I shot to waking somewhere in the Haven.

Dr. Illagan, standing above me, sounded out of breath. “That was quite the ride, wasn’t it?”

I rose, rubbing my eyes. I found I could speak. I found I had control of myself once again. I couldn't do anything when the albularyo was talking to me. It felt good to be normal again. “You saw everything?”

“Everything. It was like a movie, Jayson.”

“A horror movie, maybe.” I shook my head. “Tell me what happened then.”

A pause. “Jayson?”

“Tell me. I need to know.”

Dr. Illagan proceeded to recount the events of, apparently, the last several hours, down to the last detail. “Your father seemed a very bright and intelligent man,” she explained.

“He was.” He is. It still felt like he was here next to me—like I’d turn around and see him working away at his desk, with Francesca Thaddius Reed looking up at him.

“Most of it was black,” Dr. Illagan continued. “Darkness. But it sounds like I got everything, right?”

I nodded.

The room was like most doctor’s offices, even holding a skeleton in one corner, on the brink of spilling its exaggerated ceramic guts. I, too, felt like my dreams had been spilled out for my friends and family to see.

A knock at the door. Shay popped her head in. “Couldn’t help but overhear, but I recorded it all.” She waggled her phone. “Care to see it?”

“Later.” I was just thankful to be back. “I need to talk to Janice.”

My sister had been waiting outside. We strolled along the Haven’s orchards, dodging questioning glances. They had seen everything I went through, and maybe they thought I needed to recover from what happened, but I already had. There were bigger things to do.

“Did you hear that last thing she said to me?” I asked Janice. “‘Why don’t you ask him yourself?’ What do you think she meant by that?”

“I wouldn’t get too caught up on what it was saying. It was probably messing with you.” Janice jumped and grabbed a banana from one of the trees. “Why?”

“Then why show me everything with Papa? What’s the point?”

“To gain trust?” She peeled the banana and bit down on the fruit. “Why, Jayson?”

I didn’t answer. Not right away. “You think what she said is true?”

Janice shrugged. “Papa kept things to himself, so I have no reason to doubt it. She was your CEO, right?”

Francesca Thaddeus Reed, CEO of Metamatics Manila, had never crossed my mind until now. Her involvement with my father couldn’t leave my thoughts. What else did she know?

I sighed. “I think I need to go back to Manila. Maybe there I can figure out what she was saying.”

I thought Janice would protest. I thought she’d tell me to stay. Instead, she seemed to collect her thoughts. “If you’re going, I’m coming with you.” Before I could add anything else, she pulled out her phone and showed me the Ashes to Atienza website. “We’re gaining traction.”

A2A had grown since we created Black Fire Online. A lot. More traffic flooded the website, and most of the engagement came from TikTok shorts and Instagram reels.

“We’re calling them the black papers,” Janice said in one reel. She had filmed it somewhere in the Haven, with a stark white wall as her backdrop. I guessed Shay had helped her operate the cameras.

From then on, Janice revealed the most significant secrets of how the streaming giants came to Manila. The favors, the bribes, the nepotism. It was corporate greed mixed with lies and government corruption. The roots ran deep.

“It’s nothing people haven’t said before,” uttered Janice, “but we’ve gathered all the information in one place and made it easy to digest. That’s the key these days—engaging short attention spans.”

So she said. There were hundreds of the reels, filmed by Janice and other rogue journalists at A2A.

“And they’re all in Manila?” I asked.

Janice nodded. “Things are heating up. I should be with them.”

I felt that as well. I needed to get back home. Despite what the city had done to me, how it had swallowed me in its gullet throughout my life and hadn’t spit me out until almost a year ago, its pull kept creeping back. Maybe you could never escape the city’s hold. Perhaps I wasn’t meant to.

There was meaning back there, and I needed to find it.

When we returned to the Haven, I told Shay, Andrei, and Reggie about the plan. They listened quietly at first, but Shay was the first to yell out. “You’re an idiot,” she said to me. “Same idiot we’ve known all this time.” She sighed. “But I would be lying if I said I didn’t expect this.” A shrug. “I guess we’re getting too cooped up in here, anyway.”

So, Shay was in. “Reg?” I asked. “What’s up?”

He frowned, looking down. “There’s still a lot of work here. You still haven’t decided what to do with Carlotta and Carl.”

Shoot. I hadn’t. The two were thorns in my side that appeared from nowhere. “That,” I said, “and the daydreams. They’re… more real than I thought.” A lot more. From how Carlotta described them, they seemed like rooms I could have stepped out of whenever I wanted. They were more like prison cells.

I wasn’t surprised to hear his response when I asked Andrei what he thought. “The Clan will be waiting for me,” he said. “At least what’s left of them. I doubt I’ll last a week.” I thought he was exaggerating until he held my stare. “But, as Shay was saying, if you’re stupid enough to go, I suppose I’m stupid enough to join you.”

That was as much confirmation as I was going to get. Shay was in, but Reggie hadn’t answered me directly. He often avoided difficult questions when posed to him. I knew this was more difficult for him than most. He had a lot to lose going back to Manila, seeing as Metamatics would no doubt want him back as well. The only person who seemed poised to enter the city again was Shay, but I wouldn’t let her go alone. I… just couldn’t.

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I still had Carlotta and Carl to deal with, and as I searched the Haven for them, the hatchings of a plan came to me.

“That’s it,” I said to Shay and Andrei before we all found Carlotta and Carl under Uncle Nestor’s careful watch. A circle of armed guards stood around the two in the center of one of the factory floors. Everyone must have been too busy to take them to separate quarters.

“Thank God you’re back,” said Uncle Nestor as I arrived. “They’re your responsibility.”

He was about to leave us with them, but what I said next put him on pause.

“Uncle,” I said. “We should use them.”

“Huh?”

“Use them. They’re with Delta Reel. They can give us protection.” This all didn’t make sense outside the greater context, so I told him about our plans—well, my plan—to return to Manila.

“Absolutely not,” he barked, to every point I made. “We’re safe here now, Jayson. You’ve got a lot to work on. Manila is the worst place you can go to now.”

“You saw what was in the daydream! She was saying something about Papa.”

“Half that stuff wasn’t true!” Uncle Nestor pulled at his hair. “It convinced you it was, but I knew my brother. He didn’t tell me anything about his time at Metamatics. He would have confessed to me that he was working on an AI.”

I frowned. “You didn’t tell me Papa worked at Metamatics.”

“It was only briefly. Way way less time than that thing called the albularyo implies.” Uncle Nestor scratched his chin. “Look, Jayson, it knows enough about you that it can use my brother—your father—against you. You should be more concerned about that than anything.”

He had a point. He had all the points in the world. I had just escaped from that den of snakes, and soon, if I had my way, I’d be back inside. Looking at it that way, it seemed the stupidest decision ever.

“There’s more,” said Carlotta. She must have overheard. She stood up from her seat and Uncle Nestor let her. “The Giants have more AIs just like the albularyo. At least, that’s what they intend it to be.”

Uncle Nestor scowled at the woman. “Why the hell should we trust you?”

“I don’t expect you to, but I know people who were in on their meetings. The employees of many companies know about them. It’s not a secret.”

Uncle Nestor clenched his teeth. “You don’t get to tell my nephew what to do.”

“She’s not,” I said. “I’m going to do this myself, Uncle. I’m sorry.”

Uncle Nestor scoffed, pacing. “Fuck. After all this time, and you want to go back.”

“If I may?” asked Reggie, butting in. “Look, it doesn’t matter what these guys define as their terms.” He nodded at Carlotta and Carl. “Black Fire Online isn’t ready yet. With all the bugs we just found and the stuff with the daydreams, it’s not ready for a grand GO-Live yet.”

“Then we’ll get it ready,” I said. It was a snap statement, and the thought only came to me then, but it made sense. “Look. I’m going back. There’s no way you guys can talk me out of that. The best thing we can do is coincide with Black Fire’s release.”

“But there’s still more work to do!” Reggie urged. “We don’t have enough developers!”

“But they do.”

The room dropped to silence as I pointed at Carlotta and Carl. The two Delta Reel agents looked just as confused as the others were.

“Delta Reel has enough developers,” I continued. “We can give the code to them, and they can fix all the bugs, can’t you?”

Carlotta and Carl looked at each other. Carl quickly elbowed Carlotta, who frantically nodded back. I could tell they were struggling to look convincing.

“You’re insane,” said Reggie, eying my sister. “First you wouldn’t give the code to Janice, and the next, you’re just giving it up to Delta Reel? Why?”

That was a low blow and one that Janice didn’t take lightly. She folded her arms as she waited for my response.

I had to face my sister to say the following words. “BFO won’t ever be politically affiliated,” I told her, “no matter what you believe. We do, however, have to take a side. You’re right about that. The side we take is the one with the most resources. The one we can make the most difference with.”

Janice breathed through her mouth but nodded. “Can’t argue there.”

“So when are we getting out?” asked Carlotta.

“Nuh-uh,” I said. “You’re under our watch when we get to Manila.”

“Dude,” said Carl, “so it’s like a hostage situation?”

“Pretty much,” I said. “Do you all have a problem with that, or can we get this show rolling now?”

We went back and forth like that, but not for long. Shay and Andrei seemed reserved to the fact that we’d be returning to Manila. Janice was excited to go. Uncle Nestor begrudgingly accepted.

Reggie, though. Reggie was quiet—more quiet than I had ever seen him. He hardly looked at me as we formulated plans for our return to the city. He kept to himself, even when I asked him questions. He kept responding with one-word answers, grunts, and sometimes nothing.

“I need you with me on this,” I told him, once I found a time to be alone. “Your tech is going to keep us safe. That agent notification script? It’s excellent. We’ll need it. They’ll be looking for us. The Giants. Metamatics.”

I could read Reggie’s reply plain on his face. Then don’t go back, it said.

His words, however, were different. “Do you even want my advice anymore, Jayson?”

I paused. “Of course.”

“Really? Because it doesn’t sound like it. It sounds like you want to go off on your own without heeding anyone’s warnings. Not mine, not your uncle’s. No one’s.”

“I need to find out what’s going on.”

“Send someone else!”

“No.”

Reggie fumed. He stepped forward. “Andrei’s keeping his mouth shut, but I know him better than you do. He does this when he disapproves and wants to wait and see how things happen. It’s a dangerous way to think because it means he’s comfortable with watching you fail if it means you get to learn something in the process.”

That didn’t sound like the Andrei I knew. Then again, Reggie and Andrei had been friends way longer than I had known them. I often trusted him about Andrei. Why wouldn’t I this time?

I tried not to let my frustration show, but it was hard not to let loose all my concerns on Reggie. I wanted to vent. I wasn’t sure what good it would do.

And I wasn’t sure if Reggie was the person I could vent to anymore. That was the worst realization of all.

“I’m not going,” Reggie eventually said. “I’m going to stay here and work on BFO.”

I knew this was coming, but I couldn’t let this happen. “I need you, man. Shay and Andrei both need you.”

“I can help from afar. I’ve been working on tech to hijack the drones. Maybe I can do it again.”

“Maybe? What if it doesn’t work?”

“Then I’ll use BFO.”

“Along with the Delta Reel developers. If they let you.”

“I’m not being barred out of my project!”

“You might have to!”

Reggie scowled at me. “You have no idea how much work I’ve put into this.”

“Really? I think I do. Too much. So much that you haven’t been clear about what’s going on.”

His eyes widened. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means you should have known about the bugs—about the daydreams. You should have had some inclination. Yet, you didn’t tell us. Why is that?”

“It’s complicated.”

“Then tell us why it’s complicated.”

Reggie shook his head. “Fuck you, Jayson. I can’t understand what I can’t see. I tried my best.”

I shuttered and folded in on myself. My God, he was right. I knew it.

I wanted to comfort him, to rest a reassuring hand on his shoulder. By then, however, Reggie stormed off.

I decided not to push him on it, but to reunite with the others, planning our return to the city of our birth.