The dry season hardened everything. Soil cracked underfoot, clay pots dried too quickly, and tempers in the village flared with the rising heat. Marcos noticed fewer greetings in the square, more cautious glances from merchants, and whispers trailing behind him.
It didn't matter.
Because beneath the sweat, the dust, and the veneer of daily commerce, a deeper structure was forming — one that didn't sell soap or polish bronze. One that didn't need signs or stalls.
One that worked in shadows.
Marcos had spent weeks preparing it, without ever naming it aloud. It was a necessity, not a dream — an inevitable answer to the growing noise around his presence. With each letter slipped beneath a door, each price altered behind his back, he understood the truth: open markets demand closed mouths.
The first rule of power was not being seen.
The second was being feared when necessary.
He called it Nine Fingers.
Not ten. Never ten.
Because ten was full. Ten was perfect. Ten could be counted, contained, catalogued.
Nine suggested one finger hidden. One finger missing. One always elsewhere.
The name came to him during a restless night, while sharpening a broken quill over a map stained with wax and sweat. It was perfect.
The first recruit was, unexpectedly, Tobias.
Not because the boy was ruthless — he wasn't. Not yet.
But he was observant. Quick. He understood silence. He didn't ask why some packages were heavier than others, or why some notes burned after being read. And he had already proven he could lie without blinking.
Still, Marcos didn't reveal everything.
He waited. Watched.
Tested.
It began with a letter.
Sealed in wax. No signature.
Marcos gave it to Tobias late one evening.
"Deliver this to the tobacco seller's son. Leave it in his boot. Do not speak to him. Do not return the same way you came."
Tobias glanced at the seal, then at Marcos.
"You're making enemies," he said plainly.
"I'm preventing accidents," Marcos replied.
Tobias nodded once, tucked the letter into his belt, and vanished into the shadows behind the barn.
He returned two hours later, face smudged with dust, a small scratch on his arm.
"They never saw me," he said.
And Marcos smiled.
The second recruit was different.
Élio, a quiet former cattle boy who had lost three fingers to frostbite in the southern mountains before drifting north. He was strong, but silent. Most thought he was slow.
Marcos saw something else.
One evening, he followed Élio as the boy traced the outer fence of the market square without speaking to a soul. He paused behind the tailor's tent, sniffed the air, and scribbled something on the inside of his wrist.
When he returned to his sleeping mat behind the stables, Marcos was waiting.
"You listen better than you speak," Marcos said.
Élio looked up, unblinking.
"You can smell smoke three minutes before others do. You watch which boots carry dust and which carry oil. You know who left the square with heavier satchels than when they arrived."
Élio said nothing. But he didn't deny it.
"Do you want silver?" Marcos asked. "Or purpose?"
Élio slowly raised three fingers.
Then dropped one.
Then another.
And Marcos understood.
Nine Fingers was born that night.
It didn't have uniforms. It didn't have titles.
Just tasks. Targets. Methods.
Marcos began sketching simple codes into wax seals. He trained Tobias in basic ciphering. Élio watched patrol patterns in town and drew them in dirt with broken sticks.
Their job wasn't to kill — not yet.
It was to see.
To listen.
To memorize.
To prepare.
Because Marcos knew: power only moved when pressure was precise. Blind force invited retaliation. But surgical pressure? That brought obedience.
Meanwhile, business continued as usual — on the surface.
Ana, who remained outside the web of Nine Fingers for now, managed the accounts and market front. She noticed how certain buyers suddenly returned to do business again. How prices from rival merchants dropped suddenly — then rose after a week.
She mentioned it one morning over breakfast.
"It's like the wind changed," she said. "Like someone's guiding the market from above."
Marcos poured her tea.
"Markets don't change on their own," he said simply. "Sometimes you just have to push quietly."
Ana stared at him for a moment.
She didn't ask. But she knew something had shifted.
That evening, the system pinged again.
[New Mission: Seed Internal Networks]
Objective: Establish three informants within 5 kilometers. Use indirect communication.
Reward: Tactical Blueprint – Smoke Signal Variants (rural adaptation)
Marcos exhaled through his nose, amused.
The system understood what he was building.
It was no longer just economy.
It was infrastructure.
And that infrastructure would stretch beyond roads and barns.
It would spread through whispers. Through eyes that never blinked. Through names that vanished the moment they were spoken.
And in time, when the time was right…
The tenth finger would finally show itself.