Tires scraped on the dirt road. Not from the auto-car.

I had jumped out of the way already, rolling into the grass. I stood now and found Carlotta face first on the ground.

Carl stood over her. “Holy shit, Dude! What the hell did you do?!”

I walked—not ran—over to Carlotta. Carl backed up. The girl’s EMP pistol sat on the ground next to her. She must have dropped it when the car slammed into her. I scooped it up. Who has the gun now, huh?

“Fuck!” Carl ran his hands through his hair. “Man, you’re fucked up.”

“She pointed a gun at me,” I said, distant, as if someone else had performed the maneuver. As if it was reason enough to drive a car into her. Well, I didn’t drive it. It drove itself.

“Dude. It wasn’t loaded.”

“How the fuck was I supposed to know that?”

Carl didn’t answer. Instead, he knelt to Carlotta and shook her.

“Jayson!”

A truck had pulled up the road. Someone ran out of its driver’s side. It was my Uncle Nestor, followed closely by Andrei, holding an MP5. I wouldn’t have known the gun’s name if he hadn’t told me.

He pointed it at Carl.

“Wait,” I said. “Wait. Hold up. They’re not going to do anything.”

Carl threw up his arms. “Fuck! Shit! Let me go, man!”

Uncle Nestor ran up to me to see if I was hurt. “You’re alright, Jayson?”

“I’m fine.” I knelt to Carlotta as well. I knew nothing else to do, so I checked her pulse. Something bumped underneath my fingers.

“Uhhhhh,” she groaned before rolling. “I think you busted my hip.”

I had to admit I was partially relieved seeing her awake. That didn’t make me hate her any less. “She’s with Intervid,” I told Uncle Nestor and Andrei. “Both of them.”

Andrei leveled the gun, but Uncle Nestor raised a hand for him to lower it. “We don’t kill field agents,” he said. “Not unless we have to.”

You might have to. I did not say it out loud.

Carlotta’s gun felt cold in my hands. Colder than this barren night. I checked the barrel’s ammunition slot and found no EMP darts there. There was, indeed, as Carl said, no magazine loaded into the gun, either. I must have been too stressed to see it earlier.

“You don’t,” said Andrei, “but I will. Especially if they hurt my friends.”

“They didn’t hurt me,” I said as I got up.

Carl was helping Carlotta to her feet. I told Andrei and Uncle Nestor who they were, but the words did little to ease the air.

“Does your offer still stand?” I asked Carl.

Before nodding, he said something to Carlotta in a dialect I didn’t recognize. “Sure, dude. Yeah.”

I smiled. “Listen, ‘dude.’ You’re going to cooperate with us. Just because my uncle won’t kill you doesn’t mean I won’t either.” That should have been harder to say, but it wasn’t. “There’s a lot of land out here. A lot of places to bury two bodies.”

Damn. Looking back, I realize that saying such things seemed foreign to me. It would have been better if that sense of unease lasted longer, but it didn’t. It faded fast, replaced with anger.

“I see you’re quite the feisty one, Jayson Vargas,” said Carlotta.

Uncle Nestor flinched and looked at me. I could read his thoughts in his eyes. These two knew my name now. They had to die.

It would be an easy thing, too. Kapatagan was sparsely populated, considering all the land it encompassed. Plenty of mountains to deter searchers. Plenty of forests to hide in. Tourists never came to these parts. We didn’t have to worry about anyone finding Carl and Carlotta.

But something struck me. Something familiar. It wasn’t Mother’s words but her presence. It seemed to stand over my shoulder, waiting to see what I did next.

Absolutely not, I told it. Leave me alone. I’m not like you.

I found Carlotta. She flinched as I came closer. “You told me you can see it,” I said.

I didn’t elaborate, which would have confused the others. It took a moment for Carlotta to catch on, but when she did, she said, “All the time. Even now.”

“You better not be faking it.”

“She’s not,” said Carl. “I can see them too.”

“We don’t have time,” said my uncle. “Get whatever you want to say out of the way.”

“We’re not going to kill them,” I told him. “At least, not unless they tell me what I want.” I looked at Carlotta, who was limping. “We have a doctor who can look after you. The same one who helped you before. In exchange, you tell me everything you know about those… daydreams.” I didn’t know what to call them, but it seemed fitting.

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Carlotta looked ready to object before wincing in pain. “Fuck,” she said. “Alright. Alright.”

I could tell, though, that this was partly what she wanted. While we watched over her, she knew she would see more of the Haven. We couldn’t drug her, or she wouldn’t talk. So, we’d have to put up with her. Both of them.

After that, we’d choose their fate.

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

The sun was rising over the hills in Kapatagan, burying an orange glow across the countryside. The drive to the Haven was nothing short of informative.

Behind me, in one of the passenger seats, Andrei trained a gun on Carlotta.

The girl sat with her head facing the ceiling as she spoke. “You know those floaters in your eyes? It starts loading up like that. You can trigger it. Every morning. The key is to go to sleep when you’re under.”

Carl and Carlotta looked too far out of it to memorize the paths to reach the Haven, so I took the fastest route, eager to get out of the daylight.

“When you do that, you wake up in a sort of in-between. You can see both the interface and-”

“No,” said Andrei. “Hold up. How exactly do you ‘go to sleep’ while under Black Fire?”

Through the rearview mirror, I could see Carlotta smirk. She probably thought the answer was obvious. “You just go in really tired. It’ll happen. You’re somewhat unconscious anyway, so there’s a point where your body transitions to sleep. Like entering the middle of a dream.”’

That sounded creepy. I didn’t know this was possible at all. Shit. What else did I not know about Black Fire? Our own creation still eluded us.

As soon as we pulled into the Haven, Carl and Carlotta perked up, peering outside to get a closer look.

“Damn,” said Carl. “We were way off. We thought you guys were closer to Digos.”

Digos is a smaller city near Davao City. I had, too, visited it during my six months before finding my friends and recruiting them for Black Fire Online. That seemed like a decade ago.

Carlotta wasn’t listening. As we transitioned to the underground facility, she quietly scanned the place as if she knew it would be the last she saw.

“She’s fine,” Dr. Illagan had said once she had a chance to examine Carlotta. “Just some minor bruising. It was basically a tap.”

“It was more than a tap,” Carlotta urged, rubbing her hip. She had undressed down to a bra, and I felt embarrassed when my eyes lingered too long. I thought Andrei would be looking, too, and we could share in a moment of masculine shame. He was staring at a wall, though. I wondered what was on his mind.

“Tell me more about them,” I said. “So, you just go to sleep, and you can see Black Fire Online all around you? Same as before?”

“Not really. You have to inhale a little bit at a time. Like a tenth of your normal dosage. Is that right?” She directed the question at Carl.

“I guess. Maybe half. If you try to use the site there are a bunch of errors, and some of them are really hard on the eyes. You have to be careful.”

I clutched my burner phone in one hand, a voice recorder app open, and took down what the two said. Later, after we finished these two off, we’d play it back and hear the voices of two dead souls.

“So what have you been doing with it?” Andrei asked.

“Leaving comments,” said Carl. “Those are cool. Also, the overlay where you can share your favorite scenes is kind of neat.”

“Messaging my friends,” Carlotta said, butting in. Her brows furrowed when she said it.

So, others knew about these two. A realization hit me like the EV had with Carlotta.

“Is that a threat?” I asked. “Wait, are you on it now?”

“She’s not,” said Dr. Illagan. “I ran the tests, and there isn’t a trace in her body. Don’t let her scare you like that.”

“Actually,” Carlotta said, “you’re wrong.”

We all looked at each other.

Dr. Illagan folded her arms and spoke first. “I’m wrong?”

“Yeah. Watch.”

I was about to interrupt when my phone immediately buzzed. A knock came at the door before I could even read the message. We had been holding Carl and Carlotta in one of the Haven’s underground rooms, so it wasn’t a secret we were keeping her here. What surprised me, though, was Reggie at the door.

“Hey,” he said, panting, “I thought you said you’re with-” He paused, catching sight of Carlotta and pointing. He spoke to her. “Your mother’s on your account again.”

“No, it’s me,” she said. “One two three four.”

Huh?

Everyone looked at her, confused.

“One… two… three, and four,” she said again as if the four numbers were the most obvious thing in the world.

My phone buzzed again, and I had the presence of mind to check the message this time. It came from Black Fire Online, and it read, as you may haawve suspected:

[Carlotta: 1234]

Carlotta wrote that playful smile across her face again. It was starting to annoy me. I had a feeling that wouldn’t be the last of her jabs. “So, you see?” she asked. “There’s some things about Black Fire that you don’t know.”

“This shouldn’t be possible,” said Dr. Illagan. “She’s disconnected, right?” She directed her question at Reggie.

“Hmmm.” Our guru of hardware rubbed his chin. “I guess there is a way, but I’ve only theorized about it.” He stared off as if he could see the answer beyond the walls. “If the nanos aren’t fully expelled from the body, they will keep running. They’ll do that until they expire. It stands to reason that some of the processes would keep running, too. They shouldn’t stop.”

“But how do you access them if you’re waking?” I asked. “You should be in comatose. Black Fire is programmed that way, isn’t it?”

Reggie rubbed his neck. “Yes, and no. I mean, that’s our intention. The brain is a complicated thing. I’m not a doctor.” He looked at Illagan, almost with a sneer, as if she knew the answer. “There are patterns we’re accessing. Wavelengths we can’t see. You’d need a neurosurgeon to get to the thick of it; we don’t have that. You know, there’s a lot of guesswork.”

This was the first time I heard of this. I wanted to ask why Reggie kept this stuff to himself. It probably wasn’t intentional. Then, I remembered what Shay said and how she felt Reggie hadn’t been looping her into the project.

Either way, there was only one way to find out more.

No matter where you were in the Haven, a vape was always in arm’s reach. Each room had a cylindrical container about the size and shape of a rice cooker. I found one, a vape and a Black Fire cartridge.

“Show me how it’s done,” I said, before telling Reggie, “If she tries anything…”

Kill her, the unspoken part of me said. Everyone heard it.

Carlotta folded her arms. “Why should I?”

“You’re not in a place to argue. We’re against killing field agents, but we could keep you here forever.”

“I..”

“Carlotta,” said Carl. His voice was calm this time and articulate. If you told me his stoner drawl from before was a ruse, I could have believed you. “This guy’s stubborn. Maybe it’s better you show him yourself.”

Carlotta sighed, throwing a hand up. “Alright, go for it. See how you feel.”

Her hesitance towards helping me see BFO made me pause and consider.

What had we created?