The crazed woman’s shouts brought the entire assault to a standstill. A huge "HALT!" notification flashed across the wearables of every PNP officer and Metamatics field agent, including Bryce’s.

“If you even touch those steps, I will kill them all!” Her voice, shrill and teetering on the edge of a cackle, reverberated with twisted triumph. There was a sick pomposity in how she reveled in her power, knowing full well that she had just halted the storm bearing down on her doorstep.

“Stand down!” yelled a PNP officer. “Stand down!” His voice cracked in fealty.

Bryce had been the first through the gate, standing on the driveway roundabout only a few meters from the mansion’s entrance. As the broadcast filled the compound, Bryce stepped back and looked up at the hole blown open on the third floor.

There, on the blasted wall's edge, lay the frail shape of Hannah, barely moving.

“Oh,” buzzed the albularyo through a drone inside the shell. “This is golden.”

It was her—Bryce could have picked her out from miles away. She was still breathing, thank God.

His ex-wife. A woman he had loved a long time ago. They weren’t married for a long time, but they were married. She had settled into a part of his life he would never forget. Her memory, and more than a bit of what she meant to him, remained.

“My demands are simple…” the woman on the intercom explained, but Bryce didn’t hear her. His sole focus was on Hannah and the blood trickling down her pale face.

As Bryce stared, the albularyo’s volunteers from the clouds of capture drones above descended into a column behind him. Instead of adding layers to the shell that was now beginning to part to give him a view of the third floor, the new drones hovered over Hannah, closing in like a quiet swarm, drawn to her frailty.

“You’re sick,” Bryce muttered.

“Good stories hold truth,” said the albularyo through a drone behind Bryce. “I know you think of me as a carrion bird, but even I have mercy.”

As the AI’s words faded, a swarm of Q-90s separated from Bryce’s shell and rose to the third floor, joining dozens of their spherical brethren. Hannah looked at them, confused, dizzy, and perhaps unable to see them.

She was in the open now, a legion of PNP officers surrounding her. They would whisk her away this time with no chance for an escape.

The woman on the loudspeaker screamed something, breathing hard, but Bryce paid no attention to her. He watched as the drones gently guided Hannah closer and closer toward the edge of the blasted hole. She squirmed initially but gave up struggling as the drones flew underneath her legs and the back of her neck. As two lifted her, the others hovered underneath, forming a blanket, a basket, and a tunnel around the basket. They connected it to Bryce’s shell and set Hannah before him.

Her eyes were not blank, but they would be soon. Her breaths strained. She curled in on herself and gripped her head.

Bryce knelt beside her, gathering her in his arms. She was so tiny now, withered by stress or maybe even Black Fire. It didn’t matter.

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He had been here before, and part of him wondered if he’d find himself here again. He wasn’t sure what to say, only grateful he could see her one last time.

“Don’t…” Hannah managed, swallowing. “Don’t… give me to them.”

He knew what she was referring to. Among the PNP and Metamatics, there were also paramedics.

“They can help you…”

“No.” She coughed, blood pouring out of her mouth in gouts. Her teeth were still bloody.

“Easy.” He held her gently, his back affording no strain over her lightness. “Easy.”

The albularyo began to close in the shell around the two, leaving just enough room for them. Bryce could barely hear the world outside past the whirring machinery, the beeps of the curious drones, their bodies jostling against each other, their faces turned inwards and their capture cams pointing to the spectacle inside, not outside.

“Oh, Bryce… I told you to leave.”

He hadn’t listened to that before, so why would he now? “Why did you even come? Here? In Manila?” Why stay?

Hannah sagged a bit and shook her head.

“Tell me.” Bryce wanted to shake the answers out of her. The thought sickened him.

“Why should I?” She tried to sit up but couldn’t. “You kept things from me, you know. You kept me… out of the dark.”

He had, hadn’t he? He hadn’t left time for her. He had joined Metamatics dedicated, eager to prove himself, and was wholly unaware of the life he had just begun at home and was leaving behind.

“I remember everything,” she whispered, her chest barely rising with each strained breath. “We were… doomed from the start, Bryce. Us two. Who the hell meets at a rave?” She coughed, and blood splattered from her mouth onto her chest. “There was so much you wanted to do, and you… you cared little for me. So… I did the same. And you know what, Bryce?”

Bryce knew what was coming, but he couldn’t meet her gaze.

“My life opened up to me.” She raised a bloody hand as if something was in there he could take, but it was empty. “You were never a part of it at all.”

He hadn’t been. He’d felt that separation years ago, but had he ever done anything to mend it?

Her head sank.

“No!” Bryce grabbed her chin. “No, no, no! Hey! Stay awake!”

She blinked something back, still there, and in that moment, she could have been rising from the back of the Prius that Bryce had hijacked after the rave. The gulls of the past were sirens now, and the squawking, shouting PNP officers, trying to barge their way into the albularyo’s protective shell.

Bryce took her frail hand in his, intertwining their fingers like they had done once before, long ago. “Hang on.”

She squeezed back. “Bryce.”

His voice cracked. “Yeah?”

“It… it was me.”

He looked down at his dying wife—once-wife. “What was?”

“The video… Bryce. Your coworker.” Hannah looked up past him. “I set it up.”

His hand suddenly felt cold, as if the last traces of warmth—and the remnants of their past—had been snuffed out. Her grip was fragile. She was almost gone. But he squeezed. “Why?”

“Because there’s more to life than love, Bryce. Accomplishment… impact… improvement. Why add to the suffering with love?”

He searched through her words. “So you gave up?” A new weight pressed him down. “I’m sorry, Hannah. I… I was an idiot. I’m sorry.”

“Bahala na,” she whispered, her lips barely moving. Whatever happens, happens.

Her mouth remained open, her eyes glazing as her last flicker of life slipped away.