KADE
The desert night lies still, a black-velvet shroud of moon-washed sand and whispering scrub—broken only by the creak of wind-tossed metal and the distant yip of a coyote. From the high ridge above Fort Verde, every bunker roof gleams dull silver where the floodlights glance off them, but the dead air prickles across my skin.
Too quiet. Too contained. Perfect for predators who think they own the dark. Let them stalk.
I pause at the ridgeline, scanning the stretch of desert below. The shadows clinging to the bunkers curl like fangs—sharp, patient. The kind that wait until you bleed.
I catch faint glints of thermite tucked beneath sandbags. There’s a reek of scorched alloys riding the air, bitter and artificial, sliding down the back of my throat. Far below, a low hum vibrates through the dust—Ignis’ jammers, cloaked beneath the wind’s sigh over spent shell casings. I close my eyes for a beat, filtering heat signatures—there. A shimmer slinking along the west perimeter.
Everything in me tightens. This place doesn’t feel abandoned. It feels wound tight, every inch steeped in tension, stretched to the edge of breaking.
I drop to one knee, press two fingers into the dirt. That low, searing throb tells me everything I need to know—thermite charge. Hot. Wired. Timed.
The silence here isn’t just silence. It’s pressure. A weapon in waiting.
But this place has seen fire before.
It’ll see mine tonight.
I roll my shoulders back and breathe deep, letting the dragon rise.
Tonight, I stalk back.
"What’s your status?" Dax’s voice murmurs in my comm unit.
"Eyes on the target," I whisper. "Ignis laced the old ordnance bays—minimum eight packets of thermite, maybe more. They want a fireworks show big enough to write itself into congressional records."
A pause. Then, dry: "Disable without leveling Arizona."
"Copy that," I mutter, toeing deeper into the shadow of a half-collapsed blast berm.
The sand still retains daytime heat, but under my boots, another warmth builds—steady and unnatural, a slow surge that doesn't belong. Thermite charge, wired for remote detonation. It feels like Greer: flashy, cruel, and timed for maximum damage.
Beyond the fence, the convoy idles—eight matte-green trucks lined nose-to-tail, tarps snapping in the desert breeze.
A flash from earlier flickers behind my eyes—Dax, standing over a desert map in Ops, voice low and clipped. “Those trucks are carrying enough munitions to level two towns,” he’d said, tapping a calloused finger to Fort Verde’s coordinates. “And atleast three crates of thermite-tipped anti-scale rounds. If Greer’s here, he’s not just covering tracks—he’s preparing for war.”
I smell diesel, hot metal… and the faint electrical bite of Ignis’ jammers. Counting down.
Time to give them something they can’t revise away.
I shrug off my pack, strip the Nomex shirt. The air skims my chest like chilled water. A single breath. Another. Fire claws up my spine, greedy for release.
Flame erupts around me, spiraling in a cyclone of gold as I call forth my dragon.
Heat slams into me, a brutal force that scorches the breath from my lungs and leaves my skin stinging. The scent of molten quartz floods my sinuses—sharp, mineral, otherworldly. My spine arches as vertebrae shift and realign with brutal precision, forging into something ancient and elemental. Muscle stretches and reshapes around the expanding frame beneath me—no cracking, no tearing, just the seamless emergence of what I truly am. Flame ignites from within, licking upward with sacred intent.
Cobalt scales ripple forth, layering in fluid, symmetrical bands. Each one gleams like blue glass bathed in starlight. Wings unfurl in a single breath, smooth and vast, membranes catching moonlight as they stretch to their full span. Talons extend with predatory grace, carving arcs into the sand below.
This isn’t agony. It’s arrival.
I exhale, and the sky welcomes me. With a single launch, I rise—wings hammering air into submission. Each wingbeat is a promise. Each breath, a warning. I see it all—the buried thermite glows white-hot in my sight, bright as betrayal. I bank hard, prepared to end what Greer started.
The updraft slams beneath my wings and I pivot, slicing low over the eastern bunkers. A camera catches a ripple—nothingmore than warped heat haze—while I loose a thread of surgical blue fire. The first charge melts, sputtering into harmless slag.
A tickle of danger. Movement atop a watchtower.
Greer—because it’s always Greer—levels a long-barreled rifle,
