The capsule hotel's white lights were cold and uniform, like the shadowless lamps above an operating table. The only sounds were the low hum of the ventilation system and the scratch of a pen across paper. That faint sound seemed to carry an immense weight, deciding the fates of people far away while wearing away my own existence.
A world map stolen from a print shop was taped to the wall in front of me, several points marked on it with a red electronic marker-the places where "River Styx," "the Professor," and "the Reaper" had once been active and ultimately met their ends. It looked like a grotesque map of victories. Beside the open notebook at my elbow lay a new list, written in my own hand, targeting the more deeply rooted "lesions" hiding behind the shield of the law.
· Harold Winslow, senior partner at the Cornerstone law firm: serving multinational financial conglomerates and oligarchs exclusively, he was a master of legal loopholes who had personally created numerous notorious tax havens and immunity agreements. He was hailed as "the architect of capital's fortress." His actions were legal, but the damage they caused to public interests, the environment, and judicial fairness was beyond counting.
· General Marcus Thorne, former senior military official and one of the founders of the Iron Curtain private military company: his company had participated in numerous unauthorized armed interventions and human rights abuses, yet always escaped punishment under the pretext of "national security" or "commercial contracts." He treated war as a business, fueling conflict hotspots around the globe.
· The environment minister of a resource-rich nation, alias "Ostrich": during the minister's tenure, illegal mining and deforestation had systematically been given the green light, while environmental advocates were silenced. Pristine ecosystems had suffered devastating destruction, and the