The fleet sedan stopped outside a dense subdivision in Mandaluyong. Bryce stepped out, feeling naked without the AUG A3 M1-EMP the albularyo had given him. He still missed the weapon and wanted to learn more about it, but Metamatics probably stored it in a locker underneath the headquarters. He wouldn’t risk pulling any strings to get it, either.

Speaking of which. “Who was that guy in the gray suit who gave me the gun?” he asked.

“No one you need to concern yourself with,” buzzed one of the Q-90 drones emerging from the sedan’s rear seat.

The car sped off, kicking up urban dust as it went.

“Jeez,” Bryce huffed. Forget I asked.”

“Asked what?”

He sighed.

A few young kids in flip-flops and baggy tees threw glances his way as he strode into the subdivision. Their concerned yayas emerged from their homes and pulled the children away when he looked back at them. It was just before lunch on a Sunday when the after-church crowds assembled, but he may as well have been a funeral procession by the way he turned heads away.

A karaoke machine belted an amateur singer’s voice down an alley and into the rest of a barangay. Bryce almost thought about crashing the gathering and joining in. Where was that Filipino hospitality his people were known for?

His people. He certainly hadn’t felt Filipino since being here. This wasn’t the time of “Passport Bros.” anymore when sex tourists could come to the country and be lavished over. Every time Bryce was in the thickness of Manila—and not its whitewashed pockets—the fact kept reminding him that, in some places, he wasn’t welcome.

But even this reality wouldn’t deter his mood.

He checked his wearable to ensure he hadn’t been dreaming that morning, and found a text:

[I’m alright, sorry. Been busy. Need to catch up with school. I have a lot of chika to share.]

His messaging app hovered the text box in front of him. He was just happy to know that Janice was alright.

He thumbed up the message. Then, realizing he probably seemed insensitive, typed back:

[Let me know if you need anything.]

His message went Delivered for an hour, and the idea of the text sitting unread in Janice’s inbox started to annoy him.

This annoyance, however, stirred a new feeling in his psyche. Was it envy? Was he actually jealous that Janice could be talking to or seeing someone else? Is that where she was all this time?

Bryce wasn’t a jealous person, and these thoughts surprised him.

He hadn’t paid attention to texting etiquette before, either. Hannah didn’t use her phone much. Or, instead, she didn’t use it to text him.

His thoughts drifted to Hannah, then away and back to Janice. He seemed laser-focused on this girl—much more than before.

He rechecked his messaging app to see if she responded.

“If I didn’t know better,” buzzed the albularyo, “I would think you have a crush on this girl.”

Bryce had forgotten that the aged woman was watching and that he had been reading his texts in an open augment, forgetting to make them private. “Are you being sarcastic? She’s my girlfriend.”

“Is she? Really?”

He didn’t know what the albularyo was getting at. “Yes.”

“Did you have ‘the talk?’”

Bryce frowned. “What’s ‘the talk?’”

“I mean, did you define what you are? Did you say ‘Hey, are we boyfriend and girlfriend?’ And did she say, ‘Yes, of course we are!’”

“No, I-”

“Then you’re not a couple! Simple as that.”

Bryce frowned at the Q-90 buzzing in front of his face. It reminded him of a curious cousin or neighbor wanting to hear chika. Since his parents had emigrated from the Philippines when he was young, Bryce hadn’t found a chance to grow closer to his cousins. However, he had seen families depicted in Metamatics’s telenovelas and imagined they must have been like this.

“You know an awful lot about relationships,” Bryce said, “for something that’s not even human.”

“I watch people all day, Bryce, from thousands of angles. It’s most of what goes on in people’s lives. It makes for good fiction, too.”

“Not the kind I’d watch willingly.”

“You’d be surprised. Romance makes sense in any context. After all, it’s why we reproduce.”

You can reproduce without romance. Bryce wanted to say it but didn’t. He wasn’t much for hookup culture, or situationships, or whatever those arrangements were called.

At least, he wasn’t before he cheated on Hannah.

Regret had a way of creeping back up in your life, especially when you thought you were over everything.

“Why do you even care anyway?” Bryce asked.

“Who says I care? I’m just observing.”

“Yeah, right. You’re just doing this for Inspiration.”

“Isn’t that enough? Either way, if you think about my presence too much, it will only slow you down. Just enjoy. Don’t grow too old too fast.”

It seemed ironic that the portrayal of an aged woman was telling him not to grow old. Bryce thought about spitting the same rhetoric back at her. This AI, though, must not be that old. Assuming it’s younger than the convergence, it would be around half his age.

“All I’m saying,” the albularyo continued, “is that you need to enjoy your life. You’re not going to be a field security agent for thirty more years, are you? What about twenty? This could be your last decade, and then what?”

“I don’t like being called old.”

“Who does? Just take the pleasures when you see them.” A pause. “The long-term pleasures, Bryce Desmond, not the short ones.”

“God damn, are you my relationship coach?” He didn’t wait for a response. “Is this the right place?” He tried to steer the subject away from his relationship, perhaps distancing himself from the reality that he was getting more attached to Janice daily. What would come of that next? Engagement? Marriage? He was too old to have children but not too old to be happy.

He checked her message back and saw the text was still on Delivered. He didn’t wait to send another:

[Hey. Things are going to get crazy in the next few days. Please tell me where you are.]

If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement.

The cursor blinked as he thought about what the next message would say.

[I…]

[I miss you.]

“Woah!” said the albularyo as Bryce closed the app.

“What?”

“That’s it! You fill in the rest. Oh, yeah, by the way? This is it.”

Bryce stopped walking and peered his head up to the buildings sitting in front of him.

The Black Fire pushers had done an amateur job joining the three houses. There were no concrete passages linking the three structures. Instead, corrugated steel panels had been laid to form tunnels, with plastic tarps covering them. Cinderblocks weighed down the tarps in some places. Also, the walls separating the three properties had been dismantled without any care for aesthetics, and the bricks were thrown into piles in the yards. Overall, it was a messy, patched-up job that further emphasized the cracks in whatever operation the Black Fire pushers ran.

And Bryce would exploit those cracks.

He approached the front gate and found black curtains taped to the glass of the windows. It looked like no one had ever called this place home. Then again, that’s precisely what a safehouse would look like from outside—not abandoned, but forgotten. Still and lifeless, as if vampires dwelled inside, afraid of the light.

The front gate was thin steel, and he could probably push it down by getting a fleet vehicle hijacking script from Metamatics and driving a car straight into it. He thought about contacting Herman and getting him to write one on the fly, but more public destruction was probably not the way to go. It could be said that Metamatics and the other Giants didn’t have Manila’s entire favor at the moment.

He brushed his hands against the steel and dropped them to the biometric lock resting on the bar.

“How many houses in Mandaluyong have these?” Bryce asked.

“If I had to estimate…” buzzed the albularyo “… fourteen.”

“That’s an exact number.”

“It’s a particular device. That kid was telling the truth.”

Of course, he was. Under complete duress, Bryce fully trusted Reggie’s analysis. It seemed the only time you could really trust people was when they were scared of dying.

Bryce checked his wearable’s messaging app to see if Herman was online. Instead, he found a call from an unknown number.

He eyed the Q-90 buzzing next to his head, probably holding the albularyo’s curious eyes. When he flicked his open augment into its private mode, the drone pulled away, though only slightly.

No one ever knew Bryce’s contact number, save for a few people: Ms. Reed, Domingo Baccay, and a few others at Metamatics. He hadn’t spoken to his friend at the PNP for quite some time and wondered if he was even still alive. He’d have to pay a visit.

It could be Ms. Reed, though if she wanted to, why didn’t she contact him through the company’s messaging app? He also didn’t know who else at Metamatics would like to reach him this way.

There was one other person, though.

Bryce played the recording.

“Help. Me,” it said.

Bryce’s eyes opened.

“Help. Me,” the recording buzzed.

Bryce cranked the volume until he thought his eardrums would burst.

“Help. Me. Help Me. Help Me. Help Me.”

“Stop that,” said the albularyo. She must have heard the recording through Bryce’s earphones. “It’s not healthy.”

Bryce clenched his teeth, resisting the urge to swat the drone away. “Can’t you hear her?”

The drone floated beside him, lifeless. “Play it again. In your loudspeaker this time.”

It wasn’t often that Bryce utilized that feature of his wearable, but he did this time, heedless of the people looking at him from down the alley.

“HELP ME.”

“Shit!” Bryce exclaimed, turning the volume down.

He locked eyes with a woman down the street, and mouthed, “Sorry!”

How weird it must have looked to be playing such strange sounds in a crowded street.

The albularyo’s drone gyrated like some curious fairy creature inspecting him. “I’m not so sure,” the aged woman said. “It sounds clipped. Play it back again.”

Bryce was becoming painfully aware he was standing in front of the house where more potential Black Fire pushers could be. During the Tondo Tussle, he had seen a PNP officer’s head crumple in front of him. If the pushers here were similarly equipped, maybe they were already training their guns on him.

He stepped back into the street, playing the message three, four, and ten times until he memorized every static pop and intonation of a sentence.

“That could be altered,” said the albularyo.

Sweat matted Bryce’s hands. “But you’re not sure.”

The AI manifested the shake of a head by tilting the Q-90’s body back and forth. “No, I can’t. Is that her voice exactly?”

“Yes.” Bryce knew that for sure. He had heard it whispered in her ear.

“Well, that doesn’t matter. Voices can be faked. They could have fed that through an AI actor, right? They have tech for that.”

Bryce paused. “You’re saying this came from…” he looked to the building.

In the top window, he thought he saw the curtains pull away, and the eyes of someone beyond the slits watching him.

“Excuse me!” someone called out.

Bryce looked over. A young woman was running down the street towards him, waving.

“Excuse me!” they called. “I’d like a word with you.”

“Bad timing,” said the albularyo. “You want me to get rid of her?”

Bryce squinted as the woman came up. He whispered, “Who is she?”

“Looks like one of those amateur university journalists.” The albularyo’s Q-90 pressed closer to Bryce. “Have you been garnering attention lately?”

He didn’t think so and didn’t have time to check.

He called Ms. Reed’s direct line with his wearable and wasn’t surprised to hear the Head of Operations pick up after one beep. “Bryce? I am at liberty to tell you that the securities division is monitoring this line now, so-”

He shimmied down an alley, dipping his head down and looking like he was too busy to talk to anyone, especially some curious student journalists. “I’ve already checked this place,” he continued, “the pusher we captured led us here.”

“I’ll send a team out, Bryce. Where are you?”

Bryce started sharing his location.

“Oh,” Ms. Reed said. She must have read it. “Oh, fuck.”

“What?”

“Mandaluyong?”

“Yeah, why?”

Footsteps skidded to a halt at the alley’s mouth. The student journalist—she certainly looked the part with her beaded hair and a badge with a lanyard over her neck—pointed to Bryce. “I knew it! Metamatics!”

She held that pointing finger as she looked down the street, towards something.

“Hold on,” Bryce told Ms. Reed. “Hold on, I-”

He stepped outside and heard their tromping footsteps before he saw them.

A hundred people must have been clogging the streets, spreading wide, and blocking cars. They raised signs—the same signs he had seen in the demonstrations outside Metamatics’s Makati office when the CSO dressed him down.

KILL THE GIANTS, they read, in big bold text. Some were decorated in bloody horror movie font. KILL THE GIANTS.

KILL THE GIANTS.

“Bryce!” yelled Ms. Reed, “read your company memos! No employees in Mandaluyong!”

Bryce started walking fast away from the gathering protesters. He faced his back towards them, sinking his head and not looking anyone in the eye. “Where did they come from?”

“They’ve been clogging the streets there! Couldn’t you tell?”

He hadn’t known. He had been so focused on the mission and Janice’s texts that he didn’t bother to scope the area first.

Shit.

He walked further down the street but noticed ahead of him a similar group pushing his way. They were all shorter and frailer than he, but there were so many, maybe two hundred people on either side.

And all of them knew he belonged to the Giants.

The total weight of Manila’s hatred for his company and the others like it started to bear down on him.

He calculated his odds. He still had his Glock, but there was no reason to turn it on innocent civilians unless he felt his life was threatened. Was it really threatened? He could run through this crowd and out the other side. At least, he envisioned himself doing so.

He didn’t make a move for his gun, instead stepping forward towards the crowd in front of him.

He only turned back once to see the protesters had amassed now—more than triple the number before. Even the people in the adjoining buildings took up the chant.

“KILL THE GIANTS! KILL THE GIANTS!”

The crowd behind swelled to the point where he could barely see the gate holding the combo lock. As he squinted, he thought he saw the gate open.

Sirens whirred. A squad car honked, and then the crowd in front of him dispersed.

A PNP SUV pulled up to him. He half expected Hannah would be inside, having a change of heart.

Instead, Domingo Baccay emerged. “You, my friend, are in the wrong place.”

Bryce got into the back of the squad car just as it sped off.