Chapter 5
Goldwyn City
Silence was filling the room and it was awkward. Faust holding a few papers, Rex reading some, and them, not saying a word was very awkward in a way.
Finally, Rex held down the papers and heaved an angry sigh.
“And what was your plan on keeping this a secret to me? I am his only family left!”
“I wasn’t actually going to hide it from you. It’s just that, with the operation going to really cost much, I had to prepare you for this news. That’s why I told you about the money and the two months’ time he had left.”
“Do it.”
“What?” Faust was surprised with the change of tone on Rex’s hoarse sounding voice.
“The operation! Do it! I will prepare the money.”
“Are you out of your mind?!” Faust exclaimed. “If you do that, then what? You’re going to take him home and take care of him there? Do you have money for his medicines? What about proper care, do you know how to do it? Let’s talk about his hygiene. Are you even sure you can take care of him? How are you going to feed yourself? You can’t even work for the next six months of your life, not even for the next year after you heal yourself! This was kept a secret from you exactly because of situations such as this!”
Reality struck Rex like a large meteor. Now he understood why. He knew that the papers only told a few numbers, information, and a fraction of the real problem. His brother has a weak body and he was rejecting the medicine. He needed a bone marrow transplant, a brain surgery, and new anti-bodies. And both are going to cost lots of money, adding up the fact that he was still in a coma.
Even with the operation, it’s still unknown when he’s going to wake up. And until that time comes, they had no choice but to attach Baron to the life support machine.
He knew that this was coming. Baron’s vegetable condition was already a sign itself. Then at that point, Faust saw the card tucked on Rex’s hand.
“Wait…is that…”
“Augustus.” Rex’s mouth moved. “I heard you in the corridor.”
Faust closed his eyes and broke down on the seat.
“So you heard it?”
“Not all of it.”
“Even so, you already knew. So that’s why you were silent.” He covered his face with a hand and then removed it, looking straight into Rex’s eyes. “Are you planning on asking him for help?”
Rex took a moment to look at the card before nodding.
“Don’t.” That short prompt made Rex think. “I know you know of his kind already, but he is different. He will use you beyond your debt’s payment.”
“Even so. Baron‘s life is at stake. I can live with it.”
“It‘s still too soon for you to make up your mind.”
Rex looked at Faust and the doctor sighed. He leans on the chair and put a hand on his mouth while looking at the papers in the table.
“Did you hear about…my past mistake?”
Rex felt a surge of emotion in those words. Even if he felt that it was out of bounds, he still needed to know why Faust was against the idea of asking for the help of that man. After all, he already had the feeling that the man named Augustus is telling him something else. Something that was already obvious yet, it was still hidden in front of him.
“Only of the mistake. Nothing more.”
“Before me and your father came here, we spent a year of internship on another hospital. There, we met a patient named Maya.”
The opening made Rex look at his expression. The look of pain was written on the doctor‘s eyes. “Is this the person with the same condition as Baron?”
Faust nodded. “The solution to her problem was a transplant and the surgery. But her family don’t have the money, and so they came like sharks in a smell of blood. It looked like they already knew that she needed their help and offered a 5% onetime interest loan.”
“Onetime?”
Faust took a pen and a paper and wrote 100 and 105. “If you loan 100 pesos, you have to pay 105 pesos. That’s the onetime interest.”
“I see. And?”
“Three months to pay 25% of the loan amount…or, they take something precious from you or you yourself will have to serve him.”
Rex gasped on hearing that.
Seeing the shock in his eyes, Faust gritted his teeth as he clenched his fist. “We told Maya’s parents to never take the gamble. Even though we knew that there was an 80% chance of their daughter living after the operation, we, no, I first considered the price of their to be decision and advised them. Your father encouraged them to accept the deal but the parents listened to me. In the end, she…”
No words came after that. It was understandable.
“Even so.” Rex pursed his fist, and it wrinkled his pants. “My brother’s life is the one at stake here.”
“But what are you going to pay them?”
“I will serve under them. Even if it takes years to pay them, I will do it. I just want my brother to live.”
“But you will be sacrificing yourself!”
“I don’t care!” Rex yelled it out this time. “He is the only family I have left! I don’t want to lose him too! I saw my parents die, I don’t want to lose the only family I have left…”
Rex burst into tears and he felt the pain on his throat again. Still, the pain in his heart imagining losing Baron too was more painful a hundred times over. The thought of not doing the right thing even if he could do something was intolerable. Even if he had to pay a lifetime of servitude, if his brother could live, then he would be happy enough.
“Rex, this is…”
“You can’t stop me.” Rex interrupted before Faust could even finish. “If I had to die to let him live, then so be it. I have died once, I’m willing to do it again.”
Their eyes met and Faust knew that whatever he says now won’t reach him. He was only 19 and yet he was already standing on his own ground. Faust knew that he had already made up his mind. The kid in his memories was gone. The person in front of him now is Rex who braved imminent death and lived, used his own body to protect his brother, and even made sure that he was alive before really taking the cure to himself. He was a man who made the impossible possible, all for the sake of his brother.
Faust thought, if he made it this far, then probably, he could bare the incoming lifetime of servitude.
He closed his eyes and sighed. “I will call him.” He said. And that night became one of the longest nights Rex ever had in his life.
***
The next day, Rex was sitting beside his brother while he held his tiny hands in his.
“You will be fine. Kuya will take care of you.”
Rex looked at the blinking green light and heard the sound of his pulse rate. He wished as always, even how small it may seem, that there would be a reaction from his words. But Baron remained unmoving and only the sound of the machine’s beeping replied to him with its monotonous sound.
Then, Faust knocked on the door. Rex nodded at him. He stood up then went outside.
“They will not be entering the hospital.” Faust told him and Rex kept his gaze at Baron.
“I expected as much. Are you going with me?”
“Sadly, no, he only wanted you.”
“Then I will be alone.” Rex’s look was solemn so Faust put a hand on his shoulder.
“It’s gonna be alright. Just know where you stand.”
Those words made Rex take another glance to his brother and with the thoughts of the meeting running endlessly in his mind, the two of them reached the gate. Even with his arm in cast, his right leg in thick metallic frame support, Rex’s expression still looked stern and rigid. The robotic support was attached on his right leg and it was helping him stand firm on his feet.
The limousine came in time and a man in black suit opened the door for him. Rex looked at Faust and the doctor nodded. Rex went inside to see the luxurious dressing man looking straight at his eyes.
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“You look dashingly stiff.”
Rex remained silent.
Augustus made a smile and touched his chin. “And you look as if you don’t want to waste time.”
“I learned about your business from the Doctor. I want to avail a loan.” The straight forward words made Augustus chuckle and the two guards on both his sides look at him. The engine came as a quiet hum inside the limo and Rex’s words echoed like a night hawk.
Augustus seemed to have misheard it and so he fixed the small device attached at the end of his ear. “If my translator is not malfunctioning, I think I heard you say something about a loan.”
“Yes.” Rex replied firmly. “This is for my brother.”
A smile emerged on Augustus’s lips and he leaned back on the soft cotton seat. “Well, I’m sorry to tell you but you…might have been misinformed about me.”
“How?” This time Rex had lost his composure and the stern pose he’s been wearing went into some far away land. “What do yo mean? I don’t understand.”
“It’s simple, Mister Kingsley, I don’t give away loans anymore. I’ve moved on to a higher plane.”
Frustration quickly draws in Rex‘s face. “Then…I am sorry to have wasted your time…I…” With all his composure broken, Rex changed to a distorted mirror, with a voice layered in a hoarse, broken metallic sound.
“Don’t worry.” Rex raised his head in surprise. “I do not want to offer you a loan, but instead, I want to offer you a job. You, are a lucky man. The reason I gave you that card is that you somehow picked my interest. Congratulations. You just earned a privilege to be launched as one of the pioneers in your country.”
“Pioneers?” He raised his tone. “Pioneers of what?”
On Rex’s question, the person on the right side, a bald brute with black eyeglasses gave him a paper and the other guy, the bearded man pulled an expensive looking pen from his breast pocket.
“That‘s a waver. Let‘s not waste time here. The job I‘m going to offer you will give an advance payment. I am a generous man, after all.”
Rex saw the sincere trickery in his eyes and felt a chill touched his nape. He did not sign the paper but instead read its content and asked, “What is the job?”
“You will know that in our destination. Meanwhile, fill that up and keep the paper. You learn of the job in just a few minutes from now. Give it to me after you have decided. If you don’t want the job, you can always throw it away so we can live with our own comfortable lives like nothing happened.”
Calm, composed, imposing, authoritative…Rex felt this all in the man as he opened his arms wide and said those words as if a preacher on his religious group.
This man knew of my situation. He knows me.
He realized that he was being played from the very beginning and it was his mistake that he showed an opening on his behavior. He was the first to show that he needed him, not the other way around.
It was a rule in negotiation. First make a bid, tease the other party, and when he was on the hook, take a step back so he would follow the bait like a good prey. This time, the bait was his need of money and he followed the bait willingly. It was a truth at which he swallowed painfully. Still, he was prepared.
Rex knew well that what he’s entering is a world at which there is no coming back. He had already crossed the path of no return the moment he decided to take that card. And now, he was being tested.
It was a few minutes more, they arrived in a certain place near the warehouse district in Pier 4. It was a place full of poverty; the faces of men, women, and children, old and young was painted with the ever so distinct image of poverty in the Philippines.
“Why are we here?”
“This is the job orientation.” Augustus said with a warm smile and the bald man in black suit gave him a mask. “I don’t have to tell you how to use that, right?”
He paused before he took the offered mask and wore it. It was a modern mask, equipped with quantum magnetic pads that automatically get stuck on the skull of the wearer. The limousine then turned and entered the vicinity. A few turns more, they arrived on a certain warehouse where a few more expensive looking cars were entering an underground entrance one by one.
When it was finally their turn, all of them wore the same masks but Augustus wore a black colored one, in contrast to his all white, red tie and red shoes expensive outfit.
A fully armed guard opened the door where they are and the guard was holding a hologram panel. He checked on them one by one, and to where his eyes placed, the device that he held on his hand let out a distinct blinking sound. When he had already checked that all of the passengers of his limousine was cleared, he nodded and saluted on Augustus, closing the door in a straight move. After that, they went on more for about 5 minutes of ride in an underground floating highway.
“Is this place still in Manila?”
“It is.” Answered Augustus with a smile. “This place has been around for the past 80 years, built by your President Marcus to cater the black market. It once helped in founding the economy of your country to where it is now. When it finally served its purpose, it was then forgotten like a toy and was used instead by our organization.”
Rex swallowed upon learning of this information. What he had just put himself into was a whole new world, both shocking and very alarming, to the point that he even thought that it was the mafia.
“Relax, Mister Kingsley, you are not part of us so we don’t have anything to be worried about from you. I told you of this location and not put you into a sack because I trust that you are here with me because of an important reason. And that reason itself exceeds any kind of grounds for you to betray my trust. Or am I wrong to assume?”
Rex, with his eyes covered in a white glass stared at the solid expression behind the black mask. There were no sign of a wavering soul in there. Augustus was a man from a European lineage. His Caucasian aura had an imposing feel, suffocating enough to make him bid a defeated silent reply. He knew then that those words just now are a form of threat and also a warning.
If I tell anyone of this place, I’ll be dead.
He knew that and when Augustus felt that he realized that already, a smile emerged on his lips that made Rex’s arm covered in cast itch.
That smile was the only thing that his eyes saw. His mind was working on ways to deal with his situation but no better thoughts came into him and so he was left with the decision to accept it all.
“We’re here.” Rex’s attention was snatched and he looked behind him to see a large underground dome. It was the only place this floating road above an artificial city led to.
The underground city and the people were living on its modern streets looked like people from a different world. It was as if it was a place born directly from a sci-fi fantasy movie.
“What is this place?!”
Rex couldn’t hide the amazement on his tone.
“This is Goldwyn City. It’s just a small fragment of Manila but it is large enough to house 100,000 people every hour. It can also operate like Las Vegas without any outside help.”
“Las Vegas?”
“Yes.” Augustus smiled at him. “Welcome to the center of the Black Market Industry in the Philippines.”
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