The door to the briefing room slid open.
And the world immediately rushed in.
Voices overlapped. Boots scraped the floor. Someone laughed too loudly. Someone else said his name, unsure if they were allowed to say it out loud. Bara stepped out and felt it hit him all at once. Attention. Curiosity. That particular kind of excitement people had when something from history decided to keep breathing.
"Pak Bara." Sir.
"Pak, sebentar aja." Sir, just a second please
He stopped.
That was his first mistake.
A trooper already had a slate out. Another one hovered behind him, clearly waiting for permission that was never going to come. Someone farther back whispered something that sounded like Asura. Someone else whispered something about Bali.
"Pak, tanda tangan boleh?" autograph, sir?
Bara stared at the slate for half a second longer than necessary.
"Boleh," sure, he said, signing without flair.
The trooper looked like he had just survived something important.
Another voice cut in. "Pak, foto dikit?" Sir, a little photo won't hurt right?
Bara glanced at the ceiling, then nodded once. The photo was taken. Someone else immediately asked for one too.
This escalated fast.
A junior officer leaned in, face serious. "Pak, saya mau nanya," sir, I want to ask something.
Bara turned to him. "Apa?"
The officer swallowed. "Kalau nanti saya ditempatin di garis depan, mending mikir pulang atau mikir menang dulu?"
Bara blinked.
He considered the question with the gravity it clearly deserved.
"Pikir napas dulu," breathe first, he said. "Yang lain nyusul."
The officer nodded like his entire worldview had just been rearranged.
Bara stepped back before anyone else could get brave.
"Udah," that's enough, he said. "Kerja."
Some laughed nervously. Some straightened immediately. Discipline snapped back into place, but the eyes stayed on him longer than they should have.
He walked away.
The farther he went, the quieter it got, but the feeling stayed. Like static clinging to his skin. Like the world had just decided he was interesting again.
"Capek," tired, he muttered.
Outside the compound, the city waited like it always did. Jakarta at night did not care who you were. It cared about momentum. About traffic. About food carts and blinking signs and people who had their own problems to carry.
Bara chose to walk.
His apartment was close enough. Close enough that he could pretend this was still just another night. Close enough that no one would bother escorting him.
He moved through the streets with his hands in his jacket pockets, shoulders relaxed, head slightly down. Not hiding. Just not announcing himself.
The noise helped.
Motorcycles. Distant music. Someone arguing on the phone. Laughter from a street stall. Life continuing at a pace that did not adjust for war heroes or classified nightmares.
For the first time that evening, his breathing slowed.
The minimarket lights were too bright.
He almost walked past it.
Then he remembered he was out of water, low on cigarettes, and running on fumes that would not last until morning. So he pushed the door open and stepped inside.
Cold air hit his face.
The place smelled like plastic, sugar, and disinfectant. Shelves lined with things nobody really needed but everyone bought anyway. A familiar hum of refrigeration units struggling against tropical reality.
He grabbed a basket.
Water first. He reached the cooler, opened the door, and paused.
Someone else was already there.
She stood in front of the shelves like she had been there for a while. Hoodie zipped halfway. Hair tied back in a loose knot that suggested she had stopped caring sometime earlier that day. One hand held a bottle. The other held it again, rotating it slightly.
She was reading the label.
Carefully.
Bara frowned.
People did not read labels like that unless they were bored, paranoid, or very specific about something. She checked sugar content. Put it back. Picked another. Compared. Stopped.
He waited.
She did not notice him.
"Serius amat," that serious?, he murmured under his breath.
She shifted slightly, still blocking the shelf. Bara leaned closer without thinking.
"Permisi," excuse me, he said.
She turned.
Their eyes met for a brief second. Hers were sharp, not curious. Just alert.
"Oh," she said, stepping aside. "Maaf."
"No problem," Bara replied, reaching for a bottle.
He grabbed one at random. She watched him, expression neutral.
"Kamu nggak baca?" you don't read it?
He glanced at the bottle. "Air." Water.
She looked at him like she was deciding whether that answer was stupid or just honest.
"Masuk akal," Make sense, she said.
He almost smiled.
They stood there for another second longer than necessary, then moved in opposite directions. Bara added cigarettes to his basket. Considered the medicine aisle. Decided against it.
At the counter, the cashier scanned items with practiced boredom. The woman from the cooler joined the line behind him.
Her basket had exactly three things in it.
None of them were snacks.
Bara noticed that without knowing why.
The cashier hesitated when scanning his cigarettes. "Umur, Pak."
Bara sighed quietly and reached into his jacket. What he slid across the counter was not a civilian card.
It was a GDF identification.
Matte black. No civilian address. No decorative insignia. Just his name, a long numerical code, and a small emblem that had not been publicly issued in years.
ABYSSAL WAR VETERAN
GEN-1 CLEARANCE
The cashier froze for half a second too long.
"Oh." He pushed the card back immediately. "That's… fine, sir."
No smile. No follow-up. Just quiet compliance.
Behind Bara, the woman from the water aisle caught a glimpse of the card before instinctively looking away. No shock. No excitement.
Just recognition.
The kind that comes from someone who understands what data means and chooses not to ask questions yet.
Bara slipped the card back into his jacket without comment.
The woman glanced at it by accident.
She looked away immediately.
"No reaction," Bara thought. "Bagus." Good
Outside, they exited almost at the same time.
The city noise rushed back in.
She stopped to adjust her bag strap. Bara lit a cigarette, then paused, remembering where he was.
He lowered it.
She noticed.
"Tidak jadi merokok? " Not gonna smoke?
"Belum," not yet.
She nodded, like that made sense.
They stood there, two strangers under fluorescent light, neither in a hurry.
"Jakarta capek ya," she said suddenly. Jakarta is exhausting, isn't it.
Bara exhaled. "Iya."
She looked at him, just briefly this time. "Kamu juga kelihatan capek."
He almost laughed.
"Katanya mau istirahat," They said they wanted to take a break, he said. "Tapi ya gitu." But. That's just how it is.
She hummed, a sound somewhere between agreement and skepticism.
"Kadang istirahat itu kerja juga," she said. Sometimes resting is work too.
That made him look at her properly.
She noticed.
"Kenapa?" Why she asked.
"Enggak," nothing. "Jarang denger orang ngomong gitu."
She shrugged. "Pengalaman." Experience
They nodded at each other like that was enough.
"Duluan," See you she said, already turning.
"Iya," Yeah, he replied.
She walked off toward the darker end of the street. Bara waited until she was gone before lighting his cigarette.
The smoke tasted normal.
That surprised him.
He walked the rest of the way home slower than usual.
In his apartment, he dropped his keys on the table, sat down, and stared at nothing for a while. The quiet pressed in, but it did not bite as hard tonight.
The quiet stayed longer than usual.
Bara did not turn on the lights immediately.
He sat where he was, jacket still on, cigarette burning low between his fingers, eyes unfocused. The apartment felt different tonight. Not warmer. Not friendlier.
Just… less empty.
That annoyed him.
He crushed the cigarette out and finally stood, shrugging off his jacket and hanging it where it belonged. The motion was automatic. Everything in his apartment had a place. Disorder invited thought. Thought invited memory.
He did not need either.
He poured water into a glass, drank half, then stopped. His hand lingered on the rim.
"Focus," he muttered.
The slate waited for him on the table.
Slim. Seamless. No visible ports. No branding. Just a faint GDF emblem that only appeared when it recognized his biometrics.
He tapped it once.
The surface bloomed to life.
WELCOME BACK, ASURA
CLEARANCE: GEN-1 | VETERAN PRIORITY
DATA SYNC: PARTIAL (RESTRICTED)
Bara exhaled slowly.
"They really never stop," he said.
He scrolled.
Operational briefs. Deployment projections. Abyssal movement heatmaps layered over tectonic fault lines. The data was dense, clean, and merciless. Someone had done their homework.
He leaned back, eyes scanning faster now.
Heavy Trooper restructuring proposals. Regional command stress points. Casualty projections adjusted upward by percentages that would have terrified anyone else.
He barely reacted.
Then the weapons tab opened.
Updated armories. Revised doctrines. Ammunition classifications refined since his last active cycle.
AP variants optimized for denser exoskeletal targets. HE rounds redesigned for internal cavitation rather than surface detonation. Thermite payloads stabilized for underwater ignition.
He stopped scrolling.
"About time," he murmured.
He pulled up simulation overlays. Squad movement patterns. Kill corridors. Extraction windows.
This part felt familiar.
Comforting, in a way that scared him a little.
He had always been good at this.
Not because he enjoyed it.
Because he understood how things broke.
A notification pulsed softly at the edge of the slate.
INCOMING SENSOR ALERT
SOURCE: DEEP OCEAN ARRAY
STATUS: UNCONFIRMED
Bara frowned.
He tapped it open.
The map zoomed out. Far out. Past territorial lines. Past shipping lanes. Past places that mattered to civilians.
A pressure anomaly.
Large.
Persistent.
Too deliberate to be geological.
His jaw tightened.
"No," he said quietly. "Not yet."
The slate did not argue.
The designation had not been assigned yet. No codename. No threat rating. Just raw data feeding in from arrays that had not lit up like this since—
He closed the file.
Hard.
The slate dimmed.
Bara sat there in the dark, elbows on his knees, hands clasped loosely. He stared at the floor like it might answer him back.
"They're all insane," he muttered.
As if on cue, his thoughts tried to drift. Back to fluorescent lights. A hoodie. Someone reading labels like the world made sense if you looked closely enough.
He shook his head once.
"Not now."
He stood and moved to the window, pushing it open just enough to let the city breathe into the room. The noise came back. Distant. Familiar. Alive.
Jakarta did not care about abyssal threats or legacy pilots.
That was why he liked it.
Tomorrow, things would accelerate. Paperwork. Reassignments. Training schedules rewritten around his presence whether he wanted them to or not.
Nathan and Samuel would be called in. Questions would be asked. Lines would shift.
And somewhere out there, something old was moving.
Bara rested his forehead briefly against the cool glass.
He was tired.
Not of walking. Not of attention.
Of momentum.
But momentum had found him anyway.
He closed the window, turned off the slate completely, and lay down on the bed without changing. The ceiling stared back at him, blank and patient.
Sleep did not come immediately.
That was fine.
For the first time in a long while, the quiet did not feel like a threat.
It felt like a pause.
And pauses, he knew, never lasted.