Bryce had been the first one into the room, not a single armed terrorist opposing him. The drones had made it in first, blowing doors open throughout the mansion and laying waste to those who attempted to raise a weapon. There were more people than Taser darts and more bodies piling up.
When he came upon a plush couch with a man and a woman lying on it and more than a hundred more sprawled not just in this room but around the house, he thought they had raided the wrong residence for a moment.
He shuffled back when his boots touched something soft, and through the smoke, he found the sprawled form of the woman they identified as Esmeralda Lane Bernal. Her long dark hair was tousled in a bunch. Blood seeped from twenty pocks in her body, the result of the decision between the PNP Police Chief and the hostage negotiator to eliminate the woman as soon as she showed.
There was no room to negotiate with terrorists like her.
The officers came, and most field agents yielded to Ms. Reed’s orders to let the PNP lead the rest of the operation, even though Metamatics had started it. This would place Metamatics cleanly into the backlines—hopefully—allowing the PNP to take most of the credit. At least, that’s how PR would try to phrase it in the short term.
The entire operation’s fallout would be more significant than the company’s PR reps could anticipate. He imagined them all scrambling around their desks, joining urgent augmented reality meetings to figure out how to tell people they went first. They would have to be ready.
He turned back to Esmeralda’s blood-soaked body, and the sight of it stirred something in Bryce, though not the revulsion he might’ve expected. It was the grief—the kind that had hit him hard when he found out about Hannah. Her death was still fresh, an open wound that wouldn’t heal. Standing here, surrounded by bodies, Bryce wondered how much longer he could keep doing this. It felt like death was all he had left.
Bryce stepped over Esmeralda’s body, his eyes barely registering the carnage of the room, and thought of Hannah. He hadn’t been able to save her either and hadn’t stopped the blood that filled her lungs. Her final words echoed in his head—“Bahala na.” It wasn’t peace; it was surrender. Just like she had surrendered to whatever had torn them apart before. Now, standing in the aftermath of another violent failure, Bryce couldn’t shake the feeling that he was always too late, constantly losing people he couldn’t keep close.
At least, however, they saved most of the hostages.
One by one, the officers and paramedics awoke each entranced individual, hijacking their engineered highs to end them at a time deemed the least claustrophobic. Despite their efforts, the junkies rose in a daze, vomiting, fainting, and some just wobbling around confused, wondering what had just transpired, why smoke filled the room, why there was caution and tarped bodies, and whether they would still get paid.
“No identification,” buzzed the albularyo from a Q-90 hovering next to Bryce. “Just squatters. She must have chosen these people wisely and compensated them well.”
The albularyo was steering clear of Bryce’s emotional state, which was the correct course of action. He didn’t want to talk about Hannah or Janice anymore. He didn’t even want to be here.
Beside them, a woman linked her arms around two officers. A third one carried a child around five or six years old in his arms. Fist-sized capture drones took an interest in these two, and Bryce could picture the officer becoming a protagonist in a dozen movie posters, pulling a child from the rubble or house fire.
“You’ll be the show’s star, for certain,” said the albularyo. “The troubled protagonist. I made sure that would happen.”
Bryce was still processing everything, the reality that he was the albularyo’s pawn.
He continued to search the faces of those escorted out, but there was no sign of anyone named Jayson. How could he tell? Probably, the name could have belonged to anyone but Janice’s brother, of all people. Maybe she had come here because she was a tester.
He’d have to ask her more tonight—except there would be no tonight. She was missing. His mind recoiled from the thought, fighting it, refusing to let it take root. Janice had been at Ayala Triangle Station when the bomb went off. He should’ve known. He should’ve been there.
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But he wasn’t. He had left her there, alone, and taken her phone. It had been necessary—he needed it to find the mansion, to get here in time. But still, he had left her with nothing. No way to call for help, no way to escape the chaos. He should’ve been there.
“Hey,” the albularyo buzzed softly. “Easy, Bryce. Don’t lose it now. You’ll find her. She’s alright—she has to be.”
He nearly collapsed from that realization. It must have been evident from his figure by the way the albularyo kept prodding him.
He turned up to the Q-90 buzzing beside him. “Can you see her?”
The drone was still. “Just because I can’t see her doesn’t mean she isn’t there.”
So, that was it. Hannah was gone. Janice was gone. What was with him and the people in his life leaving?
Ms. Reed spoke again, likely after joining a conference call about the raid. “This is all in the PNP’s hands now,” she said. “Bahala na.”
Bahala na. Whatever happens, happens. How many series would that line creep into in the next week? It seemed the albularyo had pulled in every drone in Luzon to watch Bryce.
He felt something prodding his shoulder. He turned to see the Q-90 pressing gently against him, while its brethren focused their lenses on him, capturing his grief, his every movement, for the world to see.
----------------------------------------
President Atienza stood outside the cemetery, atop the erected platform outside the main entrance, a crowd of tens of thousands raising Philippine flags and wearing headbands, a tribute to the Marcos revolution. Though, this time, the headbands were purple—the unofficial shade of the Inspiration Convergence.
They flooded the blocked-off streets, the barricades, and the floors of the offices that looked down on the Philippine president. A hurricane-shaped funnel of capture drones circled and recorded.
“The road ahead will not be easy,” she continued, partway through her address, “but we must rebuild together. The Giants and their abuses will be addressed, but so too will the wounds that have torn our nation apart.”
Bryce had watched the entire proceedings from the Metamatics Makati office in the second-floor lobby. Every employee had tilted their wearables down to watch.
“Despite who led the assault on the resurgence of Black Fire,” President Atienza resumed, “it is clear the events of that day have lent to purifying the Philippines. We are a country defined by our people and not by its possessions. We are defined by our spirit, not by the consciousness such people push. We endured worse hardships than this, and we will continue to do so, in the face of adversity.”
“Useless platitudes,” Bryce uttered.
It had been said President Atienza wrote her own speeches, but that didn’t make them pander any less. Nothing of substance left her mouth. Despite how she had reached her office, she was another cog in the corrupt machine that the Philippine government was known for.
The total weight of this realization came when the speech ended, and Ms. Reed—standing with her arms folded in on herself and watching—beckoned Bryce into her office.
“I can’t help but notice the contradictions,” she said, sitting on her pod chair. “That is what scares me the most. She perpetrates unity and healing, and yet she enacts a surveillance state. Then again, that’s how it always is, isn’t it? One thing for the public, another behind the scenes.”
She leaned back, her fingers tapping lightly on the armrest, a smile playing at the corner of her lips.
“Must be a cover-up,” Bryce determined.
Ms. Reed waved the point away.
Bahala na, then.
The young head of operations looked expectantly at Bryce, waiting for an answer to a question she didn’t ask. “That was a job well done, by the way. We can handle the backlash.”
Bryce sunk his head. “We only got their leader.”
“We cut off their head, right? The rest of the beast will die. The PNP knows where all the major dispensaries are now, and they have the contact info for the dealers in the city. They’ll start rounding them up.”
“I thought the objective was to eradicate Black Fire.”
“And you practically did. Now? We wait.”
Bryce, too, was waiting for Ms. Reed to say something. It seemed too greedy to ask, but he had to. He had been through too much to wait. “When do I get paid?”
Ms. Reed smiled. It seemed genuine. “Right about…” she raised a finger and brought it down. “Now.”
A notification chimed on Bryce’s wearable. He checked it.
[Credit: 110,000,000 PHP]
He did the math quickly, mentally cataloging everything the money could buy. A life of comfort and freedom. But as the numbers added up, so did the emptiness.
“You deserve it,” Ms. Reed said, her voice smooth, almost too calm. “Take some time and enjoy it. Be by yourself for a bit, without distractions.” Her eyes flicked toward a capture drone outside the window. “Without any outside influence. Maybe that’s what you need. Travel. Go somewhere without the need to chase something.”
Weren’t we all chasing something? Bryce was numb by now. He wasn’t so sure what he needed. He didn’t have a single destination in his life in mind or a plan. Now that his purpose was complete, he could remain stagnant somewhere comfortable, enjoying the view from the ledge.
But sometimes, the emptiness of the ledge was scarier than the fall. If there were sharks at the bottom, at least then he’d know where to jump.
Before he left, Ms. Reed stopped him. “Can I count on you, Bryce?” Her voice was light, almost a statement rather than a question, her smile unwavering
“We’ll see,” Bryce muttered, the words hanging in the air before he turned and left.