Incorporated with DeepSeek
**AIR COLOMBIA**
The ceiling here is different. No crack. Just a smooth, white expanse. The light is softer, too. More like sunlight filtered through something. I think it's a hospital, but I'm not sure anymore. The memories come in fragments now, like a broken vid feed that keeps glitching back to the same nightmare.
My name is not important. What matters is what I saw. What I survived.
And what I will never, ever touch again.
---
**CHAPTER 1: THE BRIEFING**
The sicario's name was Hector, and he spoke to us like we were children. Which, in a way, we were. Twenty-three recruits sitting on rough wooden benches in a warehouse outside Medellín, the humidity eating us alive while ceiling fans chopped the air into useless motion.
"You want to work for the Cartel," he said, pacing slowly. "You want respect. Money. Women. All of that comes. But first, you must understand the one rule."
He stopped walking. Looked at each of us in turn. His eyes were old. Older than his face.
"There is only one foreign organization in our territory that is absolutely, completely untouchable. You see their ships, you look the other way. You hear their name, you forget it. You meet one of their people, you smile, you nod, and you walk away."
He pulled out a tablet. Flicked it on. Showed us footage.
Three vessels, moving in perfect formation, impossibly fast, skimming the surface of the sea like stones skipping across a pond. They were beautiful and terrifying in equal measure. Sleek, low-slung racing catamarans, stretched wide and long—seventy meters, Hector said—with wings that extended from their sides like some kind of futuristic sea bird. The lead ship had lettering on its hull: **AIR COLOMBIA**.
"These are not narcos," Hector said. "They carry no drugs. No weapons. Only goods. Medicine. Vaccines. Emergency supplies. Computer parts. Sometimes food, when the villages flood and the roads wash out. They run cargo up every river they can access, all across the Caribbean. They are the fastest thing on water. Faster than our patrol boats. Faster than the navy. They can break the sound barrier ten meters above the waves."
Someone in the back row laughed. "Bullshit."
Hector moved so fast I didn't see it. One moment he was at the front. The next, he had the doubter by the throat, pressed against the warehouse wall, a knife resting gently against his eyeball.
"No," Hector said softly, "you will find that I do not bullshit. The men who crew those ships are not dockworkers. They are former BOPE. British SAS. American Navy SEALs. French Foreign Legion. Chinese Marines. The best killers the world has ever produced, retired to the only job that pays enough and asks nothing of their souls."
He released the man, who slid down the wall gasping.
"Now. Here is the rule, and you will remember it with your blood if you must: If anyone—anyone—touches an Air Colombia ship, a crew member, or their cargo, that person will die. Not in a firefight. Not in a glorious battle. They will die at night, in their bed, with a single shot. Head, lung, heart. In that order. The doctors will say it was an aneurysm. The police will find nothing. And the next morning, three ships will still be running cargo up the river, and no one will speak of it again."
He let that sink in.
"Why?" someone asked. "Why do we protect them?"
Hector's face changed. Softened, almost. "Because they are the only outsiders who actually bring profit to our people. Not to the Cartel. To the people. The villages. The families. They built the harbor at Puerto Escondido with their own money. They built the cafe where the old men sit and drink coffee and watch the ships come in. Every employee gets an equal share of the company. The cooks. The cleaners. The crew. All equal."
He looked at the floor for a moment.
"When the Boss—the man who started Air Colombia—when he came to Puerto Escondido for the first time after they finished the harbor, he walked through the village. He saw the clinic they'd built. The school. The old women selling empanadas to his crew. The children swimming in the water, safe because his ships patrol it. And he sat down at the cafe, and he ordered a coffee, and he wept."
Hector looked up at us.
"I was there. I saw it. A man who could buy and sell every one of us, crying into his coffee because poor people were happy. So yes. You will protect them. With your silence if nothing else."
---
**CHAPTER 2: THE HARBOR**
I didn't believe it. Not really. Not until I saw it myself.
Puerto Escondido wasn't a Cartel town. That was the first thing I noticed. No armed men on corners. No kids running packages. Just a small, clean harbor with three long docks designed to accommodate the Air Colombia fleet. The ships were there when I arrived, resting in the water like sleeping gods, their wings folded against their hulls.
The cafe sat on a low hill overlooking the water. White stucco. Red tile roof. Ceiling fans spinning lazily overhead. I sat at a table near the railing and ordered coffee, just like Hector said.
It was the best coffee I've ever tasted.
The crew came and went. They looked like anyone else—tanned, relaxed, wearing shorts and loose shirts. But you could see it in the way they moved. The way their eyes tracked everything without seeming to. The way they never sat with their backs to the door. Former soldiers. All of them. You don't lose that.
An old woman brought me empanadas. I tried to pay, but she waved me off.
"From the crew," she said, smiling. "They say new face, new friend."
I looked over at their table. One of them—a big man with a shaved head and tattoos crawling up his neck—raised his coffee cup to me. I raised mine back.
For a moment, I felt something I hadn't felt in years. Peace.
---
**CHAPTER 3: THE VISITORS**
They came on the third day.
A private yacht, gleaming white, flying no flag. It anchored outside the harbor, and a smaller boat brought five men to the dock. Tourists, I thought at first. Rich idiots looking for authentic experience.
Then I saw how they moved.
Confident. Purposeful. Hands never far from their sides. Eyes scanning constantly. They weren't tourists. They were hunters.
I was sitting at the cafe, same table, same coffee. The Air Colombia crew was there too, scattered around, pretending to relax but I could see the change. The big man with the tattoos had put down his newspaper. Another crew member, a woman with close-cropped hair and a face like carved stone, had shifted her chair to face the newcomers.
The five men sat at a table near the water. Ordered coffee. Laughed too loud. Talked too much.
One of them—the leader, I guessed, based on how the others deferred to him—kept looking at the ships. Not with admiration. With calculation.
I finished my coffee and left. It wasn't my business. I was just a recruit. I had the rule. I would follow it.
---
**CHAPTER 4: THE NIGHT**
I was staying in a small room above a butcher shop, three blocks from the water. The walls were thin. I could hear the family downstairs arguing about something, a man and a woman, their voices rising and falling like the tide.
I woke to silence.
Not the kind of silence that happens naturally. The kind that happens when everything stops at once. The arguing had ceased. The dogs weren't barking. Even the insects seemed to have gone quiet.
I lay still. Listened.
Nothing.
Then, soft as a whisper, a sound. Not nearby. Not in my room. But somewhere in the night. A single cough. The kind a rifle makes when it's fitted with a suppressor.
Then another. And another.
Three shots. Head, lung, heart. In that order.
I didn't move. Didn't breathe. Just lay there in the dark, staring at the ceiling, waiting for morning.
---
**CHAPTER 5: THE MORNING**
The cafe was full when I got there.
Crew members. Locals. The old woman who'd given me empanadas. Everyone drinking coffee, talking quietly, watching the harbor where the three ships rested peacefully in the morning light.
The yacht was gone.
I ordered coffee. Sat at my usual table. The big man with the tattoos walked past, nodded at me, kept going.
No one mentioned the night. No one mentioned the five men. It was as if they'd never existed.
Later, I saw Hector. He was sitting alone at a corner table, reading a newspaper. I walked over, sat down across from him.
"The five," I said quietly. "The ones on the yacht."
He didn't look up from his paper. "What five?"
"The ones who came yesterday. The ones who—"
He lowered the paper. Looked at me with those old eyes.
"There were no five. There was no yacht. You had a dream. Drink your coffee."
I wanted to argue. But I remembered the warehouse. The knife against the eyeball. The rule.
I drank my coffee.
---
**CHAPTER 6: THE BOSS**
He came that afternoon.
I knew it was him the moment he stepped off the ship. Not because of how he was dressed—just a plain linen shirt, worn jeans, sandals—but because of how everyone reacted. The crew straightened. The locals smiled. The old woman rushed to embrace him.
The Boss.
He walked through the village like a man coming home. Stopped to talk to children. Bought empanadas from every vendor. Sat on a bench and let an old man show him photographs of grandchildren.
Then he walked to the cafe.
I was still there. Couldn't seem to leave. He sat down at the table next to mine, ordered coffee, and stared out at the water for a long time.
I watched him. I couldn't help it.
After a while, he turned to me. Smiled. It was a tired smile, but genuine.
"You're new," he said.
"Yes."
"You like it here?"
I thought about it. The quiet. The peace. The way people looked at each other, not with fear, but with something like contentment.
"Yes," I said. "I do."
He nodded. Looked back at the water.
"You know what we do here?" he asked.
"Transport goods. Medicine. Supplies."
"Yes. But that's not why." He was quiet for a moment. "We're building something. A place where the rules are different. Where people don't have to be afraid of the knock on the door. Where the money goes to the people who earn it, not the ones who steal it."
He took a sip of his coffee.
"It's small. Just this village, for now. But it's something."
I didn't know what to say. So I said nothing.
He finished his coffee. Stood up. Looked at me one last time.
"Stay if you want. Leave if you want. But remember—whatever you do, don't touch what we're building. The people here... they deserve this."
He walked away, down toward the water, toward his ships.
And I sat there, watching him go, and I understood why Hector had told the story. Why the Boss had cried.
Because this place—this impossible, fragile, beautiful place—was worth crying over.
---
**CHAPTER 7: THE RECKONING**
I stayed.
For two years, I stayed. Worked at the cafe. Learned to cook empanadas from the old woman. Watched the ships come and go. Watched the children grow. Watched the village thrive.
I never touched the cargo. Never asked questions. Never looked too long at the crew.
And then, one night, they came.
Not the Cartel. Something worse. Outsiders. Men with hard eyes and harder guns, who thought they could take what Air Colombia had built. Who thought the rule didn't apply to them.
The crew was ready. Of course they were. They'd always been ready.
I hid in the butcher shop, in the room above, listening to the gunfire. It lasted maybe twenty minutes. Then silence.
In the morning, the village was untouched. The cafe was open. The old woman was making empanadas.
And the bodies of seventeen men were floating face-down in the harbor.
The crew moved among them, pulling them out, stacking them on the dock like cordwood. The big man with the tattoos saw me watching. He walked over, stood beside me.
"They didn't listen," he said.
"No."
He looked at me. For a long moment, I thought he was going to say something else. Something about me, about my place here, about whether I'd earned the right to stay.
Instead, he just nodded.
"Empenadas are ready," he said. "The old woman's asking for you."
He walked away.
I stood there for a moment, looking at the bodies, looking at the ships, looking at the village going about its morning like nothing had happened.
Then I went inside. Ate empanadas. Drank coffee.
And never spoke of it again.
---
**EPILOGUE: THE LESSON**
The ceiling here is white. Smooth. The light is soft. I think it's a hospital, but I'm not sure anymore.
The memories come in fragments. The ships. The cafe. The old woman's smile. The bodies in the harbor.
And the rule.
*If anyone touches an Air Colombia ship, a crew member, or their cargo, that person will die. Not in a firefight. Not in a glorious battle. They will die at night, in their bed, with a single shot. Head, lung, heart. In that order.*
I survived because I followed the rule. Because I understood, from that first day in the warehouse, that some things are untouchable for a reason.
Most don't understand. Most try to take. Most end up floating face-down in some harbor, forgotten before the sun sets.
But me? I'm still here. Drinking coffee in my memory. Watching the ships come home.
The Boss cried because he built something worth protecting.
I cry because I got to see it.
And because I know, now, that I'll never see it again.
Enter here or here. Dream to Reality or Dying Trying, but this is the way. Gangcoltoure Vs Gangculture.
