The cold wind swept across the square.
The negotiations were finally drawing to a close.
Ultimately, the Port Authority made concessions.
Night shift allowances were increased.
Hazardous roles received extra bonuses.
Families of the missing workers received compensation.
At the same time, some of the investigation files were to be made public.
Although it was far from satisfying, at least it was the first real progress made in days.
Thomas listened in silence.
He whispered a few words of consultation with the foremen behind him.
Finally, he nodded slowly.
A commotion immediately rippled through the square.
It wasn't a cheer, but rather the collective sigh of relief after a long, suffocating oppression.
Some released their clenched fists.
Some wiped the cold sweat from their foreheads.
Others let out a long, deep breath.
At least, it seemed no one would die today.
Jonathan breathed a sigh of relief as well.
Without him even realizing it, his hand holding the truncheon had gone numb.
His nerves, which had been stretched taut for days, finally relaxed a fraction.
The young patrolman beside him even let out a soft laugh.
“Is it over?”
“Presumably.”
“It's finally over.”
Jonathan didn't speak; he merely looked at Thomas.
The tall representative of the dockworkers was shaking hands with the director of the Port Authority.
The gesture was somewhat stiff, but they indeed shook hands.
Quite a few workers around them began to clap.
The applause was sparse at first, but it gradually grew.
Some turned to leave.
Some began discussing how much more bread they could buy with their wage increase.
Others were already wondering if they could finally get a peaceful night's sleep.
The dark clouds that had hung over East Port for days finally seemed to part slightly.
...
Thomas let go of the director's hand.
He turned around, preparing to say something to the workers.
At that very moment, Ryan suddenly felt a wave of dizziness wash over him.
The sweet scent in the air grew stronger and stronger.
“Opium...”
Ryan blurted out.
The wind seemed to stop.
The entire square fell into an eerie silence.
It was so quiet that it felt surreal.
And then.
Bang.
In the next second, Thomas's head jerked backward.
His body froze.
Time seemed to stop.
All motion ground to a halt.
The applause stopped.
The chatter stopped.
Breathing stopped.
Even the wind stopped.
Thomas remained standing there, still caught in the middle of his turn.
The expression on his face hadn't even had time to change.
Yet, a small hole had suddenly appeared in the dead center of his forehead.
It was black.
Perfectly round.
As if someone had poked him with a pencil.
Then, blood slowly trickled down, tracing the bridge of his nose, passing the corner of his mouth, and dripping onto his clothes.
...
No one reacted.
Truly, not a single soul reacted.
Jonathan froze in place, his mind completely blank.
He didn't even know what had happened.
Because it had all happened too fast, too fast for his brain to process.
Weren't they just shaking hands?
Hadn't they just finished negotiating?
Wasn't it over?
Why...
Why did this happen?
Beside him, the director of the Port Authority still held his hand out.
The smile on his face was frozen.
His eyes were filled with utter bewilderment.
Thomas's body swayed.
Then, he slowly fell backward.
Thud.
The back of his head struck the cobblestone street, sounding like a heavy sack of sand hitting the ground.
Even at this moment, the square remained quiet.
Deathly quiet.
Thousands of people stood there, staring at the corpse on the ground.
There were no screams.
No crying.
No angry curses.
Nothing.
Because their brains still hadn't processed it.
It was too sudden.
So sudden that it felt as if everyone had been stripped of their souls.
The bread in a young child's hand slipped and fell to the ground.
A worker stood with his mouth wide open, forgetting to close it.
A woman stared intently at the corpse, without even blinking.
Jonathan reflexively reached for the revolver at his waist.
The moment his palm brushed against the grip, he suddenly froze.
The texture was wrong.
It wasn't the familiar, cold metal, but a soft, bizarre texture.
Jonathan snapped his head down.
The holster at his waist was still there.
The belt was still there.
But the object tucked inside had changed.
It wasn't a revolver at all; it was a curved yellow banana.
There were even a few brown spots on its skin.
Jonathan's mind went blank for a second.
He even wondered if he had gone mad.
Where had the service weapon at his waist gone?
Who had swapped it?
When had they swapped it?
No one had come near him.
No one had touched him.
Yet, the revolver that had accompanied him for years had vanished just like that.
He stared fixedly at the banana.
A sudden chill crawled up his spine.
Because this wasn't a prank.
This was mockery.
The ultimate mockery.
As if some entity lurking behind the scenes was looking over the heads of the crowd, staring down at him.
Staring at the police.
Staring at the workers.
Staring at all of East Port.
And then letting out a silent laugh.
His ears began to ring, growing louder and louder until it felt as if the entire world had been stuffed with thick cotton.
He couldn't hear any sound.
He couldn't hear breathing.
He couldn't hear the crowd.
He couldn't even hear his own heartbeat.
There was only the corpse, lying quietly in the center of the square.
The blood spread bit by bit, like red ink bleeding into paper, slowly creeping outward.
...
And then, whether a second had passed or ten, a sudden shriek erupted from the crowd.
Sharp.
Piercing.
Like a blade slicing through the silence.
The entire square finally surged to life.
“Someone's dead!”
“Someone's dead!”
“Thomas!”
“Thomas has been killed!”
Countless voices exploded at once.
The crowd, which had been so quiet just moments ago, instantly descended into chaos.
Some desperately shoved forward.
Some recoiled in terror.
Others tried to scramble onto wooden crates to get a clearer view of what had happened.
Jonathan snapped out of it.
“Don't move!”
“Nobody move!”
“Maintain formation!”
He practically screamed the words.
But the moment they left his mouth, they were completely swallowed by the roar of thousands of people.
There were too many people.
There were simply too many people in the square.
Those in the front wanted to see what was happening.
Those in the back, clueless about the situation, were also pushing forward.
Those in the middle were squeezed together, swept up like a tide, constantly losing their footing.
...
Thomas's corpse still lay there, his blood spreading.
And just then, someone, from who knows where, cried out.
“The police fired!”
The voice wasn't loud, but it was like a spark landing in a powder keg.
Dozens of people nearby spun around at once.
“What?”
“The police shot him?”
“I heard the gunshot!”
“It was the police!”
“They killed Thomas!”
More and more people began to repeat the claim.
More and more people began to believe it.
Because the only people on the scene who had guns were the police.
No one had seen where the bullet came from.
No one knew who the shooter was.
But everyone saw the patrolmen.
They saw the truncheons.
They saw the uniforms.
And so, the answer seemed painfully obvious.
...
“It wasn't us!”
Jonathan roared.
“Nobody fired!”
“Everyone, stand fast!”
But no one listened.
Or rather, no one wanted to listen.
A woman who had lost her husband began to wail.
A railway worker began to curse.
Several young dockworkers, their eyes bloodshot with rage, charged toward the cordon.
Emotion spread like a plague.
One face infected another.
One word influenced ten.
Ten words influenced a hundred.
In a matter of dozens of seconds, no one in the square cared about the truth anymore.
All they knew was that the man who represented them was dead.
He had died right at the negotiation table, surrounded by the police.
...
Ryan stood in the crowd, observing everything.
Things were completely out of control now.
Even if the actual shooter stepped forward and confessed right now, it would be useless.
The crowd had already made up its mind.
...
The first to fall was a woman.
No one knew her name, nor did anyone know where she was from.
She was merely standing at the edge of the crowd, holding a young girl of about six or seven in her arms.
When the shot rang out, she had instinctively tried to back away, but the crowd behind her was surging forward.
She lost her balance.
Her heel slipped.
She fell backward.
The child slipped from her grasp, slamming hard onto the stone floor.
The woman shrieked, trying desperately to scramble back up.
But it was already too late, because the human tide behind her had arrived.
It wasn't one person, it wasn't ten people, but the combined force of hundreds of people moving simultaneously.
The first foot trampled her hand.
Crack.
Her fingers snapped instantly.
A second person stepped on her shoulder.
A third trampled her back.
A fourth didn't even know what lay beneath their feet.
The woman had barely opened her mouth before her chest was brutally crushed.
The air in her lungs was instantly squeezed out, collapsing into a mangled, distorted scream before vanishing entirely.
...
But the most terrifying part was that no one stopped.
Because those behind them couldn't see a thing.
They only saw the people in front of them running, so they ran too.
They only saw the people in front of them pushing, so they pushed too.
Terror was spreading through the crowd, faster than a plague, faster than fire.
Someone yelled that the police had fired.
Ten people believed it.
A hundred people passed it on.
A thousand people began to run.
And so, everyone began to run.
...
A young dockworker was swept up in the middle of the stampede.
He didn't even know what was happening.
He only felt the space around him tightening.
Breathing became increasingly difficult.
His shoulders repeatedly slammed into others.
He was shoved forward from behind.
His feet were nearly lifted off the ground.
To his horror, he realized he could no longer control his own body.
He wasn't walking; he was being swept along by the crowd, like a leaf in a rushing river, only able to drift with the current.
Suddenly, someone in front of him tripped.
He instinctively tried to stop, but it was impossible.
The people behind him kept pushing, pushing relentlessly.
His knee collided with the fallen person's face, and he pitched forward over them.
In the next second, dozens of feet trampled him simultaneously.
His head, neck, back, and ribs.
He struggled frantically, his fingernails clawing bloody marks into the stone.
But it was completely useless.
The weight grew heavier and heavier, heavier and heavier.
It felt as if an elephant were standing on his chest.
The air in his lungs was squeezed out bit by bit.
His vision began to darken.
His ears were filled with screams, with the thudding of footsteps, with the sound of cracking bones.
Eventually, he heard nothing at all.
...
The west side of the square had descended into absolute chaos.
Some wanted to flee.
Some wanted to charge.
Some wanted to find their families.
Some wanted to see if Thomas was truly dead.
Streams of people rushing in different directions collided, forming whirlpool after whirlpool.
The elderly were knocked down.
Children were trampled.
Some climbed over wooden crates.
Some leaped directly into cargo wagons.
Terrified horses shrieked and whinnied.
A delivery carriage was overturned, its wheels rolling over the crowd.
A chorus of agonized screams instantly erupted.
...
The fire slowly spread.
The sweet scent in the air grew stronger and stronger, stronger and stronger.
Many people began to weep.
Many began to laugh hysterically.
Others stood frozen in place, dazed, as if they were seeing things.
A railway worker suddenly dropped to his knees.
He opened his arms to the empty air.
“Father...”
“Father, you've come back...”
In the next second, the tide of people swallowed him whole.
He didn't even struggle.
With a smile still plastered on his face, he vanished beneath countless trampling feet.
...
Jonathan stood behind the cordon, feeling cold all over.
Because he realized that the situation had spiraled completely out of control.
The square was no longer filled with a crowd, but a pack of wounded, rabid beasts.
The anger, terror, grief, and hallucinations of thousands of people blended together, coalescing into a torrent that no single individual could hope to stop.
A patrolman rushed over, his face deathly pale.
“Sir!”
“People are dying on the west side!”
Before his words could settle, someone else screamed from the other side.
“People are down on the east side too!”
“The ambulances can't get in!”
“The roads are completely blocked!”
Jonathan whipped his head around.
His gaze pierced through the crowd, looking toward the center of the square.
Thomas's corpse still lay there, his blood having pooled far across the stone.
And swirling around that single corpse, the entirety of East Port was collapsing.
Rate on N.U.
