Season 1 chapter 18
The Premature Detonation
"Go! Go!" Kniya screamed, shoving the last hostage—a weeping girl from Cell 408—down the dark throat of the garbage chute.
Malesh was already turning to follow her, his hand on the rim of the metal pipe. "That's the last of the inventory. Now we—"
KABOOM.
It wasn't the geothermal plant. It was something closer. A secondary ammo cache in the wall behind them cooked off from the heat.
The blast didn't just knock them down; it threw them across the room like ragdolls. Kniya hit a metal support beam with a sickening crack, and Malesh was slammed into a pile of jagged concrete debris.
Dust and smoke filled the room instantly. The air tasted like copper and burnt plastic.
Malesh groaned, pushing a heavy slab of drywall off his legs. His tactical coat was shredded, the left sleeve hanging by a thread, revealing a deep gash on his forearm that was already soaking the fabric in red.
"Kniya?" Malesh coughed, spitting out blood. "You alive, or do I get your share?"
"Fuck you," Kniya wheezed from the corner. He tried to stand, but his pants were torn from the knee down, and his shin was a mess of bruises and cuts. He wiped blood from his forehead, looking at his hand. "I'm alive. Unfortunately."
They looked at each other—bleeding, covered in soot, clothes hanging off them like beggars.
And then, they started laughing.
It wasn't a happy laugh. It was a manic, adrenaline-fueled cackle. The absurdity of it all hit them at once. Two teenagers taking down a fortress and getting blown up by the dessert.
"Look at us," Malesh laughed, holding his bleeding arm. "We look like we went through a meat grinder."
"But we got it," Kniya grinned through the pain, limping over. "The girl. The hostages. The collateral."
"Five million credits," Malesh whispered, his eyes gleaming through the dust. "The thing we always wanted. We are practically royalty."
The Logistics of a Tortoise
"Hold on, your highness," Kniya interrupted, leaning against the wall to catch his breath. "Don't spend the money yet."
"Why?" Malesh frowned. "The job is done."
"The job is half done, you idiot," Kniya snapped. "We are stuck in the middle of a jungle. We don't have a motorboat. We don't have a truck. We have fifty terrified civilians waiting at the bottom of a sewer pipe."
Kniya gestured angrily at the map in Malesh's torn pocket. "We are 75 kilometers from the coast. How are we going to ask these slow tortoises to move that distance? Have you seen them? They haven't eaten properly in weeks. They walk at the speed of a dying snail. If we walk, it will take three days. We'll be dead before we hit the halfway mark."
Malesh blinked, the euphoria of the explosion fading as the math set in. "Right. The tortoises."
"If the condition is that," Malesh rubbed his chin, smearing blood on his face, "I think so... the best thing we can do is to make a boat. We have the river. We have trees. We build rafts."
"A boat?" Kniya looked at him with pure disbelief. "We will create a ship for 50 people? Fucking idiot, do you think a bamboo raft creates itself? A makeshift boat carries a maximum of 10 people. Maybe 12 if they hold their breath."
Kniya started counting on his fingers. "We are two operators. We can pilot two boats. That's 20 people. 25 max. What about the other 25? Who drives the other boats? The Dean's daughter? She looks like she's never seen a river in her life."
"We tie the boats together?" Malesh suggested weakly.
"And turn it into a barge that gets stuck on the first rock?" Kniya shook his head. "It's a nightmare. We have too much cargo and not enough transport."
The Missing Percent
Kniya paused, his brow furrowing as a thought struck him.
"And another thing," Kniya said, looking at Malesh accusingly. "You told me the demographics were 95% female. We just cleared the cells. I counted. It was all women."
"So?" Malesh shrugged.
"So, what about the 5%?" Kniya asked. "You are literally disrespecting them. Where are the men? Did they just evaporate?"
Malesh looked at the burning room, then back at Kniya. His face went blank, devoid of emotion.
"I think so," Malesh said quietly, his voice dropping an octave. "They would use them for a very different purpose, you know?"
"What purpose?"
"Manual labor is inefficient in this climate," Malesh stated coldly. "But... organ harvesting? Or perhaps... live target practice for the recruits? Or maybe a very different purpose. Some clients have... niche tastes."
Kniya stared at him, disgusted. "Why are you always like that, Malesh? Why does your brain always go to the darkest possible option?"
"Because the world is dark, brother," Malesh said, finally moving toward the garbage chute. "I just keep the lights on."
Another explosion rocked the floor beneath them. The structure was groaning.
"We can argue about morality later!" Malesh yelled. "Right now, we need to join the tortoises!"
He grabbed Kniya by his torn collar, and together, they jumped into the darkness of the chute, sliding down into the filth to figure out how to move an army of civilians across a green hell.
The Math of Betrayal
The dust from the explosion was settling over the river, coating the water in a fine grey film.
Malesh stood up, wiping the sludge from his face, looking back at the smoking crater. Something was wrong. The math in his head didn't add up.
"Kniya," Malesh said, his voice low. "I didn't pull the lever."
Kniya, who was wringing out his soaked coat, froze. "What?"
"The geothermal valve," Malesh muttered, staring at the ruins. "I set the pressure to overload in sixty seconds. The blast happened in forty. And look at the smoke plume. That's not just steam. That's black cordite smoke. That was high-grade munitions."
Kniya looked at the crater, his eyes narrowing. "You're saying the generator didn't blow? That was the ammo dump?"
"Someone detonated the ammunition chamber," Malesh said, a cold chill running down his spine that had nothing to do with the river water. "Someone inside that base waited until we were in the chute, and then they blew the whole thing to hell."
"To save us?" Kniya asked.
"Or to bury the evidence," Malesh countered. "If we had been ten seconds slower, we would be ash right now. There was a betrayer in there. A third party. And I don't know if they are a friend or just a very efficient cleaner."
Kniya spit on the ground. "Great. Another mystery. Let's worry about the ghosts later. Right now, look. We found the missing variable."
He pointed to the group of survivors huddled by the reeds. Standing among the forty-seven women were three men. They looked just as emaciated and terrified as the others, wearing tattered rags.
"Three males," Malesh noted. "5% of 50 is 2.5. Rounding up to the nearest whole integer. The demographics are balanced. Good."
The Apple Argument
"Alright, everyone!" Kniya shouted, clapping his hands to get the attention of the shell-shocked group. "Wash up! The sludge in that chute is toxic. Use the river water to clean your skin. We don't have towels, so... improvise!"
The survivors moved slowly, scrubbing the filth off their arms and faces. They were trembling, not just from the cold, but from the trauma.
Malesh watched them, leaning against a tree.
"What should we do with them?" Kniya asked quietly.
"I think so," Malesh rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "We should sell them again."
Kniya whipped his head around, eyes wide. "What the fuck, bro? We just saved them!"
Malesh kept a straight face for two seconds before shrugging. "I am joking. Obviously. The market is too volatile right now."
"You are sick," Kniya shook his head. "We need to feed them. Look at them. They're fainting."
"Agreed," Malesh nodded. "Go find some fruits. This is a jungle. It should contain high-fructose energy sources."
"What kind of fruit?" Kniya asked, looking at the dense wall of green.
"You know," Malesh waved his hand vaguely. "The basics. Apples. Bananas."
"Apples?" Kniya stared at him. "Your Highness, do you know how geography works? We are in the tropics. Apples grow in cold climates. If you find an apple tree here, it's a genetic mutant. I'll look for bananas or mangoes. You stay here and keep them alive."
Kniya grabbed his machete and disappeared into the brush, muttering about "geniuses who fail geography."
The Democrat's Survey
Malesh was left alone with fifty traumatized people. He wasn't good with emotions. He was good with systems.
He pulled a portable ceramic water filter from his survival kit—one of the few pieces of gear that hadn't been destroyed. He set it up on a flat rock and started pumping river water into a small metal cup.
He walked over to the nearest survivor, an older woman who was shivering violently. He handed her the cup.
"Hydrate," Malesh ordered gently. "It is filtered. 99.9% pathogen-free."
She took it with shaking hands, her eyes welling up with tears. She didn't speak, but the gratitude in her gaze was overwhelming. It made Malesh uncomfortable. He needed to fill the silence with data.
"So," Malesh said, clearing his throat as she drank. "I assume you are from the DI Republic?"
The woman nodded slowly.
"Excellent," Malesh said. "I have a question regarding your previous employment. Did you receive wages—hourly compensation—or a fixed salary? I am trying to calculate the economic loss of your captivity."
The woman stared at him, the cup half-raised to her lips. She blinked, utterly confused.
Malesh took her silence as contemplation, so he moved to the next person, one of the three men.
"Here. Water," Malesh said, handing him a cup. "And you, sir? Are you a supporter of Democracy or Monarchy? I find that monarchists tend to have lower survival rates in stressful situations due to a reliance on centralized authority, whereas democrats are more adaptable."
The man looked at Malesh like he was an alien. He just opened his mouth and croaked, "Thank... you."
"You're welcome," Malesh said, checking his watch. "But you didn't answer the question. It's for a survey."
He looked around the group. Fifty pairs of eyes watched him. They were shattered, broken, and exhausted. But in those eyes, Malesh saw something he couldn't quantify with a survey. They felt safe. For the first time in months, they weren't livestock. They were people.
"Fine," Malesh muttered, putting his notebook away. "No politics until after lunch."