Chapter 14 Jackson
FOURTEEN
Jackson
THE BURN
The ground bucks against the soles of my boots, a tectonic shudder rising from the earth itself. Above us, the world ends in a concussive roar.
“Move!” Vargas slams his shoulder into mine, his voice a rasp of dust and urgency.
My hand clamps around Talia’s wrist. I yank her down the tunnel just as the ceiling of the electronics shop buckles.
The blast isn’t a Hollywood fireball. It’s a physical hammer—a slam of overpressure that punches the air from the room.
The thermite Vargas rigged eats through the steel support beams in seconds.
Debris rains down, white-hot sparks showering the concrete like hellish confetti.
Darkness swallows the space.
The tunnel is narrow, walls slick with condensation, emergency lights casting everything in red. Water ticks somewhere in the dark like a metronome, counting down our lives.
The air down here sits heavy and stale, smelling of wet earth, rust, and the ozone tang of the explosion.
“Lights.” Vargas’s wheeze echoes off damp brick.
Beams click on, cutting through the gloom. The tunnel stretches out before us, a narrow, brick-lined throat. A relic of Prohibition-era Chicago that Vargas rediscovered and reinforced for exactly this kind of day.
It’s tight. Too tight.
“That’ll slow them, not stop them. This way. East, through the panadería basement.” Vargas is already in motion, limping but fast.
He slaps a detonator onto the tunnel wall as we pass.
A compact charge, angled just so. I recognize the setup instantly—his signature placement, the perfect geometry for maximum containment with minimal blowback.
I’d know that craftsmanship anywhere. Vargas didn’t just teach me how to blow a door; he taught me how to shape destruction into an art.
He doesn’t even glance back before triggering it. A controlled burst seals the section behind us with collapsed brick, the pressure rolling through the tunnel in a deep, concussive thump.
My ears ring from the wave. Dust and heat wash over us. Talia blinks hard, refocuses. God, she adapts fast.
“You’ve been prepping for this?” I say.
Vargas snorts. “You live long enough in my line of work, paranoia’s just pattern recognition.”
Talia’s breathing hitches—rapid, shallow gasps that bounce off the low ceiling.
“You okay?” My hand finds her shoulder, squeezing the tension there.
She flinches, then leans into the touch. “I’m—I’m intact. Probability of structural failure?”
“Low.” I keep my voice level, a counterweight to her panic. “Vargas reinforced the arches. It’ll hold.”
“Keep moving.” Vargas limps past me to take the lead, his bad leg dragging. He moves on adrenaline and muscle memory now, but the strain rattles in his lungs. “Ventilation is shit down here, so unless you want to suffocate on smoke, pick up the pace.”
We push deeper into the tunnels. Red light pulses against the sweat on Talia’s neck, painting her skin in shades of warning.
She stumbles once on broken concrete; I catch her by the hips, pull her tight into my line, and reposition her in front of me where I can shield and drive her pace. She fits there like she belongs.
“Stay in front of me,” I tell her. “If something happens, I take the hit first.”
Her breath catches, but she doesn’t argue. The trust in that silence cleaves me open.
The tunnel winds beneath the city, a secret artery clogged with the dust of a century. My left arm—the one that took the bullet—throbs in time with my heartbeat. A dull, heavy ache spreads from the wound, a warning that the adrenaline is wearing off and the bill is coming due.
Talia’s silhouette bobs in the flashlight beam ahead of me. She keeps the pace up, but her posture remains rigid. Her head swivels, checking the brickwork, the pipes running overhead, the dark water pooling in the center of the floor.
“This masonry.” Her voice trembles but gains strength as she analyzes. “Chicago Common Brick. Uneven firing. Suggests construction prior to 1930. Which means no modern schematics exist in the city database.”
“Which means Phoenix can’t track us down here.” I stay close to her back, a physical shield against the dark behind us. “We’re off the grid.”
“Off the grid is good. I like off the grid.”
“Fuse,” Vargas calls back, not slowing down. The tunnel forks; he veers right without hesitation. “This exits into the panadería’s cold storage. Through the back freezer, up the stairs, then street level. You got a plan for when we surface?”
“Get a car. Get gone.”
The tunnel narrows again. Heat licks the back of my neck—residual from the explosion or adrenaline, I can’t tell. My arm screams every time I pivot, but pain’s just background noise now.
I keep my hand low at Talia’s waist, steering her through blind corners, feeling the tension locked in her muscles, the stutter-skip of her breath when something crashes behind us. Every instinct I have wraps around her and refuses to let go.
“That’s a wish, not a plan.” Vargas stops at a junction, leaning heavily against the damp wall.
He shines his light on me, the beam blinding.
“You saw the heat map on my monitors. That wasn’t a hit squad, kid.
That was a battalion. Phoenix isn’t sending messages anymore. They’re scrubbing the board.”
“I noticed.”
“I gave you the Root Seed.” Vargas pats the lead-lined pouch slung across his chest. “It’s the only thing that can kill the AI. But it’s hardware. It needs to be plugged in. Physically. And I can’t run that gauntlet.”
“We’ll handle it.”
“Will you?” He spits on the floor. “I trained you to be a one-man wrecking crew. But you aren’t breaching a fortress like Nexus Holdings with a wounded arm, a civilian analyst, and a crippled old man. That’s not a mission. That’s a suicide pact.”
My jaw tightens. “I can protect her.”
“You can die for her. There’s a difference.” Vargas pushes off the wall, pain etching deep lines around his eyes. “You want to be a martyr, or you want to win?”
Talia turns. The flashlight beam catches the dust coating her lashes, the streak of grease on her cheek. She looks exhausted, hunted, vibrating with a fear she tries desperately to rationalize away with logic.
Vargas is right. The math doesn’t work.
I’ve been playing defense for days. Running. Hiding. Reacting. But Phoenix is an algorithm. It predicts reactions. To beat it, I need to introduce variables it can’t calculate. I need chaos. I need precision. I need violence on a scale I can’t manufacture alone.
“You got someplace we can go?” I need time to activate the pack.
“I’ve got another place, a secondary bolt-hole. It’s shielded. No signals in or out unless you tap the hardline, but we gotta get there first.”
The air grows thinner, hotter. Sweat slicks my skin under the tactical vest. Every step sends a fresh spike of fire through my bicep. I focus on Talia’s back, on the rhythm of her boots on the wet stone.
Left, right. Breathe. Scan.
She stumbles over a loose brick.
I catch her before she hits the ground, my good arm wrapping around her waist, hauling her upright. She gasps, gripping my forearm, her fingers digging into the muscle.
“I’ve got you.”
She doesn’t pull away. She presses back against me, seeking the solidity of my chest. “I hate this. I hate the dark. I hate not knowing the variables.”
“I know.” I keep my arm around her, guiding her forward, refusing to let go. “Stay with me. I won’t let you fall.”
“Statistically, fatigue leads to error. Error leads to—”
“Talia.” I put my lips right next to her ear. “Turn off the brain. Just move.”
She nods, a jerky motion, and forces herself forward.
By the time we reach the iron ladder at the end of the tunnel, Vargas is dragging his bad leg. I boost Talia up first, watching until she clears the hatch, then help haul Vargas onto the landing.
We burst into the panadería’s basement. The smell hits first—flour, yeast, and chemical cold from the freezer. A row of metal racks lines the wall, stacked with bags of sugar and industrial mixing bowls. Somewhere above, a rack rattles; flour dust drifts like ash.
Vargas moves to the far corner and punches a code into a hidden keypad. A section of shelving swings inward.
“Up those stairs,” he says. “Keep your heads down.”
We climb. The stairwell’s tight, lit only by Vargas’s flickering penlight. Above us, faint shouts filter through—the Phoenix teams closing the perimeter. Boots hit the roof. A radio squawks two words I can’t make out. Doesn’t matter. I know the cadence of a net tightening.
At the top, a heavy door. Vargas shoulders it open, revealing an alley bathed in darkness and the hum of distant sirens. Ozone hangs in the air—burned electronics, the scent of our past life going to ash.
He kills the light, peering up at the skyline. “They’re sweeping east. We’ve got twenty seconds before they circle back.”
Talia grips my sleeve. “Jackson—”
“I know.” I scan the street, map exit routes, and calculate cover angles. We need wheels.
A delivery van sits idling across the street, rear doors open, driver nowhere in sight. Perfect.
I take her hand, squeeze once. “Run.”
We sprint. Behind us, a muted detonation rumbles—the sound of Vargas burning what’s left of his life’s work. Sirens rise, echoing off brick and steel. A breeze rifles the alley, cold across sweat, lifting the edge of Talia’s borrowed shirt. She’s breathing hard, controlled. No panic. Pure will.
We don’t look back.
Across the street. Into the van’s shadow. I boost her up by the hips; she swings into the passenger seat, slides across, and makes room for me. I drop behind the wheel.
“Go.” Vargas climbs into the back, slams the rear doors, his breath ragged.
Headlights off. Gear engaged. We roll in darkness.
Two blocks, three. I keep our speed just under suspicion, eyes slicing through mirrors and the windshield. Overhead, a faint, insectile whir—too steady to be urban noise.
“Drone,” Vargas says from the back, voice flat. “Thermal micro. Civilian shell, military guts.”
“Got an EMP?” I ask.
“You know it. Short pulse only,” he replies. “Anything bigger blacks out half the block and puts our location on every dashboard.”
“On my mark.”
I cut left under a narrow trestle, metal girders strobing shadow over the windshield. The whir deepens, searching. Talia’s gaze presses against my profile—steadying me and unsteadying me at the same time.
“Now,” I say.
Vargas pops the rear doors an inch. A low thump. White fizz cracks across the night like lightning bottled wrong. The whir hiccups, stutters, dies. The drone pinwheels into a trash-strewn gutter behind us, a small, expensive idea coming apart.
“Nice,” Talia murmurs, breathless.
“Don’t celebrate,” Vargas says. “Overwatch still has eyes.”
I cut another block, then two. Sirens converge somewhere to the east. Phoenix is herding us—gentle pressure, invisible hands. We need to slip the pattern.
“We’re just delivery people,” I say. “We’re nobody.” As if my thoughts could convince an autonomous AI.
Talia watches the side mirror like it’s a threat. The exact moment her pulse begins to steady registers in the reset of her shoulders, the lift of her chin. That iron in her spine makes me want to pull her closer and never let her out of arm’s reach.
“Left up here,” Vargas calls, checking a cracked phone running an offline map. “Cut through the industrial. Fewer cameras.”
I take it. The street opens into a strip of shuttered warehouses and chain-link fences topped with lazy coils of razor wire. Sodium lights buzz. A stray dog trots across our path, unconcerned. The van’s engine hums low, the night breathing around us.
“We need to change vehicles,” I say. “Soon.”
“Two blocks ahead,” Vargas says. “Auto salvage yard. Owner leaves keys in the night-shift runners. He’s old school and careless.”
“Perfect,” I murmur.
We roll past a blown-out billboard, then another. The yard looms—wide, fenced, slit of chain at the gate. I ease the van inside, and coast to a stop between two stacks of crushed sedans. The air smells like rust and oil and old heat.
We listen.
Distant sirens. No immediate footfall.
“Out,” I say quietly. “Fast, clean.”
Talia moves first, sliding down from the van, landing softly. I’m right behind, hand at the small of her back, guiding her shadow-tight along the aisle of stacked cars. Vargas ghosts after us, his limp barely a drag when fear is doing the lifting.
Keys glint in the ignition of a dented sedan. I test the handle; it opens with a tired sigh. The engine turns on the second try. The dashboard glows a sickly green.
“Switch,” I say.
We trade vehicles in under ten seconds. The van sits cooling, door cracked, a decoy in the making. I pull the sedan out slowly, nose first, then angle us toward the rear gate.
“Hold.” Vargas watches the sky through the rear window, listening with his whole body. “They’re sweeping west now. Wait for the handoff.”
I do. Talia’s thigh presses against mine, unintentional, heat radiating through denim. I don’t move. Can’t. The closeness steadies me and threatens to undo me in the same breath.
“Now,” he says.