CHAPTER 100: DETONATE
CHAPTER 100: DETONATE
The bunker’s clock read six in the morning, but in the world of the sleepless, time is merely a suggestion. My index finger hovered over the Enter key. My hand wasn’t shaking, but my ears were ringing, as if the very air in the basement were being compressed.
—If you hit that button, Ríos, there’s no turning back, —Ramírez’s voice over the speaker sounded like sandpaper and tobacco. —Tomorrow, you won't be able to step out for coffee without someone checking your neck to see if it's still attached to your shoulders.
—San Avelino’s coffee is swill anyway, Ramírez, —I replied, using cynicism as my armor. —I’d rather take the risk than live in ignorance.
I looked at Alessio. He stood with his arms crossed, eyes locked onto the screen with absolute focus. He didn’t try to stop me. He didn’t give me a hero’s speech. He simply nodded, acknowledging that this detonation was the only way to let oxygen back into this city of rotten stained glass.
I clicked. Publish.
We didn't drop the entire payload at once. It was a surgical strike. We uploaded a short but lethal thread: photos of the broken seal on the avenue, the license plates of the gray truck that followed us from the warehouse, a close-up of the R-Δ pin on the prosecutor’s lapel, and most importantly, the weight discrepancy—the three kilos of paper that "evaporated" between the South Zone and the Judicial Repository. We didn't name Belmonte yet. We let the system wonder just how much more we knew.
—And... boom, —Marco whispered, watching as the share counter began to spin like a jet engine.
San Avelino isn't a city; it’s an organism that breathes through Wi-Fi. Within fifteen minutes, #TheMissingBox and #NoSloganRoute were trending. The reaction was a tsunami of digital noise. Messages of support poured in from people sick of "human errors" always benefiting the same elite, but then they appeared: the army of shadows.
—Look at the trolls, —Marco said, pointing to a flood of accounts created yesterday, no profile pictures. —"Mafia-funded journalist," "Moretti’s girlfriend faking evidence," "Photoshop hit squad." They’re running the basic smear-campaign manual.
—Let them talk, —I said, feeling a strange sense of calm. —If they’re barking, it’s because we drew blood.
Alessio moved closer to the monitor, pointing at an official tweet that had just appeared. It was from the verified account of the San Avelino General Prosecutor’s Office.
—Here they come, —Alessio said. —The official denial.
The Prosecution issued a statement with impeccable spelling and the logic of wet clay. They claimed the procedure had been "strictly legal," that the material was "under federal safeguard," and that the alleged weight difference was due to a "lack of calibration in the private warehouse’s weighing scale." They even attached a photo of a calibration log that smelled of fresh ink from a mile away.
—They made the mistake, —I whispered, a spark of triumph lighting up my chest.
—Which one? —Marco asked.
—The calibration log they’re showing has the serial code V-LOG/411, —I pointed to the screen. —That’s a VENTO system maintenance code. And according to the log Vitral gave me at the shipyard, that specific weighing module was decommissioned six months ago for "technical inconsistencies."
Ramírez let out a raspy laugh over the phone. —They tripped over their own cape, Ríos. They tried to patch a hole with a scrap that was already torn. Tomorrow, the Feds are going to have to explain why they trust a scale that the VENTO system itself says is broken.
But the system doesn't roll over that easily. As the web burned, Marco detected a new entry in The Urban Spectator’s inbox. It wasn't an official email. It was a link to an external file-sharing server.
—It’s Vitral, —Marco said, his pulse racing. —Or what’s left of her.
I opened the file. It wasn’t a document. It was a video from a street security camera—one of those hanging from the traffic lights that supposedly "don't record" when a Moretti or a Belmonte passes by. The image was grainy, but the mercury-vapor lights of the avenue were enough.
It was the moment of the bottleneck on San Jerónimo Avenue. You could see the Prosecution vehicle stopped. But the angle was different from ours. You could see the front of the vehicle.
The "Paper Man," that shadow fixer who had halted the transport, was climbing out of the gray truck. But what we saw next left us speechless. From the passenger side of the official Prosecution vehicle stepped a man in the blue uniform of a VENTO technician. They shook hands—a short, almost military grip. The technician handed him a small envelope, the size of a flash drive, and then gestured toward the back of the vehicle where my father’s box was kept.
—The VENTO technician was inside the vehicle, —I whispered, a chill running through me. —They didn't just intercept the transport from the outside. They had someone inside validating the file-wipe in real time.
—That’s no ordinary technician, —Alessio said, zooming in on the man’s face. —Look at the pin on his collar. It’s not R-Δ. It’s the Level 5 Maintenance pin. Santiago Belmonte’s level.
The video ended with the Paper Man pocketing the drive and returning to his truck as the official vehicle drove off as if nothing had happened.
—We have the connection, —I said, looking at my companions in the bunker. —The VENTO system isn't just a management tool. It’s the murder weapon. And we just filmed the killer putting the gun in his pocket.
The hook was set. We had the video proving the collusion between the State, the private sector, and Belmonte’s technicians. San Avelino would wake up just as filthy as ever, but tomorrow, the sound of the detonation was going to be so loud that no "lack of calibration" would ever be able to drown it out.
—Tomorrow, —I said, looking at Alessio, —we go for the full name.