First Light of a New Age

Chapter 186: Constructed Conflicts

Third Civilization Zone, Austronesia People's Empire, Imperial Mahalika.

4th Year of the New Age, Tuesday, 2nd Week, 10th Month of the Father

Later that night, in a cramped basement space hidden beneath an abandoned machine shop in Imperial Maharlika, a single bulb was hanging from a frayed wire over a rust-eaten metal table, illuminating the faces of five key members of the Sons of Man.

They were spread out around the room on broken crates and old chairs that creaked with every shift of weight. With dust lingering in the air, the whole place smelled of a mix of oil, mold, and the kind of tension that made everyone breathe quieter than usual.

"This is getting ridiculous," the woman snapped as she slammed her palm on the table hard enough to rattle it. Her hair was tied back in a messy knot, and the dark smudges under her eyes made her irritation look carved into her face. "Those politicians promised full backing. Now suddenly they're 'reviewing' everything? 'Reassessing'?"

"I call bullshit on that," a middle-aged man with scarred knuckles growled. He leaned forward and rested his elbows on the table. "It's all excuses. They're scared and they're pulling back. And we've been burned too many damn times already."

He looked around the basement as if he expected someone to be hiding between the stacks of rusting junk.

"Don't forget, almost half of the bases were wiped out in the past year. And it wasn't incompetence. Someone inside is gutting us from the shadows. Some undercover operative... or a damn good spy."

"Or something supernatural was involved," the woman corrected quietly. Even she seemed unsettled by what she was hinting at. "The armory... that night... I still don't understand what the hell happened. The security footage melted and the walls crumbled inward like... like something crawled out of them. Worse, there are no intruders caught on camera."

Everyone in the room remembered the smell of it, the wrongness of it. They all hated remembering it and none of them wanted to be the first to speak.

Before paranoia could boil over into panic, the man standing near the corner finally stepped forward.

Arturo Salazar, a former commander in the Black Armored Division, now one of their most dangerous ghosts, cleared his throat and spoke out.

"Enough. Calm down, all of you," he said. "There's something else you should hear. I heard word that there is a noticeable spike in national security movements across the empire. Not the usual patrol adjustments, this is a more coordinated deployments across all provinces. Something major happened recently, something the military doesn't want the public to know."

The group stiffened. The government staying quiet was often more alarming than when it shouted.

That was when all eyes turned to the man seated at the head of the table.

Miguel Zavalla.

He had once been the respected leader of the Human Sovereign Front, a legitimate human-rights movement back when it still stood for peaceful advocacy. But months of witnessing atrocities committed by non-human races had stripped the idealism out of him and radicalized everything inside. Now, that old cause had curdled into something sharper and far more dangerous.

Miguel Zavalla sat at the head of the table with the composed posture of someone who had already accepted the risks. His hands were folded neatly and almost politely, as if they weren't discussing crimes that could get every one of them executed.

Miguel breathed out slowly. "You're all right to be uneasy. It is justified after all. I've been digging through every connection I still have, but the Empire is smothering whatever happened under absolute information blackout."