Three months.

  It was enough time for a seed to sprout, or for a wound to fester. For The Bridge Project, it was a tremulous, promising first breath of life. For Vargas, it was ample time to hone his blade to a razor's edge.

  Mateo stood on the balcony of his new office—a modest room on the third floor of the civilian administration building, far from the grandeur of the Sun Palace.

  From here, he could see part of the plaza where the "Sunrise" cooperative was now bustling, not just with yellow card holders, but also with small-time vendors daring to set up their stalls again. The gossip of housewives shopping, children's laughter, and the shouts of hawkers created a discordant yet vibrant music of life.

  They were calling it the President's Bridge, he thought. And they were starting to believe the bridge could hold weight.

  It was a victory. Small, fragile, but real. The grinding meat-grinder of the economy had slowed, though not stopped. The despair in the markets had shifted into a wary hope.

  The boy by the river—Luis, he remembered—now wore a simple school uniform, and his eyes were no longer hollow. They were eyes learning to spell, to count, and beginning to believe that tomorrow might not hurt.

  But behind this carefully constructed peace, another sound hummed. A more subtle, more dangerous whisper. The reports from Felix, now flowing through newly encrypted channels, painted a different picture.

  Supply disruptions on the project's distribution routes in the outer districts. Local project officials found "suicided" with two bullets to the chest. Murmurs in the army barracks: "Vargas cleans out the trash, while the Wonder Boy hands out bread. Who's really strengthening the Republic?"

  The Bridge Project had become a litmus test. The dividing line between two irreconcilable visions for the Venez Republic. And Vargas had chosen his side; he was the surgeon, excising rot, and in his eyes, Mateo was merely a sentimental trash collector.

  Mateo exhaled, his breath misting in the cool morning air. He couldn't let this continue. Every day Vargas moved freely was a day the newly laid foundations of his bridge could be blown from beneath.

  But excising Vargas wasn't like eliminating Mendez. Mendez was a malignant tumor everyone had agreed to remove. Vargas was an infected organ within the same body trying to heal itself. Cutting it out crudely could cause fatal hemorrhage, shock, death.

  And then there was the National Loyalty Unit. The special forces Vargas had midwifed—though Mateo had his own hand in that. Five thousand men and women brainwashed to consider blind obedience the highest virtue.

  Their doctrine was simple: follow orders. Who gave the orders? The superior with the highest authority in the chain of command.

  It was both a threat and a loophole. They were Vargas's most dangerous weapon, but also a weapon that could be redirected. As long as there was a higher, more legitimate voice ordering them to stand down, they would stand down. Or at least, most of them would.

  The problem was, Vargas was no fool. He would have planted his own loyalists within the NLU. People personally devoted to him, not to the doctrine.

  Mateo's estimate was about a thousand. A thousand daggers that would need to be neutralized simultaneously, before they realized their master had fallen.

  This was a surgical operation. Not a field clearing. And for that, he needed a cold, meticulous, unillusioned surgeon.

  He needed Felix, who also saw Vargas as a problem.

  ***

  The meeting was arranged in an unusual location: inside a nearly empty public library in the western district.

  The smell of old paper and decaying wood filled the air. Felix's choice, of course. A place with no strategic value, no prying eyes or ears, just the white noise of pages being turned by a handful of patrons.

  Felix was already there, sitting at a table behind the military history stacks, disguised as a researcher with glasses and a worn sweater. He was thumbing through a book on Roman cavalry tactics.

  Mateo sat across from him, placing a bag containing several folders on the table. For a moment, they just sat in silence, two men pretending to read.

  "The Bridge Project is holding," Felix finally said, without looking up from his book. "My deputy now leading it reports an 18% drop in dependency on emergency aid in the first four districts. Children are in school. Some roads are being repaired. Those are good numbers."

  "But it's making Vargas more brazen," Mateo countered, opening the first folder containing black-and-white photos. Images of burned-out trucks, vandalized distribution posts. "He's testing the limits. Seeing how far he can push before we push back."

  Felix finally looked at him, removing his glasses. His eyes, without the lenses, looked older and more weary. "He's already past the limit, Mateo. Three of our project officials are dead. That's not testing. That's war."

  "And we can't fight an open war. The NLU is an elite force in cleaning and terror. An open conflict would wreck half the capital and shatter all the fragile trust we've just built."

  "So what do you want? Invite him for tea and convince him to retire?" Felix's tone was sardonic.

  "I want him gone," Mateo said, his voice as flat as a scalpel. "And I want the NLU to remain intact, functional, and under new control. Under legitimate control."

  Felix froze. He understood the implication instantly. "You want to swap the brain without the body noticing."

  "Not swap the brain. Remove the tumor in the brain, and ensure the rest of the nervous system still responds to commands from the new control center."

  "And who is the new control center? The President?"

  "The President is the symbolic highest authority. But for operational command... we need a clear chain the NLU will accept. Someone with undeniable military authority they can recognize as the 'superior with the highest authority.'"

  Felix stared at him sharply. "Don't."

  "You are the only person they might listen to, besides Vargas himself. A Colonel, a war hero, known as a neutral party. If the President issues an emergency decree placing you as the NLU's interim commander during an 'internal review,' while Vargas... vanishes, most of the unit will comply. It fits their doctrine."

  "And those who don't comply? The thousand Vargas loyalists you mentioned?"

  "For them," said Mateo, opening the second folder. It contained blueprints of the NLU headquarters, patrol schedules, battalion commander profiles. "We need a precision purge. At the same moment Vargas is taken out, his core loyalists in every subunit must be neutralized. Arrested, or if necessary, eliminated. Without giving them a chance to organize resistance. You are only the interim leader while I find a more suitable permanent commander for the unit."

  Felix took a deep breath. He closed his eyes for a moment. "You're talking about mass execution inside our own headquarters."

  "I'm talking about preventing a civil war within our own body. The choice is: remove a hundred, two hundred, maybe a thousand fanatical individuals, or risk street battles between a fractured NLU and regular forces that would destroy the capital and bury The Bridge Project and all its hope with it."

  "Don't wrap this in rhetoric," Felix hissed, opening his eyes. The cold light from the overhead lamp illuminated the hard lines on his face. "This is political murder. A dirty scheme. I don't like getting involved in this sort of thing."

  Stolen novel; please report.

  "Yes," Mateo admitted without hesitation. "It's dirty. But what's the alternative? Wait for Vargas to decide the time is right to seize the palace? Or put him on public trial with evidence that would make the entire NLU institution look like a nest of assassins and thugs? That would ruin their legitimacy forever. We need them, Felix. This country needs an elite force it can trust, not a gang of enforcers to be disbanded."

  Felix stood, pacing slowly between the bookshelves, his hands clenched behind his back. "You want me to be part of this. To be the face that gives the lawful order for this butchery."

  "I want you to be the man who ensures the butchery doesn't have to happen. That only those who need to die, do. And that when it's over, the NLU can be salvaged, reformed, made into a real tool of the Republic, not one man's tool."

  "And Sombra?" Felix asked, turning. "They'll be the executioners, won't they? The unit that's not fully trained yet. You'll use them to strike from within."

  "For the phase of removing Vargas and his key commanders, yes. They're the only ones who can get inside without raising alarms. After that, after you take command and issue the emergency orders, the rest of the arrests can be carried out more openly by NLU troops themselves who are loyal to the new chain of command."

  "A very neat plan. Too neat. You've thought of everything."

  "Because we can't leave room for error. One mistake, one leak, and we'll be fighting in the streets that have just begun to quiet."

  Felix returned to the table, staring at the maps and photos in the folder. His rough fingers traced over the image of the NLU headquarters. "I served there briefly as an instructor. I know some of the men inside. Some are good soldiers, just lost in a doctrine of blind obedience."

  "And they will survive," Mateo said, his voice a shade softer. "Those who were just following orders will see the change in command as procedure. Only those actively loyal to Vargas personally are targets. That's why we need accurate intelligence. And that," he looked at Felix, "is your part. You know the internal structure. You know who is merely obedient, and who is fanatical."

  For a long time, Felix was silent. The sound of the library's wall clock was loud: tick... tock... tick... tock... Like the heartbeat of a nation waiting for a verdict.

  "I'm doing this not for you," Felix finally said, his voice hollow. "Not for your father. I'm doing this because Vargas is a sickness. And that sickness will kill this country if left to fester. The Bridge Project... that's something different. Something worth protecting, even with dirty hands."

  That was what Mateo needed. Not moral approval, but operational assent. "So, we're agreed?"

  "We're agreed to plan," Felix corrected. "This plan has too many points of failure. We need details. Exact timing. Signals. Escape routes. And a guarantee that the President will issue that decree at precisely the needed moment, not a second late."

  "The President will be ready. He understands the risks."

  He had discussed this with his father just the day before.

  "Does he?" Felix looked up, his gaze penetrating. "Or does he just see this as a way to get rid of a troublesome rival, while letting his son get his hands dirty?"

  Mateo didn't answer. It was a question that didn't need an answer.

  "Fine," Felix uttered, sitting back down. "Let's start from the beginning. Vargas. His routine. His weakest point."

  The conversation continued for two hours. They dissected Vargas's life like an autopsy. His routine: NLU headquarters in the morning, a meeting with his informants at a café at noon, his office at the Ministry of Internal Security in the afternoon, then home to his heavily guarded house in the military district in the evening.

  "Home is not an option," said Mateo. "Too many guards, too much potential for a noisy firefight."

  "The café is out too," added Felix. "Too many civilians. Risk of collateral damage."

  "The Ministry office? It would be a stain if there was a bloody incident inside the Ministry of Security building..."

  "The NLU headquarters," Felix concluded. "It's his territory. Where he feels safest. And that's its weakness. There, standard military security protocols apply. Not paranoid personal protection. And most importantly, there's his private anteroom, windowless, on the third floor. Only one way in. Isolated."

  Mateo nodded, his mind racing. "If we can get someone inside the headquarters, into that anteroom..."

  "...then his removal can be clean. Silent. And his body can be removed via the rear delivery entrance used for logistics," Felix finished. "But getting someone inside is near impossible. Everyone entering is checked, vetted."

  "Unless," said Mateo, "that person is part of that very logistics delivery. Or... someone with a legitimate reason to be there. A courier from the Presidential Palace, for instance, with an urgent message."

  Felix considered it. "That could work. But the courier would be checked, and likely detained afterward."

  "Not if the courier is part of Sombra, and knows how to vanish after the job is done. Or," Mateo gave a thin smile, "if the courier is someone who wouldn't be suspected at all. A waiter delivering a food order for the commander."

  "Vargas doesn't accept outside food. He's paranoid about poison."

  "But he accepts reports. Documents. In sealed diplomatic pouches." Mateo tapped the table. "Our Sombra agent infiltrates as a clerical worker at the Ministry of Security. He brings a pouch containing 'top secret' documents that must be handed directly to Vargas. Inside the pouch, not documents."

  Felix pictured it. A young, nervous clerk carrying a pouch. Routine inspection. Pouch sealed with the Ministry seal. They might open it, they might not. If they opened it, they'd see... what?

  "Gas?" Felix guessed.

  "Too volatile. Could leak. And takes time." Mateo opened a third folder, containing technical specs from the memory of his first life. "Something more direct. A high-yield piezoelectric device, concealed within the binding of a false document. Activated by a specific pressure—the pressure of the pouch being opened, for instance. A concentrated blast, not large but enough to kill anyone in a small room without breaching the walls."

  "A book bomb," Felix murmured. He wasn't shocked. In guerilla warfare, such tools were common. "The risk is, the courier dies too."

  "The courier is a captured Mendez fanatic we've 'rehabilitated.' He hates Vargas more than we do. He'll do it willingly, with a promise his family is provided for by The Bridge Project." Mateo stated it flatly. "Or, we render him unconscious. The pouch has a more complex timed mechanism, and the courier is out before the blast."

  "Too complex. More variables, more points of failure." Felix shook his head. "We need something simpler. More controllable remotely."

  They kept arguing, refining, discarding ideas. The sun outside the library windows shifted, casting dusty golden beams through the bookshelves.

  These two men, one young with a face too old for his years, the other a weary soldier sick of war, planned an assassination with the precision of engineers designing a bridge.

  Finally, they reached a consensus. The plan had three phases:

  Phase I: Penetration and Elimination of the Head.

  A Sombra agent, under a false identity as a communications technician from a government service provider, would gain access to the NLU headquarters to "update the system" on the third floor. His technical equipment would carry the kill device, activated remotely. When Vargas was alone in his room—something he did routinely for 20 minutes after lunch to read reports—the signal would be sent. Chemical, not explosive. Leaves no blast marks, only what appears to be a natural cardiac arrest. The technician would leave calmly after "finishing the job."

  Phase II: Command Takeover.

  Immediately upon confirmation of Vargas's death, Felix, escorted by a handpicked unit of Blindaje and with the President's emergency decree in hand, would enter the NLU headquarters. He would announce Vargas's sudden death due to a "health crisis" and assume interim command in the President's name. All outgoing communications from the headquarters would be severed.

  Phase III: Internal Purge.

  Using the pre-compiled list (identifying Vargas's fanatical loyalists), the still-obedient NLU units would be ordered to arrest their listed comrades. The operation had to be simultaneous across all sections of the headquarters and other postings. Any resistance would be met with lethal force. Sombra would move in the shadows to handle difficult targets or those attempting to flee.

  "The plan hinges on two things," Felix said, emphasizing each word. "First, Vargas's death must appear natural for at least a few hours, giving us time to move before the news spreads. Second, the target list must be perfect. If we arrest the wrong person, or miss the right one, the rebellion starts from within."

  "Intel for that list will come from two sources," Mateo explained. "From your wiretaps on NLU comms, and from an informant within Vargas's own inner circle."

  Felix raised an eyebrow. "You have someone inside his inner circle?"

  "Not a someone. But something almost as good." Mateo didn't elaborate further. Mother Rosa, with her invisible network of maids and drivers, had delivered an intelligence gem: a scorned lover of Vargas's who felt neglected and kept a diary full of grievances and the names of those he trusted most. It was a starting point.

  They then dove into technical details: signal codes, emergency radio frequencies, rally points, code words to distinguish merely obedient NLU members from fanatical ones.

  "When?" asked Felix, as the conversation wound down.

  "Preparation takes time. Two weeks. No more. Every day beyond that increases the risk of a leak." Mateo looked at him. "Are you ready?"

  Felix sighed, rubbing his face. "I'll never be ready for something like this. But it must be done. For your bridge project. For the boys and girls who are the future."

  It was the assent Mateo needed.

  They parted in the library, leaving through different doors. Mateo walked along the sidewalk now filling with people heading home from work.

  He saw a young mother pulling along her daughter, who was eagerly chattering about something from school. He saw an old man selling newspapers with headlines about new public works projects.

  This world, with all its chaos and simple hopes, didn't know that in a quiet library, two men had decided the fate of one man and a thousand others, to try and salvage the possibility of peace.

  Mateo didn't feel victorious. He didn't feel powerful. He only felt tired. Tired of the calculus, of the dirt one had to hold so something clean could grow.

  He bought a bottle of water from a kiosk, drinking it all. It tasted bland, boring. Not the soda he sometimes craved. Just water. A cleanser. Like his plan.

  He glanced toward the NLU headquarters in the distance, a soulless, sturdy concrete block. Inside, Vargas was likely planning his next purge. And he, Mateo, had just set the timer for the man's death.

  There was no thrill. No regret. Just another task to be completed. The next step in an endless algorithm of survival.

  He turned, melting into the crowd, a young man with the burden of an old killer on his shoulders, and a fragile bridge of hope he had to guard by any means necessary.

  The plan was made. Now, only execution remained. And the wait, in the darkness before dawn, to see if the bridge would hold, or collapse along with the bodies that would fall beneath it.

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