Shadows Behind the Throne

Menteng, Jakarta – Bintang’s safehouse. The safehouse stank of jasmine incense and gun oil. Bintang’s fingers brushed the serpentine symbol etched into the bullet casing—CakraBirawa—its grooves mirroring the carvings on the 13th-century Candi Sukuh temple walls, where he’d first seen the mark as a child. His father, a general turned dissident, had called it “the wheel that grinds empires to dust.” Now it glinted in the dim light of a cracked Tiffany lamp, a relic from the Dutch colonial era that still hung in this crumbling Menteng mansion.

Across the room, a hologram flickered above a stolen Nine Dragons projector. Wei Long’s scarred face contorted as he slammed a fist onto a boardroom table, his voice distorted by static: “Burn the ports, and the rebels starve.” Huang Jin, draped in a crimson suit, leaned back with a viper’s smile. “Burn the world, and we rebuild it purer.”

“Pawns,” Bintang muttered, tossing the casing onto a map of Jakarta riddled with red pins. “All of them. Even the Dragons answer to something older.”

Felix glanced up from sharpening his karambit, the curved blade catching the hologram’s blue glow. “You’ve been sniffing too much temple ash. The city’s drowning in bodies, and you’re chasing ghosts.”

Bintang’s laugh was a dry rasp. He’d heard the same skepticism years ago, when he’d warned his Black Sorrow team about the Nine Dragons’ rise—before half of them turned up in dumpsters. “You think this war started with drug cartels and bribes? The Dutch, the Japanese, the Suharto regime—all wore CakraBirawa’s collar. The cycle isn’t about who rules. It’s about who owns the wheel.”

He tapped the hologram controls. The image shifted to a satellite feed: Jakarta’s financial district, its skyscrapers lit like gravestones. Red dots pulsed where Nine Dragons shell companies clustered. “Wei Long wants order. Huang Jin wants chaos. But they’re just dogs fighting over scraps while their master eats the feast.”

Felix stiffened. Somewhere in the mansion’s rotting bones, a floorboard creaked.

Three knocks echoed—two quick, one slow. The Black Sorrow signal.

Bintang palmed a pistol as Felix melted into the shadows. The door burst open, and a figure collapsed inward, reeking of blood and burnt plastic. The courier—a boy no older than sixteen, his ojol delivery jacket soaked crimson—gasped, “They took the Underground… whole sector’s gone.”

Bintang knelt, pressing a rag to the boy’s gut wound. “Who?”

“Not… Dragons.” The courier choked, clawing at his pocket. “They wore… no insignia. Just… this.”

A metal token clattered to the floor. Felix snatched it, his face draining of color. Engraved on its surface: Phi-Trust.

Bintang’s jaw tightened. The courier went still.

Outside, sirens wailed as Menteng’s elite fled the rising smoke over Glodok. Felix stared at the token. “You knew. This whole time, you knew it wasn’t just the Dragons.”

“I hoped I was wrong.” Bintang pulled a rusted lever hidden behind a peeling oil painting. The wall slid open, revealing an arsenal: EMP grenades, neurotoxin darts, and a single folder stamped CakraBirawa in his father’s handwriting. “The Underground was a test. Now they’re moving openly.”

Felix sheathed his blade. “So what’s the play?”

Bintang tossed him a gas mask. “We find who’s spinning the wheel.”

As they slipped into the night, the hologram behind them flickered one last time—a split-second image of a boardroom table, empty save for a lone wayang kulit puppet with the CakraBirawa symbol burned into its chest.

The Fall of Trust

Jakarta Underground – The last stronghold. The war room hummed with the static of dying machines, its air thick with mildew and despair. Flickering LED strips cast a sickly green pallor over the Resistance’s final refuge—a crumbling Cold War-era bunker beneath Jakarta’s sewers.

Eka leaned against a concrete pillar, her fingers absently tracing the jagged scar on her temple, a souvenir from the Glodok ambush. Kiran’s final taunt echoed in her mind: “The cycle always wins.” Across the room, Felix paced like a caged predator, his karambit gleaming as he jabbed at the holographic map of the city. Red markers pulsed where Nine Dragons forces tightened their noose.

“You vouched for Kiran!” Pandu, the Green Sniper, slammed his fist on the splintered table. A cup of teh botol shattered on the floor, its sticky sweetness mingling with the reek of rust. “How many more graves do we dig for your trust?”

Eka met his glare, her voice flat. “I vetted her like I vetted you.” The lie tasted bitter. She’d missed the signs—Kiran’s lingering stares at encrypted files, her sudden interest in Oenrust Island. Now, the bunker’s walls seemed to close in, the chalk outlines of abandoned battle plans mocking her from every angle.

Felix kicked a chair aside, its legs screeching against the concrete. “The Dragons are minutes from drilling through our skulls, and you’re squabbling like kampung hens?” His gaze darted to the ceiling, where dust sifted down like funeral ash. “Move now or rot here.”

—

The door hissed open. Bintang entered, rainwater sluicing off his trench coat, his boots leaving muddy prints on the cracked floor. Silence followed him like a shroud. In his hand, he clutched a charred ledger, its pages brittle with age and secrets. He tossed it onto the table, and a sketch fluttered free—a serpentine symbol, CakraBirawa, its coils mirroring the scars on Bintang’s wrists.

“The enemy isn’t here,” he said, his voice a low rasp. “It’s in the shadows, feeding on your fear.”

Thalia, the Javanese Eagle, stepped forward. Her pistol trembled, but her voice didn’t. “You slink in and out like a ghost. Who’s to say you’re not one of them?” Visions of her brother’s death at Tanjung Priok flashed behind her eyes—a prophecy she’d failed to prevent. “Maybe you’re why they always know where to strike!”

Bintang’s eyes narrowed. Before he could speak, the ceiling erupted.

A drill charge tore through reinforced concrete, unleashing a hail of debris. Enforcers rappelled down on graphene cables, their mirrored visors reflecting the bunker’s chaos like fractured glass. Pandu lunged for a rifle, only to be shredded by tungsten-tipped rounds. Felix grabbed Thalia, shoving her behind an overturned generator.

“Go!” Felix barked at Bintang, ejecting a spent magazine. “You’re no use dead!”

Bintang hesitated, his hand brushing the ledger. For a heartbeat, time fractured—the enforcers’ visors flashed with the faces of a hundred fallen allies, their screams echoing across cycles. Then he vanished into a ventilation shaft, the ledger clutched to his chest.

Eka ducked behind a server rack, her fingers flying across a cracked tablet. Data scrolled—encrypted CakraBirawa files, timestamps stretching back to the Dutch occupation. They’ve been here all along. A bullet grazed her shoulder, and she hissed, scrambling toward a sewer grate.

Thalia fired blindly, her shots ricocheting off enforcer armor. Felix tackled her as a grenade rolled in, its blast swallowing Pandu’s corpse. “Stay close!” he growled, dragging her toward an exit.

Aboveground, Jakarta burned. Flames devoured the Senayan district, where a CakraBirawa shell company had already launched a “relief fund.” The cycle spun on—destroy, profit, rebuild.

In the tunnels, Bintang ran. The serpentine brand on his wrist burned, a relic from a Javanese priest’s warning: “You are both pawn and player.” Somewhere ahead, a gamelan melody echoed—a lullaby from his childhood, or CakraBirawa’s taunt. He followed it, the ledger’s weight a promise.

Behind him, the bunker’s screams faded. The Resistance was ash, but the war had only just begun.