Cipher stumbled into the room above the pawnshop, chest heaving, rainwater dripping from his hood. His hands trembled—not from fear, but from adrenaline that still burned hot in his veins. The pistol he'd stolen from Santos clattered onto the table. He stripped off his jacket, revealing a deep graze across his ribs where Estrella's bullet had nearly found its mark.
Blood oozed slowly. It wasn't fatal, but it hurt like hell.
He pulled open an old duffel bag tucked beneath the table. Inside: a battered first-aid kit, duct tape, and scraps of cloth he had repurposed as bandages. He'd patched himself up before—in back-alley fights, in street wars—but this wound felt different. The Shadows weren't thugs or syndicate hitmen. They were professional predators. And they wanted him gone.
As he poured antiseptic over the wound, he hissed through clenched teeth. "Government dogs… trained killers. Why me?"
But he already knew the answer.
Project Haraya wasn't just another black-budget program. From what he had seen in the stolen files, it was a weapon—an algorithmic system designed to monitor every Filipino's movements, messages, purchases, and habits. A digital prison invisible to the naked eye. Delgado and the others didn't just want power. They wanted control. Absolute. Permanent.
Cipher tightened the bandage around his ribs, breathing through the pain. His mind sharpened. The attack in Quiapo had been reckless. He had underestimated their readiness, underestimated just how quickly the government would mobilize.
But they had underestimated him, too.
He remembered Ramos' size, Salonga's twitchy knife work, Estrella's sniper precision. He replayed every move, cataloging weaknesses. Ramos' knee injury. Salonga's overconfidence. Delgado's careless satchel. Every small flaw was a weapon waiting to be used.
Cipher wasn't just a hacker anymore. He couldn't afford to be. He was prey in a city of predators—and prey survived by adapting.
He leaned over his laptop, booting it back up. The stolen pistol rested beside him, its weight oddly comforting. His fingers flew across the keyboard, setting up new relays, scrubbing the traces Torres might have caught. But he didn't just want to hide. No—he wanted to turn the game around.
"Find them before they find me," he whispered.
The Shadows had names. Records. Histories. Even ghosts left trails if you dug deep enough. And Cipher knew exactly where to dig.
On his screen, new code unfolded—a spiderweb crawler designed to infiltrate government databases, social media logs, even financial networks. He wasn't just going to defend himself. He was going to peel back the masks of his hunters, one by one.
But first, he needed allies. The journalists on the whistleblower forum had picked up his first leak. That meant momentum. That meant someone out there was paying attention. If he fed them enough, they could amplify his message, keep Delgado and Villareal scrambling in public while he worked in the shadows.
Cipher leaned back, wincing at the pain in his ribs. Outside, the storm had quieted. Manila hummed with its usual midnight chaos—car horns, street vendors, laughter that masked poverty. But beneath it all, he felt the city's pulse in his bones. This was his battlefield, and he knew its veins and arteries better than any foreign-trained assassin.
For the first time since the fight, a smile touched his lips.
They think I'm a ghost," he muttered. "Let's haunt them properly."
He closed the laptop, slid the pistol into his waistband, and tightened his jacket. The next move would be his. And if the Shadows wanted to hunt, they were about to learn what it meant to chase prey that bit back.