They set the date and moved with the discipline of people who understood what losing would mean.
Rafael spent the next forty-eight hours like a man assembling a clockwork bomb—methodical, quiet, all small precise moves that together would make a loud sound. He never revealed how he saw which piece had to go where. To his team, it looked like brilliance, exhaustion, stubbornness.
Antonio Reyes tightened the legal hinge: the prosecutor had agreed to act if presented with a sealed, irrefutable dossier. Arman—bruised but steady—had given sworn affidavits and the precise names of HydraCorp middlemen who handled the dirty work. The freelance journalist coordinated a live segment timed to the prosecutor's actions. NGOs and barangay captains readied crowds of witnesses. A network of student volunteers prepared to livestream everything.
The plan was surgical: a triple-pronged public collapse.
• Legal: the prosecutor obtained arrest warrants and court orders based on the newly-validated documents and whistleblower testimony.
• Media: the journalist would go live at noon with a package of evidence that could not be credibly dismissed—internal memos, transaction chains, recorded orders.
• Public: community witnesses and NGO auditors would show up at HydraCorp's offices and at procurement, chanting for transparency and turning any delay into spectacle.
At 10:00 a.m., nothing seemed different. Raja — a volunteer live-technology runner — texted the warehouse: "They're moving—coach says document custody chain is locked." Rafael felt the familiar hum at the edge of his focus and put on a face that didn't tell the team how close the trap already was.
The journalist opened her live segment with the human story: Arman's testimony, the burned crates, the bruised drivers. Then she cut to footage the public hadn't seen before—internal memos signed by HydraCorp compliance staff, notes instructing the subcontractor to "seed evidence" and "route funds to non-trace accounts." The camera held on the memos for long, deliberate seconds as commenters in the live feed tried to parse the handwriting. Hashtags flared.
At exactly noon, the prosecutor's office released a statement on the same live feed: warrants were being executed. It was coordinated so that the reporter's live cameras captured the first dramatic movement—squad cars, plainclothes officers moving into a glass tower, a HydraCorp security chief hustled into a cruiser as cameras rolled.
Inside HydraCorp's boardroom panic opened like a wound. Ramon's face went pale when his phones lit up with incoming calls and the news feed. Across the city, investors watched the live footage and had the same cold calculation: if the company was implicated in criminal conspiracy, assets would evaporate.
The raids were relentless and public. Regulators seized files, froze suspect bank accounts, and escorted trembling middlemen out of elevators. In neighborhoods, local activists captured video of lawyers and board members arriving for emergency meetings, their faces drawn, their explanations stumbling.
Back at the warehouse, the mood was electric but tense. Rosa hugged Jericho. Maria watched live feeds without blinking. Rafael stood with Antonio, each of them quiet, letting the civic machinery roll.
Within hours the first dominoes fell. A mid-level HydraCorp executive was arrested on charges of conspiracy and evidence tampering. Screenshots of internal chat logs—already mirrored by the journalist—revealed a pattern of instructions to "make it look like AquaPure was compromised." An offshore conduit for disbursements was traced and froze under international attention.
The market reacted in minutes. Stock tickers started a slow, then jagged fall as trust hemorrhaged. HydraCorp's PR issued stern denials, but every camera that caught a denial also showed lines of police tape and officers carrying boxes marked for evidence. Words meant less than images.
By evening, prosecutors announced multiple subpoenas against senior HydraCorp officials. The minister in charge of procurement called an emergency session, promising audits and immediate procurement freezes while investigations continued. The public, which had been leaning toward Rafael for months, roared approval. #HydraExposed and #AquaPureTruth trended at the top of every platform.
Rafael felt the relief like a physical thing—brief, bright, fragile. The Codex's steady whisper had told him probability, but not miracles. This was civic machinery—people, laws, witnesses—moving the right way when pressured. He had assembled the pressure; justice had begun to move.
That night, a small crowd gathered at the warehouse, chanting and lighting candles. Rosa gave a speech that had nothing to do with law or PR: it was about water for children, about dignity, about the right to clean drinking cups for families who had never had them. The chant took on a life of its own.
Across the bay, HydraCorp scrambled — lawyers blocked certain filings, PR teams spun, and a few directors quietly resigned to save their own skin. But the damage was done. The company's board issued cautious statements; bank partners distanced themselves. Calls from international agencies set in motion cross-border probes.
Rafael watched it unfold without the smile that sometimes lifted his mouth. He had wanted victory quickly; victory came, messy and incomplete. HydraCorp's reach was not gone overnight, but their public sanctity had been severed.
He walked home past the river where the city lights reflected like small, stubborn stars. He thought of Arman and of the truck drivers and of the women who'd held up a dirty glass and then swallowed clean water. He thought of the cube locked in his room and the secret reasons he had been right about so many things.
He did not celebrate. He had a long road ahead—trials, appeals, power maneuvers. But for the first time since the cube pulsed in his hand, the giants had a visible wound.
Rafael sat on his bed and let himself feel tired. Tomorrow the legal skirmishes would begin in earnest, but tonight the city sang.