.” Vargas taps the drive. “But it has to be a direct connection. Air-gapped. You have to be in the room with the brain.”
“That’s the plan,” I say.
“It’s a bad plan.” Vargas starts shoving other gear into a duffel bag—jammers, signal repeaters, EMP charges. He turns from his screen. “Nexus will have military-grade security. Biometric scanners, motion sensors, armed guards—despite the shell company facade.”
“Can you get us past building security?” I ask.
“Maybe.” He’s already pulling equipment from drawers. “I can clone biometrics if you can get me a clean image of someone who works there. High-resolution photo, specific angles.”
“The building has security cameras.” Talia’s fingers fly across her keyboard. “I’m in the building management system now. Pulling up feeds.”
She works in silence, that brilliant mind finding pathways through digital architecture the same way I find structural weaknesses in buildings. Within ninety seconds, grainy footage fills her screen—lobby, elevators, stairwells.
“There.” She freezes frame forty-seven. Sophia Blackwell, sharp suit, sharper expression, pausing at the elevator. “Will this work?”
Vargas enlarges it and studies the resolution. “It’s not perfect, but yeah. I can work with this.” He starts pulling up different programs. “Give me twenty minutes to clone her biometrics. You’ll have elevator access and door scanners, but any secondary protocols will fail authentication.”
“What about the service stairs?” I ask.
“Keycard and six-digit PIN. Can’t clone that without knowing her actual code.”
Talia pulls up more data. “According to building maintenance logs, there’s an HVAC shaft that runs from the parking garage to the roof. Maintenance access requires a basic keycard only—no biometrics.”
“You want us to crawl through air ducts?” Jackson huffs a laugh.
“I want us to have options.” She turns to me. “If elevator access fails, we need a backup entry point.”
Smart. Always thinking three moves ahead.
“The HVAC route dumps us where?” I ask.
Talia traces the schematic on her screen. “Mechanical room on forty-six. One floor below Nexus. We’d have to use service stairs for the last level.”
“Which requires Blackwell’s PIN,” Vargas reminds us.
“Or we bypass the door entirely.” I’m already planning the approach. “I can blow the lock. Shaped charge, minimal noise, won’t trigger fire alarms if I time it right.”
“You’re carrying shaped charges?” Talia stares at me.
“Always.”
She blinks, processes, then nods, as if this is perfectly reasonable. “Okay. So our entry options are: main elevator with cloned biometrics or HVAC shaft with explosive breach.”
“Those are terrible options,” Vargas mutters, but he’s already assembling equipment. “You’re both going to die.”
“We’re doing it anyway.” I check my watch. 3:47 AM.
Vargas works in focused silence, building what he calls a “universal access device”—a sophisticated lock pick that mimics Blackwell’s biometric signature. He integrates it into a blank keycard and adds a small display showing authentication status.
“Green means you’re good.” He holds it up. “Red means run. Yellow means it’s processing—give it five seconds.”
“Failure rate?” Talia asks.
“Honestly? Forty percent. These systems are designed to catch clones.” He hands her the card. “But it’s the best I can do with what we have.”
She takes it, studies the device with those analytical eyes. “Forty percent failure rate means sixty percent success rate. Acceptable margins.”
Vargas looks at me. “She always this optimistic about death?”
“Only when she’s done the math.”
He pauses, his hand hovering over a sensor array on his desk. A red light blinks. Once. Twice.
Heat signatures blossom across the schematic like blood spreading through water.
“Shit.” Vargas’s fingers fly across the keyboard. “Shit, shit.”
“Talk to me.”
“Perimeter breach. Silent alarm on the alley sensors.” He looks at a monitor that is hardwired, not wireless. “Heat signatures. Six … Eight … Twelve. Closing fast.”
“Phoenix?”
“Who else?” Vargas grabs a shotgun from under the counter and racks the slide. “They found you. Or they found me. Doesn’t matter now.”
“We need to move.” I draw my weapon. “Back door?”
“Burned. They’re bracketing the building. Standard kill box.” Vargas moves with surprising speed for a cripple, throwing switches on a breaker panel. “You’ve got ninety seconds before they breach.”
Vargas’s paranoia kicks in like muscle memory. He reaches for a recessed switch under the desk. Instantly, every monitor dies. The hum of drives falters. Then the hiss starts—hard disks degaussing, magnetics shredding everything he’s ever built.
“We can hold them.” I check the sight lines.
“Not with twelve shooters and a high-value target.” Vargas nods at Talia. “You need to disappear. Not fight.”
“How?” Talia asks. “If they have the building surrounded—”
Vargas kicks aside a rubber mat on the floor, revealing a steel grate. “Prohibition tunnels. Bootlegger run. Connects to the panadería’s cold storage.”
Then he’s moving again, sweeping a hand across the workbench to grab a compact EMP charge and a pair of encrypted comms. “Grab that pack—the green one, back wall. Move.”
Talia’s already in motion, quick and precise, snagging the duffel by the straps.
The strap bites into her shoulder; I adjust it without thinking, my fingers brushing the warmth of her neck.
She goes still for a heartbeat, then nods once—understanding, gratitude, something that lands low and hot in my chest.
Talia peers over the opening—black mouth, old brick, stale air. “That’s our cleanest exit?”
“It’s our only exit.”
Vargas yanks a small remote from his pocket. Flips the safety cap. “Front of the shop’s rigged with thermite. Controlled collapse when I trigger it. Should slow them down.”
“Define slow.”
He smirks grimly. “Ten seconds, if we’re lucky.”
Above us, faint footsteps scrape against the roofline—soft, deliberate. My instincts flare.
“They’re here.”
Talia freezes, listening. The rhythm’s unmistakable: tactical pacing, tight formation.
“You two go ahead. I’ll hold them as long as I can.” Vargas’s grip on the shotgun tightens.
“Vargas, come with us,” I say.
“I’ll slow you down.”
“I’m not leaving you.”
“I’m not asking.” He shoves the bag of gear into my chest. “Take the girl. Take the Seed. Go.”
“No.”
“Dammit, Fuse!” Vargas slams his hand on the counter.
“I built the cage for this monster. Let me be the one to burn the key.” He pulls a remote detonator from his pocket.
“Shop’s rigged. Thermite in the ceiling.
C4 in the structural columns. When they breach, I bring the roof down. It buys you the distraction you need.”
“Mateo—”
“Go!”
Glass shatters in the front of the shop. A canister clatters across the floor, hissing smoke.
“Breach! Front!” I shout. “We have to go.”
Vargas looks at me one last time. The mentor looking at the student. “Don’t miss, kid.”
I yank the grate open. “Down. Now.”
Talia hesitates a heartbeat too long. I grab her by the waist with my good arm, one motion fluid and fast, lowering her through the grate before she can protest.
She drops into the hole. I follow, but I grab Vargas’s arm before I descend.
“You’re coming.”
“Fuse—”
“I said you’re coming. You don’t get to die today, old man.” I haul him toward the opening.
“You stubborn son of a bitch.” He curses, but he moves, slinging the shotgun strap onto his back and grabbing the ladder.
“Learned from the best.”
Vargas mutters something about ghosts in the machine.
I drop into the darkness right behind him, the heat of the collapse licking the back of my neck.
He shoves me to the side, dragging the heavy steel hatch closed. A lock engages with a metallic clank that severs us from the destruction above.
Above us, boots hammer on the floorboards. Shouts. The sound of a breaching charge blowing the front door.
“Fire in the hole!” Vargas wheezes, jamming his thumb on the remote detonator.
A deep, rising whine of capacitors discharging fills the air.
I shove Talia against the brick wall of the tunnel, shielding her with my body as the ceiling above us begins to glow white-hot.