Andrei and Shay had been skeptical the whole ride over, but after seeing Sagingan Haven spread out before them and all that my family had accomplished, they couldn’t deny my words.

“Holy shit,” murmured Shay, looking up from her book for the first time since we docked at Davao. The book was some vampire romance, though if Shay was reading it, its originality score probably clocked in higher than most of what the Giants released. Her eyes glistened as she rolled down the passenger side window and peered outside. “I mean, I love bananas…”

As I winded the SUV around a corner, I thought about telling her the joke I had been suspecting six months ago: Uncle Nestor had brought me all this way to inherit his banana plantation.

“Just you wait…” I managed instead.

Andrei, however, was more reserved. He barely glanced outside as we rolled in, not even commenting on the extensive subterfuge my family employed to hide everything. His jaw remained clenched as we sunk into the area underneath the plantation, the monolithic doors opening to admit us. I thought he would step out and leave the way we came any moment.

I parked the car in an underground parking garage similar to the one at TelePerformix. Andrei and Shay hadn’t brought much. They had been suspecting, rightfully so, that they would be on the run again. I was going to suggest Andrei sell Reggie and Rei’s so that we could keep a lower profile. Still, once he informed me that Reggie’s family would essentially be running the operation using his funds, it started to make sense why he even agreed to come.

Uncle Nestor waved at us from across the car park as he noticed our approach. He saved the greetings for my friends, taking Shay’s bags. “This is your reader friend?” he asked me, smiling.

I nodded. “Shay wouldn’t let an episode of The Crest go without her seeing it.”

“And you’re lucky I didn’t!” Shay gave a slight, quirky bow to Uncle Nestor. “Mano po?”

Uncle Nestor offered his hand, and Shay took it, placing the top side of it on her forehead. She liked to go out of her to do this with the elders she met.

Andrei followed the gesture. “Thanks,” was all he said.

I gave them a tour of the operation, beginning with the largest area underneath the plantation comprising most of the equipment used to produce Black Fire.

“We call this part the Kitchen,” I said as we descended a flight of wide concrete steps. “It’s where we load the stitchings onto the cartridges.”

The machinery hummed, punctuated by hissing pistons. Rows of vats containing vapor gas that would fill the vape cartridges, pipelines leading to massive cooling tanks, and cartridge loaders as large as stoves were arranged in rows in the vast underground room. At least three people were operating or maintaining each machine.

On the far side of the room, a conveyor belt system snaked behind the walls to the car park, where the Black Fire cartridges would be loaded onto trucks and distributed throughout the Philippines.

Shay's eyes scanned the area, curiosity and suspicion mixing in her expression. On the other hand, Andrei kept glancing at the equipment like he wanted to topple them over and see what would happen. He jumped from foot to foot, eager to get on with the tour.

A woman with dyed blonde hair receding at the roots spoke to a group of four technicians, each wearing white lab coats. They made me feel under-dressed.

“Auntie Havannah,” I said to Shay and Andrei. “She’s the head of the Kitchen.”

“That’s a failed opportunity not to call her ‘The Chef,’” said Shay.

“I agree!” snapped my aunt, strutting over. Her thick plastic goggles seemed unorthodox, as she was nowhere near one of the tanks. The room was also dry, but I learned during my six months at Sagingan Haven that you needed to be prepared for all emergencies.

I could tell Shay wanted to perform mano, but Auntie Havannah waved the gesture away. “Would love to stay and chat, but we’ve got a new shipment going out,” my aunt said. “We’ll catch up on the pleasantries over dinner.” She passed us and another group of technicians. She yelled at them. “Get to work!”

Shay watched her go, like a fashion model strutting off the runway. “Wow. Beautiful and kind of a prick. Remind me not to slack off in her presence.”

“You won’t be anywhere near the Kitchen,” I assured Shay.

Another set of doors separated the Kitchen from what I deemed the Workshop. The two doors slid open to admit us, and inside, we found a room that was almost the polar opposite of the one before. Where the Kitchen contained tanks and pipes and liquids, this one had wires and computers. Some were flat-paneled screens, while others were projector orbs opening a shared augmented reality. I still didn’t know what many of the devices did.

“And this is where we create the stitchings that will be loaded onto the cartridges,” my uncle explained. “It’s all just software, in the end.”

“Feels like I’m in an office,” Andrei said, shivering as he looked around. His gaze wandered, settling not on the motions but on one of the overhanging EXIT signs. “Reggie would love this place.”

Silence fell at the mention of our old friend, and I suspected Andrei had timed the remark intentionally.

“Reggie?” asked Uncle Nestor. “Your friend in Manila?”

Andrei raised an eyebrow at that. “You know him?”

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I nodded to my uncle.

“Jayson’s got a lot of plans,” Uncle Nestor continued, “and I think they’re good ones.” He smiled. “Your friend will be fine. I bet he’s seeing you through their eyes right now, laughing, telling you not to worry.” The way Uncle Nestor explained it, it sounded like Reggie was dead. There was indeed a possibility that he was dead this whole time. I had to keep reminding myself of that.

Andrei just looked down. He had been friends with Reggie longer than Shay, and I had, and he wanted him back more than anything. I knew all this banter about Reggie was taking its toll on him.

“The next place I need to show you is kind of far off from everything else,” I told them, pushing out another set of doors from the Workshop and down a long hallway lined with offices. “I call it the Lab, and we don’t let just anyone go inside it. I haven’t even set foot in there.”

“Me neither,” said Uncle Nestor.

“Me neither,” said another voice.

I turned and found my cousin Matthew walking down the hall behind us, emerging from one of the offices. He resembled an IT intern with short hair and a plaid shirt with jeans. He just needed a pen in his front pocket to complete the look of a tech mogul during the Internet boom. He would have fit in next to Reggie.

I made quick introductions as Matthew joined the tour, and together, we found a long window that overlooked a deeper room that was larger than the Workshop but not quite the size of the Kitchen.

The first thing you would notice was the stark whiteness brought out by the harsh lighting. Men and women wearing tight-fitting rubber clothes and gloves stood as they operated PC workstations on stand-up desks. Surgical masks covered their faces, and some even spoke to each other in sign language. They surrounded giant boxy machines that were equally as white. I thought that spilling a drink in there would trigger an alarm.

“Hold up,” Matthew said, leaving our group and swiping his keycard to enter a part of the lab. A minute passed, and he emerged on the other side, walking past groups of technicians and the machines they operated. He found what looked like a refrigerator, opened it, and pulled out a circular slab of a silicon chip. He walked over to the window and, from the other side, angled it over to us.

“This is the silicon they make the nanobots from,” I told Shay and Andrei.

“Shit…” said Shay, standing on her tiptoes. “Isn’t there a chip shortage? That stuff must cost a fortune.”

Matthew moved away and brought the chip back to the refrigerator-like unit.

“The price of progress,” said Uncle Nestor. He looked around. “I suppose you want to show them their quarters?”

“What are we, on a ship?” Andrei quipped.

Uncle Nestor scoffed. “The sooner you think of it that way, the better.”

My uncle walked off as soon as Matthew left the Lab, though it looked like my cousin still wanted to hang out with us. Uncle Nestor must have sensed the tension in the air, particularly from Andrei.

I led them away from the Lab, up a set of stairs, and passed a cafeteria.

“It’s a fucking internment camp in here,” uttered Andrei. “You know they got places like this in China?”

“This is a Philippine operation,” Shay uttered with pride.

“Yeah. The only country you could get away with this.” He peered back to the cafeteria as we ascended another flight of stairs. “No way you’re getting me to eat in there. I was going to open a restaurant, for hell’s sake.”

Shay remained passive, looking at me as if I could say anything to tame Andrei. I knew I couldn’t ignore his underlying question for long, but the hallway near my family’s workers wasn’t a place to tell him.

The “quarters” Uncle Nestor was referring to were several long hallways that were, admittedly, only a bit less sterile than the Kitchen. We passed common areas with televisions, shared kitchens, and laundry rooms where many of my family’s workers gathered. I wondered how much they were getting paid.

“It’s like I’m back in school,” Shay remarked.

“Or that time I went to the hospital,” Andrei said.

I felt my teeth clench. I understood his frustration and impatience to get out there and find Reggie already, but couldn’t he just shut up for an hour?

“Hold onto that back-to-school analogy,” I told them, guiding them to our rooms.

The best way I could describe the arrangement was, as I had alluded to, like a dormitory. The unit led from the hallway into its central common area with a kitchen, living area, and a den that could fit a PC or a treadmill. Five bedrooms with their doors open, each containing a double bed, a desk, a mini fridge, and a closet.

“It’s not much,” I told them, throwing my bags on our kitchen island. “But you’re safe here. There’s a room for Reggie as well and another for-”

Andrei slammed the door shut. “Okay, okay, Jayson,” he said, stepping in. “I get it. You take us to your wealthy prison so we can help you again. Things are going well here. But you still haven’t told me how we’re going to get Reggie back.”

I guess I couldn’t hold back the topic any longer. Shay, too, stood with arms folded as if she were also waiting for the answer. Maybe I owed them as much. I hadn’t contacted them for six months, after all. They could have left, gone to another city, and abandoned the Iloilo plan. But they didn’t.

“Alright.” I shrugged. “Well, quite simply, we’re going to break him out.”

Andrei was leaning against a wall, and Shay was doing the same. The two looked at me as if I had just driven over someone.

“Break…him…out?” Shay asked. “How the hell are you going to do that?”

“Well… I was thinking we walk in and pull him out.”

Andrei huffed. “This isn’t funny.”

I didn’t say anything.

Shay frowned. “Jayson? You’re joking, right?”

“I mean, kind of.” I scratched the back of my neck, searching for the words. “Reggie was probably held up in Metamatics’s headquarters for some time after he was taken, but I doubt he still is. The company underwent a security probe, remember?” I reminded them of when President Atienza had forced an investigation of the Giants after the Shaw Boulevard Station incident and the Laguna helicopter attack. We had been lucky in both cases.

Andrei and Shay looked at each other, the unspoken question hanging between them.

Shay voiced it. “Then where is he?”

“I don’t know, but no doubt wherever he is has less security than their headquarters. We can find him.”

“I’m not showing my face to those drones,” Shay said. “Really, Jayson? We just came from Manila, and you want to go back?” She looked down when she said it, probably realizing going back to Manila for Reggie was a small price to pay.

“I hate it too,” I said, “but we don’t have to go.”

This made them both pause.

“I mean,” I continued, “we won’t have to, but I know someone who can. He’s with the PNP, and he helped me escape from my mother already. I trust him.”

Shay blinked, turning to Andrei. “He’s right.”

Andrei shook his head at Shay. “How do you even know?” he asked.

“His name’s Baccay,” Shay told him. “He helped me get away after the shooting in the market where the graffiti was. Remember?”

Andrei nodded. Shay must have told him everything.

“That’s one thing,” Andrei said, “but getting Reggie out of wherever he is is another. Aren’t they going to be watching him the whole time?”

“We have other ways for that as well,” I said.

Andrei sighed. “I’m sure you do,” he conceded.

Shay looked down as if she wanted to ask a question. She turned to Andrei first. “Don’t take this the wrong way,” she told him before facing me, “but why all the trouble?” She exhaled as if it was wrong to phrase it that way. “I mean, why Reggie?”

“He’s our friend,” Andrei bellowed.

It was the obvious thing to say, and I wish the only thing. But I needed Reggie for more reasons, and Shay had already caught onto this.

“He’s important,” I said.

“Why?” Andrei asked.

The plan was still fresh in my mind, but it was possible. Brighter minds than me had confirmed it. I paused, thinking if now was the right time. But I had learned there was never really a suitable time for anything, just less worse.

“Because,” I began, “we’re going to bring Black Fire online.”