NOVEL NEXT Chapter 258: The Doors of Death
We staggered through the tunnel toward the port access, Alice's limp body dragging my spine into the ground with every step. Salt air mixed with diesel fumes drifted toward us—freedom so close I could taste it.
That's when ARIA cut through the exhaustion like a scalpel.
"Master, new intelligence on the hostages," she said, voice flat, clinical. "Two of these women are significantly more valuable than initial projections indicated."
I frowned. "Define valuable."
"The one you're carrying—Alice Kirkman. She is married to Professor Daniel Kirkman, dean of MIT's Computer Science department. The other... Rebecca Chen is the wife of Professor Chen Wei-Ming, chair of Stanford Engineering."
The words hit harder than gunfire. "The professors who signed off on Charlotte's degrees."
"Confirmed. Both were pressured by Helena Voss's network. Their wives were abducted as leverage to force fraudulent testimony. The intent: annihilate Charlotte's personal credibility while undermining Quantum Tech's legitimacy."
My grip on Alice tightened. Margaret looked up at me, eyes wide with the same horror that had just set my veins on fire. This wasn't random cruelty. This was surgical warfare—academic reputations turned into weapons, women stolen to twist men into traitors.
"Jesus Christ," I whispered.
The tunnel widened into a maintenance chamber—rusted machinery slumped against the walls, steel scaffolding and dead generators forming a skeletal maze. Emergency lighting pulsed overhead, blood-red strobes that made the place look like Hell's own engine room.
And then the voices behind us became muzzle flashes.
RAT-TAT-TAT-TAT.
Gunfire ripped through the chamber from three different angles. Ellis. Sloane. Kane. The CIA's wolves had spread into a textbook formation, overlapping fire zones, herding us into the kill box.
"GET DOWN!" I roared, hurling Alice behind a rusted generator and shoving Margaret, Rebecca, and the last survivor toward whatever shadows counted as cover.
But there wasn't enough. Not for five people. Not against operators running coordinated fire with night-vision optics and military-grade hardware. This chamber was designed for maintenance crews, not survival.
Which left me with exactly two plays: stay low, watch them shred the women one by one, and die knowing I failed every promise I'd made…
Or stand up, light myself like a bonfire, and draw their fire long enough for ARIA to manufacture a miracle.
It wasn't really a choice.
I stepped into the open chamber, AK-47 raised, and gave three federal predators exactly what they wanted—something to kill.
"COME ON, YOU GOVERNMENT TRAITOR FUCK-STICKS!" I roared, unloading a burst that sparked off their cover. "You want a target? HERE I AM!"
Sloane moved first, shotgun booming from behind a pillar. The blast hit me square, the jacket eating most of it, but the kinetic shockwave slammed into my ribs like a sledgehammer, driving me back.
Kane slid from the flank, submachine gun stuttering death across the chamber. Bullets sang past my skull, punched holes in scaffolding, screamed sparks off metal.
And then Ellis joined the chorus—controlled, precise, the cold surgeon of the pack. One round slammed into my thigh, spinning me sideways. Another grazed my shoulder, hot blood spraying across rust and dust.
They had me triangulated. Wolves working their kill box exactly as trained.
But behind me—Margaret dragging Alice's dead weight, Rebecca hyperventilating on the edge of collapse, Erin curled up and broken on the floor—there wasn't math. There wasn't survival.
There were only four fragile lives balanced on how much punishment I could take before gravity and blood loss made the final call.
So, I stood, staggering, bleeding, defiant.
Because sometimes being the shield meant you had to break before anyone else did.
"ARIA!" I snapped inside my own skull as another burst from Kane's weapon shredded the air and forced me down behind cover that wouldn't last another ten seconds. "I need options that don't end with body bags."
"Master," ARIA's voice cut sharp through the chaos, "the Maybach is en route. Soo-jin insisted on co-driving despite my objections. ETA: ninety seconds."
My gut twisted. "They'll cut the car to pieces before it gets close."
"Then you keep every gun pointed at you until extraction. That's the only viable solution."
I rose, fired a burst that drove Ellis behind a support pillar, then rolled left as Sloane tried to flank. The chamber was a graveyard of rusted machinery and broken scaffolds, and I was sprinting through it like some fucked-up parkour course where the prize was staying alive.
But the math was bad. Ammo low. Energy lower. And three federal wolves were carving up my cover piece by piece.
Kane's thermal scope found me behind a corroded water heater. His SMG chewed through it like tinfoil, spraying molten fragments across my face. My left eye filled with blood, stinging fire.
"Sixty seconds, Master," ARIA said coldly. "Can you hold?"
I glanced at the women—huddled shapes behind dead machinery, Margaret's eyes locked on me with the kind of faith you don't deserve but can't refuse.
"I'll hold them," I growled.
The low rumble came first. The Maybach's engine, echoing through concrete, building like a storm. Soo-Jin was driving straight into hell for people she'd never met.
The agents heard it too.
"Vehicle inbound!" Ellis barked. "Kane—disable it before it reaches the civvies!"
Kane pivoted, scope locking on the tunnel mouth where headlights began cutting into the red haze. One burst and Soo-Jin would burn alive inside a rolling coffin.
Time fractured. Distances, trajectories, kill-zones—my augmented senses mapped it all. Only one move ended with that car still moving.
"Margaret!" I roared across the chamber. "When that car stops, you get them inside—don't fucking wait, don't fucking look back!"
Her head snapped in a nod, eyes blazing with the same desperate fire as mine.
I dropped my empty rifle, stepped out into the open chamber, and walked straight toward three professionals with enough firepower to pulp me in seconds.
"ARIA," I said, voice flat, "tell Soo-Jin to gun it."
The Maybach exploded into the chamber like a black missile, headlights slicing the dark, engine howling as Soo-Jin floored it toward the loading dock where Margaret and the others waited.
Three agents turned as one. Three fingers curled on triggers that would turn salvation into a funeral pyre.
That's when I charged straight into hell.
Four steps. That's all it took to close the gap with Kane. I hit him like a battering ram, driving him off his feet just as his SMG swung toward the Maybach. The weapon clattered across the concrete, sparks skittering, while I crushed him into the chamber floor.
"FUCK—!" Kane snarled grappling for a blade.
A knife appeared in his hand like sleight of hand—fast, lethal, aimed for my ribs. I caught his wrist mid-thrust, twisted until bones snapped like dry branches, and watched the blade drop from fingers gone useless.
The world detonated behind me.
BOOM!
Sloane's shotgun thundered behind me. The blast slammed across my back and shoulders, turning the jacket into a shield that barely held. Without it, I'd be a red mist. With it, I still felt like a god had just tried to break me in half.
Ellis's rifle barked—CRACK! CRACK!—
Concrete burst where my skull had been an instant before. I rolled, blood stinging my eyes, thigh burning from the old wound Kane had gifted me earlier. He groaned beside me, clutching his shattered wrist, teeth gritted against agony.
"Son of a bitch won't go down!" Ellis shouted, voice cutting sharp through the chamber. My vision tunneled—narrow, red, full of fire and inevitability.
Behind me came the desperate chaos of salvation—doors slamming, Margaret screaming at the women to move, Soo-Jin shouting in Korean, voice breaking between prayer and fury: "Hold on! HOLD ON!"
"GO!" I roared, smashing my fist into Sloane's chest as he tried to chamber another shell. The impact drove a guttural grunt from him, air exploding out as he staggered back. "GET THEM THE FUCK OUT!"
The Maybach's engine roared like a beast, tires shrieking, smoke choking the chamber as Soo-Jin wrenched it in reverse.
But Ellis was still mobile, his voice a cold snarl over the chaos: "Kane, up! Up! We finish this now!"
Kane forced himself to his knees, teeth bared against the pain, his broken wrist dangling useless but his other hand already clawing for a sidearm.
The chamber echoed with the soundtrack of hell—rifle cracks, shotgun booms, the guttural curses of men too trained to quit, the ragged sobs of women in the Maybach, the raw animal sounds tearing from my own throat as blood poured hot and heavy down my side.
I was alone in a collapsing tomb of rust and gunfire, every exit sealed by men who killed for a living.
The doors of death yawned wide. The void stretched its hands toward me, hungry.
Time to find out whether being enhanced meant surviving the impossible… or proving that even monsters can be broken.
This was the test. Not simulation. Not rehearsal. The real thing.
Either I walked out of this chamber.
Or I bled out in it.
There was no third option.