Lino Ilagan

  September 7, 2035

  THE FLAYED MAN SCREAMS IN BUREAUCRATESE

  Three Days Dead in the Republic of Moral Ambiguity

  The corpse does not blink. It cannot. But it watches.

  Lino stands still beneath the buzz of fluorescent light and the soft whisper of air conditioning, both conspiring to make the room colder than it is. The smell is chemical, organic, irreversible, it crawls into his lungs and coils there like a patient parasite. He does not wince. He catalogues it. Formaldehyde, copper, rot, bile, fear.

  The corpse is an installation. A message. Art for the deranged.

  Face peeled like a fruit. Eyes and organs on a plate, arranged, not spilled. This was not rage. This was intention. Ceremony.

  Right arm slumped against the torso. Left arm stretched, nailed to the wall. A parable in meat.

  The skin is removed whole, hangs behind it, pinned like a curtain, like a backdrop, like a failed attempt at resurrection.

  The body is naked in a way most corpses never are. Not stripped. Unmade.

  The AC hums above, indifferent. The walls sweat.

  Lino's boots make no sound on the tiled floor. He steps closer, crouches slightly. The light hits the body in all the wrong places. The peeled chest glistens. There are no signs of panic. No defensive wounds. Just ritual.

  Sarah enters. Her movement is soundless. Precision incarnate. She doesn't recoil. Just narrows her eyes.

  "Fuck," she says. Low. Sharp. Like a data point.

  She crosses the room with the posture of a soldier who has already mapped the exits, clocked the threats, and decided she is the worst thing in the room.

  James is leaning against the doorframe, white around the edges. He'd arrived earlier, seen it before Lino. That doesn't make it better.

  He holds a hand near his mouth. Not covering it, not quite. Like it's still deciding what the appropriate human response is.

  "I don't know if I should throw up," he says, voice thin and frayed. "Or pray."

  Sarah doesn't glance at him.

  "No one's listening."

  The technician, anonymous in a white suit, gloved hands, masked face, materializes like mold. Offers data.

  "Three to four days," he mutters. "Based on the larvae. They're, uh. Active."

  Lino doesn't move.

  He's staring at the chest. At the dark, wet staple holes where the note used to be.

  He stands, reaches into the envelope that brought him here. The paper is still damp. He reads the message again, just to taste it.

  LINO ILAGAN. TUMIGIL KA NA.

  Not a warning. Not really. A dare.

  Sarah tilts her head. Still watching the body, not the note.

  "Ballsy."

  Lino pockets it. He already knows what it says. He already knows who it's for.

  The air shifts. Sarah finally looks at James.

  "What do we have?"

  James blinks. His face is pale, but he's trying... trying to hold it together, trying not to embarrass himself, trying to pretend the body on the wall isn't still breathing in the corner of his vision.

  He checks his notes. They're digital. He scrolls, even though he already knows the information. The act gives his hands something to do.

  "Boarding house," he begins, voice shaky but clear. "Mostly laborers. Construction workers. Long-term tenants. No CCTV inside. No security guard. It's just rooms and rust."

  Sarah watches him like a machine assessing software integrity. She doesn't interrupt.

  "Place emptied out last week. Most of the tenants came from the same place and they had a festival back home. No one noticed anything until this morning."

  James clears his throat. Regrets it. Swallows the taste.

  "One of the boarders came back. Found the body. Called it in. Said he recognized the tattoo on the leg. Right calf. Sun and three stars. Crude. Old-school."

  "He came back. Opened the door. Found theology on the wall." Lino repeated.

  The sun-and-stars tattoo, almost a cliché in these parts. Revolutionary spirit turned cheap ink turned identity. It fits.

  "Name?" Sarah asks.

  "Sinag Amihan," James replies. "Construction worker. No priors. No unusual records. Quiet type, according to the neighbors. Paid on time. Ate alone."

  Sarah's fingers tap once against her thigh. She's building the psychological model in her head. She's always doing that.

  "Last job?" Lino asks, eyes still on the flayed offering nailed to the wall.

  James answers.

  "Binondo Heights. Same as Pol."

  Sarah turns her head slightly. Her gaze sharpens.

  "When?"

  "A little over a week ago."

  Silence lands like a heavy coat.

  Lino exhales slowly. The timeline aligns too neatly. Pol. Binondo Heights. Now Sinag. The same orbit. Different exits.

  "They're cleaning up," Sarah says, voice flat. "Tying off threads."

  James looks between them, frowning. "So you think this connects to..."

  "We don't think," Sarah cuts him off. "Not yet. We observe."

  Lino steps closer to the wall. He stares not at the corpse now, but at the space just above its head. An imaginary graph of motives. A constellation of pain.

  "I've seen this before," he says, quietly.

  Sarah glances at him. "From an old case?"

  Lino nods once. Slowly.

  "Right arm limp. Left arm nailed. Skin removed, not slashed. Hung like... art. Same techniques. Same staging. But some elements have changed."

  He gestures toward the plate on the ground.

  "The eyes. In the original case, they were stapled to the chest. This time... served."

  James's mouth moves before his brain approves it.

  "Copycat?"

  "Maybe," Lino murmurs. "Maybe not."

  Sarah is expressionless, but something sharp flickers in her voice.

  "Someone's either echoing a ghost or playing god. Either way, they're trying to get your attention."

  "They have it," Lino says. Then, after a moment:

  "Run Sinag. Deep. Deeper than the Bureau likes. Not just employment. Look at associates. Off-book behavior. Debts. Enemies."

  James nods, already pulling up systems on his tablet.

  "Binondo Heights, too," Lino continues. "Re-review everything we have on them, find anything that can get the DoJ to give us a warrant."

  Sarah speaks up: "We might have something about that, I'll report on it later since it's still being worked on." James raised his hand "I might have something too."

  Lino nods.

  Sarah looks around the room one last time. Her eyes pause on the nailed skin.

  "This wasn't murder," she says. "This was messaging. Theater. And whoever did this knows we'd see it."

  Lino looks down at the note again, feels its weight in his pocket. Not just ink. Not just threat.

  "Good... good" he says. "Let's respond."

  Behind them, the corpse stays still. Watching. Waiting.

  And in the silence that follows, the AC continues its low drone. Cold air cycles endlessly, like memory refusing to fade.

  Amy Rivera

  September 7, 2035

  A CLUB CALLED NOTHING

  Desire, Denial, and a Man Explaining Why You're Not Worth the Fruit

  The club is a meat grinder for souls.

  Amy grips her purse like a soldier grips a rifle. Inside, nothing useful. Lip balm, maybe. Or a lighter that doesn't work. Her body is dressed in what passes for armor here. Shorts, tank top, glittered skin. It glistens under the light like a sacrifice. She had come with Sandro, her ex, her co-conspirator, her foolish wingman. But he dissolved. Swallowed by the biomass of bodies, music, and synthetic fog. One minute he was talking about the bartender's arms. The next, gone. Like a good dream after waking.

  She should look for him.

  She does not.

  Instead, she studies the architecture of oblivion.

  The club is a cube. Concrete, brutalist, divine. A holy box for the worship of volume. Above, a mechanical god swings, an LED chandelier the size of a small moon. It flashes declarations: pride, lust, currency. Lady Gaga sings to the congregation. Her voice is chopped and rewired, a sermon from the Church of Bass and Neon. Amy drinks a shot of tequila. It tastes like regret with a citrus finish.

  She came here because Jiro owns it. Her father's research was clear, if not unhinged. Numbers that screamed when you stared too long. Graphs that bled when printed. Jiro, the name at the center. This club, his one visible organ. The construction site is sealed now. Guarded by men with no shadows and clipboards full of nothing. So Amy came here. Where at least the lies come with music.

  She wishes Zaira could be here.

  Zaira, who would have turned the dance floor into a manifesto.

  Zaira, who would have made the lights make sense.

  Amy closes her eyes. The room spins. Not metaphorically. The room literally spins. Or maybe just her. Maybe that's the same thing. Her body sways. Her mind screams in lowercase. She is not here for fun.

  But fun is happening anyway.

  And maybe that's enough.

  The dancing is carnal mathematics. Every limb a variable. Every pelvis a question asked in rhythm. The floor is packed shoulder to shoulder, skin to skin, god to god. Shirtless men shimmer under sweat and strobe, their bodies cut from marble and sin. Someone in leather is being led by a leash, but no one is looking. Everyone is looking. Glitter floats in the air like holy spores. Someone is screaming the lyrics to "Bad Romance" into a stranger's mouth. They might be in love. They might be dying.

  Amy floats through it like a ghost in denim. Her clothes mark her as visitor, but the crowd does not care. They accept everything. They devour everything. Gender is just the beginning. Eyes flash and linger, then vanish. A man in six-inch heels does a death drop that cracks against the floor like thunder. People cheer like they've seen God. Maybe they have.

  The drinks are too sweet, too strong, too cheap to trust. Everyone is drinking like they're trying to remember or forget. Vodka cranberries passed like communion. Tequila poured straight down open throats. Hands reach for bodies, hips, laughter. Fingers slip into places they should not be, and no one stops them. This is a place where consequences dissolve in light.

  The air tastes like perfume and electricity. A heartbeat of music under every surface. Sweat clings to everything. Necks, thighs, glass. In the bathroom line, two strangers are pressed together like puzzle pieces that don't quite fit. One is crying. One is kissing their tears. Neither seems surprised.

  Amy takes another shot. It doesn't help.

  The music does.

  A little.

  She steps closer to the dance floor.

  She lets the lights consume her.

  A flicker in the corner of her eye.

  Platinum. Artificial, wet with sweat. For a moment she thinks it's a trick of the lights. Too many strobes, too much synthetic neon burning behind her eyes like afterimages of regret. But then it moves. A tilt of the head she knows too well. It's Sandro. Hair bleached to the color of hospital lights, clashing with skin flushed from booze and attention. He's alive.

  He's also very busy.

  He has misplaced his shirt. Possibly on purpose. Possibly in some act of worship. He is chest to chest with another boy, both of them topless, indistinguishable from dancers or demigods. The boy's hands are in Sandro's back pockets. Sandro is eating his mouth like he's trying to get inside, like desire is an escape route. Tongues and teeth and half-closed eyes. It is not romance. It is not performance. It is the urgent hunger of people who believe the world might end before sunrise.

  Amy watches.

  She feels the beginning signs. That delicate, familiar distortion at the edge of things. The floor is stable but she doesn't trust it. Her stomach is a theory she hasn't proven yet. Her hands move slower. Her brain flickers between clarity and syrup.

  She's not drunk.

  Not yet. She tells herself.

  But the door is open.

  The room around her swims in excess. Bodies blur. The lights become colorless, just temperature and motion. She tries to focus on Sandro, on the ridiculous shape of his joy, the way he clutches the boy like a drowning man might clutch music.

  She should call out.

  She doesn't.

  She lets him vanish again.

  Someone bumps her elbow.

  Someone laughs too close.

  The music doesn't end. It never ends.

  It only changes shape.

  Then the girl appeared.

  Lino Ilagan

  They sit inside a mall restaurant that feels like a simulation of comfort. Music loops. Air smells of garlic, fried sugar, and a forgotten war. Fake wood paneling. Real exhaustion. Lino's plate is half-gone. Chicken adobo swimming in regret. Sarah's is cleaner. She eats like the world might end mid-bite. James stares at a sandwich that is trying to unmake him.

  Plastic cutlery clicks like soft gunfire.

  Lino chews. Swallows. Speaks without looking up.

  "Update on Pol?"

  Sarah wipes her mouth. Not out of delicacy, but out of protocol. Her voice slices clean through the din.

  "Still under surveillance. Showed up at a Barangay Consultation yesterday. Crowd was loud. Tense. Someone threw a sandal. Session ended early."

  She sips her soda. It fizzes like static.

  If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.

  "Binondo Heights people were there too. Stood around. Looked threatening. Did nothing. Too many cameras. Too many uniforms. Sharks sniffing glass."

  Lino nods slowly. His fork hangs mid-air.

  "They're getting nervous," he says. "They'd crucify him just for the symbolism. Even if he stays quiet."

  Sarah finishes chewing. Swallows like closing a case file.

  He turns to Sarah, tone sharpening like a pencil ready to stab.

  "Push him. WPP. Today. I don't care if he wants it. I care if he breathes tomorrow."

  Sarah nods. Picks up her iced tea. Drinks like someone baptizing their insides.

  She continues.

  "The mole in the PNP," she says, tone flat as pavement. "The one you flagged."

  Lino lifts his eyes.

  "We have him. He's in a box. He's ready to squeal. Prosecutors are circling like dogs with degrees."

  "Name?"

  "Not yet. He's withholding. Wants a deal. He could be legit. Or he could be a red herring dressed as a witness."

  Lino rubs the bridge of his nose. The mall light hums louder, as if mocking them.

  James finally finds the courage to speak, eyes still on the uneaten half of his sandwich.

  "So, wait. If the thugs were there but didn't move, does that mean they're waiting for permission? Or like... a signal?"

  Sarah looks at him. Not unkindly. Not kindly either.

  "Could mean they're cowards. Could mean they're professionals. Could mean they already knew it didn't matter."

  James nods solemnly. Takes a bite. Immediately regrets it.

  Lino watches James continue to struggle with the sandwich like it's a cursed relic. Tomato slices slip out with the slow dignity of resignation. Mayo oozes. Bread buckles. The whole thing is losing structural integrity.

  He doesn't let it finish dying.

  "Navotas. What do we have?" Lino asks, calm and clear, the voice of someone who already knows there's rot but still wants to hear it spoken.

  James startles slightly, swallows the lump in his throat instead of the sandwich. Puts it down. Wipes his hands like they touched guilt.

  "Uh... right. The fire. We've got a full report. It's confirmed arson. No doubt. The investigators are... almost impressed."

  Sarah raises an eyebrow without moving any other muscle.

  "They used something potent. Some kind of industrial reactant. Vaporized Fire Engine 124. Not burned. Gone. Like it was never there. Like it dreamed it existed and then woke up."

  Lino nods once. He's already in the warehouse. He's already breathing smoke.

  "Warehouse is registered to a small-time Filchi businesswoman. We got her talking. She admitted she leased the place out, off the books. No papers. No IDs. Just cash. Always a full year in advance."

  "Too clean," Sarah says. Not opinion. Diagnosis.

  "Yeah. She said the tenant was introduced by a 'mutual friend.' That guy's now in the Middle East, evading taxes and possibly gravity. Our liaison can't reach him."

  "Dead end?" Lino asks.

  James nods, then grinned. "Mostly. But the cams gave us something, something good."

  He opens his tablet. Swipes. Doesn't show it. Doesn't need to.

  "Multiple men. Leaving the warehouse. Faces covered. Not digitally. Just scarves. Glasses. Low hats. They scatter, melt into traffic, disappear into the crowd like cigarette smoke."

  Sarah sips her iced tea, eyes half-lidded. Listening like a hunter watches brush for movement.

  "We tracked nearby vehicles. Analysts ran elimination patterns. Cross-referenced exits, timing, proximity, process of elimination. We identified cars they likely got into."

  "And?" Lino asks.

  "All registered under shell companies. Fake owners. Fake addresses. Real engines."

  Sarah leans forward slightly.

  "This morning, cross-referencing those shells, we linked them to a group orbiting Gino Sanchez. Former PNP. Special ops. Discharged for behavioral instability."

  "In English," Sarah says, voice cool and razor-thin, "he's a lunatic."

  "Yeah," James says. "And he hangs out with other lunatics. His old unit. They've been spotted at Binondo Heights and a few other properties owned by a guy named Jiro Lim Uy."

  "No legal ties between them?" Lino asks.

  James shakes his head. "Not in SEC. Not in BIR. Not in any traceable system. Jiro's clean. But it smells like bleach."

  "He's the project manager for Binondo Heights," James continues. "His company's part of a loose corporate net. At the top of that net? His uncle Calvin Uy."

  Lino's eyes narrow like shutters closing.

  "The firetruck was the tip," James says. "It's deeper. Bigger. But we still don't have the paperwork to touch Jiro."

  Lino leans back. His plate is empty. His mind is not.

  Then James adds, quieter. "The traffic cams got scrubbed. Again. Same as the last two."

  Lino glances at him. "Good call pulling them out early."

  James brightens for half a second. It's his first sunlight all day.

  "Yeah. Sent it to your friend Maria. She says this time it's different. The hacker. Different code. Sloppy. No finesse. Not the same entity."

  "Copycat?" Sarah asks, tone unreadable.

  "Maybe. Or a third party. Or noise. Maria says no fingerprints like last time. Just static."

  Lino nods again. Thoughtful. Calm. Already moving forward inside.

  "Keep tracing. Connect the noise. See what shakes loose."

  James nods, reaches again for the sandwich. Stops. Just looks at it.

  "Permission to leave the sandwich behind, sir?"

  Lino allows himself a thin, private smile.

  "Granted."

  Amy Rivera

  Amy doesn't know when the girl appeared.

  One moment she was dancing alone, the throb of synths rattling her ribs, the tequila humming behind her eyes. The crowd was a blur. Shirtless men slick with sweat, women in sequins and mesh, all spinning in a dreamlike rhythm under violet strobes and falling glitter. Hands in the air. Tongues out. Someone screaming joy into the fog.

  Then...

  There she was.

  The girl.

  She wasn't dancing, not at first. Just watching. Not from afar, but close. Too close to have arrived without Amy noticing, yet there she stood, half in shadow, half cast in the flash of a pink spotlight. Her hair was long and dark, like ink caught mid-spill. Her eyes unreadable, sharp, cutting through the music like a scalpel through gauze.

  She didn't smile.

  Not until Amy met her gaze and blinked, drunk but not stupid, her lips parting just slightly in surprise. Then the girl tilted her head, just a little, like she'd been waiting for Amy to see her.

  And smiled.

  Not the smile of someone impressed. Not the smile of someone polite.

  The smile of someone already inside the building of your life, and now just walking calmly down the hallway.

  Amy didn't speak. She couldn't.

  The girl reached out, not touching yet, but offering, one hand extended, gloved in rings and red nail polish chipped at the tips. Amy took it without thinking, and the girl pulled her forward, into a space on the dance floor that felt suddenly more private than it had any right to be.

  They began to move.

  The girl didn't grind, didn't shove her hips into Amy like the others had. No. Her movements were slow, sinuous, hypnotic. She danced like someone with nothing to prove, like someone dancing in a mirror only she could see.

  Amy matched her. Found the beat. Let go.

  Their hands met, then clasped. The girl leaned in close, lips grazing Amy's ear, not speaking, just there. Her perfume was citrus and smoke. Her fingers slid up Amy's bare arm, and the electricity was immediate. Real. Not fantasy. Not drunk invention.

  Then, a whisper, finally, just audible under the music:

  "You're too tense. Let it go."

  The words weren't advice. They were instruction. Like magic words.

  Amy obeyed.

  They moved together now, closer, a closed circuit. The rest of the club fell away. The strobes flared, the beat dropped. Someone spilled a drink nearby. A fight may have broken out in the corner. Amy didn't care. Couldn't care.

  The girl kissed her.

  Soft, not hesitant. Not a question.

  Amy kissed back.

  It wasn't rushed. It wasn't desperate. It was like falling slowly, piece by piece, into something warm and inevitable.

  When they finally broke apart, the girl licked her bottom lip like tasting a new cocktail, then leaned in again.

  "I'm Raven."

  Amy nodded, breathless. "Amy."

  Raven didn't respond with words. She simply tugged Amy by the hand, out of the crush of dancers, through a break in the crowd, past a curtain of dangling beads near the back.

  Amy didn't notice they were climbing stairs until they were halfway up.

  Raven held her hand now, not pulling, just guiding. Amy followed, dazed but willing, as they ascended a hidden stairwell carved into the concrete like a vein. The club's thunder dulled with every step, replaced by the soft buzz of fluorescent hallway lights above. They passed a bouncer seated beside an unmarked door. He barely glanced up. Raven didn't speak, she tapped something into a keypad mounted beside another steel door. A small, discreet beep. Then the door opened.

  Amy barely had time to register the sound of it locking behind them.

  Inside: a room washed in low, ambient light, flickering in hues of plum and dimmed gold. Velvet curtains hung against matte black walls. A sofa, huge, soft, built for collapse, waited in the center. There was a drink tray in the corner, untouched. A speaker played something wordless, slow, sensual, like jazz submerged in water. It wasn't loud. It didn't have to be.

  Amy turned, suddenly sober enough to notice the silence.

  "How..." she began.

  Raven answered by placing a finger on her lips. Not harsh. Just certain.

  It was cooler up here. Quieter. The world below was loud and urgent. Here, it was sacred. Not in the religious sense, but in the way that things hidden from the crowd always are. Amy looked around the room again and realized it wasn't the kind of place people stumbled into. It had been prepared. Maintained. Remembered.

  Raven stepped forward, slowly. Her hands rested at Amy's waist again, but now with gravity. A different kind of intent. She leaned in and kissed her. This time slower, softer, like language. There was no rushing. No audience. No chaos to blend into. Just touch. Raven's lips moved against hers with practiced warmth, with patience. With a rhythm designed to unmake.

  Amy let herself sink into it.

  Raven pushed her gently onto the sofa, following her down, hands mapping her with a new precision. Not like before. This was deeper. A different register of closeness. Amy's breath caught. The lights flickered above, responding to something. Motion, or mood, or whim.

  Clothing slipped off in stages. Not flung, not dramatic. Just loosened, peeled, rearranged. Amy's tank top lifted slowly, exposing skin to air thick with perfume and the salt of breathing. Raven's hands were sure now, cradling her side, tracing the edge of her ribcage as if reading a map. Amy's back arched to meet the touch. The couch behind her was cold, grounding. Raven in front of her, warm and infinite.

  They kissed again. It was deeper now. Not desperate, but deliberate. Not performance, but privacy turned inside out. Raven's tongue danced with hers, lips parting and returning like waves. Amy let herself fall into it. Her body answering before her thoughts could catch up. There was rhythm here, yes. But not the club's rhythm. This was slower. More sacred. Less beat, more breath.

  Hands moved. Amy's own now found skin, curves, the smooth slide of back and hip and thigh. She memorized Raven by touch. She found the small places, behind the ear, the line of her jaw, the dip in her collarbone, and kissed them like secrets. Raven shivered at one of them. Amy smiled. A tiny moment of power, shared. Then Raven pressed into her again, mouths colliding with more heat.

  The music played on. A long, slow heartbeat.

  They moved together on the couch, a choreography built on improvisation and trust. The room was built to keep secrets. It asked no questions. The velvet curtains didn't stir. The lights dimmed just slightly. There was only skin and breath and breathlessness. There was only now.

  When it was done, if it ever ended, Amy lay back, Raven beside her, their hands still touching. The room hadn't changed, but something in her had. Not everything. But enough to feel the weight of silence again.

  The air in the room had thickened, not with heat or perfume, but with the presence of two people who had already decided they didn't need to explain themselves.

  Amy sat up first. Her back against the armrest, one leg folded beneath her, the other dangling off the edge like a careless afterthought. Raven was perched at the other end, cigarette in hand, gaze unfixed, like she was watching a memory unravel across the wall.

  Neither of them spoke for a while. The silence wasn't companionable. It wasn't tense either. It was sovereign. Each woman held her own corner of the room like territory. Claimed, but not conquered.

  Raven took a slow drag, then offered the cigarette. Amy waved it away.

  "I'd rather taste the air."

  "Suit yourself," Raven said, exhaling toward the ceiling. "The air tastes like velvet and someone else's regret."

  "I like regret. It leaves a clean burn."

  Raven tilted her head. Not a smile. Just the beginning of one. She turned toward Amy fully for the first time since sitting up.

  "You don't seem like someone who lingers."

  Amy shrugged. "I don't linger. I loop."

  "Same place, different day?"

  "No. Same question. Different angles."

  That got a smirk out of Raven. Not warm. Not cold. Just real.

  "Why were you here, really?" she asked. "Don't say to dance."

  "I wasn't going to. I was here to think." Amy leaned back. "But then thinking got loud. And then you."

  "You think too clean to belong in a place like this."

  Amy looked at her. "You touch too gently to act like you don't care."

  Raven turned her face away at that. Not offended. Just choosing not to respond.

  "Do you like saying things like that?" she said after a beat.

  "No," Amy replied. "They come out on their own."

  Raven stood then, slow and casual, but not aimless. The cigarette disappeared into a nearby ashtray.

  "I'm getting drinks," she said.

  Amy didn't move. "What are the options?"

  Raven looked over her shoulder, dark hair falling like ink down her back.

  "Me. Or something less interesting."

  Amy didn't answer. She didn't need to.

  Raven dressed up, walked out, door closing with a soft mechanical sigh.

  The red lights still pulsed faintly from beneath the couch. The room, emptied of motion, seemed to breathe in her place. Amy leaned her head back, closed her eyes, let the blood settle.

  And then...

  A sound.

  Faint. Muffled. But real.

  Her eyes snapped open. She held still. Listened again.

  Voices. Two. Male. Arguing, low, sharp, purposeful. Not club noise, not distant conversation. These were close. Just beyond the wall. Her head turned. Her eyes adjusted.

  A vent.

  She stood and approached it slowly. Metal grating, old and dusty. The building must've been repurposed, modern wiring laced through an older skeleton.

  The voices filtered in like ghosts through a rusted throat of metal.

  Amy lay flat now, one cheek pressed to the cold floor, her phone trembling in her palm. Every breath she took was deliberate, silent. Below the whirring fan, two men spoke, one with the frantic rhythm of someone falling, the other with the unhurried stillness of someone watching the fall and wondering if it would be artful. He recognized Jiro's voice as the manic one from meeting recordings her dad gave her.

  Jiro was spiraling. His words stumbled over each other like drunks.

  "I need this gone," he snarled. "Everything. The PNP guy, the construction worker, the fire, everything. Scrubbed. The NBI's already on it. You think they stop once they start? You think they don't see the connections?"

  No reply yet. Just a pause. Measured. Almost annoyed.

  Jiro filled the silence with desperation.

  "The cop's in custody. He's gonna talk, I know it. They've got him in some air-conditioned hole drinking taxpayer coffee and snitching on everyone who's ever shaken his hand. And the worker... he's under NBI protection in Tondo. Slum rats everywhere, and they've got him tucked in like royalty. Only a matter of time till they get him to talk as well"

  Another pause.

  "I can't afford this. I can't. You've helped before. Quezon. Tondo. You wiped the traffic cams. Clean. Nothing left but smoke."

  Then a shift in tone. Accusation.

  "You chose not to help with Navotas. That was deliberate."

  And then, the other voice spoke. Cool. Even. Soft as silk around a garrote.

  "Navotas bored me."

  "What?"

  "I did the first two because your uncle had something I wanted. Intel. And a box of mandarins from a farm I like in Jiangxi. Not the usual kind. The good kind. He knew."

  Jiro's disbelief was a full-body noise.

  "You're fucking with me. Fruit?"

  "Yes."

  "Mandarins?"

  "They're not just mandarins," the voice said, a trace of actual warmth curling at the edges. "They're rare. The skin's thin, the juice is almost floral. It's heavenly. You wouldn't understand."

  "You're insane," Jiro snapped. "You'll erase two entire surveillance networks for a box of fruit and some gossip, but I ask you for one and suddenly you're some philosopher of caution?"

  "No. I didn't come here to handle this," the man said softly. "I came because your uncle said you had something useful to give me."

  A beat. Then:

  "Evidently you don't have, not even fruit."

  Then something cracked. Jiro's voice dropped into a sick kind of pleading.

  "I'll pay. I've got money. I've got safe houses, networks, clean routes. You like boys? Girls? I can get you both. You like land? Votes? Government contracts? Name it. Just tell me what you want..."

  "No."

  The reply was louder this time.

  Not shouted. Just undeniable.

  "Your uncle buys loyalty. I don't sell it. You insult me by thinking I'm interested in your crumbs."

  Jiro's voice cracked like wet glass. "What kind of Chinoy even are you, if you're unwilling to help a brother out? You don't even speak Hokkien."

  Silence.

  Then Mandarin, each word a scalpel:

  "我不需要你的钱，不需要你微不足道的权力，我更不需要你的认同感。"

  (I don't need your money, don't need what little power you have, I especially don't need your acceptance.)

  Back to English, now colder than before.

  "You think we're connected by accident of birth. We're not. We are not brothers. We are not cousins. We are not even comrades in capitalism. You are a noise. I am a filter."

  Jiro's voice slipped toward begging.

  "My uncle said you were the best. He said you handle things. You wave a hand and it all gets fixed. That's your whole thing."

  "I choose what I handle."

  A pause.

  "And I choose not to handle you."

  "But I'm exposed. They're closing in. Don't you get it?"

  "I do," the voice said, flat. "That's why I'm leaving."

  Jiro's final plea was small, almost childlike. "Please."

  The reply was nearly tender.

  But not kind.

  "Don't call me again."

  Then footsteps. A door opening. A chair creaking once.

  Amy blinked.

  She didn't know who the man was.

  She didn't know why fruit mattered.

  But somewhere far below, the club's beat picked up again.

  And in the crawlspace above, something far larger had been silenced.

  The door opened with a low hiss.

  Raven returned carrying two glass cups that steamed at the top. One fizzing, the other amber and quiet. She didn't say what was in them, didn't ask what Amy preferred. She just handed one over and sat back down.

  Amy took a sip. It tasted like ginger, smoke, and something bitter trying very hard not to be.

  "You were gone a while," Amy said.

  "I had to be persuasive."

  "Did it involve violence?"

  "Worse," Raven replied. "A smile."

  They drank. Quietly. The music from below had shifted, a slower track now, distorted vocals stretched over low synths like voices caught underwater. The red lights buzzed overhead in their dying rhythm. Amy leaned back against the couch. Her dizziness had dulled to something bearable. The voices in the vent were gone. Whatever she had overheard had burned itself out.

  "What's your real name?" Amy asked, not looking at her.

  Raven shrugged. "That depends on how long you'll remember tonight."

  "I tend to remember the parts I'm not supposed to."

  "Then Raven will do."

  Amy let that settle.

  For a moment, the room felt almost normal. Not soft, not tender, nothing that easy. But real. Like two strangers sharing the same cliff edge, looking out at different parts of the fall.

  Raven finished her drink and stood.

  "No goodbye?"

  "I don't do goodbyes," Raven said. "I do leaving."

  Amy didn't argue.

  She watched her go, that liquid motion through the door again, like slipping out of a story before it decided how to end her.

  Amy stayed there for a few more minutes, listening to the low hum of the room. Then she got up, straightened her clothes, slipped her phone back into her pocket, and followed the trail out.

  Downstairs, the club had only gotten messier. Bodies pressed against bodies. Lights flickered with the stuttering pulse of too much electricity and not enough reason.

  She found Sandro in the back corner of the club, half-swallowed by velvet shadows and strobe light. His shirt was still gone, long forgotten, his pants pulled down barely holding on, his skin slick with sweat and someone else's glitter. One hand gripped the wall behind him for balance, the other tangled in the hair of a man kneeling in front of him. Intent, hungry, unbothered by the crowd.

  Another man was behind Sandro, shirtless, teeth grazing his shoulder, hands wandering around his waist and below without shame or hesitation.

  Sandro's head was tipped back in ecstasy, mouth open, eyes closed like he was dreaming something religious.

  The music throbbed around them. Slow and filthy. And the air smelled like cologne, tequila, and heat.

  For a moment, Amy stood there. Watching.

  Not in judgment.

  Just in quiet, sharp disbelief.

  Then Sandro opened his eyes for the briefest second, and met hers across the chaos.

  A lazy smile bloomed on his face, as if to say, oh, hey, like this was nothing. Like she'd caught him fixing his tie.

  Amy didn't wave.

  She turned and walked away.

  The night was thick with secrets.

  And this wasn't one of hers.

  rating.

  If it whispered something strange into your ear, leave a comment.

  Especially those.

  See you in the next room.

  Do you think there were enough clues in the previous chapters to guess who Jiro was talking to? Or is it still too vague?