Aghorik's chest tightened as the words from the notification slid through his thoughts. Recognised as a third party this year only. The phrase lodged itself like a stone in his throat. He walked slower, each step measured, and his mind drifted into the place he always went when questions crowded too close: his own inner stage, where explanations became neat and dangerous.
Third parties. He let the term unfurl in his imagination, picturing an invisible line that split the world into two great, greedy halves — MafiaLandia and The United Earth — and then the thin, restless shadow that stood apart from both. Third parties were neither of them; they were the ghosts and anomalies, the lone wolves and hidden cells who refused to be absorbed.
He thought aloud in his head, methodical and almost clinical. Third parties are those who belong to neither the government nor the mafia. By definition they oppose one or both systems. Sometimes they act directly against them; sometimes they help one side in secret, slipping assistance under the radar. They're unpredictable, fragmented, and—by their nature—dangerous to the established order.
Recognition didn't come easy. The state and the gangs both kept meticulous lists, a ledger of enemies and nuisances. There are 890 third parties officially recorded, he imagined someone reading from a file. I am one of them — newly listed this year. He could almost feel the weight of the number press against the inside of his skull.
He let himself stare, thinking of the ledger that might carry his name now. The cold truth had edges: he was a serial killer, a surgeon of violence who cut through corrupt men and rotten syndicates. Over two hundred and forty lives, he whispered inwardly, counting faces he did not allow himself to recall fully. Two whole mafia gangs reduced to silence under his methodical blade. He had been careful, efficient — a ghost who left the city a little cleaner and a lot more terrified.
Yet a second label carved deeper into his skin than the first: Global Danger. The words tasted wrong. He pictured a docket stamped with that title, red and official, the kind that rippled through both governments and criminal councils and made men sit up at night.
Global Danger meant attention on the largest scale — both Mafialandia and the United Earth would mobilize. The number was smaller, prouder and sterner: thirty-one global threats in the world. The list read like a roll call of nightmares. To be listed there meant resources, bounties, task forces, the long teeth of institutions snapping in the dark.
He tried to convince himself of the impossibility. A third party becomes a global threat so quickly? It didn't fit the pattern. Some names took decades to escalate; others festered quietly until a single mistake lit them up. He had been careful. He had been careful enough. Yet here the headlines were already blaring the opposite.
Something in him narrowed, an animal's suspicion rising. Patterns that made sense before now unraveled into a messy web. There is definitely something fishy going on here, he thought, and the conviction held like iron.
He had questions. He had enemies. And now, seemingly, he had two of the world's most powerful figures watching the same shadow he had been living inside.