[MAIN METALLURGICAL LABORATORY (MML). CENTRAL R&D BLOCK. LAWIMORE INDUSTRIAL PARK. CENTRAL SAMARATHA. ~10:30 AM]
RING! RING! RING!
The secured line phone in the Main Metallurgical Laboratory kept screaming, a sledgehammer pounding against silence.
Arya's hand hovered in midair, frozen between instinct and consequence.
Then he grabbed the receiver.
"Arya Wicaksono. Project Lead."
His voice was hoarse, held together by the discipline Gilang had drilled into him.
The voice on the other end belonged to the Regional Forensics Authority, official, flat, hurried. No sympathy.
"We confirm, Mr. Wicaksono, that the Kiln 7 incident has been formally closed. Cause of death, unexpected toxic vapor exposure. The investigation is complete. You are required in the Main Conference Hall within thirty minutes to attend a standard press briefing as Project Lead. Do not be late."
The line went dead.
In bureaucratic language, case closed meant evidence erased.
Why was the Forensics Authority using the Executive Secured Line?
Arya narrowed his eyes.
KNOCK! KNOCK! KNOCK! KNOCK! KNOCK!
The pounding on the lab's steel door intensified, no longer requesting, demanding.
Arya inhaled slowly. He was ready.
He unlocked the door.
A young Assistant Director stood outside, pale with panic.
"Sir Arya! You're needed immediately. Orders from the Board."
Arya nodded once, his gaze cold.
"Of course. Let's go!"
...
The Main Conference Hall of Lawimore Industrial Park was a marble sarcophagus, cold, elegant, designed to hide the sweat of molten steel.
Past the staged press setup, Arya was escorted into the Executive Chamber.
Three members of the Board waited for him.
Their eyes carried curiosity, not grief.
"We mourn Gilang," the Operations Director said. The words were hollow.
"As his mentor, I must know, perhaps you can explain what he was working on recently? His last research? Why was he at Kiln 7 past midnight?"
Arya became an actor.
He projected honesty, layered over a necessary lie.
"Gilang was… Gilang," Arya replied evenly. "He was always anxious about potential bugs in our low-grade ore filtration system. Lately, he was concerned about temperature instability that might jeopardize the Gen-4 launch. We assured him it would be addressed post-launch."
Arya knew the rule.
Mention the ore composition and they would know Gilang had warned him.
So he redirected, from material quality to machine behavior.
"He was a metallurgical engineer," Arya continued, voice firm.
"He didn't believe in market morality. He believed in thermodynamics. I'm confident this was a tragic accident."
The Board members didn't look satisfied.
But the explanation protected them from mechanical negligence, not material corruption and that was enough.
They were staring at the wall.
Not the crack in the foundation.
Arya was dismissed with a warning.
"Respect the loss. Focus on the launch. No distractions!"
After the press conference, Arya returned to the lab.
He hadn't convinced them, only given them something comfortable to believe.
They would wait. Watch.
And when the time came, they would erase him too.
The days in Lawimore moved on as if nothing had happened.
Only Arya felt Gilang everywhere, a weight in his chest, a sickness that never surfaced.
Outwardly, he remained Lawimore's finest engineer.
Inwardly, he began to dig.
Quietly.
Illegally.
He even returned, covertly, to Kiln 7, now fully locked down.
One week passed.
...
[MAIN METALLURGICAL LABORATORY (MML), CENTRAL R&D BLOCK, LAWIMORE INDUSTRIAL PARK. ~10:30 PM]
(One week after Gilang's death...)
The air in the lab felt different now.
No longer ironic.
It felt like a battlefield sealed in glass.
Arya stood before the High-Resolution Mass Spectrometry Unit (HRMS), a multi-million-credit machine.
Three grams of anomaly.
A microscopic number that now carried geological weight.
Gilang hadn't died for a machine bug.
He'd died for scientific truth.
The past week had blurred, a brief press conference, shallow forensic questioning, carefully supervised reports.
Meanwhile, Arya delayed launch readiness updates to the Board while quietly investigating.
The Gen-4 launch was now one week away.
Arya locked the lab.
He wasn't looking for a weapon.
He was seeking redemption.
With terrifying calm, he prepared the same GEN-4 battery sample, then introduced low-grade Nickle ore, stolen from Gilang's sealed waste disposal unit the previous evening, into the HRMS chamber.
This was a forbidden experiment.
A simulation of thermal waste degradation, subjecting the sample to extreme temperatures to observe forbidden reactions.
The goal was simple, to see how elements that should not exist behaved when nature reclaimed them.
The graphs began calmly.
Then, at the critical melt point, around 750°C, the readings became impossible.
Arya leaned closer.
What he saw was not noble Nickle chemistry.
It was volatile sulfide traces and mineral residues that, upon degradation, formed extremely corrosive acids, toxins capable of penetrating bedrock and poisoning groundwater for millennia.
Gilang hadn't been protecting economic stability.
He had been trying to save the world from a perpetual ecological hell.
"An ecological time bomb," Arya whispered.
The words tasted foul.
This wasn't a trade-sanction risk.
This was a betrayal of Natural Law itself.
The Green Utopia the world was about to celebrate, was a delayed poison.
...
Arya didn't just see data.
He saw Gilang's exhausted face.
He saw the Nickle Cathedral outside, now a temple built on moral quicksand.
"Utility matters more than purity."
Professor Bimasena's voice echoed in his mind.
Bimasena, the nation's most revered economist, architect of prosperity, advisor beneath Nusadyra's highest economic ministry.
To him, the ecological time bomb was a calculable risk.
To Arya, they had corrupted the most eternal law of all, The Cause and Effect.
His anger wasn't grief.
It was a scientist's rage at deliberate ignorance.
Arya printed the results, thin thermal sheets, fragile proof.
This evidence had to become a beacon, not a report.
In the corner of the lab, Gilang's old phone, taken silently from his locker after Kiln 7's lockdown, vibrated.
An encrypted message from Gilang's old whistleblower network.
Message:
"Audit data received. Corrupted. 99% transferred. We need hash validation or the missing 1%. Do not send anything. Run! Aurellia, now!"
The message confirmed it.
THE NICKLE CHAIN had shifted targets.
They weren't just cleaning scenes.
They were erasing footsteps.
...
The emergency lights flickered twice.
Not an alarm.
An Area Lockdown Command.
Lawimore's security system isolated the MML inside the Central R&D Block.
The main exit doors clicked shut.
A cold digital notice appeared on Arya's monitor,
RISK MANAGEMENT ANNOUNCEMENT
Your lab access has been revoked due to potential involvement in the Kiln 7 industrial incident. Please remain inside. Security teams are en route for debriefing procedures. Do not access equipment, especially server logs.
Debriefing was code for disappearance.
They weren't coming to ask questions.
They were coming to collect evidence.
Time was gone.
Arya stuffed the Ecological Time Bomb thermal prints into his fire-retardant jacket, along with the Three-Gram Anomaly Report.
He sprinted across the lab to the Eastern Emergency Evacuation Window, a chemical evacuation system he had designed himself.
Manual access.
But protected by a Level-4 Metallurgical Security Code.
Only Gilang had known it.
Arya entered the code he thought Gilang used.
Denied.
Then Gilang's words surfaced.
"Protect your integrity. Forget the rest."
Integrity.
Arya entered the atomic weight of pure Nickle, 58.69.
Followed by Gilang's birth date, 02.
Beep. Beep.
Unlocked.
Boots thundered in the corridor outside the lab.
They were close.
This was the only way out, a ten-meter drop into a hazardous cargo loading zone.
No plan.
Only one destination, Aurellia.
Arya cracked the window open.
Security personnel in black uniforms were already positioned outside the locked lab door.
He pulled the emergency lever.
The reinforced glass hissed open, just wide enough.
"Damn it," Arya breathed, staring down.
He was just an engineer running with the truth.
"Self-preservation is over," he whispered.
"Now comes redemption."
Outside, a security officer raised his hand to the intercom.
"Target sighted. Attempting escape via eastern evacuation sector.
Engage if necessary. Ensure he - "
…