Cipher's room smelled faintly of antiseptic and stale instant coffee. The rain had not stopped hammering Manila, the city pulsing with neon and grime beyond the cracked windowpane. He sat hunched over his laptop, ribs wrapped in tight bandages, face lit by shifting lines of code.
He was no longer running. He was hunting.
The Shadows thought they were nameless, faceless predators. But Cipher knew better—everyone left a trail. A footprint in the digital mud, a careless keystroke, a name buried in an encrypted payroll. The government liked its secrets clean, but corruption always left cracks. And Cipher had made a career out of crawling through cracks.
He started with Ramos, the wall of muscle who had nearly crushed him. Cipher replayed the alley fight in his head, zooming in on the way Ramos favored one knee. Injuries meant records—military, medical, pension. He dug into Department of National Defense archives, breaching an old server through a forgotten admin account. There it was: Ramos, Hernando Miguel. Former Marine Sergeant. Dishonorably discharged after a brawl in Zamboanga. A rap sheet hidden, sealed by "national security." Cipher smirked. A mercenary draped in government clothes. Weakness: pride and temper.
Next was Salonga. Twitchy, knife-happy, too eager to bleed. Cipher traced him through petty crime records—most redacted—but the Manila Police blotter held whispers: "confidential asset" turned special operator. A street rat plucked from the gutter, weaponized by the state. But even now, his Facebook under a pseudonym betrayed him—late-night posts about gambling dens and underground cockfights. Vice. Addiction. Weakness: compulsion.
Cipher's fingers flew across the keyboard, his system spiderwebbing through data centers. Every name was another thread in the web tightening around his hunters.
Estrella was harder. Cold, precise, disciplined. Her records were buried deeper, her identity locked behind multiple firewalls. Cipher slowed down, careful. Too much brute force, and Torres—their tech handler—would see the intrusion. So he ghosted, weaving through backdoors in telecom networks, disguising his path as regular Manila traffic. Finally, he found her: Estrella, Lourdes Maria. Former scout sniper, Philippine Army. Commendations for sharpshooting, dishonorably discharged after a questionable "friendly fire" incident in Marawi. Officially erased, unofficially reborn as a Shadow. Weakness: guilt, buried under steel.
Cipher paused, flexing his sore fingers. Each Shadow had a mask. Each mask had cracks.
But Delgado—he was the real prize. The man with explosives, the one too reckless to secure his gear. Cipher suspected deeper ties. He dove into procurement records, searching for unaccounted explosives purchases. It led him into a gray network of shell companies tied to politicians in Makati. There, Delgado's name surfaced again, connected to black-budget contractors who supplied both government and cartels. Dirty money, dirty loyalties. Weakness: greed.
Cipher leaned back, heart pounding, mind buzzing with the thrill of the hunt. The Shadows weren't untouchable ghosts. They were flawed, human. And humans bled—digitally, physically, emotionally.
He began cataloging dossiers, encrypting them under multiple layers. Ramos' pride. Salonga's vice. Estrella's guilt. Delgado's greed. Each file a dagger he could plunge when the time came.
But then he stopped typing, staring at the empty search bar.
Santos. The quiet one. Efficient. Cold. Cipher had stripped him of his pistol, but his eyes hadn't flinched, hadn't burned with emotion like the others. Cipher dug—but the databases gave nothing. No service records. No medical files. No financial activity. Just… nothing.
A true ghost.
Cipher's gut tightened. Santos was different. Either erased so thoroughly that only Torres himself could access the file, or something far worse: someone who had never officially existed.
He shut his laptop slowly, the glow vanishing from his face. The Shadows were dangerous, but Santos was something else. A silence that couldn't be traced. A silence that killed.
Cipher stood, pain shooting through his ribs, and holstered Santos' stolen pistol. His reflection in the cracked mirror looked pale, exhausted, but his eyes were sharp.
"They think they're hunting me," he whispered. "But now I know who they are."
Outside, Manila never slept. Jeepneys roared, neon lights flickered, lives moved on, oblivious. But in the city's veins, an invisible war had begun. And for the first time, Cipher wasn't just running from the Shadows.
He was preparing to break them.