Chapter Two
The Night of Return
Night.
The rain fell without sound.
But the air was thick with the smell of gunpowder.
The neon lights of Paradise Island were still glowing.
Only the rhythm of the flickering light no longer belonged to music.
It was gunfire.
It was the frequency of life and death in conversation.
I sat inside the temporary command vehicle of the Raptor Special Force, watching the screens.
Red dots appeared one after another.
KARAM’s men.
They were pouring out from the casino, the exhibition hall, the underground tunnels.
Twenty of them in total, divided into three teams.
They moved like a military unit, but their eyes were colder than soldiers’.
Richard Fell’s voice came through the comms channel — low, steady.
“Teams One, Two, Three, and Four in position.
First Division sealing off the main street.
Raptor, MCS — infiltrate from the rear entrance.”
Eagle Eye replied with only one word.
“Copy.”
He nodded at me.
That was battlefield understanding —
no explanations, no questions.
No one knew who might disappear in the next second.
Outside The Grand Victorium Hotel.
The night wind rose, flags hanging upside down.
The Police Special Force formed a triangular formation and advanced silently.
Rainwater spread across the ground like a layer of uneasy glass.
“Ready,” Eagle Eye signaled.
The indicator light flashed.
The entire MCS team moved in —
me, Cheung Man Man, Chan Chee Yan, Lee Mun Tseng.
Wai Hing had not yet returned to the unit.
Ahead, a dark figure darted out from behind a pillar.
The movement was too familiar —
a soldier-level assault.
I fired instinctively.
A flash of muzzle light — he dropped.
The bomb in his hand had not been armed.
“KARAM,” I said quietly.
“They’re here.”
Inside The Grand Victorium Hotel, the power was completely cut.
The entire building fell into darkness.
Then came the sound of shattering glass.
A flashbang exploded, tearing the night apart with light.
The world turned white for a second — then black again.
Gunfire erupted.
Chaos flooded the ears like a tide.
The Police Special Force suppressed from the front.
Raptor attacked from both flanks.
MCS secured the rear line while Lau Chee Yan operated the interference device, cutting off enemy communications.
I saw Saeed.
He moved like smoke, struck like a blade.
His body nearly pressed against the wall as he advanced.
The silenced pistol in his hand wasted nothing.
Each shot — one officer down.
Eagle Eye charged forward and engaged him head-on.
The distance between them was less than three meters.
Muzzle flashes illuminated their faces —
one calm as iron, the other cold as ice.
Casino level.
Mousad had taken position at the staircase with a sniper rifle.
Bullets struck the walls, sparks flying.
He was terrifyingly calm.
It was the composure of someone who had seen too much death.
He was not killing.
He was executing mathematics.
I rushed in.
“Cover!” I shouted.
Cheung Man Man rolled behind the bar counter and fired upward reflexively.
A bullet grazed Mousad’s shoulder. He tilted slightly —
did not retreat — returned fire instantly.
I heard the rush of air beside my ear.
A round grazed the side of my face — burning.
At that distance, I should not have survived.
But I did.
Because his shot went slightly off.
He was covering someone.
Yuliana appeared.
The suicide squad insignia shimmered on her chest.
She moved like a phantom.
Two short blades — one black, one white — edges reflecting light.
She did not use a gun.
She used herself.
One officer had his throat slit.
Another had his arm twisted, weapon seized, shot down with his own gun.
She almost cleared half the floor alone.
I crossed paths with her.
For a brief second, her eyes collided with mine.
Not madness. Not hatred.
Just emptiness.
She whispered, “This is retribution.”
I fired.
Her body fell slowly, like a flower collapsing.
The suicide squad was completely crushed.
Blood flowed across the polished tiles like a shattered map of the island.
Partial power returned to the central surveillance room.
Richard Fell’s voice came back online.
“Continue advancing! Leave no survivors!”
But I knew — someone was already retreating.
Saeed withdrew.
Mousad provided cover.
And Mohammed —
He was in the deepest shadow,
where even light doubted itself.
He dipped his finger into a comrade’s blood and wrote on the wall.
It was Arabic.
“العودة (Al-‘Awda).” Meaning Coming Back.
He was not escaping.
He was declaring.
I led the team in pursuit.
But the rain outside grew heavier.
Waves crashed against the breakwater like a beating heart.
They disappeared into the storm.
Leaving that word repeating in my mind —
Al-‘Awda.
Post-battle statistics:
Paradise Island Police — 10 dead, 7 injured.
Raptor — 1 dead, 4 injured.
MCS — all survived, but none uninjured.
Cheung Man Man was shot in the arm.
Chan Chee Yan’s eardrum ruptured from the blast wave.
A line of blood seeped through my vest from a cut across my chest.
There was no pain.
Only emptiness.
Richard Fell stood before the ruins, cigarette unlit.
“Paradise Island will never be the same,” he said quietly.
But war never ends at the end.
The real battlefield is the aftershock.
One week later, intelligence arrived.
KARAM still existed.
They had left two sleepers on Paradise Island —
Ayman Adel, intelligence operative;
Burhanuddin Hekmatyar, bomb specialist.
Both had infiltrated the island as laborers, reentering the system.
The island’s peace was only an illusion.
While reviewing files in my office, I saw a familiar code name.
ZETA-2.
It appeared seventeen times in the data.
Every time — before a critical operation.
I dug deeper.
The truth felt like the reflection of an iceberg —
the deeper it went, the colder it became.
ZETA-2 was not an organization.
It was a person.
Han Li.
The quiet digital engineer who always sat in the server room with a faint smile.
He had once co-developed “Project MORPHEUS” with Lau Zi Him —
a classified research program linking human memory to AI neural systems.
ZETA-2’s mission was to initiate termination protocols if MORPHEUS went out of control.
Contain. Monitor. Destroy.
I suddenly understood.
This was not coincidence.
Karam knew too much.
Someone had leaked information.
And perhaps ZETA-2 had not been stolen.
It had been released.
Wai Hing returned to the unit.
His eyes were darker than before.
I did not ask what he saw that night at Yihou.
We both understood — some things, once spoken, only grow heavier.
Chee Yan proposed an idea.
To collaborate with the New City Armed Forces’ Digital Special Operations Unit.
Using ZETA-2’s core architecture to develop next-generation counterterrorism software and equipment.
It was not just technology.
It was defensive will.
“We need MCS to be more than people,” he said. “We need it to be a system.”
I nodded.
He was right.
The future battlefield would not exist only on the streets — but in networks.
A new member joined.
Hong Zong Fu.
Forty-eight years old, Deputy Head of the Explosives and Ordnance Disposal Unit at New City Bayfront Police Station.
He trained with the UAS Explosives and Bomb Disposal Unit and has conducted in-depth research on KARAM’s bomb systems.
He is not a talkative man.
But the moment he walked into the meeting room, the atmosphere became calm.
What he brought was not just technical skill.
He brought experience —
the experience of coexisting with fear.
The counterterrorism robot he demonstrated can automatically assess chemical gas reactions.
The strike drone he designed can neutralize detonation signals within fifteen seconds.
It was a kind of calmness that dismantles death into components.
He said,
“Fear is a discipline.”
I looked at him.
It sounded like instruction for all of MCS.
Months later.
Paradise Island descended into chaos again.
This time, KARAM did not hide.
They came aggressively, attempting to seize control of the entire island.
Night fell.
The alarms sounded again.
I put on my tactical headset and said quietly to the team:
“Heaven never belonged to anyone.”
Eagle Eye’s voice came through the channel.
“Prepare to welcome hell.”
I replied,
“Hell has already awakened.”
The wind rose.
Paradise fell once more.