"Zulfa, look up!" Naya cried out with a trembling voice, pointing toward the night sky through the cracked window of the old taxi speeding along the northern district highway.

Zulfa glanced out the window. The capital's night sky, normally adorned with the twinkling lights of skyscrapers, had shifted drastically into a deep, bruised crimson as if soaked in a sea of blood. Low, rolling clouds reflected colossal pillars of purple-blue energy spewing from deep within the earth's belly.

In that exact instant, every streetlamp, traffic light, and building light across the entire metropolis died simultaneously in absolute unison.

Bzzzt—

The sprawling metropolitan landscape spanning hundreds of square kilometers plunged straight into pitch-black darkness within seconds. The massive black-scale blackout most feared had finally occurred. The low-frequency hum of power generation units that used to serve as the city's background noise abruptly ceased, replaced by a symphony of chaos: the crash of colliding cars, the panicked screams of thousands of pedestrians on the sidewalks, and the wailing wails of ambulances and fire trucks echoing endlessly along gridlocked boulevards.

"Damn it... the city power grid is down a hundred percent," the old taxi driver muttered with ragged breaths, gripping the steering wheel tightly amidst the highway darkness illuminated only by their headlights. "Son, where are we supposed to go now? This city's gone insane! The military just declared a state of emergency!"

Zulfa glanced down at his phone screen, which broadcasted a national emergency alert from the government radio. The announcer's voice broke amid signal static: Attention all citizens... martial law is officially declared... immediately evacuate to safe zones...

"Don't go to the evacuation zone, sir. Please take us to the Municipal Public Works Building in Sector 4," Zulfa ordered firmly, though a creeping chill gripped his chest.

Naya whipped her head toward Zulfa in shock, her eyes blown wide. "To the office, Zul? Are you out of your mind?! That place is definitely locked down tight by corporate security or mercenary troops!"

"We don't have a choice, Naya!" Zulfa shot back seriously, locking eyes with her. "Inside the safe of the main office archive room lies a physical manual override—a special mechanical key code required to seal the secondary emergency valve. Without that key, we'll never be able to shut down the Main Valve in the square!"

Naya bit her lower lip, falling silent for a moment before nodding in resigned acceptance. "Fine... if we die there, let's make sure we die after driving that bastard corporation bankrupt."

Fifteen years later—or so it felt—the old taxi pulled to a halt down a dark side street, roughly a hundred meters from the Sector 4 Municipal Public Works main building. Zulfa and Naya paid the fare in a rush, then bolted across the pavement through crowds of panicked citizens fighting for space on the sidewalks.

The ten-story municipal building loomed pitch-black and unlit. There was no sign of routine administrative activity. All that greeted them on the front lawn were two pitch-black military tactical trucks bearing Aethel Corp logos parked over torn landscaping turf. Several heavily armed mercenaries wearing tactical vests and night-vision goggles patrolled around the main lobby doors.

"Look at that," Naya whispered softly, pulling Zulfa's arm and crouching behind a concrete garden partition wall. "The main entrance is heavily guarded. There's no way we're getting in that way."

Zulfa surveyed the situation carefully, his eyes sweeping the building's perimeter. "Relax. As an engineer who spent years in this building, I know every inch of the utility piping and rat-runs. Follow me."

Zulfa led Naya to slip through a side drainage conduit leading down to the underground utility room. Thanks to the absolute darkness of the blackout, their movement slipped past the mercenaries' sightlines. They managed to scramble inside the damp, silent ground-floor service corridor.

Their footsteps felt agonizingly heavy against the cold cement floor. The atmosphere inside the municipal building tonight felt deeply ominous; no sound broke the silence except their own ragged breathing and water dripping from a leaking ceiling pipe above.

"Zul... something feels wrong," Naya whispered with a slight tremor, gripping Zulfa's jacket sleeve as they climbed the emergency stairwell toward the third floor where the main archive room was housed. "This building is too quiet. Too... empty."

"We're almost at the archive room. Stay alert," Zulfa replied, gripping the small flashlight tightly in his right hand.

They arrived at the third-floor emergency stairwell door. Zulfa pushed the iron door open slowly until it parted by a few inches. He peered into the dim third-floor main corridor, illuminated by the bleed of bruised crimson light spilling through the massive glass windows at the end of the hall.

The hallway looked empty. Yet, directly in front of the main elevator doors in the center of the hall, something dangling in midair froze Zulfa's stride dead in its tracks.

Naya, right behind Zulfa, peeked into the corridor as well. Upon spotting the hanging object, the girl instantly slammed both hands over her mouth, biting back a scream that nearly tore out of her throat.

Amidst the dim crimson glow of the night sky, a human silhouette hung rigidly above the frame of the main elevator doors. The victim's neck was tightly cinched by a coil of glowing red optical fiber cables emitting a faint electrical pulse.

Zulfa and Naya stepped out slowly, approaching the figure with bated breath and hearts hammering against their teeth.

When Zulfa's flashlight beam washed over the victim's face, the blood in Zulfa's veins instantly turned to ice.

It was Mr. Hendra—the maintenance section head who had long served as Zulfa's boss, the man who consistently protected the corporation and threatened Zulfa to drop his investigation. Now, the middle-aged man hung lifelessly, suspended hideously in front of the elevator with his eyes bulging wide and tongue slightly protruding, while parasitic corporate optical fibers bored straight through the skin of his neck like mechanical worms.

"Mr... Mr. Hendra..." Zulfa whimpered softly, his voice raspy and shaking violently.

Naya averted her gaze to the side, her body trembling with terror at the gruesome execution unfolding before them. "Zulfa... they... they murdered their own manager. The corporation doesn't play games."

Before Zulfa could process the horror before him, the sound of slow, cold applause suddenly echoed from the dark end of the hallway.

Clap... clap... clap...

Zulfa and Naya spun around instantly, sweeping their flashlights in unison toward the source of the sound.

From the shadows of the archive hall, a sturdy silhouette stepped out slowly. In his hand, the man carried a short-barreled assault rifle, while the silver-serpent lapel pin on his suit collar glinted under the crimson bleed from the window. Malik—the man from Aethel Corp's external audit division—flashed a cold smile as he stared down the two of them.

"Welcome back to the office, Engineer Arditama," Malik said calmly, his voice echoing down the silent corridor. "You're right on time to witness the end of your journey."