SIX MONTHS LATER
Despite the Giants’ sweeping innovations and the massive funding poured into Manila, space remained a rare commodity. This was only a minor reason why the memorial to the Ayala Triangle Station bombing victims stood in Ayala Triangle Gardens. The deeper, unspoken reason was far more profound: it was a silent indictment of the Giants’ failure.
The monument was a shattered glass tower depicted in stone, not unlike Metamatics’s Makati office or any of the other dozen headquarters belonging to the streaming Giants. The cracks on the tower’s depiction were intentional, and at night, they blazed a neon teal, symbolizing the scars the Giants had left on the city. The tower’s shattered fragments at its base were strewn about, the names of the bombing victims etched into them.
Bryce sat on a bench across from the monument, waiting for the crowds to disperse. It was just past lunchtime, meaning the only people viewing the structure were joggers on their random days off and parents walking their children through Ayala Triangle Gardens with no intention of staying long. Bryce didn’t intend to stay long either.
He wasn’t worried about showing off any Metamatics logos on his person, as he had stuffed all his company clothing in a box the day after he met with Ms. Reed half a year ago. Despite not dressing the part, he wondered if people would recognize him.
Footage of the Esmeralda Lane raid, the bombing, and the Shaw Boulevard incident still circulated. It had been a tumultuous year, but Bryce had already spent most of it away from the office. He would be happy if he didn’t ever have to go back.
Bryce stood up and approached the monument once only a few people stood beside it. He tried not to stand too close to any of them and interrupt their mourning. Still, a part of Bryce wanted to reach out.
No one told him how lonely his retirement would be, but he should have known. He didn’t have friends in Manila aside from workmates. He had a group chat with Herman Colose, his software engineer contact at Metamatics, so that was something. He had once considered Domingo Baccay a friend, but the PNP officer had since been stonewalling him, not responding to any of his messages or calls. When Bryce tried to reach out harmlessly to Baccay’s family, who had helped him comb through the footage in the office before the Laguna raid, only radio silence replied.
It seemed everyone was leaving Bryce’s life. As he knelt, inspecting the glass fragment of stone that contained her name, he wondered who would go next.
JANICE VARGAS
His fingers hovered over the engraved letters, the cold stone a reminder of how final it all was. There were no more words left to say, no more moments to share. She had always been there—steady, patient, quietly watching over him—even when he had been too distracted to notice. He stared at her name, and the familiar ache settled deep in his chest, an ache that never quite left him whenever he came here.
It wasn’t the loud voices or the grand gestures that lingered. Ultimately, it was the quiet care, the understated moments he had let slip by. She had been in order in his chaos of existence, but he hadn’t recognized it until it was too late.
Just then, Bryce’s wearable beeped to life. Metamatics had gifted him a consumer model that accompanied the company’s highest subscription tier—as if he couldn’t afford hundreds of them.
It beeped again, insistent.
Bryce rose, walking back to the bench again. After seeing the seats were occupied, he steadied himself under a tree, away from the walkers, and clicked open his private augment.
He found a text from Herman Colose in their group chat that had been dormant for months.
[Yo, Bryce! Sorry to bother you, but I thought you’d want to see this.]
[P.S. Don’t tell anyone. Security would lose their shit. Though Ms. Reed might not.]
[Hope you’re well.]
Bryce scrolled down.
[File Size: 432 MB]
The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
[File Name: The Crest and its Killers - Episode 5 - Finale]
Bryce furrowed his brow. That name belonged to the largest, most successful Black Fire television show ever. He had seen all four episodes, the last one ending on a cliffhanger. There had been nothing since the Laguna raid.
Even the thought of Black Fire hadn’t occurred to him for months. The drug had gone under the radar, both in Bryce’s life and in the lives of Manila. He hadn’t seen any junkies tripping out on the streets with it, at least. Then again, how would he notice? The users always looked like they were sleeping.
He thought about phoning up Herman to see if the video was a joke—like an ill-timed Rickroll—but Herman was probably steeped in work at this hour. Besides, Bryce trusted the file wouldn’t be anything malicious anyway. His wearable’s malware software would have caught it.
So, he downloaded the file and played the video.
Seskone’s defeat reminded Bryce why he hadn’t watched many sad stories during his retirement. They only made the isolation and the distance from meaningful people worse. This wasn’t helping—it appeared Seskone was in the dregs, and things wouldn’t improve for him.
Until the subtle signs came, inspiring home. Seskone’s friends rallied with him. He found allies. He escaped from the ceremony’s stage. He fought back the corruption in his kingdom and retook his rightful place in it. It was incredibly captivating, and the only time Bryce looked away from the video was when it was over.
And that’s when he saw her.
“Hello, Bryce,” said Francesca Thaddius Reed. She wore a white raincoat and sniffed, pointing to the sky with a matching umbrella. “You’re gonna get drenched in a bit.”
Bryce looked up, seeing clouds. “You have been following me?”
“Nope, but you’re hard to miss. It only takes a momentary view to see everywhere in this city now.” She nodded to Bryce’s right.
There, beside them, floated a Q-96 capture drone. Several more behind it hovered throughout the park, but this one was laser-focused on the two of them.
“She hasn’t bothered reaching out to you?” Ms. Reed asked. It sounded more like a statement than a question, as if she knew the answer already.
He didn’t need an elaboration on who “she” was. The albularyo had been the third woman to leave him in his life. After the events of the Laguna raid, she hadn’t said a word. Though, that didn’t mean she wasn’t there.
Bryce shook his head, rising. “Did you see Episode 5?”
“Unfortunately.” Ms. Reed looked around. “I think it’s their way of giving us the finger, you know?” She winced as if the Black Fire pushers had shanked her just then. “Did you see the scene where Seskone escaped?”
Bryce did—he hadn’t looked away. He rewound the footage and opened his augmented reality to Ms. Reed. She promptly joined.
They played through the scenes again, Seskone running from the stage, choosing to stay, and returning to his palace.
Bryce frowned. “I’m not quite sure how this is relevant, though.”
“Your friend Baccay with the PNP went missing six months ago. His family, too. Right after the Laguna raid.”
Bryce’s gut instinct was to assume the worst had happened until he saw the video of The Crest and its Killers paused precisely when Seskone chose to stay inside Crystalline.
He rewound the footage again and again and kept playing the scene back. The parallels came to him so clearly and vividly that he thought about how he hadn’t noticed them earlier.
He swallowed. “Baccay is Toben, then, and Seskone… he’s Jayson.” He hadn’t uttered the name in months when he had warned Ms. Reed that this wasn’t over, that Black Fire was still in the Philippines. Simply cutting the head off the beast wouldn’t be enough—
—because it could grow back.
“Yeah,” said Ms. Reed. “That’s what I figured, too.”
So, Jayson—whoever he was—had escaped. But did that necessarily mean the drug would resurge? “You’re going to have a lot to deal with, then,” he told Ms. Reed.
“Oh, I know, Bryce. But that’s not what I wanted to talk to you about.”
He wasn’t sure what she was getting at until the capture drone next to them—like a curtain parting on cue—drifted aside to reveal a man standing in the center of the gardens. He was Filipino, middle-aged, and wore a gray suit.
Bryce was back in the past again, At Apo’s Reach with Janice and Baccay. This gray-suited man had given Bryce the experimental weapon he had used at the dispensary, only to have it taken away from him during the security probe. He had almost forgotten about him and his supposed ties to the albularyo.
The capture drone’s all-seeing eye bored into Bryce as he turned to Ms. Reed. “How do you two know each other?”
The man walked closer and joined their duo, the capture drone now looking the three of them over. Two more Q-95s approach and a Q-90, floating right next to Bryce’s shoulder. Lost in thought, Bryce didn’t notice the subtle hum of the drone as it hovered close to his shoulder.
Ms. Reed cleared her throat and glanced at the gray-suited man and the hovering drones before locking eyes with Bryce. “It is time you knew the truth.”