Swamp Murder

Swamp Murder. 58

Wang's Pov.

It's been a year.

A full year of waking up with Zhan's name in my mouth, and going to sleep with it echoing in my ribs.

At first, I thought it was a prank. A misunderstanding. Maybe he dropped his phone, missed his flight, and ended up on some last-minute trip with Dre. He was on a video call with Mia—laughing, saying something ridiculous like "I'm eloping with Wang"—and then gone. Just like that.

The kind of silence that tastes wrong.

The kind that lingers.

I went to the airport, filed missing person reports, and called every number I could find. Nothing. No surveillance footage. No records of a boarding pass. Like he vanished in the space between frames. Like the world had a glitch, and he fell through.

My brother and Cheng told me to move on, but how do you move on from someone who still feels like they're breathing in your chest?

I keep dreaming he's cold. That he's shivering somewhere, barefoot, asking why I haven't come for him. I wake up drenched in sweat, hand reaching for someone who isn't there.

I don't know where he is.

But I know he's not dead. I'd feel it if he was.

Some string inside me would snap, and it hasn't. Not yet.

So I wait.

I work, I train. I dig. I stay angry.

Because if I ever find out who took him, who buried him in silence—

I won't ask for answers.

I'll burn down the whole world just to see him warm again.

I hacked everything I could.

Airline databases. Border patrol logs. CCTV networks across the world and airports. I even tapped into private security systems—parking garages, hotel lobbies, traffic cams—anything that might have caught a glimpse of him that day.

Nothing.

No timestamp. No blurry footage. No record of him ever walking through that gate, ever boarding a flight, ever existing past that final video call.

It was like the world deleted him.

I remember staring at my screen at 3:17 a.m., eyes bloodshot, every line of code starting to blur, heart pounding so loud I couldn't hear my thoughts. It didn't make sense. He wasn't clever about hiding. That was never Zhan. If anything, he was too loud, too bold, too damn visible. A spotlight in a crowd.

But now?

Not even a shadow.

I tried tracing Dre too. No luck. His socials went cold on the same day. His phone pinged once—somewhere near the airport—then nothing. Like the signal had been swallowed. Like they'd both stepped off the grid into some black hole that didn't want to be found.

I thought maybe they were running. Maybe they screwed someone over. Maybe they were lying to me.

But that's not it.

Zhan would never disappear without a word—not to me. Not if he had a choice.

I knew then what I hadn't wanted to admit: this wasn't a coincidence.

This was orchestrated.

Someone took them. Someone with reach. Someone who knows how to erase footprints before the ground's even cooled.