Log 15
Converging Lines
The wind at the harbor shifted direction.
The salt carried in from the sea no longer stung the nose, as if it had temporarily washed the scent of blood thinner. On the deck, I secured the last bandage. When I looked up, dawn was just brushing across the shoulder of the White Tower. Lau Zi Him was strapped to the stern with a five-point restraint system, silent as a piece of cold metal. His pulse remained. His “dream” did not.
We escorted him back to the Bayfront Police Station—not to hand him over to anyone yet, but to make him public.
Chee Yan uploaded the γ-layer lock reports, temperature curves, medical examinations of the chain-controlled subjects, and the β/γ authorization signatures onto the chain, filed them, and made three copies.
I know this: the enemy of evidence is not the criminal. It is tampering.
Only when the truth is laid under the sun does it grow bones.
By the twelfth hour of detention, two teams of lawyers had rotated through.
The first spoke of procedural flaws and national security secrets. The second spoke of nothing at all, filling the room with silence.
Lau Zi Him remained silent as well. He stared at the tabletop as if measuring the rhythm of its wood grain.
“You have the right to remain silent,” I informed him by procedure, “but your silence cannot defend you.”
He lifted his eyes and looked at me for the first time. His gaze was cold, but there was no hatred in it.
“Loke sir,” he said softly, “I thought you would be tired.”
“I thought you would regret.”
He smiled, the curve thin as the sheen along the back of a blade. “Regret is the anesthetic you give yourselves. My profession is not killing. It is pain relief. And those who relieve pain—you call criminals.”
“Pain relief is not amputation.”
“If you don’t amputate, it rots.”
He spoke word by word, as if delivering a lecture.
I closed my notebook. “Save the podium for the court.”
The court came quickly—faster than the administrative process.
It wasn’t us pushing. It was the city.
On the second day after the white fog lifted, the Medical Association, the Ethics Committee, civic groups, and families of test subjects jointly petitioned for an open trial.
In the witness stand, for the first time, I used my own name and told how I had been turned into the city’s “source.”
The moment I said it aloud, I understood that shame was not for myself—it was for those who still trusted this badge.
The judge asked, “Defendant, do you plead guilty?”
Lau Zi Him stood, head slightly lowered, voice even. “I reserve silence.”
His lawyer answered for him: “The defendant asserts a defense of ‘necessary evil.’”
I let out a small laugh. I thought: the moment evil requires defense, it has already begun to lose.
The evidence advanced like the tide, wave after wave.
The γ-layer cooling curves, the β-layer collective phase design, the medical reports of chain-controlled subjects, the absence of ethical approval in the laboratory records, the money trail—Leadwhite Fund → Somnus Technologies → AquaVault → the ‘Deep Whale’ floating module—seven shell layers deep, ending in a consultancy account for a military contractor in Rayleigh.
On that consultancy report was a familiar abbreviation: P.M.
Project MORPHEUS was never a “municipal medical experiment.” It carried a military logic:
— First remove pain, then remove capability.
— First synchronize, then command.
In the third week of detention, the verdict came down.
Death penalty.
Procedurally, execution required scheduling. The date would be set later.
The sound was like a hammer striking wood—dull, but decisive.
Within half an hour, the news circled the globe.
Headlines ran cold and hot:
The Doctor of the White Fog City.
The Dream Engineer.
The Hidden Hand of Mass Induction.
The Police’s Blacklisted Hero.
The last one made me frown.
A “blacklisted hero” means not a hero of the system, but one tolerated by it.
And what is tolerated is often the next to be cut loose.
Sure enough, that afternoon, an internal meeting.
The investigative committee highly commended MCS for its contribution to “ascertaining the facts of the case,” while issuing a warning regarding procedural irregularities in our operations.
Half our equipment was reclaimed. The budget was frozen. External statements required clearance.
I looked at the words on the paper. Each line was like a hook.
I folded the paper and slipped it into my pocket. The crease looked like a knife mark.
The execution was scheduled for three months later.
The transfer date was separately arranged: 4:15 a.m., from Bayfront Police Station to New City Prison.
The route, convoy, transfer points—all standard operating procedure.
And standard procedure is always the easiest thing to predict in criminology.
I requested heightened security. The application was “politely declined.” The reason: “Verdict rendered. Social sentiment stable.”
I folded that letter again and placed it beside the previous one.
At his desk, Chee Yan tapped his keyboard. “Sir, they’re treating us like flammable material.”
“Then learn not to ignite.”
“How?”
“Bring your own juice.”
On the day of the transfer, a light rain fell before dawn.
Two lead vehicles, three prisoner vans, one rear guard—moving by the book. I was in the last vehicle. Wai Hing in the first. Man Man in the middle.
The radio was suspiciously quiet.
I checked my safety latch again.
One kilometer out from Bayfront Avenue, the intersection ahead suddenly went dark.
Traffic lights black. Only emergency building lights remained.
The broadcast announced: municipal maintenance.
— Coincidence. Too much coincidence.
I was about to issue an order when a burst of fire flared from the edge of the multi-storey carpark on the left. “Tat-tat-tat—” Heavy machine gun fire fell like rain.
The front-right tire of the lead vehicle exploded. The vehicle fishtailed sideways.
Almost simultaneously, three charges detonated along the road. Shrapnel and smoke fractured the asphalt into a shattered chessboard.
All standard procedures were severed.
The convoy became an island.
“Cover! Disembark!” I shouted.
No one answered. My window was already riddled.
I leaned out and fired in controlled bursts, suppressing the muzzle flashes.
Wai Hing’s voice was cold. “High right. Seven o’clock. Two teams.”
Chee Yan’s voice crackled in my earpiece. “Jamming’s up—they’re flooding comms with garbage packets.”
“Switch to narrowband.”
“Done, but their bandwidth is thicker.”
“Then—” I gritted my teeth. “Use the old one.”
We switched to the backup direct channel—an ancient fire service frequency.
The audio was like sandpaper. But clean.
“Left front disengage! Middle vehicle inward!”
“Copy.” Man Man’s voice was steady.
She yanked her van hard into the curb. The rear swung wide, blocking half the fire from high right.
Two dark figures appeared down the center line—fast, steady. Not street thugs. Trained mercenaries.
Disciplined footwork. Short-barrel rifles and close-combat blades. Close-fitted chest armor. Carbon fiber joints.
I pushed the door open and rolled out, knee to ground—three shots right hand, one left.
Both figures took hits—and kept advancing.
I stepped back half a pace, widening my stance—Bajiquan’s cling, press, burst. It isn’t about strength. It’s about borrowing.
When the first merc lunged, I knocked his barrel aside, shoulder to chest, knee to hip, elbow to throat—four beats in a line.
He fell.
The second slashed. I entered empty-handed, wrist misaligning his blade spine, pressing his thumb joint—his grip opened.
I “borrowed” the knife and drove it downward, the handle wedging into the seam of his armor.
His pupils contracted. Slow. Slow means human.
I fired to finish.
Above us, the machine gun kept sweeping. Firelight turned the rain into silver needles.
Wai Hing held the front line, his marksmanship unchanged—no flourish, no fury. Just steady.
“Tin Kay,” he said over comms, “they’re not here to fight. They’re here to take him.”
“I see it.”
The rear door of the middle prisoner van snapped open under an electromagnetic hook. A heavily armored merc emerged from the smoke, movement rigid as a rolling shutter.
He struck an escort officer square in the chest plate. The officer fell hard, spine thudding.
The merc turned and reached for Lau Zi Him.
I raised the blade and blocked him.
He lifted his arm to parry. Armor thudded.
Up close, I don’t match strength. I match angles—elbow, shoulder, hip aligned, driving him into the van wall. Borrowing momentum, I drove a reverse elbow into the nerve bundle at his neck.
Armor can be hard. Nerves are still flesh.
He recoiled.
I slid the blade into the gap between rib armor and abdominal plate, twisted, and withdrew.
He gasped. Dropped to one knee.
I kicked him aside.
Just as I moved to lift Lau Zi Him, a short whistle sounded in the distance. Two short notes.
My chest tightened.
Not ours.
Mockery.
Beneath the overpass on the left, the roof of a black truck slid open. An M134 emerged—no operator visible. Remote-controlled.
Purpose: flip the lead vehicle.
One glance was enough.
Vandorath’s private force—the Ospreys.
In Vandorath’s dictionary, dream and war are the same word.
Their stronghold lies in Kalsora—a nation famed for “The Great Divide.” One side: a hyper-modern capital of advanced technology. The other: the Shadow Territories—lawless ground ruled by the Osprey syndicate.
Ospreys—eagles of the sea. Fast. Precise. Ruthless. Once they lock on prey, there is no escape.
The barrel flashed.
I yanked Lau Zi Him down and threw myself over him—protecting evidence, or protecting a man about to be dissected in court.
Fire rained down. The van flipped. Metal scraped asphalt in a long, screaming trail.
A ringing filled my ears. The world dropped to low frequency.
Weight on top of me. Him.
I shoved him aside and pushed up.
My right arm went numb. Blood dripped from my elbow to my fingertips.
Figures advanced through smoke.
I raised my weapon—before I could fire, they had already dispersed, moving like choreography.
“Cover!” I barked.
Man Man slid in low from the opposite side, firing at ankle height—two front-line mercs dropped, legs shattered.
Formation broken.
Wai Hing flanked—two shots, two Ospreys. He never needs a third.
Chee Yan overrode the traffic system remotely, tagging our vehicles friend, theirs foe.
Iris launched a sonic disruptor. In a flash, the M134 above stuttered like a drunk—gears failing to mesh.
We tore a gap in their line, like a blade through cloth.
I dragged Lau Zi Him back. One word in my mouth: “Move.”
He laughed softly, blood in his voice. “Sir Lok, you protect me… like a child.”
“You’re only protected to the courtroom.”
“The courtroom is just your dream.”
“Then I’ll wake it every day.”
He said nothing more.
We fell back twenty meters to a side street.
The rain had stopped. Someone’s blood ran along the curb into a drain.
Helicopters sounded in the distance—not rescue. Pursuit.
I looked at the sky and knew: this round, they had won. Not tactically—strategically.
They didn’t want annihilation. They wanted extraction.
In a single moment, I made the decision I hate most:
— Withdraw. Preserve lives. Ensure the witness is not reclaimed.
Which also meant: another prisoner van might not be so lucky.
We retreated into an alley, into a tunnel leading toward the harbor.
Behind us, fire burned along the main road, as if someone had set the white fog alight.
I knew this image would travel the world—not just this city.
Within half an hour, it did.
“The condemned MORPHEUS mastermind attacked during transfer. Prisoner not recovered. Multiple casualties.”
On screen, the street looked like the tail end of a storm.
The anchor’s face was calm. The eyes were hot.
Public opinion moves faster than sea wind.
Questions surged:
“Who planned the transfer?”
“Why wasn’t security heightened?”
“Was there an insider?”
“How was Vandorath involved?”
“Did MCS overstep authority?”
“Did MCS manufacture a crisis to whitewash itself?”
That last one made me laugh. Bitterly.
We were pushed to the crest of the wave—not heroes. Targets.
On television, experts drew lines across screens as if solving a locked room they had never entered.
Some called us “romantic in action, sloppy in procedure.”
Some said we “confronted a superior enemy head-on without strategic patience.”
Others said, “MCS did what the system didn’t dare—but must pay the price.”
I was about to turn off the TV.
Wai Hing held my hand down and lit a cigarette. “Let them talk. The sea recedes on its own.”
“When did you start speaking philosophy?”
“I didn’t,” he sighed. “I just got old.”
The next day, the government convened.
Two conclusions:
— A cross-ministerial special investigative task force would be formed.
— MCS operations suspended pending investigation.
In other words: a glass box.
Safe. Suffocating.
Suffocation distills anger into resolve.
I requested the right to speak publicly—for one purpose: to clarify the money trail.
Under lights hotter than a courtroom, I stood at the podium.
My heartbeat was slow—not because I was trained, but because I refused to let rhythm control me.
I spoke in the shortest sentences possible.
“Project MORPHEUS funding did not come solely from medical research.
The Leadwhite Fund is a wall. Behind it stand Vandorath’s military contractors—three companies, two shells, one ultimate beneficiary.
We have the accounts.
We have names—including two local intermediaries.
We will submit them to the court and to Parliament.
We will not submit them to any place that requires a stamp before action.”
The room fell silent for a second.
Like a wave curling back from shore before crashing.
A young reporter stood. “Loke sir, you’ve been called ‘blacklisted heroes.’ Your thoughts?”
I looked at him—young, fresh from campus.
“‘Hero’ and ‘blacklist’ should not share a sentence. If there is a blacklist, it should include those who used public funds to conduct dream experiments and treat the city like a patient.”
“And you?”
“We are just the ones who keep the ledger.”
There was a laugh.
There were frowns.
Tomorrow’s headline, I knew: The Policeman Who Keeps the Books.
Maybe that was safer. Heroes are dragged down quickly. Bookkeepers are harder to exhaust.
That night, after the conference, I gathered everyone in the screening room.
Chee Yan, Mun Tseng, Man Man, Wai Hing.
Iris, RootKnot, Nori, P.
On the whiteboard, I erased everything and wrote four words:
Sea. Land. Money. People.
“Sea,” I said, “δ-layer fragments, offshore mirrors, cross-border nodes.
Land: remaining white coats, security firms, fragrance warehouses.
Money: every suspicious flow between Leadwhite and Vandorath.
People: the missing list, chain-control survivors, and the insiders among us.”
Chee Yan said, “I can mark the mirror routes, but we need foreign allies. Two trusted nodes. The cost—we make everything public.”
I nodded. “We should have long ago.”
Wai Hing: “I’ll take the people. There’s a crack in the white coats. The one who hit the red key at Layer Zero—I felt his shadow. And a missing name from hospital duty before the incident.”
Man Man: “I’ll handle the ground. Four fragrance warehouses—three shut down. One still active: Yongfen Logistics. Shell under Somnus Tech.”
Mun Tseng laid down psychological reports. “Chain-control survivors must be treated as people, not evidence. Their language, dreams, movements—they carry clues.”
Without looking up, P said, “I’ll map the money into numbers less than one.”
“What does that even mean?” Iris raised a brow.
“Shadow,” P said simply.
I smiled. “He means the traces left outside the books.”
At the bottom of the board, I circled an empty box and wrote:
Vandorath Collaborators
HARBOR
TOWER
“Who?” Chee Yan asked.
“Not yet,” I said. “But one of them is in this city.
The blackout during transfer was coordination, not accident.
Power response within three seconds—that’s abnormal.”
Wai Hing nodded. “Insider.”
I didn’t name anyone.
Naming is fast. Arresting is faster. Releasing is fastest.
We are dismantling a net—not catching a single fish.
“One more thing,” I said. “Execution in three months.
I won’t wait.
I won’t let one man lie on a table so society can feel justice is done.
I want everyone involved to stand on the steps. Be seen.”
I looked at each of them.
“For the next three months—don’t seek elegance. Seek stability.
Every step, make the enemy think we’ll misstep.
When they expect us to dodge, we collide.
When they expect us to collide, we sidestep.
This is not a hero’s battle. It’s a battle of records.
Remember every name. Every dollar. Every breath.”
Chee Yan grinned. “Sir, that’ll be boring on the news.”
“Then don’t let it make the news.”
“Who should hear it?”
“The court. The world.”
After the meeting, rain fell again.
Alone in the screening room, I unfolded the creased papers from the bottom drawer.
Two “polite refusals.” One “warning.” One “suspension.”
I flattened them. Folded them again to the same angle.
Paper edges are sharp. They can cut skin.
I let it cut.
Pain is a reminder: if you’re awake, don’t fear a little blood.
Lau Zi Him. Vandorath’s HARBOR and TOWER. The operator among the white coats. The accountant behind the fragrance warehouse. The one who pressed the blackout switch. The engineer who arrived three seconds late. The man who closed his eyes in the meeting…
They will all stand beneath the same light.
Not for revenge. For memory.
I took the badge from the drawer, polished it, pinned it back to my chest.
A badge is not a talisman. It is a mirror.
It shows you yourself.
It shows you others’ faults.
It shows you the moment you almost chose sleep.
When I stepped out, the wind shifted again—
From the city toward the sea.
A distant ship horn sounded offshore, like someone answering.
I know the next line runs between land and sea—
Docks. Cable shafts. Bonded warehouses. Diplomatic cargo.
Behind every noun is a face.
I will learn it.
This city will not dream the same dream again.
If it must dream, the dream will have names.
Names wake people.
I walk.
My heels strike the corridor lightly—softer than gunfire, but longer lasting.
Because that sound tells me:
The road is ahead.
The tide is coming.
We do not retreat.