I remember the ocean and how all the water I had seen in my entire life couldn’t compare. Taal, Laguna Lake, the Pasig River, and even Manila Bay, which was so close to the ocean, still felt enclosed in comparison. It was different staring off into that expanse, the sheer breadth encompassing most of the world. It was our freedom and prison walls wrapped into one.
We had driven a straight path west out of Cavite, heading south along Luzon’s western coast, with no helicopter or capture drone in sight. We had pulled up to a beach—I didn’t know exactly where it was, but my adrenaline had since cooled to a simmer, replaced by the fear of the inevitable creeping up on me.
I wasn’t sure how far Baccay was taking me. It seemed excessive. For the first few hours of the drive, I had thought the trip was nothing but a last-ditch effort, a hopeless wandering that would only lead us to our ends. As nightfall slowly approached, I was beginning to think we were only drawing out the inevitable.
We parked the car in a garage in a town I hadn’t heard of before, and from there, we walked to a white sand beach on the coast. I listened to the waves lapping and the geckos croaking while the smell of fish and freedom assaulted me.
A sleek yacht anchored maybe a kilometer off the shore lit far off like a beacon. I thought it wasn’t meant for us until I saw a black dingy approaching the beach, its puttering motor the only sound in existence.
The man who stepped out wore a floral shirt and jeans, like a wealthy local on a casual outing. I had met him only once before but had spoken with him on the phone many times since then. He had, in the end, fulfilled his promise.
“We don’t have much time,” Uncle Nestor said, taking two duffel bags from Baccay. A younger man stepped off the motorboat, a pistol holstered on his waist, while two more stayed in the boat. Uncle Nestor patted me on the shoulder with almost enough force to topple me over. “You’ve done good, Jayson.”
My mind filled with questions, but exhaustion subdued it, and the weight of decisions, failures… and grief. The excitement of what was to come must have helped me bottle it all up.
The journey south took two days, the yacht running on its AI autopilot. Uncle Nestor, Baccay, and the yacht’s four crewmen passed the time tending to their duties, talking among themselves more than to me. I spent most of the time gazing at the vessel’s prowl, snatching a view of the Philippine coastline.
One of the crewmen was a master chef, catching fish off the side of the boat during one of our fuel stops near Cagayan Island, which was somewhere southwest of Iloilo City. I tried staring that way to find Reggie’s home while remembering my promise to Andrei and Shay. If they had followed my advice, they would already be in Iloilo.
It was after breakfast on our first day out when Uncle Nestor pulled me aside. The four crew and Baccay had all—whether intentionally or not—made their way to the upper deck, leaving the two of us alone.
I felt numb then, a strange mix of adrenaline and distance. I only shook my head when Uncle Nestor sat across from me in the ship’s hold, looking up at me with weary skepticism as if I didn’t have the guts to continue all this. Maybe that was just my doubt.
“I know what happened,” said Uncle Nestor.
He could have been referring to a dozen different things, though one of them sat in the forefront of my mind.
“And…” he continued, “…I would have done the same thing in your position. Your mother was nothing short of a tyrant. She won’t be missed.”
I had to agree. Nodding my head, I felt no weight behind the gesture. Instead, I felt lighter than I had in the last month.
I got Uncle Nestor up to speed on everything—Janice, the shootout at my mother’s mansion and how we managed to get away, and my time hiding in Manila with my friends. Uncle Nestor seemed more interested in learning from me than sharing what was coming next.
That is until one of the crew members stepped down into the hold. Instead of silencing our conversation, Uncle Nestor waved him over. “Son,” he said, “talk to your cousin.”
The boy was a few years younger than me, maybe 19 or 20, with short black hair and a moreno complexion. He was skinny and taller than me, about Uncle Nestor’s height, and he wore an LA Laker’s jersey.
Our conversation felt forced, but then again, so did most familial interactions in your life. His name was Matthew Vargas, son of my uncle Nestor Vargas, and he was the first cousin I ever met.
“I wish Janice got to meet you,” I told him. I wish she were here for everything.
After our small talk—I guessed there would be plenty of time to catch up later—Uncle Nestor nodded Matthew away to work more on the ship. After the boy had left, my uncle climbed up the steps and yelled, “Brother! Get in here!”
I hadn’t heard him refer to anyone as his brother yet. Then again, I hadn’t been paying attention for the first part of the journey. I should have been excited to meet another of my uncles, but it felt more akin to tying loose ends or learning what I should have already known. I was owed this information.
“Joseph,” said the man who came down to the hold next, shaking my hand firmly. “Pleasure to reel the family back in.”
I blinked at his name. I hadn’t recognized him, but I knew that name. He was older than Uncle Nestor, parts of his gray stubble seeping through and his face marred with sun damage. He had a tattoo of the Philippine sun across his chest.
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I smirked, remembering when Papa had taken Janice and me to see a projection flick. “Crime Lords.”
“Tchh.” Uncle Joseph smirked. “Your father would never let me live that down!” He made a camera gesture with his two hands. “I get my big break, and no one knows it’s me! I should have got paid, right?” His smile beamed.
I laughed for the first time during that trip and perhaps in the whole month. Being alongside my two uncles and cousin Matthew was unlike being in the Bernal mansion. Maybe it was the freedom of the ocean around us, combined with the familiarity of the coast of our homeland, or perhaps it was the talk of big plans to come and even larger ambitions. Maybe it was the last night of the journey when we drank to our heart’s content, and I forgot, for a brief time, the friends I had left behind.
But I allowed myself the moments to relish in my family’s presence while intentionally ignoring that things would probably get a lot more involved, and this might be my only chance to celebrate.
“No need to fear pirates,” said Uncle Nestor on the prowl of the yacht the following morning. “A lot of them are on our side.”
I didn’t know what he meant until he pointed to the three other yachts spread loosely between the two land masses in front of us: Basilian Island to the right and Mindanao to the left.
Mindanao was beautiful. Where the coastlines of Luzon had been sparse and trodden, parts of Mindanao seemed untouched, littered with dense palm and coconut trees, and home to white sand beaches undisturbed. We stayed close to the coast, passing towns and wharves and waving to the children who stepped out onto the shores.
I felt a strange sense of calm here, an unfamiliar ease setting in. I wasn’t sure how to explain it until I asked Uncle Nestor, “What’s so different about this place?”
I thought he would tell me something profound, like the rush of an escape still fresh in my mind, the excitement of plans coming to fruition, or the chance to restart. But he didn’t say anything like that. Instead, he threw his arms out and beckoned me to look upon the sky. “There’s no capture drones!” he yelled.
Of course. I hadn’t seen one for over 24 hours, and I didn’t miss them at all. I felt free to say anything and do anything without the Giants watching me. I had grown up under the gaze of the Giants, and being separate from them was addictive. I didn’t want that feeling to end.
“If I can do something to preserve this,” I told Uncle Nestor, “then I will.”
That’s when he told me about the plans for Black Fire.
“Imagine, Jayson, the entirety of the Philippines with access to a substance that allows them to envision any story as if it were real. Not just Manila but our entire beautiful country. No man, woman, or child will be restricted from accessing Black Fire.”
It sounded like communism, almost. Black Fire still had a cost to create, distribute, and maintain, which would never disappear. I chalked my uncle’s words up to exaggeration and passion, all the while unsure of how serious he was.
“How is it here?” I asked, nodding to Mindanao’s southern coast.
It could have been the sun gleaming in Uncle Nestor’s eyes. It could have been his pride, too. “It’s booming,” he said, “but we must lay low until we try again.”
I wanted to ask what he meant by “try again,” but based on what he said earlier, I could guess.
I phrased it in a way that sparked a tinge of pride in me. “My mother only aimed for Manila,” I ventured. “So, we spread first and emerge in many places simultaneously.”
Uncle Nestor nodded. “See? You get it. We’ll come out of the woodwork all at once, with even greater reach. They can raid all the Manila dispensaries they want. Those were your mother’s dispensaries, after all, not ours. But can they spread themselves throughout the entirety of the Philippines and stop us?”
The mention of dispensaries made me straighten. “And how goes us?”
Uncle Nestor pointed to the shoreline. “Let me show you.”
We parked the yacht in Davao City in a private marina full of wealthy Filipinos and foreigners alike—primarily Chinese and European, with vessels more luxurious than ours. Uncle Nestor’s yacht seemed to blend in enough not to garner any attention.
A white SUV awaited us, and more techno-culture shock hit me when I slipped inside and found a driver operating it using a stick shift. As I looked at the cars around us, everyone was in the driver’s seat.
“No fleet network, either,” said Uncle Nestor, smiling. “That’s Manila tech.” He lazed back. “Here in Mindanao, we do everything ourselves.”
Davao blazed with light and activity. We drove right through as the city caught us in its momentary congestion, which was nothing compared to Manila’s. The air was cleaner, and street food smelled more pronounced. Gone were the glass edifices the Giants had brought into Manila’s downtown core, too. Here, the buildings were stained concrete with brightly colored corrugated steel roofs. There were birds, too. So many more than in Manila.
We drove north out of the city, pushing further into Mindanao’s dense embrace. Trees pressed around us all over, making Laguna’s vegetation seem frail in comparison. We passed Mount Apo, a stratovolcano, and barreled down dirt roads behind trucks carrying bushels of bananas. We rode one of them for almost an hour, and I was going to ask the driver if we should overtake the truck in front of us until we followed it down a long, barren road.
A sign plastered over an archway, and we drove underneath it.
***SAGINGAN HAVEN***
We rounded a corner and banana trees filled my view, the grids of dirt roads between them lit with floodlights. Flatbed trucks wove between the patches of banana trees, carrying more bushels. Workers stood on those trucks, t-shirts wrapped around their heads and hauling baskets. Auto-tractors slept at their charging ports while giant sprinklers the size of trees themselves rose high over the plantation.
I wanted to ask Uncle Nestor if he had been talking about bananas and not Black Fire the whole time. Before I did, we drove the SUV to a long garage that looked like it should have held tractors or other equipment. The men standing in front of it were armed, and at our approach, the gate opened.
Tractors and trailers lay dormant inside, but there was also a ramp in the center leading down to a black and yellow sealed door, almost like an underground parking garage. We descended to the front of the door and waited nearly a minute.
It opened, and underneath, my understanding of the operation came full circle.
The space was four or five stories tall, like a warehouse that spread out to cover the whole plantation underground. Machines littered the place, tall vats with long tubes feeding between them, each decorated with digital panels and screens. Forklifts zoomed around. Armed men on scaffolding patrolled atop us. Security cameras were everywhere.
My eyes widened as I comprehended the scale. As soon as we stopped, I jumped out, dodging a worker in a lab coat. From the ground level, I saw all the glassed side rooms with chairs and comfy desks full of people. I counted at least one hundred workers, and as I explored the many assembly areas, labs, and offices, I found thrice more.
Uncle Nestor ran to me as I collapsed on the ground in awe. Some people looked at me before returning to their work. Everyone must have realized who I was when Uncle Nestor stood over me.
He pulled me up and held an arm around me. “Now,” he said, “the real work begins.”