“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 memorynow, 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 thepanadería’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.
