The ceiling fan in Adam's office didn't cut the heat; it just rearranged it.
It spun with a lazy, rhythmic thwack-thwack-thwack, each rotation stirring the soupy, diesel-choked air of his third-story walk-up in Kebon Sirih. Below his window, the 2 PM Jakarta traffic was a solid, screaming knot of motorcycles, bajajs, and delivery vans. The city was a furnace, and Adam was sweating through his last clean linen shirt.
He leaned back in his chair, the vinyl creaking in protest, and put his feet up on his scarred teak desk. The desk was a graveyard of old case files, instant noodle cups, and an overflowing ashtray.
Adam was a man who believed in facts. He believed in evidence you could hold, in motives you could understand—greed, jealousy, desperation. He believed in the logical, predictable, and often disappointing patterns of human behavior. He was, by trade and by nature, a Private Investigator. And right now, he was bored.
His current case, spread out in a fan of blurry photographs, was a typical one: an insurance company suspected a restaurant owner was planning to burn down his own ruko for the payout. It was a tedious, sweaty job that involved sitting in his car for eight hours at a stretch, watching a man buy groceries. It was logical. It was boring. And it barely paid the bills.
The ancient, rotary-style phone on his desk jangled, loud and shrill, cutting through the traffic noise.
Adam let it ring twice more before picking it up. "Adam. Investigasi."
"Mr. Adam?" The voice on the other end was smooth, polished, and carried the clipped, precise accent of someone educated abroad. It was the kind of voice that didn't belong on his dusty phone line.
"Speaking," Adam said, sitting up, his feet hitting the floor.
"My name is Mr. Wijaya. I am the legal representative for a client with a... delicate situation. We require a discreet operative. Your name was recommended by a mutual acquaintance at the National Archives."
Adam frowned. The Archives? He'd done a job for them once, tracing the provenance of a stolen manuscript. "I'm listening."
"My client," Wijaya continued, "is a private heritage foundation. A significant item has been... misplaced... from one of their private collections here in Jakarta. The police are not to be involved. This is a matter of absolute discretion."
Adam picked up a pen. This sounded better than insurance fraud. "Misplaced, or stolen?"
"That is what you will be hired to determine, Mr. Adam. The item in question is a Hellenistic-era lantern. The case file refers to it as the 'Pythagoras Lantern'."
Adam wrote it down. Lentera Pythagoras. "A lantern. Like, an old lamp."
"A precise, if reductive, description. It is a bronze artifact of considerable historical value. And, to my client, of sentimental value."
Adam knew what "sentimental value" meant. It meant the client was rich, and the fee would be high.
"Go on."
"The item was last seen at a private residence in Menteng three nights ago. My client is offering a fifty-million-rupiah retainer, simply to take the case and ascertain the facts of its disappearance. A significant bonus will be paid upon its retrieval."
Adam almost dropped the pen. Fifty million. Just to start. That was more than he made in six months. The furnace in his office suddenly felt a few degrees cooler.
"That's a very generous retainer for an old lamp, Mr. Wijaya," Adam said, keeping his voice carefully neutral. "What's the catch?"
"The catch," Wijaya said, his smooth voice dropping slightly, "is discretion, as I mentioned. And speed. My client is anxious. Furthermore, the item is... unique. You may find that others are also looking for it. We need you to find it first."
"Others? You mean other collectors? Rivals?"
"You could say that. My client is adamant that if you encounter any other party expressing interest in the lantern, you are to disengage and report to me immediately. Do not, under any circumstances, attempt to interact with them. Or the lantern."
"Don't interact with the lantern?" Adam raised an eyebrow. "Is it dangerous? Is it going to explode?"
Wijaya laughed, a dry, humorless sound. "It is an antiquity, Mr. Adam. It is fragile. My client is simply... protective. He is a very serious collector. You understand."
Adam understood "eccentric rich people." He understood it very well. "I understand. Send me the file. And the retainer. I'll get started tonight."
"Excellent. A courier will be at your office in one hour with your advance and the preliminary file." The line clicked dead.
Adam hung up the phone, a slow smile spreading across his face. He leaned back in his chair, ignoring the creak, and looked at the blurry photos of the restaurant owner. This case could wait.
This was what he loved: a high-paying mystery, eccentric clients, and a clear-cut case of theft. It was simple, logical, and profitable.
True to his word, the courier arrived fifty-five minutes later. He was a silent man in a sharp suit who handed Adam a thick, leather-bound envelope, took a thumbprint signature on a digital tablet, and left without a word.
Adam locked his office door. He turned on his desk lamp, the single yellow bulb casting a pool of light on the dark wood. He opened the envelope.
Inside were two things. The first was a bank transfer receipt for fifty million rupiah. Adam stared at it, his heart giving a pleasant little thump. The second was a single, high-quality, 8x10 photograph.
It was the lantern.
It was bronze, heavily tarnished with green patina. It wasn't large, perhaps the size of a human head, but it was incredibly ornate. The "glass" was not glass at all, but six panels of what looked like dark, polished crystal, almost black. The bronze framework was a latticework of complex, interlocking geometric shapes—triangles, spirals, and angles that seemed to fold in on themselves. It was beautiful, but it was also... unsettling. The geometry felt wrong to him, like an optical illusion that hurt his eyes.
He turned the photo over. Taped to the back was a single key card and an address. Jalan Borobudur, Menteng.
Adam whistled. The old-money heart of Jakarta.
He grabbed his jacket, a crumpled linen blazer that had seen better decades, and holstered his unremarkable revolver in the small of his back. He didn't expect to need it—rich people didn't usually involve gunfights—but he was a man of routine.
The drive to Menteng was a slow, agonizing crawl through the macet. By the time he arrived, the tropical sun was beginning to bleed into the horizon, casting the old colonial mansions in long, deep shadows.
The address wasn't a mansion. It was a private gallery, a sleek, modern, brutalist structure of concrete and glass that looked bizarrely out of place among the white-pillared homes. The gate was open.
He used the key card. A heavy glass door hissed open.
"Mr. Adam?" A voice echoed in the cavernous, empty space. Mr. Wijaya was standing at the top of a spiral staircase.
"Mr. Wijaya." Adam walked in, his footsteps echoing on the polished marble floor. The gallery was empty. No art, no pedestals. Just a vast, cold, concrete room.
"My client prefers his privacy," Wijaya said, walking down the stairs. "Thank you for coming so promptly."
"Your client's collection is... minimalist," Adam said, looking around.
"The collection was moved last week. The lantern was the last piece, scheduled for transport tonight. Unfortunately, it vanished."
"Vanished? From where?"
Wijaya led him to the center of the room. On the floor was a square of black marble. On top of it sat a velvet cushion. The cushion was empty.
"It was here. The room was sealed. The security system—which is state-of-the-art—was active. At 03:17 AM, the system registered a pressure drop on this pedestal. As if the lantern had simply... evaporated."
Adam knelt by the pedestal. "No alarms? No broken windows? No forced entry?"
"None. The system logs show the room was sealed tight until the curator arrived at 0900 and found it gone."
Adam ran his fingers along the edge of the velvet. His eyes scanned the floor. He was a skeptic, but he was also a professional. "Evaporation isn't a motive, Mr. Wijaya. Someone got in. Or someone was already in. Who else had a key card?"
"Only myself, and the senior curator."
"Then one of them is your thief," Adam said simply. "Or you have a flaw in your 'state-of-the-art' system. What about cameras?"
"There are no cameras in this room," Wijaya said. "My client believes..." He hesitated, as if searching for the right word. "He believes electronic observation can... agitate... certain pieces."
Adam stood up, suppressing a sigh. Eccentric was one thing. This was just bad security. "Agitate? Mr. Wijaya, it's a lamp."
"A very unique lamp," Wijaya said. "Please, just... find the flaw. Find the thief."
Adam spent an hour sweeping the room. He was methodical. He found no scuff marks, no fingerprints on the pedestal, no hidden switches. The concrete walls were seamless. The air vents were too small for a child.
It was, he had to admit, a perfect locked-room mystery.
He was about to declare the initial investigation a bust when he saw it. It was almost invisible, hidden in the shadow of the spiral staircase. A scratch.
It was a long, thin scratch on the marble floor, as if something heavy, with a sharp metal edge, had been dragged.
"Here," Adam said, pointing. "This is your flaw."
Wijaya peered at it. "I... I don't see how. That's twenty meters from the pedestal."
"It's a drag mark," Adam said. He followed it. The mark led from the staircase, went about five feet, and then... just stopped. In the middle of the floor. "And it stops cold. No, wait..."
Adam got on his hands and knees. The scratch didn't stop. It changed. It became fainter, as if the object had suddenly become lighter. He followed the near-invisible line. It led him on a bizarre, curving path, right back to the velvet cushion.
"Odd," he muttered. "It's as if they dragged it... and then it started to float." He immediately dismissed the thought. "No. They dragged it in a bag, and then picked up the bag here. But the mark starts at the stairs. Why not just walk?"
He walked back to the staircase. He looked up, scanning the concrete ceiling. Nothing. He looked down, at the base of the stairs. And he saw it.
Tucked into the seam where the bottom step met the marble floor was a single, long, black... feather? No, not a feather. It was a quill.
It was about a foot long, jet black, and iridescent, shimmering with an oily purple-green in the gallery's dim light. It was thick as a pencil and razor-sharp at the tip.
Adam had seen an eagle's feather. He had seen a peacock's. This was neither. This feather was too large, too heavy, and it felt... cold to the touch.
He looked at Wijaya, who had gone pale.
"Mr. Wijaya? You recognize this?"
"That... that is not possible," Wijaya whispered, taking a step back.
"A bird got in?" Adam asked, though it felt absurd.
"That is not from a bird, Mr. Adam," Wijaya said, his professional composure completely gone. "That belongs to... another party. The ones I warned you about. The ones who also want the lantern."
"Who?" Adam demanded.
Before Wijaya could answer, a shadow detached itself from the top of the spiral staircase. It wasn't a person. It was just... a patch of darkness that was darker than the dim room.
"He's still here," Wijaya hissed, grabbing Adam's arm. "We have to leave. Now!"
The shadow dropped.
It fell the thirty feet from the top of the staircase to the marble floor and landed without a sound. It wasn't a shadow; it was a thing.
It was at least seven feet tall, impossibly thin, and wrapped in what looked like charred, black rags. It had no face, just a smooth, pale expanse of skin. And where its arms should have been, it had long, blade-like appendages made of the same oily, black-quill material.
Adam's blood ran cold. His mind, the logical, skeptical mind of a detective, was screaming. It was a hallucination. It was a trick of the light.
The creature turned its blank face toward them.
"Run," Adam said, pulling his revolver. The sound of the hammer clicking back was impossibly loud in the silent room.
The creature moved. It didn't run. It slid across the floor, covering the twenty meters between them in a single, silent blur.
Adam fired. The gunshot was a deafening explosion.
The bullet didn't hit. The creature vibrated, and the bullet passed harmlessly through a space where its chest had been a millisecond before.
It raised one of its black-quill arms. Wijaya screamed.
"Adam! Look out!"
A new voice. A woman's voice. A figure in a dark grey tactical suit dropped from the staircase behind the creature. It was a woman. Lena.
She was holding a small, silver cylinder. She twisted the base, and a beam of blinding, pure-white light shot out, hitting the creature square in the back.
The creature screamed. It was a sound like metal tearing, and it made Adam's teeth ache. The creature dissolved, not into dust, but into a cloud of oily, black smoke, which was sucked back into the silver cylinder in Lena's hand.
In a second, it was over. The room was silent again.
Adam was on the floor, his ears ringing, his revolver feeling useless and stupid in his hand. Lena stood over him, the silver cylinder (Archive-Level Relic designed to capture or repel certain entities) smoking slightly. She was athletic, her face sharp and all business, her eyes cold.
She looked at Adam, then at Wijaya, who was hiding behind a pillar. "You're late, Wijaya," Lena snapped. "And you brought a civilian?"
"He... he found the quill, Agent Lena," Wijaya stammered.
Lena's eyes snapped to Adam. She seemed to size him up in an instant. The cheap jacket, the terrified look, the useless gun. "He's contaminated," she said.
"Wait, what?" Adam said, getting to his feet, his mind reeling. "What was that? What the hell are you people?"
"We," Lena said, walking toward him, "are the ones who clean up this mess. He's seen a 'Shade'. He has to be processed."
"Processed?" Adam remembered the word from old spy movies. "You're going to kill me?"
"No," Lena said, stopping in front of him. "We're going to make you forget." She raised a small, pen-like device. A blue light glowed at the tip.
"This will be painless," she said. "Just a Class-B Amnestic."
Adam stared at the blue light. His logical world, his world of facts and evidence, had just been torn to pieces in thirty seconds. He had two thoughts. First: That thing was real. And second: I am absolutely not going to let her erase that.
As she lunged forward, Adam, the detective, did the only logical thing he could. He threw his heavy, useless revolver straight at her face.