Act III – Chapter 8: "Things Are About to Get Interesting"
2021 — somewhere in a residential neighborhood
Flames were devouring the house as if trying to erase even the memory of what had happened inside.
Police lights sliced through the night. Neighbors kept their distance—some filming, others crying without really knowing what to do.
A fifteen‑year‑old boy stood motionless on the sidewalk.
Enzo Alvarez.
He stared at the burning house. His fists were clenched so tightly his nails dug into his palms. The heat stung his face, but he didn't step back.
"Hey," a voice murmured.
A hand rested gently on his shoulder.
A woman had approached. Brunette, bob cut, green eyes with an almost cold clarity. Twenty‑six years old. Practical suit, badge at her belt.
"You're Enzo, right?" she asked.
He didn't answer, eyes still fixed on the blaze.
"My name is Ilona," she added. "Ilona Virtanen."
"I understand your anger," she said softly. "Believe me, I understand it better than you think."
Firefighters shouted orders. Part of the roof collapsed, sending a spray of sparks into the sky.
"Are they… gonna make it?" Enzo asked, his voice tight.
Ilona hesitated.
She was a terrible liar. She didn't even try.
"We're doing everything we can," she replied. "But what you're feeling right now… that urge to tear everything down, to burn everything back… if you let it go the wrong way, it'll destroy you too."
He gritted his teeth.
"It's them, isn't it?" he whispered. "The mafia."
She neither confirmed nor denied it.
But her silence was answer enough.
"If you aim your hatred at whatever's in front of you," she went on, "you'll hit the wrong people. And you'll end up exactly like the ones you hate."
She looked him straight in the eye.
"I'm not here to choose your path for you. But it seems to me your heart… has already picked one."
Enzo finally turned toward her. There was nothing of an ordinary fifteen‑year‑old in his eyes. There was something else. A cold clarity, wrapped around a tightly contained rage.
"I want to catch them," he said. "All of them."
The flames reflected in his pupils.
He didn't know it yet, but this woman wasn't just "some investigator".
Ilona Virtanen was known for bringing down shadow figures nobody dared touch. In Finland, people whispered that she'd ruined careers, exposed networks, stripped bare corruption that had been entrenched for years. They'd gotten rid of her neatly, of course. But her file still circulated, under the table.
A rumor said she'd been personally approached by President Trump to investigate a leaked 2019 program—the "Zero Program". But those were only rumors.
For Enzo, she was something else:
living proof that you could stand up to a rotten system… and win.
Time passed.
He studied, relentlessly, as if every good grade were a blow against the mafia that had burned his home. People called him a "genius", but those who truly knew him understood there was only a relentless worker who never let a single detail slip by. Not one.
He graduated with honors and joined the police. At first they saw him as "the kid who takes everything too seriously", then as the young investigator climbing fast. At twenty‑two, he already held a detective title others needed a decade to earn.
He never saw Ilona again.
But every time he hesitated, he saw her green eyes again in front of that burning house.
2028 — present
Two trucks, three SUVs, a small ballet of vans. All of them frozen on a road just outside the city.
The containers belonged, directly or indirectly, to Don Javier's networks.
"Cargo secured, sir. Nothing in or out," a helmeted agent reported.
Enzo Alvarez watched the scene, hands in his coat pockets, looking almost relaxed. Inside, he was counting seconds.
The special unit officers fanned out around the vehicles, weapons raised.
"Police! Step out of the vehicles, hands in the air!"
Doors opened.
Nervous men, armed, some wavering between shooting and surrendering.
Enzo narrowed his eyes a little.
The air smelled of gunpowder, fear, and something metallic.
"Alvarez! We're waiting for your orders," a superior called.
"No need to shoot if we can avoid it," Enzo answered.
He walked forward slowly, right down the middle of the road.
One of the traffickers, still in the cab of a truck, aimed his gun at him.
"Back off!"
Enzo didn't reply.
He felt a familiar vibration running under his skin. Lately he'd realized he could do more than just sense the electrical tension in a place.
He briefly clenched his hand, as if to suppress a tremor.
Not here. Not in front of them.
"Lower your weapons," he ordered simply.
"I said—"
An officer stepped in, firing a precise shot into the truck's tire. The bang made everyone jump. The traffickers gave in one by one, dropping their guns. Handcuffs snapped shut, drug bags and crates of weapons were seized.
Enzo watched it all with a cold sort of satisfaction.
One of Javier's "big shipments" had just gone down. A blow—not lethal, maybe, but deep enough to be felt.
A bit later, away from his colleagues' eyes, Enzo had slipped off to a corner of the commandeered warehouse. They'd piled the weapons and crates into a sealed storage hangar.
"Alvarez? We need your signatures!" someone shouted from a distance.
"On my way," he called back without turning around.
He walked between rows of crates until he reached a spot where no one could see him directly. There, he placed his hand on one of the containers.
The feeling rushed through him immediately.
Circuits, cables, forgotten batteries—anything still holding a trace of current all started "talking" to his nerves.
Since the fusion with the fragment, something in him had changed.
He didn't control electricity like Gwen did—he wasn't born with it—but he could store it and fire it back in a single, raw blast.
He inhaled, then let the charge build in his arm, down into his fingers.
A tiny spark leapt between his index and middle finger.
Not here, he thought.
He let it bleed off gently, like turning on a tap just a little to test the water. A few sparks slid down the metal, vanishing into the container's frame.
"Alvarez!" the voice called again, closer now.
"Coming," he replied.
He stepped back, hands back in his pockets, as if nothing had happened.
No one could know. His colleagues saw him as a brilliant detective; he wasn't about to add "unregistered living weapon" to his résumé.
Meanwhile, on the hotel's top floor, Don Javier was still playing with his lighter.
The door burst open.
Gregorio walked in, face grave.
"We've got a problem," he said.
Emilio didn't even look up at first.
"A couple of failures aren't going to bring me down," he replied casually. "Breathe."
"I'm not talking about a simple failure," Gregorio said.
He set a tablet on the desk and started a video.
On the screen: footage of the seized warehouse.
Agents moving around, sealed crates… and, caught at the edge of a badly placed camera, a lone figure who thought he was out of sight. Enzo.
They saw him place his hand on a container.
Then, a few seconds later, a small but very real spark jumped from his hand and died on the metal.
Don Javier went still.
The lighter stayed open in his hand, flame unmoving.
"Replay it," he ordered.
Gregorio rewound and ran the sequence again in slow motion.
They both saw the same thing: a man, with no gear, no cables, sending a visible jolt of electricity from his bare hand.
"He's hiding that from his colleagues," Gregorio added. "No official report mentions… this."
Silence fell.
Outside, the hotel kept humming with life. Someone laughed in the hallway, faint music drifted in from the bar.
Don Javier started laughing—sharply, almost delighted.
He snapped the lighter shut and set it on the desk.
"Looks like things are about to get interesting."