Blood in the Backstreets

The streets smelled like oil and rain. Neon lights flickered over puddles, the colors distorting into ghostly shapes that danced under my feet. It was almost midnight in George Town, and the air was so heavy with humidity that every breath felt like swallowing soup. I should have been asleep—God knows my body needed it—but after what happened last night, closing my eyes felt like walking into a trap.

Reza walked beside me, hands buried deep in his jacket, a cigarette hanging from his lips. He was quiet. Too quiet. When Reza didn’t speak, it meant his mind was chewing on something dangerous.

“Spit it out,” I said.

“What?”

“You’re walking like you’ve already killed someone and are planning the next one.”

He grinned, barely. “You’re not wrong.”

We turned into a narrow backstreet where rusted fire escapes crawled up the walls like skeleton ribs. Somewhere above us, a radio played an old Hindi song, its melody warped by distance.

“I talked to Musa,” Reza finally said. “He knows who hit the shipment.”

I stopped dead. “And you didn’t lead with that?”

“I was waiting for the right moment. Besides…” He flicked his cigarette into the gutter. “It’s bad.”

“How bad?”

“It wasn’t the police. Wasn’t random thieves either. It was Kamal’s people.”

For a moment, the whole street seemed to shrink around me. My fists clenched on instinct.

“Kamal,” I repeated. “He’s here?”

“No. Not yet. But someone high up in his crew is running operations in Penang. Musa says they’ve been moving in slowly for months.”

My brain started buzzing. I had been running from Kamal since Dhaka—since the night everything burned down and I became a scapegoat. Now he was here in spirit, breathing down my neck even across the ocean. “Why hit our shipment?”

Reza gave me a look like I was being naïve. “Control. First they steal from us, then they offer ‘protection’. Classic move.”

The thought made me sick. “Where’s Musa now?”

“Waiting for us. He’s got a location on their warehouse.”

I should have turned back. I should have told Reza that this was above our pay grade and that we needed to tell the boss. But the moment I heard Kamal’s name, logic got drowned out by something else—something hotter, darker.

“Let’s go,” I said.

The building looked abandoned from the outside—corrugated iron walls streaked with rust, weeds poking through the cracked asphalt. But the light seeping through the broken windows told another story.

Musa was leaning against his motorbike, a lean man with the kind of eyes that were always moving. He gave us a nod.

“They’ve got maybe six guys inside,” Musa said. “Two outside on watch. Saw a van parked out back—probably full of our stuff.”

“Any guns?” I asked.

Musa smirked. “You think they’re running candy out of here?”

We moved fast. Reza took the left side of the building, creeping along the wall. Musa and I went right. The night was quiet except for the distant hum of traffic.

The first guard was leaning against the door, scrolling through his phone. Musa slipped up behind him and cracked him over the skull with a length of pipe. The man went down without a sound.

Inside, the air was thick with the smell of damp wood and gasoline. Crates were stacked high, marked with codes I didn’t recognize. Voices came from deeper in, along with the clink of bottles and the scrape of metal.

We crouched behind a stack of boxes, watching two men load smaller crates into the van. Reza appeared from the shadows, motioning with two fingers: Four more in the next room.

I tapped my chest and pointed at the men near the van. Reza nodded. Musa tightened his grip on the pipe.

We moved as one.

The first man didn’t even have time to turn before I slammed his head into the van’s metal frame. The second swung at me with a crowbar, but I ducked and drove my knee into his stomach. Reza grabbed him from behind and drove a knife into his side.

Somewhere deeper inside the warehouse, someone shouted. Footsteps thundered toward us.

The next few minutes were chaos. Three men burst through the doorway, two holding machetes, one with a pistol. The gunman fired wild, the bullet sparking off the wall near my head. Musa swung his pipe and caught one machete wielder in the jaw, but the other closed in on me fast.

Steel flashed in the dim light. I blocked with my forearm, pain shooting up to my shoulder, and grabbed his wrist, twisting hard until the blade clattered to the ground. I headbutted him before he could recover, sending him crashing into a stack of crates.

Reza had the gunman pinned against the wall, the knife at his throat. “Who sent you?” he snarled.

“Kamal!” the man gasped. “Kamal’s people—”

The sound of engines cut him off. Outside, tires screeched.

“They called backup,” Musa shouted.

We grabbed what we could—two crates from the van, still sealed—and bolted for the side door. The alley outside was narrow, hemmed in by high walls. Ahead, a pickup truck roared toward us, headlights blazing.

“Move!” I yelled.

We split—Reza and Musa darted left, I went right. The truck swerved after me, tires screaming. I vaulted a low fence, landing hard in a puddle, and kept running. My lungs felt like they were on fire.

The street ahead was empty, except for an old tuk-tuk parked by the curb. I yanked the driver out—apologizing in half-broken Malay—and slammed the accelerator. The little three-wheeler groaned but lurched forward, just as the pickup came screeching around the corner.

Bullets tore through the night. Glass shattered around me. I swerved hard into a side street, the tuk-tuk almost tipping over. The engine screamed as I pushed it faster than it was ever meant to go.

Finally, after what felt like hours, the headlights faded. I ditched the tuk-tuk behind a row of shops and slipped into the shadows, chest heaving.

I found Reza and Musa at our safe spot—a half-collapsed shop front we’d been using as a hideout. Reza had a cut on his cheek, Musa’s knuckles were raw.

“They know we’re here now,” Musa said grimly.

“Let them know,” I spat. “We hit them first.”

Reza lit another cigarette, his eyes glinting in the dark. “This isn’t over. Kamal’s people will keep coming.”

“Good,” I said. “I’ve been running long enough. It’s time I stopped.”

There was a silence, heavy and deliberate. Reza looked at me like he wasn’t sure if I was serious.

“You go after Kamal,” he said, “there’s no coming back from that.”

I met his gaze. “I’m not coming back anyway.”

Somewhere in the distance, sirens wailed

Later that night, while I was bandaging my arm, Musa slipped something onto the table—a phone, buzzing softly.

“They’re calling you,” he said.

I frowned. “Who?”

He didn’t answer.

I picked up the phone. An unfamiliar voice spoke, low and deliberate.

“Arman Azin. Or should I call you Ashique?”

My blood ran cold.

“I have something you want,” the voice continued. “And you have something I need. Meet me tomorrow at Pier 17. Come alone… or she dies.”

The line went dead.

I stared at the phone in my hand, heart pounding, as the truth sank in. The voice had said she—and there was only one person it could mean.