The Betrayal Unmasked

Eka’s throat tightened as Kiran’s laughter echoed in her memory—a sound now as brittle as the mangrove twigs she’d once described. Just days ago, they’d huddled over kopi tubruk in this very room, Kiran’s hands animated as she recounted dodging saltwater crocodiles in Penang’s estuaries. “Fear’s just a story we tell ourselves,” she’d said, her grin sharp as a machete. Now, her press badge lay at the bottom of Tanjung Priok harbor, and her stories were ash.

Lian Zhu’s absence cut deeper. He’d been the silent architect of their survival, sketching escape routes on napkins with a mechanical pencil. Eka could still see him adjusting his wire-rimmed glasses, his voice a calm counterpoint to Kiran’s fire: “Surveillance grids have blind spots. Even dragons sleep.” His meticulous maps had saved them a dozen times. Now, they’d led him into a killbox.

Betrayal coiled in Eka’s chest, venomous and cold.

—

The meeting reeked of burnt noodles and despair. Above Madam Lim’s stall, the windowless backroom throbbed with the clatter of woks below. Lanterns swung from rusted hooks, casting fractured shadows over the faces Eka no longer trusted. Clarissa stood rigid near the door, her Interpol-trained gaze dissecting every twitch. Pandu leaned against a wall, his sniper’s fingers drumming a silent rhythm on his rifle stock. Mayang crouched in the corner, grinding herbs with a mortar and pestle—a futile balm for wounds no poultice could heal. Felix and Nicholas lurked in the gloom, their Black Sorrow tattoos peeking beneath rolled sleeves, their loyalty as frayed as the bullet-riddled Sukarno poster behind them.

Eka’s boots crunched over spent casings as she stepped forward. The warped table bore scars from their last firefight—a spray of bullets that had nearly claimed Thalia. The psychic sat now with her Javanese Eagle amulet pressed to her lips, murmuring fragments of visions. “Phoenix wings… burning bridges…”

“They’ve been feeding intel to the Dragons,” Eka said, slamming the decrypted pages onto the table. The communiqués slithered like snakes, timestamps circled in red.

Clarissa snatched a sheet, her eyes narrowing. “This routing code—it’s from our servers.”

“Lian Zhu’s servers,” Eka corrected. “Accessed two hours before the ambush. By someone here.”

Felix flicked his cigarette. “You pointing fingers, bocah? We all saw Zhu’s maps. Dude was paranoid—triple-encrypted everything.”

“Paranoid,” Eka said, “because he knew there was a rat.” She tapped a line of code: Phoenix ascends with twin shadows. “This is a Nine Dragons kill order. ‘Phoenix’ means a high-value target. ‘Twin shadows’ means two traitors. Kiran and Lian Zhu were just the start.”

Thalia’s head snapped up, her camera-eye whirring. “The serpent… it wears two faces. One smiles, the other lies.”

Lia’s komboloi beads stilled. “Zhu Fen. He negotiated ‘ceasefires’ with the Dragons last week. Too many coincidences.”

The name hissed through the room. Zhu Fen—The Mediator, a Nine Dragons affiliate who’d slithered into their ranks under the guise of peace. Eka’s code had traced his digital fingerprints: encrypted handshakes, rerouted data packets, a backdoor in Lian Zhu’s firewall.

Pandu’s rifle shifted imperceptibly. “Where is he?”

As if summoned, the door creaked open. Zhu Fen stood framed in neon, his silk suit untouched by the market’s grime. “Apologies. The Dragons’ new… demands required renegotiation.”

Mayang’s mortar clattered. Eka lunged, slamming Zhu Fen against the wall. “You sold them, Kiran. You gutted us!”

He smiled, a knife wrapped in silk. “The cycle requires balance. The Dragons’ rise is inevitable.”

Clarissa drew her sidearm. “You’re under arrest.”

“For what?” Zhu Fen chuckled. “Diplomacy?”

The shot cracked before anyone blinked. Zhu Fen collapsed, a crimson bloom spreading over his heart. Through the window, a shadow dissolved into the crowd—a flicker of a dragon tattoo on a retreating wrist.

Hitori.

Chaos erupted. Felix and Nicholas vanished. Pandu scanned rooftops, rifle raised. Thalia chanted, “The Phoenix burns its wings…”

Eka knelt beside Zhu Fen’s body, her reflection warped in his polished shoes. His phone buzzed—a final message: The blade serves the one who wields it best.

The cycle had already chosen its next traitor.

Silence. Then chaos.

—

Kiran leaned back in her chair, arms crossed, her press badge glinting. “Proof?” she drawled, but Eka didn’t miss the flicker in her eyes—a split second of fear, or triumph?

Lian Zhu’s hand crept toward the exit’s rusted knob.

“Sit. Now.” Eka’s voice cut through the murmurs. She tapped her laptop, and Kiran’s voice spilled into the room—cool, transactional, bartering satellite coordinates for a “safe passage” guarantee. The recording hissed with static, but the words were unmistakable: “The Phoenix Project’s bioreactor coordinates. Deliver them by dawn, and Wei Long’s enforcers will look the other way.”

Pandu, the Green Sniper, gripped his rifle tighter. “You sold us out for what? A pat on the head from the Dragons?”

Kiran’s smirk didn’t reach her eyes. “You think they’re the real enemy? The Nine Dragons are just gardeners pruning the weeds. The cycle’s root goes deeper. Ask your precious Eka what else she found in those files.”

Eka froze. She had seen something—a reference to “Cakra-Birawa directives” buried in the metadata—but there’d been no time to dig.

Lian Zhu lunged, a butterfly knife flashing. Eka sidestepped, slamming the woman’s wrist against the wall until the blade clattered to the floor. “Why?” Eka hissed, her breath hot against Lian Zhu’s ear.

“Survival,” the strategist spat. “The cycle always wins. You’ll see.”

A metallic clink rolled across the floor. Smoke erupted, stinging and white. Pandu cursed, overturning a table as the room dissolved into coughs and shouts. Eka groped blindly, catching the sleeve of Kiran’s jacket—but the fabric tore free.

When the haze cleared, the traitors were gone. Only Kiran’s final whisper lingered, haunting the scorched air: “The cycle always wins.”

Outside, Glodok throbbed with oblivious life—vendors hawking durian, tourists snapping holograms of lantern-lit alleys. Eka stared at the crumpled communiqué in her fist. Somewhere in the crowd, a shadow moved too smoothly, a figure in a tailored suit pausing to light a cigarette. For a heartbeat, his face caught the neon: sharp features, eyes like polished onyx. Then he melted into the throng.

Hitori. The name slithered through her mind. The Dragon Enforcer—myth or man?

Pandu materialized beside her, rifle slung low. “We’ll hunt them down.”

Eka shook her head, the scar on her temple pulsing. “No. They wanted us to find this. It’s a message.” She crumpled the paper, the words Cakra-Birawa burning in her memory.

Somewhere, a clock ticked.

—

A Truth Too Dangerous

Oenrust Island – David’s last refuge. The storm screamed like a wounded beast, its winds clawing at the mangrove research station perched on Oenrust’s rotting pilings. David crouched over a flickering holographic map, the jagged outline of Jakarta’s coastline glowing in the dim light. Rain lashed the corroded windows, blurring the world beyond into a watery nightmare. Beside him, Clarissa hunched over a stack of hard drives, her Interpol-trained fingers dancing across a cracked tablet. The data streaming in was worse than they’d feared.

“It’s not a bioreactor,” she said, her voice steady but her knuckles white. “It’s a Trojan horse. The Phoenix Project’s ‘clean energy’ grid—it’s synthesizing methylmercury isotopes. They’re weaponizing the food chain.”

David’s hand drifted to the amulet at his throat—the Crown of the Dragon, a relic from his ancestors on Komodo Island. Its jagged edges bit into his palm, a reminder of the curse he carried: to feel every death in the ecosystem he’d sworn to protect. Right now, it hummed like a live wire. They’re already poisoning the bay.

“If we broadcast this,” Clarissa said, slamming the tablet onto the rusted lab table, “the UN sanctions alone would—”

A shadow moved outside. Both froze. The station’s lone security feed showed nothing but sheets of rain. David’s curse-laden senses screamed. He’d rigged the perimeter with crab traps wired to piezoelectric alarms—silent to everyone but him. Three traps had just snapped.

“Go,” he growled, shoving the hard drives into a waterproof satchel. “Take the kayak. Head for the deep channel.”

Clarissa didn’t argue. Six years chasing war criminals had honed her instincts. She was already at the door when the first bullet shattered the window.

Glass exploded inward. David tackled her behind an overturned freezer as automatic fire chewed through the room. Chemical tanks hissed, spewing noxious green vapor. Through the haze, David counted four figures in black tactical gear advancing from the mangroves—Nine Dragons insignias stitched onto their sleeves. Hired guns. Disposable.

Clarissa pulled a palm-sized drone from her jacket, its camera eye blinking red. “Last one,” she muttered, flinging it into the storm. The device whirred skyward, live-streaming evidence to a dozen encrypted servers. “Even if they kill us, the data’s out.”

David’s amulet burned. He could taste the poison in the air now—sickly sweet, metallic. The Phoenix Project’s toxin. It’s here. They’ve already deployed it.

He grabbed a Molotov cocktail from his emergency stash, the gasoline sloshing with his trembling. “When I light this, run. Don’t look back.”

Clarissa met his gaze. For a heartbeat, he saw the girl she’d once been—the idealistic investigator who’d laughed over kopi luwak in Singapore, convinced justice could outrun greed. Then she nodded.

The firebomb arced through the broken window. Flames erupted with a whump, igniting the lab’s stockpiled chemicals. A scream pierced the roar as a mercenary became a writhing silhouette. David didn’t watch. He was already shoving Clarissa through the back exit, toward the kayaks bobbing in the storm swell.

She made it three strokes before the sniper’s bullet struck.

David saw it in slow motion—Clarissa jerking forward, the satchel slipping from her grip, her hand clutching at the red blooming across her ribs. She mouthed something lost to the wind before sliding into the black water.

He didn’t hesitate. Plunging after her, he grabbed the satchel, its straps tangled in her fingers. The drive was still there. So was the drone’s footage. Enough to burn them.

A bullet punched through his shoulder as he surfaced. Onshore, a mercenary lowered his rifle, face obscured by a gas mask. Behind him, the research station collapsed in a gout of flame, its skeletal frame swallowed by the hungry sea.

David’s amulet shattered then, the Crown of the Dragon dissolving into emerald dust. The curse lifted—but with it came the final, crushing truth.

They wanted us to find this. They wanted the world to see.

As the second bullet found his heart, he understood: the Nine Dragons weren’t hiding their crime.

They were advertising it.