Viva Las Vegas

Moving outside, Maddox beelines it to the car across the street that had been following him this morning.

The two coalition members inside the car, seeing Maddox heading straight for them, are worried since they think Maddox will do something to them. All Maddox does, though, is knock on their passenger door window, which is rolled down. Both the people in the car have their hands on their weapons.

Maddox slightly raises an eyebrow at that since he has no idea why they view him as a threat.

"I know who you are, and you know who I am, so I am gonna make this quick... get me access to any information that can be used to find this person," Maddox tells them as he hands over Katherine's card.

Both coalition members looked at each other as if they were at a bit of a loss in what to do.

"I will make it worthwhile," Maddox adds, seeing that the two in the car were on the fence about how to act.

"You name it. I'll buy it that work?" Maddox adds, and that wins at least one of them over as they reach out for Katherine's card

The card is taken out of Maddox's hand, and he hands them another piece of paper with his email scribbled. With nothing else to do, and this type of information will take some time to gather, Maddox returns to his apartment without another word.

Sitting down, Maddox grabs his gun and places it on the living room couch before again practicing his illusions, but this time only having one thought on what to develop. Hours go by until Maddox gets an email on his computer with the information he requested from the two in the car. Maddox reviews the email he got to find out what happened, leaving a simple reply telling them not to follow him and that he will uphold his end of the deal later.

It turned out that Katherine had been placed on a simple recon mission in Las Vegas, Nevada, a week ago. The Coalition deemed her MIA after her team reported they were about to enter a warehouse a fair distance from the famous Las Vegas Strip.

So Maddox booked the first flight to Las Vegas and started packing up for his flight to the city of sin. Maddox expected to find a lot of infected living there since it was practically a breeding ground for them. So getting that settled, Maddox gets an Uber to come by his house in two hours as he uses this time to finish what he was trying to accomplish beforehand with his illusions.

As Maddox receives a notification from his Uber on his computer, he opens his eyes and looks down at his right hand. This is what Maddox had been trying to make through his illusions.

He had made a moving illusion of his now gone right arm while his left arm was now missing in its stead as it looked like he had lost his left arm in the altercation with his mother rather than his right arm. With this, Maddox could do many things to people, and once Maddox confirmed its effects on the infected, it would be possible to fight better than most of the coalition members.

In the Uber, Maddox looked across the street where the two coalition members were and saw how the two in the car were facing his way. Maddox nods his head to them as thanks before he is driven away to LAX international airport.

"Did we do the right thing, Andrea?" The member in the car seat asks as she watches Maddox leave the Uber and enter the airport terminal

"I can only hope we did cause we took a big risk in helping him..." Andrea responds as she glances at the driver and smirks

"What?"

"If he does come back, what are you gonna ask from him, Rebecca?" Andrea asks

"I dunno, plus I don't think that guy will be coming back, so we can just take whatever is in his apartment," Rebecca answers as she takes out her phone and starts scrolling around.

"Well, I think he will come back, and you know what I am gonna ask from him?"

"You are gonna just tell me regardless..." Rebecca complains as she puts down her phone and starts the car

"Yeah, well, I am going to have him take me shopping and have him pay for a bunch of expensive items!"

"Pretty sure he only said he was gonna buy one thing." Rebecca cuts off Andrea

"No, I-"

The two continue to argue as they drive away in the LAX traffic.

Maddox's thoughts drifted to plans on what he could do as he was driven to the airport, and all the while, he stayed quiet. At the same time, the driver occasionally would look at Maddox since he knew who he was and drive him around, creating an uncomfortable atmosphere in the car.

'Poor kid...' Were the driver's thoughts as he dropped Maddox off and a tip was given to him for the trouble

As Maddox was going through security with his illusions playing a big part, he threw his gun onto a piece of soft luggage that had already gone through the x-ray machine. While people saw that he had placed his single bag on the line via an illusion of himself, Maddox threw the gun across the way. That was how he could smuggle his illegal firearm into LAX and board his flight to Vegas within the hour. The flight was smooth, and Maddox could practice his illusions by making it seem like the two seats next to him were occupied by an elderly couple and continued to create more illusions on the flight to Vegas.

Touching down, Maddox leaves the airport and sees a limousine parked with a man waiting with the dog open to let in a young man. The only reason that Maddox paid attention was that that man had an immense aura of miasma that was close to transforming him into an infected. Since Maddox had only dealt with one such instance of miasma, he was inclined to follow the young man, but Maddox knew that he was not here to state his curiosities but to help Katherine.

So pulling up a printed address, Maddox gets in a cab waiting in the airport and gives the driver the address, not in Las Vegas but another city not too far called Boulder City. It was only a thirty-minute car drive east to where Maddox wanted to go, which was a home on the outskirts of boulder city a bit away from everyone else, and Maddox was driven along a dirt road at one point.

Taking out his luggage and paying the driver, Maddox looks at his end destination after using a little miasma to change his disabled body to hide his missing arm. It was a white squared house with a lot of shade on a large fenced property which was nice for the Coalition to use for any mission in Las Vegas. Just driving through that city, Maddox saw so much miasma that he was surprised that no one was falling on the streets and becoming infected right then and there.

Moving to the front gate to the property, the house's front door was opened up, and multiple footsteps were heard as people moved from the house to the gate.

About five females showed up at the gate, all light-wearing clothing due to the heat, with various medieval-type weapons hanging on their waists. Two of the girls had regular short swords; one had a spiked mace, another with a pair of daggers, and the final girl did not carry anything, meaning she had some other means to fight.

"Who are you?" The girl without weapons calls out to Maddox and asks

"..." Maddox does not say anything as he looks at the girls and gauges who would be the most troublesome to deal with, and of course, it was the no-weapon girl seeing as she is confident enough to fight without a weapon

"Listen here, creep, we ar-"

"I am here only to find Katherine, so I want to talk with you guys about her before anything else," Maddox cuts off the girl, about to threaten him.

"Who is she to you then? Are you another star-crossed lover from the Coalition trying to get into her pants?" The girl with the dagger asks

"Hahaha! Jesus, girl look at me. Does it look like I am old enough to be with her? No... I am only doing this to help a friend," Maddox replies as he moves closer to the gate.

"Yeah, just get lost, dude. We are not going to tell you anything because you asked," The no-weapon girl says before turning around to go back inside.

'Bad mistake...' Was all Maddox thought as he took out his gun

He shoots off the lock and opens the gate before opening and entering.

The girls saw Maddox armed and wanting to force his way in, causing them to act by drawing forth their essence and having it reinforce their bodies and weapons with varying colors of yellow emanating from them. Maddox responds in kind by releasing more than half the miasma in his body to create illusions of a United States special forces team appearing behind him on the other side of the fence from the surroundings.

From a distance, they looked like the real deal, but if you were to get closer, there would be a lot of mistakes in their overall image. Since Maddox had never seen a special forces soldier, he had to rely on his imagination a bit, leading to them looking fake, only while up close.

The results were as immediate as before; it looked like Maddox was alone and only had a light gun. In the next second, out of nowhere, an entire team of eight special forces soldiers appears from the ground armed to the teeth with assault weapons all pointed at them. The once confident girls were starting to rethink their actions since they could not last long against concentrated firepower. Plus, under the laws enforced by the Coalition, they would be unable to kill them as they were all regular people. The best they could do was to incapacitate them and try not to harm them as much as possible.

"I only wanted to talk to those who know anything about what happened, that is all, get me some information, and we will leave," Maddox says as he is dealing with a major headache right now since moving illusions was a lot harder to create and maintain. These eight 'people' were pushing his limits and causing a significant headache to ensue and get worse at a concerning rate.

"... Fine, but he is inside and cannot move due to his injuries," The weaponless girl answers, seeing that getting into a conflict was not going to be beneficial to anyone here, and caved into Maddox's demands.

Leaving the safety of the 'soldiers,' Maddox approaches the group and what they saw was just an illusion of him a few feet ahead of the real one that is invisible to everyone else. He had to be cautious since they might try to use him as a human shield to get rid of the soldiers. Still, the group did not act, and only the girl with no weapons led him to the house while the others had a standoff with the soldiers. Maddox's illusioned body reaches the door but turns back to face the group of soldiers and does a series of random hand signals. The soldiers move around and disappear from the scene, which causes the rest of the girls to move out and around in the hopes of catching sight of them.

Maddox did that for a few reasons, wanting to remove the strain on his mind for keeping the active illusion going since it was hurting, but he felt that it would be a bit funny for those girls to try and find the sight of those soldiers that did not exist.

Still moving through the house, Maddox could see that this place had been modified to have one section as a sort of recovery ward for the injured, as the area had hospital beds with multiple monitors alongside each one. Only one such bed was in use, a guy with both his arms and legs cut off, leaving him only stumps to use and the hope of prosthetics in the future.

"This is him?" Maddox asks, a bit doubtful at the fact this is who he had to talk to since it looked like he was in a coma with all the tubes and machinery going into him, which reminded him of how he was after his six months

"Yes, but as you can see, he is in no condition to talk, and we don't know when he will wake up, so please leave now," The girl asks, wanting Maddox to leave immediately.

"Fine..." Maddox says as his illusion leaves the house once more, but he stays in the room with the coma guy

That made the no-weapon girl sigh in relief as she left with Maddox's illusion trailing behind at a smaller distance.

The reason was that he was not in a natural coma and was forced into one by some miasma which was his best guess. It was wrapped around him, almost like a blanket. So Maddox wanted to see if he could attempt to either hijack this miasma or eradicate it, with the option of highjacking it being the better option since he did not care if this would wake up the guy.

So Maddox grabs the guy's head only once he made sure that his illusionary self had left the property from the view in the window being available to guide it since setting a path for it was a bit of a hassle since it might run into something and phase through it which is why he sent it slower than the girl who leads him out.