Chapter 64: Struggles

Chapter 64: Chapter 64: StrugglesJack stopped mid-step, arms crossed tight. "Dude. Seriously. You’re not helping."

Anita kept walking. "If your heart’s heavy, the trees know. That’s what the elders say."

Jack rubbed his forearms. "I hate folklore. Why do you all talk in riddles?"

Then Ronnie reached the warehouse door and pushed it open.

Inside was not what they expected.

A circular formation. Men, some shirtless, others draped in loose robes, sat cross-legged in absolute stillness. Candles flickered, placed with uncanny precision around a ring of amulets. Estello sat among them, his eyes closed, mouth moving rhythmically. Latin. Harsh consonants woven into cadence. A strange hum echoed off the corrugated walls.

Ronnie raised a finger to his lips. Shhh.

Jack froze at the threshold, eyes darting between the glowing wax and the chanting figures. "Okay... yeah. Cult vibes confirmed."

Richard didn’t speak. His breath caught, sharp and shallow.

Something... pulled.

He activated his skill — Sensory Amplification. And the room changed.



Colors bled from the air—radiating heat signatures, pulse rhythms, electrical arcs. The amulets in the center weren’t just decorative. Energy flowed into them—visible now, a vortex of raw force twisting like smoke through a lens. Some streams were faint, like whispers from a dying ember. Others sharp and focused, concentrated like coiled wire.

But one—one amulet—stood apart.

It didn’t glow. It vibrated. A pulse in its center, dense and refined. Impossible to see with the naked eye, but to Richard, it was a beacon. An artifact charged beyond normal means. Possibly ancient. Possibly unstable.

Jack leaned in and whispered, "Are they summoning Satan, or... like... Wi-Fi?"

Anita gently nudged past them, removed the thin chain from her neck, and knelt at the edge of the circle. The small, round pendant at the end of her necklace glowed faintly as she placed it beside the others. She settled into position and began chanting in perfect sync with the rest. Her voice, soft but firm, fused into the resonance of the ritual.

Richard didn’t move. He couldn’t. The air inside buzzed with power. And strangely... it felt familiar. Like he’d touched it before. Been inside it.

Jack shifted uncomfortably. "I swear to God, if a demon pops out, I’m drop-kicking it."

Ronnie stepped beside them. "Boss Estello wanted you to see something."

He nodded his head toward a side door.

Jack glanced one last time at the chanting circle, then followed Richard and Ronnie down the short hallway to a steel-reinforced room. The air inside was cooler. Sterile. A single hanging bulb flickered.

At the center of the room sat a man.

Tied to a chair. Face swollen. Shirt torn. Dried blood crusted along his nose and cheek.

Richard’s breath caught. Recognition struck like static.

Mario.

One of the men who’d raided the mansion.

Ronnie closed the door behind them. "He’s one of the guys that hit the estate ten days ago. You might not recognize him like this, but check the neck tattoo. Upper right side."

Richard stepped forward, squinting. The bruises distorted the skin, but there it was. A faded black ink. The same mark caught by the mansion’s security cams during the raid.

Jack’s tone turned serious. "Wait. This guy?... he’s one of those goons who stole the Variant-3 model, right?"

Richard nodded slowly. "Yeah. You saw it too, when we watched the raid when it was happening, when they broke through the "vault". They didn’t know it was a trap. If we didn’t reinforce the server room, they would smell that it was a trap."

The Phoenix Variant-3 Infiltration model. Designed with a backdoor module hidden under hundreds of decoy scripts. A trojan horse, purposefully left vulnerable. Anyone who tried to hijack it... would be hijacked in return.

Richard’s eyes sharpened. "I’m just glad dhey took the bait."

Richard folded his arms. "Lina’s been trying track it. Whoever they sold it to, the AI is gonna infiltrate their network, as soon as they get careless and send us the backdoor access and the location as soon as they went online. But that only gives us the when.

Ronnie stared at Mario "Boss Estello wants you to understand the why. These people didn’t just come to steal. They wanted to dismantle what you built."

Jack exhaled, then turned toward the bound man. "So... what’s the play here?"

Ronnie’s voice was steady. "Boss Estello wants you to decide. Whether you get your hands dirty or leave it to us. But he insists—you need to experience this firsthand. So you understand what it means when people come for your work."

He stepped aside. "Kill him. Torture him. Talk to him. It’s your call. It’s only a matter of time, before what happens at the mansion, is going to happen again. Maybe it’s going to be worse than last time and you’re only lucky you found out ahead of time"

Jack muttered under his breath, "Jesus..."

Richard stared at Mario. The man groaned faintly, barely conscious.

He’s right. They set themselves like a shining beacon for the sharks. This was no longer about tech, or code, or corporate espionage.

This was one elaborate scheme. Local insurgents would know nothing about tech or maybe they do now. But if he had to guess who, it would be an outsider. Someone powerful. No one would use the terrorists as mercenaries. If it was just a local private company, they wouldn’t be too careless and noisy about it.

Richard crossed his arms, eyes still on Mario. "So, what do you wanna do with him?"

Jack looked at him. And for once, didn’t say a word.

Jack leaned on the wall, arms hanging at his sides. He didn’t answer right away. His eyes flicked to Mario, tied to the chair like a crumpled piece of trash someone left behind.

"...I don’t know, man." Jack sighed. "I get it. What Ronnie said. About this happening again. But..."

He looked away.

"I can’t do it."

Richard smiled faintly. A short, sympathetic smile. He patted Jack’s shoulder once.

"You don’t have to," Richard said. "I’ve got this."

Ronnie nodded and jerked his chin toward the door. "Let’s go."

Jack followed him out, glancing one last time over his shoulder as the door shut behind them.

The room went quiet.

Mario coughed. His lip was split, the dried blood cracked as he sneered. "Your friend," he said, eyes still on the closed door. "He looks like he just got out of high school. Soft. Fresh."



He leaned forward, tilting his bruised face. "Come on. Hit me, pussy."

Richard didn’t flinch. "I’m not him."

Mario smirked. "Yeah. I can tell. You’ve got that look. Cold, rich, and bored. Bet you’ve never even been in a real fight."

"I don’t need to hit you," Richard said. "You’re already broken."

"But you want to, don’t you?" Mario laughed, raspy and dry. "Guys like you always want to prove something."

Richard’s voice stayed even. "You don’t scare me. And I’m not angry. Not at you."

Mario raised his eyebrows. "No? Then what’s this? A morality lesson? Let me guess—you’re one of those genius CEO types who thinks the world’s broken because poor people don’t try hard enough?"

Richard didn’t blink. "I think the world’s broken. But I also think you’re full of shit."

Mario scoffed. "Easy for you to say. You weren’t born in a slum. You didn’t wake up every day wondering if you’d eat, or if your sister would make it home from school. You didn’t have to listen to politicians lie through their teeth while your father coughed his lungs out in a hospital that didn’t even have proper beds."

Richard said nothing.

Mario leaned in, eyes burning. "You call me a terrorist? Fine. I’ll wear that. But I didn’t start this. I just got tired. Tired of watching my life disappear into rent and bills and garbage jobs that treat people like dogs. Tired of choosing between medicine and food. Tired of being invisible."

Silence.

Then Richard moved. Slow. Deliberate.

He walked to the center of the room, looked down at the cracks on the floor beneath Mario’s chair. Then he exhaled and turned back.

"You think I don’t understand struggle?"

Mario chuckled bitterly. "You don’t."

"No," Richard said, quietly. "I don’t understand your struggle. I never will. But I understand what it means to lose something. I understand what it means to fight for control in a world that laughs at you for wanting more."

Mario frowned.

"You blame the system," Richard continued. "I blame the people who let the system rot. We’ve all got someone to blame. You just chose the easy one."

Richard crouched in front of him.

"The truth is," he said, "you didn’t want to fight. You wanted an excuse to stop trying."

Mario’s jaw clenched.

"I don’t care if you hate me," Richard said. "But don’t lie to yourself. You didn’t join the cause because you believed in something. You joined it because it gave you a reason to be angry. A reason to blame someone. A reason to feel powerful for once."

Mario’s eyes flickered. A crack in the armor.

"You wanna know why you’re here, tied to a chair in a warehouse?" Richard asked.

He didn’t wait for a reply.

"Because you walked into my home and stole from me. Because you thought you were smarter. Because you thought you could."

Richard stood up.

"You’re not the first."

Then, a pause. Long enough for Mario to breathe.

"...So what now?" Mario muttered. "You gonna kill me for what I did?"

Richard didn’t answer. Not at first.

He walked back to the wall. Leaned against it. Folded his arms.

"I could," he said. "But that’s not what I want."

Mario frowned. "Then why am I still here?"

"Because I want to know who sent you," Richard said flatly. "I want names. Places. Orders. Not fairy tales about poverty and suffering. I want the truth."

Mario looked down.

His voice dropped, tired now. Honest.

"There’s someone..." he began. "Not from here. Not from Mindanao. They don’t care about the politics. They just wanted your tech. Said it was worth more than anything else on the market."

Richard’s eyes narrowed. "Who?"

Mario hesitated. Then.

"I don’t know his name. Just that they called him Mcknight. A foreigner, if I had to guess, he’s American, he didn’t have any accent in his English. He wasn’t alone, he always has 2 companions when he visited."



Richard’s stomach turned.

That name again.

The one Lina flagged. The one that kept popping up in encrypted backchannels.

Mario looked up. "He arrived at our camp a few times, some years ago. He just suddenly arrived and said he’d support our cause. He’d sent us money a few times, though only our boss knows how much, I just pick up snippets of conversations from my brothers"

Richard stared at him. Quiet.

Then he walked to the door, hand on the handle.

Behind him, Mario spoke again. Low. Weak.

"You were right, you know."

Richard paused.

"...About what?"

Mario breathed out, like it hurt to admit.


"I am tired."