Singapore.
The first place I headed was the HSA Mortuary in Outram.
The Health Sciences Authority’s forensic autopsy facility.
My Dennis was there.
Unlike Singapore’s scorching air, the inside of the building was chillingly cool.
I passed down the cold corridor and went deeper inside.
Fluorescent lights stretched along the hallway, casting their glow.
My footsteps echoed especially loudly.
The building was unnervingly quiet.
It was a different kind of silence from a hospital’s.
There was no trace of life to be found.
An employee led the way without a word.
A moment later.
We arrived in a room lined with large metal drawers.
“This is it.”
The employee pointed to one of the countless drawers.
When I nodded,
the employee pulled the handle.
Clank.
A dull sound rang out as metal slid against metal.
Dennis emerged from the large silver morgue drawer.
He was covered with a white sheet.
The employee carefully pulled back the sheet.
“Please confirm his identity.”
The employee’s voice was as dry as the building itself.
I paid no attention to it and looked only at Dennis.
The person lying on the cold metal slab was indeed Dennis.
He was far paler than the man I remembered.
Beneath his chin, the mark left by his final choice had spread like a red flower,
yet strangely, his expression looked peaceful, as if he had simply fallen asleep.
As if he were smiling.
I could not say a word.
I simply held my breath and looked at Dennis.
So I could remember this final sight.
I took Dennis’s hand.
It was cold.
There was no warmth of a living person.
Only then did it begin to feel real.
He really was dead.
I thought of Congo, where I had lost my brothers.
The shock and terror I felt then were still vivid.
The sensation that the world was collapsing,
the sense of loss that everything I had been holding up had vanished—those feelings still tormented me.
That was why I insisted on solving everything with money whenever I could,
and why I invested so much money in equipment.
Because I didn’t want to lose anyone.
Because I never wanted to feel that again.
Because I didn’t want to drive my people to their deaths.
Money didn’t matter whether I had it or not,
and if I didn’t have it, I could just earn more,
but family who had disappeared could never return.
“The cause of death is presumed to be suicide. A more detailed cause will be determined through autopsy, but…”
“There’s no need for an autopsy. It’s Dennis. We’ll take him.”
“That is not something you decide, sir. The coroner will confirm and determine whether an autopsy is necessary. If you could wait until then…”
“I said I’m taking him.”
I glared into the eyes of the employee listing off procedures and spoke in a low voice.
A low growl.
The employee flinched and stepped back.
But I didn’t care.
I could not leave Dennis in this cold place any longer.
I could not leave him in this unfamiliar place, not even for another minute or second.
Dennis belonged in Zamboanga, not here in Singapore.
I had to take him home.
I looked at Dennis’s face once more.
It seemed he had made an extreme choice to settle everything on his own.
He must have done it to protect us.
Because Dennis was that kind of guy.
“Dennis is going to Zamboanga now. And call an emergency meeting.”
Instead of answering, Scott bowed his head.
I looked at Dennis’s peaceful face.
“Please be happy there. I’ll take care of the fight that’s left.”
This was not the end.
It was only the beginning.
*******
I headed to the Marina Bay Sands Hotel.
It was the last place Dennis had stayed.
The place that held his final moments.
I couldn’t move on without checking it.
The elevator stopped on the 55th floor.
The hallway was quiet.
There was yellow police tape in front of the door, but no one was guarding it.
It seemed the case had already been closed as a suicide.
I crossed the police line,
opened the door, and entered the suite on the 55th floor.
The scene had been preserved as it was.
No, no one had touched it.
I stood at the doorway for a moment and looked into the room.
Then I slowly stepped inside, examining my surroundings.
The floor, the sofa, the window.
I shifted my gaze little by little, taking in the room.
The situation from that day began to form in my mind.
Dennis had already known.
That his enemies were coming up.
There was no way Dennis wouldn’t have noticed.
How scared must he have been?
How much must he have wanted to be with us?
He was a man who liked people more than anyone, a smooth-talking rascal.
Surely he must have been desperate for someone to lean on.
But Dennis didn’t do that.
He pushed away the urge to ask for help,
and instead chose loneliness in order to protect us.
Rather than calling for help, he cut off the channel that could connect him to us.
He smashed his phone.
So we would not be dragged into it,
he endured every hardship alone.
I should have stopped him until the end.
I should have made sure he never did anything dangerous.
Belated regret quietly washed over me.
I took one more step.
I saw dried bloodstains on the floor.
At least that was a relief.
Before those bastards came,
before their filthy hands could reach him, he had made the decision himself.
It was a relief that he had not suffered humiliation.
I stood in front of the window.
Singapore’s sea spread out beyond the glass.
And beside it, I saw a San Miguel beer.
When I picked it up, the half-finished beer sloshed inside.
“You bastard…”
Tears fell before I knew it.
It seemed he had spent his final moments here.
He must have missed Zamboanga while drinking San Miguel.
He must have missed us until the very end.
Then he should have called.
He should have said, save me, help me.
Then I would have gone to get him no matter what danger I had to face.
The tears I had held back kept flowing.
It felt so much like it was my fault that I couldn’t raise my head.
“…Can you see Zamboanga from here?”
I asked, but there was no answer.
“You worked hard. Let’s go home now.”
I remembered his final moment with my eyes.
After checking the hotel room, I felt like I could understand why Dennis had done it.
It seemed he had tried to settle everything himself.
It seemed he had tried to end it at his own level.
Like Dennis, everything had been put in order.
He had cleaned up even his laptop and phone.
Even so…
This was not something that ended here.
It must not end like this.
Now only one thing remained.
To find out who had driven him this far.
And make them feel the price of it down to their bones.
******
Emergency Response Meeting
The emergency response meeting was held not in Singapore, but in Johor Bahru.
A place where you could reach Singapore by crossing a single bridge.
A place where you could get anywhere in Singapore within an hour.
But a place that was Malaysia, not Singapore.
Johor Bahru.
That was where we met.
There was a reason we met in Johor Bahru instead of Singapore.
Singapore was extremely sensitive right now.
The police and government offices were on edge.
I didn’t know the reason.
But that meant Dennis’s death was not an ordinary death.
No one was saying it, but something had definitely happened.
There was no need for us to move around in groups in a place like that and draw attention.
There was no need to go poking around everywhere.
We had to clear Dennis’s unjust death,
but there was no need to create friction with public authority over unnecessary matters.
I didn’t want to complicate things like that.
The more it was like this, the more careful we had to be.
So we chose Johor Bahru, close to Singapore, as our base.
There was another decisive reason we chose Johor Bahru as our temporary headquarters.
The rebels.
From now on, no one knew what would happen.
We had to prevent needless mishaps,
but my personality was not so good that I would let an enemy in front of me walk away.
We decided to station the rebels nearby so we could respond to any situation.
So that if anything happened, we could immediately pour firepower into it.
So that if necessary, we could even start a war.
But Singapore was too small to station rebels.
There were too many eyes.
Public authority was too strong.
So we had no choice but to settle in Johor Bahru.
We set up headquarters near the Second Link Bridge connecting Johor Bahru and Singapore.
So we could enter Singapore at any time.
Almost everyone attended the emergency response meeting.
Sandro, Simon, Edward, Chen Zhihao, Anna, even Magiting.
Patrick could not come.
He could not move because of an overseas summit schedule.
Even if he had tried to come, I would have stopped him.
But Patrick’s rage upon hearing of Dennis’s death was beyond our imagination.
I could feel his fury even through the phone.
Patrick promised all funds and intelligence support needed to find the mastermind.
And one other person.
Sin Junggi did not attend either.
He was absent from the meeting, but gave no reason.
He did not answer calls at all.
They said he had shut himself inside his workshop and refused to come out.
They only said he was engrossed in something.
That he was hardly even eating.
I was worried about Sin Junggi,
but right now, I had no room to worry about him.
We had work to do.
What we needed now was not grief, but the truth.
We needed information.
Why Dennis had died,
and who had driven him to his death.
.
.
.
The air in the conference room was heavy.
But it was not simply a sunken atmosphere.
In the silence, there was a sharp, edged energy.
If anyone were caught,
there was a killing intent that seemed ready to grind them up and drink them on the spot.
What filled the meeting room was burning vengeance.
“So it’s Parallax?”
“Yes. Recently, during dealings with Parallax, there were a few unpleasant incidents.”
Leon, who had long smuggled weapons as part of a team with Dennis, answered.
Leon had been a comrade who had lived through thick and thin with Dennis since the days they smuggled weapons under Jericho.
Dennis had mostly handled sales and negotiations,
while Leon was in charge of managing and shipping the weapons.
The two, who had grown up in the same village, were old friends and partners.
Leon’s voice was calm,
but his eyes were already red and bloodshot.
“Tell me in detail.”
“There’s an organization called Parallax that has by far the most overwhelming influence in the black-market arms trade. They demanded a monopoly on Phantom Grid and offered ten million dollars, but Dennis refused, saying it wouldn’t even cover labor costs.”
“He did well.”
“The problem came after that. Parallax held a grudge and attacked Zamboanga to steal Phantom Grid… a bomb went off at the factory… Gavin took the men and…”
Leon’s explanation continued.
It was long, but no one interrupted him. Everyone listened intently.
But beneath the table, everyone was clenching their fists, swallowing their anger.
We could feel, in full, how hard Dennis had worked to protect the organization in a place where none of us were present.
The more Dennis had struggled, the angrier we became.
“The last contact was him saying he didn’t know what would happen and that he was disposing of his phone. He said he would contact us again once he made a new phone. That was the end.”
“Did he say anything else?”
“He said it seemed Gavin had been taken care of. He wasn’t sure… just that it felt that way.”
“Understood. Leon. You secure weapons now.”
“We already have plenty of weapons.”
“Do I sound like I’m talking about rifles right now? That’s not what I mean. Secure weapons capable of fighting a war. Tanks, fighter jets, nuclear weapons—whatever. Get anything you can. Don’t worry about money. Bring in everything you can get.”
My voice rose without my realizing it.
“That’s…”
“Why, is there a problem?”
“If it were guns, maybe not, but for weapons like that, Parallax will get involved one hundred percent.”
“You’re saying buying weapons would be helping Parallax?”
“That’s right. And not only that, we don’t know what kind of tricks they might plant inside them.”
A sigh escaped me.
But Leon was right.
We couldn’t buy weapons from Parallax when we were preparing to go to war with Parallax.
And we had no idea what schemes they might have hidden inside.
Purchasing weapons was off the table.
“Understood for now. If there are weapons you can get without going through Parallax, get them. And find out more about Parallax. Their organizational structure, their money lines, their base, their routes—everything.”
“Yes, sir.”
Leon bowed and left.
When the door closed, the conference room became quiet again.
But no one was sitting there blankly.
It seemed everyone was thinking, in their own way, about how to take revenge.
All we knew right now was the name Parallax.
Other than that, we knew nothing.
But we could not sit back and do nothing.
There might be someone who knew something.
I called Du Mansik, the chairman of the Triads.
“Do you know Parallax?”
- I only know the name.
“What else?”
- They’re a European organization, so they don’t operate much on this side. We don’t have much information. They’re mainly active in South America and the Middle East. I know their office is in Dubai.
“Dubai?”
- Ah! And they also have an office in Singapore. It isn’t very big.
“Do you know the address of the Singapore office?”
- I’ll look into it and contact you within ten minutes.
Du Mansik sent me an address in less than five minutes.
We had received a gift, so we couldn’t very well fail to return the favor.
“Get ready to move out. It’s only polite to give back as much as we received.”