Signs of a Vanishing Man

Kiran exhaled, forcing himself to remain calm. He had prepared for this. He reached for his backup drive, plugged it into his laptop, and pulled up his encrypted files. Reports, government memos, leaked transaction records—everything he had uncovered about the missing official was still intact.

For now. His phone buzzed again. He grabbed it, expecting another warning. But this time, it was something worse. Account Error:

Your access has been revoked.

A chill crept down his spine. His press credentials had been disabled. He clicked onto his banking app—a red notification flashed.

ACCOUNT FROZEN. CONTACT CUSTOMER SUPPORT.

Kiran felt his breath catch. This wasn’t a coincidence.

He grabbed his jacket and moved toward the door. He needed to think. Needed to get some air—

But as his hand reached for the doorknob, he stopped.

Something was off.

The Search – But Who?

Kiran turned slowly, scanning his apartment with fresh eyes. The papers on his desk… were slightly out of place.

His chair wasn’t how he left it.

His desk drawer, usually locked, was ajar.

Someone had been here.

His pulse quickened. Not a robbery. Not random.

A warning.

His mind raced through possibilities. The Nine Dragons had eyes everywhere—they could have done this while he was sleeping. Or maybe… while he was out.

He turned back to his laptop, fingers moving quickly. Security logs.

His camera feed had been remotely accessed—twice—while he was gone.

Then, something else caught his eye.

A single file had been modified.

Not deleted. Not stolen. Modified.

Kiran’s fingers trembled as he opened it.

It was his own article draft—the exposé he had been working on. The one about the missing government official.

But now, the text was different.

Someone had rewritten it.

One paragraph stood out, added in clean, precise wording.

Your story is wrong, Kiran. Your sources lied. You’re looking in the wrong place. Come find the real truth.

No signature. No trace of who had edited it.

Kiran’s stomach twisted. This wasn’t Luo Jian’s style.

This was something else.

—

Across the street, from the shadowed corner of a rooftop, Haruto watched. His presence was unseen, unfelt—but deliberate. Luo Jian’s way of handling problems was digital erasure. A slow deletion. A whisper that never became a scream. But Haruto had a different philosophy.

He didn’t just erase people. He made them break. Kiran wasn’t ready yet. Not yet.

He watched the journalist from behind his scope, the infrared overlay painting Kiran’s every movement in clean digital clarity.

Every breath. Every hesitation. Kiran reached for his phone. Haruto adjusted his aim.

Not yet.

He flipped his knife between his fingers, allowing the cold metal to glint under the dim light. If Kiran moved in the right direction, he would be allowed to live. If he didn’t— Haruto’s blade stopped spinning.

—

Jakarta – 3:30 AM. Kiran locked his apartment door, sliding the deadbolt into place. Too late for that. If they wanted to get in, they would.

He sat back down, staring at the modified document. Someone had changed his story. They weren’t just watching him. They were guiding him.

He exhaled, rubbed his eyes, and did what he always did. He followed the lead. Kiran clicked on his anonymous messaging app and typed quickly.

Eka. I need you.

The response came in seconds.

Already tracking you. You’re compromised.

Eka, tell me something I don’t know.

Okay Kiran. Your story is bigger than you think. And you’re not the only one looking.

Kiran frowned.

Who else?

Eka’s next response took longer.

Then, finally, it came through.

I don’t know yet, Kiran. But you’ve got bigger problems. I just intercepted something.

What?

A pause.

Then, Eka sent him a screenshot.

A live security feed.

And in it, a figure standing outside his apartment.

Dressed in black.

Holding a blade.

Watching.

Waiting.

Jakarta – 3:45 AM. Eka’s fingers flew across the keyboard, her breath coming in quick, shallow bursts.

She had played this game before.

She had infiltrated corporate servers, government backdoors, military-grade encryptions—but nothing like this.

The first sign that she had made a mistake came in the form of a slow, creeping system shutdown.

One by one, her access points flickered offline—not all at once, not an instant kill switch, but deliberate, methodical, controlled.

He was watching her.

He was toying with her.

Eka muttering. "No, no, no… too fast…"

She flicked her eyes across the monitors, attempting to re-route through a proxy chain in Bangkok, but the nodes were collapsing before she could stabilize them.

This wasn’t just an AI defense system.

This was Luo Jian himself.

And now, he had found her.

—

Her speakers crackled to life. A voice—calm, smooth, deliberate.

Luo Jian: "You shouldn’t be here."

Eka’s heart skipped a beat. Her fingers hesitated over the keyboard. The connection was still active. She had exactly 4.3 seconds before he pinpointed her.

She typed fast.

"Neither should you."

And then—she severed the connection.

Her screens plunged into darkness.

She sat back, her pulse hammering in her ears.

For the first time in years, she felt something she had almost forgotten.

Fear.

—

Luo Jian leaned back in his chair, smirking.

The darkness of his control center was illuminated only by the shifting data streams, the cascading failures of Eka’s infiltration attempts still visible on his monitors.

His fingers tapped rhythmically against the desk. Slow. Calculated.

Luo Jian softly. "Impressive."

His subordinates had never seen him lose even a fraction of control over the system.

And yet, this hacker had slipped past his defenses—not fully, but enough.

She is dangerous.

But more importantly—

She is useful.

A game had begun, one he fully intended to win.

He opened a secure channel.

A voice answered almost instantly—sharp, composed, patient.

Haruto: "I assume you need me now."

Luo Jian smiled. "Find her. Watch her. But don’t touch her yet."

A pause. Then—

"And if she runs?"

"She won’t." Luo Jian smirks. "They never do."

—

Eka’s Hideout – 3:50 AM. Eka forced herself to take a slow breath, trying to still her shaking hands. She had severed the connection in time.

Luo Jian hadn’t found her exact location. But she knew he was already looking. She switched to her emergency console, pulling up live threat-detection logs.

Her heart sank.

NEW TRACE ATTEMPT DETECTED.

THREAT LEVEL: UNKNOWN.

INTRUSION VECTOR: UNDETERMINED.

She clenched her jaw. He wasn’t attacking her network anymore.

He was watching her.

Eka whispering. "He wants me to know."

She had two choices.

Run.

Or fight.

She flexed her fingers over the keyboard.

Let’s see how much control you have, Luo Jian.

—

Far from the neon glow of Jakarta’s skyline, in a place where streetlights failed to reach, Haruto adjusted the infrared scope of his rifle.

Through the digital overlay, he could see her.

Alone. Focused. Completely unaware.

Luo Jian wanted her monitored.

Haruto didn’t care for digital wars.

He preferred clean, precise solutions.

His fingers traced the handle of his knife.

Not yet.

For now, he would watch.

But the moment Eka made a mistake?

He would be there.

Waiting.

Luo Jian’s surveillance network flagged Kiran the moment his investigation crossed into dangerous territory. A missing official. A corporate deal gone wrong. The Nine Dragons’ fingerprints were everywhere, and now, so were Kiran’s.

Before his story could go public, his accounts were frozen, his press credentials revoked, and his family received anonymous threats. One by one, the doors began to close. He no longer existed—not in the system, not in the city.

Yet, within Luo Jian’s vast web of control, something was off. A brief disruption. A trace of digital interference—someone else was watching. But who?

Kiran knew he had little time. He backed up his data on an encrypted drive, stripped his devices of all identifiable connections, and attempted to go offline. But the Nine Dragons had anticipated his every move.

Black SUVs roamed the streets near his apartment. A drone hovered outside his window, scanning for signs of life. Then, his phone vibrated—a simple message: Stop. Or disappear.

Before he could react, his apartment door burst open. Agents swarmed in, methodical and ruthless. His files, his research—gone. Kiran reached for his encrypted drive, but it had vanished.

Across the city, deep in a secure location, Rudy leaned back in his chair. The data had been intercepted just in time. The Resistance now had their first real lead.

—

Jakarta – 2:12 AM. From the highest floors of his private tower, Luo Jian watched the city like a god surveying his dominion. Jakarta pulsed beneath him, its neon veins illuminated by traffic, LED billboards, and security lights that never truly allowed darkness to take hold. But Luo Jian didn’t trust what the eyes could see.

His true power lay elsewhere. In the invisible currents of data. His surveillance network stretched far beyond Jakarta. It reached through Southeast Asia, into financial institutions, government servers, and intelligence agencies.

It didn’t just observe crime—it predicted it before it happened. He monitored not just criminals, but journalists, activists, politicians—anyone who might become a threat.

And if they did?

They ceased to exist.

But tonight…

Something was wrong.

—

Luo Jian’s fingers moved swiftly across the holographic interface of his workstation, pulling up a section of encrypted logs. A flicker. A ripple in the code. Something—no, someone—had tapped into his network.

Only for 0.3 seconds. A lesser technician might have missed it, but Luo Jian’s system had been programmed to detect even the smallest deviations.

Luo Jian mutters. "You think you can hide?"

He traced the anomaly’s origin. The signal had bounced through thirty different servers, disguising itself in legitimate data packets. It was surgical. Intentional. This wasn’t a mistake. This was a challenge.

Luo Jian smirks. "Not an amateur, then."

That made it interesting.

And dangerous.

—

Somewhere in Jakarta, Eka leaned back in her chair, exhaling as she pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose.

She had done it.

Just for a fraction of a second, she had slipped inside Luo Jian’s network—long enough to map a small section of his surveillance grid.

She hadn’t tried to steal anything. Not yet. That would have been too obvious.

Instead, she had left a mark.

A whisper in the code.

"You are not untouchable."

Not an actual message, of course. Nothing that could be traced back to her. Just a single, deliberate flaw introduced into his system.

One small imperfection.

Because even gods could bleed.

—

Luo Jian didn’t panic. He didn’t even frown.

He simply studied the anomaly.

It was a test.

Whoever had done this wanted to see if he would notice.

His mind worked quickly. There were only a handful of people in the world capable of this level of precision.

And one name stood out.

Eka.

She was a ghost in the grid, a hacker whose name had surfaced only in whispers and classified reports.

Corporate espionage. Leaking encrypted government files. Vanishing before counter-hackers could trace her.

Luo Jian smirks. "So… we finally meet."

He opened a secure line.

A voice answered immediately.

Not digital. Not artificial.

Human.

"I assume you need me now."

Luo Jian smiled. "Find her. Watch her. But don’t touch her yet."

"And if she runs?"

"She won’t."

He glanced back at the encrypted log, watching as the ripple in his system slowly stabilized.

Luo Jian softly. "They never do."

—

Far from Luo Jian’s tower, Haruto adjusted the scope of his infrared sight, scanning the rooftops below. He didn’t care for digital games.

He preferred steel and silence.

But tonight, he was playing by Luo Jian’s rules.

For now.

Through his scope, he watched as a single light flickered on in a hidden safehouse below.

Eka.

The hunt had begun.

—

Jakarta – 4:22 AM. Kiran had been running for days. Not just physically—but through encrypted servers, back channels, and burner accounts. Every move was anticipated, every safehouse compromised, every attempt to reach the outside world blocked. He was out of time.

Through the shattered blinds of his apartment, he saw them. The black SUVs. Sleek. Unmarked. Moving with precision. They weren’t just looking for him anymore. They had found him. His pulse hammered in his ears. He had maybe three minutes before they breached the door. He needed to disappear. But not before making sure his work survived.

—

Kiran’s fingers moved across his keyboard, bypassing the last security protocols. Too slow. He opened his secure access tunnel, dragging his remaining files into an anonymous dead-drop server.

Uploading… 20%…

He forced himself to breathe.

35%… 49%… 63%…

A sound outside. Boots on concrete. He clenched his jaw, typing faster.

82%… 91%… 98%…

Then—The door shattered.

—

The force of the breach sent splinters of wood flying across the room. Four heavily armed enforcers stormed in, their movements calculated. Tactical. No wasted motion. No words. Just efficiency.

Kiran was already moving. His chair crashed backward as he lunged for his hidden escape route.

Too slow. A boot slammed into his chest, knocking the air from his lungs. He hit the floor hard.The agent nearest to him lifted his laptop, eyes scanning the screen. Nothing. The drive was empty. The files were gone. Kiran’s eyes widened.

Who erased them?