Location: Ashwick Corridors — Muchachos Restaurant — Night
Elijah's taco arrived.
He didn't touch it.
His eyes were on the stairs at the back of the restaurant—the ones that led up to Andreas Ferrano's office. A man in a dark suit stood at the bottom, his arms crossed, his face blank. Security. Always security.
Santiago Fuentes, Elijah thought. The sky king . The wealthiest drug king on the planet. The man who had everything.
And then he lost it all.
---
The morgue was cold.
White tiles. Fluorescent lights that buzzed like dying insects. The air smelled of formaldehyde and despair. Santiago stood over a table, his hands gripping the edge, his knuckles white. On the table, covered by a sheet, were the remains of his family.
Not bodies. Char.
Josefina. Clara. Isabel. Sofia.
The sheet was not white. It was gray, smudged, stained by something that had seeped through from beneath.
Santiago's face was a mask.
Then it cracked.
His lips peeled back from his teeth—not a snarl, the beginning of a scream that had nowhere to go. His eyes, wide, bloodshot, filled with tears that did not fall. His hands lifted from the table, hovered in the air, trembling, as if reaching for something that wasn't there.
His fingers curled.
His palms pressed against his temples.
His body swayed—forward, back, forward—like a tree in a storm that was about to uproot.
Anguish, Elijah thought. The kind that doesn't scream because screaming isn't enough.
Then despair.
Santiago's knees buckled. He caught himself on the edge of the table, his forehead pressed against the cold metal. His shoulders shook. His breath came in ragged, wet gasps. The sound was not crying. It was breaking.
Then rage.
His head snapped up.
His eyes—red, wild, hungry—found the ceiling, the walls, the door. His hands slammed against the table. The metal rang like a bell. His mouth opened, and this time the scream came—not loud, low, a sound that vibrated through the floor, through the walls, through the bodies of the men who stood outside the door.
Vengeance, Elijah thought. He wanted vengeance. And he didn't care what it cost.
---
He didn't hold back.
Esteban Rojas—the man who had betrayed him, the one who had planted the package on his doorstep—was given a remote detonator and a list of targets. Ferrano corridors. All of them. The restaurants, the warehouses, the safe houses.
Blow them all, Santiago had said. Leave nothing standing.
The explosions came at dawn.
Muchachos went first—a fireball that consumed the kitchen, the booths, the basement full of Haze. Long Walk followed, its elegant scrolls and silk dresses turned to ash. Kuvitich, its concrete walls and winter paintings, crumbled into dust.
The turf factions nearly collapsed that day.
Seven years ago. A wound that had never fully healed.
Santiago knew his time in the sun was over, Elijah thought. The Mysterium clan would not forgive him. Would not forget. They had let him have his revenge, and now they would come for theirs.
So he chose his own way out.
---
The office was dark.
Santiago sat behind his desk, a bottle of tequila in front of him, a revolver in his hand. His suit was white, rumpled, stained with sweat and something that might have been blood. His eyes were empty.
Outside, the sound of gunfire.
His men—the ones who had stayed loyal—were fighting a running battle against the Mexican army. Commander Phillipo had arrived with two hundred soldiers, armored vehicles, helicopters. The ranch was surrounded. There was no escape.
Santiago raised the revolver.
He pressed the barrel against his temple.
His hand trembled.
Then it steadied.
"Perdóname," he whispered.
He pulled the trigger.
---
The army swept through the ranch.
Soldiers in green fatigues, their faces hidden behind helmets and goggles, moved from room to room, clearing, securing. Bodies lay everywhere—Santiago's men, their weapons still in their hands, their eyes still open.
Commander Phillipo walked through the carnage.
He was tall, broad-shouldered, his uniform immaculate despite the dust and smoke. His face was square, his jaw was strong, his eyes were the eyes of a man who had seen too much and stopped caring.
Behind him walked a young man.
Andreas.
Nineteen, maybe twenty. His face was lean, sharp, with dark eyes that missed nothing. He wore civilian clothes—jeans, a leather jacket—but his posture was military. He had been trained. He had been tested.
They reached Santiago's office.
The door was open.
Phillipo stepped inside.
Santiago's body was slumped over the desk. The revolver had fallen from his hand. The tequila bottle had shattered, its contents pooling on the floor like blood.
Phillipo stared at the corpse.
Then he spat.
The saliva landed on Santiago's cheek, dripped down, mixed with the drying blood.
"Cobarde," Phillipo said.
He turned to Andreas.
"Remember this. Power is not given. It is taken. And those who cannot hold it do not deserve it."
Andreas nodded.
His eyes never left the body.
---
The maid's testimony was different.
She had been hiding in the closet when Santiago pulled the trigger. She saw everything—the revolver, the tequila, the way his hand steadied before the end. She told the newspapers. She told the investigators. She told anyone who would listen.
No one believed her.
Phillipo took credit for the kill. The hero of the hour. The man who brought down the Lord of the Skies.
And for a time, Elijah thought, he was untouchable.
---
Esteban Rojas did not die quickly.
The meat-processing plant was in the industrial district—a maze of conveyor belts, grinding machines, and workers who had learned not to ask questions. Esteban was brought there in the back of a van, his hands bound, his mouth gagged.
They fed him into the grinder.
Feet first.
The machine was old, loud, its blades thick and rusted. It chewed through bone and flesh with the same efficiency as it did through beef and pork. Esteban's screams lasted for three minutes.
Then they stopped.
No one claimed the remains, Elijah thought. No one came looking. He was erased. Like he had never existed.
---
Phillipo became the next voting power.
Not by choice—by circumstance. The Mysterium clan needed someone to rebuild the Ferrano corridors, to restore order, to make the money flow again. Phillipo was the obvious choice. He was a hero. He had connections. He knew how to lead.
But Phillipo was smarter than the others, Elijah thought. He knew that the power they offered was a poisoned chalice. He took their money. He took their connections. He rebuilt the corridors.
And then he quit.
The rebuilding took months.
Architects drew plans. Masons laid bricks. Electricians ran wires. Phillipo stood at the center of it all, a blueprint in his hands, shouting instructions over the noise of hammers and saws.
"The foundation needs to be deeper!" he yelled. "The walls need to be thicker! I don't want this place falling apart in a year!"
Andreas worked beside him.
Not as an heir—as a laborer. He carried bricks. He mixed cement. He learned the value of sweat, of calluses, of the kind of exhaustion that came from a hard day's work.
Many didn't welcome Phillipo at first, Elijah thought. They remembered the old ways. They remembered Santiago. But Phillipo's manner of operating—his efficiency, his fairness, his refusal to play favorites—won them over.
Within months, he was wealthy. Connected. Respected.
And then he walked away.
---
He returned to his home country.
The Tinkuana cartel was born in the mountains of southern Eva, where the air was thin and the roads were treacherous. Phillipo used the money he had accumulated—the money from the Mysterium clan, the money from the corridors—to buy land, to buy weapons, to buy loyalty.
Army vests. Operative gear. Men in black uniforms, their faces hidden behind balaclavas, their weapons gleaming.
On the side of their vehicles, an emblem.
Same silhouette. Same geometry. Two figures, standing back to back, their swords raised, their shields interlocked. The same emblem that appeared on Mysterium clan documents. The same emblem that had been burned into the minds of everyone who had ever crossed them.
Phillipo was not naive, Elijah thought. He knew that the Border Patrol Agency was just a branch—a stuge—of the Mysterium clan. He knew that if he stepped out of line, he would end up like Santiago.
So he stayed in his lane.
He built his cartel. He made his money. He never forgot who held the leash.
---
Andreas stayed.
He took over Muchachos—the smallest of the three corridors, the one that had been hit hardest by the bombings. He started at the bottom, washing dishes, waiting tables, learning the rhythm of the restaurant from the inside.
He earned his way to the top, Elijah thought. No handouts. No favors. Just sweat and grit and a refusal to give up.
That's why the people love him.
He's one of them.
But he's also something else.
---
The files were buried deep.
Elijah had found them in the Global Intelligence network—a cloud database of classified information that the Mysterium clan kept under wraps. Most of it was junk. Decades-old reports, irrelevant dossiers, the digital equivalent of a dusty filing cabinet.
But one file caught his attention.
Andreas Ferrano.
Not a drug lord. Not a restaurant owner. An Edgeform, B-rank operative. Trained by the Mysterium clan for military combat. Not the Epsilon program—something different. Something more refined.
The training had taken place in the jungles of Coprendes, where the trees were thick and the air was wet and the enemy was always watching.
Andreas moved through the undergrowth like a ghost.
His uniform was green, patterned, designed to break up his silhouette. His face was painted with stripes of black and brown. His weapon was not a rifle—it was a knife.
The enemy appeared from behind a tree.
A man, large, his machete raised, his mouth open in a scream that never came.
Andreas moved.
His body flowed—not fast, not slow, just continuous. His arm extended. The knife traced an arc through the air, caught the light, and disappeared into the man's chest.
The man's eyes widened.
Andreas pulled the knife free. His leg swept the man's feet. His knee struck the man's stomach. His fist cracked the man's jaw.
The man fell.
Andreas didn't watch him fall. He was already moving toward the next target.
Precision becoming reflex, Elijah thought. The difference between thinking an action and executing it—gone. He doesn't decide to strike. He just strikes.
That's not training. That's transformation.
---
Elijah picked up his taco.
It was cold. He didn't care.
Andreas Ferrano, he thought. The man who lost his father. The man who rebuilt his life from nothing. The man who trained in the jungles of Coprendes and came out the other side as something more than human.
He knows who holds the real power. He's not naive. He's not ambitious.
He's just... waiting.
For what?
For someone to give him a reason to move.
Elijah took a bite.
The meat was dry. The salsa was bland. He chewed slowly, swallowed, and set the taco down.
History tells us that a man needs four eyes—two in the front, two in the back—to survive in this world. Andreas has that. He's been watching. Waiting. Preparing.
But he's also stuck.
The Ferrano corridors are his cage. The Mysterium clan holds the keys. And he can't break free on his own.
That's where I come in.
He smiled.
I'm here to spice things up. To shake the cage. To see if the man inside is willing to bite.
And if he is?
Well.
Roping a guy like Andreas to my side?
That will be fun.
---