The Weight of Time

Sebastian is trapped in a vision—a fragmented, chaotic glimpse into Jakarta’s near future. Fire rages across the cityscape, smog thickens the air, and sirens wail through the streets. The sounds of protests blend with the distant roar of collapsing buildings. He stumbles through a metropolis crumbling under corruption, environmental disaster, and unchecked power.

Jakarta is barely recognizable. Flooded streets reflect the neon glow of corporate billboards flashing distorted propaganda. Towering skyscrapers stand abandoned, their skeletal frames covered in vines. Black smoke rises from corporate sectors, signaling destruction. In the chaos, civilians riot against faceless enforcers.

Among the destruction, symbols of the Nine Dragons dominate the city. Their insignia hangs from banners, their influence displayed on digital billboards. A lone figure stands atop a ruined building, masked and unmovable, watching as the city falls. The vision flickers, distorting before Sebastian can make out the details of the figure’s face. Then everything fades to darkness.

Sebastian’s knees hit the pavement first, the impact jolting through him like a live wire. One moment, he’d been standing in the damp chill of his Jakarta apartment, tracing a finger over the cracked screen of his surveillance monitor. The next—this.

Heat seared his lungs before he registered the flames. Jakarta burned in every direction, a fever-dream collage of ruin. Skyscrapers, those glittering idols of progress, now leaned like drunkards, their glass facades shattered into jagged

—.

Awakening & the Burden of Prophecy

Sebastian’s eyes snapped open, his throat raw as if he’d been screaming. The room swam into focus—a cramped, windowless space lit by the jaundiced glow of a dying desk lamp. The air smelled of mildew and ink, of desperation etched into peeling walls. He lay on a cot, its springs digging into his back, while the remnants of the vision clung to him like a second skin. His ribs ached, phantom pain from collapsing buildings. His palms burned where he’d gripped the banner, its mold-rotten fabric now lost to the void between futures.

He rolled sideways, retching, but nothing came up. Just bile and the metallic taste of fear. Not again. The mantra looped in his skull as he staggered to his feet, legs trembling. Around him, the sanctuary—his self-made prison—sprawled in chaotic devotion. Maps of Jakarta papered the walls, studded with pins and crisscrossed with red string. Newspaper clippings curled at the edges: Oenrust Island Sinking—Gov’t Denies Climate Claims. Riots Erupt Near Presidential Palace. Photographs of Nine Dragons members, their faces circled and annotated, watched him like a gallery of ghosts.

He lurched toward the desk, knocking over a tower of reports. Pages fluttered to the floor, their margins crammed with his manic scribbles. Flood patterns match 2026 corporate dredging permits. Zhi Fang’s cousin owns 18% of BioGen Solutions. He grabbed a charcoal pencil, its tip broken, and scrawled on the nearest scrap: BioGen—gene-mod crops? Linked to the Kalimantan famine?? His handwriting spidered across the paper, barely legible.

A coffee cup overturned, staining a 2030 tidal projection map. The brown spill swallowed entire neighborhoods. Just like the visions. Sebastian laughed, a cracked sound. He’d drawn that map two years ago, trying to warn them. Instead, the city had built higher seawalls—right where the Nine Dragons owned cement factories.

He pressed his forehead to the wall, cool plaster against his feverish skin. The vision replayed behind his eyelids: that masked figure on the tower, their gloved hand lifting—a key? A weapon?—before the world dissolved. Always just before. Prophecy’s cruelest joke.

His gaze drifted to a photograph pinned beneath a rusted switchblade. A woman’s face, her smile blurred by motion. Lia, read the caption in his hand. Subianto’s diplomat. Last seen at ASEAN Summit. She’d laughed when he’d cornered her in a parking garage, spouting warnings about supply-chain sabotage. “Fantastic pitch,” she’d said, sliding into her black sedan. “You should write fiction.” The next day, her assistant had emailed him a list of mental health clinics.

Sebastian’s fist clenched, crumpling the BioGen note. Every intervention backfired. Every warning twisted into profit. When he’d leaked Tian Hao’s port schematics to the press, the Nine Dragons had spun it as a “security upgrade,” inflating their stock. When he’d tracked the strike funds to Macau, the money vanished, only to resurface as “disaster relief” bearing their logo.

He slumped into the desk chair, its wheels screeching. On the monitor, a live feed showed Jakarta’s streets, serene under predawn drizzle. Normal. For now. But the cracks were there: a traffic cam flickering offline near the docks, a headline about “unrest” in Bandung. He zoomed in, freezing the image. A shadow in an alley—a figure in a long coat?—but the pixels blurred into nothing.

This time, he thought, digging through the debris for his glasses. The left lens was cracked, a hairline fracture splitting the world. This time, it’s different. The masked figure in the vision hadn’t appeared before. Neither had the banner, its gold threads blackened. Clues, or another maze?

His hand brushed a folder buried under takeout containers. Inside, satellite photos of the Bank Mandiri tower, its rooftop bare. Except—he squinted—a smudge on the ledge. He’d dismissed it as dust. Now, he traced the shape with a trembling finger. A boot print.

The monitor buzzed. An alert popped up: BioGen Solutions IPO announced. Major backers include a Nine Dragons subsidiary.

Sebastian stood so fast the chair toppled. He tacked the BioGen note to the wall, red string coiling around it like a noose. Gene-mod crops. Famine. Profits. The threads converged on a single pin: a rural district in Kalimantan, where Nine Dragons-owned trucks had rolled in last week.

“No,” he muttered. Not again. Not another Oenrust.

But the vision had shown him the tower. The figure. The choice.

He yanked a hoodie over his sweat-soaked shirt, shoved the satellite photos into a frayed satchel. Maybe this time, he’d reach the rooftop first. Maybe this time, he’d pull the mask off himself.

As he slipped into the dawn-lit streets, the desk lamp flickered out. Behind him, the maps rustled, their strings trembling as if stirred by a wind only they could feel.

—

The Warning of Kiran’s Death

The pain struck without mercy—a white-hot blade twisting behind Sebastian’s eyes. He braced himself, fingers digging into his desk as the vision surged. Again. This time, the fragments sharpened into clarity: Kiran sprinting through a rain-slicked alley in Kuala Lumpur, her chest heaving, a silver data drive clenched in her fist. Neon signs bled crimson onto the pavement, their glow fractured by the flicker of failing streetlights. Somewhere behind her, gunfire erupted—sharp, rhythmic. Not random. Targeted.

A shadow detached itself from the alley’s mouth. A man in a tailored suit, face obscured, stood statue-still as Kiran vanished around a corner. The vision stuttered, rewound, then lurched forward. Now, her press badge—emblazoned with the faded logo of The Sentinel—lay crushed under a soldier’s boot, its edges smeared with blood. The soldier’s uniform bore no insignia, but Sebastian recognized the hexagonal dragon tattoo coiled around his wrist. Nine Dragons.

Sebastian jerked back to his cramped apartment, sweat stinging his eyes. His heartbeat thundered in his ears, syncopated with the hum of the city beyond his barred window. The visions had haunted him since the accident last year—the car crash that had killed his fiancée and left him with a fractured skull… and this cursed gift. Fragments of futures that dissolved like smoke if he hesitated.

He didn’t know when this would happen. Days? Hours? Kiran’s investigation had already cost her two sources. Last week, she’d texted him a photo of a deforested Malaysian hillside, the earth gouged by excavators. “Project Horizon isn’t about clean energy,” she’d written. “It’s a cover. Meet me Thursday?” He’d ignored her. Too consumed by his grief, his ghosts.

No more.

Sebastian lunged for the chaos of his desk—maps scribbled with coordinates, bank statements tracing shell companies, a dossier on Nine Dragons’ CEO, Li Wei. The syndicate’s tendrils spanned continents: drug trafficking, arms deals, and now this gleaming facade of sustainability. Kiran had unearthed something that could burn them all down.

His hands trembled as he dialed the only number he’d risked saving under a contact name. Two rings, then a voice, wary and weathered: “Boss?”

“Malik,” Sebastian said, staring at the photo of Kiran—her grin fierce, her hair a storm of curls. “I need everything on Project Horizon’s site security. Blueprints, shift rotations, everything.”

A pause. Malik had quit fieldwork after a botched op in Jakarta, but his hacking skills were unmatched. “You know what they do to snoops, Seb. This isn’t some corp espionage—”

“She’s going to die tonight.” The words hung raw in the air.

Another pause. A sigh. “One hour.”

—

Sebastian moved to the window, peeling back the blinds. Kuala Lumpur’s skyline glittered, a monument to progress. But in the alley below, a figure lingered—too still, too patient. The man from his vision? Paranoia, or precision? Nine Dragons had eyes everywhere. They’d made sure he knew that after he’d dug too deep into their shipping logs. A bullet in his mailbox. A photo of his sister’s kids taped to his door.

He let the blinds snap shut. Kiran’s data drive was the key. Whatever she’d stolen, it was worth killing for. Worth dying for. His vision hadn’t shown her body, only the badge. Hope, or cruelty?

The laptop pinged. Malik had delivered: schematics of a solar farm in Johor Bahru, payroll logs listing ex-military hires, and a security timetable—patrols halting at 1:17 a.m. nightly. A glitch, or a trap?

Sebastian grabbed his go-bag, fingers brushing the cold steel of his pistol. He’d vowed never to carry it again after Lena’s death. But tonight, the weight felt like a promise.

As he slipped into the hallway, the flicker of a cigarette ember glowed in the stairwell. Footsteps echoed, deliberate, unhurried. They’d found him faster than he’d expected.

He ran.