In a chilling turn of events that is sending tremors through the city of Bacolod, the Philippine’s National Bureau of Investigation finds itself staring at a morbid enigma right on its doorstep. Last Friday, beneath the steely dawn light, a mundane NBI vehicle became the silent witness to a gruesome tableau – a sack of human remains left to puncture the calm of the morning. Amidst this unsettling discovery was a macabre inventory: a severed left hand, a left foot, and a pair pariahed ears.
The event, a spine-tingling intersection of crime and mystery, also bore the emblem of a message. Within the sack lay a simple H&M bag, its content far from commercial – a handwritten note proclaiming, “William De Arca NBI Protector of Hanz Lopez Drug Lord.” Was this a candid confession or a malignant smear? The question hung heavy in the air.
Renoir Baldovino, Director of NBI-Bacolod, eyes the scene with the weight of his experience – his intuition hinting at a connection to a much larger narrative. The amputated extremities bore no bloodstains and emanated the cold whisper of refrigeration – perhaps secrets once interred within a funeral parlor’s quiet embrace?
As the specters of these unidentified limbs are scrutinized by NBI’s forensic team, the shadow of William De Arca looms large. Known within the Bureau as a bona fide agent untarnished by narcotic scandals, De Arca has found his name entangled in an underworld saga tied to the ferocious campaign against illegal gambling which he champions with unwavering zeal.
The NBI, to which De Arca pledges his allegiance, has yet to correlate the tendrils of this morbid message to any known criminal overlord of the moniker Hanz Lopez. The directors suspect, not without good reason, that this may be an elaborate ruse – a diversionary tactic with the malicious intent to besmirch De Arca or sway the Bureau’s focus from the crippling grip of illicit gambling to the hydra-headed monster of drug cartels.
The labyrinth of e-sabong’s nefarious networks, once embraced and regulated albeit transiently by the Duterte regime, has since been shunned with its 34 missing souls – a grim testament to the perilous intertwines of corruption and online cockfighting.
As the nation grapples with the aftershocks of raids dismantling e-sabong fortresses and jueteng’s clandestine allure, Baldovino tightens the bastions of the NBI’s defenses. Security intensifies, both for the institution and the imperiled De Arca.
This Friday revelation is not an isolated incident. Thrice since the year’s turn Bacolod has been stage to these cryptic displays of human fragments. With six individuals entangled in the legality of the missing connected to e-sabong, alongside three erstwhile officers of the national police, the narrative of this grotesque discovery becomes ever more obfuscated.
The NBI stands vigilant, its members cloaked in stoicism and resolve, as the tale of these severed slivers of humanity continues to unfurl, page by morbid page, in the somber annals of Bacolod’s history.
