The all-white room felt unbearably cold. The soft hum of life-support machines and the sterile glow of LED lights overhead were the only signs that time was still passing.
Beyond the smart window, which had been set to a fogged setting, the second day since that blood-soaked night had arrived. On the intensive-care bed, Andien shifted restlessly. Her swollen, dark-rimmed eyelids slowly opened. Her vision was blurry as it adjusted to the light stabbing at her eyes. The sharp smell of antiseptic immediately assaulted her nose, triggering nausea that burned down her throat.
“Andien... my child...” A trembling voice reached her ears. Andien turned stiffly. Beside her bed, her mother sat sobbing, clasping Andien’s cold fingers between her trembling hands. Her mother’s face looked so exhausted and old, carrying a grief no less profound.
“I... Mom?” Andien whispered, her voice hoarse and dry as a desert. “Yes, sweetheart. It’s Mom. You’re in the hospital, honey. You’re safe now...” Her mother stroked her daughter’s forehead, trying to share whatever warmth she had left. Andien closed her eyes for a moment, trying to piece together the scattered fragments of her memory. But within seconds, images from that night slammed into her consciousness without mercy. The dark lobby, the metallic stench of blood, Bisma’s pale face with foam bubbling at his mouth, and Baim’s scream shattering the night.
Bisma.
“Bisma... Mom, where’s Bisma?” Andien suddenly yanked her hand away and tried to sit up. The heartbeat graph on the monitor beside her bed spiked dramatically, setting off a shrill warning alarm. Beep! Beep! Beep! “Andien, don’t move yet, sweetheart! You just woke up!” “Where’s Bisma, Mom?!” Andien screamed, tears bursting from her eyes. Her lungs felt as though they were being crushed by hot iron. “Tell me Bisma is still alive! Tell me it was just a nightmare, Mom! Tell me!” Seeing her daughter hysterical, her mother could only sob and hold Andien tightly.
“Be patient, sweetheart... Say a prayer... You have to be strong for Baim...” That embrace was not a comfort but the cruelest confirmation of reality. Bisma was truly gone. The man who had been the axis of her world had vanished. An unbearable pain exploded inside Andien’s chest, so intense that her chest felt constricted and her breath caught in her throat. Her vision began to spin again, and the colors around her blurred into gray. Before she could say her husband’s name one more time, Andien’s consciousness was ripped away again.
Her body went limp in her mother’s embrace, sinking once more into dense darkness. Meanwhile, at the Metro Jaya Regional Police Headquarters, the cyber command center was under extreme tension. Dozens of digital forensics analysts and senior detectives had gathered before three-dimensional display screens hovering in the middle of the room.
“How could every optical-feed recording in Sectors 3 and 4 become corrupted at the same time?!” the Chief of Detectives barked, slamming his hand against the control desk. A young analyst wiped the cold sweat from his forehead. “The fire at the AeroTech Building ten minutes before the incident apparently triggered a chain surge of Electromagnetic Pulses, or EMPs, through the underground network, Commander. Every CCTV camera in the city, restaurant security camera, and traffic scanner within a three-kilometer radius malfunctioned and suffered data leakage. Someone engineered this energy leak with extraordinary precision.” “You mean... this wasn’t an ordinary fire?” “No, Commander. The fire was both a distraction and a way to erase the evidence.
“The perpetrator was highly professional. They knew exactly when to execute Mr. Bisma, knew the sensors’ blind spots, and knew how to disable the security system within fifteen minutes. We didn’t find a single image of the perpetrator’s face. No digital trail. Nothing.” The Chief of Detectives clenched his fists. The execution of a key state scientist in the middle of a public facility without leaving so much as a strand of hair behind was a devastating blow to the police of the twenty-second century. Powerful forces with sinister motives were working behind the scenes, controlling the game from the shadows.
An equally heated commotion was unfolding in the hospital’s main courtyard. Hundreds of reporters and national media outlets had packed the cordoned-off area, forming a sea of people and airborne drone cameras.
Cole, a thirty-eight-year-old man who had served as Bisma’s personal manager and trusted chief of staff, stepped out toward the press podium under the tight escort of six security cyborgs. Cole’s face looked utterly haggard, dark circles ringed beneath his eyes, reflecting the heavy burden that had suddenly fallen on his shoulders.
Cole adjusted the microphone in front of him, then drew a long breath before speaking. “Good afternoon, members of the media,” Cole began, his voice heavy but carefully composed. “I’m standing here on behalf of Mr. Bisma’s entire family. We confirm that Mrs. Andien and Baim are currently receiving intensive medical care. Both have suffered severe shock as well as profound physical and psychological trauma as a result of this tragedy. We earnestly ask everyone to give the bereaved family privacy and compassion.”
Before Cole could finish his statement, more than a dozen reporters immediately shouted questions over one another. “Mr. Cole! What about the allegation that this stabbing was connected to the embezzlement of funds from the Palace’s secret project?!” “Was Mr. Bisma murdered because he was about to expose documents related to that project?!” “Is it true that Mrs. Andien is also being investigated on suspicion of money laundering?!”
Hearing the wild questions and vicious assumptions targeting his late employer and Andien, Cole’s expression changed drastically. His eyes narrowed, flashing with anger. His jaw hardened.
“Enough!” Cole cut in, his raised voice silencing the commotion for a moment. He looked at the reporters one by one with a cold, cutting stare. “Mr. Bisma was a patriot and a scientist who devoted his entire life to advancing this country. The baseless accusations you’re throwing around while his family is grieving are profoundly indecent.”
Without giving the reporters even a chance to interrupt again, Cole abruptly turned away. “The press conference is over,” he said coldly to his guards, then strode back into the hospital building, leaving the reporters’ muffled shouts trapped behind the barricade.
Hundreds of kilometers from the chaos of blood-soaked Jakarta, heavy rain poured over the interior of the Kalimantan rainforest. Amid dense tropical trees and thick fog blanketing the highlands stood a remote research facility built from steel impervious to electromagnetic waves.
Inside one of its hidden laboratories, a fifty-year-old man sat hunched over an ancient workstation monitor isolated from the global internet. The man was Professor Denny, a senior scientist, Bisma’s former mentor, and his primary partner in designing the trillion-dollar secret project.
His graying hair was disheveled. His swollen eyes stared at the transparent screen displaying a news broadcast mourning Bisma’s death. Professor Denny’s trembling fingers nervously brushed across the surface of the desk.
He had sequestered himself in this remote corner of Kalimantan two days earlier, severing all communication with the outside world immediately after hearing news of the breach in Bisma’s laboratory security system. “Bisma... you trusted them too much...” Professor Denny whispered, tears running down his wrinkled cheeks.
Professor Denny pulled open a hidden steel drawer beneath his desk and took out a pitch-black encrypted memory drive—the sole backup copy of the secret project that Bisma had never managed to deliver to the government. The old man knew all too well that Bisma’s death was not the end of the tragedy, but the beginning of a bloody hunt. And now, after Bisma had fallen, he was the next target.