Chapter 17 — Bayang Audit
Scene 1: Audit War Room
The night's poison lingered into morning.
Clock Corp's trading floor buzzed with whispers, but up on the seventieth, silence reigned. A silence too thick, too rehearsed, like the moment before a guillotine fell.
Mira walked at the head of her audit team, heels a metronome against the marble. Her suit was graphite grey this time, hair in a flawless knot, eyes rimmed by the thin bruise of sleeplessness she refused to acknowledge. Behind her, aides carried armfuls of files, each stamped URGENT: AUDIT TRAIL.
The board had demanded this war room. They wanted blood disguised as numbers. They wanted Mira cornered, flinching, humiliated after last night's headline.
They would not get it.
The glass doors hissed open. Inside, the boardroom was colder than usual, lights too bright, screens already alive with charts and spreadsheets. Eveline Hart sat rigid at the far end, calculator beside her like a holstered pistol. Two auditors in stiff suits muttered over ledgers. Jonas stood ready with a tablet, stylus trembling slightly.
And in the corner, silent, waiting—Arkellin.
He was half-shadow, half-storm, the streak of white in his hair catching the reflection from a screen. His jacket was open, his tie gone, shirt sleeves rolled once to the forearms. He didn't look like a man invited to audit a corporation worth billions. He looked like a wolf forced into a cage of paper.
"Begin," Mira said.
The lead auditor cleared his throat, voice nasal and overconfident. "Miss Clock, preliminary review shows multiple inconsistencies across Q2. Procurement entries not aligning with shipment invoices. Adjustments filed but unapproved. This suggests—"
"It suggests sabotage," Mira cut in, eyes narrowing. "Continue."
The man blinked. "We… we cannot conclude sabotage. Merely… errors of oversight."
Arkellin moved. Not much—a shift forward, one palm flattening on the polished table. The sound was soft, but it cracked the room like a whip.
"Errors don't repeat themselves in a spiral," he said, voice low, steady. "This is a trail. Someone planted it."
Every head turned. Even Eveline, stone as ever, frowned. "And who are you to determine that?"
Arkellin's eyes flicked up, cold steel under black lashes. "The only one in this room who's seen a trail like this before."
The projector whirred as Jonas pulled up the ledgers, scrolling fast. Numbers danced across the wall—columns of credits, debits, vendor codes. Mira's gaze cut through them like a blade, but Arkellin was already ahead.
"Stop," he ordered.
Jonas froze the screen.
Arkellin rose, shoulders uncoiling like a predator's stretch. He walked to the projection, the low hum of his shoes on marble sounding like inevitability. He lifted one finger, tracing a column of numbers that at first glance looked ordinary.
"This vendor," he said. "Helios Freight. Registered six months ago. Billed consistently under five million each quarter. Clean." He stepped closer, eyes narrowing. "But the invoice pattern repeats. Every seventeen entries, the exact same decimal remainder. No human clerk does that by accident. No machine either—unless someone taught it."
Silence. The hum of the projector filled the void.
Mira's eyes sharpened. "A planted algorithm."
Arkellin nodded once. "They wanted you to find it. Not to hide, but to distract. While you chase false decimals, the real money bleeds elsewhere."
One of the auditors sputtered. "That's speculative—"
Arkellin turned, gaze slicing through him. "That's survival. Numbers don't lie unless someone forces them. Whoever did this is laughing right now, watching you count their smoke."
The man fell silent, throat working.
Myra hadn't arrived yet, but her absence was almost as loud as her presence. Mira's pulse throbbed under her calm. Last night's headline burned behind her eyes, fueling her resolve.
"Jonas," Mira said crisply, "cross-check Helios Freight against our East Dock manifests."
Jonas tapped furiously, fingers trembling. "There's… nothing. They don't appear in Dock records."
"Because they don't exist," Arkellin said. "It's a shell."
Eveline slammed her calculator shut. "If this is true—"
"It is," Arkellin cut her off.
The way he said it—flat, absolute—froze the room.
Mira studied him, her expression unreadable, but inside she felt that dangerous tug again: the certainty in him that bent others to his will. He wasn't trained for boardrooms. He wasn't polished for markets. But he was sharper than all of them, honed on scars they couldn't imagine.
"Then we cut the trail," Mira said at last. Her voice was iron. "We burn their smoke and find the fire."
She turned to the auditors. "You will stop wasting my time with errors and begin mapping real exposure. I want every shell cross-referenced in twenty-four hours. If you cannot, I will find people who can."
Her gaze flicked to Arkellin, just for a heartbeat. "And I'll keep him."
The room exhaled. Jonas's stylus shook as he scribbled notes. Eveline swallowed irritation. The auditors shrank in their seats.
Arkellin simply returned to his corner, rolling his sleeves another fold, expression unreadable.
But Mira caught the flicker at the edge of his mouth—something like satisfaction, something like warning.
And for the first time that morning, she wondered whether saving her company meant surrendering more than she was ready to lose.
The war room dissolved into a buzz of reluctant obedience.
Mira dismissed the board with the sharp crack of her pen against the table, the gesture enough to scatter auditors like startled birds. Jonas followed her out, stylus tapping frantic notes. Eveline lingered behind, muttering to herself, calculator clutched like a rosary.
Arkellin was the last to leave. He moved at his own pace, unhurried, silent, the faint smell of toner and burnt coffee still clinging to him as he stepped into the corridor.
The hallway stretched long, all marble and chrome, walls lined with digital art that flickered corporate slogans between abstract colors. Employees passed in clusters—young analysts with files, secretaries balancing trays of coffee, interns whispering. Their chatter bent, shifted, broke when Arkellin walked past. Heads dipped, conversations faltered. He had become the ghost they all wanted to look at but none dared address.
Halfway down the hall, he paused to wait for the elevator.
And that was when Myra appeared.
She didn't walk. She glided.
Her heels clicked in a rhythm too slow for urgency, too deliberate for accident. She wore a pale pink blouse tucked into a pencil skirt, both hugging her like second skin. A faint shimmer dusted her collarbones, the kind of glow that wasn't make-up but aftermath. Her hair was loose today, cascading over her shoulders, a silent declaration of defiance.
Whispers followed her like perfume. That's her. The photo. The silhouette.
Arkellin didn't turn, but he knew. He always knew when she entered a room, a corridor, a silence.
"Morning," Myra purred, voice pitched to carry just enough for nearby staff to hear.
He shifted his weight, eyes forward. "Myra."
She stopped beside him, close enough that the faint citrus of her perfume mingled with the static hum of the elevator panel. She smiled at the cluster of analysts watching from a distance, then tilted her head up toward him.
"They're staring again," she said. "Why don't we give them something to stare at?"
Her fingers brushed his sleeve—light, teasing, electric.
Arkellin's jaw tightened. He didn't move away, didn't flinch, but his voice dropped into steel. "Not here."
Myra's smile only deepened. "Why not? The story's already written. Might as well add a better chapter."
From the corner of his eye, Arkellin caught Mira at the far end of the hall, emerging from another meeting. She had stopped mid-step. She didn't move closer. She only watched, her face unreadable but her eyes cold fire.
Myra followed his gaze, then leaned in closer, deliberately, her lips almost brushing his ear. "She sees us. Let her."
Arkellin turned at last, eyes cutting into hers, calm but edged with warning. "I said—"
"Not here," Myra finished for him, voice low, mocking. "You're no fun when you're right."
She pulled back, laughing softly, tilting her head so her hair fell like a curtain between them. Then, with a last lingering touch along his arm, she stepped away, hips swaying, every movement calculated to feed the whispers swelling behind them.
The elevator chimed.
Arkellin stepped inside alone. The doors slid shut, cutting the noise, the whispers, the storm of eyes.
But in the last sliver before the doors sealed, Mira's gaze locked with his. A single, searing second—enough to remind him that silence could wound sharper than words.
The sky over Aurelia dimmed to the bruised gold of late evening. Clouds hung low, their undersides lit by the city's restless glow. From the seventieth floor, the world looked smaller, quieter, but inside Mira's office the silence pressed heavier than the glass walls could contain.
She stood by the desk, jacket off, blouse sleeves rolled to her elbows, reviewing documents Jonas had left behind. Her posture was perfect as ever, but there was a tightness in her shoulders that betrayed how much of her strength she had already spent today.
Across the room, Arkellin leaned against the wide pane of glass, one hand tucked into his trouser pocket, the other holding a tumbler of water he hadn't touched. The sunset carved half his face in amber, half in shadow. He didn't look at Mira, or at the stack of ledgers, or even at the skyline. His eyes were distant, as if fixed on something beneath the skin of the city itself.
On the sofa, Myra sprawled without care, legs tucked beneath her, scrolling idly through her phone. She hummed softly to herself, a tune with no melody, no end. Every so often she glanced up at Arkellin with a little smile that Mira ignored but never missed.
Then came the sound.
A buzz. Low, metallic, vibrating against the surface of the desk. Not Mira's phone. Not Myra's. The sound was different—rough, older, heavier.
Arkellin turned his head slowly. The source sat half-hidden on the corner of the desk: a matte-black burner phone, plain, unbranded, cheap enough to be disposable.
Buzz. Buzz. Buzz.
Mira looked up. "Yours?"
Arkellin crossed the room, picked it up, thumb brushing the cracked screen. His eyes narrowed.
One message.
He unlocked it with ease. The text glowed stark against the darkness:
"East Dock belum selesai."
Three words. No sender name. No signature. Only a timestamp and coordinates buried in the metadata, coordinates Arkellin knew by instinct without reading aloud.
He stared at the words long enough that Mira finally asked, "What is it?"
"Nothing for you," he said quietly. His voice carried weight though—less dismissal than burden.
Myra rolled onto her stomach, hair falling over her face. "East Dock?" she asked, playful tone thinly masking curiosity. "Sounds like a date."
Arkellin's jaw tightened. His thumb hovered over the delete icon, but he didn't press it. Instead he set the phone down again, screen still glowing, message burning in the dim light.
Mira stepped closer, crossing the carpet in precise, measured strides. She looked down at the words, then up at him. "Explain."
His gaze met hers, steady but unreadable. For a moment the office felt smaller, crushed between glass and sky.
"It's old business," Arkellin said at last.
Mira's brows drew together, sharp as the skyline beyond. "And does old business threaten us now?"
Arkellin turned back toward the window, the streak of white in his hair catching the last light of sunset. "It always has."
The office fell silent again. Myra's phone buzzed with another notification—social feeds, likes, hearts, gossip—but she ignored it, eyes narrowed on Arkellin's back.
Mira looked at the burner phone once more. The screen dimmed, then went dark, leaving only their reflections staring back at them in the glass.
The city below kept breathing.
But in the silence above, something older had woken.
And Arkellin knew the East Dock would not wait.