Getting a hold of Janice was anyone’s guess. Bryce still didn’t know where her secret base of operations was, even though he had been there before. He’d tried retracing his steps and thinking of the most likely places she could hide but came up short. Manila was a dense pit—she could be anywhere inside it.

He entered his condo’s lobby to the site of someone familiar. They sat on one of the L-shaped couches, reading a magazine as if waiting for someone—as if waiting for him.

“She doesn’t want to talk to you,” said the informant who had first led Bryce to Janice’s hidden base of operations. This man had referred to Janice as the ‘information broker.’ “She said you’d know why.”

Bryce nodded, remembering the subway and how he had left her for dead to get a hold of her phone. He and Herman had jailbroken it and discovered that Janice’s brother Jayson was involved in the Black Fire operation. The fact seemed so minuscule now compared to a sentient AI running rampant and breaking plane engines to perform a rescue for all of the Philippines (and the world) to see.

“What about a phone call?” Bryce asked the informant. “Even just a minute?”

The young man shook his head. “Sorry, dude. Her word is bond. Anything you want to tell her, you can go through me.”

Bryce didn’t necessarily trust this guy, but if the theory that an AI had orchestrated the PAL 578 rescue was widespread, Bryce might have been preaching to the wind anyway.

He caught the guy up on the meeting, reciting everything the Heads of Operations said to each other. Thinking back, he had forgotten most of it. He had been more focused on Janice being alive.

The informant listened with his ear tilted towards Bryce. “Did you record anything?”

“No.”

“Well, then, it’s as good as conjecture.”

“Why would I lie about it?”

“No one knows why you would lie about it, but that doesn’t mean you wouldn’t lie about it, either. People say weird shit about the Giants all the time. Besides, what makes you think you can stop this thing? Why not just let it run its course?”

Bryce frowned. “People can’t actually be thinking that, right?”

“People will believe whatever you tell them to. You just have to be convincing. And based on what you’ve told me, the Giants seem very convincing.”

This informant really did belong to Janice’s ilk. He seemed to know a lot about how people processed information. “What’s your name anyway?” Bryce asked him.

The young man ignored the question. “Are you her ex or something?”

“Something like that.”

“So, a fling?”

“Are you a paparazzi or something?”

“I actually was once.”

“That’s weird and doesn’t surprise me.”

“Not sneaking recording devices into a meeting of Heads of Operations is weird. Catching up with your exes just when you need them is weird.”

Damn. Those were both correct points, though the second was worse. Janice and Bryce… what had they actually been? The albularyo had asked them that as well.

Bryce sighed. “Let me see her.”

The young man, too, looked fed up to deal with a man as impatient as Bryce.

“She doesn’t want to talk to you, man. When she says something, we follow. Those are the rules. And it seems like you already broke them with whatever you did.”

He broke a lot more when he took Janice’s phone, including any chance of a future between them. Maybe this was pointless, and he was grasping for straws.

The informant took his leave a minute later, saying nothing leading up to it and bowing his head as he made his way to the lobby door. Before he left, he turned back towards Bryce. “One more reason why you might want to stay out of this…”

Bryce straightened.

“Janice has spoken to her, yes. ‘The albularyo’ or whatever it is. Apparently, it has followers, too. I’m not sure if they’d like you barking up their leader’s tree.”

“You guys don’t follow it?”

“We at Ashes don’t follow anyone.”

Ashes. Bryce remembered the phrases littering the computer terminals in the hideout. Janice had her hands full, and if she weren’t going to get him any closer to the albularyo, he’d have to go himself.

“Albularyo sympathizers, though?” Bryce asked. “I mean, really? They sound like…”

“Fanatics?”

“That’s the least of it.” Bryce shook his head. “Where can I find them?”

The informant didn’t look like he wanted to answer. “You have ways to defend yourself?”

The AUG was still folded inside Bryce’s jacket. Its imprint must have looked more like an umbrella tucked under his shirt. Any field agent would have noticed it. “You betcha,” Bryce said.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

This was enough for the informant. “Good. I’m just about to meet them.”

----------------------------------------

Destitution sat in Quezon City’s heart. The three-story club was three equal parts: hedonism, grunge, and retaliation. Bryce could read the rebellion on the walls, in the faces of the men and women leaning on the bar counters, dancing to inaudible tunes blasting out in their rented wearables. The cords of the devices dangled like snakes latched onto their necks. Bryce searched the gazes and found nothing but lust, fervor, and the chance to escape the hellhole of Manila. The patrons dove head first and never let go.

The capture drones presiding over the club were more like curious ravens, hovering atop buildings as if they were perching on window ledges. They watched, but they did not prod, lest they upset the people.

“You’re kinda cute,” said a German woman almost as tall as Bryce. “What’s your name?”

Bryce had dressed the part, donning a black leather jacket with pink neon glow-tape highlights. It was the kind of getup you’d wear in the California raves. Back on the scene now, he felt a strange sense of homeliness. The only thing missing was Hannah.

Shit.

“Des,” he said, adopting a moniker from decades ago—the kind you’d wear when you wanted to tell someone a bit about you, but not everything. Definitely not everything.

The girl was around Janice’s age. She looked athletic. She could have told him she was an Olympic competitor, and he would have believed her. If Metamatics hadn’t trained Bryce for combat, she might have been able to kick his ass.

Her pupils, also, were dilated. She was on E, or F, or some other name for a street drug. The fluted end of a cylinder about the width of his finger stuck out from her pocket. It was a vape—the same kind you’d drop Black Fire with.

She must have caught him looking. She pulled the device out and twirled it in her fingers. Bryce was expecting her to handle it with the skill of a street magician. Instead, she dropped it. It clanked on the table. The nose fell off.

Bryce went to pick it up, then looked behind the woman. He squinted. “Oh?”

“Is there any reason you’re so fascinated with my boyfriend?” said the newcomer.

The German woman seemed to sober up immediately as if she were never high, to begin with. She turned around. “‘Scuse me?”

“You heard me.”

“He didn’t tell me he had a girlfriend.” She smirked. “You’re not exactly in his league, either. Actually, I’m not sure whose league you’re in.”

“Just fuck off,” said the newcomer.

The German woman sneered at Bryce—as if it were his fault—before leaving the bar and walking away. In minutes, another man had started talking to her. A part of Bryce would have been jealous at that, but confusion overwhelmed.

“Well,” he said, and nothing more.

The woman from Ermita slid closer to Bryce and smiled. “Relax, hot shot. I have a husband.”

“Yeah, and a boyfriend, apparently.”

“That was just to get her out of here. I don’t like her.” She sat on the bar stool next to Bryce. “So, you’re not the kind to forget girls, are you? You probably get a lot of attention.”

“Attention isn’t always good.” Bryce took a sip of something. He had forgotten what the drink was. His mind was elsewhere. “You were right about the information broker, you know.”

“I’m right about a lot of things.” The woman waved at the bartender and pointed to Byce. “Lucy’s Lust for me!” It must have been some kind of drink.

The bartender nodded and went off.

“You’ve been following me?”

Bryce blinked, realizing a moment later she had been talking about him. He smirked. “Just the first time.”

That comment would have sounded creepy in other contexts. The woman matched Bryce’s smirk.

“I didn’t even get your name,” he said.

“And I didn’t give it. But I guess it’s unavoidable now.” She swiveled the stool to face him. “Pearl. Like the kind you go to dingy bars and dive for.”

“I know what a pearl is.”

“But do you know who Pearl is?” She swiveled her drink in its glass. “So, if you’re not following me, then what the fuck are you doing here? I don’t think your kind exactly frequent places like this.”

“My kind?”

“Rich white folks.”

“I’m half pinoy.”

“Yeesh. Doesn’t look like it. You should play up that angle a bit more. Get into it. Pinoys aren’t as rigid as you are.”

‘Pearl’ wasn’t as talkative now as she was before. Maybe she was on something, but Bryce didn’t know what. It sure as hell wasn’t Black Fire, for she would have been knocked out on one of the couches as some of the patrons were.

“You didn’t answer my question,” Pearl prodded. “What brings you Here?”

The way she said the last word… it was as if she attached some significance to the place. “Do you know anything about…” He thought of how to phrase it. “Sympathizers?”

“Nothing the information broker couldn’t tell you?”

He didn’t tell Pearl that he had already been trying to get Janice’s attention. He didn’t mention that the information broker was a fling of his. Ex-fling. Or whatever that was. Girlfriend? He still didn’t know.

“A healer,” Bryce settled.

“Ah.” Pearl leaned in closer. “You’re in the den of these people. They follow her like time itself.” Pearl tapped her head. “Everyone wants an audience, but yeah, none of us can get it.”

Bryce didn’t necessarily want an audience, only to find the thing. Then, he’d worry about getting rid of it.

‘Getting rid of it.’ Exterminating it. Killing it. Killing the albularyo. Was such a thing possible? He wasn’t anti-virus software. He wouldn’t let Pearl know his complete intentions, either.

“Best bet,” Pearl continued, “is to throw yourself into the limelight and hope it chooses you. I guess you’re pretty good at that already.” Pearl sipped. “What did she talk to you about before?”

Bryce had told Pearl about the albularyo, but not what she had said. He looked for words to describe all the cryptic things the AI had mentioned and settled on just one novel concept. “New Manila.”

“Ah. Well, if it makes you feel better—and I’m not sure why it would—you’re not the only one to have heard that from her. But did she show you what she meant by it?”

Bryce saw NAIA. He saw the traffic outside. He saw the drive to Laguna through the albularyo’s eyes, and it was pretty similar to reality the further they ventured from Manila. From the way Pearl regaled the albularyo’s vision, though, he guessed it must have changed a lot since.

He was about to ask what she meant when the room silenced. It seemed every head in his vicinity turned to the door. Bryce was on the first floor for a reason—it was the easiest floor to leave out of. He wouldn’t have had to jump off any high ledges or balconies.

But it was also the easiest to enter.

The group that entered the Destitution pulled every guest’s attention their way, even Bryce’s. It was like an orchestra full of trumpets had just announced their presence. Looking back, Bryce had no time to memorize their appearance. He only noticed the fact that they were looking his way.

One of them lifted their arm and aimed a gun.