Chapter 17 - Strain

Chapter 17 - Strain

18:49 Sunset.

Engines roared behind Kane roughly two hundred yards in the distance. Three trucks, rugged and tailored for the unforgiving desert landscape, were superior to his flimsy dune buggy. He had seen them lurking a couple of miles back, but now, they were steadily closing the gap.

The buggy tore through the desert, leaving a trail of dust swirling in its wake. The fine grains of sand slipped through the folds of his shemagh, grinding against his teeth, stinging his eyes, and settling into the sweat along his neck. Every breath tasted of dust and heat, the desert trying to bury him grain by grain.

He passed the port town of Abu Zenima thirty minutes ago if the cracked road signs could be trusted. Ninety miles left, maybe less, depending on how long the engine held. The gauge was flirting with red. Radiator hissing. Heat bleeding through the floor. A warning he couldn’t afford to heed.

The el-Tih Plateau rose in the distance like the bones of some ancient, buried god. Limestone and silence stretched across the earth, carved by forgotten rivers. Dry valleys snaked along the base of distant ridgelines. No cell towers. No signals. No noise.

Just the sound of a dying machine and the weight of what chased him.

Kane adjusted the sling of his carbine, the metal hot from the desert heat. Sand and grit making its way into the bolt and chamber. The duffle on the seat beside him shifted with every jolt. The gift from the Syndicate still serving its purpose.

He hadn’t seen another soul in hours.

But that was until he passed that damned coastal town.

Could these people be what the Syndicate warned him about? The mention of “multiple orgs” didn't come with coordinates. Operatives? Nomads? Something worse?

He grit his teeth, eyes scanning the landscape. The dunes had thinned into broken ridges and pale stone, the ground harder now, more uneven. The Sinai Peninsula grew rockier the closer one got to the southern coast. A blessing in a place built to swallow the unwary whole. Out in the open sands, he’d have been an easy mark. Here, at least, the terrain might give him a chance.

He couldn’t shoot and drive at the same time. Not well. Not out here.

And if he stopped, it was over.

But he had to keep moving. As long as there was distance, there was time. Time to think. Time to adapt.

Conventional tactics were off the table. Whoever these people were… they knew the land better than he ever would.

And they were catching up.

Fast.

If he didn’t want a shootout, then this was the moment to try.

He’d done it before – subconsciously, instinctively – back home. Cloaking himself. He felt his resonance bleed into his bike back then too.

But this time, he needs to feel the Essence.

Feel for the flow. Remember her teachings.

Essence… strain… shape it, don’t force it.

A hill rose ahead. It was low but wide enough to break line of sight. If he could swerve behind it, kick up enough sand before the turn, maybe he could vanish.

Not just disappear.

Erase.

Worst case, he’d kill them all.

But he wasn’t ready to throw more bodies into the desert just yet.

His grip tightened on the wheel. The buggy shuddered on the uneven ground, each bump threatening to shake the concentration out of him. He could already hear the vehicles behind him, engines chewing through the desert like rabid dogs.

Calm down.

Breathe slow.

Focus.

Feel it in your spine. Feel it in your blood.

Focus.

The buggy is an extension of the body.

Cloak.

A jolt of pain stabbed through his spine like needles running through each vertebrae. Like lightning surging from where the relic fused with his back. His Essence in conflict with his resonance. Kane’s vision faltered for just a split second. And suddenly, as if a drop of water crashed into a still lake. Clarity. Like an infant learning to walk. The bare necessity of a new concept. A forgotten language.

The buggy shimmered, wavering in the air like a heat mirage, Kane’s outline breaking and bleeding into it. Imperfect. Fragile. But enough.

Behind him, only a billowing cloud of sand hung in the air where he had been, twisting in the wind, masking the line where hunter and hunted might meet.

But these nomads won’t be fooled. They aren’t complacent like Division 9. Not shielded by bureaucracy. Out here, survival bred sharper instincts. They’d seen the kind of horrors the GRC buried in sealed reports, and they’d learned how to look for what wasn’t there.

Suddenly, a bright sphere of fire tore across the gap, bursting just right of the buggy. Heat slammed into Kane’s face, and the blast churned the sand into a shimmering haze hot enough, bright enough, to burn through the cloak’s imperfections. Through the heat-mirage and dust, the buggy’s silhouette bled back into sight.

Shit. An Elementalist.

Stolen story; please report.

The buggy was beginning to stall out. Heat from the elementalist’s strike had warped something vital. The gauges dead and needles buried in red. It was finished. The buggy came to a slow stop in the cloud of sand.

They had him trapped. Encircled. The buggy broke invisibility. Engines throttled down around him, circling like wolves closing on a kill. The sand at his wheels quivered, humming with a low vibration that crawled up through the chassis. Inch by inch, the buggy sank. Grain swallowing rubber until the wheels vanished completely. Another Elementalist. And Kane? He was already a step ahead, gone from where they thought he’d be. Cloaked with his duffle on his back and rifle slung. Crouched low atop the buggy’s roll cage, his outline blurring with the dying light. Watching. Waiting.

The sun sets fast in the desert. Luckily for him otherwise he might’ve casted a shadow in the sun. One by one the men go out from their vehicles. Six of them…half moving with the discipline of soldiers, the rest with the wary, predatory ease of herders who’d traded pasture for pay. Whoever they were, they moved like they’d hunted people before.

It’s a shame honestly… It’s me or them.

The men began to speak among themselves, voices carrying low over the hiss of cooling engines. Bedouin Arabic. Kane didn’t know the tongue, but familiar enough from years past to catch the cadence. He can tell the slight difference in dialect from Egyptian Arabic and these were locals, or at least men who’d lived under this sun long enough to be shaped by it. One man, though, spoke in Russian. Ordering the others to spread out, eyes on the ridges. That one wasn’t the elementalist who’d thrown the fireball, and Kane needed to look for the one that manipulated the sand. Priority target. Kane stayed crouched atop the buggy’s roll cage, body a shadow against the dying light, the cloak breathing with him. Waiting. Watching. Counting.

He’s known about those who can manipulate sand. A single step in their domain was like touching the strands of a spider’s web. How dangerous they were came down to aptitude, and well…A desert nomad with sand magic is about as synergistic as it could get.

That’s when Kane saw it… one of the men breaking formation, crouching low. The nomad scooped up a fistful of sand, letting it spill between his fingers before bringing a clump to his nose. He inhaled slowly, as if scent alone could tell the story of where Kane had gone.

The man said something in Arabic. Every head turned toward the buggy.

No more waiting. No more planning.

With the cloak still holding, Kane exhaled slow, letting the sights settle. The Sand Elementalist was first. The priority. One smooth squeeze and the man’s head snapped sideways, a fine red mist spraying across the side of a nearby truck. He was dead before his knees hit the sand.

Kane shifted immediately, the world narrowing to crosshairs and breath. Two shots for the Russian. The first grazing his neck, carving a hot line just shy of the artery. The second slammed into his chest plate, the impact folding him back but not dropping him. The armor held. Barely.

“BLYAT!”

Every standing nomad reached for their weapons. Except for the Fire Elementalist. Flames roared from his forearms, spilling over the buggy in a blinding wave of heat and light. The perfect distraction.

Kane was already gone, crouched in the shadow of a rocky outcrop twelve feet away, cloak rippling faintly with each breath.

This time, there was no restraint. He flipped the safety selector to the back. Full auto. Those who were unfortunate to be in the front ate the entire mag. Fire Elementalist included, his flames surging wild and uncontrolled. Heat bled into the sand in erratic bursts before collapsing in on itself, leaving blackened glass where fire met sand. When the haze cleared, four bodies lay still.

The Russian staggered from behind one of the trucks, one hand clamped over the grazed wound at his neck, the other raising two fingers to his temple.

Kane lined up the shot and the world detonated behind his eyes. Shattering his invisibility.

A crushing wave slammed into his skull, as if invisible hands had shoved iron spikes through his temples. His vision fractured, blurring at the edges. Breath caught in his throat, the desert tilting beneath him in a nauseating lurch.

Psychokinetic.

Of course.

He gritted his teeth, fighting to keep the rifle steady, but every heartbeat was another hammer blow in his skull. The Russian advanced through the bodies, eyes locked on Kane, the air between them throbbing with invisible pressure.

No time for words. A Russian in Sinai meant only one thing… he wasn’t an ally. The Sovereign Soviet States and the NAC were open rivals, carving up Black Zones like Sinai in quiet, vicious wars.

This is a mental battle now. And Kane is losing.

The pressure hit again, harder this time, and Kane almost blacked out. It wasn’t just pain. It was an intrusion, a constant grinding at the edges of his mind, looking for a crack to split him open from the inside.

Psychokinetics didn’t trade warning shots.

There were no standoffs, no surrenders.

When two collided like this, it always ended the same way – one alive, one dead.

The Russian knew it too. He advanced slowly, deliberately, eyes locked on Kane’s, feeding more and more pressure into the connection. It was a silent stranglehold, the kind that could burst blood vessels, snap nerve pathways, erase thought entirely if held long enough. Kane felt the edges of that void scraping closer.

But the Russian was pushing with resonance alone.

Kane had something else.

Essence.

Not much, not refined. But enough.

He stopped fighting head-on, letting the pressure roll over him instead of bracing against it. He drew in a slow breath, remembering her words – shape it, don’t force it. Instead of cloaking his body, he folded what little control he had inward, shrouding his mind in a thin, trembling veil.

The next psychic pulse slammed into him and broke. Not completely, but enough to jolt the Russian’s focus.

Agony followed. Pain flared behind Kane’s bloodshot eyes, the sudden counterstrain sending knives of sensation down his spine. His ears rang, balance gone, the world tipping like the deck of a sinking ship. Hot copper flooded his mouth as blood slid from his nose.

But the opening was there.

The rifle slipped from his hands as his sidearm cleared the holster in the same motion. His vision swam, but muscle memory carried the shot. Subsonic and dead-on, the round struck true. The Russian’s head snapped back in a spray of blood and bone, his body crumpling into the sand.

The psychic weight vanished, but the backlash lingered. Thunder in his ears, vertigo dragging at his balance until the horizon seemed to tip beneath him. His pulse pounded against the inside of his skull, each beat blooming white at the edges of his vision. He wiped at his face and came away with blood. Not the first time since that S-rank enforcer… and it wouldn’t be the last. He crouched on the rocky outcrop, fighting to steady his breathing while the cooling desert air carried the smell of dust, cordite, and blood.

Another step forward in control.

And another reminder that every use came with a cost.

Kane let out a short, ragged laugh, coughing up blood with the sound. He hadn’t wanted to kill them. But wanting didn’t matter anymore. Someone was hunting him… who or what, he didn’t know. All that mattered was that, for now, he was still breathing.

After a short rest, Kane moved through the wreckage, stripping what he needed. Water, food, a few spare magazines of 9mm; handgun ammo was always plentiful. The rifles were useless to him, chambered in a different caliber. He didn’t linger over the bodies.

Three trucks remained. Two were riddled with holes or scorched beyond use. The third idled quiet, keys still in the ignition. The Sand Elementalist lay slumped over the rear wheel, a dark smear of dried blood marring the tan paint.

Kane climbed in, took a long swig from a water bottle, and dug into a snack from the supplies. The fight had drained him – mind and body – and he needed the calories to push back against the mental strain.

The sun finally dipped below the horizon, draping the desert in long shadows. Kane drove toward the mountains, unaware that other eyes were watching from beyond the ridges. Mount Sinai had once been a place of pilgrimage. Now it was a Black Zone where faith curdled into violence and the air itself whispered in secrets. He had bled there before with those he trusted. This time he would bleed alone.