“You tried protocols. You tried fences. You tried sleep. But Severino makes art.”

  November 8, 2035

  The SUV slid into the horseshoe driveway of the Corinthian Gardens estate like a shark circling into still water. The gates had already been opened, someone was expecting them, but no one came out to meet them at first. Just the hush of pine trees, the wind brushing the car’s side mirrors, and the distant hum of Quezon City traffic bleeding through the gates.

  Lino stepped out. The soft creak of the vehicle’s suspension followed him, then the heavier sound of another door slamming shut, Rocco, a looming silhouette even in the dark. Broad-shouldered, shaved head, polo shirt stretched taut across muscle. Behind him came a smaller figure in private security uniform, with a service pistol clipped neatly to his belt. He approached with his hand out and introduced himself: Roddy Gonzales, head of Tatiana Tiamzon’s personal security detail.

  The handshake between Lino and Roddy was brief, firm, and meant nothing beyond protocol. The real conversation happened with their eyes, Lino’s dry and glinting like flint, Roddy’s wary, tired, and defensive.

  “Evening, sir,” Roddy said.

  “Report,” Lino said, not bothering with small talk.

  As they walked through the arched stone entrance, the air changed. Outside, the estate had been silent and cool. Inside, it was cooler still, but it was the kind of cold that came from money. Marble tiles stretched ahead like a runway. Crystal light fixtures dangled from the twenty-foot ceiling. A grandfather clock ticked somewhere deep in the house like a metronome marking the tempo of absence.

  “She left the property at around five,” Roddy said as they walked. “Took four of her men. Didn’t say where. House staff say she looked… tense. Maybe agitated. But she didn't yell. Just left.”

  “You weren’t told?” Lino’s voice was dry. It could’ve been boredom or disbelief.

  “No, sir,” Roddy said. “Not a word.”

  “Thought you were her chief of security,” Rocco said gruffly.

  Roddy didn't answer. He just kept walking.

  Lino’s fingers were clasped behind his back as he walked, suit jacket billowing ever so slightly with each stride. “Rocco,” he said without turning his head. “Setup?”

  Rocco’s tone turned clipped, military.

  “Teams arrived staggered between 2000 and 2040. Main perimeter set by 2100. Mansion was already empty when we breached the interior. Housekeeper confirmed she left around 1700. They used a second exit, off the east side of the property. Leads into a back alley that connects to White Plains Avenue.”

  “I thought the property only had one exit?,” Lino said.

  “Exactly,” Rocco replied. “We pulled property plans from the City Architect’s Office this afternoon. That backdoor’s not on any of them.”

  “Illegal?” Lino asked.

  “Could be. I can have someone dig.”

  Lino grunted softly. It wasn’t agreement. It was acknowledgment. For him, they were often the same.

  The trio climbed the stairs, brass-lined banisters, ornate portraits of Tatiana in various outfits and stages of triumph hung along the walls. She had the presence of an empress, captured in oil and gold leaf. A mining tycoon, a woman who had razed mountains and built fortunes from the dust. Every inch of the house was proof of that power.

  Now, that house was empty. Like a stage after the curtain had dropped.

  They arrived at the second floor landing. Roddy turned the brass handle to a heavy wooden door, and it groaned open like something ancient being disturbed. Inside was a study that could’ve doubled as a presidential war room, bookcases that reached the ceiling, a globe bar cart in the corner, a carved narra desk the size of a billiards table.

  Seated at that desk, hunched slightly over a slim black laptop, was Sarah.

  She didn’t look up when the men entered. Her hair was tied in a loose bun. Her eyes were locked to the screen, one hand on the mouse, the other drumming lightly on the wood like a percussionist counting beats between phrases.

  “Sarah,” Lino said.

  She glanced up. “Boss.”

  Just that. Then she turned the laptop slightly toward them. A static image on the screen: a screenshot of a message. Lino leaned in.

  “I pulled this from her desktop inbox,” Sarah said. “Encrypted folder. She got it two days ago.”

  “What is it?” Rocco asked.

  “Someone’s trying to blackmail her.”

  The word blackmail hung heavy in the room like incense smoke. Lino didn’t react, just nodded once for her to continue.

  “She was sent a digital file with incriminating material. Some photos, two recordings, nothing explicit yet, but it promised more to come, and it’s enough to damage her politically, especially if the Senate probe gets traction.”

  “From someone we know?” Lino asked, trying to hide Severino’s name from Roddy.

  Sarah shook her head. “Likely, but we can’t rule out third party actors. It was anonymous sender. Routed through two VPNs, Russian and a Korean node. Could be anything from a troll farm to someone she pissed off.”

  “Location?” Lino asked.

  Sarah pointed to a line of text on the screen.

  Meet me in 2007.

  “No other details,” she said. “No coordinates. Nothing.”

  Lino leaned back slowly, rubbed his chin with one hand.

  “Roddy,” he said, turning.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “How long have you worked for her?”

  “Just a year, sir.”

  Lino’s eyes narrowed, thoughtful.

  “Who worked for her in 2007?”

  Roddy hesitated. “Jerico Mallari. He was the chief back then. Retired now. In Tagaytay last I heard.”

  “Call him,” Lino said immediately. “She might have reached out to him instead of you. She knew this might get dangerous.”

  Roddy nodded and stepped out of the room, already dialing.

  Lino turned back to the laptop. Sarah didn’t say anything. She didn’t need to. Lino was already scanning the text again. Meet me in 2007.

  Lino pulled out his phone. He swiftly tapped a contact from sheer muscle memory.

  One ring. Two. Then:

  “Boss.”

  The voice came sharp, clipped. Renz.

  Lino set the phone down on the wide narra desk, tapping the screen to activate speaker.

  “You’re on speaker. Rocco and Sarah are with me.”

  A beat.

  “Copy,” Renz replied.

  Lino leaned forward slightly, resting both palms on the edge of the desk.

  “Status?”

  Renz’s voice came clear through the speaker. In the background, the low hum of an operations room, keyboards clacking, hushed voices exchanging data.

  This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  “Tatiana’s phone and the SUV she left with, they both had GPS transponders. Both signals dropped about forty minutes after departure. Last known ping was along the Skyway entering Muntinlupa.”

  Lino muttered, almost to himself, “Southbound, then.”

  He straightened. “Put out a notice. NBI and PNP south districts. Look out for that SUV. Tag Tatiana as a missing person. Quietly.”

  “Understood,” Renz said. They could hear him immediately begin relaying orders:

  “Ver, alert Alabang, San Pedro, all the way to Calamba. Quiet ping on a black Montero, 2028 model, plate…” his voice faded as he walked away from the mic.

  The room fell still except for the faint whirr of the laptop fan. Sarah glanced at Lino but said nothing. Rocco stood by a shelf lined with old books and polished stones, arms crossed, eyes hard.

  Renz’s voice returned. “Done. What else?”

  “Media,” Lino said.

  “We’ve issued a blackout advisory. Soft, not official. Just enough pressure on editors. Told all networks and online outlets to sit on any random tipoffs or footage for the next twenty-four hours. No airtime, no blog noise.”

  “Good,” Lino said. His voice, calm but final, carried a subtle edge now. “We can’t give Severino the publicity he desperately wants.”

  Sarah gave a quiet nod of agreement, already scanning through tabs on Tatiana’s browser history.

  There was a pause. Lino broke it.

  “We also need to operate on the assumption Tatiana’s already fallen into Severino’s trap.”

  That hit the air like an anchor.

  Rocco’s jaw flexed. The movement was small, but not subtle. Lino saw it. He didn’t address it.

  “Prepare for worst-case,” Lino continued. “Craft a response in case her body turns up. Work with Enzo on the wording. Severino missed his first chance to make his works public. He’ll make sure this one gets seen by all.”

  On the phone, Renz didn’t argue. “Understood.”

  They heard him walking again, issuing another series of quick, murmured orders to his analyst cell. Lino tapped the phone screen, ending the call. The screen went dark.

  A beat later, the door creaked open.

  Roddy Gonzales stepped back in, his face tight, lips pressed thin. A flicker of sweat caught the corner of his temple.

  “I got through to Jerico Mallari,” he said. “They spoke.”

  Lino’s gaze didn’t waver. “When?”

  “This afternoon. Around 3pm.”

  “What did he say?”

  Roddy exhaled, voice uncertain. “He told her to leave it alone. Not to confront whoever was behind the message. Told her to let the authorities deal with it.”

  “She didn’t listen.”

  Roddy nodded.

  “She insisted on handling it herself. Said it was personal.”

  There was a long pause.

  Sarah, without turning from the laptop, asked, “If Jerico was that concerned, why didn’t he tell you?”

  Roddy shifted on his feet. “He said he didn’t want me implicated.”

  Rocco’s brows lifted. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

  It didn’t. Jerico was retired. Roddy was her active security chief. If Jerico was worried, why go radio silent?

  Lino narrowed his eyes. Roddy’s voice had that slight edge now, strained, clipped at the end. Something behind the eyes. A tension coiling in the jawline.

  “Roddy,” Lino said carefully, “is there something you’re not telling us?”

  Roddy hesitated. His gaze flicked toward the door.

  Rocco moved without a sound. His large frame shifted, just a half-step. But the result was unmistakable: he was now standing between Roddy and the exit.

  The air in the study turned still.

  Roddy looked from Lino to Rocco. Then to Sarah, who finally turned her head to look at him, one eyebrow raised in that almost-playful, almost-threatening way that meant she already had her own suspicions.

  Lino didn't speak. He just waited.

  Roddy swallowed.

  Lino didn’t raise his voice. He never did, when things were serious.

  “Roddy,” he said, his tone even, “do you know where Tatiana went?”

  Roddy’s eyes darted between them. “No, sir. I don’t. I really don’t.”

  The tremble in his voice was slight, but present.

  In the background, the furious tack-tack-tack of Sarah’s keyboard filled the silence. Her eyes were locked to the screen, her focus a sharp blade in the corner of the room. A different kind of interrogation was happening through her fingers.

  Lino tilted his head, studying Roddy like a surgeon studying a heartbeat.

  “And where were you… when she left the property? Around 1700?”

  Roddy took a half-step back, blinking. “I was outside, sir. I had to deal with something in the neighborhood. A car that was loitering outside the gate, thought it might be press.”

  Lino’s eyes didn’t move. He was watching for tells, not just in words, but in posture, in breath.

  “And the four guards who left with her?” he asked. “Why didn’t they inform you she was leaving?”

  Roddy’s mouth opened, then closed again.

  “I don’t know,” he finally said.

  At that moment, Sarah popped her head up from behind the laptop. She didn’t speak. Just looked directly at Lino and gave a short nod.

  Signal received.

  Rocco moved instantly.

  Before Roddy could take a step, the larger man was already behind him. Thick arms shot forward like pistons, grabbing both of Roddy’s wrists. Roddy struggled, twisted, tried to pull back, but Rocco simply bore down like a hydraulic press. Roddy was strong, but Rocco was built like he’d been poured into his muscle. It wasn’t a fight.

  “I didn’t do anything!” Roddy cried out. “I swear…”

  “No one cares what you swear,” Sarah said, already turning her screen toward Lino. Her voice had cooled. Professional now. Clean. Icy.

  “Take him outside,” Lino ordered without looking at Roddy. “Secure him.”

  Rocco nodded and dragged the man out of the study, the door swinging shut behind them with a soft but definitive click.

  Sarah stood.

  “The blackmail files Tatiana received,” she began, voice brisk, “had embedded metadata. Image creation logs, file path data. They were generated from within her local server system. Her encrypted storage.”

  Lino didn’t speak.

  Sarah continued, “Someone extracted the files using internal access. I checked the access logs, Roddy’s credentials were used. His log-in, his passkey.”

  She tapped the keyboard once, and a list of file entries appeared on screen: timestamps, user names, locations.

  It was damning. Clean and digital. A betrayal reduced to digits and date stamps.

  Then, from the forgotten speakerphone, still lying on the table, Renz’s voice returned, calm and cold:

  “I heard all of that. Speaker’s been on the whole time.”

  Lino leaned back, his expression unmoved. “What do you have?”

  “Roddy’s a nepotism hire,” Renz said. “One of Tatiana’s cousins vouched for him last year. No prior experience in executive security. Just a few years in mall asset protection. Jerico called him a warm body.”

  “You spoke to Jerico?”

  “Yeah. Just now.”

  Lino’s jaw tightened slightly.

  “Jerico said Tatiana’s been suspicious of Roddy for a few weeks now. Ever since a break-in last month. High-value burglary, jewelry, art, documents. Millions lost. She suspected it was an inside job. Didn’t report it publicly. She was going to fire Roddy next week. Already lined up a replacement.”

  Sarah exhaled through her nose. “So she knew.”

  Lino muttered, almost to himself, “So he’s just an incompetent nepo hire.”

  He paused. Then refocused.

  “Track everything. Payments, messages, connections. Even if we can’t stop Tatiana from dying, we can still learn something. We can build a picture of Severino’s methods.”

  “Already on it,” Renz replied. “I’ll stay up.”

  Lino stood, closing the laptop with a soft thunk. He looked to Sarah.

  “Stay alert tonight. Both of you. We don’t know when or where the body will turn up.”

  Sarah gave a small nod. “Copy.”

  “Dismissed,” Lino said.

  No salutes. No formality. Just the quiet language of people who knew what darkness looked like when it crept in through the walls.

  * * * * *

  Lino woke to the gentle hum of the LED strips lining the ceiling, soft, white light programmed to mimic the Manila afternoon. The NBI’s napping room was spartan: a cot, a wall clock, a water dispenser, silence.

  Renz was already there, crouched beside him, nudging his shoulder.

  “Boss.”

  Lino’s eyes opened slowly. There was always a moment, one breath, where the old trauma threatened to come up with him. But it didn’t. Not this time.

  He blinked at his watch.

  13:00.

  “They found her,” Renz said.

  Lino sat up in one slow motion. His body wasn’t shocked, but his mind was.

  So it’s come to this.

  He stood without a word, slipped on his coat, and followed Renz out into the corridor. The hallway was slick with white panels and black stone tile. Everything inside NBI headquarters was designed to look clean, modern, institutional. But no design could fully drain the building of its tension, there was always a hum behind the walls, a kind of collective holding of breath.

  Renz led him down two corridors, then through the double-glass doors of the Ilagan Division War Room. The space was wide and circular, with wraparound desks and a ceiling rig of harsh downlights that made everything inside look grimmer than it already was.

  At the center of it all: the main screen.

  Muted, but still playing.

  A TV Patrol segment. Field footage from Las Pi?as. Smoke blurred the top third of the image, rising, thick, orange-grey. A fire had gutted half a commercial block. Locals clustered near the tape, blurred faces shouting at each other. One camera caught a firefighting crew turning a hose toward the flames.

  And then…

  In the far corner of the frame.

  Lino saw it.

  A pillar. No… something worse. Something made.

  At first, it looked like a pile of burnt, lumpy debris.

  Then the camera panned slightly.

  And Lino saw it for what it was.

  A totem.

  Of flesh.

  Arms stretched upward, fused with each other in postmortem rigor. Chests, torsos, skulls layered and forced into a single vertical grotesquerie. A ribcage laid flat like wings. A spine exposed and twisted at the base.

  At the base, a woman’s face, caved in, torn but somehow still distinguishable. Gold earrings, melted halfway into the cheek. Charred hair. White teeth in a jaw that had locked open in a scream.

  Tatiana.

  The camera shook. Then…

  The feed cut.

  The newsroom scrambled to transition to a commercial. Too late.

  Renz said, quietly, “News crew was covering the fire. One of the cameramen caught the remains on the far side of the blaze. They bypassed our blackout by accident.”

  Lino hadn’t moved. He stared at the screen like a man staring at an eclipse. Quiet, expressionless. But something inside was closing off. Freezing over.

  “Is it leaked?” he asked.

  “Social media’s already spreading screenshots. Even ones taken by bystanders. We tried to flag them, but they’re already everywhere. Reddit. TikTok. Discord. Even Tumblr for some goddamn reason.”

  Lino turned, eyes hollow. “Statement?”

  “Ready. Enzo’s tripled-checked the wording. Neutral tone. Zero speculation. No confirmation of identity until after forensic matching. Not a word about Severino.”

  Lino gave the faintest nod.

  “Good. Seed it to the press. Then through our official account. Schedule the press conference for 17:00.”

  “Copy,” Renz said, stepping away to issue the orders.

  But Lino didn’t move.

  He kept staring at the screen, even after it had gone black. His eyes weren’t fixed on anything visible now, they were locked onto the last image burned into his mind. That twisted, vertical monument to a human life reduced to meat. A grotesque signature.

  His breathing was slow, but shallow.

  There was no question in his mind now. This wasn’t just murder. It wasn’t just a message.

  It was art.

  Severino was back, and this time, he had perfected his medium.