The man stirred at last, his consciousness rising like a sodden corpse from a blackened lake. Memories, fractured and incoherent, floated to the surface—shards of light refracted in a stormed glass. His skull throbbed with each beat of his pulse, as though iron hammers struck relentlessly against the inside of his cranium.
A groan escaped his parched lips, low and ragged. Blinking, he found no solace in the gloom—for the darkness was not mere absence of light but a living substance, thick, suffocating, as if the shadows themselves exhaled.
His wrists and ankles screamed with the pressure of coarse hemp ropes, each fibre grinding into raw flesh with cruel insistence. He tugged once, twice, thrice, but the bindings refused concession. The air about him was heavy, damp, metallic; it smelt of rust, mildew, and despair—like a tomb where iron and memory decayed together.
A sudden chill licked the length of his spine. Not the ordinary shiver of discomfort, but that marrow-deep dread which creeps uninvited and burrows like frost beneath the skin. He held his breath, straining to pierce the silence—until it came.
A sound. A rhythm. Footsteps.
Measured, deliberate, inexorable. They echoed through the chamber like the ticking of an executioner's clock.
Then, with a rasp sharp enough to slice through bone, came the metallic convulsion of a lock undone. The sound reverberated like the overture to some baleful symphony. Hinges wailed in complaint as the door pushed ajar, spilling into the gloom a shard of pallid light. It cleaved the darkness like a blade, casting ragged shadows that leapt and contorted across the walls—phantoms summoned unwillingly to dance.
From that aperture emerged a figure, framed in the half-light. Tall. Unyielding. His silhouette rigid as an obelisk. He advanced without hesitation, each footfall a note struck upon the cold concrete, a mechanical percussion devoid of humanity.
The bound man squinted, his unadjusted eyes flinching from the sudden illumination. The stranger's features remained veiled, faceless yet inescapably oppressive, like the outline of a predator glimpsed through smoke.
When the voice came, it was glacial, deliberate—cutting through the tension as cleanly as steel through silk.
"It is time."
No more, no less. The words bore the weight of a gavel struck by an unseen judge, the finality of a curtain's fall.
The prisoner's chest convulsed; his heart thundered in frenzied percussion, an erratic drumbeat of terror. He swallowed hard, his throat desert-dry, his words a hoarse rasp dragged from within.
"Time… for what?"
The figure did not answer. Instead, he tilted his head, a slow, measured gesture—a predator's curiosity, detached, almost mocking. The shadow-cloaked face revealed nothing, yet the silence itself grew unbearable, pressing against the walls, pressing against the prisoner's lungs, until breath itself became treachery.
In that instant, amidst the dripping silence and the stench of rust, the man realised the truth: he was no longer merely captive. He was a character ensnared in another's theatre, cast in a tragedy whose script he had never read. The stage was set, the curtain already risen—and he was wholly, woefully unprepared.
On the twenty-fifth of December 2042, within the alabaster chambers of the Shin-Zhang Corporation, Madam Di-Xian stood motionless before the wide portholes. The sunlight, a molten river of gold, spilled across the glass, suffusing her silhouette in austere radiance. Beyond lay the metropolis of Zhaoxian, a city of spires and veins of chrome, humming with the pulse of commerce and sin. She turned at last, the hem of her robe whispering against marble like silk upon a blade, her gaze fastening upon the two figures before her—Agent-90, whose expression was implacable as obsidian, and Roy, whose eyes betrayed the heat of human fire.
"You are both assigned a mission," she intoned, her voice glacial and deliberate, each syllable falling like a gavel's strike. From within her sleeve, she withdrew a photograph, sliding it across the obsidian desk. "This man—Zubaid Hossain—in his mid-thirties, a crime journalist of irreproachable integrity. He vanished whilst pursuing his work at Kumortuli."
The image was of Zubaid Hossain—a man in his early thirties, with a sharp jawline softened by a trimmed beard, intelligent eyes framed by thin spectacles, and a hint of a dimple etched into his left cheek. He wore a buttoned shirt, sleeves rolled up as if he were always ready to work.
Roy leaned forward, his brow furrowed, his lips tightening as though tasting doubt upon the air. "How did he go missing?" he asked, his tone sharpened by suspicion.
Madam Di-Xian did not immediately reply; instead, she fixed him with a stare, the kind that stripped pretence like bark from a tree. Her features, carved by discipline, betrayed neither warmth nor malice—only severity. "No," she said at last, her voice low, deliberate. "He was kidnapped."
Roy's breath caught in his throat. "Kidnapped by whom?" he pressed.
She inhaled deeply, the sound like a drawn blade, and then spoke with venomous certainty: "By Samir Faiz Rahmani."
The very name seemed to curdle the air.
Samir F. Rahmani: the political jackal of Glaciergrave Isle. When Wajidul Hasina grasped power with her iron claws, Samir became her fixer, her phantom enforcer, her dark right hand. He funnelled billions through spectral offshore accounts, forged fraudulent "development" schemes that hollowed the land, and extinguished rivals with assassins hired like hounds at a hunt. To Hasina, he was indispensable; to the people, he was a phantom tyrant, the architect of their shackles.
But Samir was more than profiteer—he was a geopolitical broker. A covert ally of JAW (Jawothlin Analysis Wing), he traded his nation's soul for weapons, predictive AIs, and dominion over Nin-Ran-Gi's fractured cyber-infrastructure. Immunity was his armour; monopoly, his crown. His arsenal was not forged of steel, but of blackmail, debt, and dependency—a web so finely spun that those caught in it scarcely realised they were prey.
His ledger of crimes was not mere ink, but blood:
He engineered mass food shortages, reducing the populace to supplicants grovelling for ration cards.
He orchestrated cyber-drug pipelines, drowning Glaciergrave Isle in addiction.
He loosed paramilitary "development units" to purge dissent with fire and blade.
He butchered the Nawami League's rivals, leaving rivers to carry their silence.
He sold black-market weapons and intelligence to JAW, lubricating both Hasina's tyranny and Modi's imperial ambitions.
He embezzled the Glaciergrave Isle National Bank (GINB), swelling his coffers with 36,865 million ₴Z (Zhenya).
Roy's eyes widened, his hand curling into a fist against the desk. "Madam!" he exclaimed, his voice trembling with a mixture of awe and fury. "Zubaid Hossain was the very man who risked his life to give us intelligence on Hasina's fascist regime!"
Madam Di-Xian inclined her head, her expression as unreadable as a mask. "Yes," she said with chilling calm. "And Samir intends to silence him. Samir himself shall preside at the congress with the Nawami League's inner circle. And remember—his tendrils reach even into the High Chaebols."
Roy's jaw tightened. "Even so, Zubaid holds truth enough to break Samir's edifice. He is a man who does not flinch before death itself—an honest witness in a world that devours them."
"If we kill Samir," Roy added gravely, "we shatter precedent. We defy law. The consequence may be severe."
Madam Di-Xian stepped forward, her shadow falling long across the marble. "I care not for consequence," she said, voice a blade dipped in frost. Her gaze flickered toward Agent-90, whose silence was as deep as a well.
"Nor do I, Madam," Agent-90 replied, his tone flat, his expression unchanged, yet his words striking with the finality of stone against stone.
"Yes," Madam Di-Xian whispered, her voice tightening with fervour. "We do not bend our will to the High Chaebols. We obey a higher oath—the oath of humanity, oath of justice, not the hollow decrees of men who gorge upon the world's marrow."
She straightened, her robes whispering with her motion. "Ready yourselves. You depart at once—to Kumortuli."
And there it was: Kumortuli.
Not merely a district, but a living kaleidoscope of tradition and futurism, a palimpsest where clay met circuitry. Known as the "City of Clay and Culture," it shimmered beside an eco-designed riverfront, a place where ancient hands still shaped idols from mud while augmented reality lent those idols their spectral breath.
By day, the narrow alleys were alive with artisans—some chiselling clay, others commanding robotic arms that sculpted with inhuman precision. Studios of glass and graphene bamboo revealed their crafts to the public, while holographic displays invited passers-by to sculpt with phantom clay of light.
Dome-shaped galleries married ancient sculpture with 3D-printed marvels.
Floating cafés drifted upon the river, their bioluminescent lanterns bobbing like captured stars.
Streets paved with self-cleaning tiles glowed with soft strips of embedded light, turning every step into a verse of poetry.
A grand plaza erupted in festivals, whilst digital billboards exalted human artistry.
A colossal amphitheatre held sculptors—both human and machine—engaged in duels of creation.
A holographic monument stood tall, honouring the artisans of centuries past, their legacy burning bright in photons.
At dusk, the riverside pathways glimmered like veins of quicksilver, boats of glass and neon drifting upon the water. Festivals such as Durga Puja lit the city like a furnace of gods—colossal idols alive with light, each step of their dance narrated by interactive storytelling woven through air itself.
Kumortuli was not city—it was a testament. A hymn of art and innovation, a dream sung by clay and light, a place where history's soil clasped hands with tomorrow's algorithms.
And into this dream, Roy and Agent-90 had cast their gaze, knowing full well they entered not only a city, but a labyrinth of shadows.
The air inside the dim-lit chamber was thick, oppressive, laden with the mingled scent of Nihari's spiced richness and the acrid undertone of human despair. Overhead, a weary fluorescent tube stammered in its duty, sputtering its pale radiance in faltering intervals, painting the walls with shadows that seemed to breathe and contract like sentient phantoms. The cracked concrete bore stains of time and trespass, as if the very room remembered every cry, every confession, every silence imposed by terror.
Into this sepulchral chamber, Zubaid Hossain was dragged—bruised, dishevelled, wrists bound cruelly behind him, his feet scraping along the grit-strewn floor. He resembled not merely a prisoner, but a gladiator defeated before the arena's sands, led not to contest but to humiliation.
At the centre, beneath the jaundiced light, stood a long mahogany table. Polished to such sinister perfection that it gleamed like a pool of darkened blood, it anchored the space with authority. At its head sat Samir Faiz Rahmani—his presence less man than institution, a weight in the room that needed no introduction.
His kurta-pajama, immaculate and unsullied, seemed almost to mock the bruised figure before him. His silvered hair, combed back with martial exactitude, crowned a visage where sternness and cruelty had long since forged an unholy pact. A neatly-trimmed beard framed his mouth—an executioner's mask disguised as statesman's dignity. And his eyes, magnified by rimless glasses, studied Zubaid with the patience of a vulture, the gaze of one who knew time itself was his accomplice.
Before him lay a brass plate—the remnants of Nihari glistening like liquid amber, its aroma coiling with insidious intimacy through the air. He dabbed his lips with a handkerchief white as unfallen snow, folding it with meticulous precision, as though tidiness could erase the chaos of his soul.
"Ah, Mr Hossain," he murmured, his voice velvet stretched over steel, smooth yet edged, a dagger swathed in cloth. "You must be famished after so… arduous a journey. Come—eat with me. Nihari is best consumed whilst it yet holds its warmth."
Zubaid, though battered, straightened, dragging from within himself the last embers of dignity. His eyes flared, unbent, his voice emerging raw but unyielding. "I am not hungry." The syllables struck like flint against stone.
Samir's brow lifted, the faintest twitch of amusement mingling with irritation. "Oh then," he replied with studied softness, leaning back, his fingers busy in their ritual of cleanliness. The handkerchief drank the grease from his hands as though it were drinking guilt itself. "You are wondering why you are here…" He clasped his hands together, leaning forward, the predator crouching within his civility.
"It is simple," he continued, his tone turning almost cordial, as though proposing a business contract. "A task. A modest one, really. In return, you shall receive one hundred and forty-nine million, seven hundred and eighty thousand dollars. A fortune vast enough to transform your life, your family's life, into paradise incarnate."
Zubaid's lips curled into a bitter sneer, his bruised face suddenly alight with defiance. "Why would I take orders from you, Samir Faiz Rahmani?" His voice, though hoarse, rang like broken glass upon marble. "You—who hoards wealth like a carrion beast, who licks Hasina's boots like a starved dog. Do you not choke upon your shame?"
The words detonated like thunder. Samir's carefully-manicured calm fractured in an instant. His palm slammed down upon the mahogany with such force the table quivered, the sound reverberating like a cannon-shot through the hollow chamber. His eyes ignited with controlled fury, flames caged but not diminished.
One of his colossal bodyguards, obedient to the unspoken signal, lunged forward. A fist like a sledgehammer collided with Zubaid's face. Bone crunched, blood sprang forth in a red rivulet down his cheek, dripping as though time itself wept for him.
Samir rose, slowly, deliberately—the executioner donning his hood. His shadow loomed monstrously, stretching across the table like a spectral noose. "I told you," he hissed, his voice stripped of velvet, now iron. "You will work for me. Refuse—and your family will bear the price."
Zubaid's head snapped back, his eyes blazing with pain but never submission. "Yes—you drag my family into this because you fear me. You hope chains on them will silence me. But I will not bow—not to you, not to your threats." His voice was venom itself, his will a torch in the darkness.
Samir's jaw clenched, his composure a mask of volcanic rage. He strode forward and seized Zubaid by the hair, yanking his head back, their faces a breath apart. His eyes blazed like twin furnaces, his breath hot and fetid against Zubaid's torn lips.
"Because of you—because of men like you—we lost Hasina, our eternal flame! She dared conspire with outsiders, dared betray the Dominion. Do you think I shall permit you to do the same?"
With sudden violence, he released him. Zubaid slumped forward, gasping, only to be met with another slap, a crack that echoed like a gunshot, painting his cheek crimson with the tyrant's handprint.
"Take him away!" Samir's voice lashed through the room like a whip.
The guards dragged Zubaid across the floor, his feet leaving trails of defiance in dust. Bloodied though he was, he twisted his head back, his eyes twin lanterns of resistance. "You will fall, Samir! Mark my words—you will fall!"
Samir did not answer. He merely stood still, framed in the flicker of the stammering tube light, his expression unreadable, his silence a judgment more ominous than words. He raised the immaculate handkerchief once more, wiping a speck invisible to all but himself, as if to erase not dirt but memory. Then, with practised indifference, he resumed his seat, a sovereign upon his throne of decay.
The night swept low across the cityscape of Kumortuli, its shimmering riverfront alive with bioluminescent reflections and kaleidoscopic neon that danced like auroras upon the waters. The alleys throbbed with life—tourists marvelled at holographic sculptures, artisans moulded clay under the glow of augmented displays, and the district itself pulsed as though the city were an organism breathing in colours and exhaling history.
Yet amidst this carnival of artistry, two shadows moved in silence. Agent-90 and Roy blended into the ebb and flow, their disguises unremarkable—yet their eyes, sharpened by purpose, missed nothing. Their mirrored spectacles caught the glimmers of neon, disguising their gaze whilst amplifying every detail.
Alvi's words still resonated in Roy's memory, precise as a needle. "Codename in intelligence circles: The Velvet Viper—because he strikes with wealth and subtlety, never openly."
Roy's lips curled faintly, though the smile was grim. He whispered as they passed beneath a canopy of graphene lanterns, their glow painting him in hues of blue and violet. "Velvet Viper… Trust the underworld to romanticise a parasite. Cloak poison in silk, and suddenly he's a gentleman."
Agent-90 did not look at him. His gaze traced the edges of a pavilion where three guards loitered, their stances relaxed but their eyes restless. His voice, clipped and surgical, slid into the night. "Romantic names do not soften venoms. They only delay the victim's awareness that he has been bitten."
Roy smirked, shoving his hands into his coat pockets as though they were two strangers idly strolling. His tone, though hushed, carried a steel beneath its jest. "Still—wealth as a weapon. That's almost admirable, isn't it? To corrupt not with blades, but with promises of paradise. Temptation is the cleanest shackle."
"Clean?" Agent-90's head turned slightly, his mirrored lenses catching the light of a floating drone as it hummed past. His expression was unreadable, yet his words cut like glass. "No shackle is clean. Chains are chains, whether forged of gold or iron. The Velvet Viper is no less a butcher than Viram. He only has the good manners to wash his hands after slaughter."
They moved deeper into the arteries of the city, weaving through stalls of sculptors, their clay idols half-traditional, half-digitised—Durga goddesses that flickered with holographic flames, lions that roared with artificial soundscapes.
Roy's eyes flicked to one of the idols, the goddess raising her trident skyward. His jaw tightened, the faintest muscle twitch betraying the thought he didn't voice. He murmured at last, "Zubaid Hossain risked everything to expose men like him. If Rahmani believes he can erase that voice, he'll soon find silence has teeth."
Agent-90 finally glanced at him, his face impassive but his body language a stillness that felt like judgement. "Emotion again. Dangerous currency, Roy. Do not confuse vengeance with mission. We are not poets—we are scalpels. The Viper bleeds when we cut precisely, not when we rage blindly."
Roy gave a short, humourless laugh, ruffling his hair as if to shake off the heaviness of the moment. "You'd make a dreadful drinking companion, 90. But…"—his tone softened into a razor of resolve—"…you're right. No indulgence. No mistakes."
"Hey, listen up, we split you go find Zubaid where he is and I handle Samir" says Agent-90
"Okay! But before that there are JAW among them right?"
"Yes!" he reply without hesitation, "Now Go I handle the situation"
"Roger that!" he walks away leaving him among the crowd.
He paused as a convoy of black cars swept down the boulevard, their engines low, their chrome gleaming with predatory grace. Inside, the silhouettes of Samir's enforcers could be glimpsed—men in sharp suits, their eyes hidden but their intent written in the set of their jaws.
He adjusted his gloves with meticulous precision, his body language so controlled it seemed mechanical. "Then let us not hunt as lions. Lions roar. We strike as vipers do—silent, unseen, inevitable
Zubaid Hossain sat hunched against a rusted chair bolted to the floor, his wrists shackled with iron that gnawed into his skin like carnivorous teeth. His face, already mottled with bruises, carried the pale lustre of exhaustion—yet his eyes still burned, luminous as embers refusing to be extinguished. His chest rose and fell with ragged defiance, every breath like an oath hurled against despair.
A single bulb swung overhead, its light wavering like a dying star. With every oscillation, the shadows danced grotesquely—elongated, twisted, monstrous. They seemed to mock him, as though the darkness itself were his gaoler.
His head dropped forward for a moment, sweat dripping from his brow onto the floor where old stains of blood had already written their silent testimonies. He murmured, hoarse but resolute, "Riya… forgive me if my path ends here." His words were not despairing, but whispered with the solemnity of a vow—a man offering his suffering as scripture.
Suddenly, the iron door creaked. Its hinges shrieked like a beast awakened. From the threshold, Samir's guards entered, shadows made flesh. Their boots struck the concrete with mechanical cadence, each step reverberating like a funeral drum. One of them carried a tray—silver, immaculate—upon which sat a glass of milk and a plate of bread. The incongruity was grotesque, as though hospitality itself had been weaponised.
The tallest of the guards smirked, his lip curling with predatory disdain. "Eat, journalist. The Viper wants your mind sharp, not starved." His voice slithered, the syllables dragging like a whip across stone.
Zubaid lifted his chin slowly, his blood-crusted lips parting in a crooked smile. "Tell your master," he rasped, "that even venom tastes like water to a man who does not bow." His defiance cracked the silence like lightning in a midnight storm.
The guard's hand tightened into a fist, trembling with the urge to strike, yet he did not. Instead, he placed the tray on the floor with theatrical courtesy before stepping back, his expression oscillating between mockery and restrained fury.
For a moment, the bulb above flickered violently, casting Zubaid's gaunt face into strobing light and shadow—like the alternating frames of a cinematic reel. In that disjointed illumination, his expression was magnified: sometimes weary, sometimes wrathful, sometimes resolute—each an echo of his unbroken spirit.
As the guards departed, the heavy door slammed shut with a finality that reverberated through the marrow. Silence returned, dense and suffocating, yet beneath it Zubaid's whisper threaded itself like steel wire through silk: "You can bind my body, Samir Rahmani… but you cannot chain truth. And truth will strangle you."
The study of Samir Faiz Rahmani's mansion exhaled a suffocating blend of opulence and threat. Its mahogany-panelled walls were burdened with shelves of immaculate volumes—spines uncracked, their purpose more theatre than scholarship. The air was thick with the faint musk of cuban cigars, their scent clinging like the ghost of indulgence. At the centre, beneath a brooding chandelier, stood a vast oak desk, polished to a lustre so pristine it reflected the lamplight like blackened glass. Upon its surface lay a litter of documents, an ornate dagger with an ivory hilt, and a vintage rotary telephone—objects as much weapons of intimidation as tools.
Samir lounged in his leather throne, his posture loose but leonine, fingers drumming idly on the armrest. A predatory smile curled at his lips as his eyes drank in the flicker of the glowing monitor before him.
On the screen materialised Gavriel, sovereign of the High Chaebols, his countenance swallowed in chiaroscuro shadow. The faint lamplight in his office fell like a halo of damnation upon his stern visage. His eyes—cold, hooded, imperious—glimmered with the authority of a man who regarded empires as pawns and nations as expendable currency.
"Zubaid Hossain," Gavriel began, his voice gravelled with gravitas, each syllable dropping like an anvil into the chamber, "has become a thorn—no, a spearhead—against our dominion. His inquiries grope too near our foundations. Should he prevail, the tapestry we have so ruthlessly woven shall unravel, and with it the mask of our invincibility."
Samir's chuckle slithered into the air, amused yet venomous, echoing faintly against the polished surfaces of the room. "Worry not, Excellency. The journalist is no more than a pawn upon my board. He believes that his survival rests upon my benevolence. When his usefulness expires, I shall reduce his name to ash. The world will see him not as martyr, but as contagion—a pariah whose very memory is venom."
Gavriel leaned forward, his shadow devouring half his face, the authority in his voice tightening like a noose. "See that you tread cautiously. The congress of the Nawami League approaches. That assembly is pivotal—the fulcrum upon which our future tilts. Through it, we solidify not merely dominion, but permanence. Do not falter, do not overreach. Should suspicion so much as brush your name, the entire edifice quivers."
Samir inclined his head in deliberate obedience, his expression disciplined into icy respect. "Yes, sir," he murmured, his voice smooth, deferential—but his eyes gleamed with the calculating fire of a serpent waiting to strike even its master.
The screen dimmed, Gavriel's face dissolving into static before darkness reclaimed the monitor. For a moment, silence thickened in the chamber, broken only by the ticking of an antique clock upon the wall—its pendulum swaying like the patient scythe of fate.
Samir leaned back, exhaling with serpentine languor, then slowly let a sinister smile bloom once more upon his lips. His fingers brushed the dagger on his desk, caressing its hilt as though it were the throat of an enemy.
"We are law," he whispered to himself, his voice a hiss, both creed and curse. "We create them, bend them, break them. And no one—no angel, no exile, no saint—shall ever halt our dominion. No one."
The chandelier above flickered, casting fractured shadows across his face, and for a heartbeat he resembled the very viper whispered of in intelligence circles—velvet in poise, venom in essence.
However Zubaid Hossain lay on the floor, wrists still bruised, eyes banded with fatigue, but his jaw was set like a man who had learned to hold a continent of rage behind it. When the heavy door grated open, the silhouettes of Jai's agents slid in like wolves into a fold of shadow.
They did not bother with the ceremony. A short, sleek officer produced a photograph and slapped it on the table—Riya's laughing face, a picture of two small children on her knee, the sort of domestic tableau meant to dissolve resolve. "Tell us who you work for," the officer said, voice lacquered in menace, "or we show this to your family and things will get very ugly for them."
Zubaid looked at the photograph with the weary calm of a man watching a flame he cannot put out. His voice, when it came, was raw but steady, each word a flint struck against steel. "Showing this is meant to make me weak," he said. "To make me yield. You think I'll trade truth for silence? You've gutted the Shadowmire Isles, even my Glaciergrave Isle, you've hollowed out lives for power. I will not be a marketable commodity for your lies."
One of the agents sneered, impatience fraying his restraint. He swung a gloved hand; the blow landed against Zubaid's cheek with an ugly thud that echoed off the concrete. Zubaid tasted copper and grit but did not blink in surrender. The next strike was delivered with the butt of a baton, a percussion of authority meant to break bone and will. He crumpled and his breath came ragged, red blooming at the corner of his mouth, but his eyes remained furious and defiantly lucid.
"Shut up!" the lead interrogator barked, close enough that his breath fogged in the cold air. "You'll die here if you don't talk. Your family will—"
Zubaid spat through blood and grit, words like a serrated retort. "You show me a photograph and you think that makes me human? You think that turns me to pleading? You are the ones who have destroyed states, who have wreathed our streets in ash. Kill me and another Zubaid will rise. Your crimes will not be buried by my silence. You are pieces of rotten ordinance—filthy, frightened, and forgetful of consequence."
That defiance was an affront the officers could not abide. They rained another series of blows down upon him — fists and bat, the interrogator's anger becoming choreography — then, when they had vented their impatience, they left as abruptly as they had arrived, boots clanging on the corridor. The door thudded shut behind them, and silence slammed back into the cell.
Zubaid lay curled and bleeding on the cold floor, the bruises blooming like accusations across his skin. He tasted iron and the sour tang of humiliation, but under the pain there was no surrender, only the slow, stubborn calculation of a man who understood that survival sometimes meant keeping one's mouth shut until the right hour to speak arrived. He breathed shallowly, each inhale a small act of resistance, and though his body was bent, his spirit remained unbowed.
The back gate of Samir Faiz Rahmani's mansion loomed like the maw of some predatory beast—steel bars glistening under the moonlight, crowned with coils of barbed wire that quivered in the night wind. Roy crouched low, his body pressed against the stone wall, every muscle taut with the poise of a panther before the pounce. His breath was shallow, measured, scarcely disturbing the shadows that clung to him like a second skin.
He slipped a slender scanner from his wristwatch, the faint glow of the holographic interface casting cerulean light across his sharpened features. A quick sweep revealed what he dreaded yet anticipated: thirty JAW operatives distributed across each floor, their patrol routes mapped with precision upon the projected schematic. The building itself seemed alive with vigilance, a hive where drones of tyranny nested.
Roy's lips curved into the faintest smirk, a blend of grim confidence and latent disdain. He whispered into the comm-bead at his collar, his voice no more than a thread of sound carried through static.
"Thirty at each floor. A bloody fortress masquerading as a residence. I'll breach from the rear, silent as the grave. What's your position, 90?"
A pause—then the reply came, flat and unembellished, the voice of a man more spectre than soldier.
"I am already within."
Roy stiffened, his eyes narrowing at the cold audacity in the words. "Already within?" he muttered to himself, incredulity brushing his tone, though a spark of admiration tempered it.
From the comm, Agent-90's voice flowed again, monotone yet sharp, like steel dragged across stone. "Disguise holds. I've threaded myself amongst their number. They do not suspect. Keep your shadows, Roy—your footsteps must be lighter than dust."
Roy exhaled through his nose, a faint chuckle threading his breath. His fingers brushed the grip of his silenced sidearm, and his shoulders rolled as though shrugging off the weight of doubt. "Understood. I'll meet you in their belly, 90. And when we're there, we'll carve out the serpent's heart."
With that, he slid through the iron gate, his body a ripple of motion. One instant he was pressed against stone; the next, he was a phantom gliding through the courtyard, weaving between the blind spots of mounted cameras. His every movement was choreographed precision, parallel to the stillness of the night itself—silent, deliberate, inevitable.
The mansion awaited, its windows aglow like the baleful eyes of some colossal leviathan. And within its bowels, two predators moved—one cloaked in shadow, the other in plain sight, both converging upon the Velvet Viper's lair.
The congress chamber of the Nawami League was nothing short of grotesque splendour—a cathedral of corruption where velvet and vice entwined. Gilded chandeliers dripped light like molten honey upon marble floors veined with obsidian. The air was perfumed, thick with incense imported from distant isles, masking the subtler odour of sweat, cigars, and political decay. Velvet drapes the colour of drying blood framed the tall arched windows, their folds heavy with dust and arrogance.
Through those looming doors, they entered—one by one, each a titan in the machinery of dominion.
Anisur Karim, tall and gaunt, his fingers steepled as though in perpetual calculation, his eyes small black orbs darting like the beads of an abacus. He was the keeper of the High Chaebols' invisible levers, the puppeteer of ballots and broken promises.
Nafisa Rahman, her silken sari embroidered with threads of silver, a smile ever-polite yet sharper than a scalpel. Her every step exuded refinement, though beneath it lay a ledger where stolen funds bled into ghostly projects, lining pockets while schools withered.
Shahriar Amin, rotund and resplendent in a tailored sherwani, carried the scent of ink and deceit. His eyes gleamed with the self-satisfaction of one who sculpted reality itself—his media empire a mirror that reflected only the High Chaebols' chosen truth.
Tahmid Ahsan, broad-shouldered and brutish, wore his wealth like armour. Rings studded his fingers, each one forged from resources ripped from the soil of the poor. His very gait was industrial, mechanical, as though his veins pumped oil rather than blood.
Adil Hasan, suave and serpentine, carried the smile of a visionary and the heart of a vandal. He spoke in grand designs, yet his developments displaced thousands, leaving ghost towns in his wake so glass towers might rise like mausoleums to greed.
At the head of this sinister procession stood Samir Faiz Rahmani, awaiting them with open arms, his figure framed against the grotesque magnificence of the hall like a maestro before his orchestra. His kurta gleamed ivory beneath the lights, his every gesture a calculated performance of hospitality.
"Gentlemen. Lady," he intoned, rising with a smile that was equal parts welcome and warning. His voice flowed smooth as spiced wine, yet carried the undertone of a blade's whisper. "Welcome to the heart of progress. Tonight, we do not simply dine—we decide the fate of nations. Please, partake of this table, for here the old world dies and the new world is written."
His hands spread wide, palms glinting beneath the chandelier's glow, as servants in immaculate livery moved to pour champagne into crystal flutes. The members of the Nawami League exchanged glances, their lips curved in the faint smiles of conspirators who knew they dined not merely on food, but on power itself.
Nafisa's laugh tinkled lightly, like porcelain chimes, while Shahriar tugged at his collar, already drafting the next headline in his head. Anisur's eyes narrowed, suspicion concealed behind a mask of courtesy. Tahmid cracked his knuckles, impatient for promises of profit, and Adil leaned back in his chair, his serpent's grin widening as though the table itself were his altar.
Samir sat last, folding his hands upon the polished oak surface, his gaze lingering on each face. In the silence that followed, his words fell heavy as an anvil:
"Here, we are architects of inevitability. The masses may scream, the rebels may resist, but the tide always bends to our command. Tonight, my friends… the Velvet Viper coils tighter."
And the chandeliers above seemed to flicker, as though even the light recoiled from their congress.
The cell reeked of blood and mildew, its air damp with the metallic tang of torment. Zubaid Hossain lay shackled to the floor, his body bruised and his nails prised away by crude blades. The five JAW agents loomed over him like carrion birds, their laughter a discordant chorus, echoing against the stone walls as though hell itself mocked his suffering. Each strike they delivered—boot, fist, or baton—landed with mechanical cruelty, as if pain were a duty inscribed in their marrow.
Zubaid coughed, spitting blood across the filthy floor, yet his eyes burned with an unyielding defiance—a torch in a storm. Even as his body convulsed, his lips curled into something dangerously close to a smile, a refusal to let despair eclipse his will.
Then—creak.
The heavy corridor door groaned open. The agents paused, their laughter dying mid-breath. One of them, broad-shouldered and snarling, strode out, his boots thudding against the stone. A second later the silence shattered with a thunderclap: a single suppressed gunshot. His skull erupted like a burst melon, shards of bone and viscera splattering across the walls. The man's eyes, unmoored from their sockets, dangled grotesquely as his corpse collapsed in an unceremonious heap.
The remaining agents recoiled, eyes wide, curses spilling from their lips.
"What the—?!" one barked, spinning towards the door, his pistol raised.
From the corridor's shadow, Roy emerged—a phantom cloaked in darkness, his silencer still smoking. His eyes gleamed, cold and unyielding, his movements smooth as liquid steel.
Before the nearest agent could fire, Roy surged forward. His hand snapped out, seizing the man's wrist, twisting until bone cracked like dry twigs. The pistol clattered to the floor; in the same breath, Roy drove a blade between his ribs, the sound wet and muffled. The agent gasped, blood bubbling at his lips, before collapsing.
The others charged in unison, batons and knives drawn, their shouts blending into a guttural roar.
Roy moved like a predator—every strike decisive, economical, lethal. He ducked beneath a wild swing, his elbow crushing into a windpipe with a sickening crunch. Another lunged; Roy pivoted, seized his jaw, and wrenched until a vertebrae snapped, the body falling limp.
Two remained. One swung a metal baton, catching Roy's arm with a dull thud, but the intruder barely flinched. In riposte, Roy disarmed him with a brutal twist, reversing the weapon and slamming it into the man's temple. The skull cracked audibly, fragments scattering like porcelain shards.
The last agent hesitated, fear flickering in his eyes. He raised his blade, trembling, and charged. Roy sidestepped with surgical precision, grasped the man's collar, and smashed his head against the iron bars. Once. Twice. Thrice. Blood streaked down the steel like grotesque paint as the agent slumped lifeless to the ground.
Silence reclaimed the chamber, broken only by Zubaid's ragged breaths.
Roy exhaled slowly, sliding his blade back into its sheath. His gaze shifted to the battered man on the floor. Zubaid, his lips trembling, lifted his head, eyes wide with disbelief and the faintest glimmer of hope.
"Wh–who are you?" he rasped, voice cracked and brittle as old parchment.
Roy's lips curved into the faintest smirk, cold and resolute, a man cloaked not in glory but in duty. "The saviour," he murmured, his voice carrying the weight of both irony and truth.
He stooped, hauling Zubaid up with surprising gentleness, draping the man's injured frame across his shoulders. Zubaid winced as his torn leg buckled, but Roy bore the weight unflinchingly, dragging him out of the fetid cell.
Behind them, the room lay in ruin—a silent charnel house of broken bodies and blood-slick stone, a testament to Roy's lethality and Zubaid's unbroken spirit.
The congress chamber was a cathedral of excess—its chandeliers dripping with crystal like frozen tears, its carpet a tapestry dyed in imperial scarlet. The Nawami League members reclined in their gilded chairs around a crescent table, their silken garments rustling as they moved like serpents shifting coils. Twenty-five JAW agents stood guard, statues of brutality encased in black armour, their eyes hidden by visors that reflected the golden glow.
Anisur Karim leaned forward, his oily voice dripping with self-importance. "Gentlemen, our grasp tightens. High Chaebols have their claws in every isle, and yet this—this petty journalist, Zubaid Hossain, gnaws at our foundations. His pen may as well be a blade."
Nafisa Rahman adjusted her pearl necklace, her eyes sharp as razors. "Zubaid is irrelevant. What concerns me is the whisper of SSCBF. The so-called Sentinels. They are not rebels—they are architects of traps. They harvest our secrets like farmers reaping wheat. Even now, Sentinel Helix collates every fragment we cast into the wind. To rise against them would be… to step willingly into our own gallows."
Shahriar Amin exhaled smoke from a cigar, his lips curled into disdain. "We silence opposition daily. Yet Helix is different—they trade not in fear, but in inevitability. Their knowledge is a guillotine already raised, awaiting only gravity's consent."
Tahmid Ahsan tapped his ringed fingers upon the table, each strike a metallic chime. "Then we do not resist. We co-opt. We bend. A storm cannot be stopped, but it may be redirected. Helix must be offered spoils greater than Zubaid Hossain's petty truths."
Adil Hasan, ever the pragmatist, sipped his wine and smirked. "Spoils are worthless if we stand already marked. We are not predators here—we are prey, ensnared. The High Chaebols command empires, yet even empires burn when someone tends the fire from within."
A hush fell over the table, broken only by the faint clinking of cutlery. The members raised their goblets in reluctant unity, crimson wine shimmering like clotting blood in the chandelier's light.
From the shadows, Agent-90, disguised as a modest waitress, listened. His jaw clenched, his knuckles whitening around the tray he carried. His disguise was flawless—apron stained with faux wine, posture meek, eyes lowered—but inside him smouldered a furnace of restrained fury.
Then it began.
The members sipped, savouring their wine—only to falter. First, Anisur coughed, his hand flying to his throat, veins swelling across his forehead like black serpents beneath the skin. Nafisa dropped her goblet, the wine staining her silk in patterns resembling arterial spray, her lips frothing as poison ignited her veins. One by one, the mighty fell—chairs overturned, fingers clawed at throats, guttural screams muffled by choking spasms. Their bodies convulsed grotesquely, collapsing upon the opulent rug, staining it with vomit, bile, and blood.
The guards stirred, confusion splintering their discipline. But it was already too late.
With a motion too swift to track, Agent-90 slipped the Phantom Blade pistol from beneath his tray. The weapon purred like a predator finding prey. He moved with terrifying velocity—an arc of silence, a blur of inevitability. Shots whispered through the air, each one a death sentence.
One guard's visor shattered, his skull erupting in crimson mist. Another spun, clutching his throat as blood fountained. The third raised his rifle but fell before the trigger could even depress. It was a ballet of death—ninety's feet gliding soundlessly, his hands precise, his face impassive. In seconds, the twenty-five guards were corpses, their blood pooling into a grotesque mosaic around the congress table.
And then, silence.
Only Samir Faiz Rahmani remained. He sat slumped, gasping, his face ashen, sweat trickling down his temples. His eyes darted to the sole survivor of the carnage—the waitress who strode towards him with measured grace.
"Wh–who are you?" Samir rasped, his voice ragged, his authority crumbling like parchment in flame.
The waitress paused mid-stride. With deliberate calm, Agent-90 reached up, removed the mask, and revealed the face of the phantom himself. His eyes were shards of winter, his smile a crescent blade.
"I am the reckoning your sins invited," he said, voice quiet yet serrated, every syllable honed to cut deeper than steel.
Samir forced a smirk, though his breath rattled like a dying engine. "You can't win, Ninety. Kill me, and ten more shall rise. The Chaebols are eternal."
Agent-90 stepped closer until the barrel of the Phantom Blade pressed against Samir's temple. His tone dropped into a near-whisper, soft as silk yet heavy as a gravestone.
"Eternal empires bleed the same as mortal men."
He pulled the trigger.
The chamber reverberated with a single, muted crack. Samir's skull burst outward, fragments spraying across the polished oak and silken drapes. His body slumped lifelessly, eyes wide in an expression caught forever between arrogance and terror.
Agent-90 exhaled slowly, lowering his weapon. Around him lay the ruin of an empire's congress—a grotesque tableau of poisoned elites and shattered guards, silenced in a single evening. He turned without ceremony, his shadow elongating across the crimson-stained carpet as though the room itself bowed in deference to his departure.
Within the sterile brilliance of SSCBF Headquarters, the only sound was the rhythmic tapping of Wen-Li's fingers across her laptop's keyboard. Streams of encrypted data cascaded down her screen like waterfalls of luminous code, each line a secret, each fragment a weapon in the quiet war of intelligence.
Then came the echo of hurried footsteps. The hydraulic door exhaled with a hiss, parting like the jaws of a mechanical beast. Nightingale entered, her breath ragged, her eyes wide as though she had glimpsed some spectre from beyond the grave.
"Chief!" she blurted, gasping between syllables.
Wen-Li raised her gaze, her expression carved in composure but sharpened with curiosity. "What is it, Nightingale? You appear as though you have seen an apparition." Her voice was cool, clipped, precise—yet beneath it lurked the quiet gravity of a storm barely contained.
Nightingale steadied herself, her chest rising and falling as though she had sprinted through corridors of shadows. "Chief—you need to see this. The politician, Samir Faiz Rahmani of the Nawami League… and the High Chaebols' own financial architect… he's been assassinated."
The words fell like shards of glass upon the chamber.
For the first time in years, Wen-Li's fingers stilled above the keyboard. Her composure did not fracture, but the slightest furrow creased her brow—an almost imperceptible crack in her marble façade. "Assassinated?" she repeated, her voice low, deliberate, as though tasting the word itself. "When? And where?"
Nightingale swallowed hard, her throat dry. "In his mansion… at Kumortuli, Chief. They say it was no ordinary killing."
Without hesitation, Wen-Li reached for the remote. With a subtle motion, the vast holo-screen ignited, flooding the room with the harsh illumination of live broadcast. The Zhaoxian Global Network presenter spoke with an almost theatrical solemnity, the words underscored by images of grotesque aftermath:
"Breaking news. At the very heart of Kumortuli, tragedy has struck the Nawami League. Samir Faiz Rahmani, notorious political fixer and banker for the High Chaebols, was found slain within his residence.
Alongside him, five of his closest allies in the Nawami Congress met similar ends:
– Anisur Karim, orchestrator of electoral suppression across the archipelagos.
– Nafisa Rahman, manipulator of education reforms and siphoner of funds into Chaebol coffers.
– Shahriar Amin, the silencer of dissent, who controlled every broadcasted truth.
– Tahmid Ahsan, whose greed devoured industries and stripped isles bare.
– Adil Hasan, architect of ruthless urban displacement in service of oligarchs.
Authorities report the method: poison, administered with precision. Their guards—twenty-five in total—were annihilated, their blood splattered grotesquely across the marble halls. This was no random act of violence. It was orchestration. Calculated. Deliberate. But the hand behind it remains… unknown."
The screen lingered upon images of overturned chalices, spilled wine pooling like coagulated blood, and opulent corpses collapsed in impossible postures.
Wen-Li leaned back in her chair, her face illuminated by the cold glow. She drew a slow, deliberate breath, her eyes narrowing ever so slightly. Within them burned a mixture of vindication and disquiet—a balance between justice observed and mysteries unresolved.
Nightingale broke the silence, her voice fragile. "What now, Chief? What are our orders?"
Wen-Li's gaze remained fixed upon the grotesque tableau of the screen, her lips parting with an unhurried precision. "What now? They have reaped what they sowed. The architects of exploitation, the merchants of despair—they have tasted the harvest of their own corruption. In that sense, justice is poetic."
Her voice dropped lower, as if speaking more to herself than to Nightingale. "And yet… there lies the question. Who dealt the hand? Who orchestrated such a meticulous slaughter? Retribution is not without architects."
Nightingale's brows furrowed, her fingers knotting together nervously. "You mean—someone else is moving against the High Chaebols?"
Wen-Li's eyes flickered with thought, twin embers in the dim light of the command room. "Perhaps. Or perhaps the game is deeper still. For every piece removed from the board, another shadow moves unseen. And shadows, Nightingale… have a way of being far more dangerous than kings."
The screen crackled with static as the broadcast cut to another headline. In the silence that followed, the Chief sat perfectly still, her aura as heavy as a guillotine suspended by a single thread.