Chapter 18 — Jejak ke Dermaga
Scene 1: Office Tension
The rain had returned, soft and persistent, trailing down the glass walls of Mira's office like silver veins. The city outside was blurred, a wash of neon smeared by water. Inside, silence pressed heavier than the storm.
The burner phone still lay on the desk, its screen dark now, but the words refused to fade from the air.
"East Dock is not finished."
Mira stood at the edge of the desk, arms folded tight across her chest, every line of her body a sculpture of control. Her gaze pinned Arkellin like a needle—sharp, unrelenting, demanding.
"You read it twice," she said quietly, the tone colder than raised volume. "And yet you've told me nothing."
Arkellin leaned against the window, half his face caught in the dull glow of the skyline. His sleeves were still rolled to his elbows, veins showing faintly beneath pale skin. He held himself like someone who belonged anywhere but a boardroom.
"It's not your concern," he answered. His voice was low, almost indifferent, but the way his hand lingered against the glass betrayed tension.
Mira's eyes narrowed. "Everything that touches this company is my concern. That message—whatever it means—someone out there wants you. And if you are seen beside us, then they want us too."
Arkellin turned his head, meeting her gaze without flinch or apology. "They've always wanted me. You're not part of this."
"That is not your decision to make," Mira said, stepping closer. The scent of her perfume—clean, restrained, with an undertone of steel—brushed against him. "You walk into our world, you stand between me and my sister, and you expect me to believe your wars won't bleed into ours?"
For a heartbeat, neither moved. The hum of the building filled the silence—the distant drone of servers, the whisper of conditioned air, the ticking of a wall clock that seemed louder now.
Arkellin finally looked away, eyes lowering to the phone. His hand closed over it, fingers curling as though he could crush it into dust.
"This isn't your fight," he said, quieter this time.
Mira's jaw tightened. "Then whose fight is it?"
He didn't answer immediately. Shadows crossed his face as the rain outside thickened. The streak of white in his hair gleamed faintly, a scar of light across darkness.
At last, he murmured, almost to himself: "A fight that should have ended long ago. But the Dock… the Dock is never finished."
Mira's breath caught, but she steadied it before he could notice. She had heard Arkellin speak of many things in the past days—always in command, always sure. But this? This was different. Not cool detachment. Not calculated silence. This was memory, raw and jagged, leaking through the cracks of a man who never let himself crack.
She studied him carefully, searching for the man behind the shadows. "Then end it," she said softly. "Before it ends you."
Arkellin's mouth curved, not in a smile but in something colder. He slid the phone into his pocket and straightened, his presence filling the office in a way numbers and charts never could.
"I intend to."
The words were iron. Final.
Mira held his gaze another long second, but she knew she would get nothing more tonight. He was already gone, at least in his mind, standing not in her office but somewhere by the sea, where shadows still lingered between containers and cranes.
She turned back to her desk, lifting her tablet with deliberate grace, dismissing him with her silence.
But as Arkellin moved toward the door, Mira's voice followed, quiet, like a blade slipped between ribs.
"Remember, Mr. Andy. If you fall, you drag us with you."
He didn't stop. He didn't answer. The door closed softly behind him, leaving Mira alone with the rain—and the echo of words she could not yet decode.
The elevator lobby on the seventieth floor was half-deserted, its polished marble echoing only the occasional footstep of late staff heading home. Overhead, strips of neon hummed faintly, their glow reflected in the chrome panels and the black glass of the elevator doors. The hour was late enough that silence had begun to creep into the corporate tower, the kind of silence that made whispers travel farther.
Arkellin walked with his usual unhurried stride, hands in his pockets, the burner phone heavy against his thigh. He had no plan to explain himself to anyone. Not here. Not now.
But someone was already waiting.
"My, my," Myra's voice curled around him before he reached the call button. "Slipping away without saying goodnight?"
She leaned casually against the wall, robe replaced with a fitted lilac blouse and a short skirt that caught the corridor light, her heels dangling from one hand as though she'd walked barefoot just to find him. Her hair spilled loose around her shoulders, the faintest sheen of gloss catching her lips. She looked too fresh, too alive for someone meant to be winding down from a brutal day.
Arkellin stopped, expression unreadable. "Go back upstairs."
Instead, she pushed off the wall and closed the space between them, the soft pad of her bare feet on marble somehow louder than the hum of the building. She tilted her head, eyes gleaming. "East Dock," she said, voice low but edged with a challenge. "That's where you're going, isn't it?"
He didn't answer. His finger pressed the call button. The elevator responded with a metallic chime, doors sliding open with a whisper.
Myra caught his sleeve before he could step inside. The gesture was light, but her grip was iron in intent. "Take me with you."
Arkellin looked down at her hand, then at her face. Her smile was soft but stubborn, like a flame that refused to die in the rain.
"You saved me once," she said, quieter now, so only he could hear. "When they tried to grab me at the Dock, you stood in front of me. Let me stand beside you this time."
His gaze held hers, cool and steady. In it, Myra saw not rejection but something heavier—shadows she couldn't quite name.
His free hand rose slowly, brushing along her cheek. For a second she leaned into the touch, breath catching. But his words landed like stone.
"Not this time."
Her lips parted, ready to argue, but he went on, voice low, steady, final. "This isn't your war, Myra. If you follow me there, it won't be curiosity that kills you. It'll be memory. Mine. His."
She blinked, confusion flickering at the mention of his. But before she could press, the elevator chimed again in warning.
Arkellin released her wrist gently. Not a shove. Not a command. Just release. His hand lingered a heartbeat on her cheek, then fell away.
"Stay alive," he murmured.
The words stole her voice.
The elevator doors began to close. She stood frozen, watching him framed by chrome and light. At the last second she whispered, barely audible: "Don't you dare not come back."
The doors sealed shut, leaving her alone in the corridor.
From the far end of the hall, Mira stood in shadow, silent witness to the whole exchange. Her expression was carved in ice, but her hands were clenched tight at her sides.
She turned away before Myra could notice, her footsteps sharp against marble as she vanished into the dark.
The basement of Clock Tower was a different world.
Upstairs, light and glass ruled. Down here, concrete breathed damp and old, the air thick with the smell of oil, steel, and rainwater seeping through cracks. Fluorescent strips buzzed faintly overhead, half of them flickering like tired eyes. The echo of Arkellin's footsteps followed him, low and steady, as he crossed the empty expanse toward the far corner where an old black sedan waited.
He paused beside the car. For a long moment he simply stood, hands resting on the roof, head bowed. The burner phone was still in his pocket, the words carved into his mind as if burned there by fire.
East Dock is not finished.
Arkellin closed his eyes.
And the memories bled in.
He was on the Dock again—not this one, not tonight, but the other. A thousand nights ago, a thousand years. Rain slicked the boards, waves smacked against steel pilings, the smell of salt and blood mingling in the air. The sting of betrayal sharper than any blade.
A gunshot echoing.
The look on a friend's face as trust fractured.
The weight of his own body hitting the ground, bleeding out into the sea-stained wood.
And another memory overlaid it—Kindrake's.
A different Dock, but the same betrayal. Trusted men turning in the dark, knives flashing, a deal gone wrong. The sound of laughter as blood poured. The same taste of iron, the same knowledge: it ends here.
Two lives. Two deaths.
One wound that never closed.
Arkellin opened his eyes, breath shallow. His reflection stared back at him from the car's dark window: pale face, streak of white cutting through black hair, eyes shadowed deeper than the basement itself. He looked like both men at once—and neither.
His fingers tightened on the roof until the metal creaked.
"This time," he whispered, voice scraping low. "This time, I finish it."
He slid into the driver's seat, the leather cold against his back. For a moment he let the silence swallow him, hands gripping the wheel though the engine wasn't running yet. His heart beat once, heavy, then steadied into the rhythm of resolve.
In the rearview mirror, the basement stretched long and empty. But in his mind, the Dock loomed already—its lights harsh, its shadows deep, its ghosts waiting.
He reached into his jacket pocket, pulling the burner phone free. The message glowed again when he tapped the screen. His thumb hovered over the delete icon.
He didn't press it.
Instead he set the phone on the passenger seat, a silent passenger, a reminder that tonight would not be walked away from.
Arkellin turned the key. The engine growled awake, its sound rough, mechanical, alive. The noise filled the basement, chased away the silence, but could not erase the ghosts.
He pulled out slowly, tires crunching on wet concrete. As the ramp carried him upward toward the city streets, his jaw clenched, his eyes narrowed, and the words repeated themselves in rhythm with the heartbeat in his ears.
The East Dock never slept.
At night it breathed heavier—engines groaning low, cranes creaking like giant skeletons in the fog. Sodium lamps glowed in pools of orange, their light swallowed quickly by mist rolling in from the sea. Containers stacked five, six high formed crooked walls, narrow alleys of rust and shadow where anything could vanish.
Two men stood atop one such container, cigarettes burning red against the haze. Their jackets were cheap leather, their faces sharp with exhaustion and hunger.
"He'll come," one muttered, exhaling smoke that curled into the night.
The other flicked ash, gaze locked on the empty dock road. "Of course he will. That's what makes him predictable."
A third voice rose from below, calm, commanding, impossible to ignore. A figure stepped out of the shadows—broad shoulders under a trench coat, cap pulled low. His presence was heavier than the fog, heavier than the sea itself.
"Don't underestimate him," the figure said. "He's not the boy who bled here last time."
The two men shifted uneasily. "Then what do we do?"
The figure smiled, though the mist veiled it. "We remind him the Dock belongs to ghosts. And we make sure he doesn't leave."
The order hung in the cold air like a death sentence.
---
Farther down the dock, a different sound stirred—a car engine echoing against steel. Headlights cut briefly through the fog before dying as the vehicle slid into shadow.
Arkellin had arrived.
From the darkness of a container's edge, unseen by him, another shadow lingered. Slimmer, smaller, reckless. A flash of lilac fabric, hair caught in the breeze.
Myra.
She had followed.
Hidden in the narrow maze of containers, she pressed a hand to her chest, heart hammering in both fear and exhilaration. She was closer to him now than Mira would ever allow—and closer to danger than she truly understood.
Above, the two men stamped out their cigarettes, readying their weapons. The trench coat figure raised a hand.
"He's here," the voice said, low and final. "This night ends him."
The fog thickened. The Dock waited.
And from the shadows, Myra's silhouette trembled as she stepped deeper into a war she wasn't meant to join.