05/24/2017 – Paulista Avenue, São Paulo
"To restore order, one must first acknowledge the extent of the chaos."
Inside the T-47 armored vehicle, the air was as heavy as a dirty blanket, saturated with the acidic smell of burnt oil and the stench of dried vomit. Recruit Cabral, 19 years old, shrank on the metal seat, fingers clenched around his pistol holster, trying not to stare at the monitoring screen where dark figures were dragged by mechanical arms, like dismantled dolls on a slaughter line.
— "Hold that shit, you cunt," growled Sergeant Lemos—nicknamed "Pig"—as he tossed a grease- and dried-blood-soaked rag onto the boy's lap. The cloth stuck to the recruit's leg, still warm from some repair done hours before. "Listen up, the Reds are Delta-22. If you see one, don't shoot. Just mark and call the Captain. Screw up, and you're going to the grave with them."
On the flickering screen, faces emerged from digital mist, each marked with a pulsing red X—except one. A man with a graying beard flickered in blue. Cabral swallowed hard and pointed:
— "And him?"
Lemos punched the panel hard, making the screen flicker. For a second, the man's image distorted into grotesque pixels before returning to normal, the blue tag now blinking.
— "System glitch," Lemos spat, the reason for his nickname, his smile flashing in the dark as his tobacco-stained teeth gleamed. "Focus on what matters."
Outside, a scream. Lemos grabbed his rifle, spat on the ground again—dark saliva mixing with the dust and oil accumulated on the floor.
— "Time to work, boys."
Paulista Avenue reeked of tension. The asphalt, still damp from a recent rain, reflected the blinking lights of cell phones and distant floodlights, while torn banners fluttered between poles like flags of a protest that had dragged on for days. Plastic bottles filled with vinegar piled up in corners, forming makeshift barricades, their caps ready to be yanked off.
In the center of the organized group, Rafael, a medical student in a lab coat stained with spray paint and sweat, knelt on the ground, teaching others how to fold coffee filters inside wet wipes.
— "The gas will burn like fire on your face," he warned, his voice hoarse from shouting, "but don't close your eyes. Panic is worse than the pain. If you go blind, they'll trample you."
Beside him, Luana, with a purple scarf tied around her neck like a symbol of resistance, handed out homemade eye drops in empty perfume bottles, each labeled with a marker: — "Wash with milk if it burns too much."
In the background, someone played "Cálice" on an out-of-tune guitar, the notes fading into the mechanical hum of police drones hovering like vultures. The sound was barely audible.
A fifteen-year-old boy, Miguel—the youngest in the group—trembled as he lit his first molotov, hands sweating so much the lighter kept slipping.
— "Breathe, Miguel," Luana whispered, adjusting his bike helmet, already scratched from previous rock hits. "We only strike if they strike first."
The air was thick with the scent of cheap sunscreen—applied like armor against boiling water—and the metallic smell of grease from the bike chains some had wrapped around their fists as weapons. No one spoke about the dried blood on the torn-down street signs, or the abandoned shoes in the middle of the road.
The helmet camera mounted on Captain Ferreira captured every firm step of his tactical boots against the scorching asphalt, the image trembling with the impact of his march. The sky above Paulista Avenue was no longer beautiful—choked by a thick haze, a mixture of tear gas, burning tire smoke, and the oppressive heat of a São Paulo autumn. The air was dense, almost solid, laced with the acidic scent of vinegar used by protesters to neutralize gas effects, the sharp sting of gunpowder, and the acrid odor of sweat.
Ahead, the crowd resembled a singular entity, a pulsing organism of cheap rebellion. Faces hidden by black scarves and improvised gas masks, eyes burning with rage and resolve. Raised hands held homemade molotovs, shields made of plywood and pieces of metal torn from street signs. Hoarse voices chanted cliché anti-state slogans:
— "No rights taken away! No rights taken away!"
Banners fluttered above their heads, hand-painted messages in red paint: OUT WITH TEMER, AGAINST PEC 55, END THE MILITARY POLICE.
On the other side of the avenue, under the overhang of the old MASP, the Riot Squad positioned itself in battle formation, resembling ancient Spartans.
The Urban T-47 "Skulltrucks"—true black steel titans with thermal armor and 80-degree pressurized water cannons—advanced in slow march, their engines roaring. Above them, the flag of the State of São Paulo and the emblem of the Shock Troop Battalion—a cracked skull with a Spartan helmet—waved in the wind.
Inside the central armored vehicle, Ferreira studied the data on his reinforced tablet. Heat maps displayed crowd concentrations, red sectors where the human mass clustered. The protesters' operation seemed surgically planned.
Larissa Martins, 28 years old, with Midia NINJA since she was 19, hurriedly adjusted her phone inside a hollowed-out fake book, The Art of War, its cover worn, pages carved with a knife. Her livestream flickered for 47,000 viewers, the chat scrolling frenetically.
— "It's 2:47 PM. The police are positioning the Skulltrucks on Consolação," she whispered, her voice steady but eyes scanning for any movement. "We've got two wounded in the alley next to us, we need—"
A police officer with mirrored sunglasses stopped three meters in front of her, his face intentionally expressionless, but his body facing directly toward her. He knew. Larissa faked a cough, bent down as if to spit on the ground, and with a fluid motion slipped the phone into her bra, where another device was already burning against her skin. Always two: one to film, one to distract.
Behind her, the Globo TV crew pulled back, their professional cameras powered down in sync, bulletproof vest-wearing reporters biting their lips. A security guard with an illegible badge, ink-smudged name, and faded photo grabbed an independent journalist by the arm, fingers sinking into his flesh.
— "Credentials."
— "Right here, fuc—"
The guard ripped the camera from his hands and smashed it on the asphalt under his boot, glass and plastic shattering like bones. Larissa swallowed hard. Her thumb paused the stream the moment the man's face entered the frame.
She recognized him. The same from the 2013 photo—from that protest where three young people vanished without a trace.
On the other side, Captain Ferreira adjusted the built-in comms in his helmet, his voice coming out distorted through the electronic filter:
— "Initiate lockdown. North flank through Frei Caneca. Delta team, advance through Consolação. T-47s, form a semicircle. No one in, no one out."
A pause. His eyes scanned the screen, calculating.
— "Let's shut this whole shit down in twenty minutes."
From the other end of the radio, Sergeant Lemos inside the second Skulltruck replied immediately:
— "Copy that, sir!"
The first blast tore through the air.
A stun grenade was thrown, exploding in the middle of the crowd. A white flash lit up the panicked faces for an instant, followed by a deafening bang that made the ground tremble. The effect was overwhelming. And then, chaos fully erupted.
[2:49 PM]
The grenade's impact sliced the air like dry thunder. Protesters instinctively pulled back, bodies colliding in a domino effect of panic. Some fell, trampled by the stampede. Thick white smoke rose from the asphalt, engulfing everything in seconds—the signal that the conflict had passed the point of no return.
At the epicenter of the chaos, a skinny boy stood out, wearing an old Soviet gas mask, likely salvaged from a junkyard, the greenish glass fogged by heavy breathing. The cracked leather straps bit into his face, but he didn't seem bothered. In his right hand, he held a smooth stone, but didn't throw it. He just stood there, still, watching the police line ahead.
Cabral, on his first day in the Riot Battalion, felt sweat trickling under his helmet. When he saw the slight figure standing behind that mask, he lowered his shield for a moment:
— "Shit, Captain, it's a kid!"
Ferreira, a veteran of fourteen operations, raised his left hand in a signal—advance. Two heavily equipped agents grabbed the boy roughly by the shoulders.
The mask came off with a snap, revealing a surprisingly calm face: soft brown eyes, a smile that was almost relieved, as if he had been waiting for this moment for a long time.
— "You're late," the boy chuckled, his voice clear, cutting through the noise of the troops, just before he was tossed like a sack of potatoes into the back of the armored vehicle.
On the asphalt, the Soviet mask lay split in two. The green lens reflected, in a warped blur, Cabral's pale, disgusted face—disgusted with himself—as a combat boot crushed the mask underfoot.
Desperate screams mixed with the high-pitched hiss of gas canisters, bouncing along the pavement before bursting into toxic clouds. A young woman with a red scarf tied over her face clutched the black shirt of a fallen comrade, trying to drag him behind the barricades. Blood streamed from his temple, where a rubber bullet had struck hard enough to leave a deep purple bruise.
— "Watch the flank! They're coming down Augusta!" — someone shouted between coughing fits, their voice hoarse from the gas.
Ferreira leapt from the armored truck with precise movements, his boots hitting the asphalt with authority. His uniform was flawless, the rigid chest plate displaying the emblem of the São Paulo Military Police. But beneath the ballistic plate, almost invisible, a coded identification was laser-etched: MOTHRA-17A. A code not found in any official record.
Ferreira stepped on something soft. A half-burned teddy bear, soaked in water and gasoline. He kicked it aside—but not before noticing a brown stain on its fur.
Over the radio, a ragged breath cut through the static. A whisper: — "There are more of them on Frei Caneca. Watch for the ones with silver masks."
Ferreira didn't need to draw his weapon. His command was the weapon.
— "Still plenty to go around. Anyone who wants it, come get it!" — his voice boomed from the helmet's built-in megaphone, defiant. A moment's silence, a fraction of a second, as if the air itself held its breath.
Then the next order: — "Dispersal grenades, triple sequence. Flanking advance—now!"
Ferreira adjusted his holster as the armored vehicle pushed forward. His fingers drummed—three quick taps—on the leather, a tic from back when he was a lieutenant in Capão Redondo. Suddenly, a flashback. Acid rain. The stench of gunpowder and piss in narrow alleys. A teen in a red cap screaming something he no longer remembered. The dry crack of a baton against bone.
— "Captain?"
Sergeant Lemos called him back. Ferreira blinked his cold gaze, wiped sweat from his neck. The teen in Capão never had a name, but now, on Paulista, all the faces beneath scarves looked the same.
He looked at his hands. No visible blood.
The Riot Troop marched in unison. Batons pounded against riot shields in a warlike rhythm. The sound echoed between buildings, growing louder as they neared the protesters.
— "OUT!" — they all shouted in unison.
Heavy boots stirred up dust and debris—charred wood, broken bottles, trampled flyers. A hydrant destroyed by the protesters sprayed water in uneven bursts, turning the street into a muddy mess where two bodies now struggled to rise.
— "I saw! They got Thiago!" — a woman's voice screamed, raw with panic.
— "Where's the TV? Film this, fuck it!"
A journalist in a bulletproof vest marked "JOURNALIST" in fluorescent letters tried to lift his camera, hands shaking. The lens focused for a second on the advancing police, the fallen bodies, the white smoke engulfing the avenue. It was enough.
A jet of scalding water hit him square in the chest. The impact threw him backward, the camera shattering on the ground, lens splintering into shards. He screamed, eyes burning—the boiling water nearly blinded him.
Two soldiers grabbed him by the arms, dragging him to the sidewalk like a nuisance. No colleague intervened. No officer stopped to help. He lay there, slumped against a pole, face scorched, gasping for breath, as the world collapsed around him.
Several military trucks had already closed the perimeter, on Ferreira's orders, to ensure no demonstrator escaped.
At the corner of Rua Bela Cintra, where the asphalt was already blackened with soot and the air smelled of gasoline and fire, a Black Bloc group made their final stand. They had set up a defensive line with overturned traffic cones, flaming trash, and pieces of a destroyed bus.
At the center of the group, a lean, hooded young man held a Molotov cocktail with gloved hands. His eyes, visible through a slit in the black fabric, locked onto the Riot Troopers' shields—as if his own death would be a worthy sacrifice.
Ferreira stopped five meters away. Smoke swirled between them.
— "You gonna throw it?" — he asked, calm, almost indifferent.
The protester trembled. The liquid inside the bottle sloshed, dangerously close to the lit fuse.
— "Go fuck yourself, fascist!" — he spat, voice raw with hatred and adrenaline.
Ferreira didn't blink.
— "Courage is a dangerous weapon."
A subtle motion, barely perceptible.
The shot came from somewhere behind the elite line. A rubber bullet hit the boy's arm with surgical precision. The Molotov dropped, exploded on the pavement, flames immediately engulfing his leg in fiery tongues. He screamed—high-pitched, feral—and fell to his knees, trying to smother the flames with his hands. His comrades recoiled, horrified.
Ferreira simply watched.
[15:03]
The operation lasted twenty-one minutes.
One hundred and twelve injured. Forty-eight detained. Four missing.
As the Riot Troop rounded up the last protesters, forcing them to lie down with hands behind their heads, faces pressed to the still-hot pavement, Ferreira moved away from the chaos. His finger tapped the radio, switching to a secure channel, encrypted, off the official record.
— "Target neutralized. No anomalous manifestation detected so far." — his voice was metallic, distant. He continued: — "Requesting extraction for individuals marked with code Delta-22. Potential candidates for observation protocol."
On the other end, an immediate reply, distorted by a digital filter:
— "Copy, Captain. Transport is en route. Proceed with markings per Protocol 4-C."
Ferreira disconnected.
He knelt beside one of the detainees—a shaved-headed youth, eyes red from smoke but fixed, intense. Unlike the others, he didn't shake. He didn't plead. He just smiled at Ferreira, blood staining his teeth.
— "You think you've won?" — the boy laughed, softly. — "This is nothing. What's coming… you've got no idea."
Ferreira smiled back.
— "And that's why you're coming with me, brat."
From his sleeve, he pulled a regular pen—cheap, office-style. But a subtle click revealed its true purpose. The tip released a fluorescent trace, invisible to the naked eye, marking the boy's skin with a nanometric code. A signature only readable under ultraviolet light. Tracking activated.
The boy didn't even notice.
By day's end, as unmarked MOTHRA trucks discreetly arrived via Rua da Consolação, Ferreira looked up at the sky. The smoke was beginning to clear, revealing a low, orange sun.
A few streets over, ambulance sirens and news vans still howled, trying to make sense of what had just happened.
But we already knew.