[São Paulo – Ferreira's House]
"Sometimes we pretend to be okay just to hide the weight of our own actions on our shoulders."
Captain Ferreira's house smelled of aged gunpowder and cheap whiskey.
It wasn't an ordinary darkness that consumed the rooms—it was a cultivated darkness, one maintained over time. Heavy velvet curtains were nailed down at the edges to keep even a thread of moonlight from entering. The wall clock, an old wind-up model that had belonged to his father, had stopped at 3:17. It had been exactly eight days and eleven hours since he decided not to wind it again.
On the living room floor, among overturned bottles of Montilla rum and alcohol-stained reports, Ferreira's HK33 rifle rested atop a newspaper. The date on the back was smudged. The headline was still legible: "SATURATION OPERATION IN CAPÃO: 35 DEAD."
Ferreira sat in the darkest corner, his back pressed against the wall as if trying to merge with the plaster. His eyes, red from something deeper, a kind of soul-deep dryness, were fixed on a spot between the turned-off TV and a framed military portrait now lying shattered on the floor.
His fingers, yellowed by nicotine and scarred by shrapnel, ran along the rifle barrel with an obscene reverence. The metal was cold. His breath formed small clouds in the unheated air.
Click.
Deep breath.
The scene in his mind was vivid: a back alley lit by a single yellow lamp, footsteps running, screams of despair, the dry sound of a gunshot... and then, silence. The face of a boy, no older than twelve, lying on the asphalt.
His eyes—large, brown, still alive—met Ferreira's for a fraction of a second before fixing on the sky. His mouth moved. "Dad…?"
The smell of hot urine mingled with that of gunpowder.
Ferreira pressed the rifle beneath his chin. The cold metal burned. Midnight.
Outside, the wind howled between buildings like a starving specter.
[Street]
Larissa Martins pulled her coat tightly around her body. The thermometer on the park bench read 9°C, but the cold she felt went much deeper. In the window of a closed shop, her reflection looked paler than it should have.
The distorted melody of "O Cravo Brigou Com a Rosa" echoed from afar. An ice cream cart emerged from the mist in the distance, moving slowly. Pale yellow, with faded popsicle illustrations peeling off. The wheels creaked with every turn. On the awning, nearly erased red letters read: "GELADO MIRABELLI."
It stopped five meters from her.
The music ceased.
The cart door opened slooowly. With a creak.
Three figures unfolded themselves from inside, moving in ways that defied human anatomy. One of them—too tall, limbs stretched like pulled dough. He wore a blood-stained apron. His face, if it could be called that, was smooth, featureless—except for a vertical mouth that split from chin to forehead.
The second, a woman... or something pretending to be one. Sagging breasts hung over a 1950s nurse's dress. Her fingers ended in hypodermic needles.
The third—half of the face was a porcelain doll's. The other half, raw pulsing flesh. It smelled of formaldehyde and sour milk.
Larissa stepped back. Her foot knocked into an empty can.
The noise triggered all three creatures to lunge forward violently, in unison. Larissa screamed in desperation and slammed the button on the device she carried.
Her scream pierced through the closed window of Ferreira's house like a bullet.
Ferreira reacted before pulling the trigger.
His body—that of an old soldier still living in his muscles—moved on its own. The rifle was in his hands, and he rose, blasting through the front door as he passed. The night wind hit his face.
He ran toward the scream.
The roar of sputtering motorcycle engines sliced through the silence of the early morning—a silence previously broken only by Larissa's scream and the growls of the creatures.
João Gordo appeared first, his customized Harley scraping sparks from the asphalt. The headlights cut through the distance, revealing the faceless creature writhing toward Larissa, its vertical mouth gaping wide in search of something to devour.
— "Take this, you fucking abortion!"
Still in motion, Gordo raised his baseball bat, every inch wrapped in barbed wire, and swung with a blow that echoed like a cannon blast. The creature's skull exploded into a frost of amber goo and bone fragments that looked like shattered porcelain.
Fumaça was already in action before her bike came to a halt. Her fingers danced across her improvised radio device.
— "Adjusting frequency... three, two..."
The air vibrated. The streetlamps burst one by one. From the makeshift speakers on Zumbi's motorcycle, a high-pitched noise blasted, making the remaining creatures recoil like beaten dogs.
Zumbi leapt from his bike in the middle of the chaos. His military backpack writhed, the zipper unfastening on its own. From inside, dark, shiny things swarmed out—a cloud of mechanical beetles, latching onto the nurse-like creature and corroding its synthetic flesh with battery acid.
That's when Captain Ferreira appeared between the streetlights. His HK33 rifle spat fire. The bullets pierced the last abomination's shoulder, drawing a roar in an unearthly language.
Larissa dove behind a dented '98 Corsa, ears ringing, until she recognized the disheveled silhouette.
— "Ferreira?!"
The captain positioned himself beside her, shoulders squared like in the old days, eyes burning with a fire she had never seen before.
— "Stay behind me." The voice was rough, but alive.
João Gordo stumbled up, his gas mask swaying around his neck.
— "This mummy with you, journalist?" he asked, eyeing Ferreira with a mix of respect and suspicion.
The captain reloaded with a dry clack.
— "A mummy that still shoots, fatass."
Fumaça didn't waste time:
— "Detonation IN three... two..."
The device sparked violently. The final creature convulsed, its limbs folding in on themselves, and Zumbi seized the chance to drive a syringe full of brown liquid into its jugular.
The monster collapsed, melting like plastic in a fire.
Silence.
The ice cream cart had vanished. Only the distant echo of the melody remained, now played in a minor key, like someone had slowed down the vinyl.
Larissa trembled, her hands stained with grease—and something that wasn't blood. Ferreira looked at her.
— "You in one piece?"
She nodded, swallowing hard.
João Gordo scraped a piece of synthetic flesh off the sole of his boot.
— "Looks like things are heating up. MOTHRA sending mutant assassins through ice cream carts? These motherfuckers are getting creative."
Fumaça examined her device, feline eyes narrowing.
— "This was a test. Fear recognition algorithm, probably."
Zumbi knelt beside what little remained of one of the creatures.
Ferreira looked at his rifle, at the punk trio, and at Larissa.
The world had completely gone off the rails.
The smell of burnt gunpowder still lingered in the air when Ferreira lowered his rifle. His chest rose and fell like a bellows, but his hands didn't shake. A brief nod toward Larissa.
Gordo blocked his path before he could retreat. Two meters and twelve centimeters of solidified fat, his baseball bat still dripping with slime.
— "Hold up, grandpa. You're not just some random dude who showed up by chance."
Ferreira let out a sigh that carried decades of fatigue.
— "I'm just a ghost with a registered IP..." his fingers tapped on the empty holster. "And no, I don't work for anyone anymore. Just for my conscience. When it decides to show up."
Fumaça crossed her arms, her tattooed circuits writhing slightly.
— "Ghost with an HK33? Convenient."
— "HK33 stolen from a PM depot in 2017," Ferreira corrected, the corners of his mouth lifting into a near-smile.
"Took three ammo crates and a bulletproof vest that saved my life in Carandiru. Long story."
Zumbi sniffed the air like a hunting dog.
— "He's lying about something," he murmured. "But I can't tell what."
Ferreira didn't wait for the interrogation. He turned to Larissa.
— "That was your survival card, journalist. Next time..." He didn't finish. He slung the rifle over his shoulder and vanished into the night fog, his silhouette dissolving like smoke.
[Curb]
Larissa collapsed onto the asphalt, her legs finally giving out. The device on her keychain was scorched, the chip melted.
Fumaça knelt beside her with feline grace. Her fingers, cold, found Larissa's pulse.
— "Adrenaline at 180. Pupils dilated. You're going to vomit in three, two..."
Larissa turned her head just in time to puke into the storm drain.
João Gordo laughed, loud and shrill.
— "Welcome to the club, princess. Around here we call that a 'punk baptism.'"
Zumbi was already dumping the contents of his backpack on the ground—wires, motherboards, something that looked like an engine...
— "The transmitter was disposable," Fumaça explained, crushing the dead device in her palm.
"MOTHRA has jammers on every frequency. Took us six months to break that gap."
— "Why... why didn't you ever tell anyone? About the creatures, the experiments..."
The three exchanged glances. Fumaça was the first to speak, her voice dropping to a whisper:
— "Because we'd vanish the next day. João has arrest warrants in twelve states. Zumbi's been officially dead since 2019. And me..."
She lifted her shirt just enough to show a barcode tattooed along her ribs.
"...I'm a deserter. Used to work as a mechanic and engineer for the army... until I realized there was way too much weird shit going on."
João Gordo stepped forward, scratching his belly before continuing:
— "But you, journalist... you've got a clean ID. Credibility. Access."
His butter-stained finger pointed at the camera still hanging around her neck.
"That's your weapon. More powerful than my bat or Zumbi's techno-monsters."
Fumaça placed something in Larissa's hand—a memory card wrapped in electrical tape.
— "Everything we know. Everything we are. Names, locations, photos of the experiments gone wrong... and some that are going right."
The silence that followed was broken by the buzzing of Zumbi's backpack, which now sounded like... muffled laughter.
Larissa closed her fingers around the card. The words came before she could think:
— "We need a plan. And more weapons."
João Gordo burst out laughing.
— "Now she's speaking our language!"
Fumaça helped Larissa to her feet, her violet eyes glowing like LEDs in the dark:
— "Welcome to the resistance, journalist. We're going to teach you how to survive."
As they walked away, the last streetlamp burst, plunging everything into darkness—except for a red glow high above, where a surveillance camera slowly turned to follow them.
[Next Day – Ferreira's House]
The sun had barely begun to rise when Larissa knocked on the door of Ferreira's small house. The rusty gate creaked as it swung open, and no one answered right away.
She gently tried the doorknob—it wasn't locked—and stepped inside slowly.
— "Captain...?"
The interior of the house was dark, stuffy, filled with the sour smell of forgotten food and sweat. Empty bottles on the floor, newspapers scattered, a dried bloodstain in the corner—probably from when he slapped himself trying to wake up from his own mind.
She found him sitting on the couch, shirtless, his bare torso revealing knife scars across his abdomen, circular burns on his right shoulder that looked like cigarette marks, and a faded tattoo of a serial number across his chest.
Sunken eyes, messy hair, holding a glass of lukewarm water.
— "You again..." Ferreira muttered, trying to get up, but failing.
— "I didn't come to accuse you of anything. Just... to thank you."
Ferreira didn't reply. He just looked at her with a mix of guilt and exhaustion.
— "And... if you let me, I can help clean this place up." Larissa nodded toward the mess around them.
Ferreira ran a hand over his face and sighed.
— "Do what you want. Even the house has given up on me."
Larissa gave a faint smile. She took off her jacket, rolled up her sleeves, and began picking up the bottles, the broken glass, all the scattered trash. Maybe this was the beginning of something bigger.
The sound of the broom sweeping broken shards echoed through the silence of the room. Ferreira stayed on the couch, watching her in silence. The glass of water trembled slightly in his hand.
— "You don't have to do this," he murmured, his voice deep, almost hoarse from disuse.
— "I didn't come here to save you, Ferreira," she replied, still cleaning. "I just... didn't want you to go through this alone."
He gave a bitter, weak laugh.
— "Alone is how I work. Alone is how I messed up fewer things."
Larissa sat in the chair across from him. Now that the house was a little brighter, his eyes looked even deeper, like they'd seen something no one should.
— "You lied yesterday."
Ferreira looked up at her, surprised by her bluntness.
— "You said you had no connection to MOTHRA. But I saw how you held that rifle. I saw how you knew exactly where to shoot."
He didn't respond right away. Just stared into the glass, as if looking for answers in the water.
— "I saw hell before it had a map. And when they finally gave it a name... MOTHRA... I'd already lived there."
— "So why lie to me?"
Ferreira sighed.
— "Because every time I tell the truth, more people die. Because everyone I try to protect ends up dead. Because... telling is easy. Living afterward, not so much."
Larissa looked at him with a mix of compassion and frustration.
— "But you saved my life."
He nodded faintly.
— "And maybe that... was a mistake."
She leaned closer. Not in a romantic way, but in a human one, and placed her hand on his knee.
— "Maybe you're wrong."
— "Wrong about what?"
— "About it being a mistake. Maybe you still have something left to do in this world. Maybe your story's not over yet."
Ferreira closed his eyes. For the first time in a long while, he looked like someone who wanted to cry, but had already cried everything out years ago.
— "And what if I'm scared of what comes next?"
— "Then we go scared," Larissa replied. "But we go. Because MOTHRA isn't going to stop. And you know that better than anyone."
He nodded silently.
She stood up and kept cleaning, but now, the silence between them was different. A silence heavy with deep emotional understanding.