𝐓𝐞𝐧𝐬𝐢𝐨𝐧

𝐴𝑙𝑟𝑖𝑔ℎ𝑡 𝑠𝑜 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑛𝑘 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑓𝑜𝑟 𝑎𝑙𝑙 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑠𝑢𝑔𝑔𝑒𝑠𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛𝑠. 𝐻𝑜𝑛𝑒𝑠𝑡𝑙𝑦 𝑦𝑜𝑢𝑟 𝑠𝑢𝑔𝑔𝑒𝑠𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛𝑠 𝑔𝑜𝑡 𝑚𝑒 𝑓𝑒𝑤 𝑖𝑑𝑒𝑎𝑠 𝑎𝑙𝑜𝑛𝑔 𝑤𝑖𝑡ℎ 𝑠𝑜𝑚𝑒 𝑜𝑓 𝑚𝑦 𝑜𝑤𝑛. 𝑆𝑜 𝑛𝑜𝑤 𝑤𝑒 𝑤𝑖𝑙𝑙 𝑚𝑜𝑟𝑒 𝑓𝑜𝑐𝑢𝑠 𝑜𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑎𝑐𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑏𝑢𝑠𝑖𝑛𝑒𝑠𝑠. 𝐴𝑛𝑑 𝑎𝑠 𝑓𝑜𝑟 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑓𝑙𝑎𝑠ℎ𝑏𝑎𝑐𝑘𝑠 𝑓𝑟𝑜𝑚 𝑝𝑎𝑠𝑡 𝑤𝑖𝑙𝑙 𝑏𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑒 𝑎𝑠 𝑤𝑒𝑙𝑙.

𝑁𝑜𝑤 𝑐𝑎𝑛 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑔𝑢𝑦𝑠 𝑔𝑢𝑒𝑠𝑠 𝑤ℎ𝑜𝑠𝑒 𝑒𝑦𝑒𝑠 𝑠𝑐𝑎𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑦 𝑛𝑒𝑒𝑑?

Morning sunlight streamed through the tall curtains of Sky’s bedroom, golden warmth spilling across the sheets. Nani stretched lazily, his bare leg brushing against Sky’s as he shifted closer. Sky was already awake, of course—reading emails on his tablet, one hand absently running through Nani’s messy hair.

“You’re working again,” Nani mumbled, voice hoarse with sleep as he burrowed against Sky’s shoulder.

“And you’re still clinging to me,” Sky replied smoothly, though the corner of his lips lifted in amusement.

Nani lifted his head, pouting. “Of course. You think I’ll let you run away to your boring meetings the morning after our engagement?”

Sky tilted his head down to kiss that pout, brief but grounding. “You’ll see me tonight again, don’t be dramatic.”

“Dramatic?” Nani huffed, pushing up onto his elbows so he hovered over Sky. His diamond ring caught the light, sparkling between them. “You gave me this, Sky Wongravee Theraapakyun. You can’t ignore me now. Forever means forever.”

Sky’s chuckle was low, husky. “Forever, hm? I’ll hold you to that.”

Nani smiled, satisfied, and curled back down against him. But when his phone rang across the room, Sky’s mood shifted. He slid away gently to take the call.

It was Vegas. The words Nani caught—“shipment,” “transfer,” “agent”—weren’t ones that belonged in their world of romance. But Sky’s tone was sharp, clipped, business-like.

Nani propped himself up, frowning slightly.“Who was that?” he asked softly when Sky returned.

“Work,” Sky said simply, straightening his cufflinks. His face had closed off again, the warmth buried under steel.

Nani’s smile faltered. He wanted to ask more, but Sky leaned down, kissed his forehead, and whispered, “Don’t frown. Tonight, I’m yours again.”

And just like that, Nani let it go—because he wanted to stay in the bubble of last night’s happiness.

The Theerapanyakun office was humming with tension. Vegas leaned against the desk, arms crossed, while Red lounged carelessly, twirling a pen.

“The agent’s name is Ohm Pawat,” Vegas said flatly.

Sky stilled. He remembered the face—the handshake at the party, the way Ohm’s eyes had lingered a fraction too long on Nani. His jaw tightened.

Red, of course, looked delighted. “Oh, the lovesick puppy? This just got entertaining.”

Sky shot him a cold look. “We don’t entertain. We eliminate problems.”

Vegas nodded grimly. “Exactly. But tread carefully. He’s not just anyone—he’s connected.”

Sky leaned back, expression unreadable, but his mind was already racing. He couldn’t afford loose ends. And he couldn’t afford anyone looking at Nani like that.

The apartment was quiet, too quiet. Ohm sat at his desk, the engagement photo the press had splashed everywhere lying face-up before him.

Nani’s smile was radiant, his hand intertwined with Sky’s. The diamond on his finger caught the camera’s flash, gleaming like proof of something Ohm had tried to deny.

He reached out, fingertips brushing over Nani’s face on the glossy paper. His chest tightened, his throat dry.

For so long, he had admired from a distance. One-sided affection, harmless… he had told himself. But now, seeing Nani claimed, loved, celebrated—his world tilted.Slowly, Ohm flipped the photo face down, unable to keep looking at it. His shoulders sagged as the weight of it settled in.

“It was never meant to be,” he whispered to the empty room.

A hollow laugh slipped past his lips, bitter and soft. He pressed a hand over his heart, trying to still the ache, but it only throbbed harder.

“I need to forget him… I have to.”

But as silence reclaimed the room, Ohm realized forgetting someone like Nani—so radiant, so untouchable—would be harder than anything he had ever done.

The secret base smelled of bleach and metal—sterile lights humming overhead, rows of stainless-steel cabinets, and the low throb of generators somewhere deeper in the compound. Behind a glass partition, several metal shipping cases sat on a reinforced table, each clamped and sealed like miniature coffins. A team of technicians in full PPE moved around them with careful, practiced steps.

Ohm stood with his hands folded behind his back, watching. He’d been up for hours; the fatigue in the hollow of his eyes didn’t soften the focus in his stance. Dr. Prem—his forensic lead—wiped a gloved palm on his apron and stepped forward, holding a tablet full of annotated images and instrument readouts.

"We recovered the two containers intact,” Chimon said, voice steady but tight. “The shipping manifest matches the address at the drop site. The boxes were transported straight here under escort.” He tapped the tablet, bringing up a close-up scan of the locking mechanism. “But there’s a problem.”

Ohm didn’t ask; he already knew the look on Prem’s face. “Explain.”

Prem cleared his throat. “The locks are biometric. Specifically, an ocular authentication system. High grade. We ran a passive scan with the external port to see if it had an override—no success. Then with our portable interface, we tried to read any fallback firmware. Nothing.” He hesitated, choosing words carefully. “There is no soft override. And the device has a failsafe.”

“What kind of failsafe?” Ohm’s voice was calm, clipped like a command.

“A one-time attempt,” Chimon said. “Three tries is common; this unit is single-use. If you attempt a mismatch, the internal mechanism will release a chemical agent intended to render the contents useless—corrosive or denaturing, we’re still analyzing the composition. Either way, a failed attempt destroys the product and contaminates the box.”

Ohm’s jaw tightened imperceptibly. “You can’t brute-force it.”

Chimon shook his head. “Not without risking a catastrophic loss. Even if we could isolate and neutralize the chemical, the containment sequence would likely render any forensic trace worthless. We can’t risk that.”

Someone from the analysis team called across the room; Prem gave him a curt nod and turned back to Ohm. “We did a comparative scan of eyes from the local detainees—members of the crews we found near the containers. None matched the enrolled biometric signature.”

“Could someone have removed the retina data?” Ohm asked. “Stolen it?”

“It’s possible, but unlikely,” Chimon answered. “The signature appears local to this device—custom encoded. Whoever set it up registered the biometric on-site or at the originating node.” He tapped a few more images. “Also—there’s another constraint. The ocular template is not tied to a single face per se. It’s tied to a specific encrypted token. Without that key, even the originator would need the registered eye.”

Ohm looked at the sealed cases again, the metal catching the overhead light. He ran a hand down his face, then worked the bridge of his nose with his thumb. He’d seen tech like this in reports—mixes of military-grade hardware and bespoke tradecraft—but never with a failsafe this surgically defensive. Whoever engineered it had planned for interdiction.

“All right,” he said finally, voice cutting through the hum. “We don’t open them now. We don’t touch them until we know who the registered biometric belongs to. Chimon—” he met his teammate’s eyes, steady, precise, “mobilize the field teams. Send search units to the pickup coordinates and the route logs. Scan for anyone who handled the containers. Interrogate the local pockets—truck drivers, port hands, whoever worked the route. We need to identify anyone who had access to the crates before they were flown here.”

Chimon nodded and tapped the tablet, already issuing orders. “I’ll have teams out in twenty minutes. I’ll also pull the detained suspects for in-person ID verification. You want prem to run controlled biometric comparisons on them here once we have confirmation?”

“Yes,” Ohm replied. “But do it with total caution. No attempts on the lock, no experiments. If we need an eye-match we’ll bring the person to the device with full containment protocols and a medic team on standby—only once we’re certain they’re the registered user.” He paused. “Bring me the ones we captured along with the shipment. I want to see their faces, hear their stories.”

“Understood.” Chimon turned and started barking orders into a headset, technicians springing into coordinated motion.

Ohm watched the lab for a long moment as the team mobilized, the metal cases looming like unexploded problems. The dossier on his tablet was already filling with callsigns, route timestamps, and the names of the local gangs associated with the drop. He slid the tablet into his jacket and spoke once more, quietly, to the nearest tech.

“Seal the perimeter. Nothing leaves without authorization. No press, no unnecessary personnel. Keep the chain of custody intact.”

“Got it, sir.”

As Chimon vanished into the feverish logistics of the operation, Ohm’s face set into a mask of planning. The locks might refuse them. The boxes might be impenetrable. But they had leads, coordinates, and people to question. The answers, he knew, would be somewhere between the routes, the men who moved the crates, and the pockets of the city that lived off the shadows.

He took one last look at the sealed metal boxes, then turned and walked toward the briefing room—where men with heavy boots waited and a set of vehicles were warming outside. The investigation was shifting from forensic labs to streets, and every minute counted.

They were a ruin of men. Three bodies slumped against metal chairs in the center of the interrogation cell—faces bruised and swollen, shirts torn, dried blood crusted at the edges of collars. Their wrists were bound with rope that had chewed into skin; their eyes were hollow, the kind of look people get after being broken more than once.

Ohm walked in with two of his team: Chimon at his side with a tablet, and another officer name junior with a tired, impatient expression. Junior kept his distance; this was Ohm’s responsibility.

“We’ve tried everything,”junior muttered without looking up. “Water, sleep deprivation, the usual. They won’t talk.”

Ohm didn’t flinch. He moved slowly to stand in front of the middle man — the one who still managed a defiant glare despite the state he was in. The man’s lip twitched into a laugh that was more habit than humor.

“Scared of your boss, huh?” Ohm said quietly, leveling his voice so the three men heard. “Tell us who he is and you walk out of here. You protect him, you rot in a cell. Your choice.”

The middle man barked a sour laugh back. “You don’t know who you’re messing with, officer. You’ll regret poking at this. He doesn’t like anyone who touches his shit.”

Ohm’s jaw tightened. He pinched the bridge of his nose, an old habit when restraint was necessary. “I’ll find your boss,” he said, voice iron-cold. “And when I do, I’ll make him regret the day he ever thought he could hide behind thugs.”

One of the other prisoners snorted. “Good luck with that,” he spat, voice ragged. “But make sure he doesn’t find you first.”

A thin, dangerous silence hung in the cell after that.Junior shifted nervously. Chimon’s gloved hand hovered over his tablet, fingers poised to log the exchange.

Ohm looked at the three men in turn, taking in the tattoos, the way they didn’t bother to meet his gaze. He had no illusions about how long it would take to crack them—how loyal fear could be, or how faded loyalty might be bought with blood. He also knew when a brute method was necessary.

“Lock them up,” Ohm said finally, voice flat and precise. “Place them in solitary. And if they’re found dead on anyone’s watch, that’s a report I want written with names attached.”

The junior’s eyes widened. “You want us to—”

“Ohm.” Chimon’s tone was cool, not judgmental. “If you want them alive for interrogation, execute standard procedure. But if you mean we make them disappear—there will be consequences. This isn’t a street hit.” He tapped the tablet. “We need answers, not more bodies.”

Ohm’s stare didn’t falter. The men in the chairs had made threats and assignments. He weighed the usefulness of keeping them breathing against the danger of leaving them as loose ends. “Keep them alive for now,” he said. “We need their faces, their names back through the routes. But seal the perimeter. No visitors. No leak leaves this room.”

He turned to Chimon. “Run the tattoos through the database. Turtles—check every local cell we have on record. Send teams to the coordinates where we found the containers and hit the surrounding neighborhoods. Interrogate the drivers, porters—anyone who handled crates. I want movement logs, payment trails, phone pings. Find the handler who signed the pickup.”

Chimon curtly nodded, already entering commands into his tablet. Junior moved to carry out the orders, glancing once at the captives with something like pity mixed into his fatigue.

As they left the interrogation room, the middle man spat in their wake—an insult and an omen. Ohm’s face remained impassive. He closed the door behind them and the small, fluorescent-lit cell was left humming quietly with the three men’s ragged breaths.

Ohm walked briskly toward the briefing room with a single thought driving him: find the network that handled those crates, map every finger, and follow the route until the trail led to a name that could open the boxes.