The stitching dropped Bryce into the albularyo’s fabricated NAIA, past the customs lines. The AI seemed as eager to see him as he was to see her.

“Wait,” Herman’s voice echoed throughout the terminal. “You’re in cahoots with this thing?”

“Quiet,” said Ms. Reed, joining the connection and watching Bryce go under from their wearables.

Bryce found the aged woman sitting by the baggage claim, observing people—who weren’t people—waiting for their luggage.

“I can’t blame you for what you did,” she said. “I would have taken it as well. The circumstances seem… unfortunate.”

So, the albularyo knew it was Janice’s phone. “You’re a calculating AI. You’d take candy from a baby.”

“That… is mostly untrue.”

Bryce didn’t have time to elaborate. He didn’t sit next to the albularyo.

Excitement coursed through him, even in this manufactured place. He needed to test a theory.

He looked around. “Is this to scale?”

“NAIA? Not really. But My Manila? Definitely.”

My Manila. She was genuinely proud of her creation.

“How confident are you in that?” Bryce asked.

“Confidence is not a word to me. I have a margin of error of .01%, which is not insignificant, but it is an exact match to other GPS location data, and obviously, from what I’ve gathered from your Inspired footage—thank you very much.”

She had already answered his question. “Mind if I check that margin of error?”

The albularyo held up her hands. “You don’t trust me, Bryce? I believe you would have a larger margin of error than I would if you rebuilt Manila from the ground up.”

“I don’t think you made any errors, but I also…” He trailed off, deciding how to phrase it. “How long do I have before you kick me out?”

The albularyo stood, taking her sweet time about it. “As long as I can follow you, you can take all the time in the world, my friend.”

He nodded. “I might need a speed boost, though.”

Bryce exited through the baggage claim, past the terminal’s departure area, and boarded what the albularyo considered a futuristic Infusion Motors SUV. The rows of seats had been cut out, leaving only two facing each other, the one across empty. Bryce took one, and after he blinked, the albularyo materialized across from him. No one was driving.

“Herman?” Bryce asked. “Coordinates?”

“Incoming,” Herman replied.

The SUV left NAIA, accelerating to a speed no car could match. Such were the creative liberties of this place. Traffic parted slightly as if they were an ambulance, but it was clear the albularyo hadn’t bothered working the specifics of fleet mode out and decided to take the easy way. At least the pathing algorithm stuck to the roads.

“What about inside the buildings?” Bryce asked as they passed Ayala Triangle. He could see the lights of the subway station he had been at earlier that night.

“Some people never close their windows,” said the albularyo, looking out to the passing city.

Bryce squinted, noticing figures in some condo buildings and office towers. Whether they were the albularyo’s extrapolations of their future selves was a guess he did not want to make.

“I did some pattern matching with a script,” said Herman, his voice filling the city. “It says whoever held this phone made frequent trips to Quezon City.”

“To a specific place?” Bryce asked.

“Yeah, kind of. Almost daily. You sure this is a pusher’s phone and not some university student’s?”

Bryce swallowed. “Why ‘university?’”

“These are all near the University of the Philippines Diliman campus.”

Bryce tried to steady his thoughts and his body. Janice was from UP, so this was confirmation that, by some luck, Janice hadn’t been carrying someone else’s phone. “Where else?” he asked.

“A lot of back and forth between there and Bonifacio Global City. Between there and, like, the Uptown area.”

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That was more confirmation, then. Bryce’s condo was near Uptown Mall in BGC. If this weren’t Janice’s phone, then it would have been someone making the same movements, which would have been a strange coincidence.

“Any more than that?” Ms. Reed asked.

“Just… random places throughout Manila. And some outside.”

“Outside?” Bryce asked.

“Yeah. One visit outside.”

The albularyo turned the SUV onto the South Luzon Expressway, taking them on a straight course beyond the city’s limits.

“I have to warn you,” the AI said, “that my coverage outside Manila is spotty. I’m not a province girl, you know?”

“I don’t think we need to go far,” Bryce guessed. “Right, Herman?”

“If you’re referring to the last data point,” he said, “then no, especially not at your speed.” He sent the data over.

Minutes later—what should have taken hours—the SUV traveled down a forested road in Laguna and stopped abruptly.

“What’s wrong?” Bryce asked, staring at the winding dirt road that ended in a loop, doubling back on itself.

“Nothing,” said the albularyo, “these are your data points, not mine.”

“She’s right,” said Herman. “Maybe it’s a bug, Bryce. I can double-check.”

“Let me check first,” said Bryce, and stepped out of the SUV.

Humid air assaulted him, the dense canopy of trees overhead doing little to stop the heat. He smelled the soil and saw tiny bananas hanging from the trees near the road. There was a shallow ditch and no driveways along this stretch. He doubted anyone had ever stopped in this area before unless for an emergency.

It didn’t make sense. Why would the UP and BGC locations match, but this one led him to a dead end? It was not even a dead end, just a road that wrapped around itself and turned back.

The albularyo appeared next to Bryce and started walking with him. “Are you admiring my handiwork?”

Bryce ignored her, lost in thought. AIs were overconfident, he realized. There was no way they were always right.

“Herman,” Bryce began, “can you match my location to the same place on a map of Luzon?”

“Should be easy if this is indeed a one-to-one scale,” said the software engineer. He silenced for a moment. “My god, all the detail. This is really what the capture drones see?”

The albularyo’s proud stare seemed to say that there was even more underneath this constructed veneer. Bryce, however, wasn’t convinced. Not yet.

A crackling made itself audible in Bryce’s ear. No matter where he turned, he heard the Geiger counter-like sound flickering. “Is that you?” he asked Herman.

“Yeah. Just keep walking. It’s going to pop like crazy if you encounter something weird.”

“You won’t find anything,” said the albularyo, “but you can try.”

Bryce walked into the ditches, examining the plants, trees, and soil, glancing back at the road. San Pedro lay somewhere to the east. He could check for consistency there, but everything seemed fine during the ride. No, there was something strange about this dead end. Come to think of it, how many dead ends were there in Laguna forests?

He decided to check, walking to the end of the road while listening to Herman’s Gieger counter-like script. It started as faint clicks in his ear, but as he pushed deeper into the forest, brushing leaves aside, it crackled like a firecracker.

“I hardly see the point of all this,” said the albularyo.

Ms. Reed, however, laughed. “I do,” she said.

“Herman?” Bryce asked, glancing at the still-proud-looking albularyo, “Can you pull this place up in Google Maps? The exact coordinates I’m in?”

“You mean in her Manila? I can’t see those.”

“Hold on,” said the albularyo, stepping back. She raised her arms, and slowly, numbers began carving themselves into the dirt road.

“I was just going to say there’s no protocol for her to send information to us,” said Herman, “but that works. I’m looking at it now.”

“I’m already gathering forces,” said Ms. Reed.

Bryce smiled. Ms. Reed saw it, and probably Herman, too. The only person—thing—that needed convincing was the albularyo.

“Ah,” said Herman. “I see it now. I guess you’re right, Bryce.”

Bryce found the albularyo staring at the numbers etched in the road as if eager to brush them away. “Your little reconstruction is off,” he told her. “It only sees what the capture drones see.”

The albularyo hunched forward and raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, your version of Luzon is wrong. Everything’s off by a bit.”

The aged woman breathed in through her nose, her eyes going wide. She stared still at the ground as if processing that something like her could be incorrect.

Ms. Reed didn’t wait for her.

“Bryce!” she called. “Herman and I have the match, and our field agents are ready. Gabriel Marcello is on the line.”

“Impossible,” uttered the albularyo, still in denial. “I capture everything.”

“Not if the drones don’t,” said Bryce. “Those things bind you.”

Perhaps it was like telling someone to envision a five-dimensional shape—they couldn’t. It was beyond their comprehension.

“How much longer on my high?” Bryce asked. He looked up, scanning the artificial clouds that, after this discovery, seemed too perfect to be real. “Guys?”

“Don’t know,” said Ms. Reed, her voice rising. “Get him out now, Herman.”

“Sure thing, Boss,” said Herman. “Hold on, Bryce.”

“How are you going to do that?” Bryce asked. They hadn’t done it yet. Then, a more critical question hit him. “Wait. why?”

The gray skies darkened, clouds dissipating as if vacuumed away. The trees crumpled, folding like spines snapping, turning to jelly all at once.

“Message on my wearable,” said Herman. “Emergency broadcast. Terrorist attack.”

The world turned black, closing around the albularyo with her hand outstretched. The last image Bryce saw was the woman smiling. He thought she mouthed the words, “Good luck.”

“Where?” asked Bryce among the blackness.

Herman coughed before saying, “The subway.”