--: Author's POV: --
The darkness in the mall wasn't just a power outage; it was a trap. The red emergency lights pulsed like a dying heartbeat. One moment, the eight girls were standing together, a wall of friendship—the next, a hiss of gas filled the narrow corridor of the boutique.
One by one, girls of HVIS and the Thai girls collapsed. The last thing Jay Jay saw was the blurred figure of a man in a mask stepping over the fallen body of Gorya, reaching for her.
--: Keifer's POV: --
I took the stairs three at a time, my lungs burning, Thyme and Kavin right behind me. We reached the boutique in less than two minutes.
The store was silent.
Shopping bags were scattered across the floor. A neon dress lay crumpled near the fitting rooms. But the girls—all eight of them—were gone.
"NO!" Thyme's roar echoed through the empty mall. He kicked a glass display, shattering it. "They were right here! How?! My men were at every exit!"
I didn't scream. I couldn't. I walked to the center of the room and picked up a small, white envelope. Inside was a dried jasmine flower and a note.
_______
"You looked for me in the shadows, Thyme. But I was always the one holding the light. I have all of them. Every time you close your eyes, remember... they belong to me now."
————
I felt the world tilt. I had promised Jay. I had told her she was safe. And now, she was in the hands of the devil, and she wasn't alone.
--: Author's POV: --
When the girls finally regained consciousness, the luxury of the Paramaanantra mall had been replaced by a suffocating, damp reality. They were in a concrete basement, the air thick with the smell of mildew and rusted iron. Each of them—Jay Jay, Gorya, Kaning, Freya, Raki, Mica, Ella, and Grace—was bound hand and foot, their mouths stuffed with thick, abrasive gags that made every breath a struggle.
The heavy steel door shrieked as it swung open. The stepfather stepped in, silhouetted by a harsh, yellow light from the hallway. He didn't look like a man; he looked like a shadow that had finally caught up to them.
He walked down the line of girls, his footsteps echoing like a funeral march. He stopped in front of Gorya and Kaning. Gorya glared at him with a fire that should have burned him alive, but he only chuckled.
"I see the fire," he whispered. "The fire of the F4. I realized that you and the little florist are the hearts of Thyme and Kavin. I thought about taking my revenge on all of you... making themwatch while I break their 'queens' one by one."
He turned his gaze to Jay Jay, who was huddled in the center, her eyes wide and glassy.
"But for now," he purred, his voice dropping to a terrifyingly intimate level. "It will be you. Come with me, my child."
--: Jay Jay's POV: --
My body turned to ice. As he reached down and grabbed my arm, a primal scream died in the back of my throat, muffled by the cloth. I thrashed, my heels scraping uselessly against the concrete.
I saw Freya and Gorya lunging forward as much as their ropes would allow, their muffled cries filled with a desperate, helpless rage. They tried to hold onto my clothes, to keep me anchored to them, but he was too strong. He dragged me across the floor like a broken doll, my eyes locked onto theirs until the heavy door slammed shut, plunging them back into darkness.
He dragged me into a secondary room. This one was worse. It had a single wooden chair bolted to the floor, a bed and a large, stained mirror on the wall. He threw me into the chair, winding the rope around my chest and arms so tightly I felt my ribs groan.
He stepped back, a dark, hungry smirk stretching across his face.
"Don't worry, my baby," he whispered, stroking a stray hair from my forehead. I flinched, my skin crawling at his touch. "I won't do it now. I know you haven't done that yet. You're pure, aren't you? And maybe... maybe you don't even know how to do it properly."
He leaned in, his nose brushing mine. "I'm going to teach you, Jay Jay. I'm going to show you exactly how it's going to be when your time comes."
--: Author's POV: --
He stepped to the door and barked a command. A woman entered— a hollow-eyed girl in her early twenties, wearing nothing but a lace, her face a mask of practiced indifference. She didn't look at Jay Jay; she looked only at the monster.
"I want you to sit there and watch, Jay Jay," he growled, standing behind the chair and grabbing her hair, forcing her head back so she had no choice but to see. "Don't blink. Not for a second."
Jay Jay's heart hammered a frantic, uneven rhythm against her ribs. She watched, paralyzed, as he began to kiss the woman. It wasn't an act of passion; it was a performance of power. Then he began to undress the woman, his eyes never leaving Jay Jay's face, feeding off her horror.
The room was soon filled with the sounds of skin against skin and the rustle of clothes hitting the dirt floor.
Jay Jay squeezed her eyes shut, hot tears leaking out from under her lids, but he leaned down, his voice a lethal hiss in her ear.
"Open them. If you close them, I'll go back into that other room and I'll start with the little florist. Do you want that?"
Jay Jay gasped, her eyes flying open. She watched through a blur of tears as they stood before her, completely exposed. The sounds of their bodies, the woman's forced, rhythmic moans, and the sight of her stepfather taking what he wanted... it was a sensory assault that felt like acid being poured into her brain.
It went on for hours. The woman's moaning became a haunting soundtrack to Jay Jay's breaking spirit. Every movement, every sound, was a promise of the nightmare that was waiting for her.
--: Jay Jay's POV: --
I was gone. My mind had retreated to a dark corner where I couldn't feel the ropes or hear the sounds. I just stared at a crack in the wall, praying for the floor to open up and swallow me. I felt filthy. I felt like the air in the room was staining my lungs.
When he finally stopped, the silence that followed was even more terrifying. He stood over me, sweat beads on his forehead, looking down at me with a sickening pride.
"Did you see, Jay Jay?" he asked, his voice rasping. "Did you learn how to please me? Or do you need more lessons?"
I couldn't even whimper. I was a hollow shell.
"I want you to be tortured for some time before I finally take you," he said, patting my cheek with a hand that smelled of the woman. "You have to see it for some more days. You have to learn every move, every sound. And then... I will perform it with you."
--: Author's POV: --
He untied her with a rough jerk, dragging her limp body back to the cellar. He threw her into the center of the room, right in front of the other girls. He didn't say a word as he just double-checking the knots before stepping out and locking the door with a final, heavy thud.
The second the lock clicked, the cellar erupted into muffled chaos. The girls shuffled toward Jay Jay, their bodies pressing against hers, their heads bowing toward her in a desperate attempt to comfort her.
Freya pressed her forehead against Jay Jay's, her muffled sobs vibrating through both of them. Gorya used her shoulder to nudge Jay Jay, trying to get a reaction.
But Jay Jay was silent. Her body was shaking with a violent, rhythmic tremor. Her eyes were wide, staring at the images seared into her retinas.
"Keifer... Keifer... Keifer..."
The name was the only thing left of her soul. She whispered it over and over in the silence of her mind, a broken SOS sent out into a world that couldn't hear her.
___________
Time in the cellar did not move in hours; it moved in the rhythmic dripping of a leaky pipe and the terrifying creak of the iron door. By the second day, the eight girls were unrecognizable. Their clothes were stained with the soot of the concrete floor, and their faces were hollowed by a bone-deep exhaustion.
The stepfather didn't just want their bodies; he wanted to witness the slow death of their spirit. Every morning, he brought a single tray of stale bread and a plastic pitcher of lukewarm water.
--: Jay Jay's POV: --
For the first twenty-four hours, we were defiant. We didn't touch the food. Gorya sat at the front of our small circle, her eyes burning with a fire that even this darkness couldn't dim. But the monster knew how to break us.
On the second morning, he walked in and headed straight for me. He grabbed my throat, pinning my head back against the jagged stone wall until I couldn't breathe.
"You think you're heroes?" he sneered, shoving a piece of dry bread into my mouth. I tried to spit it out, but he clamped his hand over my mouth and nose. I panicked, my lungs screaming, until I was forced to swallow just to survive.
He looked at the others — his eyes chillingly calm. "Every time she spits it out, I'll hold her breath a little longer. Is that what you want? To watch her turn blue?"
My eyes pleaded with them through my tears. Please. Just eat. To save me, they finally reached for the bread. We all ate like ghosts, the dry crusts tasting like ash, our dignity breaking with every forced swallow.
--: Keifer's POV: --
72 Hours. 4,320 Minutes
I hadn't closed my eyes for a single one of them. I stood in the command center, my reflection in the glass looking like a stranger—a man with hollowed cheeks and eyes that had turned into black pits of redirected rage.
"Nothing!" Thyme roared, throwing a glass carafe across the room. It shattered, but no one flinched. Thyme looked like a demon; his hair was a mess, and his knuckles were raw and bloody from punching the walls. "How can he hide eight girls in my city?!"
Angelo sat at the monitors, his fingers trembling. He hadn't slept or showered; his suit was wrinkled, his face covered in dark stubble. "He's using old-world tactics, Keifer. He's hiding in the blind spots."
I looked out at the Bangkok skyline. "If he touches her," I whispered, and the coldness of my voice made even Kavin and MJ look up in fear. "I will dismantle everything he has ever touched. I will make his death a legend of agony."
--: Author's POV: --
The third night was the breaking point. The stepfather dragged Jay Jay into the "Lesson Room" once more. The woman was there, her movements robotic, her eyes fixed on the ceiling.
This time, he was more vocal, more violent. He made sure Jay Jay saw every detail of the act, forcing her to sit tied to that chair only inches away. The sounds—the rhythmic thudding, the woman's forced moans, the smell of sweat and tobacco—became a permanent stain on Jay Jay's soul.
"Look at her, Jay Jay," he gasped, his hand tightening on her hair. "This is your future. Tomorrow, she leaves. Tomorrow... I don't need a substitute."
When he threw her back into the cellar, Jay Jay didn't move. She lay on the cold floor, her mind completely fractured.
--: Jay Jay's POV: --
The girls crawled toward me in the dark. I felt Freya's hair against my cheek and Gorya's hand on my shoulder. They were whispering my name, but I couldn't hear them. All I could see were the images from that room.
"Keifer..." I thought. It was the only word left. "Keifer, come get me. Or please, just let me die before tomorrow."
--: Keifer's POV: --
03:14 AM
The silence of the command center was shattered by MJ slamming his fist onto the desk. He had been running a "Gait Recognition" scan—tracking the unique way a person walks—across every grainy CCTV camera in the district.
"I found him," MJ whispered, his voice shaking with a mix of exhaustion and triumph. "I stopped looking for the black van and started looking for him. Look at this feed from a 7-Eleven three miles from the old industrial zone."
We all crowded around the screen. A man in a heavy hood was buying several bottles of water and cheap pre-packaged meals. He was moving quickly, but the way he carried his shoulders—the arrogant, predatory slouch—was unmistakable.
"It's him," I rasped, my heart hammering.
"I traced his path back," MJ continued, pulling up a map. "He didn't take the van. He's been using a series of stolen motorbikes to stay off the main roads. But every time he leaves, he heads back to the same coordinate. An abandoned silk factory on the edge of the Green Zone."
"Is there power?" Angelo asked, already grabbing his gear.
"The building is officially 'dead,' but I just pinged the local transformer. There's a tiny, steady draw of electricity," MJ said. "Just enough for a single floor of lights and a ventilation fan. Thermal is showing a cluster of eight signatures in the basement... and one moving in the room next to them."
I felt a surge of adrenaline so violent it was like an electric shock. I grabbed my tactical vest, my movements precise and lethal.
"Thyme. Angelo. Section E," I commanded, the coldness returning to my voice. "Check your safeties. We aren't taking prisoners. If it moves and it's not one of our girls... erase it."
--: Author's POV: --
The warehouse was a rotting shell, but inside, the air was screaming with tension.
In the cellar, the girls — were huddled together, their faces pale and sunken after three days of terror. They heard the heavy iron door groan open. The Stepfather entered, looking at Jay Jay with a sickening, final triumph.
"Now my child," he whispered, reaching for the hem of her dress. "No more waiting. I'm tired of waiting.."
--: Jay Jay's POV: --
I felt his hand touch my face, and I finally broke. I closed my eyes, a silent scream trapped behind my gag. "Keifer... please..."
BOOM.
The entire factory shuddered. The sound of the front doors being blown off their hinges was followed by the rapid-fire pop-pop-pop of suppressed weapons.
The Stepfather froze. His eyes went wide with a sudden, frantic fear. He grabbed me by the hair, dragging me toward the back of the room as the sound of heavy boots thundered down the stairs.
--: Keifer's POV: --
"BREACH!"
I was the first one through the cellar door. The light from my tactical lamp cut through the darkness, illuminating the seven girls huddled against the wall.
"KAVIN! SECTION E! GET THEM!" I roared.
I didn't stop to help them. My eyes were on the side door. I kicked it open, and there he was.
--: Author's POV: --
The Stepfather was backed into a corner, holding a jagged piece of glass against Jay Jay's throat. He was shaking, his face a mask of sweating desperation.
"Back off!" he screamed. "I'll kill her! I'll do it!"
Keifer didn't stop. He walked into the room, his rifle lowered, his eyes fixed on the man. He looked like a god of war, covered in dust and fueled by a week of sleepless fury.
"You have five seconds," Keifer said, his voice a low, terrifying growl. "To take your hands off her. If you don't... I'm going to make sure it takes you three days to die."