Lino Ilagan

  September 17, 2035

  Lino sits. Chair of synthetic leather, no squeak, no give. Enzo beside him, posture perfect, spine straight as an affidavit. The city beyond the tinted glass boils in slow ruin, heat locked behind engineered calm.

  The lawyer sits opposite. His briefcase open like an autopsy. Papers extracted gently, as though they might bleed. He slides them forward. Enzo accepts them, face smooth as marble, cold as the data centers humming beneath Makati's towers.

  Lino only glances. The language of the documents swims before him, familiar and alien. Commandeered. Coerced. Kidnapped. Innocent. Words bent into shape by men paid to bend them.

  The lawyer's voice spills into the hush. "Calvin maintains," he says, measured and slow, "that Mr. Jiro Lim Uy was not the mastermind. Gino Sanchez took him. Used him. Forced his properties and bank accounts into service of the trade. Mr. Uy has been missing ever since, and Calvin fears he's being kept... close. As a hostage. Or worse."

  His words hang in the room, twisting in the artificial air. A new story offered up, fresh paint on an old ruin.

  Enzo reads, unblinking. The lawyer keeps talking. Calvin's narrative is sculpted marble: Jiro was coerced to lend his property, Jiro's accounts merely wired funds by accident, Gino merely appeared and took. Everything merely, everything only. Sin dissolved by grammar.

  Lino listens in silence. The hum of the office is constant, white noise swallowing conscience. His gaze drifts to Enzo: mask on, ice-eyed, language machine fully engaged. Lino always admired that in him. The way Enzo could bury himself alive in procedure, wear law like chainmail. Stoicism not as choice, but as vocation.

  The lawyer leans in now. Voice dropping, becoming softer, conspiratorial. "Calvin... may recall something," he says. "A memory. A place Gino once mentioned. Perhaps a warehouse, a condo, somewhere Jiro might be held. But this help..." He pauses, throat working around the next words. "Would only come if the NBI agrees to drop its case against Mr. Uy, once Gino Sanchez is apprehended. Calvin wants to see the true criminal behind bars, not his nephew."

  The lawyer's voice trails off, the offer lingering like the aftertaste of spoiled wine.

  Silence stretches. The office seems to grow larger around it, walls breathing in and out, numbers on the digital clock glowing dumbly in the corner.

  Lino does not answer. Words sit heavy behind his teeth, unsaid.

  He turns his head. Looks at Enzo instead. Enzo, whose eyes still hold the color of judgment, whose lips hold back words that could tilt the scales.

  ? ? ?

  The door clicks shut behind the lawyer, leaving an absence heavier than his presence.

  Enzo drops the mask. The tension drains from his shoulders like water down a rusted grate. His expression softens, the professional frost thawed into something closer to weariness, or resignation.

  Lino leans back in the chair. Artificial leather sighs under his weight. The room feels different now, stripped of performance. Just two men and the city's rot pressing in from beyond the glass.

  "Calvin's trying to buy back his nephew," Lino says, voice flat. Statement of fact, not accusation.

  Enzo gives a small nod. His gaze drifts over the desk's smooth surface, as if the answer might be hiding in the glass.

  "Do we even have a case?" Lino asks. The question tastes bitter, though he already knows the answer.

  Enzo exhales. "Technically?" he says, words carefully chosen, like stepping over broken glass. "There's a gap. No payroll tying Gino to Jiro. The fact they vanished at the same time, could be coincidence, legally speaking. Money moved to Gino through shell accounts, different amounts, staggered. Hard to draw a clean line back to Jiro."

  He flips an invisible page in his mind. "The drugs? Gino's crew handled them. Hired muscle, freelancers. Jiro's name never shows up on shipment logs. No witness ever saw him near a crate. Bartenders, spa masseurs, construction workers, they only know Gino. To them, Jiro's just the name on the deed. No fingerprints, no CCTV. Just absence. Amy's statement got us through the door but it's not enough to charge him with anything."

  The silence that follows isn't comfortable. It feels alive, like something crawling between them.

  Lino sighs. It feels like something cracking inside his chest. "Bureaucracy, and justice," he mutters, "never did belong together in this cursed city."

  For a moment, his gaze drifts past Enzo, to where the skyline splits into a thousand glittering lies.

  "Do we actually have to follow through?" he asks. "If Calvin gives us where they're hiding, do we really have to keep our hands off Jiro?"

  Enzo's gaze lingers on Lino, then drifts to the empty chair where the lawyer sat moments before. His jaw tightens, breath held a moment longer than natural, as if he's measuring each syllable before it leaves him.

  "No," Enzo says at last, voice low, words careful, almost tired. "We don't have to. Legally, nothing binds us to keep Jiro's name clean once we know where they're hiding."

  "It's not just the politics," Enzo says, voice steadier now, slipping back into the rhythm of someone who's walked this edge too many times. "Legally speaking, we don't have a lot, Lino. Nothing that ties Jiro directly to moving the product. No payroll, no witness. Just property and accounts that could be explained away."

  He pauses, the hum of the office wrapping around the silence.

  "If we jump the gun, charge him anyway, right after Calvin gives us the location, it looks bad. Defense counsel can argue the whole thing was entrapment or built on an improper promise. That the NBI bargained away objectivity in exchange for a lead. It gives them an opening to move to suppress. Some judge, somewhere, will listen. Pieces of evidence start getting thrown out. And once that starts, it rarely stops."

  He rubs his thumb against his brow, the habit of a man who has argued with too many ghosts in too many courtrooms.

  "With Gino it's cleaner. He's already dirty all the way through. But Jiro? He's a smudge on the edge of the painting. If we're not careful, we wash the whole thing off trying to scrub him out."

  Enzo lifts his gaze, softer now, something close to regret behind it.

  "So no, we don't have to keep our promise. But if we break it too soon, we risk burning the whole case down before it sees daylight."

  Then softly, almost as if to himself, Lino wonders: "What do you think a psychopath like Gino does when he finds out the big boss is willing to cut him loose for family?"

  Enzo doesn't answer.

  The question hangs there, heavy, sour, and unfinished.

  Lino sits there a moment longer, the words settling in the quiet like ash. LED light paints pale shapes across the table, catching in the tired lines under Enzo's eyes.

  He breathes in, slow and deliberate, gaze fixed somewhere beyond the glass, beyond the city devouring itself one headline at a time.

  Then he speaks, voice low, almost casual in its certainty. "We get their location first," Lino says. "That's what matters. We can find a way to charge Jiro later, once we have something solid. But right now? We take the deal."

  No drama. No speech. Just the blunt, clean edge of decision.

  Enzo doesn't even blink. Doesn't ask why, doesn't offer caution or another path. The moment Lino's words land, Enzo nods once, sharp and small. Like dropping a stone in water.

  "I'll contact the lawyer," Enzo says. His tone is calm, professional, but behind it there's a flicker of something older, trust, built bone-deep over years of hunting men who think they can slip between the cracks.

  The room feels smaller, suddenly. Purpose filling it, quiet but heavy.

  Outside, Manila's ruin keeps breathing under soft electric light. Inside, two men move forward, silent agreement stitched between them, knowing full well what city they serve, and what it demands in return.

  ? ? ?

  Lino stands at the head of the war room, shoulders squared, hands clasped lightly behind his back. The LED-lit screens throw shifting reflections across his face, lines of data and satellite imagery rippling like restless ghosts.

  Behind him, the room is alive with quiet tension. Analysts frozen mid-keystroke, agents leaning forward, the curious from other divisions packed in the back, shoulder to shoulder. Even Director Elias Ortega has come, posture regal, gaze fixed on the feed. No one speaks. The hum of recycled air and soft electronics is the only noise, a mechanical heartbeat beneath the hush.

  On the main screen: Rocco Dalisay's body camera. The image jerks faintly with each breath he takes. His rifle fills part of the frame, barrel steady despite the tremor of anticipation. The green wash of night vision renders the scene uncanny, familiar shapes stripped of warmth.

  The site itself is nothing special on paper, a compound in Cavite, property of an old provincial dynasty whose name hangs on election tarpaulins every three years. Outside, the area throbs with life: trucks rumble past, jeepneys belch black smoke, street hawkers shout into the night. The messy noise of humanity that even Ashtree's eyes couldn't fully see through.

  Calvin Uy's message had come hours ago, words careful, almost whispered onto paper. The promise of a location: the place where Gino might be keeping Jiro, or keeping him quiet.

  Lino gives the nod. A small thing, but it travels down the chain like voltage.

  Rocco moves first. The team flows forward, shadows swallowing them.

  They cross a courtyard first, concrete cracked and weeds grown thick in the lines. Old plastic chairs piled in a corner, drums rusted and dented, as if someone had tried to forget this space existed. The breeze carries the sour reek of old fuel and wet earth. Dogs bark somewhere beyond the walls, but nothing stirs inside.

  Next, they clear an empty building. Hollow rooms whose walls hold the smell of old mildew and sun-baked dust. Doorways yawning into darkness, windows boarded with splintered plywood that rattles faintly in the night wind. Rocco's breathing grows louder in the mic, steady but heavier now. Footsteps scuff over grit and fallen plaster. The team fans out, checking corners, barrels sweeping through dead air.

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  Nothing. Only silence.

  On the screen, the team reforms, rifles raised again. Ahead looms the warehouse, squat and indifferent. The corrugated walls stained by years of neglect, the entrance chained and padlocked, a gesture too feeble to stop what's coming.

  The war room tightens around the moment. Breaths held. Every pair of eyes locked on Rocco's camera.

  Lino watches, face unreadable, gaze sharp as drawn wire. The pulse of the room is felt more than heard, a collective heart, waiting for the breach.

  Then Rocco lifts a gloved hand in signal. The team stacks by the warehouse door.

  Metal groans.

  Darkness waits inside, hungry and absolute.

  The camera shudders as Rocco's team sets charges on the warehouse door. The metal shivers under gloved hands, rust flaking off like dead skin. The night holds its breath, the only sounds are the quiet click and snap of plastic explosive, the soft hiss of tape being pulled tight.

  In the war room, no one dares speak. Even the screens around the main display seem to dim, shadows pooling at the edges as if the building itself is bracing for what comes next. Director Ortega remains motionless, eyes narrowed, jaw set in the calm of a man who's seen too many nights like this.

  The charge pops, small but violent, light blooming white across Rocco's camera. The door kicks inward, hinges squealing like something alive.

  They move. Boots thunder on concrete, rifles up, angles covered by instinct drilled in sweat and repetition.

  Inside: darkness layered on darkness. The first sweep catches only rusted beams and broken crates. Dust drifts in the camera's light, each mote a tiny star in a dead sky. The beam shifts, painting the space in pale arcs of green.

  Then the camera tilts. A sudden jerk upward as Rocco's breath catches.

  Gasps echo in the war room, sharp and involuntary.

  From the ceiling: bodies. A dozen or more, maybe more beyond the reach of the lens. Hung by thin cords or wire, necks tilted at impossible angles, legs limp and shoes brushing the concrete floor. They sway slightly, a grotesque and silent dance moved only by the draft that followed the breach.

  The team stops, rifles trembling just a fraction. Rocco steadies the camera. The image clears: clothes stained by sweat and fear, some barefoot, faces half hidden by dried blood and bruises turned black in the low light.

  Rocco's voice, low and clipped, crackles back to the war room. "Checking IDs now," he says. The team splits, stepping carefully among the dead. Gloves pat pockets, flick open wallets, read ID cards under shaky beams of light. Each name spoken into the mic sounds like a prayer denied.

  Seconds stretch into something viscous, too thick to breathe.

  "No Jiro," Rocco finally says. His voice is flatter now, as if the weight of the dead has pressed the air from his lungs. "No Gino. And four of Gino's crew are missing too. The people here are the rest of Gino's men, they've all got the same burning upside down cross tattoo on their backs. There's also a few faces and names not on any of our lists."

  In the war room, Lino doesn't need more words. The logic is immediate, sharp as glass. Gino knew. The betrayal wasn't quiet; it was heard. And Gino's answer to betrayal is always the same.

  His mouth is already moving before the thought finishes. "Patch me to Sarah."

  A flicker of static, then her voice, faint and tinny.

  "Sarah," Lino says, gaze locked on the flickering bodies on the screen. "Get to Calvin Uy. Now. Gino knows Calvin gave us this site. He'll be hunting the betrayer first."

  For a moment, no one in the room breathes. The screen still shows the hanging dead, an obscene stillness at the edge of the living city.

  Outside the war room, Manila's neon arteries pulse on, unaware. Inside, between LED light and shadows, two truths remain: the living must move quickly, and the dead never speak.

  ? ? ?

  Sarah Borja

  Sarah stands under the washed marble arch of Calvin Uy's BGC tower, the night above her stacked in glass and light. The air is dense with Manila's contradictions: the humid breath of diesel and rain-soaked concrete mixing with the sterile chill leaking from the lobby behind. Neon reflections coil around passing SUVs, skitter over body armor, and dissolve into shadow.

  Her team holds formation beside her, silent shapes in tactical gear, faces unreadable under helmet brims. The weight of weapons and Kevlar feels familiar now, like old regrets carried on the back.

  They watch everything. Delivery vans groaning under sacks of produce, tinted sedans gliding to valet, office workers laughing into phones, heads tilted just so. The doormen pretend not to stare, trained to be invisible yet never missing a detail.

  On a screen clipped to her wrist, Ashtree's real-time feed streams a calm lie: traffic as expected, pedestrian patterns unchanged, thermal anomalies zero. An artificial voice might have called it "normal." But even normal here feels wrong, stretched too tight over something waiting to snap.

  The building's security team, faces already slick with sweat under the warm lobby lights, glance toward them, then away again. The memo from the NBI told them what to expect, possible attack, high priority. Yet they stand there clutching radios like crucifixes, praying the mess will pass by without consequence.

  Sarah's earpiece murmurs updates in clipped static: stairwell clear, elevator waiting, roof overwatch in place. But still, nothing. No black SUV that lingers too long. No delivery man who keeps his head too low. No camera catching a face the system flags in urgent red.

  Calvin's message had come hours ago, coiled in cautious words and half-swallowed fear. The site in Cavite was supposed to be the end of it. A handover. A trade. But betrayal never ends where it's supposed to.

  Sarah checks the street once more. The shimmer of brake lights. The wet gleam of sidewalk tiles. BGC dressed up like a promise it can't keep.

  Then the call comes. Lino's voice, pared down to the barest steel: it's time.

  She lifts her hand, fingers curling. A signal older than procedure, older than fear.

  The team moves.

  They cross into the expansive lobby's curated chill, boots biting softly on polished stone. Columns rise around them, veined marble meant to impress, to quiet the unspoken fear that power ever ends. Crystal light scatters across tactical helmets.

  Building security steps back, the admin already briefed, words stuck in throats. Faces hover between relief and dread.

  Guests and tenants freeze mid-stride. A young man in a suit drops his phone; the clatter echoes off marble like a gunshot. A woman in black whispers something sharp, her eyes darting from the rifles to the gilded concierge desk.

  Someone laughs, too loud, too brittle. "Are they filming a movie?"

  The words hang in the air, absurd, a feeble spell to turn real violence into entertainment.

  But Sarah has no space left for absurdities.

  "Stairs," she orders, voice flat as old stone.

  Half her team breaks off, boots pounding toward the fire exit door. Its faded EXIT sign hums above them, casting weak light on peeling paint. The stairwell smells of wet concrete and forgotten mop water, an emptiness where echoes live.

  Sarah and the rest step into the waiting elevator, brass panels polished to blind perfection. The doors slide shut on whispers and marbled silence, cutting them from the world below.

  Inside, the hum of the cables feels almost intimate. Numbers on the panel rise, patient, deliberate. The polished walls reflect their armored forms, shadows of violence carried upward by steel and blind machinery.

  For a few heartbeats, it almost feels calm. The city outside invisible, the mission reduced to floor numbers counting up, soft as prayer beads slipping through anxious fingers.

  Sarah watches the reflection of her own face in the polished brass: helmeted, unreadable, a stranger staring back. Around her, the men steady their rifles, breathing shallow under plates of armor. No words spoken; everything already decided below, in the heat and diesel air.

  The carriage hums. Soft music plays overhead, a gentle piano loop meant to soothe billion-peso nerves. Its absurdity settles over them like fine dust. Sarah keeps her eyes forward, counting the seconds, the slow rise of numbers, each one another heartbeat closer to the unknown.

  Then the doors part with a chime too delicate for what follows.

  Calvin Uy's private floor opens before them: polished stone veined like fossil bone, glass walls framing city lights that pulse indifferent and eternal. But the air tastes wrong, thick with old panic and something metallic.

  They step out, rifles raised, the sweep automatic, muscle memory built from years in places that don't forgive hesitation.

  The condo is large, built to impress. But it's messy in ways money can't explain: a glass overturned, liquid bleeding across marble, a shoe lying sideways in the hall. Furniture skewed off perfect angles, curtains tugged and half torn, footprints on pale carpet that don't belong to anyone living here.

  Staff cower at the edges, maids in crisp uniforms, a middle-aged man in house security livery lie dead on the floor. Their faces pale, eyes wide, lips forming the start of apologies or prayers.

  Sarah's men shout, voices breaking the hush. "Where is Calvin?"

  A maid's hand lifts, trembling, eyes wet. "In the study," she breathes, as if naming the place itself might summon more violence.

  They pivot, boots whispering over expensive rugs. The door to the study stands shut, sleek wood at odds with the jagged fear in the room. One of her men tries the handle, shoulder pressing hard. It holds, locked.

  The hallway seems to shrink, walls bending inward under the weight of the moment. Her team fans out, barrels poised, eyes locked on the door.

  Then a voice cracks through the barrier, distorted by thick wood and distance. Words turned ragged at the edges by anger, desperation, something darker.

  It's Gino.

  His name lands heavy in the air, fouling it like smoke.

  They don't speak. Breath catches. The stillness before something terrible and irreversible.

  And in the city outside, lights keep shining, blind to the fact that, in this room, history is about to fracture.

  They press close to the study door, boots squeaking faintly against polished marble, rifles poised in the hush that feels too deep, too heavy to last. The hallway smells of money and fear, the sterile perfume of an air conditioner mixing with the faint tang of sweat soaked into ballistic nylon.

  Sarah steps forward, close enough to see the faint grain of the wood, the sheen of polish dulled now by dust and the shadow of violence. She lifts her hand, palm flat, then brings her fist down hard.

  Thud.

  The heavy knock rattles the lock in its frame, sends a tremor through the quiet. Her voice follows, clipped and hard as concrete. "NBI! This is the National Bureau of Investigation! Open up! Come out now with your hands where we can see them!"

  Inside, the door swallows her words, the thickness that was built to keep arguments private now muffling desperation. Only muffled rustling answers: furniture scuffed, shoes scraping, words spoken too low to carry.

  Sarah's jaw tightens. She slams her fist against the door again, the echo snapping through the hall. Thud. Thud.

  Her voice rises, sharper now, each syllable stripped of doubt. "Final warning! NBI! Step out with your hands up! We will breach if you do not comply!"

  Nothing. The air seems to tense around them, like a held breath waiting to break.

  Her eyes flick to the man beside her, battering ram already clutched tight. He shifts his stance, weight balanced, knuckles white on steel.

  Inside: a muffled shout, garbled by wood too thick to betray words.

  Then the crack. A gunshot, flat and final, from behind the door.

  Instinct detonates the stillness. One of her men jerks forward, rifle up, trigger snapping. Rounds slam into the wood, carving splinters and ugly divots, but the door, built for secrets, absorbs the violence without breaking.

  Sarah's hand cuts the air in a single, fierce arc. Go.

  The man with the ram surges forward, breath hissing between teeth. Shoulders coil, eyes narrow. The ram swings in a brutal arc, the steel head colliding with the lock in a crash that vibrates through bone.

  The door shudders, the lock groaning under protest. Another swing, louder, angrier. Veneer splinters fly, dancing in the light.

  One final swing and the door gives way, the lock tearing free, the frame cracking apart in a ragged surrender.

  The door bursts inward, torn from the illusion of safety.

  Beyond: the study, caught mid-violence. Shapes turning, the smell of gunpowder raw and immediate, shadows frozen in a moment too late to change.

  The door crashes open, splinters leaping through the air like startled birds. The study uncoils before them in a single, terrible heartbeat.

  Sarah's eyes catch everything at once, the room drawn in raw strokes of violence: toppled books spilling across carpet stained with something darker, chairs overturned, glass shattered along the edge of the marble desk.

  And there, Gino. Face flushed red, sweat shining under the warm LEDs, eyes wild with something too jagged to be called rage alone. His gun already turning toward them, shoulders twisting, lips parted in the start of a curse or a threat.

  Sarah doesn't think. Her finger tightens once, clean and final.

  The shot snaps the air apart, cracking glass behind Gino into a spiderweb bloom. His head jerks back with a sickening whip, dark mist trailing, body frozen in a grotesque half-turn before it folds and drops. The thud echoes off marble and wood, brief as an apology no one will give.

  Time slides back into motion.

  Calvin Uy lies already dead on the floor, his lifeless eyes catching the ceiling's warm glow. Jiro slumps near him, blood streaming from a gash at his neck, hands pressed uselessly to the wound, eyes wide with shock too deep for words.

  Sarah lunges forward, boots slipping slightly on polished floor now slick with blood. Her gloves press against Jiro's wound, feeling the heat of fresh blood soaking through fabric, pulse fluttering beneath.

  Jiro's eyes, red and swimming, stare past her, lips trembling around soundless syllables. Then they move, broken whispers pushed out by sheer desperation: "I'm sorry... I'm sorry..." Over and over, raw and childlike.

  Her men spread through the study, weapons up, sweeping corners and shadows. Two kneel by Calvin and Gino, cameras clicking in mechanical rhythm, each flash reflecting off glass shards and pooling blood. Outside the shattered window, the city waits, its towers blinking warnings to distant planes, streets below alive with movement that has nothing to do with this room.

  The radio crackles against Sarah's ear. Lino's voice, heavy and flat: "Report."

  "Boss," she says, voice clipped, steady despite her pulse hammering in her throat. "Calvin Uy is dead. Gino Sanchez is dead. Jiro is alive but injured, needs immediate medical attention."

  A pause, the hum of background noise on the other end. "Where are the other four?" Lino asks, the words hard as steel dragged across stone.

  Sarah's eyes flick around the wrecked study, just the bodies, just the shadows. "There were only three people here, sir," she answers, breath hitching faintly at the edges.

  Jiro sobs beside her, shoulders shuddering, lips mouthing apologies to no one who can answer. Beyond him, the vast glass wall shows Metro Manila still alive and restless: a thousand headlights crawling through midnight avenues, LED screens screaming ads to a sky that doesn't listen.

  The city moves on, untouched by the blood drying on Sarah's gloves, by the dead sprawled on cold marble, by the man crying out apologies into a room that stopped hearing them long ago.

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