A deafening explosion blasted through the telephone receiver, followed by a sudden, sharp screech of static.

  I stood frozen in the San Marcos communications room, my fingers clenched bone-white around the handset, listening to the silence that was more terrifying than any blast.

  Five seconds.

  Ten.

  Then, a crackling, broken transmission: "...here… partial tunnel collapse… casualties…"

  "Felix?" My voice was flat, controlled.

  "Here… alive." His breathing was heavy, labored. "Mendez… he's fallen back deeper. He has a hostage. A middle-aged woman… likely a palace servant."

  "And he wants to speak to me?"

  "Yes. He says… he knows the voice on the radio. He knows it's you." Felix paused, the sound of shifting debris coming through. "He's approaching. With the hostage."

  My mind raced at a speed that made the world around me seem to move in slow motion. The dust motes dancing in the window's sunlight, the ticking of the wall clock, my own measured breath.

  "Felix, listen very carefully," I said, each word spoken with surgical precision. "When he takes the phone, you count in your head. Thirty seconds. No matter what happens, no matter what he says, no matter what I say. On the thirtieth count, you shoot him."

  Silence on the other end. Then: "Master Mateo… the hostage—"

  "Thirty seconds, Felix. That's an order."

  Another silence, longer this time. I could hear the conflict in it—then a curt sound of acknowledgment. "Understood."

  The sound of footsteps came through the line, then a different voice—hoarse, breathless, yet still carrying the crumbling remnants of authority.

  "So we finally speak." Mendez's voice. "The ghostly voice haunting my radios. The wonder boy riling up the masses with sob stories."

  "Release the hostage, Mendez. This is between us."

  Mendez gave a short, bitter laugh. "Oh, no. Mother Rosa here is… my insurance." Mother Rosa’s muffled sob drifted in the background. "She's made my best coffee for the past year. Unlike the rest."

  I closed my eyes, picturing the scene: a narrow tunnel, wavering flashlight beams, Mendez with a pistol to Mother Rosa's temple, Felix and his men poised in the shadows.

  Twenty-three, I counted in my head.

  "What do you want?" I asked, my voice still calm, conversational.

  "What every cornered man wants: a way out. A vehicle, safe passage to a neutral country." Mendez paused. "And one more thing: an acknowledgment."

  "Acknowledgment?"

  "That your struggle isn't the people's struggle. That it's a foreign conspiracy. That Prussi pays you, trained your troops, gave you the guns." His voice grew more intense. "I have documents. Proof. Transactions through Swess banks. Names of Prussi instructors killed in 'training accidents'."

  "What do you get from all this, Mendez?" I shifted the topic. "Power? Wealth? Look where you ended up—in a filthy tunnel with one middle-aged hostage."

  "Don't moralize at me, boy." His anger flared now. "I built this country! While your father dreamed of schools and hospitals, I built the roads, the ports, the power grid!"

  "And the prisons. And the mass graves."

  "Progress requires sacrifice! You think your way is different? Prussi-trained troops? Executions at Fort Garand? I know about those, boy. Vargas told me everything before he turned."

  Fifteen seconds, I counted.

  Mother Rosa cried out again. "Please… my children…"

  "Quiet!" Mendez snarled. Then, to me: "So this is the new civilization? Just like the old one, but with a younger face?"

  "No," I replied. "We will rebuild. With transparency. With accountability."

  Mendez's laugh was now hysterical. "Transparency? Accountability? You executed three hundred prisoners in a single morning! You threatened the Alvarez family! You—"

  Ten seconds.

  "And your father? That holy man? Does he know? About Fort Garand? About your threats to the Alvarez? Or do you, like I once did, handle the dirty work so he can stay clean?"

  I opened my eyes. Isabella stood in the doorway, her face pale. She was listening. I'd dismissed her earlier, but she'd returned.

  Five.

  "I'll tell him," Mendez threatened. "I'll broadcast it from the emergency transmitter in the palace. The whole country will know what kind of monster they've invited to power."

  "Three."

  "Or," his voice suddenly changed, becoming wheedling, "we could work together. I disappear. You take power. We each hold secrets about the other. A symbiosis, just like you have with Alvarez."

  Two.

  "Think, boy! Without me, you'll be alone at the top. And that summit… is very lonely. Very high."

  One.

  "I could be—"

  "Adiós, Mendez."

  BANG! BANG!

  The gunshots through the phone were sharp, clear, final.

  Then a woman's scream—Mother Rosa. Then Felix's voice. "Target neutralized. Hostage is safe."

  I placed the receiver down gently. My hands did not tremble. My breath was even. Across from me, Isabella stared, her eyes wide, her mouth slightly agape.

  I offered no explanation. I simply walked past her, out into the corridor, and headed for the main operations room.

  ***

  Caraccass, on the seventh day after the palace fell, smelled of corpses and ashes.

  Major—now Colonel—Felix walked along the Avenida Bolívaria, his mud-caked boots crunching over shattered glass and rubble.

  On either side of the street, buildings still smoldered from the fighting over the weekend. Some windows still reeked of gunpowder and blood.

  "Twelve in this block," Sergeant Diaz reported, indicating a clipboard list. "Former Mendez Special Forces. Hiding in a bakery basement."

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  Felix nodded. "Status?"

  "Refuse to surrender. Said they'd rather die than be tried by 'traitors'." Diaz shrugged. "We gave them a choice."

  A choice. The word now had a metallic taste in Felix's mouth.

  He approached the bakery—or what was left of it. The front window was blown out.

  Inside, among toppled racks and shattered ovens, twelve men in tattered uniforms sat on the floor, hands bound behind their backs.

  They stared at him with pure hatred.

  "Which one of you is Captain Rios?" Felix asked, his tone flat.

  The man in the center, bearded with a scar across his cheek, spat on the floor near Felix's boot. "I am Rios. And you are the traitor."

  Felix ignored the slur. "You commanded the execution of forty-seven political prisoners at La Cassona Prison last month. Correct?"

  "Enemies of the state," Rios growled. "Like you are now."

  "A military tribunal will decide." Felix turned to Diaz. "Prepare transport."

  Rios laughed—a harsh, humorless sound. "A tribunal? Like the one for the garrison at Fort Garand? We heard about that. Summary execution. No trial."

  A sudden, tense silence fell. Felix's men exchanged glances.

  "Fort Garand was a different combat situation," Felix said, but the words sounded hollow even to his own ears.

  "Yeah, sure." Rios smirked. "And I'm sure you'll say the same about us later. When we 'try to escape' on the way to prison. Or when there's an 'accident'."

  Felix studied the man. He recognized the type—a true believer. The kind who would fight to the death, or escape to start a guerrilla insurgency.

  The kind that would be a problem forever.

  He glanced around the bakery. His men awaited orders. The city outside needed stability. And from San Marcos, through backchannels, the message had come: "Ensure no embers remain that could reignite."

  "Colonel?" Diaz prompted, his voice low.

  Felix took a deep breath. The scent of burnt bread still lingered in the air, clashing with the smells of death and cordite.

  "Take them to the back," he said finally. "The loading area. Away from the main street."

  Rios smiled, a cynical twist of his lips. "Ah. So this is how it works. No different from us. Just a different flag."

  Felix didn't answer. He walked outside, back into the street, breathing in the morning air that still carried the scent of burning.

  From behind the bakery, came the sound of gunfire.

  Bang!

  One. Then a pause. Then nine more. Regular. Efficient.

  Diaz emerged a few minutes later, his face pale but composed. "It's done."

  "Make sure their families are informed they died in combat," Felix instructed. "And list them as 'executed while attempting to escape'."

  "Yes, sir."

  Felix kept walking. At the next intersection, an army transport truck passed, carrying bodies under tarps. Blood dripped from the corner of one tarp, leaving a thin, red trail on the cobbled street.

  ***

  The Plaza de la República, in front of the palace, had been transformed into a macabre stage.

  On one side, cleanup crews swept up glass and debris. On the other, journalists and photographers—some local, some foreign—crowded around something in the plaza's center.

  Mendez's body lay on a crude wooden table, the kind usually used for flower markets.

  Someone—probably Vargas, with his dark humor—had propped him up, sitting against a makeshift backrest of empty ammunition crates.

  His eyes were open, staring vacantly at the palace he had occupied and which had ultimately killed him. The bullet wounds in his neck and forehead were small, neat, surrounded by the dark rings of close-range powder burns.

  "A little to the right," said a photographer from El Nacional, adjusting his camera tripod. "I want the palace in the background."

  A young soldier—no more than nineteen—shifted the table a few inches. His face was greenish-pale, his eyes avoiding the corpse.

  "Good!" The photographer squeezed the rubber bulb, the magnesium flash igniting with a harsh white light and a sharp smell. "Again!"

  Felix watched from the sidelines. This was a direct order from San Marcos: "Ensure photographic proof. Let no one doubt his death."

  A clear message: Mendez is dead. The true regime holds power.

  An old woman approached, supported by two younger ones. She stopped a few feet from the body, staring.

  "Beast," she whispered, then spat. Her spittle landed on Mendez's still-polished shoe—a final touch of vanity, even in ruin.

  Others followed. A procession of final contempt. A man threw a rotten egg. A young woman hurled a shoe.

  A boy, maybe ten, raised a rock, but his mother pulled his arm back, shaking her head.

  "Not like this," the woman said. "We are not like him."

  But she was too late. The rock had already flown, thudding against the corpse's shoulder.

  Felix looked away. On the palace balcony, a new flag flew—the eagle and sun banner, the symbol my father was using for the true new beginning.

  Beneath it, someone had hung a large banner: "RETURN TO THE PEOPLE".

  Return to the people. Felix looked around the plaza—at the corpse made a spectacle, at the bakery execution, at his new troops conducting "clean-up" with an efficiency reminiscent of Mendez's regime.

  Was this what "return to the people" meant?

  The field telephone on his belt vibrated. San Marcos code.

  "Felix here."

  "Colonel." The voice wasn't Mateo's, but Isabella "Situation report."

  "Clean-up is proceeding. Organized resistance is nearly nonexistent. Just holdouts remaining."

  "And… the methods?"

  Felix glanced at Mendez's body in the plaza, then towards the distant bakery. "Efficient."

  A pause on the line. Then: "There are reports of extrajudicial executions."

  "Misinformation," Felix said automatically. "All deaths occurred during combat or escape attempts."

  A longer pause. Then her voice came again. "Mateo wants you to know his father will arrive tomorrow for a speech in the plaza. Everything must be… clean."

  "Understood."

  "And Felix…" Isabella hesitated. "Mother Rosa. Mendez's hostage. She survived. In shock, but physically okay. Ensure she's cared for."

  Felix closed his eyes. "We'll see she gets proper facilities."

  "Good." Isabella's voice softened. "Be careful out there, Colonel."

  The connection went dead.

  How could a boy as cold as that one have a sister so warm?

  Diaz approached with another clipboard. "Next block. Apartment on Calle Miranda. Four former Mendez intelligence officers. Their families are with them."

  "Children?"

  "Three. The youngest is four."

  Felix looked at the city around him—a shattered city, a city needing healing. A city that would require stability at any cost.

  "Surround it. Offer them surrender. Guarantee of a fair trial."

  "And if they refuse?"

  Felix looked at Mendez's body once more. The photographer was still taking pictures, from a different angle now, ensuring every detail of death was documented for public consumption.

  "Then we do what must be done," he said, his voice tired. "For the country."

  ***

  Night in Caraccass, still without power, was dark, but a few bonfires burned in the plaza and on street corners.

  People gathered around them, cooking what little food they had, sharing stories.

  In the former headquarters of Mendez's Special Forces—now the temporary HQ of the Liberation Forces—Felix sat in an office that had once belonged to a now-dead colonel.

  On his desk, today's casualty reports: sixty-three executions, all listed as "during escape attempts" or "in combat".

  He signed them, one by one. His hand did not shake. But somewhere inside him, something that would once have recoiled at such numbers now lay still, numb.

  A knock at the door. Vargas entered without waiting for a reply.

  "Colonel. The city is almost clean. My people caught fifteen more in the eastern sewers. Trying to escape disguised as refugees."

  "Dealt with?"

  Vargas smiled—a smile that made Felix want to cut his throat. "Dealt with. Although one… a woman. She claimed to be pregnant."

  Felix looked at him. "And?"

  "Still dealt with." Vargas shrugged. "A tumor must be cut out entirely, no? Even seemingly healthy cells can be cancerous."

  The words sounded familiar. Too familiar.

  "You've been speaking with Mateo?" Felix asked.

  "Periodically. He provides… guidance." Vargas sat, pulling a bottle of wine from his bag—expensive stuff from the palace cellars. "To our success."

  He poured two glasses, offering one to Felix. "To the new country."

  Felix took the glass but didn't drink. "What do you get from all this, Vargas? Truly?"

  "Survival." Vargas sipped his wine. "And perhaps a little… advancement. Mateo speaks of a new position. A post in the Ministry of Security. Someone with field experience." He smiled again. "Someone who knows how to do the dirty work so the others can stay clean."

  The glass in Felix's hand felt suddenly heavy. He set it down.

  "The President arrives tomorrow," he said. "Everything must be calm."

  "Oh, it will be calm." Vargas stood. "The public is happy. They have Mendez's corpse to see. They have a new flag. They have hope." He walked to the door. "The people don't need to know how the sausage is made, Colonel. They just need to eat it and be grateful they're not starving."

  After Vargas left, Felix finally drank the wine. It tasted bitter.

  He took a photo from his uniform pocket—a picture of his wife and two daughters, sent last week from their safe village. They were smiling. They didn't know what he did. They never would. They must not.

  Or so he hoped.

  Outside, from the plaza, came the sound of singing. The people were singing an old Venez song, one banned under Mendez.

  Their voices rose into the night sky, carrying hope, carrying anger, carrying all the mixed emotions of a people who had passed through hell and emerged on the other side, unsure of what they'd found there.

  Felix extinguished the oil lamp, sitting in the dark.

  He thought of the thirty-second count in the tunnel. Mateo's calm voice. "Adiós, Mendez." Then the gunshots.

  Easy. Clean. Efficient.

  That was the new way. And he, Felix, was part of it. A cog in a larger machine that ground its enemies—real and imagined—into dust.

  He picked up his pen, began writing the report to San Marcos. "City of Caraccass secure. Clean-up complete. Ready for President Guerrero's arrival tomorrow."

  The words were neat, confident.

  No one would read the tremor in the hand that wrote them. Or the shadow in eyes that had seen too much done in the name of the "new country".

  In the plaza, the singing grew louder. And somewhere in San Marcos, Mateo Guerrero—the voice, the architect, the decision-maker—watched the incoming reports and nodded, satisfied.

  Phase one was complete. Power seized. Enemies neutralized.

  Now, phase two: the building.

  And Felix, sitting in the dark, wondered to himself—when all you build is raised upon corpses and lies, will it be a house or a tomb?

  But that was a question for tomorrow. Tonight, there were reports to write, a city to secure, and a folk song to listen to—a song he could no longer sing with the same conviction.

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