James Arambulo

  August 30, 2035

  Sirens In, Sirens Out

  The convoy the chased smoke and found itself

  James sits upright in the front seat of the NBI-issued SUV, eyes fixed on the windshield like it might blink first. His fingers twitch against the edge of his seatbelt, tapping a silent rhythm he can't quite place. Ahead, the road unspools, gray, slick, untrustworthy. Two other SUVs follow in formation, steady as drumbeats.

  He wants to believe they're onto something. Maybe they are.

  Two days ago, James stood beneath the low concrete sky of the Quezon City flyover, clipboard in hand, collar damp with sweat, air thick with diesel and the aftertaste of something burnt. The taxi fire had long since been put out, the wreckage towed, the scene cleared, but what lingered, what always lingered, was the story, scattered across people like ash.

  They interviewed everyone.

  Not figuratively.

  Everyone.

  Tambays with plastic chairs facing the street like altars. Vendors hawking corn, fishballs, gossip. Sidewalk pastors. The jeepney dispatcher with a clipboard older than James himself. A man pretending to be blind. A woman pretending not to be watching. James asked the same questions over and over, careful not to roll his eyes when a man insisted the fire engine floated. Another said it arrived before the fire started, as if it had been waiting for it.

  A woman claimed a ghost was behind the wheel.

  A child said the fire engine meowed like a cat.

  A boy claimed it shot water that smelled like vinegar.

  One man, shaking slightly, said a figure stepped out of the taxi before it burned. A man on fire. Laughing.

  One tanod said the taxi wasn't on fire, it was glowing. Holy, even.

  Another swore he saw a horse leap out of the flames.

  Someone else gave a name: Saint Elmo. Not the fire, the actual saint. Claimed he was there, hands in his coat pockets, watching.

  James wrote it down anyway. Just in case.

  The first hints were vague.

  A kid said he saw a white van, the kind that the mother in Tondo saw, "like the ones in movies where bad things happen."

  James asked what kind of bad.

  The kid shrugged. "Like when someone disappears."

  A woman from the adjacent sari-sari store added, offhandedly, "There was a van, yeah. White. Didn't look right. It wasn't parked, just slowed down, door open, like someone got yanked inside."

  James asked if she remembered any faces.

  "No. Just a hand, maybe. Long hair. Girl, I think. Could've been sleeping. Could've been... not."

  Girl. Zaira.

  The third report came from a rice vendor who had been setting up her stall across the street. She said she turned when she heard shouting, two men, possibly arguing, but then saw the van speed off, back tires slipping slightly on the dust.

  "No plates," she said. "Smoke covered them. Or maybe they were covered on purpose."

  That detail stuck.

  Each account different in tone, in shape, but their core matched.

  The white van.

  Zaira taken from the taxi.

  Gone before the fire even began.

  It wasn't until later, on the far side of the flyover, that James met the ones who remembered the number.

  These weren't the animated storytellers, the wide-eyed speculators. These ones spoke plainly. Quietly. Like they hadn't told anyone else.

  An old cigarette vendor.

  A traffic aide.

  A barangay tanod half-awake in his post.

  All three described the first responder to the fire.

  Not the firemen who came late and loud.

  No sirens. No flashing lights.

  It came early. Silent. Efficient.

  A fire engine.

  Number 124.

  Each one said it clearly.

  "BFP 124."

  "Yung 124 ang nauna."

  "Sure ako. Isa-dalawa-apat. Maliwanag."

  James asked if they were certain. Each nodded with the heaviness of people who had seen something they knew wasn't supposed to be there. One even sketched the number in the dirt with a stick.

  He kept their statements separate. He knew better than to let narratives contaminate each other. He wasn't a veteran, but he was trained. Still, something about the separation made it worse.

  One group saw the van that took Zaira.

  The other saw a fire engine that shouldn't exist.

  No overlap. No collusion.

  Just two sets of truths, each pointing at different shadows cast by the same fire.

  James wrote it all down. Carefully. Then again, in his personal notebook, the one he doesn't let the others touch. Because sometimes, the official version isn't big enough to hold the whole shape of the truth.

  The next morning, their analyst traced Engine 124.

  Decommissioned six years ago.

  Sold to a private service that mostly handled mall fires and wealthy subdivisions.

  Then sold again, for scrap, to a junk shop in Caloocan.

  Then it vanished from the system.

  The junkyard in Caloocan sat at the edge of the city like a broken thought. Beyond the rows of abandoned buildings and half-functional welding shops, it sprawled in silent chaos, rusted sheet metal, ruined refrigerators, forklifts with no eyes, tangled nests of wires that once carried current and now only carried regret.

  James arrived just after lunch, alone. His team had scattered to chase down related leads, but this one felt personal. He wanted to see the place himself. It wasn't protocol. It was instinct. The kind of gut-feeling optimism he hadn't yet learned to distrust.

  The gate was half-open, hanging on one hinge like it had given up years ago. There was no sign. Just the stink of oil, heat, and neglect.

  Inside, it felt timeless. Machines stacked like bones. Tires half-swallowed by the earth. A fire truck's skeletal ladder reaching toward a sky that didn't care.

  He found the owner behind a makeshift desk, drinking something thick and amber out of a reused soy sauce bottle. Mid-sixties, stained tank top, bandaged wrist, small radio playing an old rock ballad about betrayal. He squinted at James the way feral cats size up newcomers.

  "NBI?" he croaked, already annoyed.

  James introduced himself, badge flashed out of habit more than necessity. He asked about Engine 124. Got nothing but a dismissive grunt and a swig from the bottle.

  "Tagal na 'yon. Baka wala na 'yan. Sunog na siguro."

  That was his answer. That and a lazy wave toward a field of indistinguishable wrecks.

  James tried again. Dates. Paperwork. Sale records. Anything.

  The man laughed. "You think I keep records? This isn't LTO. This is where things come to die."

  James was about to leave when a younger man emerged from the shadows of a corrugated shed, skin darkened by years of work, overalls smeared with grease, a pair of bolt cutters slung over one shoulder. He had the eyes of someone who saw more than he spoke.

  He looked at James and said, quietly, "Three years ago. Someone bought that truck. Paid in cash. Told us to haul it out."

  James turned to face him. "You remember that?"

  The man nodded. "Hard to forget. Fire truck that beat to hell. Bent chassis. Missing panels. One tire flat. But the guy... he wanted that one."

  "What did he look like?"

  He hesitated. "Late thirties, maybe forty. Military vibe. Or like he used to be. Quiet. Eyes like broken stone. The kind of guy who doesn't ask questions because he doesn't need to."

  "Name?" James asked, pen poised.

  The man exhaled. "He gave one. Don't know if it's real."

  James waited.

  "Elias Mendoza."

  James blinked. That sounded fake. But not badly fake. Just believable enough to disappear behind.

  "How'd he get it out?"

  "Brought in an 18-wheeler. Had a guy with him. They loaded it up and left. No plates on the trailer. No rush. Just like it was routine."

  "No receipt?"

  The man smirked, eyes flicking to the drunken boss now snoring behind the desk. "Do you see this place?"

  James scribbled it all down. It didn't feel like a lead. Not yet. But it felt alive in the way certain clues do, unfinished, unresolved, uncomfortably warm.

  Before he left, James paused at the gate. The whole junkyard stretched behind him like a memory trying to rot. He looked once more at the rows of silent metal, then stepped out.

  Somewhere, someone had brought Fire Engine 124 back from the dead.

  And that meant someone thought it was still useful.

  James felt the weight of that fact settle in his chest, strange and slow.

  Back to today. To right now.

  The sky over Navotas is the color of wet cardboard and long-forgotten promises. James watches it flatten against the windshield, smeared by the blur of speed, the blur of urgency, the blur of the world unraveling just slightly ahead of him.

  The convoy moves like a thought that hasn't made up its mind, three black SUVs, boxed in by smoke and silence. They're nearing the warehouse. The tip said this was the place. A whisper from the digital void, a ping on a dusty old network. The inter-service notice had gone out just yesterday, flung into the system like a message in a bottle. For once, someone answered. Someone saw Engine 124. A warehouse. Navotas.

  James blinked when the report came in.

  Already?

  He wanted to believe in the system, its wires, its teeth, its creaking, rust-covered machinery. He wanted to believe it could still work, still sputter to life like an old TV set showing a real image, even just for a moment.

  He wanted to believe.

  His phone rings. The sound is shrill, overconfident. He answers.

  The voice is official. Measured. It says it's the BFP liaison. It says words James doesn't want to hear but does anyway.

  This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

  "Warehouse is on fire."

  James stares forward. The words sit in his chest like smoke.

  Burning.

  Not smoldering. Not heating. Not smoking.

  Burning.

  He doesn't speak at first. His mouth opens, but no words come out. Everything has moved too quickly, like a deck of cards thrown into the wind before he learned the rules of the game.

  Did they know?

  Did someone know they were on the trail?

  Did the fire engine come home only to be eaten by flame?

  He swallows hard. Grabs the radio.

  "All units, sirens on."

  It's not a request.

  The sound cracks open the air a moment later. All three SUVs howl. Traffic parts with reluctance. A man on a motorbike nearly drops a plastic bag of pandesal. A child covers her ears and smiles. The city doesn't stop, but it shifts.

  The SUV lunges forward, caught in the war-cry of steel and glass.

  James presses his hand to the dashboard. Not for balance. Not for prayer. Something in between.

  The fire is ahead.

  The past is behind.

  And something, someone, is trying to erase the middle.

  Amy Rivera

  September 2, 2035

  Z IS FOR ZAIRA, FOR ZERO, FOR ZETTLEKASTEN

  What do you do when a ghost leaves receipts? You ask your dad to read them..

  Amy stands in the middle of the room.

  The room stands in the middle of Amy.

  Both are filled with objects that refuse to rot.

  This is not a room. This is a reliquary disguised as domesticity. A curated zoo of Zaira's interior self. Stickers that won't peel. Posters that resist the concept of time. A dried-out lip balm that still carries the ghost of mango.

  Instax photos chatter silently on the corkboard.

  "We remember," they whisper, in a language made of smiles and overexposed lighting.

  "We remember what you two almost were."

  A sock in the corner is mid-gesture. It once pointed at the door. It now points at Amy's chest.

  Amy does not cry. The air is already crying on her behalf. It hangs thick with unspoken goodbyes and a faint tang of menthol shampoo.

  The memory arrives.

  Not like a flood. Floods are dramatic. This memory slithers in on silk. It taps her shoulder like a polite waiter.

  "Madam, may I offer you... the first kiss?"

  "Madam, here is the receipt for the friendship you settled for."

  Amy nods. She accepts the memory. Folds it in half. Tucks it under her tongue.

  This is Zaira's room.

  This is a diorama of love unspent.

  Zaira is everywhere. Zaira is nowhere. Zaira is:

  The uneven paint job behind the mirror.The cracked phone case that saw too much.The scent of eucalyptus pretending to be bravery.

  Amy breathes in.

  There is work to do.

  Love is not an excuse.

  Time does not apologize.

  She steps forward. The room exhales. The floorboards hold their breath. The lightbulb flickers, not due to electricity, but reverence.

  And Zaira, saint of the Almost, does not return.

  Amy reaches for the journals.

  They do not resist. They surrender like tired soldiers.

  Zaira had always loved to journal. With a vengeance. With a penmanship that seemed to fight the page. Letters tilted left like they were hiding something. Bullet points that weren't bullets, but warning shots.

  The freshest notebook, the final notebook, is gone. It has become evidence, or myth, or ash. It now lives in a police locker, or a landfill, or in the digestive tract of a bureaucratic god.

  It doesn't matter. Thinking about it is like chewing thumbtacks.

  Amy focuses on the ones left behind.

  There it is. The journal with the coffee stains. A holy relic. The result of a morning tragedy featuring caffeine, lateness, and Zaira's inability to hold onto travel mugs.

  Amy flicks. The pages whisper, "Not here. Not yet. Keep going."

  Then: words. So many words. Thoughts, rants, flirtations with philosophy. Daily schedules annotated like crime scenes. She's reading Zaira's brain in cross-section.

  "Today I saw the foreman again. He was yelling at a worker without a helmet. It was almost operatic. The worker looked like he was being scolded by God. I think they fake inspections."

  "Goldenrock is the name. Golden like corruption. Rock like cement in lungs. I feel like there's more. The workers trust me a bit more now."

  "Bribes. Safety inspectors. One of them winked at me when I asked about protocols. A PNP badge fell out of his wallet. I pretended not to notice."

  Amy blinks. The air thickens. Or maybe that's just grief wearing new clothes.

  She reads the same sentence three times. The name glares back. Not glowing. Not bolded. Just there—like a cockroach in a five-star hotel.

  Jiro Lim Uy.

  The ink bound ghost of a real man. Project Manager of the Binondo Crown site. Not a villain yet. Just a name. A maybe. A rhythm of syllables that sounds vaguely guilty.

  She clutches the journal. Not because it helps. But because it is Zaira. Zaira, encrypted. Zaira, fragmented. Zaira, still trying to explain something from the other side of the event horizon.

  The NBI will probably come back for these.

  They'll go through her things.

  They'll wear gloves and pretend they aren't ruining anything.

  They'll breathe in her perfume and call it "evidence."

  Amy knows she should be careful. Knows she should leave it undisturbed.

  But she's already touched it.

  The NBI would dismiss it. "Not enough," they'd say, as if truth came pre-packaged in high-resolution, with timestamps and a narrator's voice.

  But Amy feels.

  And feeling, in this case, is evidence enough for action.

  Goldenrock.

  It sounds like a casino. It smells like diesel.

  It may have killed Zaira.

  Amy does not know.

  But Amy knows.

  James Arambulo

  The fire breathes like an animal.

  James stands just beyond the cordon, his shoes pressed into asphalt softened by heat. He does not move. Around him, the world shudders, firefighters shouting coded urgency, hoses writhing like panicked veins, neighbors frozen in reverent horror, their eyes lit not by light but by the promise of collapse.

  The warehouse is howling now, not roaring. Screaming. Metal rips apart with long, tortured wails. Sections of the roof implode. Sparks shower into the air like it's Lunar New Year and someone ordered fire instead of joy.

  A firefighter stumbles past, suit blackened, coughing into his elbow. Another replaces him without ceremony. There is no time for drama. No time for heroes. Just containment.

  James does not look away.

  He watches the roof fold.

  Watches the sky grow thicker with smoke.

  A news chopper swings in above like a grotesque spectator, blades chopping the heat into ribbons. Somewhere in a distant newsroom, someone is already naming this footage: Blaze in Navotas, Developing Story, No Confirmed Casualties Yet.

  A crowd has formed. Faces like masks. Phones out. The world documenting itself as it ends in small, manageable pieces.

  His earpiece hisses with static and clipped status reports. One of his men is trying to count the firefighters, checking for unfamiliar faces. Another is muttering under his breath about how the fire moved too quickly, how it didn't crawl, it leapt.

  James hears none of it.

  He's already pulling out his phone.

  The wind shifts. A plume of black smoke coils toward them. The heat licks his face. Somewhere behind the blaze, he imagines a rusted red shape being eaten slowly, deliberately. Engine 124, if it was ever truly here, is now melting into legend.

  He speaks into the phone like it's a lifeline. "I need all traffic cam footage in this area pulled now. Two kilometers out. Anything from the last twenty-four hours. Before the footage disappears. Again."

  He doesn't wait for confirmation. Doesn't trust it will come.

  Ash drifts past him, snowing sideways. The fire crackles louder. It's not dying. It's multiplying.

  He hears it before he sees it.

  A sound like splintering wood, then a sickening, musical chime of glass rupturing. Someone screams. Not from pain just yet. From realization. From the arrival of the second fire.

  The neighboring warehouse catches.

  James turns. Watches the flames leap across the alley like a deal being made in secret.

  New smoke. New chaos.

  More engines arriving, sirens late to the party but wailing with conviction.

  His team is beginning to draw looks, questions in uniform. NBI shouldn't be here anymore. Not in the middle of it.

  He hears one of his own say, "We're not helping. We're just standing here."

  He nods. Slowly.

  The fire no longer cares who started it. It just wants to grow.

  And James, James knows the truth doesn't survive well in fire.

  It cooks.

  It curls.

  It burns into something else.

  He pockets his phone. Steps back.

  "Get in the cars," he says. "We're done here."

  Doors slam shut with the heavy thud of defeat dressed as retreat. The air-conditioning hums to life, cold, clinical, a poor imitation of control. The smoke is outside now, filtered out by glass, trapped in memory. But James still smells it. Or maybe it's inside him now. Nestled in his lungs like failure made physical.

  The convoy pulls away. No sirens this time. Just the quiet, obedient roll of rubber over asphalt. One turn, then another. The warehouse disappears behind them, swallowed by its own appetite. Somewhere in the rearview mirror, the fire is still dancing.

  Inside the SUV, no one speaks at first.

  Then the murmurs start. Theory like a slow fever. Each word a guess. Each sentence a thread with no needle.

  "It was the bulletin."

  "We made it public. It reached everyone."

  "Someone tipped them off. Has to be someone inside."

  "They had time to prepare. Time to burn everything."

  It's not an argument. It's a séance.

  They speak not to convince, but to conjure.

  To summon a shape from the smoke.

  Something that makes the ruin make sense.

  James stares ahead. Eyes fixed on the road, but his mind already pacing inside the ash-filled shell of the warehouse. He imagines Engine 124 again, slumped in the corner, watching the flames with something like dignity.

  Maybe it was never there.

  Maybe it was already gone.

  Maybe this was the point all along.

  He lets the others talk. Lets them chase ghosts.

  The car rolls forward through streets that don't care what they've lost. Traffic resumes. Vendors reappear. A dog crosses the road with the calm of a survivor.

  Then, a sound.

  Small. Precise.

  His phone dings.

  He doesn't flinch. Just unlocks it.

  An email. Subject line bland, bureaucratic: The Requested Traffic Cam Files.

  He opens it. Stills. Scans.

  The footage is there. The timestamp matches. Multiple angles. No deletion. No tampering. Not yet.

  They got it.

  He exhales. Quiet, but it feels seismic. Like pressure leaving a sealed chamber.

  It's not victory.

  Not even close.

  But it's a thread.

  And they still have hands.

  James leans his head back, eyes closed for just a moment. He imagines Lino's face when he tells him.

  The tired smile.

  The shrug that means: Of course they burned it.

  The nod that means: But we keep going.

  He imagines Lino saying, "So what's next?"

  As if there's always a next.

  As if the fire never really ends.

  Amy Rivera

  Amy steps down the stairs like she's descending into a memory someone else left playing on loop. The voices come before the people do, low, worn thin, passing from condolence to logistics and back again.

  The living room smells like dust and coffee. It smells like grief that's been politely asked to sit down.

  Her parents and Zaira's parents occupy the couch like statues carved from old stories. They are conversing in careful tones, the way adults do when nothing they say can fix anything but they say it anyway, out of ritual. Out of survival.

  Zaira and Amy had been best friends for years. Naturally, the parents had known each other. Vacation photos, birthday dinners, PTA meetings, the occasional family group chat that never really worked. A shared history, modest but real.

  Now that history hangs in the air like old perfume.

  Amy's mother Katrina Rivera holds Lorraine's hand. Her father Mark Joseph Rivera says something about prayers. Adrian nods, a man who has run out of ways to nod but still tries.

  Adrian Navarro is composed now. Not healed. Just... composed. Like someone who has accepted the irreversible. No more collapsing into his wife's arms, no more wails in sterile office chairs. Now he is functional. Dressed. Speaking in full sentences. The dull dignity of loss has calcified in him.

  Lorraine is quiet, but not fragile. Her silence carries strength, the tired kind, the kind that lifts coffins and continues to answer the door. She corrects her husband when he forgets a date. She talks about the funeral home like it's just another weekend plan.

  The body hasn't even been released yet.

  The NBI still has it, still has her.

  A fact passed between them like a teaspoon of poison. Said gently, with the knowledge that no one can taste it for too long.

  Zaira's little brother isn't here. He's probably upstairs in his room, gaming through the pain, headphones on, heart elsewhere. The only reasonable way to survive at his age.

  Amy watches it all like someone visiting a version of her own life she narrowly escaped.

  Then they see her.

  "How did it go?"

  She breathes. Smiles a little.

  "It was good. Closure."

  They smile back. They believe her, or want to. No one pushes. No one wants to scrape the scab.

  She sits down for a few minutes. Pretends to sip tea. Pretends to listen. Her mother says something about the wake. Zaira's mother talks about urn options. Her father mentions a contact in the barangay who might help with the permits.

  Amy nods, nods, doesn't cry.

  Then she excuses herself. Just a moment with her father.

  A breath. A pivot. A patio.

  She gestures towards her father as she walks out the patio door, his cup of coffee untouched, already cold. He follows her out without question, stepping into the quiet with that familiar ease of a man who's lived long enough to know when a daughter needs something.

  The air outside is pleasant in that mocking way, it's late afternoon Quezon City light, yellow and forgiving. Trees sway like nothing is wrong. Somewhere, someone is grilling tilapia. Somewhere, a karaoke machine hums to life.

  It is an offensively good day.

  Amy doesn't waste time. She doesn't have time.

  "Can you look into a company for me?" she asks.

  Mark Joseph Rivera, who once taught her how to balance a checkbook and file an FOI request, lifts an eyebrow. He doesn't ask why just yet. He doesn't have to. That's not the rhythm of their bond.

  "Which one?"

  "Goldenrock."

  The name drops like a stone into the clear pool of fatherly calm. It ripples, but doesn't shatter.

  He considers it, head tilted slightly, the way he does when parsing mergers or listening to politicians lie. He's not just her father right now. He's also an investment banker. A man who's spent decades in backrooms full of data, handshakes, and well-laundered corruption.

  "What's it for?" he asks, eventually. Not suspicious. Just thorough.

  Amy doesn't lie, but she doesn't open the whole book either.

  "Zaira was looking into them," she says. "Something she started. I just want to finish it. For her."

  That's all she says. But it's enough.

  Mark Joseph nods. Slowly. Thoughtfully.

  "I've heard the name before," he says. "They were floated as a potential contractor for a project we consulted on. Infra. Mid-scale. Maybe around Clark or the old port. I'll check."

  He's already thinking. Already pulling on the invisible threads in his mind. Contacts, files, backdoor databases, maybe even a friend at the SEC.

  "I'll look through the old files," he adds. "Might have some background material on them. See what bubbles up. I'll ask around."

  Amy exhales. Relief, but not peace. She steps forward and hugs him. It's the kind of hug that doesn't say thank you, doesn't say I'm scared, but carries both like passengers on a train.

  Mark Joseph holds her close. He doesn't ask more questions. He has learned over the years that Amy only tells what she's ready to say.

  They pull apart.

  She doesn't say I miss her.

  But he sees it anyway.

  He puts a hand on her shoulder. Squeezes.

  Inside, voices murmur through the walls. Zaira's name is said again. And again. Like a candle that won't quite go out.

  Amy looks up at the sky. Too blue. Too whole.

  The kind of sky that doesn't understand what it means to lose someone mid-sentence.