Shadows of Identity

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The rain had followed them even to HQ.

Heavy sheets lashed against the windows of the investigation wing, casting long shadows across the dusty floors. Most of the team had been camped out there for hours—laptops plugged into every outlet, papers spread across desks like a hurricane had hit.

Mugs of half-finished coffee and empty snack wrappers littered the tables. Someone’s hoodie was being used as a pillow on the couch. Post-it notes with cryptic scribbles hung off whiteboards like forgotten prayers.

Mark had tried to make instant noodles three times. Each attempt had been stolen by someone else before it finished cooking.

In one corner, Sky leaned against the windowpane, arms crossed, eyes flicking between Nani and the storm. Nani sat on the couch, legs tucked under himself, flicking through printed files with shaky hands. His eyes moved over the pages, but he wasn’t reading—he was scanning for something. Anything. Familiar handwriting, a hidden note, a picture that might say we didn’t want this for you.

Tee sat across from him, laptop glowing faintly in the dim light. “I added keywords from the old lab reports into the AI parser. We might get a hit if they show up in any corrupted files.”

Sky raised an eyebrow. “You’re trusting the AI again? Wasn’t the last one hallucinating a ghost in a cornfield?”

“That was user error,” Tee mumbled, cheeks pink.

Mark groaned from his desk. “That ghost made more sense than half our leads this week.”

Dew entered from the kitchenette, carrying a tray of drinks. “Hot cocoa. Because caffeine is a lie and we all need to stop twitching.”

“I’m not twitching,” Junior said from behind a mountain of documents, where he’d made himself a den of annotated charts and a pillow shaped like a cartoon shark.

“You’re vibrating,” Dew replied.

Junior accepted the cocoa anyway.

Meanwhile, downstairs in the archives, chaos had a name: Dew and Junior.

“I swear,” Dew muttered, stepping around a dusty stack of boxes, “these shelves haven’t been touched in years.”

“That’s because no one’s insane enough to look through fifty years of cold files manually,” Junior groaned, lifting a box marked “R&D - DEFENSE” onto the trolley. “Except us, apparently.”

Dew grabbed a flashlight from the wall hook and flicked it on. “We need anything that links your parents to Project Nyx, to that lab, to anyone on this list.”

Junior huffed. “Cool. Just crack open hell and dig out a file.”

They went through two more rows of labeled boxes. Dew flipped open a dented metal case—and froze.

“Junior,” he called, voice low.

“What?”

Dew turned the file toward him. Inside were photo negatives, blurry lab images, and a list of names. One name, in particular, was circled. Twice.

Dr. Sirinya Hirunkit. Nani’s mother.

“Take it,” Junior said, already stacking boxes onto the trolley again.

They rolled back to the lift, trolley wheels squeaking with every bump on the floor. The moment the elevator doors opened onto the HQ’s main room, they were hit with the scent of burnt popcorn.

“What happened?” Dew asked.

“Nani tried to microwave frozen rice balls,” Sky said flatly.

“It exploded,” Tee added, pointing to a faint scorch mark on the wall.

Mark yawned. “I told him to use water. He said, ‘How bad could it be?’”

“Anyway,” Junior cut in, wheeling the trolley in. “We found something.”

Sky was already moving toward the files. Nani scrambled to sit up, blanket pooling at his waist.

Junior threw the folders onto the main table. “Photos, names, records of the facility. And... a name we didn’t know before.”

He flipped open the folder. “Project Nyx was real. Government-sanctioned. And everyone who helped create it? Dead, missing, or working in some off-the-grid underground lab setup.”

Tee tilted his head. “So what’s the goal now?”

“We track who’s left,” Sky answered grimly. “But there’s more.”

Junior nodded. “The files confirmed that Nani’s parents were researchers—but they weren’t just participants. They tried to shut the project down. They refused to experiment on live subjects. That’s why they ran.”

“And hid Nani and Mj,” Dew added, eyes flicking to Nani. “They knew what kind of retaliation would come if anyone found out they had kids.”

Mark rubbed his face, finally waking up. “But then Mj got curious. Dug into the accident. Uncovered things.”

“And the enemies,” Sky said, his jaw tight, “figured it out. That the researchers had children. That maybe they passed the information down. Now they think Nani has the file.”

“But I don’t,” Nani whispered. “I really don’t.”

Sky crouched beside him, eyes filled with too many emotions to name. He didn’t speak. Just looked at him—heart pounding, hand twitching, holding himself back.

Dew broke the tension. “That’s not all. While Junior and I were digging through boxes... I found another name. A location.”

Everyone turned.

He slowly pulled a dusty blueprint out of the folder and unrolled it.

An off-grid facility. Marked decommissioned. In the mountains. One that didn’t appear on any official record.

Sky stepped closer. “You think it’s where the original data is?”

“I think,” Dew said quietly, “it’s where they planned to bury it. Or where they failed to.”

The room fell into silence. Rain hammered the windows. Thunder rumbled low in the distance, like something ancient waking up.

“We should go,” Junior said softly. “Before they do.”

Tee sat beside Dew, tucking himself under his arm. “It’s not gonna be easy, is it?”

Dew pressed a kiss to his forehead, just barely brushing skin. “Nothing worth it ever is.”

Mark rolled his eyes as Junior dropped a hand casually to his waist. “Do all of you have to do this when we’re talking about near-death missions?”

“Yes,” Sky and Dew said at the same time.

Nani, for the first time in hours, smiled—just a little.

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