David Environmental Destruction

Oenrust Island – A Fragile Sanctuary. The dawn painted Oenrust Island in hues of gold and rose, a cruel mimicry of the paradise it once was. David stood at the water’s edge, his boots sinking into mud that reeked of sulfur and decay. Above, a lone heron circled, its cries hollow against the silence of dead mangroves. The trees, skeletal and slouching, clawed at the sky like beggars. Their roots, once tangled fortresses for crabs and mudskippers, now floated lifeless in water glazed with an iridescent sheen—oil and chemicals swirling into kaleidoscopic poison.

Behind him, Mayang crouched beside a withered fern, her gloves caked in black sediment. “This isn’t erosion,” she said, voice tight. She snapped a brittle leaf; it disintegrated like ash. “It’s systemic. The soil’s pH is lower than battery acid.”

David didn’t turn. He already knew.

The team had arrived at sunrise, lugging equipment funded by grants the Nine Dragons had “generously” supplemented. For conservation, they’d claimed. Now, their drones buzzed overhead, capturing footage of kelp forests reduced to slime, coral reefs bleached bone-white. A grad student, Rangga, waded into the shallows, netting a bloated fish. Its gills oozed neon-green fluid. “Ikan patin,” he said, grim. “Migratory. They shouldn’t be here.”

“Or dead,” Mayang muttered.

David’s gaze drifted to the horizon, where smokestacks belched clouds into the dawn. The Nine Dragons’ “clean energy” bioreactor loomed on a neighboring islet, its silhouette jagged against the sky. He’d seen the permits, stamped and unquestioned. Environmental innovation, the documents declared. Yet the water here hissed where it kissed the shore.

—

Thalia adjusted her AR visor, the holographic overlay flickering as it calibrated. Beside her, Bima, her Javanese eagle, perched on a drone dock, its talons gripping a sensor array. The eagle’s augmented ocular implants streamed real-time thermal scans to her visor. “Methylmercury levels spiking at 12 ppm,” she announced, her voice clipped and efficient. “Industrial-grade concentration. This isn’t runoff—it’s deliberate.”

Mayang stood, wiping her hands on her pants. “We need to report this. Now.”

David finally turned, his face a mask. “To whom? The fisheries minister who approved the bioreactor? The journals owned by syndicate shell companies?”

The team froze. Rangga’s net slipped into the water, forgotten.

Mayang stepped closer. “You knew.”

“I suspected.”

“And you brought us here anyway?”

David’s jaw tightened. He’d hoped—foolishly—for evidence that might survive the syndicate’s reach. Instead, he’d led them into a graveyard. “The data still matters. Even if we’re the only ones who see it.”

Rangga laughed bitterly, kicking a driftwood stump. “For what? A eulogy?”

Thalia tapped her visor, commanding Bima to ascend. The eagle-drone hybrid soared, its cameras panning the bioreactor. “Live-streaming to decentralized servers,” she said. “Even if they scrub it, the blockchain’s immutable.”

Mayang shot her an approving nod—Gen Z pragmatism meeting Millennial resolve.

David watched Bima’s feed on his outdated tablet. “They’ll trace the signal.”

Thalia shrugged. “Let them. My VPN is routed through six countries.”

A grad student’s idealism, David thought, but he didn’t argue.

Mayang knelt again, scooping a water sample. Her hands trembled, not from fear, but rage. “We’ll seed resistant mangroves. Flood the media. Something.”

David admired her stubbornness, even as it chilled him. She hadn’t seen what he had—activists vanished, data scrubbed, forests bulldozed and rebranded as “renewable zones.” The cycle was elegant in its cruelty: destroy, sanitize, rebuild.

“Focus on the samples,” he ordered. “Document everything. Even if it dies with us.”

As the team scattered, David knelt beside a tidal pool. Beneath the oil’s rainbow veneer, a baby sea turtle floated belly-up, its shell softened by toxins. He cradled it, the weight negligible, the loss infinite.

Mayang’s shadow fell over him. “We’re not just documenting,” she said quietly. “We’re burying evidence.”

David set the turtle adrift on the foul current. “Or planting a flag. For whoever comes next.”

In the distance, the bioreactor hummed, a hymn to progress. Somewhere, a boardroom table would soon hold reports of Oenrust’s “unfortunate decline,” followed by offers to rehabilitate the land—for a price.

David stood, wiping his hands on his shirt. The stains wouldn’t wash out.

Uncovering the Crime

Further inland, David leads his team through a dense section of the island, past rusting storage tanks and abandoned equipment. The smell of chemicals lingers in the air. They arrive at a site where trees have been cleared, replaced by large metal drums partially buried in the soil.

Mayang removes her gloves, touching the ground. Her expression hardens. “Toxic waste,” she says. “It’s seeping into everything.”

One of the younger researchers, a quiet intern named Adi, hesitates before speaking. “We found similar contamination near the eastern cove,” he says. “It’s spreading.”

David clenches his jaw. This is no accident. Someone is using Oenrust as a dumping ground.

—

The rumble of engines cut through the island’s deathly silence, vibrating in David’s molars before he saw the SUVs. They emerged from the skeletal mangrove grove like black beetles, tires crushing brittle coral underfoot. Five vehicles, windows tinted, engines idling. The lead door opened, and Haruto stepped out—the Silent Whisper, his scarred cheek catching the sun like a crack in porcelain. Behind him, enforcers fanned out, their boots crunching on dead shells. They carried no visible weapons, but their belts bulged with shock rods and neural disruptors.

David’s team froze. Mayang edged toward a sample crate, her fingers brushing a soil probe like a makeshift weapon. Thalia tapped her AR visor twice—recording—as Bima, her drone-eagle hybrid, ascended silently into the smog.

“Mr. David,” Haruto said, his voice a monotone calibrated to unnerve. “You’re trespassing on private property.”

David gestured to the rotting “Protected Conservation Zone” sign half-buried in sludge. “This island’s status hasn’t changed.”

Haruto’s men shifted, their movements synchronized. One kicked over a water sampler; another crushed a mangrove sapling underfoot. “It has,” Haruto said. “New ownership. Progress requires sacrifice.” His gaze flicked to the bioreactor looming offshore.

Rangga lunged forward, fists clenched. “Progress? You’ve turned this place into a sewer!”

Haruto didn’t flinch. A flick of his wrist, and an enforcer activated a shock rod. The crackle of electricity split the air.

“Stand down,” David ordered, locking eyes with Rangga. The younger man seethed but retreated.

Mayang stepped forward, her voice steady. “We’re documenting ecological crimes. The world will see.”

Haruto tilted his head, amused. “The world sees what we let it.” He nodded to Thalia. “Your little drone’s feed? Already quarantined. Firewalls are… fragile.”

Thalia’s jaw tightened. Her visor flickered—hacked—but she kept her hands still. Bima circled higher, a speck in the haze.

Haruto closed the distance to David, close enough for the stench of antiseptic and gun oil to cling. “Leave. Now.”

David held his ground. “Or?”

“Or your team becomes a statistic. ‘Activists lost in environmental tragedy.’ Poetic, no?”

Mayang’s breath hitched. Rangga muttered curses. Thalia’s fingers twitched, her visor’s backup drive whirring silently in her pocket.

David weighed the variables: Thalia’s data, Mayang’s resolve, Rangga’s rage. All outweighed by Haruto’s indifference. He’d seen this before—the Kalimantan team, the Sulawesi researchers. Vanished, their work erased.

“We’ll go,” David said.

“David—” Mayang started.

“Now,” he snapped.

Haruto smiled, a slit in stone. “Wise.”

As the team packed under the enforcers’ watch, Thalia knelt to tie her boot. Her visor’s backup drive slid into the muck, camouflaged. Bima’s thermal scan pulsed once—data preserved.

Haruto’s gaze lingered on David. “You think this changes anything? The cycle continues. With or without you.”

David shouldered his pack. “Cycles break.”

The enforcers parted, a gauntlet to the boats. Rangga spat at Haruto’s feet; the enforcer behind him raised a shock rod.

“Leave it,” David growled.

They boarded the skiff in silence. As the engine sputtered to life, Haruto’s voice carried across the water: “Tell your allies—Oenrust is just the beginning.”

—

The Symbolic Crown Becomes a Target

David’s office was a relic of another time. Maps of Jakarta’s archipelago yellowed on the walls, annotated with decades of conservation notes. Shelves sagged under the weight of soil samples, cracked coral fragments, and his grandfather’s journals. At the center of his desk, bathed in the jaundiced glow of a desk lamp, sat the Crown of the Dragon—a twisted circlet of tarnished silver and jade, its edges clawed and unpolished. Passed down through generations of his Nusatenggara ancestors, it was said to hold the rage of Komodo dragons and the cunning of island storms. To David, it had always been a burden. To the Nine Dragons, it was a trophy.

He slumped into his chair, the weight of Oenrust’s rot still clinging to his clothes. Haruto’s words echoed: “Cycles break.” A threat, not a warning. David traced the Crown’s jagged peaks, each one representing a clan that had resisted colonial sugar barons and poachers. His father had worn it during protests in the ’90s, its weight a reminder: “Power isn’t given. It’s taken.”

Now, power was being taken from him.

A knock startled him. Mayang leaned in, her face drawn. “They hit the mangrove project in Surabaya. Same toxins. Same denials.” She tossed a report on his desk—photos of dead otters, their fur sloughing off in clumps.

David didn’t look up. “And the fisheries ministry?”

“Silent. As always.”

When she left, he opened his laptop. Surveillance footage from Thalia’s hidden drone flickered: enforcers dumping barrels into Oenrust’s waters under moonless dark. Another video, timestamped yesterday, showed Wei Long inspecting the Crown in a museum exhibit—Cultural Heritage of the Archipelago. His gloved hand hovered over the glass, a hunter admiring prey.

The Crown wasn’t just a symbol. It was a key.

His grandfather’s journal lay buried under permits and permits and permits. David flipped to a dog-eared page:

“The Dutch called it superstition. But when they stole the Crown in 1912, the Komodo dragons turned on their camp. Coincidence? The islands have memory.”

Memory. Vengeance.

—

David’s phone buzzed—a blocked number. A single image: the Crown’s glass case, shattered. The caption: “Return what’s ours.”

He laughed, sharp and hollow. Ours. As if the Dragons had ever belonged to these islands. They were locusts, stripping flesh from bone and calling it progress.

But the Crown... It had survived wars, tsunamis, and greed. It would survive this.

He opened a locked drawer, retrieving his father’s old kris dagger, its serpentine blade etched with Javanese script. “For dragons,” his father had joked. David had never found it funny.

Another knock. Thalia hovered, Bima perched on her shoulder. The eagle’s augmented eyes glinted. “They’re escalating,” she said. “Social media’s flooded with posts calling the Crown a ‘national treasure’—hashtags, conspiracy threads. The Dragons are rallying public sentiment to seize it.”

David slid the dagger into his belt. “Then we move it.”

“Where?”

“Somewhere they’ll never look.”

Thalia’s visor flickered. “They’re monitoring us. Haruto’s got a six-hour head start.”

David lifted the Crown. It hummed faintly, a vibration more felt than heard. Maybe it was the blood rushing to his head. Or maybe the islands did remember.

“Let them come,” he said. “They want a war of symbols? We’ll give them one.”