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 metallicclankthat 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.
FOURTEEN
Jackson
THE BURN
The ground bucksagainst 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.
