Chapter 2 - 2

Chapter 6: Nadia Russo

Nadia Russo stood at the threshold of the hidden clinic just before dawn, coffee cup warming her hands. At forty-two, she was a seasoned aid worker; years of crises had tempered her with quiet bravery. The first orange hint of sunrise seeped through narrow slits in the painted-over windows, slashing patterns across folded blankets and medicine cabinets. In the pale light, the room felt more like a fragile sanctuary on the edge of an abyss than a place of healing. Nadia's white coat felt heavy on her shoulders, each thread woven with determination. In this world of surveillance and ghosts, it was both shield and armor. Outside the door, the city was unnaturally quiet. Footsteps still echoed on the empty pavement and a distant hum of drones undercut the silence. It had been more than two weeks since the midnight abductions began, and already the nights seemed endless. Nadia drew a steady breath, pressing the cup against her lips. Despite the fear-laced hush that blanketed the streets, inside these walls she had to be calm. She set down her cup on the makeshift table and stepped inside.

She moved with practiced hands, flipping on the small lantern hanging in the corner and pulling her medical bag from under the exam bed. Each motion was deliberate. In a handwritten logbook she kept hidden beneath the table, Nadia had already begun cataloging the victims from the previous night in code—initials and dates that only she or a trusted few could decipher. In the dim light, she ran her finger along a fresh entry: a name crossed out, another added. The ink was black, the handwriting neat. She closed the book quickly and slipped it further under the table, as if no one else would ever find it.

A hesitant knock at the door startled her. "Occupied," she called softly, adjusting her coat. A familiar face appeared in the gap—Laura, a volunteer nurse who had been helping since the disappearances began. Laura's gray-streaked hair was pulled back, her eyes red-rimmed from hours of vigilance. "First ones are here," Laura whispered, already easing into her cotton gown.

Nadia nodded, then moved toward the door. She opened it to reveal a young father and his daughter, plus a woman trailing behind. The man had dark circles under his eyes and a bruise blooming on his temple. He was clutching the hand of a little girl—Sofia—while the woman, his wife Maria, knelt beside them, soothing the girl with a gentle lullaby. The father's arm had a crude bandage, the woman's arm was also bruised. They stepped inside carefully, faces drawn and tired. Nadia offered the shaken man a gentle smile. "Come, sit. We'll help you." She asked the child's name, which he answered softly, then motioned for the father to take a chair. He placed Sofia in his lap, her small body rigid with fear. Maria stayed kneeling by their side, brushing Sofia's hair back and murmuring reassurances.

Nadia ran cool water over her gloved fingers and gently peeled back the bandages on the man's arm. He winced at the touch. Despite the makeshift wrap, Nadia could see the swelling beneath. The rope burns around both his wrists were raw and dark, faint but telling—like echoes of the bindings that had hurt him. Bruises blossomed along his shoulder and side, as if someone had tried to twist him. As Nadia pressed on a knot of swelling at his elbow, she murmured, "You were bound?" The man gave a slight nod. His eyes, wide with pain and terror, met hers.

The father drew a quivering breath. "They took him at midnight," he whispered. Nadia lifted her gaze, meeting the father's haunted eyes. "Tell me what happened," she prompted gently. He swallowed hard. "My brother, José… he was at home with his children. They came for him in the night." He paused, voice trembling with fear and anger. "A black van. No markings. Ghost van, they call it." Nadia felt the word ghost press cold against her chest. "They zip-tied him, blindfolded him in front of his children… then drove off," he continued, voice tight. A choked sob escaped Maria's lips. "He begged them… for mercy," she managed to say through her tears.

Maria's eyes were brimming. "He was only asking questions. Why would they take him like that?" Nadia's mind raced. Had José asked about secret labor camps? Maybe even questions of injustice? But here, people barely dared whisper the word interrogation, much less demand answers. She didn't mention any interrogation sites—those places were discussed only in nightmares, not by voices in daylight. Instead, Nadia reached out and placed a reassuring hand on the father's shoulder. "He's stable," she said softly to Maria, though her own heart pounded. "We'll keep these wounds clean. I'll stay here with you all day if need be." Laura moved to cut cloth and wrap fresh bandages. Nadia finished dressing his arm and temple, trying to offer comfort with her calm efficiency. "You're safe here," she told them both. "I'll take care of him."

As she worked, the father spoke again, eyes fixed on some distant point. "My kids… they watched him taken," he murmured. Nadia's stomach clenched. She glanced at Sofia and Maria. "It's okay, he's here," she said quietly, though her words felt small. Maria nodded and softly sang a lullaby to Sofia, who slowly drifted toward sleep against her father's chest.

Once the man was bandaged, Nadia took a moment to document what she could. From her coat pocket she retrieved the small digital camera she always carried. Without a sound, she snapped photos of the bruises on his arm and shoulder, of the faded rope burns around his wrists. Each click was a quiet act of defiance—evidence for a future in which authorities might be made to listen. In this city, any official record could vanish in an instant, but a photograph bypassed silence. Nadia slipped the camera back into her pocket and made sure the images were encrypted. In the logbook on her desk she jotted down his name, José Ramos, and a few code notes: "abduction witness, Apr. 14." Beneath the examination table, the ledger grew thicker with coded truth.

Nadia listened as Maria, tear-streaked, tried to explain more of what happened. The captors had worn no insignia at all, just masks and black gloves. Maria described them in haunted whispers, "like shadows." They had interrogated José briefly—asking about local activists and neighbors—before dragging him away. "He tried to protect the others," she choked out. "He just wanted answers," Maria added quietly. The father gripped Maria's hand, and Nadia could feel the trembling gratitude in their clasp.

Then the door opened again. A tall, bearded man in fishing clothes hesitated at the threshold. Nadia recognized him as one of the local fishermen. He entered quietly and took a seat on an exam table at the far corner. His fishing coat was damp, his beard salt-crusted. Nadia stood and asked, "What brings you here, sir?"

The fisherman introduced himself as Omar, his voice low. Nadia noticed a large bruise on his side and a fresh cut on his lip. "My friend Hassan disappeared from the docks last week," Omar began, looking down. "I went out on my boat to search at dawn, and… there was something on the horizon." He drew a shaky breath. "A black boat. No lights. It was huge, moving slowly. The men on the docks say they call it the Sea Silencer." Nadia's pulse quickened. This was the name she had only heard in rumors. She gestured for Omar to describe it more.

As Omar spoke, Nadia gently cut away the bandage on his side. He winced. "They came for me too," he whispered. "After I talked to people on the pier, two officers grabbed me. Beat me up and asked what I saw." Omar pointed to the bruise blooming on his ribs. Nadia pressed a fresh cloth against the swelling, applying ointment. "It's okay. You're safe here now," she told him quietly. "Stay here and rest for a minute."

Omar closed his eyes, relief flooding his features. Nadia sat beside him, mentally marking the location he had gestured to on the map of the harbor behind them. The brief interaction was another silent alarm of truth against the regime's lies.

By late afternoon, daylight had long since faded. Nadia lit another lamp and prepared a simple soup for Laura and any volunteers who might come. They ate huddled together in the corner, speaking only when needed. Even now, the fear clung to them like a second skin. Nadia took a moment to herself. She moved through the small clinic, turning off lights that were no longer needed. In one corner stood a battered wooden desk, its top stacked with manila folders and charts. To any outsider it looked like ordinary clinic paperwork, but to Nadia each file was a smuggled shard of truth—patient intake forms, signed petitions, evidence of disappearances hidden in plain sight. She flipped through her own notes once more. Every chart was a ledger of defiance. In their pages, bureaucratic scrawl became testimony.

She touched the smooth collar of her white coat. "Armor," she thought wryly. Gently, she unzipped it and stepped out of it. The coat, once a badge of authority, now seemed like just a piece of cloth. She folded it carefully and draped it over the back of the chair. She was both healer and witness. Tomorrow she would don this coat again, wearing it like a suit of armor.

It was late evening when Nadia finally returned to her own apartment. The building was quiet, the drone's gentle hum the only sound in the hall. She closed and locked the door behind her, then leaned against it for a moment, catching her breath. In her small kitchen, she poured a cup of warm tea, the steam fogging her glasses. Every muscle in her body ached, but she could not rest yet. Above the kettle's whistle, the drone buzzed steadily on its night patrol outside the window.

Her desk bore the rest of her work. Nadia sat down and booted up her computer. Maps and images lit the screen. On one monitor, a satellite photograph hovered; a grainy black shape sat anchored fifteen miles offshore—the Sea Silencer. As the others on her clandestine team connected dots, Nadia pulled up coordinates of known disappearances. The Sea Silencer wasn't a myth; it was real, a silent vessel in the darkness. Nadia circled its silhouette in red. If people were taken there, it meant this floating prison might hold answers—or horrors—beyond what anyone dared imagine.

She opened another tab—a draft of the legal petition she had been working on. Her fingers hovered over the keyboard as she added details gleaned from today: midnight kidnappings, ghost vans, terrified families left in the dark. She wrote under a false name of course, stripping every file of metadata, and routing it through encrypted channels to human rights lawyers abroad. This was paperwork as rebellion. Each carefully chosen word and carefully removed trace of identity felt like laying down a gauntlet. When it was ready, she would send it through hidden networks where government censors couldn't see it.

A notification pinged on her laptop from the encrypted chat. It was Samir. Nadia's chest tightened as she read:

"Heard on the police scanner: They are tracing patterns. We're not safe."

Her breath caught. They were noticing the trails—they had pieced together the map of disappearances into a pattern. Nadia stared at the message, mind racing. Then she typed back, "Understood. Lay low." And she deleted the conversation, erasing their code.

Just then her phone buzzed with an unknown caller. Nadia pressed "answer" on reflex. A deep voice said only, "They know who you are." Then silence and the line clicked dead. Nadia's chest tightened. Someone had found her.

In the silence of her dimly lit room, panic surged. But she fought it down. She thought suddenly of Elena Garcia, her mentor from decades past. It was the late 1990s, and young Nadia had trained under Elena in Bogotá. Elena had kept notes on every student who was taken; she had taught Nadia that truth was power, even if it came on paper. Elena had been taken in an earlier wave of purges, leaving Nadia a notebook of names and a promise to bear witness. And now history echoed in the present. Nadia steadied her fingers on the desk.

She opened a clean sheet of paper from her sketchpad. Gingerly, she drew the outline of the coastline near Omar's old pier. In the distance, she sketched a boat—a dark hump on the horizon. In the margin she wrote: Sea Silencer. Nadia refolded the paper and slipped it into the evidence file along with her petition drafts. She slid the heavy folder into the bottom drawer of her desk and turned the key. The click of the lock echoed in the quiet room.

For a moment, she sat alone with the radio receiver tuned to the late-night broadcast. It crackled through static. Nadia listened to the announcer's voice: "Authorities have detained nineteen people overnight in connection with a so-called terror plot. All suspects will face justice. We thank loyal citizens for their vigilance." Another round of arrests. Another justification for fear. She clenched her jaw, rage coursing through her. "They call us terrorists," she whispered to the empty room. The radio sputtered out.

Nadia turned the receiver off. For a long moment, the only sound was the steady hum of the drone outside her window. Drones. Their constant droning was like a heartbeat of control in the city's night. Outside, a dog barked once. Inside, all was still except for a faint hiss of static left over. Nadia sat at her desk and wrote one more entry in the little notebook she kept: "April 2025 – Late. They know who we are. The patterns are seen. We will not disappear quietly." She shut the notebook firmly and opened her closet. The white coat hung there, waiting. Nadia ran her hand over its worn collar. Tomorrow she would put it on again, wearing it like armor. Somewhere over her shoulder, the drone's hum settled in again, low and insistent. She turned off the lamp and left the room in darkness. The drone outside became her only witness. Nadia Russo sat in the dark for a long moment, eyes fixed on the locked drawer of evidence, resolve hardening in her chest. For tonight the clinic was empty and the streets were silent, but the fight was far from over.

Chapter 7: Corrosive Calm from Marcus Hall's Perspective

He stood in the observation tower alone in the hush of early May, the city stretched beneath him in ruinous silence. From this height, the empty avenues and closed façades of government buildings looked like a painting left undone—dark, uninhabited, taut with expectation. The curfew, imposed weeks ago, had silenced even the night breezes that once danced through the city streets; in its place, a vacuum stretched out far beyond sight. Marcus Hall felt its weight on his shoulders. It was almost as if the city held its breath, waiting, watching. Only the distant flicker of streetlights pierced the inky blackness below, faint yellow lighthouses in an ocean of night. At this height, he could sense every block below him, and the tranquility was unnerving.

He shifted, the padded lining of his uniform whispering softly under his movements, the epaulets cool against his palms. He had insisted on making this observation himself. The formal orders had been obeyed to the letter: deserted streets, emptied squares, and shuttered windows across the capital. Outside, in the heart of the metropolis, silence reigned. And he was its keeper, perched above it all. The insignia pinned to his chest caught the faint glow of the streetlights far below, though the lights themselves were nothing more than distant punctures of yellow through a canopy of black. He exhaled, and even that breath sounded loud and tangy with the smoke of his worries in the sterility of the night.

He looked to the northeast, where the wide river ran silently under a crescent moon. The pale arc of it cast a silver sheen along the water's surface, though Marcus could not see it from here — only the imagination of light. Somewhere along the banks, patrol boats glided slowly, waves dying untraceably in the dark. The rifle-toting sentries he had deployed were as still as fish in an aquarium. The metropolis he had known — alive with honking horns and distant radios — had been subdued. Every face he once saw in markets and cafes had been replaced by a ghostly blank.

His own reflection, ghostlike, appeared in the glass panel behind him. The rigid lines of his uniform now felt like armor pressing against his skin — crisp collar, polished badge, heavy fabric drawn tight. He reached up to touch the lapel pin at his throat, feeling the cold metal between his fingers. In the darkness, Marcus recognized how this uniform had become a mask, concealing how far he had drifted from the man he used to be. It was a costume that hid every doubt and fear. If an observer from below had looked up, they would see only an immovable figure. The face in the reflection was steady and pale, his dark eyes calm. Yet inside, Marcus felt a slow, gnawing agitation.

He remembered the cry of a child, the voice haunting him out of the silence. It was an echo from the past, piercing the air with uncanny clarity, as though the empty city had borrowed its sound. Marcus shivered at the memory. The day was burned into him: the eve of his inauguration, standing on a grand dais under harsh floodlights, surrounded by a cheering throng of supporters. He had been smiling then, full of hope. A young boy, no more than seven or eight, had climbed onto the stage. The boy's eyes were wide and terrified, mouth quivering with fear. And just as Marcus raised the first line of his speech, the child let out a sudden, primal wail that shattered the ceremony. Instinctively, Marcus had winced. Guards in dark uniforms had quickly moved, gently ushering the boy offstage and out of sight. At the time, Marcus had forced a polite smile and continued speaking, though his hands had started to shake. The audience had murmured briefly as the protest was hushed, and then most everyone had quickly forgotten. But the sound had engraved itself in Marcus's mind.

Now, high above the city, the echo of that cry seemed to gather at his feet. It spoke of innocence lost and of lives irreversibly broken by the hands of men like him. Guilt and doubt pricked at his conscience even in the deep quiet. He shook his head as if to dislodge the ghost of that sound. The quiet around him was absolute; he had never realized silence could be so loud. In this emptiness, he realized how much noise had meant to him before — the street vendors' shouts, the clatter of dinner carts at dusk, even the protests in the plaza that he had watched over with proud duty. All were gone. Replaced by a tense, watchful hush that felt almost unholy.

Marcus pictured the empty alleys far below: not just empty but listening, as if the city itself held its breath. The steel and concrete were patient, unaware guardians of the night, reporting no crime, making no sound. He imagined the soft pad of his own footsteps in those alleys, the echo of his voice giving a command — and then nothing, no answer, no cry, only silence. And through it all, Marcus Hall was watching.

He had orchestrated this stillness with mechanical efficiency — cleared blocks, silent arrests, and nightly transfers. He had learned to relish this calm as a sign of victory, but now, forced to confront it in person, he felt something strange: a corrosion eating at him from the inside, an acid of guilt that even these empty streets could not absolve. The regime's power was at its zenith, and stillness was his triumph. But at what cost? The order he had fought to maintain now felt like an oppressive shroud around his chest.

He stood motionless for a moment longer, letting the weight of these thoughts anchor him in the tower. Finally, Marcus gave the desolate city below one last long look. The streets lay silent and obedient under the moon. With a resigned breath, he turned away. He descended the metal stairs slowly, each step echoing through the spiral stairwell. At the base of the guard tower, a cool draft greeted him as he entered the main corridor of the administration building. The artificial lights were dimmed here, conserving energy until dawn. Security cameras blinked softly in the halls, recording everything as if to prove no one had trespassed.

The silence of the observation deck, intimate and alarming, was replaced by a low hum as he re-entered the offices. A small team of night-shift clerks sat hunched over terminals, eyes lighting their way like beacons. Other officers in crisp uniforms moved about their own late-night tasks — checking logs, annotating files, sipping strong black coffee. None of them looked up as he passed; in these halls, everyone understood the expectation of efficiency and duty. The regime's banners and slogans plastered the walls: Peace. Prosperity. Unity. Marcus followed the carpeted hallway lined with these framed propaganda posters — proud smiles held high, children saluting the flag — to his own polished desk and leather swivel chair. In the naked bulb of the morning on his world, those smiling faces were thin, like masks. Marcus braced himself and sat down heavily.

The morning's paperwork had piled up by the thousands, waiting. He took a breath, steadying himself for the day's work, and opened the first file carefully. Inside were columned sheets and printed data: the morning's roster of cases, detailed lists of arrests and transfers. Marcus's eyes skimmed down the columns of names, each row a person he had never met but whose fate was sealed by bureaucracy. None of the dossiers bore actual names; instead there were code names, case numbers, and identification tags. For an outsider, it would have been a tedious sequence of numbers and checkboxes. But for Marcus, they were human lives — lives now reduced to data points. He tapped his pen against the paper as he read names that no one would ever say aloud.

He observed the labels: date of apprehension, description of charges, location code of holding cell. In one column he saw a code he recognized from last month — Case E-2217. That was the man from the waterfront protest who had shouted condemnation at a rally. Marcus felt a vague recognition, as if the paper was reproaching him. He vaguely remembered a seminar lecture: men like him, sitting in front of neatly organized lists, had once been footnotes in history books. Now he was living those textbook atrocities, tracing the same chilling path.

"Report?" The voice at his elbow broke the reverie. Marcus glanced up at Lieutenant Sara Koll. She stood perfectly still, a red folder tucked under one arm. She was younger than him, but too polished, already knowing exactly how to carry her weight. Even the sunlight filtering through the blinds seemed sharpened in her presence, as if her efficiency focused the day itself.

"District report," she said, extending the folder to him. "All scheduled transfers have been completed, sir. I have updated logs from each precinct. Every detainee has been accounted for. Sir, the system is running smoothly — as designed." She replied in a flat tone, as if reading aloud from an assessment sheet.

Marcus closed the first file and reached for her folder. "Thank you, Lieutenant." His voice remained neutral. "And the system is… frictionless now?" he asked softly, echoing her words.

She nodded, eyebrows slightly raised. "Yes, sir. The shipments were executed precisely on time. No deviations. If I may add, the new central database has eradicated the old paperwork delays. There are no bottlenecks in the process anymore."

He nodded once, satisfied. "Excellent. Good work."

He shuffled through the documents in her folder. The header read Operation Crescendo — a code name for their new initiative. The date: May 2, 2025. The papers listed block after block of identifiers, each "suspect" silently checked off. Lieutenant Koll stood attentive, waiting.

"The Eastern Sector numbers are in," she continued. "Sir, we've exceeded our target by twenty percent, as the General demanded. Your intervention with the command chain helped clear any reservations. The high command is satisfied."

Marcus let the words wash over him. On paper, indeed, they had surpassed quotas. But he felt none of the generals' pride. Instead, a hollow emptiness settled in his gut. He cleared his throat and straightened the top sheet. "Lay it on the table," he instructed, gesturing to the center of his desk. The aides, about half a dozen others, arranged themselves around him. Some peered over their thick-rimmed glasses, others stood at rigid attention. Outside, the morning sun had climbed higher, filtering through venetian blinds and illuminating motes of dust floating above the table.

Sara set down the report with a thud. "Our numbers are full. The final shipment departed on schedule last night. All manifests have been verified."

Jonas Ruiz, another junior officer on duty, stepped forward with a small smile playing on his lips. "We've had no security breaches, sir. Zero leaks. Our operatives across the sectors have done their jobs, no questions raised." His chest swelled with pride at the news.

Marcus nodded slowly. "Good," he said quietly. He noticed how Jonas's eyes gleamed at this. The man was proud of their stealth, perhaps forgetting that among themselves, at least some might not actually lose sleep over it. Marcus's jaw tightened, and he returned his attention to his desk.

From a neat pile to his right, a thicker folder was slid across and opened by an aide. It contained charts and progress gauges for "Case Processing." They diagrammed how inmates moved from arrest to holding to final destination. The arrows of the flow chart were always heading to Sea Silencer or other final facilities, with no detours. It was an assembly line of finality, and Marcus presided over it.

He realized his heart had begun to race as he read the last column: "Completion – yes or no." The enormity of what he authorized settled on him in dread.

"Sir," an analyst at the edge of the table reported, "the latest transfers are set for midnight tomorrow. The list is ready for signing."

Marcus leaned forward. The folder was open at the place he had left it. The cover page of a letterhead, plain white cardstock: Authorize Transfer: Sea Silencer Detention. He moved his pen into view as if to inspect it closely.

He felt the room's eyes on him. Everyone was awaiting his command. He inhaled, feeling the tension shift. The bureaucratic precision around him was comforting and horrifying at the same time. On this tidy desk, mass cruelty looked placid.

Marcus put his pen down. "Prepare the cover order," he instructed in a crisp tone. "The next list should be processed immediately. Inform the transport division that everything is cleared for departure."

Behind him, Sara had started summarizing another file, but she caught his gaze. The unspoken question hung between them: Do you want me to finalize this?

He glanced at the cover order. "Yes," he whispered. "Yes, proceed." His voice was soft, almost drowned out by the humming lights overhead. He allowed a small nod to make it official.

Jonas quietly exhaled with relief, and the aides began organizing the papers for his signature. The gears of the administrative machine turned smoothly at that nod. Marcus turned his head to pretend to listen to one of the reports, but inside he felt strangely apart from the scene.

For a moment, Marcus's mind wandered. He imagined walking along those empty streets, seeing the faces of the men and women who were listed before him — old school principals, young mothers, shopkeepers — everyone vanished without a fight. He had told himself all these names were enemies of the state; he had convinced himself of their guilt long ago. Yet now, the faces of people he once admired flickered behind his eyelids. The twisting in his stomach told him the lie: these were people, with lives.

His eyes returned to the present. "Yes, have it drawn up," he said, still watching the final rows on the spreadsheet. "Ensure all entries are accurate."

One of the aides, a woman with dark hair tied back, tapped the papers into her computer. Another printed out the official document he'd signed earlier. They were efficient, voices hushed, actions precise, as though this were just another meeting.

There was no time for pity here. Time moved fast: soon the vehicles would roll, silent vans carrying the unmarked stories to Sea Silencer, a name that slipped like a tongue of forgetting over every one of those incarcerated.

Marcus steadied himself against the polished wood of the table. "This efficiency… it's necessary," he said with more conviction than he felt. "We owe it to our people."

Sara's lips thinned as she nodded. She added no more, for none was needed. Each person there understood.

The meeting ended as quickly as it had begun. Marcus gathered his coat and badge and stepped out of the office into the corridor. The sun was still bright in the sky, but heat from the morning seemed to have no welcome in the quiet halls. The building's hallways were empty as he walked to the main exit. Outside, a sleek black sedan waited. Marcus got in and gave the driver the address for the banquet hall. On the drive, the radio played a patriotic anthem softly, but Marcus turned it off, preferring the silence. The city lights and the powder-blue morning sky alternated as the car pulled away, as if transporting him back into reality from a nightmare.

By the time he arrived at the officers' banquet that evening, his forehead had cooled but an uneasy tremor still lingered in his chest. The banqueting hall was a different world: warm light, polished marble columns, and a buzz of celebration that nearly spilled out onto the boulevard outside. Symphonic music and clinking glasses spilled from the open doors, a stark counterpoint to the night's vacant streets. Marcus straightened the black tie of his dress uniform, the starburst insignia on his collar catching the light, and stepped inside with a practiced smile.

Tables stretched in a semicircle around a raised dais where dignitaries mingled and laughed. White-linen tables were set with crystal goblets and platters overflowing with roasted meats and glazed fruits, the air rich with spices. Officers in their best uniforms told jokes and traded congratulations. The orchestra, seated near a grand piano, played a swelling tune that rose to meet the laughter. It was as if any tension that had knotted Marcus's chest began to unwind in this warmth.

He followed others toward a table near the center. People acknowledged him with toasts and friendly shakes. "General Hall," said Colonel Ramos, clasping his shoulder, "we owe you great gratitude for the recent sweep. The city sleeps so much safer now. Order is restored thanks to your work." Ramos's face was flushed with wine and pride, and Marcus returned the gesture with a smile that felt carefully hollow.

"All in a day's duty, Colonel," Marcus replied evenly. He raised his glass as he took it from an aide. "To order," he murmured into the clink. The others at the table echoed or murmured "Hear, hear," but Marcus could feel only the emptiness of the words.

His eyes flicked across the room. The guests were masks. To his left, the Intelligence Chief laughed boisterously at one of the aide's stories, whisky in hand. To his right, the Minister of Defense toasted across the table to a laughter-filled crowd at an adjoining table. Beneath their smiles, Marcus sensed the taut thread of fear; each man knew that moments like this could be followed by scrutiny or even suspicion. They drank to their safety while subtly watching one another.

A waiter poured him another glass of wine. Marcus accepted it, pressing lips to porcelain calm. He noticed even the wine tasted of ash. Conversation swirled around him — congratulatory compliments, rumors of further success, offhand remarks about rounding up resisters — but Marcus struggled to pay attention. Instead, he studied the faces: too confident, too assured. A few wives and daughters sat at peripheral tables, turned away so that they would not see the foul trade their men quietly discussed. There was irony in that, thought Marcus, remembering the orphaned boy outside the inauguration. Here, the innocent were shielded from truth while the guilty reveled.

A deputy raised her glass across the table. "To our triumphant leadership!" she said, voice loud enough to catch his ear. The hall cheered again, voices rising with the orchestra. Marcus raised his own glass out of reflex.

"To leadership," he repeated, voice resonating through the splendor of the hall. It felt like an empty ritual. The polished hall rang with their cheers, a cacophony of masks clashing, while the truth remained muffled.

Before more could be said, Marcus felt a stifling heat under the chandelier's glow. He was acutely aware of his uniform's tightness at his collar and the sudden dryness in his throat. He needed air.

He cleared his throat and stood abruptly, chair scraping softly. "I apologize, gentlemen," he said, voice steady but firm. "I have duties to attend to." He gave a curt nod and started toward the exit.

Surprised glances followed him, but no one could argue. It was not unusual for a commanding officer to slip out quickly. The music and conversation resumed behind him as he walked away, fading in volume with each step.

Outside, the night air was cool on his face — a welcome change from the thick warmth inside. The lights of the city ahead were dimmed by the curfew, but he watched them nonetheless as he made his way back to the vehicle.

The car's journey home was silent. Marcus stared straight ahead, hands resting on his knees. The city's silhouette was still, as if nothing had changed tonight. In truth, he was changed, bit by bit. He arrived back at headquarters in the quiet of late night. The lights in the corridors were off now; the building was asleep. Marcus climbed the stairs to his private study on the top floor.

Inside his dimly lit study, he allowed himself a moment of solitude. The desk lamp glowed over a mess of papers. Marcus loosened his uniform, unbuttoning his stiff collar and undoing his tie. He peeled off the heavy coat and draped it on a hook by the door. The uniform — that mask — he hung carefully on a stand. In the mirror by the door he caught a glimpse of himself: drawn features, dark eyes shadowed and tired.

On the desk lay the draft orders waiting: the cover letter reading Authorize Transfer: Sea Silencer Detention, the manifest listing names he had prepared earlier. Marcus sank into the leather chair with a weary sigh. He rubbed his eyes and stared at the document as if trying to memorize every word.

Picking up his pen, he leaned over the form to add a detail he had left blank: an address at the harbor docks where the transfer would begin. Each stroke of his pen felt heavy, like carving lines on a tombstone. The names beneath the pen's nib scrawled into view: eight individuals, each coded, each already marked for disappearance.

He wrote in neat, cursive; each name was a sentence. A juvenile offender from the slums, a mid-level dissident journalist, a midwife who had sheltered a resistor, a university professor indicted for speaking about free speech. He had gone over these names earlier to decide who would be sent first. Now he merely recorded. The pen scratched across the paper like a judge's gavel.

He paused, recalling one name: Ellen Iverson, a schoolteacher who had been arrested for leading a petition at the market. She was pregnant. Marcus had known this. In the cold glare of last month's hearing, there had been nothing but stubborn resolve in her eyes. When one of his officers had asked if the pregnancy changed anything, Marcus had said only: "Under special conditions," meaning nothing at all. Now, he wondered for a heartbeat if he had lied.

He sighed heavily. It made no difference. She was designated for transfer like all the rest.

Marcus wrote her name last on the list, leaving his pen hovered for a moment on her file, and then finished the detail. Next, with a sense of finality, he took the thick stamp from his desk. It was the official insignia seal of the Directorate of Safety, the authority of the state. The rubber had dried slightly from lack of use, like an old wound scab. He pressed down, imprinting the order with a solid royal seal of approval. The ink pad made a dark print on the cover sheet. Authorized. It was done.

He leaned back, closing his eyes. On the desk, the document lay ready for the midnight courier. Twenty thoughts ran in circles in his mind, but one was loudest: No one will know. Every stroke, every signature was secret. Without witnesses, without records in the open, the truth of this paper could vanish between the lines forever.

The silence in the study pressed in again. Marcus felt like the sole man awake while the entire city slept. In the darkness, only the quiet ticking of a clock on the wall measured the moments — the second hand marking time in slow, deliberate steps.

He stood and walked to the window. Outside, the city lay peaceful under the stars, roads and buildings unassuming in the night. It betrayed nothing. The banquet's echoes had vanished completely. The city gave nothing away. And here, on the other side of the glass, Marcus Hall stared at the face that watched back at him.

It was still his face, he realized, but drawn and gaunt. His eyes were tired and shadowed. The medal on his chest seemed to melt into his uniform in the darkness. He knew something in himself had irrevocably changed.

At that moment, Marcus whispered, almost to himself: "No one will know."

His voice was barely a whisper, lost amid the silence of the empty city. The words drifted away like smoke from a candle. Outside, the last lights of the city were dying. Marcus walked back to his quarters. In his heart, the silence he carried was full of everything: fear, despair, and something he could not name. The night had fallen again, and the shadow he had become lengthened under it, a quiet witness to the calm he had imposed, corrosive and complete.

Chapter 8: Luis Ortega Underground and Hunted

Luis Ortega woke to the smell of damp earth. In the half-light of dawn, he peeled himself out of the rolled canvas sleeping bag and sat up on the cold, muddy floor of the forest shelter. Tiny droplets of water dripped from the low wooden beams that made up this bomb shelter's ceiling. The night's rain had seeped through the decaying planks and mixed with the moss-covered silence. He brushed his fingers against the rough wood wall as he stood, listening to the distant hoot of an owl and the forest's pre-dawn stillness. By design, this hillside refuge was hidden in overgrowth: a hollow between ferns and tangled vines that kept the shelter invisible from above.

He crouched and patted down his trousers for small supplies, retrieving the portable shortwave radio wrapped in greasy oilcloth. He had spent weeks repairing and reinforcing the rusted metal door and crumbling walls of this bomb shelter as if patching together pieces of himself. Every nail hammered in had brought a fragile sense of control, but the deep damp of the forest floor was a constant reminder of vulnerability. Now he had other work. He settled on a stump of rotten wood, careful to make no sudden noise as he clicked the radio on. It hummed to life with static. He had tuned it to the agreed frequency long ago and now waited for the signal. His heartbeat thundered; a wrong step here might shatter everything. Under the brim of his cap, his dark eyes narrowed as he adjusted the tuning dial. Somewhere out there, on that frequency, a voice awaited.

He held still for minutes. Bugs chirped lazily in the underbrush, but Luis dared not move. The dial hissed with snippets of muffled transmissions. He thought of his cover tasks for the day—later he would patch a leak in the shelter wall, tighten a rusted hinge—but first, business. He tapped his fingers on his knee, waiting.

Finally, a faint voice came through in clipped code: "--delta--bridge--eight--crosspoint." Static crackled. He recognized the pattern. Coded language to secure the message, heard only by those in the know. Luis straightened, heart tightening. He had heard this introduction countless times. With the second predetermined beep, he pressed the push-to-talk and spoke softly: "Alpha six-nine. Confirm your location." The radio answered, "Grid five-niner at Loma Vista. Courier en route. Over." Luis let out a silent breath.

The message was brief: Grid 59 at Loma Vista. A meeting point. A courier coming. They were in business. "Received," he whispered, letting the microphone line fall dead. His hand lingered over the switch for a heartbeat, to listen for any more. The dial returned to static and silence. His chest was tight with both relief and tension. A courier coming here meant tonight he'd meet someone face-to-face, not just hear coded words. That carried enormous risk—but it also carried hope. He quickly switched off the radio, the click echoing in the empty air of the shelter, and wrapped the device again in oilcloth before stowing it away.

He sat on the stump, the message heavy on his mind. The distant forest was waking: drops of water tinkled on leaves and a woodpecker tapped rhythmically on a branch. The air was cool. Mist hovered over the fern floor. He breathed in the scent of wet pine and earth. This silence was everything. Out there in the world, noise was a regime tool—the shouting propaganda from bullhorns, the constant drone of surveillance, the authoritarian proclamations over loudspeakers. But here, in this hidden glade, silence was his ally. Even the wind seemed to hush.

Sunlight trickled in through cracks. The rain had warped the old metal door, and he knew he needed to fix it. It could jam on someone. With methodical calm, he fetched a hatchet from his pack. Wedging it under the door's bottom edge, he forced a crack. Splinters flew under his blows. With a final shove, the heavy metal door groaned and swung open into the dawn light.

He cursed softly, but not loud. Leaning outside the threshold, he scanned. Nothing moved—no footprints in the mud, no wildlife scurrying. A thin veil of fog lifted from the ground around the ferns. Far above, a patrol tower waited on a ridge, silhouetted against the sky, but unmanned at this hour. By day, the countryside was strictly watched. But here, behind heavy vines, he was free of their gaze—for now. He slipped the plank propped against the door back into place, making the outside appear undisturbed, the hollow all but invisible. He stepped back inside the shelter and released a breath he hadn't known he was holding.

Inside, the smell of wet wood mixed with cold metal. He removed the oily rag that had sealed a gap overnight. Satisfied with the quick fix on the door, he turned to consider next steps. The radio had said "courier en route," but gave no time. It might be tonight, after dark, which meant he had to be on the move soon. He packed his satchel: a canteen of water, a few spare rations, a simple first-aid kit—thin pickings, but better than nothing. Most importantly, a folded forged ID and an old newsprint map of the city, with his own scribbles marking safe routes. Carmela's last update was written in the margin: Route C, meet at dawn. That would have to be enough preparation.

He switched off the small kerosene lamp. Light streamed in from outside; dusk was coming. The city lay ahead, sleeping in denial of the danger. He climbed out of the bunker again and disappeared into dense brush. Moments later, the old shelter door closed on a final click and silence reclaimed the hollow.

By late evening, the sky above the city was streaked with red and purple. Luis timed it perfectly. He dressed quickly in the partial uniform he had prepared. He buttoned up a secondhand patrol jacket—no insignia remained, a cheap patch covering the name—and tugged on a faded blue cap. The disguise made him uneasy, as if he wore someone else's skin. But the uniform was his shield tonight. It would allow him to move through checkpoints and cursory inspections. He straightened his shoulders and took a steadying breath.

He crept out of the woods onto a hidden dirt trail that led toward the city's south district. Overhead, a distant drone buzzed in the twilight sky, its red light pulsing. Luis froze under a fallen log for a count of ten. The drone's whir faded as it moved on. He dashed across a grassy clearing and slipped into a ruined warehouse on the edge of town. Inside was an old cargo truck, empty and dusty. He tried the door latch; it was unlocked. Perfect. He slid inside and felt around under the seats. Enough fuel for a quick drive. He turned the key and the old engine cough-started, the headlights flickering on. It wouldn't outrun a patrol car, but would help him cover distance to the alley where he wanted to paint his message.

He rolled the truck as quietly as possible into the dark street. Then he crept out and mingled with the night air, walking the truck into a side lot before abandoning it under its cover. The city was wrapped in darkness except for the patrols. Soldiers in crisp uniforms marched along the main road under lamplight, rifles casually slung. Two others in plain dark coats blocked an intersection, directing a long line of cars through a checkpoint. Luis kept to shadows. He had to slip by unseen.

He chose a narrow side alley near the old cathedral, behind the main cathedral's grand facade. Here the walls were already scrawled with old faded slogans—mottled papers and paint peeling away. The government had plastered red-lettered bulletins all over the walls outside the central post office: "CUMPLEN Y OBEDECE" and "No hay excepciones en la seguridad." Propaganda. But this alley, with its cracked stone, was quiet tonight and perfect. He pulled a small cloth from his bag and pressed it against the cold brick. In his mind he sketched a symbol of resistance. Then he drew the brush down and began painting in bold, black strokes: Cero arrestos.

The letters were thick, uneven, jagged—and defiant. He painted deliberately, each stroke feeding the tension coiling in his chest. The phrase glared at him from the wall: "Cero arrestos" – "Zero arrests." A dangerous proclamation. His arms tensed with each letter, adrenaline clearing his mind. The city around him felt far away, as if stopped by his resolve. He stepped back, breathing softly, eyes fixed on the message. The streetlamp overhead flickered as a breeze rustled a newspaper in the gutter. It was done.

He straightened and wiped his hands on his trousers. That was when he heard it – a faint clatter from down the alley. He froze, paintbrush still in hand. Somewhere behind him, a trash can lid turned. A patrol.

In the growing darkness, he saw two figures emerging at the other end of the alley. They wore similar jackets to his, but official and unmarked. One swung a flashlight beam ahead. The other was talking into a radio handset. Luis's heart hammered. He pressed himself flat against the wall, trying to become part of the brick. The first officer swept the light back and forth, the beam swinging dangerously close to where Luis stood. He dared not breathe. Each muscle was rigid as steel. If he were found here, on this wall with that slogan, there could be no excuse or forgiveness.

His lungs burned as he held steady. When the flashlight blazed near him, Luis lunged sideways, dropping the brush to the ground. His fingers scrabbled on the rough pavement as he rolled behind an overturned crate. He heard the guard curse quietly. A second later, bootsteps in heavy patrol boots receded. The men had passed him by. Luis exhaled slowly. He watched as they disappeared into the mouth of the alley. Only when their radios faded to silence did he dare to move.

He risked a glance at the wall. The black letters stood stark against the stone: Cero arrestos. His message to the city glared back at him. Silently, Luis let himself smile. The threat was real; someone else might pay. But tonight, he had spoken.

He eased out of the alley and continued onward. The laughter from that distant banquet hall still echoed faintly behind him, ghostly through the buildings. That boisterous merriment was Marcus Hall giving a toast to the regime's false prosperity, somewhere safe and warm. Luis bit back anger. Somewhere down the road, Marcus Hall and his cronies were feasting while Luis and countless others lived in fear. He pressed on, leaving the hungry echo behind.

He retraced his steps to the east, toward the derelict apartment that served as a safehouse. Each footstep made him acutely aware of lurking dangers. The city might slumber, but its watchmen did not. As he turned the corner onto an empty street, he froze at the sight of another checkpoint. Two plainclothes officers in dark suits blocked traffic at an intersection. A battered sedan was stopped before them. Luis ducked into a nearby shop doorway, heart pounding. He realized the guards were questioning a mother and father inside the car. Through the tinted glass he saw a small boy coughing violently in the backseat.

One officer raised his eyebrows at the sound. Then the child coughed again, a tortured burst that echoed painfully. Instinct took over. The parents' faces inside the car were etched with fear. Suddenly, the guard's attention was fully on them. Luis took a careful step out. The second officer straightened up and called quietly to his partner. In an instant, both guards moved toward the car to help the family. The mother stumbled out shouting, "¡Ayuda, por favor!" and the guards rushed to her side.

Luis exhaled slowly. His legs felt like they could move again. He stepped forward onto the pavement. Handing up his forged ID, he declared smoothly, "Sergeant Carmona, returning to unit." The distracted guard barely glanced at the card, seeing what he expected to see. In that split second, Luis passed. "All clear, sir," he said softly with a salute. The officer nodded and turned back to the ambulance call for the child.

In the same moment, as if to seal his escape, a patrol car's spotlight cut across the alley behind him. The family's cough had diverted that attention. Luis didn't wait for the officers to catch up; he strode away, a fleeting shadow merging into the emptiness of the side street.

Safe for now, Luis quickened his pace. He stuck to alleys and darkened boulevards toward the designated safehouse. On the way, he thought of the child's cough—a chilling reminder of how close he had come to capture. He felt more alive, more viciously alert, than he had before. By midnight, he stood outside a crumbling brick building on a vacant street.

He tapped the secret knock on the door in a specific rhythm. Inside, quiet footsteps shuffled. A latch clicked. Carmela Cruz cracked the door open. Her stern eyes darted over him like a knife—uniform, brace on his arm from the fall in the forest, face, boots. Then she allowed him entry.

Dim lamplight revealed others around a kitchen table: Carmela, David Moreno, Sister Isabel, Antonio, and Fabian. They shifted as he entered, relief flickering across anxious faces. Luis removed his jacket and cap. His disguise was useless here; these were his people. At Carmela's nod, he sat across from them and set his satchel on the table.

"Noticias," Carmela said softly—News. She poured a cup of water and handed him a damp cloth. He wiped paint and grime from his hands. He pulled out the bundles from his bag: newspapers and scraps taped together, a small cloth packet, and an old photograph. He laid them on the table.

They leaned in. One by one, they examined the contents. David lit another candle. Luis explained in low Spanish: "Courier from the north. These came with him." He passed the coded papers, scribbled notes, and schedules around. They were maps of patrol routes and lists of names—all hidden on scrap corners of newspaper. Luis pointed to one list filled with names of workers. On another was a note: tomorrow's special roundup list.

Sister Isabel's eyes filled with tears as she realized the lists were targets. "They're rounding up everyone on these," she whispered. "All of these names… they disappear at dawn." One by one, each person recognized someone: a neighbor, a cousin, a friend. Luis felt his throat tighten.

He took out the last bundle – a small padded packet. Inside were a microfilm spool and a folded photograph. He did not need to look to know what the photo was. He opened it carefully. The faces smiling back were his parents'—Camilo and Mercedes Ortega—young, before the war. He had thought they were dead. Next to the photo was a tiny note in Carmela's handwriting: Camilo y Mercedes Ortega – sobrevivieron. They survived.

Luis's hand trembled on the table. The room felt suddenly smaller. Fabian leaned forward, eyes wide. "Your parents?" he asked quietly. Luis simply nodded. He ran a finger lightly over the spool of microfilm. The courier had risked everything to bring this to him.

Silence fell. Then Carmela clapped a hand on his shoulder. She did not look pitying. If anything, pride and determination shone in her eyes. "No time," she said softly. Everyone moved quickly. Antonio and David collected the lists to be burned or hidden. Carmela sketched new routes on their city map. She passed folded papers to Luis and Fabian. "Your cover identities," she reminded. Each received a forged order of any sort, and a new route map showing out of the city after dawn. David placed the microfilm carefully into Luis's bag.

Luis accepted it with a nod. The thought of seeing his parents fueled him with something fierce. He looked around at the others. These faces—scarred with fear, hope, and resolve—were his family now. David winked briefly. "We live another night," he whispered.

Carmela motioned to him. "Route C, Fabian goes with you. You head northwest at 4:15. We'll keep listening for updates." She pressed a folded scrap into his palm with one final instruction scrawled on it. Fabian popped it open: "Next drop, forest NW of here, 04:15." Good, planned to meet.

Fabian gave Luis a quick grin. "Stay safe," he said. Sister Isabel placed a small crucifix in his hand. "We pray," she murmured. Luis smiled ruefully and tucked it into his jacket pocket.

Minutes later they were out the door again, the safehouse swallowed by night. The damp air hit him. He kept his jacket unbuttoned, blending in as a half-uniform man on an errand. No one on the street at this hour. In the silence, Luis turned once toward the direction of the banquet hall where Marcus Hall still laughed away. For a heartbeat, he caught the sound of a toast and the clink of glasses carried on a distant wind. He touched the soft fabric of the photograph in his pocket. Let them feast, he thought. In the shadows, he and a few others fought back.

He and Fabian split up a block later to avoid drawing attention together. "Good luck," Fabian said, as they each tucked into different alleyways. Luis nodded, watching Fabian disappear around the corner. Now alone, he moved with equal parts caution and urgency. Dawn would come too fast if he lingered.

The empty streets were dark and strange after midnight. Every footstep echoed; every shadow might conceal watchers. Luis stayed in narrow corridors of darkness, every sense alert. Ahead the sky was just beginning to pale, the first edges of dawn. He passed shuttered shops, graffiti-scrawled shutters, and the odd stray dog slipping into the gutter. Quietly, his mind replayed the name on that slip of paper: Ortega. Tomorrow, he thought, tomorrow if all goes well.

He approached a T-intersection where two more bodies blocked the road. A streetlamp cast a low yellow glow. He froze. In front of him was a plainclothes officer at a makeshift barrier. The man's eyes were tired, scanning papers from a clipboard. The officer glanced up at Luis. Something about the uniform or the gait made the guard raise an eyebrow. Luis almost collided with Fabian in the shadows, but he had fallen back to let him pass. Now he offered the same courtesy to the officer. "Sergeant Carmona, leaving perimeter," Luis said with the unwavering calm of a man used to lies.

The guard looked him over. "Carmona… Unit 12?" he asked, voice neutral. He held out a tattered ID card. Luis pulled his own card from his pocket. It said Carmona, Unit 12. The guard took it, checking the photo and seal. The red lamplight made Luis's heart skip. The officer grunted, handing the card back. "Yes, same number. Move along," he said.

Luis exhaled without showing it. He gave a quick salute and slipped past. Behind him, he heard a familiar cough. It was false, meant to draw the guards again. In the distance, a faint rumble of a security drone's rotors grew louder as it swept overhead.

As he turned away, his final streetlamp flickered out. The horizon glowed faintly gray. Luis was still in the city's belly. He didn't dare trust the shadows entirely. He checked his back as he walked onward. The city was stirring soon; someone might have followed them at some point.

He passed the last corner and found himself on a narrow lane. Only the silhouette of abandoned storefronts lined it. Overhead, the sky was lighter now. High above, a lonely red light blinked on a surveillance drone that had just crossed his path. He heard it faintly overhead, a constant distant buzz. Luis didn't look up again.

He walked into the shadowed street, unsure if he was being followed. The drone's hum faded as it rounded the block. Luis felt every sense straining in the new dawn light. Ahead, the first birds chirped in a tree. He adjusted his cap and kept moving forward, into whatever came next. Above, faint through the gray sky, the lone drone buzzed softly overhead.

Chapter 9: Nadia Russo – Night Raid and Rendition

Nadia Russo sat hunched at her scarred wooden desk, the glow of the computer screen painting the dark room in shades of blue. Towering piles of files and notebooks leaned above her like the barricades of a besieged city. On the screen, satellite images whispered secrets: thin lines of gray snaking across the black-and-white landscape, military transport routes that had become highways of fear. Beside the screen lay another open file: a ledger of the disappeared—names and dates cataloged one after another.

She had left the window cracked open; a soft early-June breeze drifted through, rustling the curtains. The warm night air carried the distant scent of jasmine from a neighbor's garden, a faint comfort against the sterile glow of her screens. Across the street a television flickered behind drawn curtains; otherwise the block remained silent. Nadia ran a hand through her heavy dark hair, brushing back loose strands as her eyes blurred with fatigue. Every name on the list was a life cut short—friends, colleagues, even strangers who had asked for help and now were gone.

She reached out and touched the feather-soft fabric of her old wool coat, folded neatly over the back of a chair. The coat was a worn comfort around her shoulders, an old companion from another life. As her fingers brushed the coarse linen lining, her mind suddenly drifted.

She saw the desert at dawn in a flash: a makeshift field hospital nestled among sand dunes and barbed wire. Young children with eyes the color of wet earth clung to her hand in fear. That morning her coat had been new and crisp, its fine wool warm against the cool air. A father had looked up and given her a tired, grateful smile as he held out a battered tin cup of tea. The bitter warmth that flowed into her hands had smelled of crushed mint and cardamom. Under the pink sky of that dawn, Nadia had still believed that each act of kindness might change even a single life. In that moment, standing amid chaos, she had felt powerful and hopeful.

Her thumb then dragged over the smooth edge of a photograph pinned to the wall. The image showed her and other volunteers smiling after a protest march months ago, banners raised high and eyes bright with conviction. But even in the faded photo, the shadow of change had begun to creep across their faces. Nadia touched the photo, and a dull ache followed: how naïve they had been, how fiercely they had believed their voices would be heard. She felt the weight of that collective innocence, heavy and battered. The wool at her shoulder caught on a nail protruding from the wall; she freed it and straightened up with a shaking breath.

The night had deepened around her. Absentmindedly, Nadia clicked to another satellite image, its pale lines showing the city's outskirts under a scant moon. In that image's quiet beams she imagined the hum of surveillance drones above. They had captured something that afternoon: white vans parked in neat rows along the waterfront, the same unmarked vehicles that had been whispered about in rumor. Nadia knew that dock well from a coastal mission six months ago. In her memory, the afternoon sun had been hot and the air smelled of salt, eucalyptus, and something she now thought of as hope.

She blinked, and the scratch of her pen on paper drew her back to the present. Her notes were disjointed scribbles on thin yellow pads: names, dates, locations. Foggy lamplight danced across the desk as if hungry to illuminate each scrawl. The memory of that petition—her petition—mingled with what she was writing now: the name of a young activist who had simply disappeared a week ago. Nadia paused, heart twisting. Slowly, reverently, she wrote the name again, to remember it, to prove he'd existed. On her ledger, the tally grew with each passing entry, each final name that ought to have a face.

Outside, the wind chimes on her balcony stirred: a soft, hollow clink like distant bells. It reminded her of the ocean—those long days on the coast, where even in calm the air still carried whispers of an unseen storm. She took a sip of the now-cold tea at her elbow and tasted its acrid bitterness. The wind chimes fell silent, leaving only a heavy hush in the apartment. Somewhere far off, a siren wailed—a lullaby for nightmares echoing between buildings. Nadia raised an eyebrow at the timing, then turned away from the window and back to her desk.

She stood, stretching tired shoulders above her head. Every muscle ached from exhaustion and too many sleepless nights. But adrenaline kept her hands steady as she gathered the scattered reports and images in front of her. The papers lay spread on the table before her, lit by a single desk lamp that cast long, crawling shadows across the floor. The lamp had a faint hum, mechanical as her heartbeat—steady, insistent. She unpinned another photo from the wall: an image from an early mission abroad. The air in that memory smelled of eucalyptus and iodine, of a field clinic teeming with feverish hope. She traced the outline of a volunteer's smiling face in the photograph, warmth captured in a single instant. For a moment, the past pressed down on her, and it felt like those days were just behind her. But she forced herself back to the present.

She returned to the desk and flipped on a small reading light so as not to wake her neighbor through the thin wall. Against the desk's warm wood, Nadia's fingers flew over the keys. She typed a new note about two more missing names. Under her breath she whispered each one, as if speaking them out loud might keep them alive. "Second convoy to Hell's Gate, twenty-three unaccounted," she murmured, writing it twice more in her log. She leaned back, listening to the night around her. No wind now, no wandering shadow; only the distant hum of a refrigerator somewhere and the soft ticking of a clock somewhere in the hall. Still, her mind raced: where were those people being taken? She had read official statements about labor camps, but those announcements were lies. She could feel it in her gut.

Back in her chair, Nadia's eyes stung with the weight of exhaustion and sorrow. She reached up and massaged the tender crook of her neck, muscles knotted with tension. On the table lay the torn edge of that petition—ripped from her notebook, its words now mostly illegible. She closed her eyes for a moment. In the darkness behind her lids, she saw that coiled spring of hope inside her unwinding slowly, unraveling into something cold and sharp. Each name on her list had a face, a voice, a promise of return—and now those promises felt like empty echoes. Nadia inhaled deeply, trying to steady herself.

She glanced at the wall clock: it read 11:58 PM. The minute hand was on the verge of slipping into midnight. Nadia didn't realize how late it had gotten. The whole city seemed to hold its breath. In that pregnant pause before midnight, she felt it again—an undercurrent of dread, as though the net were tightening around her work.

Just after midnight, outside her door, a deliberate sound rippled through the quiet. It wasn't thunder, or wind, or a passing car. It was a pounding—a warning hammer blow on the door. Nadia's breath froze. In one terrified instant she thought: They have come for me. For a heartbeat, nothing happened. Then, from somewhere down the hall, she heard heavy footsteps multiplying, thudding closer to her door. The doorknob rattled violently. Nadia's body betrayed her as it began to shake; silent tears welled in her eyes. She pressed herself against the floorboards, clutching at the rug's fibers. The fur lining of her coat collar pressed cold against her neck. Behind the door, she thought she heard hushed voices speaking in urgent tones.

And then, without warning, armed men in black uniforms and masks burst through her door. The night in her apartment fractured. "Down!" a voice barked like a pistol shot. Glass from a small window above the desk crashed to the floor, scattering over her notes. Nadia's heart leapt in her throat as she threw herself flat. A soldier's knee shoved into the small of her back, forcing her face into the rug. The legs of the desk jammed into her side as one of them yanked at her arms, wrenching them violently behind her. Another soldier's words came through a mask, guttural and urgent, but she could not make out what they said. All at once, hands gripped both of her wrists. Plastic cuffs snapped tight around her hands with a sharp click, biting into her skin. Pain lanced up her arms.

Nadia bit her tongue to stifle a cry. She tasted metal and fear. The men hauled her to her feet with brute strength. The rustle of papers behind her and the thud of files hitting the floor filled her ears. Each step toward the open door flung her forward, her feet scuffing on the familiar carpet. Her fortress of information—reports, charts, interview transcripts she had compiled—was being crushed underfoot. Her precious files curled and tore beneath the soldiers' boots. In that moment, all Nadia could feel was chaos and cold air rushing into the apartment.

Dragged from the sanctuary of her work and memories, Nadia Russo could no longer breathe her own air. The door slammed shut behind her with finality. She was half-carried, half-dragged into a cold corridor. Panic made her body heavy and slow to obey. She stumbled on the familiar rug, which now felt like quicksand under her trembling legs. Behind her, a metal filing cabinet tumbled over, spilling folders and loose sheets. In the sudden clamor, Nadia thought she heard the rustle of leaves from outside a nearby open window, as if the midnight breeze was disturbed by the commotion. She had no time to think: her mind raced for answers, but none came.

They yanked her up the stairs two at a time. At each landing, fluorescent lights flickered and buzzed, once mundane in nighttime calm but now feeling like interrogation lamps. Every flash of the bulbs drew another bead of sweat onto her brow. Each step was marked by the heavy rasp of her own breathing, her heartbeat thrumming so loud she thought it would burst. The hand gripping her elbow was iron-cold and unyielding. Her wrist already throbbed beneath the zip-tie's cruel tension. She felt the sleeve of her jacket snag on a railing; a soldier jerking her free tore a thread in the fabric. The warm smell of home—old books, cold mugs of tea, her own pulse—was gone, replaced by the acidic tang of sweat and panic.

They pushed open a stairwell door and spilled onto a bright landing. Without a word, the guards pressed her into an elevator. In the polished metal walls of the lift she saw her own terrified reflection for a split second before the door shut with a clang. With another lurch, the elevator began to descend.

The van lurched onto the rain-slick street. Blindfold still over her eyes, Nadia could only breathe and listen. The engine's vibration rattled through the metal bench beneath her as the vehicle crept forward. Outside, the quiet of the night had turned into distant wails and fading sirens. The van's tires bumped over an uneven road, and each pothole made Nadia's spine jolt. Her chest rose and fell with ragged breaths. One of the guards chuckled low and hollow beside her. Another muttered something into a radio about the "fresh air of night." The interior smelled of gasoline and damp rubber—oil and fear.

Her body felt foreign in that cramped space. Every muscle was coiled tight. She tested the zip-ties again and again, willing them to give or snap, but they held. Her fingers clawed uselessly at her wrists. Only her mind was free to race. She wondered if the torn petition scrap in her coat pocket had survived the raid. She clutched at the fabric as if to be sure it was still there. If it was lost, a piece of her would be lost too.

At last the van slowed and rumbled to a halt. Nadia felt herself being lifted out of the vehicle and onto a hard metal surface that gently rocked beneath her boots. A blast of cold air—salty, sharp—hit her face. The motor of the van cut off. She realized with a jolt that the air smelled like the ocean: salt and diesel, sea spray and rain. One of the guards pushed her forward toward stairs made of grated metal. Each step she climbed made her boots clank, echoed by waves slapping against the hull somewhere below.

The deck around her was wide and painted matte black, like dried ink. Overhead lights cast long, distorted shadows. The ocean stretched away in every direction, a flat inky expanse under a starry sky. The ship—a massive, ominous silhouette against the night—loomed above. Nadia felt like she had stepped into the belly of a great beast. Every breath of wind carried brine onto her face and raised gooseflesh on her arms.

The guard by her side steered her toward an open hatch. His grip on her upper arm was firm. Nadia squinted at his uniform beneath the deck lights: black as midnight, with a dull insignia embroidered on his shoulder. He had a cap low over his eyes, night-vision goggles strapped to his face. When he looked at her, she saw only glassy reflections, no soul behind them. He didn't speak a word. Behind him, more guards followed—silent, precise, a line of dark silhouettes. The only sound besides the wind was the distant hoot of the ship's horn, a mournful long note that seemed to sigh through the night air.

They pushed her down into the ship's belly. The interior was a labyrinth of corridors. The air turned warmer, heavy with oil and metal. Fluorescent lights buzzed overhead, flickering on and off as she passed. The space smelled of engine grease and something antiseptic. The walls on either side were bare steel plates, scratched and smeared with rust. Nadia's footsteps rang hollowly on the metal floor. Every echo sounded like a judge's gavel to her ears. Cameras blinked at her from every corner—red lights capturing her movements. The place felt alive in its own mechanical way: a soft hum and clank in the distance, like the ship's whispered breathing.

She was led onward at a steady pace. Each turn of the corridor, each door they passed, sent her adrenaline spiking. The guards spoke quietly to each other but only in a language she didn't understand. Every hallway felt the same, like an endless maze of steel. In one dim stretch she thought she heard a muffled groan from behind a door—someone else locked away, or perhaps something about to strike. A guard's boot nudged her forward just in time; she was sure she had caught a glimpse of movement through a narrow window in a door. Fear whispered that she might not be alone here.

At last, they stopped before a heavy steel door at the end of a short hallway. The guard in front slid a large rusted key into the lock. Nadia's stomach flipped. With a loud click, the door swung open. Inside was a single bulb that buzzed awake overhead, giving off harsh yellow light.

One of the guards motioned her forward. Nadia stepped through on trembling legs. The cell was small and bare: metal walls pocked with rust spots, a narrow cot bolted to one side, its thin mattress stained and sagging. A stainless-steel sink and toilet were crammed into the far corner. The concrete floor was cold, dirty. The single overhead bulb cast weak light that flickered in the corner of her vision. She could see a small barred window high up on the far wall through which more yellow light filtered. The door clanged shut behind her, and a lock engaged with a final click.

Nadia's wrists burned where the cuffs bit into her skin. She tried to rub them but the hands held her steady. There was a small slot at eye level in the door that could be opened to pass in food or check on prisoners. Above it, a bare lightbulb buzzed. The air smelled of mildew and something faintly chemical, as though the place had been scrubbed clean long ago. Her coat and shoes were damp where seawater spray had drifted in.

She sank down onto the cot. Every part of her hurt. Outside the cell she heard indistinct sounds: voices murmuring far away, the faint clank of machinery. Here, in the silence, she felt utterly alone.

Carefully, Nadia lifted her hands and found the ripped scrap of paper in her coat pocket. It was crumpled and damp with her own sweat. Gently she unfurled it. Faded names and numbers swam before her tired eyes. This was the petition fragment: the names of the missing, a plea written in neat cursive. These were the lives she had promised to remember. Nadia pressed the paper to her lips, as if tasting the words. Then she folded it and clutched it to her heart. It was the last piece of her protest still in her hands.

She closed her eyes for a moment and took a breath. The room was deathly quiet except for distant engines humming. She could feel the cool metal of the cot through the thin mattress. Her legs felt numb from being bound, as if they no longer wanted to support her. In the silence she heard her own heartbeat. Each thump echoed in her ears as loudly as if it were the engines or the waves.

Nadia forced herself to breathe slowly. She sat up and curled her legs under her on the cot. The scrap of paper was pressed against her chest, held there by trembling hands. It felt absurdly large against her. This fragment was her only tether now—proof that she had once had a voice in this world. The rest of her world had been swept away.

Somewhere above, boots paced on the deck. Each time they came and went, Nadia felt it in her bones. Each thud sounded like a countdown. The far-off rhythm of the ship's horn sounded again, a low wail lost in the night.

She began to count the seconds in her head to keep from losing herself. One Mississippi… Two Mississippi… Time dripped slowly, measured by her own pulse now instead of the sun or moon. The single bulb above sometimes stuttered, and when it did the shadows on the wall danced menacingly. In the space between flickers, Nadia's mind wandered to everyone and everything she had lost: the friends now gone, the ideals once bright, the quiet apartment that was no longer hers.

After an interval that felt both endless and too brief, distant footsteps receded. Nadia pressed the paper tighter to her heart. Its words were a flicker of flame in the crushing dark. All around her was the stillness of steel.

Overhead, a voice crackled through a speaker. It barked a command Nadia did not understand. But the one word she recognized ended it all: "Lights out." The bulb overhead gave one final blink and died. In that pitch black, Nadia's breathing was the only sound.

She drew the scrap of paper up to her chest again and clutched it like a lifeline. The darkness pressed close. The engines hummed, the ship settled into the night. And in the blackness, Nadia Russo waited, curled around that fragile hope in her hands, counting each beat of her heart as the ocean rolled on outside the steel walls.

Chapter 10: Pipe Dreams and Final Orders

Marcus Hall sat alone at the cold steel desk late in the afternoon. The fluorescent light above him buzzed faintly, a steady drone that only amplified the hush. Aside from that mechanical hum of the air-conditioning and the distant thrum of machinery buried in the walls, the room was silent. In front of him lay a manila folder stamped in bold, authoritative letters: SEA SILENCER – TOP SECRET. Its laminated cover bore cryptic military emblems and the project codename, but all Marcus's attention was drawn to the thick stack of pages spilling from its edges. Carefully, he flipped open the cover.

The first sheet was a terse operations report. In understated prose it announced: "100 inmates transferred. Project on schedule." Below, neatly printed lines outlined schedules and confirmations. Everything was proceeding exactly as planned. He felt a quiet satisfaction, cold and controlled, welling in his chest. This sterile success was the culmination of months of clandestine work.

The only sound was that of the cooling fans cycling above and the faint clack of the folder's pages as Marcus thumbed through them. The sentences on the page were as final as a gravestone inscription: tally sheets with figures, passports and serial numbers redacted, signatures of officials who would never speak of this day. On a separate form, a checkbox had been marked with a bold red stamp: "Mission Complete." He allowed himself a momentary smile of approval at the precision of it all.

He noticed the tension in his shoulders begin to ease ever so slightly. In this light, with no one watching, Marcus could almost pretend he was just another bureaucrat at a desk, counting beans. The dictator's regime had entrusted him with ensuring the success of Sea Silencer. Today the calculus had worked, and no alarms or cries had shattered the quiet.

He closed the folder with a soft thud and leaned back in his chair. The mechanical chorus of air ducts filled the silence. His polished black boots on the floor made a clicking echo as he shifted position. Marcus inhaled deeply and exhaled slowly, feeling the conditioned air cool his throat. The weight of the world outside these walls—the noise of protests and the cries of countless others—felt a world away. Here, there was only order.

Beside the folder on the desk lay his emerald-green fountain pen with silver trim. He picked it up and turned it between his fingers. Once, he had thought of a pen as a tool of progress; now it was for writing orders of finality. Its nib glinted under the lamp. Marcus ran the tip along his thumb, a small, soothing ritual. The pen had become an instrument of power as sharp as any blade, and in moments like this, it almost felt sacred.

Everything about Marcus Hall appeared impeccable: the gray tunic of his uniform was neatly pressed, every crease a perfect right angle; the brass insignia on his chest shone under the light; his tie was knotted without a wrinkle. That uniform was his mask – beneath the starched collar and medals lay a man who was haunted, at times, even by the faintest whisper of doubt. But under the uniform, he kept those moments locked away as meticulously as he locked these files. For now, he allowed his uniform to do its work, hiding the shadows he carried.

Drawing himself erect, Marcus pushed in his chair and gathered the folder to his chest. He paused for a moment to appreciate the calm and order of the secured office. Here everything was predictable: file numbers, ink stamps, concise reports. In contrast, the city outside might be unraveling at the seams without anyone even noticing. But in this enclosed space, as long as the flow of paper and paperwork continued without error, Marcus could continue to claim control.

He stood and stepped out of the office, leaving the folder on a side counter. The door closed behind him with a soft click, sealing the silence in that small chamber. Marcus walked down the hallway toward the operations center, his boots rhythmically striking the polished floor. The corridor lights stretched in neat lines overhead, and the air smelled faintly of disinfectant and old coffee. Each step forward was measured, deliberate—he had been trained to move like an echo of certainty.

At the entrance to the command center, a pair of tall double doors swung open under his approach. The buzz of conversation, the ring of telephones, and the murmur of machines came to life around him. Marcus stepped inside and was immediately greeted by a controlled hum of activity. On one wall a massive digital screen glowed: an expansive world map crisscrossed with glowing lines and arrows. A timeline ticker scrolled across the bottom, steadily marching toward future checkpoints. On smaller monitors, columns of data streamed by.

A row of telephones lined the front console, each cord coiled with expectant energy. Several were ringing quietly, waiting for quick reports. Aides in subdued uniforms moved fluidly about the room, whispering phrases into handsets or consulting briefing charts. One young officer glanced up and automatically offered, "Sir, all stations are green." Another placed a stack of newly printed documents onto the glossy table in front of Marcus.

He surveyed his domain. The oval table at the center was littered with papers, already half-sorted into neat piles. Marcus took his place at the head of the table. Phones rang in gentle succession with updates—brief, clipped confirmations of success from distant units. Marcus remained impassive, acknowledging each with a slight nod or a terse "Noted." Every call completed was another silent affirmation that his orders had been obeyed without falter.

On top of the papers the aide had placed, one folder caught his eye: "Indefinite Detention Orders — Final Approval." In tight government script, names and identification numbers were listed, each line crisp and definitive. This was the last bureaucracy before disappearance. Marcus picked up the fountain pen again. For each remaining name, he drew a single line: his signature a steady black loop that signified the end of liberty for each person listed.

With each sweep of his pen, Marcus felt the gravity of his absolute authority. These signatures were not protests or medical charts—they were the final say on someone's life of freedom. He wrote slowly, deliberately, making sure each letter was unambiguous. The pen scratched on paper with a precise rhythm. None of the aides whispered or interrupted; they knew better than to break this solemn ritual.

Behind him sat an empty chair, facing the table. It was reserved for the General, the only person with rank equal to or above Marcus's own. The General was abroad, ostensibly on a diplomatic mission, but the implicit fact was that Marcus was running this operation alone today. He imagined what the empty seat symbolized: in this moment, Marcus Hall was the operation. This was no longer just an order to execute—it was a plan of his own making brought to life. He was the executor of the General's vision and, in some quiet way, its architect. It was a subtle shift of perspective to hold that thought, but one that filled him with a dark satisfaction.

Glancing up at the back wall, Marcus noticed the regime's banner hanging near the ceiling. Its slogan was emblazoned in stark black letters: "SECURITY THROUGH SILENCE." The banner flapped faintly in a recycled draft from the vent, the fabric rustling just enough to remind him it was there. Security through silence. The words should have been comforting, an ideology, but today they felt like an accusation. Marcus wondered how true it was for those who weren't secure. Here it meant that all voices had been silenced – the detainees' voices, certainly, but also any dissenters who might remember them. He let the banner's promise sink in, a hollow echo in the stale air. Silence had become both weapon and refuge in this room.

He tore his eyes back to the paperwork. Another aide, a clerk with nervously tilted spectacles, was unfolding a fresh stack of forms. On top lay the latest list of transfers – names and ID numbers neat and forgettable. "Last one," the clerk murmured, as if under breath. The document had gone through countless hands already: marked by a lieutenant, stamped by a captain, initialed by a colonel, and now awaiting Marcus's seal. It was an endless chain of authorization that was all just paperwork, but the weight it carried was heavier than any bullet.

Marcus could feel the clerk glance at him, hesitating on the final line of the form. The young man's finger lingered by the signature box, concern written across his face. Marcus dipped the stamp pad into crimson ink. The rubber seal of authority, once pressed, gave life to the orders. The clerk whispered an apology for the delay. Marcus leveled a steady gaze at him and simply nodded. "Proceed," he said softly, his voice even. The command was short but absolute, like an executioner's at the gate.

The clerk brought the stamp down firmly on the paper. "AUTHORISED" bloomed in a bright red oval, the letters stark against the pale paper. That single stamped word was final. The clerk exhaled slightly and began the ritual of filing away another nameless victim. There was no applause in the room. Even relief seemed unwelcome. Instead, the sound of pen on paper and faint clicks took over as each signed sheet was placed into a dossier and slid into a cabinet.

Each signature Marcus had written, each stamp he had sanctioned, had an air of ritual. In that ceremony of bureaucracy, faces vanished. The tools of government—pens, stamps, folders, typewriters—had become weapons. The truth was, no soldiers or guns were needed here; just a line at the bottom of a form or a rubber stamp could enact the same brutal ends. Marcus reflected, not with regret but with numb comprehension, that the most dangerous fights were being fought by quiet hands like his.

The clock on the wall ticked onward. The phones fell silent as the final reports were accounted for. Screens on the wall changed from amber to the reassuring green. With one last folder slid in and the final entry filed, the operation was complete. Marcus stood up, pushing his chair back. Its legs scraped against the floor. In the sudden quiet, the room felt cavernous. The aides exchanged hushed congratulations and began packing up their notes. Some were tired, worn from the strain. Marcus almost envied them their exhaustion – there was nothing here for him to feel but the lingering echo of authority.

He walked to the windows at the far end of the room. Outside, dusk had settled over the city like a blanket, and the first stars were just beginning to appear. From this height in the capital's secured district, the streets below looked peaceful and endless – rows of tiny lights moving aimlessly through the dark. Cars crawled along highways like glowing centipedes, oblivious to the true events that had transpired this day. In the distance he saw familiar silhouettes of buildings, monuments to a national pride he had helped redefine.

With the office lights dimmed now to save energy, Marcus's reflection stared back at him in the glass. His uniform remained immaculate: the crisply ironed jacket, the polished shoes, the medals standing out bright. He touched the knotted tie at his throat, the starched cotton a constant against his skin. But beneath that starched facade, the uniform couldn't hide everything. He could feel the cold hardness in his chest—a settled inertia from the hours of decisions, the names signed away. The quiet of the night enveloped him, save for the low hum of the air system.

He thought of the prisoners now being herded to their new cells – knew he was supposed to think of them as enemies, traitors, agents. In the silence, he allowed himself to recall a small detail for each name he had signed. Luis – maybe he was a singer now silenced mid-lyric. Nadia – possibly a scholar cut off from her books. Elisa – maybe she had once cared for a child, a mother whose lullabies would now turn to screams in the dark. But Marcus couldn't actually see their faces. What he saw were entries in a ledger, names followed by numbers. If he closed his eyes, all he could picture was a white file on a metal shelf.

He wondered, for a split second, if those inside the cells would remember him. Probably not. To them he would be just a nameless man at a desk, another faceless part of the bureaucracy. That thought brought a dry sensation to his throat, as if something in him had dried up.

Just then, one of the aides turned off the final display panel. The room went dim, leaving only the stars outside and a few low red lights on the consoles. Marcus took a deep breath to steady himself. He needed to move on, to close the chapter of these last months and face whatever came next.

He stepped away from the window and crossed back to his desk. The air was cooling again around him, coming to a rest after carrying so many whispered orders. On the desk lay the cover of the SEA SILENCER folder, which he had pulled out a few moments earlier. Next to it was a heavy, leather-bound book of international law – thick and imposing. He remembered placing that volume on the desk early that morning, as a reminder to himself. A reminder that once existed to hold power accountable.

Marcus's fingers traced the embossed letters on the book's cover: Universal Declaration and Convention, though the rest was hisopia in the dim light. The book's presence was a statement – words of rights, of justice – that felt incongruous here. In this quiet room it was almost an anachronism. Underneath the cover lay treatises and charters, principles he had learned in briefings but never internalized.

He exhaled slowly. The day's work had been sealed by his hand, his will. In front of him, the tools of his authority – pens, stamps, telephones – lay at rest. The empty word "Justice" on that open page mocked him. Not here. Not in this operation. Those ideals had been overridden by necessity, and Marcus had kept moving, foot by heavy foot, down a path he couldn't abandon now.

Marcus took up the SEA SILENCER folder again. It was a reflex, almost tender in its simplicity: he patted the cover, as if to reassure himself that it was real. The folder contained months of his life's work, in dry ink and dull paper. A lifetime of strategy and answers for questions no one would ever ask out loud. He breathed deeply once more to steady the weight in his chest. The folder had been where all these names began and ended.

He placed the cover folder back into its drawer. The lock clicked. On his desk, the heavy book of international law remained unopened.