Reggie kept his head trained to the ground as he passed sari-sari stores still open far past midnight along Kalayaan Avenue. His subterfuge mattered little, however. The University of Makati student housing surrounding him held different tenants every school year. On that border where BGC became Pasig, no one recognized him.
The car park was behind a McDo, monitored by two security guards still attentive at a time when most dozed off. Despite this, they did not question Reggie when he stood by one of the entrances too long, as the burner phone Jayson had given him found the access terminal’s OS and hijacked it.
It was old tech to Reggie—stuff he had hacked when scraping fiction. When he was thirteen, he had pried terminals like this from the back entrances of fast food joints, taken them home, and tinkered with them until he could get past their firewalls in record time. When Jayson brought him into this new operation, Reggie didn’t have to try so hard at cracking these locks himself—most of that work had been done already.
Black Fire was neat, but the tech to create the shows interested Reggie more. The machines that automated the creation of television series must have cost millions of PHP. Plus, all gadgets and scripts to conceal their whereabouts were once the stuff of science fiction to Reggie. He was so enamored by the capabilities before him that he only imagined the future such technology would propel him into. He never questioned the consequences.
Reggie could have been a vagrant king, too, upon the steps of his palace in Crystalline. He felt every door in the city was open to him. It didn’t matter that a flock of strange-looking capture drones perched on a railing beside him, watching him. They resembled pigeons both in their appearance and their threat to him. He could have grabbed one and squashed it.
Instead, he climbed the stairs to the second-highest floor of the car park. Security cameras turned away from him as he walked past, thanks to some tech on his phone. He would have to ask Jayson or their employers about it.
Jayson had kept their identity a secret, but although Reggie wasn’t sure why, it didn’t matter. Business was good. Soon, he could leave the Philippines and get a tech job at a startup in Singapore, America, or even for one of the Giants. Unlike the other scrapers, Reggie wasn’t above working for the enemy, though he never told them that.
Most of the car park was occupied at this hour by cars belonging to BPO employees working their midnight shifts. Jayson could recite the names of those vehicles by heart, but Reggie never liked cars as much as the tech inside them. Some EVs were in sentry mode, ready to alert if someone tried to break through their windows. Reggie stepped far away from the models most likely to have these features and found where he agreed to meet the man.
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He should have left when he found the place empty, but he didn’t.
The corner was empty, with no shadows cast by figures leaning against the wall or any security guards. The only capture drones were those damn pigeon-looking things spread out around him on the tops of cars, gentle as fallen feathers. They crooked their heads as he walked backward, confused by his actions—or entertained.
He turned around and found the door to the staircase closed. In front of it, a tall man stood, with even more of those pigeon drones surrounding him. The Giants must have thought him more interesting than Reggie was.
“I wasn’t sure you were coming,” Reggie called, walking towards the man. He held a cartridge out. “It’s ready for you. Episode 2 is the best yet. You’ll love it.”
He froze. He was too excited. This had to be the man he was on the phone with, right?
The man pointed a finger, and at the time, Reggie thought someone behind him was the target.
The only lights on the faces of the pigeon drones were the red dots indicating they were recording. As if time had stopped and the eyes of Metro Manila turned to him, Reggie noticed one of those red dots blink out, then another, until the whole flock of them were dark as ravens.
They collected, forming a wall between him and the familiar man walking closer.
“Sir?” Reggie asked. His teeth chattered.
The man’s footsteps could have been marching drums. He wasn’t here to make a deal, Reggie saw now, getting a better look at the armored vest he wore.
He wasn’t with PNP, but worse. He was with the Giants.
Reggie booked it, running across the park to another staircase door on the opposite side. He grabbed the doorknob, but his hands touched something warm and steely. He looked down at one of those pigeon drones as it wrapped around his fingers. Two more buzzed around it, clamping against his hands and squeezing until he thought his bones would break.
He screamed, trying to swat the things off, but they were like persistent mosquitos or lampreys attached to fish.
He butted the door with his shoulder, and it swung open, but there was nothing on the other side to stop his fall. He tumbled, hearing nothing but the hum of the pigeon drones surrounding him, excited.
The big man’s footsteps came next.