Chapter 1

The young mayor got out from his car. He stood still, adjusted his eyeglasses, and stared at the abandoned building in front of him, gleaming white at the light of the full moon - a giant ghost, pale in the midst of the dark shaded foliage of ferns, narra and balete. It is the night of the founding anniversary of their city and there is a big celebration back home, yet he is alone, on a tux, here in the depths of mountain vegetation overlooking the homes of his constituents. He took a step, then another, and continued to walk calmly, slowly, as if avoiding to rouse something in the shadows; even if dried twigs and leaves cracked thunders on his leather soles that greatly disturbed the stillness of midnight.

He is now at the front of the main door. Being used as a garage for a mining company in the past, the building's entrance could fit a large excavator. It had been tied shut for years by a huge corroded chain, the lock unrecognizable because of the oxidation. He turned right and walked faster, the walls echoing his every step. He stopped. A dead end.

At a dark corner, planted on a seemingly newer concrete, is an old rusty pipe, about the size of a child's arm. At the pipe's foot is a peculiar engraving - a shape of a tree without leaves, it has five branches shaped like hands, each holding something - a scroll, a dagger, a seed, a gem and a quill. He pulled the pipe like a lever and came a soft hissing from beneath the ground then the clanking of gears. The wall in front of him disappeared. In its place, an elevator opened. He stepped inside and the pulley brought him underground. After a few minutes the elevator stopped and the door slided open. He stepped out and looked around the dim room where the sillouhetes of about fifty people stood. Among them a pair of red dots stared at him. He nodded and spread his hands.

"Thank you for coming ladies and gentlemen ," he said. "Welcome to the 51st assembly of The Common Good. Shall we get started?"

He smirked.

At the other side of the town, in a lonely cold corner of the street in front of the mayor's mansion, an undercover agent sneezed. The party is lasting longer than he expected and he still have not seen the mayor go out.

This night is unkind. The chill of the north-easterly wind is making his skin-hairs stand stiff despite his leather jacket. The meat bun he had for dinner has long been gone and his stomach can now be heard from a distance. His partner who should be snitching into the party is not responding anymore after that drunken status report nor could he contact his chief - saying that he's gone to invistigate an explotion on a suspected narcotics laboratory. It has been twelve hours and he still has not seen anything.

This is not part of the plan.

"The tip said that the bastard will be up to something tonight but why the heck are they still drinking at this hour?" he sneezed a lump again, this time with meat on it, and it dropped on his shirt.

"What the - urrggg!"

Someone laughed from the back.

Startled, he grabbed his gun and aimed at the culprit. What he saw stopped his breathing.