Season 1 chapter 4
The Crude Oil Trap
Klove's interrogators stepped closer, their shadows stretching long and jagged across the office floor. The General sneered, leaning over his desk to watch the light go out of Kniya's eyes.
But it didn't happen. Instead, Malesh started to laugh. It wasn't a nervous laugh; it was a high-pitched, mocking sound that echoed off the mahogany walls.
"I knew this would happen," Malesh stated, looking directly into Klove's eyes with total pity. "You think we'd walk into the lion's den without a backup plan? You really are just a predictable old man."
Kniya muttered through gritted teeth as the guards gripped his arms, "Are you a special kind of idiot, Klove? Do you think we're afraid of your torture? We've been beaten by the seniors since we were six. Your pliers don't scare us."
Malesh's face went cold. "Listen up, you bastard. You bruised piece of cum. Look at the edges of your precious desk."
Klove frowned, looking down. Around the perimeter of his massive oak table, a thick, dark liquid was shimmering. It had been leaking from the small canisters the boys had secretly cracked open the moment they walked in.
"It's crude oil," Malesh grinned. "The stuff our country doesn't have enough reserves of. Very flammable. Very expensive."
Part 15: Fire and Flight In the blink of an eye, the boys reached into their waistbands.
"Now!" Kniya roared.
They slammed their homemade pepper-bombs onto the desk. CRACK-BOOM. The room was instantly swallowed by a thick, stinging cloud of grey smoke and aerosolized spice.
"AGH! MY EYES!" Klove screamed, stumbling back, his wine glass shattering on the floor. The guards began coughing violently, doubling over as the pepper burned their lungs and blinded their vision.
Flick. The sound of Kniya's lighter was small, but the result was a monster. He dropped the flame into the oil trail. WHOOSH! A wall of orange fire roared to life, racing across the desk and catching the heavy silk curtains. The heat was instant, blistering the paint on the walls.
"Jump!" Kniya yelled.
They didn't head for the door. They sprinted for the massive glass windows behind the desk. With their shoulders tucked, they smashed through the glass—SHATTER—and plummeted into the night air.
Two stories down. SPLASH!
The cold water of the ornamental pool hit them like a physical punch. They sank for a second, the bubbles roaring in their ears—GLUG—before breaking the surface, gasping for air.
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The Game of Chaos
Up in the office, Klove leaned out of the burning window, his face scorched and red. "CATCH THEM!" he barked at the guards in the courtyard. "I WANT THEIR HEADS! MOVE, YOU USELESS SHITS!"
The alarm sirens began to wail—a high-pitched, mechanical scream that signaled the start of the hunt.
Kniya and Malesh scrambled out of the pool, their clothes heavy and dripping. They didn't run in a straight line; they moved in a frantic, crisscross pattern across the lawn, dodging the searchlights that began to sweep the grass.
"Bro," Malesh panted, his chest heaving. "If we want to survive, we need to make it out of here now. These guards have guns... they're going to start firing insanely at us any second."
"You're right," Kniya said, his eyes scanning the courtyard. "I don't have enough energy for a footrace against thirty thousand troops. We need to steal a gun and fire back."
Malesh looked at him anxiously. "But how? We're just kids!"
"One of us needs to be the bait," Kniya said quickly. "Take a left turn. Attract as many as you can. The other one bumps into a soldier with a handful of soil, blinds the bastard, grabs the rifle, and pulls the shot."
Malesh exhaled a shaky breath. "But what about the other one? He'll be surrounded!"
"He finds a way to get out of it," Kniya said, his voice steady despite the chaos. "And if the guy with the gun is successful, he blows enough shots to clear a path through the gates. We move or we die."
Malesh took a deep, shaky breath. The fear in his eyes turned into a hard, desperate resolve. "Well, if you've decided the whole plan... let me be the guy who gets the gun."
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The Divergence
Kniya nodded. "Go. Don't miss."
Kniya sprinted to the right, screaming at the top of his lungs to draw the attention of the approaching squad. "OVER HERE, YOU MORONS!"
Six guards turned, their heavy boots thudding on the grass as they chased Kniya toward the statues.
On the left, Malesh stayed low, his small hands digging into the flowerbeds, scooping up a massive double-handful of dry, gritty soil. He saw a lone guard aiming his rifle at Kniya's back.
Malesh didn't hesitate. He lunged out from behind a hedge, slamming into the guard's waist with his shoulder. As the soldier stumbled, Malesh swung his arms in a wide arc, throwing a blinding "shot" of dirt directly into the man's open eyes.
"AGH! MY EYES!" the guard shrieked, dropping his weapon to claw at his face.
Malesh's hands, tiny but quick, scrambled for the cold iron of the rifle lying in the grass. His fingers closed around the trigger guard.
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The Breaking Point
The guard's hand clamped down on Malesh's wrist like a goddamn iron trap, twisting it back until the bone groaned. "Got you, you little rat!" the soldier spat.
Malesh scrambled for the rifle, his fingers slipping on the cold, oily metal. More boots thundered across the grass. Four, six, eight of the grey-coat bastards were closing in, their steam-rifles leveled at his chest.
No, no, this is fucking bullshit, Malesh's mind roared. I'm not dying in the dirt because of these low-IQ cunts.
Tears of pure, unadulterated rage began to blur his vision, mixing with the soot and grease on his face. He looked over at Kniya, who was being pinned down, his face being ground into the gravel. Malesh didn't care about "rules" or "morals"—he cared about the fact that these walking piles of trash thought they could touch him.
The energy in his chest didn't just shine; it exploded. Today is not the day for you motherfuckers, he thought, his jaw clicking shut. I'm the one who's going to be standing when this is over.
With a guttural, animalistic scream, Malesh didn't pull away—he drove his skull directly into the guard's nose with a sickening CRACK. As the man recoiled, clutching a face full of shattered bone, Malesh delivered a brutal, heavy-booted kick to the soldier's nuts, followed by a snap to the kneecap.
He wrenched the rifle free. SHICK-CHACK. "Eat shit!" he roared, pulling the trigger. BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! Three guards went down, clutching their guts and legs, screaming like stuck pigs. Malesh didn't stop to watch the carnage. He sprinted toward Kniya, his sharp suit torn and soaked in blood, looking like a high-end assassin who had just crawled out of hell. Midway, he saw another rifle dropped by a fleeing coward. He scooped it up without losing a beat—now he had iron in both hands.
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The Cinematic Escape
Malesh opened fire with both hands, the kickback nearly jarring his shoulders out of their sockets, but he didn't give a single fuck. He wasn't aiming to be "good"—he was aiming to destroy. BANG! BANG! BANG! Kniya saw the opening. He bucked his head back, smashing it into his captor's teeth, and scrambled up. His mouth was a mess of blood and saliva, but as he saw Malesh standing there, twin rifles smoking and a look of pure cold-blooded triumph on his face, a wild, jagged smirk broke across his lips.
"Catch, you bastard!" Malesh screamed, tossing one of the rifles through the smoke.
Kniya caught it mid-air. Together, they turned toward the main gate, unloading a hail of lead that kept the guards diving for their lives. They weren't just kids anymore; they were a goddamn nightmare in miniature.
They vaulted over the perimeter fence, disappearing into the dark, smoggy veins of the city.
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The Safe House
Twenty minutes later, they collapsed inside the skeleton of an abandoned warehouse. The distant sirens were a joke now.
Malesh leaned against a rusted pillar, sliding down to the floor. His suit was ruined—stained with blood, sewer water, and oil—but he still straightened his tie with a trembling, bloody hand. "I thought... I thought we were fucking finished," he panted, spitting out a mouthful of copper-tasting grit. "The General outsmarted us. That betrayal... I was ready to rip that pig's throat out with my teeth."
Kniya wiped a glob of blood from his chin. "Yeah. My idea was a fucking disaster, bro. Visiting the lion's den... I was thinking with my ego, not my head. We should have stayed in the shadows and used a telephone line like actual professionals."
Malesh let out a dark, jagged laugh. "We didn't have his fucking number, Kniya. And honestly? Seeing the look of pure terror on that fat fuck's face when the oil caught fire? That was worth every second of this bullshit."
"True," Kniya muttered. "But we only got out because you packed those goddamn pepper-sand bombs. I thought you were just being a paranoid prick."
"I knew your 'direct confrontation' plan was a pile of shit," Malesh said, pulling the last of the bombs from his pocket and looking at it like a diamond. "I don't play fair, Kniya. Fair is for people who end up in graves. I play to win."
Kniya looked at his partner—the suit-wearing shark—and felt a new level of respect. He reached out and bumped Malesh's shoulder.
"Well," Kniya said, his voice dropping into that deadly, low tone. "He had his chance to be civil. Now it's our turn to ruin his fucking life. He knows we can reach him now. He knows we aren't afraid to burn his world down."
Kniya stood up, the light of the dying fires in the distance reflecting in his eyes. "Let's find a phone booth. It's time to remind Knorwin Klove exactly who owns his soul. No more talking. No more 'visits.' Just the cold, hard truth."
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The Satta Crude Oil Joke
They walked through the cooling mist of the night, their boots crunching on the gravel. Despite the blood on his lip and the adrenaline still coursing through his veins, Kniya looked over at Malesh and let out a short, sharp bark of a laugh.
"You know what, bro?" Kniya said, wiping a smear of grease off his forehead. "I actually wanted to make that whole office scene a comedy. I was gonna stand over that burning desk and give him a pitch like a salesperson."
Malesh raised an eyebrow, adjusting his torn collar. "A pitch? For what?"
"For the oil!" Kniya grinned. "I was gonna say: 'The crude oil you are seeing right now is sponsored by Satta Crude Oil—a company that we will make in the future to replace your sorry ass.' It would have been the perfect ad campaign, bro."
Malesh actually burst out laughing, a genuine, dark sound. "Bro, I would have definitely lost it. If you started talking like a salesperson in the middle of a fucking fire-fight, I would have died right there from the absurdity of it. You're a sick bastard, Kniya."
"Hey, branding is important, bro," Kniya joked, but his eyes quickly turned sharp as they approached a lonely, rusted iron phone booth standing under a flickering streetlamp.
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The Call
Kniya didn't need to look for the number. When he was standing by the General's desk, his eyes had scanned a small brass plaque on the base of the private telephone—a direct line bypass. He punched the numbers in with a cold, steady hand.
The phone rang twice. Then, a heavy, breathless voice answered. "Speak."
"Surprise, motherfucker," Kniya said, leaning against the glass of the booth. "We escaped. Did you like the fireworks? I hope that oak desk was expensive."
There was a silence on the other end so heavy you could hear the General's teeth grinding. "You little shits," Klove hissed. "I will have your skin for my rug."
"Shut the fuck up and listen," Kniya snapped, his voice turning to ice. "You had your chance to play 'civil person' and listen to the 12 o'clock deadline. You chose to be a snake. So now, the clock has changed. You have one hour. If I don't see the army withdrawing from the streets in the next sixty minutes, I'm leaking the files early. I'm done being patient with you."
Klove's voice was a low growl. "I will find you. I will kill you, you son of a bitch."
Malesh snatched the receiver from Kniya's hand, his face hovering close to the mouthpiece. "Listen here, you bruised piece of shit," Malesh snarled. "You have our names and our identities, but you can't do a goddamn thing about it. Why don't you take that threat and shove it up your ass? We already shared the data with a contact outside the city. If we so much as trip and skin our knees, the world sees your bank statements."
Malesh adjusted his suit jacket, his voice becoming eerily professional. "Now, fulfill the fucking conditions. We want the stipend—80,000 DI'an credits a month for each of us. Create a private account and have a government servant deliver the passbook and the keys to a drop-box we'll specify. And don't play smart, General. We've already started looking into the ministers above you. We find one more scrap of dirt, and we'll climb the ladder until you're just a footnote in a history book."