📘 Fragment IV – Gate 6

 Cast Backgrounds

Pieter Swanepoel (“The Archivist”)
A former customs analyst and quiet whistleblower. 

Neo Madlala
A younger, sharper metadata manipulator operating out of East Africa. Once an intern under Pieter, Neo now flips digital documentation for high-tier smuggling clients. Cynical and fast-moving, he sees Pieter as a symbol of a slower era — but also a dangerous one.

Zahra Tembe (Introduced late in the fragment)
A second-generation customs officer stationed in Durban. Daughter of a former anti-corruption official, Zahra has buried loyalties and an unnerving sense of moral clarity. She confronts Pieter not with suspicion, but with memory — and a deeper agenda of her own.

Location: Durban Port, South Africa

Time: 21:46 SAST
Perspective: The Archivist (Pieter Swanepoel)

---

Pieter hated flying into Durban. Too many memories in the concrete.

The humidity clung to your skin like guilt. The airport smelled of burnt jet fuel and synthetic citrus, and the private transfer service clearly hadn’t updated its fleet since 2014. But he didn’t complain. Pieter didn’t complain anymore — not since complaining meant someone might remember what you said.

He had requested a specific drop-off: Berth 12, Gate 6, adjacent to the old customs corridor. It used to be manned by a woman named Lerato who sang to herself and never looked up from her ledger. Now it was automated, fortified, and — allegedly — transparent.

It wasn’t.

Pieter waited in the shadows near the out-of-service CCTV node he’d personally commissioned twenty years earlier. His jacket was too light for the hour, and his right ankle clicked when he walked. He felt... obvious. And that annoyed him.

Then came the click of boots — too confident for port security.

“Uncle Piet,” a voice said behind him.
Mocking. Familiar.

He turned. Slowly.

The figure approaching wore jeans too clean for the docks, a hoodie zipped only halfway, and black-market Ray-Bans that were fashionable five years ago. Neo Madlala. Twenty-six. Born the year Pieter first filed an internal customs breach report that no one ever read.

Neo worked in “digital trade advisory,” which was code for: I know how to make illegal things look legal faster than you know what’s missing. Pieter had helped get him an internship once. Now Neo worked out of Nairobi and Kigali, flipping trade metadata for Gulf clients with zero history and unlimited freight.

They had not spoken in five years.

“You still carry that face like a receipt,” Neo said, tapping a cigarette out of a box with Cyril Ramaphosa’s face drawn in blue pen. “All itemized, no return policy.”

“I thought you were based in East Africa,” Pieter said.

“I was. But Dubai started asking questions about a Nairobi drop-off, and then a 'concerned party' in Geneva suggested I come down for a... pause.”
Neo didn’t smile. But his eyes danced.

“Gate 6 is live again,” Pieter said. “Same method. New shell.”

Neo looked him over. “You going back in?”

Pieter didn’t answer.

Because yes — he was.

But it wasn’t nostalgia. And it wasn’t revenge.

It was the itch. The smell of something too clean. The AI had known it. Pieter felt it. A container moving with weight that didn’t match the manifest. A silence where noise should have lived. A corridor reopened that no longer made commercial sense.

“I need access,” Pieter said, eyes locked. “Nothing digital. Eyes on the paper. Movement logs. Original ink.”

Neo raised an eyebrow.

“Old man still wants hard copy?”

Pieter stepped closer. “Because hard copy doesn’t crash. And ghosts don’t edit typewritten timestamps.”

Neo paused — then handed over a passcard embedded in an old port keyfob, disguised as a generic warehouse clearance chip.

“Temporary. Expires in 48 hours. You want more, you’ll need to convince someone in Singapore that you’re not part of an AI hallucination.”

“Fair.”

Neo lit his cigarette. “And Piet — if you’re going back in, don’t pretend it’s for closure. You’re too clean to be dirty. But too dirty to stay clean. That’s your problem.”

Pieter didn’t respond. He slipped the chip into his coat pocket and turned toward the warehouse corridor. His ankle clicked again. The port smelled the same.

Gate 6 loomed ahead, humming low like it had never been turned off.

---

Fragment IV (cont’d) — Gate 6

Location: Durban Port, Warehouse Corridor
Time: 22:03 SAST
Perspective: The Archivist (Pieter Swanepoel)

---

Pieter used to say that warehouses never forget — they just stop talking.

Gate 6 was exactly where it had always been: sandwiched between Berth 12’s refrigeration zone and the inland transport dispatch alley. But it felt different. The paint was fresh. The signage was digital. And the old exit door he remembered had been welded shut.

He scanned the fob Neo had given him at the side panel. The gate’s biometric lock blinked once, stalled, then released with a mechanical sigh. Someone had added a fingerprint override — he pressed his thumb down without hesitation.

Inside, it was colder than expected.

The overhead fluorescents buzzed inconsistently, like they were tired of lying. Racks of inactive pallets lined the walls, many stacked with shrink-wrapped crates marked “Agricultural Inputs” and “Health NGO Relief: Emergency Use Only.” Pieter didn’t need a scanner to know half the labels were fiction. The real story was always in the paper trail — or the places that lacked one.

He walked slowly, deliberately, ignoring the rat droppings along the back corridor. He didn’t need cameras or drones or voice-to-text transcription.

He needed dust.
Dust was honest.

If the dust had settled evenly, the crate hadn’t moved in months. If the dust was uneven, with faint streaks or boot trails… someone had tried to pretend nothing moved.

He spotted the first anomaly twenty-three paces in.
A crate marked “Frozen Tilapia – East African Distribution (EAD-17)” — sealed, stable, zip-tied.

But the zip-tie wasn’t customs issue.
It was retail-grade. Bought in bulk.
Sloppy.

He snapped a photo on a burner device, no sync. No metadata. Then pried open the crate just enough to peek.

No fish.

Instead: vacuum-sealed fiberboard boxes, slick with condensation, the edges lined in copper tape. Pieter’s stomach turned.

He’d seen this before — or at least, this pattern.

Back in 2011, two tons of “tilapia” were intercepted en route to Dubai. Inside: rhino horn powder, microchips with altered firmware, and high-capacity encrypted drives disguised as spare machine parts. The bust was classified. The director resigned six months later for “health reasons.”

Pieter hadn’t been able to stop it then.
But he’d archived the pattern.

Now it was back.

He closed the crate, resealed it exactly as found, and turned to log the serial number on the side — only to find a faint UV stamp beneath the paint.

Three letters: KHL
And beneath them: a QR code, partial and damaged.

Khalawi Logistics.
A ghost company. Long dormant. Last seen laundering aid containers through Malaysian trade zones in 2019. Pieter had filed the name away and never seen it again. Until now.

He felt the air shift.
Someone had entered the corridor.

Footsteps. No flashlight. Deliberate.

Pieter didn’t reach for a weapon. He didn’t carry one. Not anymore.
He just waited — back to the wall — hand on the fob.

Then the voice.

“Looking for ghosts, Mr. Swanepoel?”

Female. Clipped. Familiar, but not recent.

He turned.

There, at the edge of the light, was a woman in a port authority windbreaker. Older than Neo. Younger than him. Eyes too clear for someone working this late.

“You archived Gate 6. That makes you part of it, whether you admit it or not.”

Pieter didn’t blink. “Do I know you?”

She stepped closer.

“You knew my father. He flagged the Myanmar shipment. You filed the addendum that got him demoted.”

Pieter’s breath caught for half a second. He remembered now.

Her name was Zahra Tembe.
She used to follow her father around the customs yard, years ago. Barely ten. Quiet. Watchful. Her father had integrity — the kind that broke you quietly.

“Zahra,” Pieter said, slowly.

She nodded.

“This is bigger than a shipment. And you’re not the only one who remembers.”