The City of Illusions

Jakarta’s skyline was illuminated by neon lights, an artificial beacon of progress. But beneath its glow, secrets lurked in the alleys and digital networks. CCTV cameras tracked every movement, and propaganda flooded the news channels, reinforcing the illusion of stability. The Nine Dragons operated in plain sight, their influence masked by corporate empires and political alliances.

Luo Jian watched the city through the lens of his surveillance network, a digital god presiding over an empire of data. Every citizen had a profile, every movement was tracked, every secret cataloged. To the world, he was a tech mogul, a visionary leading Jakarta into the future. To those who understood the truth, he was the architect of control. No decision was made without his knowledge, and no dissenter could escape his reach.

Deep in the heart of the city, Kiran, a journalist from Malaysia, was close to uncovering something big. His latest investigation targeted a missing government official who had once opposed a major corporate development—one linked to the Nine Dragons. The deeper he dug, the more resistance he faced. His bank accounts froze without warning, his credentials were revoked, and his press access was severed. It was as if he had ceased to exist.

Yet, in the vast ocean of data that Luo Jian controlled, something was off. A brief disruption—an anomaly in the network. Someone had tampered with the system. A trace of digital interference. Eka, a former tech prodigy turned hacker, had left her mark, unnoticed… for now. The first whisper of rebellion had begun, buried beneath the city’s illusion of power.

—

Jakarta – 1:45 AM. The city stretched out below like a neon-lit circuit board, its veins glowing with endless streams of data. To the untrained eye, Jakarta was a metropolis bursting with life—towering skyscrapers, digital billboards flashing advertisements, and traffic that never ceased.

But to Luo Jian, it was something else entirely.

Through the lenses of his surveillance network, he saw everything—not just the physical movement of people, but the digital traces they left behind. Every keystroke, every conversation whispered in a dimly lit café, every financial transaction buried in encrypted accounts.

His empire wasn’t built on bullets or blood. It was built on information.

The real battlefield was not in the streets but within data streams, firewalls, and algorithms that dictated the lives of millions.

And yet, tonight, something was wrong.

A disturbance rippled through his system—a flicker in the otherwise seamless digital hum of his domain.

Someone was inside.

Not physically. Not in a way that could be tracked by security cameras or motion detectors. This was something far more dangerous.

A ghost.

Luo Jian leaned forward, fingers gliding over his console. The anomaly was subtle, too precise to be accidental.

He smirked. So, someone wanted to play.

"Trace it."

His voice was calm, controlled. He wasn’t angry. Not yet.

A junior analyst nearby scrambled to comply, his fingers flying over the keyboard.

"Sir, the signal is shifting—it's masking itself. No clear origin point."

Luo Jian’s smirk deepened. Clever.

But not clever enough.

He didn’t need to find them immediately. He only needed to let them think they were invisible.

Because sooner or later, every ghost makes a mistake.

—

Somewhere in Jakarta – 1:48 AM. Eka exhaled slowly, watching the data stream flow across her laptop screen.

Her setup was simple but effective—multiple encrypted VPNs bouncing her location across different continents, a private terminal with a failsafe kill switch, and an AI-driven monitoring tool that alerted her the moment her presence was detected.

And tonight, it had just lit up bright red.

Shit. He knows I’m here.

She adjusted her black-rimmed glasses, cracking her knuckles before diving back into the code. She had spent years preparing for this moment.

Luo Jian’s surveillance empire wasn’t just a system—it was a living, breathing entity.** A digital beast that consumed everything in its path.**

But even gods had blind spots.

And Eka was about to remind him of that.

Her fingers moved fast, inserting a tiny disruption—nothing catastrophic, just enough to send a ripple through the vast ocean of data Luo Jian controlled.

Just enough to whisper:

"You’re not untouchable."

A slow grin tugged at the corners of her lips.

Tonight, the hunter had become the hunted.

—

Luo Jian’s Control Center – 1:50 AM. Luo Jian’s gaze flickered toward the data spike. A flicker, an anomaly, a challenge.

It was a mistake.

No real hacker would be this careless.

Unless…

His fingers hovered over the keyboard. He wasn’t just tracing the hacker’s intrusion—he was learning from it. Studying the patterns, the techniques, the digital fingerprints.

"Sir, it’s disappearing—like it was never there!"

The analyst’s voice carried a note of panic, but Luo Jian merely chuckled.

He had seen this before.

Not many could operate at this level. Only a handful of people in the world could challenge his system and survive.

And he had a very good idea of who this was.

"Eka," he murmured.

It had been a long time since someone made his heart race with excitement.

His smile widened. This was going to be fun.

—

Eka’s Hideout – 1:52 AM. Her pulse quickened. The second she severed the connection, her screen glitched—just for a fraction of a second, but long enough to send a chill down her spine.

A single line of text appeared on her terminal.

YOU SHOULDN’T BE HERE.

Eka’s hands froze over the keyboard.

Then, her speakers crackled to life—a voice, deep and composed, speaking directly to her.

"You like playing with ghosts, don’t you?"

She ripped out the power cable immediately, her laptop screen going black.

The room fell deathly silent.

Her heart hammered in her chest.

Luo Jian wasn’t just tracking her.

He was already inside her system.

"Shit," she whispered under her breath.

For the first time in years, Eka felt something close to fear.

She wasn’t just up against a system.

She was up against the man who built it.

And he was coming for her.

—

Somewhere in the shadows of Jakarta, another figure had been watching all along. Haruto leaned against the railing of a high-rise rooftop, looking down at the city below. He wasn’t interested in the digital war between Eka and Luo Jian.

He preferred the real thing—flesh and blood, steel and silence.

But tonight, he had been ordered not to interfere.

Not yet.

He pulled a small blade from his sleeve, flipping it between his fingers absentmindedly.

A test. That’s what this was.

Luo Jian wanted to see how far Eka would go.

And when she stepped too far?

That’s when Haruto would step in.

—

Jakarta – 3:12 AM. Kiran sat in his dimly lit apartment, his laptop casting a faint glow over the scattered papers, flash drives, and open notebooks strewn across his desk. His fingers hovered over the keyboard, rereading the single line of text on his screen.

STOP DIGGING.

No sender. No subject.

His jaw tightened. He had seen this before. Journalists didn’t just disappear overnight. It was a process. A slow erasure.

First, their articles vanished from archives. Rewritten histories. Then, their credentials were revoked. No more access. Next, their bank accounts froze. Financial suffocation. And finally, the world simply forgot they ever existed.

Now, it was his turn.