Chapter 181 The Trap of the Desert Carnival
Chapter 181 The Trap of the Desert Carnival
Nevada Desert. Midnight.
Fire cannons blasted into the night sky. Heavy metal shook the ground hard enough to feel it through your boots. Motorcycle convoys circled the camp in streams of blazing light, and the whole wasteland reeked of liquor, exhaust, sweat, and desert dust — a full-blown carnival gone feral.
The shuttle touched down behind a sand dune. The two of them changed into their cover and switched to an off-road truck they'd staged in advance.
Mia tucked the last holographic panel back into her wrist display and turned her head toward David. "Welcome to America's worst vacation spot, babe. People out here come standard with three things — guns, drugs, and a real bad attitude."
David pushed open the door. The long blade was sheathed inside his coat, the scabbard still warm.
He swept the scene. Beyond a rusted missile launch rack, a sprawl of tents made up the camp. Heavily modified motorcycles roared through the crowd. Half-naked bodies twisted around open fires. In the distance, a tricked-out semi sat parked with its lights strung up, selling liquor out the back. It looked like a festival. Underneath, it was something uglier.
"Where's Cobra?" David asked.
Mia worked her gum and pulled herself into the passenger seat. "Underground black market. Southeast corner, beneath the old radar station. Someone's running genetic sequence trades down there. The buyer list is spotless — way too spotless. Like it was scrubbed in advance." She paused. "You know what that means."
"It means they're waiting for me to walk in."
Mia snapped her fingers. "Give the man a prize."
The truck plowed into the camp, tires throwing up walls of sand. Someone along the roadside swung a bottle at them. Someone else pounded the door. A thick guy in leather pants whistled at Mia.
She raised her middle finger without looking at him, then casually cracked the camp's broadcast system and swapped the grating country rock for something rawer — industrial metal, all teeth and noise.
Outside, the crowd erupted.
"See?" she said. "Americans are easy."
David didn't answer. His eyes stayed fixed through the windshield on the half-collapsed radar station in the distance.
Something was off. He could hear it.
Too much metal on metal in the wind. Too many faint electrical signals in the comm frequencies. Spread too wide, too many sources. Not regular festival-goers.
Mia dropped her voice. "Three hundred seventeen anomalous heat signatures. They've got the perimeter sealed. Someone's moving heavy equipment. They're not even pretending."
"Good," David said flatly.
---
The truck rolled to a stop at the black market entrance.
It was worse inside. Under a massive military canvas awning, tables were stacked with firearms, black-market chips, inhibitor serums, mechanical prosthetics, and unidentified tissue samples floating in clear canisters.
Haggling filled every corner.
The moment David and Mia stepped through, a handful of eyes snapped their way. A few people recognized the face. A few others pretended they didn't.
Mia hooked her arm through David's and walked close against him, a small smile at the corner of her mouth, her voice just above a whisper. "Nine o'clock, fake vendor. Twelve o'clock, two sniper spotters. Guy to the right in the denim vest — he's got a reverse-TK node launcher tucked at the small of his back. And..." She slowed. "Found Cobra."
At the far end of the tent, behind a metal table, sat a middle-aged man in dark glasses.
He wore sand-colored leather, every finger loaded with oversized rings, a coiled-snake pendant hanging at his throat. A row of silver gene injectors were laid out in front of him. A cluster of buyers had gathered around the table, but the space near him felt oddly empty despite the crowd.
Sawyer looked up, saw David, and his expression didn't flicker with even a trace of surprise.
He smiled. The kind of smile that had come unhinged from something.
"Thank God," he said, spreading his arms wide. "Thought Lon was playing me. Lon said you'd track it back here." He let out a short laugh. "Lon was right."
The buyers around the table quietly backed away.
Mia narrowed her eyes. "This guy is something else."
David stepped up to the table and asked it straight. "Where's Liam?"
Sawyer leaned back in his chair and took his time lighting a cigar. "You lead with that? No manners at all. At least look at the merchandise first." He exhaled a slow breath of smoke. "Tonight I've got the most valuable commodities on the planet — genetic tissue samples from a Rogue, restructuring skeletal fluid, and—"
David pressed one hand flat to the table.
All four corners buckled and collapsed.
The cigar dropped from Sawyer's mouth.
"I don't like repeating myself," David said, his voice quiet and cold.
Sawyer stared at him. Then he burst out laughing. "Yeah. That look right there. Liam was right — in person you're even more of a monster than the file said."
He yanked his leather jacket open.
Dead center on his chest, embedded in the skin, was a metal device the size of a fist. A red light pulsed steadily. Veins and metal tendrils wound around it together, beating in time with his heart.
The color left Mia's face. "Life-bond detonator."
Sawyer's grin spread wide and ugly. "Smart girl. My heart stops, it blows. Psionic signal drops, it blows. Forced removal — still blows."
He rose to his feet and opened his arms.
"And you two are already too late."
---
Every tent in the camp detonated at once.
Canvas shredded. Steel frames collapsed. The crowd that had been dancing a moment ago tore off their disguises in one motion. Beneath the leather jackets — tactical armor, uniform and clean. The bottles were never full of liquor; they unfolded into compact pulse launchers. The stage rigs swung around to reveal rows of force-field emitters rising from behind them.
Hundreds of people moved as one. Blue electrical arcs raced along the sand and linked together into a vast energy web.
Across the entire flat, a dome of crackling blue energy surged upward — a hemisphere that sealed the sky shut, its hum rattling deep in the chest.
Mia looked up at it. "Hell of an invitation."
Around them, the 'festival-goers' raised their weapons. Their eyes had gone somewhere professional and blank.
The lead commander wore a black tactical mask. He stood on the roof of an armored truck, one hand pressed to his earpiece. "Target acquired. Anti-psionic matrix online. Elimination protocol: begin."
Sawyer threw his head back and laughed, turning to spread his hands toward David. "Welcome to the Soul Sanctum's killing floor."
The next second, the red light on his chest blazed white.
"Fuck!" Mia hissed.
David yanked her behind him and threw everything open.
The explosion tore through the center of the black market and swallowed the night. A fireball rolled upward. The shockwave threw sand dozens of feet into the air and sent metal stalls, vehicle wreckage, weapon crates, and everything else spiraling skyward. The blue dome held — it crushed the blast radius inward, pressing the full force of the destruction back toward its own center.
The flat looked like it had taken a direct missile strike.
The Sanctum operatives on the perimeter stood their ground, staring into the heart of the fire. The commander's voice came out slow and measured. "Confirm target eliminated."
From the other end of the earpiece, a cold male voice answered. "Don't get comfortable. Hold the matrix."
"Yes, sir."
The flames still burned. Black smoke churned with yellow sand in the rolling heat. Out beyond the perimeter, the real festival-goers were already screaming and scattering — motorcycles down, tents on fire, the whole carnival shaking itself apart.
The commander raised his hand, ready to call the second sweep.
Then, from inside the blue dome, something cracked.
His expression shifted. He snapped his head up.
A dark red fissure had split open in the wall of the dome. Then a second. A third. The fractures spread fast, spiderwebbing outward.
Through the wall of fire, a hand reached out.
It found the edge of the energy dome, fingers closing around it — and pulled.
The hemisphere tore open. A violent rush of displaced air blasted outward. Dozens of operatives on the perimeter went airborne. Equipment trucks rolled and plunged into the dunes.
Through the smoke and settling dust, David walked out.