The rain in Kuala Lumpur always comes without warning.

My name is Ash Lin, and I‘m eighteen. I should be stressing over exams like every other senior at my school in Cheras. Instead, I’m kneeling in a back alley in Bukit Bintang, staring at a body covered by a white sheet. Rain hammers against the police tape. Red and blue lights bounce off wet walls like ghosts.

“Ash, you shouldn‘t be here.”

Inspector Chen—my dad’s old partner—sounds exhausted. But he doesn‘t send me away. He knows why I came.

Three months ago, my father died of a heart attack while investigating a serial case. That case was never solved. And now, it’s started again.

“Same method?” I ask.

Inspector Chen hesitates. Then he lifts a corner of the sheet.

The victim is a man, about thirty, in a sharp suit. No visible injuries. No blood. But his face—his face is frozen in absolute terror. Like he saw something that broke his mind before his heart stopped.

His left hand is stiff. Five fingers. Bent into a clear shape.

The number three.

“Third one,” Inspector Chen says, lighting a cigarette with shaking fingers. “First victim held up one finger. Second, two.”

“He‘s counting down. How many does he plan to kill?”

“Or he’s sending a message.”

I pull out my phone and zoom in on the crime scene photos. The victim‘s right hand is clenched tight. Using a pen, I gently pry open his fingers.

Inside: a crumpled piece of paper. One line of printed numbers.

101 108 108 32 104 97 105 108 32 116 104 101 32 103 114 101 97 116

ASCII code. The thought hits me instantly—Dad taught me this. Every letter has a corresponding number in a computer. 32 is a space. This string can be converted.

I do the math in my head. 97 is a. 98 is b. 99 is c. 100 is d. 101 is e...

e-l-l... h-a-i-l... t-h-e... g-r-e-a-t...

“All hail the great.”

I whisper the words out loud.

Inspector Chen frowns. “What does that mean?”

My phone vibrates.

A notification. Anonymous message. The sender number reads: 0000000000.

Ash Lin, did you like the clue I left for you? Your father solved my first two puzzles. So he had to die. Now it’s your turn.

—V

The blood in my veins freezes.

My father didn‘t die of a heart attack.

He was murdered.

By someone who calls himself V.

“Can you trace this?” I hand my phone to Inspector Chen.

He calls the tech team, but I already know it’s useless. Someone who can send messages like this isn‘t going to get caught by a simple trace.

Back home, I spread every case file across the living room floor. My father’s notebook is among them—his last research before he died. On the first page, in his handwriting:

“The killer isn‘t murdering people. He’s running an experiment. Each victim is a test subject.”

I flip through the pages. Dad had drawn a complex web of connections. The three victims seemed completely unrelated: Victim 1 was a university professor. Victim 2 was a stockbroker. Victim 3 was a psychologist.

But on the last page, Dad circled one common thread in red ink:

They had all participated in a psychology research study called “Project Lighthouse” six years ago.

And the project leader—the man who ran the experiments—disappeared when the project ended.

No one knew his real name.

The files listed him only by a code: V.

I stare at the ASCII message again. All hail the great.

“The great” what?

I open my laptop and search for “Project Lighthouse Kuala Lumpur.” Almost nothing. The project seems to have been scrubbed from the internet entirely. But buried in an ancient forum cache, I find a single post from six years ago:

“Project Lighthouse recruiting volunteers. Explore the limits of human fear. Do you dare face your deepest terror? Generous compensation. Contact: V@pinnacle.my”

The limits of fear.

And then it clicks. I call Inspector Chen immediately. “How did the victims actually die?”

His voice is heavy. “The autopsy reports just came in. Victim 1 showed extreme adrenaline overload—his body reacted as if he was being buried alive. But he died in his own living room. Victim 2 had all the physiological markers of drowning. But he died in his office, completely dry.”

“And Victim 3?”

“Victim 3... is even stranger. His body showed symptoms of extreme high-altitude exposure—oxygen deprivation, freezing temperatures, air pressure trauma. But he died at ground level.”

No external injuries. Yet their brains believed they were dying in extreme environments—and their bodies followed.

“He‘s using some kind of method to make their brains think they’re in a life-threatening situation,” I say. “This isn‘t murder. This is an experiment. He’s perfecting a killing technique that requires no weapon.”

“How do you know all this?”

“Because my father was close to figuring it out. V killed him to silence him. And now...”

My laptop screen flickers.

A black window opens. Green text types across it, letter by letter.

Correct analysis, Ash. As a reward, here’s your next clue: The fourth experiment will take place in 72 hours. Location—your fath

The countdown timer sat in the corner of my laptop screen like a living thing.

71:13:22

71:13:21

I couldn‘t stop glancing at it. Every lost second felt like a small death. V had given me seventy-two hours to stop a murder, and all I had was an encrypted message and a riddle about my father’s favorite place.

Where would Dad go when he needed to think?

I closed my eyes, forcing myself back into memory. My father, Inspector Daniel Lin, was not a sentimental man. He didn‘t have a favorite café or a quiet park bench. His sanctuary was his work. When a case consumed him, he would disappear into the National Library on Jalan Tun Razak, requesting obscure psychology journals and forensic textbooks. Or he’d drive up to Bukit Nanas at midnight, staring at the KL Tower lights while he pieced together puzzles in his head.

But V‘s clue was specific: “your father’s favorite place.” It had to mean something more. Something connected to the case V killed him over.

I picked up Dad‘s notebook again. The red circle around Project Lighthouse stared back at me. On the next page was the list of victims Dad had connected: Professor Tan (victim 1), Mr. Rajan the stockbroker (victim 2), Dr. Sarah the psychologist (victim 3). Three names. Three dead.

But something nagged at me. When Dad investigated, he always dug deeper than anyone else. Three victims linked to a psychology project that ran for six months with dozens of volunteers? There had to be more.

I flipped through the notebook slowly, page by page, holding each one up to the window light. Nothing. I checked the back cover. Nothing. I was about to set it down when my thumb brushed against the inside of the front cover. The paper felt... uneven. Thicker in one spot.

Carefully, I peeled back the corner of the glued-down endpaper. A thin sheet of tracing paper was hidden underneath, folded into a tight square. I unfolded it with trembling fingers.

It was a list. Seven names, handwritten in Dad’s neat print.

Prof. Adrian Tan — deceased (buried alive illusion) ✗

Mr. Devan Rajan — deceased (drowning illusion) ✗

Dr. Sarah Wong — deceased (high altitude illusion) ✗

Ms. Amira Hassan — neuroscientist, UMMC

Dato’ Rahman Ishak — property tycoon

Inspector Chen Kai Ming — PDRM, Bukit Aman HQ

[Name scratched out] — whereabouts unknown

My breath caught in my throat.

Inspector Chen. Uncle Chen. The man who had been like a second father to me after Dad died. He was on the list. And the fourth name—Amira Hassan—was a neuroscientist. V‘s experiments required neuroscience to pull off brain-fooling illusions. She would know how the technique worked. She might even know who V really was.

I grabbed my phone and called Inspector Chen. It rang five times before he picked up, his voice groggy. “Ash? It’s almost midnight.”

“Uncle Chen, listen to me. You and five others were part of Project Lighthouse. Am I right?”

Silence. Long and heavy.

“Where did you hear that name?”

“Dad‘s notebook. There’s a list of seven participants. Three are dead. You‘re number six. Ms. Amira Hassan is number four. We need to find her before V does.”

A sharp exhale. “Ash, your father made me promise never to talk about Lighthouse. He said the more I knew, the more danger I’d be in. But if you‘ve found the list... we don’t have a choice anymore. I‘ll pick you up in twenty minutes.”

---

Inspector Chen’s car smelled of old coffee and rain. He drove with both hands gripping the wheel, knuckles white.

“Project Lighthouse was supposed to be legitimate research,” he said, eyes fixed on the road. “A study on how the brain processes fear. They hooked us up to EEG machines, showed us disturbing images, measured our responses. But after a few sessions, things got... strange.”

“Strange how?”

“The lead researcher—a man who only called himself Dr. V—started using a combination of virtual reality, binaural audio, and mild psychedelics. He wanted to see if he could make the brain experience a terror that wasn‘t real. A drowning. A burial. A freefall. The funding came from a private tech company. When two volunteers had complete mental breakdowns, the project was shut down and erased from every record.”

“Who was the seventh person?” I asked. “The name scratched out.”

Inspector Chen‘s jaw tightened. “I don’t know. None of us ever met the seventh participant. V kept that person isolated. All I remember is... once, I saw a silhouette through a frosted glass door. Young. Slim. The posture of someone who had been broken and rebuilt.”

The car fell into silence. We were heading toward University Malaya Medical Centre, where Amira Hassan worked. The dashboard clock read 11:47 PM. The countdown on my laptop, now closed but burning in my mind, had dipped below seventy-one hours.

When we arrived at the hospital, the neurology wing was eerily quiet. A janitor mopped the corridor with slow, mechanical strokes. We found Amira Hassan in her office on the third floor, hunched over a microscope, a cup of cold tea beside her. She was a small woman in her late forties, with sharp eyes that held too much knowledge.

She looked up when we entered. Her expression didn‘t change when she saw Inspector Chen. It was the look of someone who had been expecting bad news for years.

“It’s started again, hasn‘t it?” she said. No greeting. No surprise.

“The fourth experiment is in less than three days,” I said. “We think you’re the target.”

Amira removed her glasses and rubbed her eyes. “I‘ve known it would be me eventually. After your father died, I went into hiding—teaching, avoiding the public eye. But V doesn’t forget.” She opened a drawer and pulled out a thick manila folder. “I‘ve been gathering everything I could on his technique. It’s called FTI—Fear Transference Induction. He uses a combination of targeted electromagnetic pulses, infrasound, and a synthesized compound administered through the air. If you inhale it and are exposed to the right triggers, your brain will generate a reality more terrifying than anything you’ve ever experienced. Your body reacts. Your heart stops. And there‘s no weapon to trace.”

“You know how to stop him?” I asked.

“I know how his experiment works. But stopping him...” She looked at me with something like pity. “Your father nearly did. He was close to finding V’s identity. That‘s why he was killed. V fears being known more than anything else. It’s why he hides behind puzzles and codes. He wants to feel superior, untouchable.”

I pulled out the list from Dad‘s notebook. “The seventh participant. Who is he?”

Amira hesitated. She exchanged a glance with Inspector Chen. “That’s the terrifying part, Ash. Your father believed the seventh participant wasn‘t a victim at all. He believed the seventh participant became V.”

The room seemed to tilt.

“That’s impossible,” Inspector Chen said. “V was the lead researcher. How could he also be a participant?”

“Because the original V—the scientist—died six years ago. The project‘s records were falsified. Your father discovered that the seventh participant was a teenager at the time. Someone brilliant. Someone who was pushed too far in the experiments and... broke. But instead of shattering completely, he rebuilt himself into something else. He adopted V’s identity. He continued the research. Only now, he‘s not just studying fear—he’s using it as a weapon.”

A teenager. Six years ago. That meant V could be in his early to mid-twenties now. Young. Smart. Obsessed.

My phone vibrated. The same impossible number: 0000000000.

Well done finding the list, Ash. You’re faster than your father. But you‘re still too slow. The fourth experiment is already complete. Check the rooftop of the hospital.

The countdown continues—for experiment five.

—V

Amira saw my face go pale. “What is it?”

I was already running.

The stairwell was a blur of concrete and emergency lights. I burst onto the hospital rooftop, the KL skyline stretching before me in a sea of neon and shadow. The air was cold. And at the center of the roof, lying perfectly still on the ground, was a man in an expensive suit.

Dato’ Rahman Ishak. The property tycoon. Name number five on the list.

His face was frozen in a silent scream. His body showed no injuries. But his hands were clenched so tightly that his fingernails had drawn blood. And his left hand—stiff, posed deliberately—was holding up four fingers.

Not three. Not Amira.

Four.

V had skipped a name. He‘d killed the fifth person on the list, not the fourth. A statement. A warning.

I don’t follow your logic. I make my own rules.

Inspector Chen and Amira reached the rooftop behind me, both breathing hard. Chen knelt beside the body, his face a mask of professional composure that I knew was barely holding.

“The fourth experiment,” I said, my voice hollow. “He killed Dato‘ Rahman instead of you. Why?”

Amira stared at the corpse, her expression unreadable. “Because he wants me alive. I’m the only one who understands his technique fully. I‘m the only one who can explain it to you.” She turned to me, and for the first time, I saw real fear in her eyes. “He’s not just playing with you, Ash. He‘s training you. He wants you to understand his work. To appreciate it. He’s looking for a successor.”

The words hit me like a physical blow.

“And your father,” she continued quietly, “refused. So V killed him. Now he‘s testing you to see if you’re different.”

My phone screen lit up again. The countdown timer had reset.

47:59:59

Beneath the numbers, a new line of text appeared:

The fifth experiment will be public. Location: your father‘s actual favorite place. I wasn’t lying about that. Come find me, Ash. Let‘s see if you have what it takes.

—V

I looked at the four-fingered corpse, then at the city glittering below. Somewhere out there, a young man who had once been a broken teenager was preparing his next move. And he believed that I—the son of the man he killed—might be worthy of carrying on his work.

I shoved the thought down into the darkest corner of my mind.

“I‘m going to stop him,” I said. “Not join him.”

But as we descended the stairwell, Amira’s words echoed in my skull. He wants you to understand his work.

And the worst part? Part of me already did.

The rooftop felt like the edge of the world.

I stood there, Dato’ Rahman‘s frozen scream still burning behind my eyes, while the KL skyline glittered like it didn’t care that a man had just died with four fingers raised to the sky. Inspector Chen was on his phone, calling in the body, his voice tight. Amira stood near the door, arms wrapped around herself, staring at nothing.

Four dead. And V had skipped her name on purpose.

He wants me alive. He’s training you.

I shoved Amira‘s words down. I couldn’t afford to think about that now. The countdown on my phone had reset to forty-seven hours and change. V had promised a public experiment. A spectacle. And the only clue was five words:

Your father’s actual favorite place.

“Uncle Chen,” I said, turning away from the body. “Where did Dad go when he really needed to think? Not the library. Not Bukit Nanas. Somewhere... personal.”

Inspector Chen ended his call and rubbed his temples. “Daniel was a private man. Even I didn‘t know half of what went on in his head. But...” He paused. “There was one place he mentioned once. A place he took you when you were small. He said it was where he taught you how to see.”

How to see.

And then it clicked.

I made them drive me home. Not to the apartment I shared with Dad, but to the old house in Petaling Jaya—the one we lived in before Mom passed away. Dad had sold it years ago, but I still remembered the address. The new owners had painted the gate a different color, but the mango tree in the front yard was still there.

I didn’t need to go inside. I needed the shed.

Behind the house, half-hidden by overgrown bougainvillea, was a small tin-roofed workshop. Dad called it his “thinking shed.” When a case got too loud inside his head, he would disappear in there for hours. I remember sitting on a wooden stool at age seven, watching him pin crime scene photos to a corkboard while he muttered to himself.

The shed was still there. The lock was rusted, but it gave way with a hard tug from Chen‘s multi-tool.

Inside, the air smelled of dust and old paper. A single bulb flickered on, revealing what Dad had left behind: a desk, a corkboard, and a bookshelf crammed with case files. But my eyes went straight to the wall behind the desk. Painted there, in Dad’s handwriting, was a quote I hadn‘t thought about in years.

“To see what others miss, stand where no one else is looking.”

And beneath it, a crude drawing of a clock tower.

Not just any clock tower. The one at Dataran Merdeka. The Sultan Abdul Samad Building. I knew it instantly. Dad had taken me there when I was ten, on a Saturday morning when the square was packed with tourists and families flying kites. He’d pointed at the clock tower and said, “Ash, this is the best place in KL to watch people. Everyone looks at the building. No one looks at the people looking at the building. That‘s where you’ll find the truth.”

That was his real favorite place. Not the library. Not the tower at night. A crowded public square where he could observe humanity without being observed.

And that was exactly where V would stage his next experiment.

“Dataran Merdeka,” I said, already pulling up my phone. “There‘s an event there tomorrow. Some kind of independence celebration preview—live music, food stalls, thousands of people.”

Inspector Chen swore under his breath. “If he releases that compound in a crowd...”

“He won’t need to,” Amira said quietly. “Fear is contagious. One person drops in front of a thousand, and the panic does the rest. It‘s the perfect public demonstration of his technique.”

I checked the countdown. It was synced to end exactly at noon tomorrow—the same time the main stage performance would begin. A crowd. Cameras. Media coverage. V didn’t just want to kill someone. He wanted the world to watch.

“We need to evacuate the event,” Chen said, already reaching for his radio.

“No.” The word came out of my mouth before I could stop it. “If we evacuate, V will know we‘ve figured it out. He’ll disappear and pick another target, another time. We won‘t get another chance to catch him.”

“Ash, there could be thousands of lives at risk.”

“And if we don‘t stop him now, there’ll be thousands more.” I met Chen‘s eyes. “Dad spent his last months hunting V. He died for this. I’m not letting V slip away because we played it safe.”

A long silence. Then Chen nodded, once. “What‘s your plan?”

I looked at the clock tower drawing on the wall. Stand where no one else is looking.

“We don‘t evacuate. We infiltrate. Amira, you said V uses targeted triggers—sounds, visuals, a compound. If we can find his equipment before noon, we can disable it. He’ll be somewhere in the crowd, controlling it remotely. We find him, we find V.”

“And if we can‘t find the equipment?” Amira asked.

“Then I’ll make him show himself.”

Dataran Merdeka at 10 AM was already chaos.

I didn‘t have a tone generator. But I had a phone. And a voice.

I pulled up a tone generator app—something I’d downloaded for a physics project last year—and maxed out the volume. Set to G-sharp. Steady tone. I pressed the speaker against the man‘s ear.

For three agonizing seconds, nothing happened.

Then he gasped.

A ragged, desperate inhale, like a diver breaking the surface. Color flooded back into his face. His eyes, still terrified, focused on me.

“You’re okay,” I said, my voice shaking. “You‘re going to be okay.”

But V wasn‘t done.

The speakers crackled again. “Impressive. You’ve been paying attention. But that was just the opening act. The real experiment begins now.”

A new sound filled the square. Not music. A countdown. Amplified, pounding, synchronized with the numbers on my phone.

00:59:59.

00:59:58.

“Chen!” I shouted into the earpiece. “Where is him?”

“We traced the signal to a rooftop northwest of the square! I‘m sending a team now!”

I looked up at the buildings surrounding Dataran Merdeka. Rooftops. Windows. A hundred places to hide. And in one of them, V was watching.

My phone buzzed again.

Northwest rooftop. Come alone, Ash. I want to meet you face to face. If you bring anyone else, I trigger the main event—and this time, the whole square goes under.

You have ten minutes.

—V

I stared at the message. Every instinct screamed that it was a trap. But the countdown was real. And if V could put one person into cardiac arrest, he could do it to a thousand.

“I have to go,” I said into the earpiece.

“Ash, don‘t you dare—” Chen’s voice was cut off as I pulled the device out and dropped it.

The man I‘d saved was sitting up now, being helped by paramedics. The crowd had thinned, people fleeing toward the edges of the square. The countdown echoed from every speaker.

I turned northwest and ran.

The building was an old colonial-era shop house, seven stories, with a rusty fire escape clinging to its side. I climbed it two steps at a time, my lungs burning. The rooftop door was already open.

And there, standing at the edge with the KL skyline behind him, was a figure in a black hoodie. Young. Lean. His face was hidden by a simple white mask—featureless except for a single symbol painted on the forehead.

The Roman numeral for five. V.

“You came,” he said. His voice without distortion was shockingly ordinary. Calm. Almost familiar. “Most people would have run.”

“I’m not most people.”

“No.” He tilted his head, studying me like a specimen. “You’re not. You‘re your father’s son. That‘s why you’re still alive.”

I took a step forward. “The square. Call it off.”

“I will. On one condition.” He raised a small device in his gloved hand—a remote trigger, thumb resting on a button. “Answer a question correctly. A riddle, you could say. The same one I asked your father before he died.”

My blood ran cold. “You spoke to him? Before he—”

“We had a conversation, yes. In his thinking shed, actually. He was very calm for a man who knew he was about to die. I asked him the riddle. He gave me an answer. But it was the wrong answer.”

The mask tilted again, and I could swear I sensed a smile behind it.

“Here it is, Ash. Listen carefully.”

V‘s voice dropped, almost reverent.

“I am the oldest prison in the world. I have no walls, no bars, no guards. I hold more prisoners than all the jails on Earth combined. Everyone visits me, but no one escapes me alive. What am I?”

The wind gusted across the rooftop. The countdown from the square was still pulsing, a distant heartbeat. Forty seconds left.

My mind raced. A prison with no walls. Holds more prisoners than all jails combined. Everyone visits. No one escapes alive.

The oldest prison in the world.

And then I remembered Dad’s words, painted on the shed wall. To see what others miss, stand where no one else is looking.

It wasn‘t a place. It was something inside every person. Something Dad had faced in his final moments. Something V had been trapped in since he was a teenager, broken by experiments and rebuilt into a monster.

I met V’s eyes—or where his eyes would be behind the mask.

“The answer is... fear,” I said. “The oldest prison is fear.”

Silence.

V didn‘t move for what felt like an eternity. Then, slowly, he lowered the remote.

“Correct,” he said softly. “Your father answered ‘the mind.’ Close. But not precise enough. He died because he couldn’t admit what he was really afraid of.”

“And what was that?”

V turned away, walking toward the edge of the rooftop. “Losing you.”

The words hit me like a physical blow.

“Your father was afraid that his work would catch up to him and you would pay the price. And he was right. Because here you are. His greatest fear, standing on a rooftop with the man who killed him.”

I lunged forward, but V was faster. He stepped off the edge—and I realized, too late, that there was a zip line rigged to the fire escape, disappearing into the alley below. By the time I reached the edge, he was gone, a black shadow melting into the chaos of the square.

My phone buzzed one last time.

The fifth experiment is complete. But not because he died—because he lived. You saved him, Ash. That was the real test.

You and I are more alike than you want to admit. We both understand fear. We both know how to use it. The difference is, I’ve accepted what I am. You‘re still pretending to be something else.

Sixth experiment in seven days. By then, you’ll have a choice to make.

—V

Below me, the square was slowly returning to life. The countdown had stopped. The man I saved was being loaded into an ambulance, alive. I had stopped a murder. I had solved the riddle.

But as I stood there, watching the crowd disperse, V‘s words echoed in my head.

You and me are more alike than you want to admit.

And the worst part?

I couldn‘t tell if he was lying.