[THE SAMARATHA SEA. TUGBOAT STRONG 5. EN ROUTE TO MAKARS PORT. ~05:30 AM]
The tugboat's cabin was narrow and reeked of diesel.
Captain Makil stared ahead, his weathered face carved by salt and years of quiet compromise, leaving Arya alone with his thoughts.
Arya's temples throbbed. His left leg was numb, the bitterness of pain a reminder that he was still alive.
He laid out what little he carried on the cracked vinyl bench.
The fire-retardant jacket. Torn. Reeking of steam and scorched metal. No longer protecting him from fire, but from the world.
The thermal printouts and the Three-Gram Anomaly Report. Proof of the Ecological Time Bomb. Fragile. Easily lost. Yet capable of detonating geopolitics.
Gilang's encrypted phone. The key to an old whistleblower network, alongside Arya's remaining possessions, like, a small backpack, a lab tool kit, his wallet, flash drives, a watch, a battered personal phone, etc.
Arya stared at the jacket.
His right hand traced the thick of anti-fire lining. Beneath aramid fibers and heat-resistant layers, he had hidden something far hotter, a truth capable of burning through an entire global supply chain.
This was the most dangerous cargo ever to leave Lawimore.
Not high-grade nickel.
Information.
Through the small cabin window, Lawimore faded into the horizon. The lights of the Nickel Cathedral glimmered like a rotten crown, a monument of national sovereignty standing tall. Arya understood then, he was not fleeing a foreign enemy.
He was fleeing something born deep inside patriotism itself.
He powered on Gilang's phone.
It took him thirty minutes to break the lock. Not a date. Not a number. But a sequence of keywords pulled from an unpublished scientific essay they had once admired together.
The password was a farewell.
The phone unlocked.
A single folder dominated the screen.
THE CHAIN.
Inside were encrypted communication logs, timestamps, and obscured document captures. Screenshots of Bills of Lading that magically transformed low-grade ore into Class-A premium material, inflated by thirty percent, clearing customs and conscience alike.
The scheme was simple.
Elegant.
Corrosive.
Cheap inputs. Premium pricing. Double profit.
Buried beneath layers labeled Encrypted Key Layer 1 – Omega were file names pointing to a physical server. Among them,
Integrity_Audit_Final_Gen4.log
Arya filtered the final outgoing emails.
Gilang had tried to reach one person repeatedly.
To: Bimasena, J. (Prof. Dr. Eng.)
Subject: Data A-001 — Urgent Quality Review
Status: Received. Unopened.
Arya stiffened.
Professor Bimasena.
The nation's most revered economist. Famous in Aurellia for his cynical sermons on sovereignty and moral realism.
Gilang hadn't contacted him to beg.
He had offered him a final chance.
Bimasena's failure to open the message was not ignorance.
It was choice.
He knew and chose to look away, in service of a logic he once preached publicly,
"Our goal is to survive and prosper, not to be clean gods."
The whistleblower network's message still burned in Arya's mind.
Ninety-nine percent transferred. One percent missing. A contact.
Rima. Aurellia.
Using the last remaining credit on Gilang's phone, Arya sent a single encrypted word.
"Omega."
A code for a high-risk scientific test, an irreversible decision.
He shut the phone down.
For now, he was just a fugitive engineer carrying the most dangerous assumption ever framed as data.
Captain Makil stepped into the cabin with two cups of thick black coffee.
"Makars is in sight," he said quietly. "You should be ready. They'll look for you everywhere."
Arya accepted the cup. The warmth steadied him.
"Thank you, sir," he said. "Why, you believe me?"
Makil took a sip, eyes fixed on the distant port lights.
"I don't!" he replied flatly.
"I'm just tired of Lawimore's stench. Smells the same as twenty years ago, when we sold raw timber. Now we sell nickel. Lies always rot the same way."
Makil wasn't an idealist.
He was pragmatic, shaped by repetition, not hope.
Arya nodded. He didn't need faith.
He needed a window.
As the tugboat closed in on Makars, Arya reviewed the Three-Gram Anomaly in his mind. No longer as documents, but as a mapped battlefield of numbers.
Data A-001 sent to Bimasena didn't just prove assay fraud.
It showed a direct correlation between accelerated smelting processes and massive spikes in Heavy Metal Leaching across Lawimore's waters, exceeding any recognized environmental safety threshold by up to one hundred times.
Within five years, disposal zones tied to the GEN-4 battery would become dead zones.
Irreversible corrosion.
This wasn't financial crime.
It was ecological murder, disguised as investment.
Arya retrieved Gilang's phone one last time.
Wearing medical gloves found in the cabin drawer, he removed the triple-encrypted SIM card. Using a modified paperclip, he sliced the chip with microscopic precision.
A physical, unrecoverable failure.
True zeroization.
Gilang's digital ghost was gone.
He hid the thermal printouts and reports deep inside the torn lining of the fire-retardant jacket. Steam residue masked the scent of paper and ink. The evidence fused to him like a new organ.
Makars was only a gate.
A buffer.
The real battlefield lay ahead.
Aurellia.
A city of glass towers and velvet-carpeted offices. The true heart of the Nickel Chain. Where sweat and dust were replaced by perfume and raw data became narrative.
Gilang's unanswered message to Bimasena had been a failed moral challenge.
For Arya, it was a starting line.
He wasn't looking for mercy.
He was looking for ignition.
The word Omega had been sent.
Rima was a blind spot in Gilang's old surveillance map.
On this geopolitical ocean, Arya was a pawn thrown onto the board.
But this pawn carried proof.
As Strong 5 docked amid the chaos of Makars Port, Arya prepared himself.
Lawimore had tried to kill him.
Perhaps now, Aurellia would try to buy him.
…