The Price of Silence

“The hottest place in Hell is reserved for those who remain neutral in times of great moral conflict.” — Martin Luther King Jr. 

• The Devil – Chains forged by fear and desire.

• Justice – The scales tip, whether you like it or not.

• Five of Swords – Victory with blood on the blade.

The Price of Silence

The village was still in the way a graveyard is still. Not peaceful—just waiting for someone to disturb it.

No music. No market chatter. No kids chasing each other barefoot down the road. Just the hum of cicadas in the distance, the crack of wood splitting under a machete, and the occasional shuffle of bare feet retreating behind a door.

Every door was closed. Every curtain drawn. And every time a pair of eyes caught mine, they darted away like fish sensing a hook.

I’d been sent here to find out what happened to a man named Somchai. Father. Fisherman. Formerly alive. According to the message that made its way into my hands, he’d been taken in the middle of the night by men in plain clothes and carried off in a black Hilux with the headlights off. Nobody had seen him since.

The source hadn’t been specific, but I didn’t need them to be. I knew what it meant. The kind of men who come for you like that don’t bring you back.

I started knocking on doors.

The first door opened a crack, just wide enough for me to see a woman in her forties, eyes ringed in red and set deep in a tired face. I told her my name. Told her I wasn’t here for trouble. That I just wanted to talk.

Her head shook once. “No speak.” The door shut. A bolt slid home with a sound louder than her voice.

The second door opened halfway before the man inside caught sight of me. He froze, and whatever warmth had been in his face drained away. He stepped back, and the door closed.

By the third rejection, I understood what was happening. This wasn’t ignorance or apathy. This was survival. They weren’t keeping quiet because they didn’t know anything. They were keeping quiet because they did.

Finally, I found one man willing to talk. Not because he was brave—he was too drunk for bravery to matter. His breath carried the acrid bite of cheap rice whiskey. His voice slurred, but the words still cut.

He told me about the Hilux. About the men. About how Somchai was dragged from his bed in front of his wife and children. About the guns in their hands and the silence in the street as it happened. No one had even stepped outside to watch.

“They took him to the base,” the drunk whispered. “Nobody comes back from there.”

And then he looked at me, eyes glassy but sharp in the way a blade can be sharp even if it’s been left to rust. “You didn’t hear this from me.”

He didn’t have to worry. Half the village had already seen us talking. That alone was enough to mark him.

That night, I found the commander. He was in the back of a gambling den, cigarette smoke curling around his head like a halo from the wrong god. Cards in one hand, a glass of something brown in the other, he laughed at a joke I didn’t hear.

I sat down at his table without asking.

The laughter died.

The other men at the table shifted in their seats, eyes flicking between us like they were watching the start of a knife fight.

“You’re making trouble, farang,” he said finally, setting his cards down. His voice was deep, practiced, the kind that could either welcome you or bury you, depending on the day.

“No,” I said. “I’m making a record.”

He smirked, leaned back, studied me like I was a piece of meat he wasn’t sure was worth cooking. “You think anyone will talk to you? You think anyone cares?”

“I think you made a mistake,” I told him.

His eyebrows went up. “And what mistake is that?”

I leaned forward, close enough to smell his cologne, close enough to see the faint tremor in his right hand. “You left a witness alive.”

The silence in the room was thick. Heavy. You could feel the eyes on us, the way everyone suddenly found somewhere else to look while not daring to move.

He didn’t answer. He didn’t have to. We both knew that whatever happened next, the balance had shifted.

At dawn, I left the village. Not empty-handed.

The ledger I’d lifted from his office was crude, hand-written, but detailed enough to bury him if it ever saw daylight. Names. Dates. Amounts paid. The “tax” each family handed over to stay off his list. And next to Somchai’s name—a number with a line through it.

Unpaid.

That ledger was more than proof. It was a weapon. And now it was in my hands.

It wouldn’t bring Somchai back. The ocean had probably claimed him already. But it meant the commander wouldn’t sleep easy. Not tonight. Not any night.

The road out of the village was quiet. Just the sound of my boots on gravel and the faint, metallic clink of the ledger’s clasp inside my pack.

Every debt gets paid eventually. Some in cash. Some in blood. And some in the slow, relentless erosion of a man’s power until he wakes up one day and realizes he’s the one being hunted.

Silence is a currency. Some people pay it to survive. Others try to buy their way out of the truth.

Me? I’ve never been in the business of selling it.

If you think truth comes cheap, you haven’t been in the room when it’s being sold.
Read the full dossier in Shock and Awe

Cobalt Rides Again!