Chapter 180: The Undercover Agent in the Soul Sanctum

Chapter 180: The Undercover Agent in the Soul Sanctum

The gravity field bore down so hard the entire opera house shook. Rows of seats exploded outward — wood, iron frames, chunks of stone ground to dust and left suspended in the air, still crumbling.

Two exoskeleton soldiers locked their eyes on David, faces twisted with fury. "Crush him!"

"Twenty times the load!"

The moment the words left their mouths, the blue-white generators on their chests surged. Current crackled through every seam of their armor. The air itself seemed to flinch.

David dragged his long blade forward. The floor buckled and split beneath each step. The dark-red edge scraped across stone, leaving a glowing scar in its wake.

The soldiers' expressions shifted.

"How is he still moving? That's not possible!"

David raised his head. The flicker of dark red in his pupils ignited completely.

The next second, he was gone.

The soldier on the left barely lifted his hand before the crimson blade cut clean through his chest. Gravity armor, generator, ribs, spine — all of it split open at once. Then his body simply came apart, reduced to a red mist and spinning shards of metal.

The soldier on the right spun and bolted, throwing every ounce of his gravity field forward as a shield. David materialized directly in front of him, reached out, and pressed one hand against his helmet.

The entire exosuit was driven straight into the floor.

The long blade came down at an angle. The armor peeled apart like foil. The blade punched through, and telekinetic force poured into the gap behind it — flesh, bone, and machinery all detonating together.

From somewhere deep behind the stage, a massive bio-soldier came barreling through the wooden wall and back onto the stage.

David turned his head. He raised his left hand and closed his fingers into a fist.

The giant stopped mid-charge as though he'd run into a wall that wasn't there. His neck, his chest, his limbs all twisted at once. The sound of snapping bone made the teeth ache.

Then the whole body burst apart in midair, showering the stage in a fine red mist.

The opera house went absolutely still. The only sound left was the soft, scattered fall of broken wood.

Lon slowly got to his feet, brushed the dust from his jacket, and walked onto the stage. He looked over the wreckage and let out a low whistle. "Growing up fast, kid. You're a hell of a lot more annoying than I was at your age."

David wiped the blood from his blade and sheathed it. "Whatever you're selling had better be worth it."

"Always is." Lon reached beneath a chair and pulled out a matte-black case, then tossed it over. "I don't use myself as bait and come away empty-handed."

David caught it. His fingers traced the gold markings etched across the surface. They were warm to the touch.

Lon settled onto a section of bent steel beam and tore away the shredded fabric at his shoulder, exposing a wound that looked considerably worse than it had any business being. "Don't give me that look. I'm not dying today."

Mia's voice came through the earpiece. "Half-dead and still trying to play it cool. Very convincing."

Lon tilted his head toward the dome above. "Pink hair, sweetheart — I can hear you."

Mia gave a short, unimpressed sound. "Then get to the point. Stop wasting my boyfriend's time."

Lon's smile faded.

"You've been hunting the person who put you away," he said.

David held his gaze. "Douglas."

"Yes and no. Douglas pulled the trigger. Someone else gave the order — Liam, the fourth seat on the Global Defense Council's inner circle. Publicly, he's a watchdog for world order. Privately, he works for the Soul Sanctum. The orders Douglas received came directly from him."

"And the Dusk Cathedral is nothing more than the Soul Sanctum's enforcement arm on European soil."

The opera house was so quiet you could have heard a match drop.

Lon lowered his voice. "You didn't end up in that prison by accident. That group had their eye on the K-serum — and on you. They wanted to watch you survive. They wanted to watch you get stronger. They wanted you to become exactly what they were building toward."

The cold in David's eyes deepened. "What does Liam want?"

"Immortality. Or something that makes immortality look modest."

Lon pulled out a blood-smeared chip. "Inside a fortress in North America, I found the core of their operation — they're calling it 'Ascension.' Liam has rebooted the original K-serum data and fed high-dimensional meteorite energy into it. He wants to shed the limitations of a human body entirely and engineer a new kind of life — one that can actually contain that kind of power."

Mia cut in. "That name alone deserves a punch in the mouth."

Lon nodded. "If he pulls it off, every military on the planet combined might not be enough to stop him."

David took the chip. "Coordinates."

"No complete set. The fortress is mobile — signal source rotates every six hours. The location key is with Liam's contact. Goes by Sawyer, arms dealer out of the Nevada underground black market, code name 'Cobra.' Tonight he's at a biker rally in the North American desert. Liam picked that venue on purpose. It's chaotic enough to hide in."

"How do I get to him?"

"He's got a bio-bonded explosive implanted in his chest. If he dies, it goes off. You'll need him breathing and talking." Lon said it like a reminder, not a warning.

Mia's fingers were already moving across her keyboard. "Got it. Every name on the attendee list is a fake identity. The security signals are a total mess — looks like someone dumped a bowl of spaghetti."

Lon raised his voice toward the dome. "See, I like her."

David didn't respond.

Lon's tone turned quieter. "Liam already knows you're in Europe. Tonight's meet-up — there's a good chance it was set for you."

"Good. Saves me the trouble of tracking them down one by one."

Lon laughed, and the laugh cost him — he coughed, and there was blood in it. "Now that sounds like me at your age."

"You weren't as good as I am." David cut him off and turned toward the far end of the stage.

Lon called after him. "I'll keep pulling on the Douglas thread. When you hit North America, you might be walking into three separate crews at once."

David didn't slow down. "Then I'll put all three down at the same time."

Lon watched him go. "I need to find a new hole to hide in. Reach me once you have the coordinates."

David lifted a hand — barely — as he walked. Acknowledgment enough.

A moment later, telekinetic force lifted him off the ground. He shot straight up, punching through the shattered dome and into the night sky above.

The shuttle's bay door was already open. Mia stood at the edge, one hand extended. "Welcome back."

David took her hand and swung himself inside. The door sealed behind him. The engines roared, and the shuttle climbed fast.

Mia pulled several holographic screens into the air around them — signal maps, desert layouts, dense grids of data filling the cabin.

She bit into an energy bar and kept talking. "Tickets are handled. Cover identities are set. We're a couple out of Texas — into custom bikes, you like to fight, I like to break into computer systems. Honestly, not that far off."

"The short version."

Mia tapped twice. The map locked onto a point deep in the Nevada desert.

"The rally location changes every year. This year it's on the outskirts of a decommissioned missile test range. It presents itself as a biker party. It functions as an underground market. I've intercepted forty-seven encrypted transmissions — the same two phrases keep coming up: 'VIP roster' and 'clear the floor.'"

She looked up. "Something's off. The signal data shows over three hundred individuals with no traceable identity — threat-level targets — and their heat signatures are spread out in a pattern that reads like a pre-positioned ambush. A few of the communication frequencies overlap with classified GDC internal channels."

David's expression didn't change, but his eyes sharpened. "Liam's people."

"Almost certainly." Mia nodded. "This looks more like a formal challenge than a meeting. They know you're coming." She tilted her head. "You're not planning to walk in through the front gate."

David turned toward the window. Berlin's lights were already far behind them. Ahead lay only the dark expanse of the transatlantic corridor.

When he spoke, his voice was flat. "They built a party to be a trap. So I'll turn it into a killing floor."