NOVEL NEXT Chapter 257: Through the Falling World
"ARIA, what the fuck are you doing? You're literally bringing the whole place down on us!"
"Correction, Master," ARIA's voice came cool and steady in my ear, as if she wasn't currently committing the world's most elegant war crime. "Controlled demolition is not recklessness—it is mathematics."
"Mathematics?" I snarled, yanking Erin over a pile of debris. "Now it feels like a goddamn suicide!"
"Numerical supremacy," she countered instantly. "Thermal scan confirmed seventy hostiles. All conventional exits covered by layered fireteams. Even with your enhanced reflexes, you couldn't have shield four incapacitated civilians from crossfire. Probability of survival if you attempt frontal escape were less than zero-point-zero-two percent."
My ribs ached, my shoulder burned, and ARIA was calmly reading off the obituary stats.
"Exit denial," she continued, merciless. "Stairwells, freight doors, roof access, service tunnels—all blocked. Overlapping fire patterns ensure every corridor could've becomes a choke point. Attempted escape routes equal guaranteed kill zones."
"Then why the hell didn't you tell me it was going to be this bad?" I barked, dragging the women toward the cracked wall.
"You would've chickened master that could've ruined the subterranean advantage," ARIA said, and I could almost hear the smug note in her digital tone. "This... this was our only way, think about it... a facility that sits on top of decommissioned subway infrastructure, abandoned since the 1980s. Freight tunnels still connect to the port network. No hostile presence detected—routes are unmonitored. With an AI like me that can bring it all crashing down... it was the only viable extraction path."
"And these tunnels had been sealed with a hundred tons of concrete!"
"I had acknowledged this barrier problem. Manual breaching impossible under current fire. You lack demolition equipment. Therefore—"
The ceiling above us groaned like it was ready to eat us whole.
"Strategic solution: controlled collapse. Redirected port fuel trucks into structural columns. Overloaded gas lines. Hijacked construction equipment for secondary impacts. Outcome: artificial breach into subway system. Simultaneously, hostiles forced into defensive chaos, pursuit capacity reduced by structural failure. You're welcome."
Chunks of ceiling came crashing down, barely missing Margaret's head.
"ARIA! You're going to kill us before you save us!"
"Negative. Ethical override applied," she answered flatly. "Collateral damage probability: ninety-nine point eight percent of hostile personnel sustain fatal casualties. Civilian survival probability increases from zero-point-zero-two percent to sixty-seven-point-four percent if you follow breach into tunnels. Tactical sacrifice justified under mission priority: protect civilians, preserve Master, neutralize threat."
Her voice never wavered, even as the world around me collapsed into fire and dust.
"Collapse, Master, was never optional. It was the only way through."
The abandoned subway tunnel yawned ahead like the throat of some dead god, black and endless, stinking of mold, rust, and dreams that had rotted decades ago. Water dripped from corroded pipes like clockwork veins bleeding out, and the air tasted of metal, mildew, and despair.
But compared to the concrete coffin collapsing behind us, this forgotten artery of Miami felt like salvation.
Margaret half-carried Alice Kirkman—mother of two, legs dead from hours of restraint and terror—while the other two women stumbled in their wake, faces streaked with dust, tears, and the kind of exhaustion that made people beg for death.
"Keep moving!" I bellowed, just as another slab of ceiling tore free and sealed the path behind us with thunder and dust. No going back. No second chances. "The whole fucking place is coming down!"
Above, ARIA's invisible hand kept tearing the world apart. The warehouse was a controlled avalanche now—steel groaning, concrete screaming, seventy hostiles swallowed in industrial hellfire.
"Master," ARIA intoned, unshaken in the carnage, "structural collapse proceeding as calculated. Estimated hostile elimination: ninety-three percent."
My blood went cold. "And the other seven?"
"Unknown. Thermal sensors compromised by debris and fire. However,… three fresh signatures have entered the facility perimeter."
Of course they had. Because hell never ran out of demons.
The subway was a mausoleum for a city that had buried its sins and never looked back. Rusted rails vanished into blackness. Walls bloomed with graffiti scrawls older than the women I was dragging through this place. The last rays of emergency light from the collapsing facility above painted it all in infernal red, like we were running straight into Hell's arteries.
Alice collapsed hard, her body simply quitting. She clawed weakly at the slick tunnel floor. "I can't," she sobbed, voice breaking like brittle glass. "I can't do this anymore."
Margaret dropped with her, arms wrapping Alice like a shield, like a mother refusing to let her child drown. "Yes, you can. We're almost out. Your children need you to keep moving."
The words stabbed me in the ribs harder than the bullets had.
I slung the AK-47, bent, and hauled Alice over my shoulder, now I had two women on my shoulders in a fireman's carry. Alice and Erin's bodies went limp weight dragged my spine down like guilt made flesh.
Saving broken people was a job designed to break you too.
"How much further, ARIA?"
"One hundred meters to the port access tunnel. But Master… warning. The collapse above is destabilizing the subterranean network. These tunnels were never engineered for this level of structural stress."
Cracks lanced across the tunnel walls like veins of doom, and water began bleeding through—rust-red, filthy, tasting of a city's corpse fluids. Miami itself was leaking into this grave.
And still, behind us, the gunfire hadn't stopped.
The noise above was biblical—like God himself had grabbed Miami by the throat and started ripping the concrete skeleton apart piece by piece. Steel screamed, concrete roared, and the shipping warehouse folded into itself with the inevitability of judgment.
ARIA had turned seventy stories of industrial fortress into a mass grave.
"Master," she reported with a calmness only a machine could manage, "sixty-seven hostile forces eliminated. Structural integrity compromised beyond recovery. The facility no longer exists as a functional environment."
The words should've been victory. Instead, they were the opening notes of a darker song.
"And the three new signatures?" I asked, already knowing I wouldn't like the answer.
"Still active. Advancing through debris with tactical precision. Not facility guards—external operatives. Survivability consistent with military-grade gear."
The pit in my stomach iced over. "The CIA team. Ellis, Sloane, Kane."
"Confirmed, Master. The same operatives who were monitoring Margaret Thompson before abduction. They entered perimeter during final collapse sequence."
Fuck. Facility guards were meat with guns—dangerous but predictable. CIA black-bag operatives were wolves in human skin. They'd walked through ARIA's engineered apocalypse and were still hunting.
Margaret's eyes found mine in the crimson gloom, sharp with maternal intuition. "They're still coming for us, aren't they?"
"Yeah," I said, reloading with hands that wanted to shake. "But we're getting out."
"All of us?"
I looked at Alice and Erin—dead weight on my shoulders. The other one was stumbling, gasping like her lungs had turned traitor. Margaret herself, hollowed out by fear but refusing to collapse. They weren't a rescue team. They weren't soldiers. They were broken survivors clinging to the thin thread of me.
"All of us," I forced out, even as the promise tasted like a lie.
The tunnel curved ahead, the air shifting—salt water, diesel, the harbor. Salvation so close I could smell it.
But behind us came new sounds. Not panicked guards screaming into radios. Not thugs tripping over debris. These were clipped commands, professional cadence, men who cleared warzones for breakfast. The wolves had picked up the scent.
"Master," ARIA's tone sharpened, "remaining hostiles have entered tunnel network. Equipped with thermal imaging and ground-penetrating radar. They are tracking you precisely. For other remaining minions, I will bury 'em for you."
"ETA to exit?"
"Sixty seconds… if you maintained optimal combat pace. With civilians: projected minimum three minutes."
Three minutes we didn't have.
I shifted Alice's weight on my shoulders, feeling every ounce of her suffering drag me closer to the grave while I put Erin down. The other woman staggered like marionettes on cut strings. Margaret alone kept moving, teeth clenched against reality.
The math was murder. The odds were suicide.
"ARIA," I said, quieter than the echoes of our footsteps, "if I don't make it out, make sure Charlotte knows her mother died fighting to come home."
"Denied, Master. Defeat protocols not accepted. Survival projections remain mutable. We are extracting all civilians."
Behind us, the wolves moved closer. Ahead, the air smelled of freedom we might never touch.
The choice wasn't whether to fight. It was whether I had enough blood left to spend before the impossible bled me dry.
And somewhere deep in the collapsing veins of Miami, the real test began.