Lino Ilagan

  September 21, 2035

  The air in Secretary Leticia Dionisio’s office felt too heavy for lungs alone. The walls were an off-white that remembered better days, and the table smelled faintly of burnt coffee and fresh ink. Lino sat beside Director Elias Ortega, the two of them a tableau of authority and exhaustion, the case report a neat stack of paper holding back an ocean of rot.

  Elias spoke with the calm pride of a man counting corpses like coins. “Immediate threat neutralized,” he said. “Gino Sanchez. Single bullet, no mess.” His voice rolled over Calvin Uy’s name too, though softer, like dropping a stone into a deep well.

  Jiro Lim Uy survived his injuries, his face still painted in polite smiles. All charges gone, washed away by the tide of insufficient evidence. But without Gino breathing fire into the empire, Jiro’s wings were clipped. A peacock left to strut, pretty but flightless. The arsonist who lit up Tondo had long since met his own quiet end.

  Almost everyone accounted for. Almost.

  Lino did not hear victory in the director’s voice. His mind gnawed on the missing four. Four shadows slipped through the dragnet, shapes he could not unsee. One in particular, the man exiled from the PNP special forces for his artful bloodletting. A sculptor of suffering, whose signature was the grotesque crime scenes Lino still saw when he closed his eyes. Somewhere out there, that living grenade waited for a spark.

  Leticia Dionisio drummed lacquered nails on the table, gaze moving between the report and the men who carried it. “Yes,” she said. “The other four may strike back, but they are not an immediate concern.” Her words were precise, surgical, the kind that left clean incisions rather than ragged wounds.

  She turned a page, voice softer now. “The Department has chosen not to sign a permanent contract for Ashtree. Not yet. But should we hire them again, the process will not drag its feet next time.” The statement settled in the stale office air like ash.

  Outside, fluorescent lights flickered in quiet defiance of the sun. Lino walked beside Elias Ortega, the hallway smelling of floor polish and unresolved questions.

  “The job is not done,” Lino said, voice low as confession. “Not until those four are found.”

  Elias stopped, turned to him, the old man’s eyes weary but stubbornly alive. “I know you’d be stubborn. Try to take your victories,” he told Lino. “Even the broken ones.” His tone carried not command but something older, heavier, older than protocol. “Take your team to dinner. A real one. My treat.”

  Lino held his silence a moment longer, as if searching for a place to set it down. Then nodded. Stoic agreement offered up like an unspoken prayer.

  ? ? ?

  Crystal light trembled from chandeliers that seemed too delicate to hold up the weight of memory. Reflections danced on marble floors slick with polish and the ghosts of footsteps past. The buffet stretched before them like a kingdom of surrender, platters of seared beef bleeding into metal troughs, slick salmon glinting under warm lamps, steam rising from rice as if in quiet prayer.

  They were here to celebrate, though celebration tasted oddly like penance.

  Rocco and Sarah sat at the heart of it, forged together in sweat and gunpowder. Rocco tore through slabs of steak, each bite a statement of stubborn vitality, while Sarah moved between plates of sashimi and roast pork with the same measured aggression she brought to breaching doors. The steel in her eyes softened only in moments like these, under chandeliers and the hush of clinking cutlery.

  James leaned forward with quiet, analytical hunger. His questions always probing, always measuring the shape of things unseen, though tonight his curiosity hovered over a plate instead of a crime scene. Beside him, Renz traded observations about tempura batter and oil temperature, treating deep-frying with the same reverence he brought to data, pattern, and motive.

  Enzo had colonized the cheese and cracker spread, building small citadels of brie, cheddar, and goat cheese on fragile wafers. His attention was precise, as if each crumble of cheese might reveal a loophole in the universe itself.

  At the table’s edge sat Lino, the quiet axis they all revolved around. His plate bore only a modest curl of pasta, pale against white china. Rocco glanced at it, brows lifting in mock disapproval. “Are you new to buffets, boss? That’s not efficient,” he judged, the words heavy with affection. “Pasta fills you too fast. Better to start with meat.”

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

  The rebuke was gentle, almost ritual. In the middle of mirrored walls and low murmurs of other dinners, it grounded them, reminded them what it meant to sit together as something more than colleagues.

  Outside, the night pressed against the hotel windows, unseen but felt, like a half-remembered warning waiting to come true. And still, the kingdom of food lay open before them, steam and salt and unspoken things rising into the chandelier’s fractured light.

  James set his fork down, eyes narrowed, voice carrying the weight of questions that never truly leave. “I read the report,” he said, as if saying it might make sense appear where none wanted to. “But how did Gino and Jiro get through? Place was locked down tighter than reason.”

  Sarah didn’t flinch, though the telling had worn itself raw inside her. “They used one of Jiro’s car,” she said, her voice flat, almost tired. “It had garage access gave them a back door, security didn’t flag it when they drove in. When they got out, Gino pushed Jiro in a wheelchair, both of them buried under hospital masks thick enough to hide everything but their eyes.”

  A pause, and then: “The wheelchair broke their movement pattern. Gait scanner never flagged them. Ashtree was never designed to be a proactive surveillance AI, and to it, vulnerable figures don’t read as threats.”

  Her words settled into the tablecloth, into half-finished plates and untouched desserts. Then the silence cracked, softening under Enzo’s gentle commentary on cheese: goat against cow, sharp against mellow, the contrast drawn out with a calmness that felt almost holy. Rocco leaned closer, steak forgotten, a boyish curiosity flickering beneath the roughness. Across from them, James listened, and Renz too, the heat of suspicion fading back into something like warmth.

  Lino watched them, and in that watching, the room itself shifted. The chandelier light caught the edge of wine glasses, turned the buffet’s silver domes into mirrors of quiet opulence, a richness meant for gentler people. Around them, marble floors gleamed, and soft music whispered from invisible speakers, as though the world beyond blood and paperwork still dared to exist.

  He let his gaze drift further, to the invisible ledger only he seemed to keep: the unsolved cases that waited in silent accusation, the lives they hadn’t saved, the names that still surfaced at night, asking why. All the silent costs that did not appear in any report, years spent, friendships frayed, hearts hardened by necessity.

  And yet, here they were. Rocco and Sarah, who still found something almost childlike in the comfort of full plates and empty danger; James and Renz, who could let curiosity turn to quiet laughter; Enzo, who could speak of cheese as though the world outside could wait. Moments of fragile joy, paid for in long hours, bruised trust, and the quiet surrender of things they would never get back.

  Lino felt the truth of it press against his ribs: that these moments were what he fought for, as much as arrests or confessions. That he trusted them, and they trusted him, not out of duty, but out of something rarer, earned slowly under sirens and ash.

  Surrounded by marble and chandeliers, plates half-finished and laughter turning softer now, Lino let that gratitude sit quietly beside him, a weight and a comfort both, knowing tomorrow, it might be all they carried forward.

  ? ? ?

  September 21, 2035

  The afternoon in Banawe on a Friday felt hollowed out, as if sound itself had chosen to wait outside. Even the usual scrape of tricycles on concrete and vendors’ voices seemed to stop respectfully at the temple gates. Lino eased the car through, engine’s rumble softened to a murmur by old stone walls. The painted arch above him read blessings he had long since memorized, words half-believed yet deeply known.

  In the parking area, heat shimmered off empty spaces. Few visitors came past noon; most preferred morning prayers, when the incense still hung thick and comforting in the air. Lino killed the engine. Silence settled around him, filling the cabin. He reached over and picked up the plastic bag from the passenger seat, its thin handles biting lightly into his fingers, grounding him. Inside, a single can of Coke, cold, beads of water gathering like nervous sweat.

  As he stepped out, the caretaker looked up. No greeting passed between them, none was needed. They moved like parts of an old, familiar machine. Lino walked slowly through the courtyard, feet brushing against fallen petals and faint traces of ash. The caretaker, thin and quiet in worn slippers, moved ahead without a word. By the time Lino reached the chamber, the caretaker had already propped the ladder against the marble niche wall.

  The columbarium smelled of old incense, stone, and a sweetness that lived only in memory. Light filtered in from high windows in upper floors, falling in gentle columns that made the dust look almost sacred.

  Lino handed him the can of Coke. Cold on warm skin, the small weight transferred between them like a ritual. The caretaker climbed, each step of the ladder creaking faintly in the cavernous hush. With practiced care, he lifted the old can, replaced it with the new. Condensation gleamed for a second under the slanting light before dulling.

  From where he stood, Lino could see the photograph perched atop the niche. The colors had begun to fade, but the stubborn curve of a smile remained.

  When the caretaker descended, Lino wordlessly pressed a folded bill into his hand, an old habit neither of them ever questioned. The caretaker nodded, turned, and walked away, sandals brushing dust in a slow, respectful retreat.

  Left alone, Lino moved toward the small table by the entrance, picked up incense sticks, thin, fragile things that broke easily if held too tight. He lit them from a candle whose flame shivered under unseen drafts, then waited until the red glow settled into steady breath. Smoke curled upward, twisting in slow spirals that seemed to hesitate before dissolving into nothing.

  He stepped closer, the stone cool beneath his shoes, the new can of Coke beading water in the stale air. The photograph above looked back at him, stubbornly unchanged while everything else had weathered and moved on.Lino gathered what he could, the weight of unsaid apologies, memories sharpened by time, the quiet ache that never quite dulled. And from all of it, he managed a single word, barely louder than thought.

  “Norah.”

  End of Book One

  rating, write a comment. Let me know what lingered when the words stopped.