Chapter 17 Jackson
SEVENTEEN
Jackson
FATAL FUNNEL
The heavy steel door slams shut behind us, engaging with a mechanical thud that vibrates through the soles of my boots. The lock cycles.
A prison cell sound.
We’re inside.
The service corridor stretches out, a long throat of gray concrete and fluorescent hum. The air is recycled, sterile, and chilled to preserve the servers below. It smells of ozone and floor wax, a sharp contrast to the copper tang of blood still coating my knuckles.
My hands shake. Just a tremor.
Not fear.
Rage.
The image replays on a loop, superimposed over the gray walls: The barrel of the gun pressed against Talia’s temple. The indentation of the metal in her skin. The way her eyes went wide, not with panic, but with calculation.
If I had been a split second slower.
If the knife had slipped.
The beast inside my chest, the one I keep chained with discipline and mission parameters, rattles the bars. It wants to turn around, open that door, and tear the corpse in the alley apart until there’s nothing left to identify.
“Jackson?”
Talia’s voice cuts the loop.
Soft. Grounding.
I turn. She’s standing three feet away, weapon drawn, eyes scanning the junction ahead. She’s covered in grime, her hair escaping the bun she tied earlier, a smudge of oil on her cheek.
She is the only clean thing in this world.
“We move,” I rasp. “Subbasement three. The heart of the beast.”
The silence of the corridor vanishes, replaced by the chaotic symphony of war.
“—breaching front glass,” Ghost’s voice is a calm baritone amidst a cacophony of shattering glass. “Brass, flush the right flank.”
“On it,” Brass replies. A heavy thump-thump-thump of suppressed rifle fire follows. “Ugly statue in the lobby. Post-modern garbage.”
A massive boom echoes through the comms—a frag grenade.
“Fixed it,” Brass says. “Lobby is clear. Elevators are locked down. We’re drawing every guard in the building to the ground floor.”
“Torque,” Ghost commands. “Status?”
“Holding pattern,” Torque’s voice fights over the roar of an engine. “I’ve got a drone swarm trying to flank me on the north side. I’m playing tag. They’re losing.”
“Whisper?”
“Roof is clear,” the sniper’s voice is dry, detached. “I have eyes on the executive elevator. Heat signatures moving down. Three squads. They aren’t taking the bait in the lobby. They’re heading sub-surface.”
They’re coming for us.
“Keep it loud,” I say into the channel. “We’re in the service pipe. Heading down.”
“Copy, Fuse,” Ghost says. “Don’t keep the lady waiting.”
I look at Talia. “They’re making noise. We’re the ghosts.”
“Lead the way.”
We move. I take point, weapon shouldered, moving with the rolling gait that keeps the upper body steady. Every corner is a potential ambush. Every shadow is a threat. The schematic of the building burns in my mind—a 3D map of fatal funnels and choke points.
We descend a ramp. The air gets colder. The hum of the building grows louder, a low-frequency vibration that rattles the teeth.
Footsteps ahead. Scuffing rubber on concrete. Not the rhythmic march of a patrol. The shuffling gait of civilians.
I hold up a fist. Stop.
Talia freezes instantly, melting into the shadow of a large support pillar. I press myself against the opposite wall, weapon tight to my chest.
Two men in gray coveralls round the corner, pushing a cart loaded with cleaning supplies. They’re arguing about overtime pay, oblivious to the war above them.
They pass within five feet of us.
My finger rests on the trigger guard. If they turn … If they see us …
The compulsion to neutralize the threat spikes. A quick double-tap. No witnesses.
Talia’s gaze burns into the side of my face. I can feel her watching my hand. For her, I won’t kill them—lucky fucks don’t know they get to live because I care what she thinks about me.
The maintenance crew continues past, their voices fading down the hall.
I let out a breath, but the tension in my shoulders remains, a coiled spring.
“Clear,” I whisper.
We press on. The corridor ends at a heavy blast door marked RESTRICTED ACCESS: AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. A keypad glows red next to a biometric scanner.
“Halo,” I mutter. “Door. Level B1 junction.”
“Working,” Halo’s voice comes back, strained. The sound of rapid typing filters through the line. “Encryption is heavy down there. Give me ten.”
“We don’t have ten.”
“I can’t magic a keycard, Fuse. The system is fighting me.”
I look at the door. Reinforced steel core. Magnetic seals.
“Never mind.” I holster my Glock and reach into my pack. “I’m knocking.”
Talia watches as I pull out a roll of Flex-Linear Charge. It looks like harmless putty tape.
It’s not.
“You’re breaching?” she asks.
“Whisper silent.” I strip the backing and apply the tape along the hinges and the locking mechanism. “It cuts, doesn’t push. Minimal overpressure.”
“Will they hear it upstairs?”
“They won’t hear it over Brass remodeling the lobby.”
I press a detonator cap into the putty. “Cover your ears. Keep your mouth open.”
She steps back, turning away, hands over her ears. I shield her with my body, thumb hovering over the clacker.
Three. Two. One.
Snap.
The sound is sharp, like a dry branch breaking, but contained. A flash of white light outlines the door frame. Smoke hisses from the hinges.
The heavy steel slab groans, tilting inward, no longer anchored to the frame.
I kick it.
The door falls with a heavy clang, echoing loudly in the confined space. I surge through the gap, weapon sweeping the room.
Clear. Just pipes and conduits. A transition space before the subbasement elevators.
“Move,” I order.
Talia steps over the ruined door. She glances at the melted steel edges, then at me. “Efficient, but noisy.”
“It’s what I do.”
We reach the service elevator bank. Two cars. Old industrial lifts with scissor gates and solid doors. I hit the call button. The light flickers. The gears grind somewhere above us.
“It’s slow,” Talia says, checking her watch. “Too slow.”
“It’s the only way down without rappelling the shaft.”
The car arrives with a shudder. The doors slide open.
We step inside. I hit the button for B3. The doors close, sealing us in a metal box that smells of grease and stagnant air. The car descends, rattling in the shaft.
For the first time in twenty minutes, we aren’t moving. We aren’t fighting. We’re just standing in a descending cage.
I look at her. The adrenaline sheen on her skin. The way her chest rises and falls beneath the tactical vest. The blood—not hers—speckled on her boots.
“You stomped him.” The image won’t leave my head. Talia, driving her heel into the operative’s foot. The crunch of bone.
She stares at the floor numbers ticking down. B1 … B2 …
“He was an obstacle.” Her voice is flat. Monotone. “He had leverage. I removed the leverage.”
“You could have run. When I tackled him. You had a clear line.”
“Partners don’t run.” She finally looks at me. Her eyes are dry, hard. The golden flecks seem sharper, colder. “You calculate threat vectors. I calculate outcomes. The outcome where I leave you behind had a zero percent success rate for the mission.”
“Is that all it is? The mission?”
“It’s the variable we control.”
She’s retreating. Going into the data. Dissociating to handle the violence she just participated in. I recognize the look. I’ve seen it in mirrors for years.
It terrifies me.
“Talia.”
I reach out, hitting the emergency stop.
The elevator jerks to a halt between floors. The silence rushes back in, heavy and suffocating.
She blinks, the analyst mask slipping. “What are you doing? We have a timeline.”
“Screw the timeline.” I step into her space. I need to break the shell before she hardens into something she can’t come back from. “Look at me.”
She looks up. Her lip trembles, just once. A crack in the armor.
“I killed those men,” I say. “But you … You stepped into the fire. You didn’t freeze.”
“I had to.”
“No. You chose to.” I cup her face, my thumbs stroking the grime from her cheekbones. My hands are rough, stained with violence, but she leans into them. “You aren’t just an analyst anymore. You’re a warrior. But don’t lose yourself in the math. Don’t turn off the part of you that feels it.”
“If I feel it,” she whispers, her voice cracking, “I’ll scream.”
“Then scream later. Right now, just feel this.”
I crash my mouth onto hers.
It’s not gentle. It’s not sweet. It’s desperation and blood and the metallic taste of fear. I kiss her like I’m trying to breathe for her. I kiss her like it’s the last thing I’ll ever do.
She makes a sound in her throat—half sob, half moan—and grips my vest, pulling me closer.
Her body presses against mine, the hard ceramic plates of our armor clacking together, a barrier we can’t remove.
I want to strip it off. I want to feel her skin.
I want to know she’s alive in every nerve ending.
If I die in this basement … If the bullets find me … I want this to be the last input. Not the noise of gunfire. Not the smell of cordite. This.
Her taste. Her heat.
I break the kiss, resting my forehead against hers. We’re both panting, breathing the same recycled air.
“If we don’t walk out of here,” I say, my voice rough, “know that you were the best thing. The only thing that matters to me.”
“We’re going to walk out of here.” Her eyes are fierce now. The cold logic is gone, replaced by fire. “The probability is low, but we’ll adjust the variables and walk out of here together. You’ll show me then, how much I matter to you.”
“Damn right I will.”
I kiss her one last time—hard, quick—and hit the run switch.
The elevator lurches, resuming its descent.
Ding.
The doors slide open on subbasement three.
The atmosphere changes instantly. The air is colder here. The hum of the servers is a physical pressure against the eardrums.
I step out first, weapon raised, sweeping the junction.
“Clear left. Clear right.”
We move into the corridor. It’s lined with thick cables running along the ceiling, pulsing with the lifeblood of the AI.
“Target is two hundred meters,” Talia says, checking her wrist comm. “Main server cluster.”
We advance.
Thirty meters. A junction.
“Contact,” I hiss.
A shadow moves at the far end of the hall. A guard on patrol. He’s looking at a tablet, bored.
Too far for a knife. Too quiet for a gun.
He turns. He sees us.
His hand goes to his radio.
I don’t hesitate. I sprint. My boots thunder on the concrete now—stealth is blown.
The guard fumbles with his holster.
I close the distance. Fifty feet. Forty.
He gets the gun up.
I slide, baseball style, knocking his legs out from under him. He hits the floor hard. The gun skitters away.
He opens his mouth to shout.
I drive a fist into his solar plexus, collapsing his diaphragm. The shout becomes a wheeze. I roll him over and apply a sleeper hold. Ten seconds of struggle. Then he goes limp.
I check his pulse. Strong. Just unconscious.
“Clear,” I pant, standing up. My arm screams in protest, the wound throbbing against the stitches. I ignore it.
Talia is beside me, picking up the guard’s keycard. “He didn’t call it in.”
“Lucky.”
“Luck is a statistical anomaly.”
“Take the win, Singh.”
We push forward. The corridor widens. We are approaching the brain.
A final blast door looms ahead. The entrance to the server room. It should be guarded. There should be a squad here. There should be laser grids, pressure plates, and automated turrets.
There is nothing.
The corridor is empty.
“Halo,” I say into the comms. “I need eyes on the door. Subbasement three.”
“I see you,” Halo replies. “You’re at the threshold.”
“Where are the guards?”
“Thermal shows nothing. Room is cold. Except for the servers.”
“Is it locked?”
“Checking … Wait.” Halo’s voice tightens. “That’s weird.”
“Define weird.”
“The electronic mag-lock. It’s offline. The circuit is dead. Someone sent a manual override command thirty seconds ago.”
“Did you kill it?”
“No. I’m good, but I’m not that fast. Someone inside opened it for you.”
I look at the door. A massive slab of steel designed to protect the most valuable data on earth.
It’s slightly ajar. A gap of darkness an inch wide.
The hair on the back of my neck stands up. Primal instinct screaming.
Trap.
“Who opened it?”
“Tracing the authorization packet … Hold on—routing through the executive proxy …”
I wait, scanning the rear, while Talia watches the door. Her face is a mask of concentration. She isn’t scared. She’s solving the puzzle.
“Got it,” Halo says. “Credentials belong to a Sophia Blackwell. VP of Operations.”
“Blackwell?” I look at Talia. “You know the name?”
“It was on the emails,” she says, her mind racing. “She was the recipient of Reed’s orders. VP level suggests deep involvement.”
“Hostile,” I say, raising my weapon.
“Maybe.” Talia steps closer to the gap. “But she unlocked the door. She let us in.”
“Or she invited us into a kill box.” I grab her shoulder, pulling her back. “We don’t just walk in.”
“If they wanted us dead, they would have kept the door locked and vented the atmosphere,” she argues, her logic cutting through my paranoia. “Or filled the room with Halon gas. Opening the door gave us a chance. She’s an anomaly.”
“Anomalies get people killed.” I move past her, pushing the heavy door with my boot, weapon trained on the darkness. “Stay behind me.” I raise my weapon, aiming at the darkness beyond. “We didn’t come this far to turn around.”
I push the heavy door. It swings inward on silent, well-oiled hinges.
The server room stretches out before us—row upon row of black monoliths, blinking with blue and green lights. The hum is deafening here. It sounds like a hive.
There are no guards. No bodies. Just the machine, waiting.
“Halo. We’re in.”
I glance at Talia. She grips the lead-lined pouch containing the Root Seed, her knuckles white against the dark fabric. The blue light of the servers reflects in her wide eyes.
I step into the room, weapon sweeping the corners. Nothing. Just the endless, rhythmic blinking of data being processed.
“Let’s plant the Seed and get the hell out of here.”
We walk toward the central terminal. The darkness of the room feels heavy, pressing against my skin. The air is too cold, the hum too loud.
We are inside. And for the first time, I feel like we aren’t the hunters.
We’re the bait.