President Atienza had just finished what seemed like her sixth national address this week. I watched her from beside Andrei, who held the phone as we huddled in the corner of the food court.
“Holy,” said Andrei. “That’s your sister? She’s hot!”
I guffawed. “What the heck, man?”
“Relax! I’m joking.” He looked again. “Okay, man, I’m not joking. Wowie!”
“Stop!”
“Yeah, I agree,” said Shay, squinting as she peered closer to the screen. “You should stop. She’s not that pretty.”
I looked at her and wasn’t sure what I despised more—Andrei saying my sister was hot or Shay saying she wasn’t. Wasn’t that also a comment about me?
I had promised Janice I would see the interview, and even if we were on the run, I wouldn’t miss it for the world.
Besides, we had some help.
We could see the protesters from our perch at The Corner Market Food Hall of SM Podium, across from SM Megamall. The crowds marched through the streets below us, beyond the glass. I estimated at least a thousand people raising their signs and blaring their megaphones. They were around our age, and I imagined what it would be like to be swept up in that throng.
Janice would have been right at home with them, too.
Instead, she was on the front lines.
“Could this be the next EDSA Revolution, Your Excellency?” Janice asked.
In less than a day, she had transformed. Her long dark hair was wavy now, voluminous, and done up so that it rested on her shoulders. A set of pearl earrings—which I had never seen her wear and that she likely didn’t own—brightened as she turned her head. Her eyes seemed larger now, probably thanks to the President’s makeup artists, but Janice had—as always—forgone whitening powders or creams and went full-on morena. She was several shades darker than Atienza.
I appreciated that detail the most.
She was fourth in a line of six student journalists, each allocated a ten-minute slot with the president. Most of the speakers before her had been timid, asking Atienza about her past and her vision for the future. The President had spoken in generic, non-divisive platitudes, never committing to one side of an argument but instead recognizing both. Atienza was one of the better leaders to grace Malacañang, but was that saying much?
“We don’t think it will come to that,” said President Atienza. “It would be a failure on our part if it did. The people of Manila are frustrated, as they should be, but law enforcement and the Philippine government have the Giants in a stranglehold.”
“Bullshit,” uttered Andrei.
“Yeah,” echoed Shay, “but I like how she says ‘stranglehold.’ Nothing softer. Give her that much.”
I agreed with both of them. Though still providing politically safe answers, Atienza seemed more honest than your average Philippine politician. That was a step in the right direction, but a minuscule one.
I thought Janice would act as cautious as the other interviewers had before her. Thank God I was wrong.
My sister scratched her collarbone before saying, “Public perception has shifted to show the Giants have done Manila a disservice. Mandaluyong is in a frenzy right now.”
“Frenzy is an understatement,” I murmured, looking outside.
The only beings now more numerous than the protesters were the capture drones following them, pressed so densely that they cast shadows, blotting out the sun. I could already guess all the scenes that this event would Inspire.
Andrei, still looking outside, held a mourning visage. We all knew why.
Regardless of what we had all given up in that place, there was no way we were going back. I didn’t need to mention this to the group. Any prints, hair, or other evidence forensics found there would lead straight back to us. We were only delaying the inevitable.
Yet, if there was a sliver of a chance we would survive all this, then making it out of that safe house had been the first step. That had begun with the recording, but it didn’t stop there.
Running Janice’s voice through an AI actor wasn’t hard—we had done that automatically with all the entities in The Crest and its Killers. The recording was short but the handiwork was evident in hindsight. If you played it back several times, you would eventually notice it was a fake. We couldn’t have relied on it very long.
That’s when we turned to the Internet.
The Giants had been in Manila’s spotlight ever since the Shaw Boulevard attack which—apparently—my mother had not orchestrated, but no doubt relished in. That had been the start, but the helicopter attack in Laguna and President Atienza’s speech afterward, calling for a security probe against the Giants, had been the catalyst and the fuel for our next move.
Metamatics field agent spotted in Mandaluyong.
We posted on Reddit first, then a few amateur journalist Facebook groups, then 4Chan. It took less than two minutes; all the while, my sister’s boyfriend Bryce stood outside our gate.
We got DMs in seconds, most from random users we didn’t know, but some from the web crawlers belonging to Rappler, The Manila Times, the Philippine Daily Inquirer, Manila Bulletin, and others. When they asked questions, we responded only with our camera footage of Bryce standing at our gate.
“The numbers are in,” Janice said, continuing an earlier topic, “but the spending doesn’t add up with the infrastructure. Where are the above-ground LRT lines? The new highways? How about Line 1 of the subway?”
“Oh!” Shay said. “This is gold!” She prodded me on the shoulder. “Leave it up to a Vargas to ask the tough questions, eh?”
“Well done,” Andrei murmured. He nodded, then looked outside as if he could see Reggie waving.
“Our MTA officials have the exact numbers,” said President Atienza, “but I know most of our spending is focused on getting the new subway up and running, which will happen soon.”
“Wow,” said Shay, looking at me. “You think she’s telling the truth?”
“I hope so,” I said, surprised at how easily our minds could shift from survival mode to urban planning. It helped me clear my head, if only for a second. We would be on the move again in a few minutes anyway.
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Plus, bonus points for seeing my sister grill the president.
And more when she started to pull out the big guns.
It was as if Janice and I shared a link. When she breathed, so did I, and when she pondered on the following question, I also thought of questions to ask Papa if I saw him again one day up there—if that was even a place I was going. How proud he would have been to see his daughter—much prouder than he ever had of me.
“Why Manila?” Janice asked.
I had tuned out to watch the protests, but I was locked in again with that question.
Atienza blinked at my sister. “I’m sorry?”
“I mean…” Janice curled her lip, employing a cute fidget as she sought to pose the question another way. There was no better way to ask it. “Why did Manila win the bid? Why not Singapore? Dubai? New York? Manila was not the richest city in the world at the time of the bid. Far from it. It may be now, but who can trust the numbers?” Janice brushed that point away as if saving it for another time. “So, then, why us?”
Atienza’s mouth opened so wide it could have reached the floor. It was clear she hadn’t expected this question at all.
She shook her head faintly, betraying her usual stoic countenance. “We were simply the best option at the time.” The syllables shook as they left her mouth. “We had the best proposal. We won because we were the best fit.”
“Nah,” uttered Andrei. “Your sister cracked her.” He patted me on the shoulder as he said it. “She’s done, man.”
“Poor Madam President,” Shay added.
“Is that so?” Janice asked. “If that’s the case, then how do you explain that the proposals for Dubai, Singapore, New York, Toronto, Paris, Jakarta, and Sydney all had more than double the bid price that Manila did?” Janice folded her hands on her lap. “Manila ranked #33 in the world in terms of how much it was willing to commit to the Inspiration Convergence.”
The funding to the Convergence was two-fold: by the Giants and by the city. The Giants would match whatever the chosen city would commit to the project and at least double it. Janice raised an interesting point here that had been on all Filipinos’ minds since Manila won the bid.
“She sure is making good use of her time,” Shay said, squeezing my leg.
I wasn’t sure if the others saw that, and I tried not to flinch, but it was the most intimate thing I had done with Shay in the last few days. A part of me—a large part of me—hoped there’d be more.
Janice didn’t relent, and as she continued to grill the President of the Philippines on a skewer, I felt prouder of her with each passing moment. If Papa were here, we would both be cheering her on.
As I leaned closer, I caught Andrei’s shadow looming over me. “We should go,” he said. “It’s been ten minutes. Sorry, Jayson.”
“It’s alright,” I breathed, just as Andrei shut the phone to a scene of my sister bowing and receiving shallow applause as she walked off the stage.
----------------------------------------
“Jayson?” Uncle Nestor asked. “Are you alright? I heard about Mandaluyong, and I feared the worst.”
“I’m fine,” I said. “Don’t tell Mom.”
Getting to the motel in Pasig took over an hour. We booked three hours in two rooms to freshen up and get our heads straight. My idea was to split up the equipment across both our suites, with Andrei taking the cartridge loader while Shay and I took the laptops. That way, if the PNP or the Giants found any of us, the others would still have time to escape.
I remembered how Uncle Nestor told me before leaving the Bernal palace that Mother was not the best leader. Did he think that was true, or was he saying it to comfort me? I thought about asking him now. More importantly, I thought he would immediately involve my mother in the call, but he didn’t.
“Just keep lying low,” he told me. “I’ll send someone for you shortly.”
I didn’t know who that would be. “Ernesto? Quin?”
“Nah. They’re your mother’s men. Not ours.”
“‘Ours?’” I had a phobia of being in the figurative dark now. I wanted to know everything. “Like you and me?”
“More. There are two sides to every coin, Jayson. For yours, there are the Bernals and the Vargases.”
I had already come to that conclusion, but hearing it from Uncle Nestor solidified it. The side of the coin I would choose was obvious.
“What about Janice?” he asked me.
He hadn’t seen the interview with President Atienza, then. Not yet. He would, and then he’d call me back demanding an explanation.
I sighed, nodding to Shay and trying to tell her without words that I was about to drop a giant bomb that would upset my Uncle to no avail. “I let her go,” I told him.
I braced myself for the onslaught, squeezing my face as if doing so would cut off every sound in existence.
Uncle Nestor sighed. “Good.”
I frowned. “Good?”
“Very good. You didn’t tell her anything about the operation, did you?”
“No, no,” I said, shaking my head as if he were in the room.
“Great. If you did inform her, we’d have a rat, and your mother doesn’t like those at all.” I heard him swallow.
The implication caught up to me. “I’m a rat, then.”
“You are, Jayson, unfortunately. That’s why I need to get you some protection—because your mother is going to be coming after you hard. She has links inside the PNP—as you saw with that girlfriend of hers.”
That conjured a weird taste in my mouth. “Hannah?”
“Yeah.”
Well, that confirmed it. “How did they even meet?”
“I don’t know, Jayson, but I wouldn’t put much weight into it. They’re more like professional contacts that…well…”
“I understand.” I didn’t need Uncle Nestor to elaborate on my mother’s affiliation with the woman. I wasn’t born yesterday. “Who should I be looking out for?”
“I can’t say for certain.” A pause. “I know that will be confusing, but they will make themselves uniquely known to you. Don’t be afraid.”
I frowned. “That’s very vague, Uncle.”
“Yeah, I’m trying to be vague. Sorry, Jayson, but this whole operation comprises layers of secrets and subterfuge. We’ve built a house of cards, but these things are always fragile. Yet, we stand.”
That humbleness didn’t assure me—not one bit.
“Hang tight,” he said, “and send me Episodes 3, 4, and 5 when you get them.”
I thanked myself before bringing the laptops. “What about Mom?”
“I’ll worry about your mother. You make those episodes.”
We made small talk after that and hung up.
I wasn’t entirely convinced Uncle Nestor had everything under control, but I had only the cash in my bags, our equipment, my friends, and nowhere else to go. The last thing I wanted to do was return to my mother, begging her to take me back in. I wasn’t sure what she would do to me in that scenario.
Shay had fallen asleep during my call, exhausted from our constant running from the Giants and, now, my mother.
We still had two hours left with our rooms, and I’d make good use of them.
I looked back at clips of Atienza’s interview with Janice. I wasn’t surprised to see there were already reels circulating of the President stammering, adjusting her microphone, and generally losing her cool against my sister’s onslaught. The “giga chad” reels made me spit out my drink in the way that they gave Janice the chin of a sculpted Greek god.
The Vargases were making waves in Manila. How much more could we do?
Well, I still needed to do my part.
My backpack had the manuscript of The Crest and its Killers, and I read and re-read it for the next hour, planning what we would include in Episode 3. If there were lessons in the words, I couldn’t decipher them. The showrunning engines were better at extracting themes and meaning than I was.
Something brushed my leg. I lifted the page.
“Hey,” said Shay.
She had fallen asleep on one side of the bed, and I had been reading on the other. Her hand rested lightly by her side, close to mine.
“Hey,” I said.
“We still have an hour in these rooms.” Her voice was soft, her gaze lingering on me as if searching for something. There was a quiet question in her eyes, something unsaid. But no words followed, just the stillness between us.
I glanced over, sensing the unspoken, but instead of leaning into it, I gave her a small, reassuring smile. “We’ll figure it out,” I said quietly.
Her smile remained faint but calm, her eyes holding a quiet warmth. I felt the same comfort in her presence, knowing that here, among our friends—our trusted people—we were safe.
As Shay drifted back into sleep, I leaned back, my thoughts still wandering. There was always tomorrow. Always more time.
But how much time?
Looking back, I shouldn’t have hesitated.