Lino Ilagan

  August 27, 2035

  Guitar Strings Still Tuning, Mic Still On

  The show was not supposed to be over yet.

  The rain had stopped, but it hadn't cleaned anything. The puddles just rearranged the grime, diluted the diesel stink, softened the rusted tin sheets and mud-caked trash into something more pitiful. Morning in this part of Tondo didn't start so much as crawl out from under broken plywood. Somewhere far off, a karaoke machine was still going. The compound wasn't the worst Lino had seen. That was its own kind of insult.

  Lino Ilagan stands just outside the yellow tape and makeshift tarp, if you could even call it that. It sags between two rusted tricycle frames. He nods at the barangay tanod who looks like he hasn't slept. No one has. Tondo doesn't sleep on nights like that.

  Lino stepped under the makeshift tarp, leather shoes splashing once in the puddle of dirty water no one bothered to sweep away. He was here on NBI business. That meant someone had decided this was too much for the local cops. Human trafficking suspected. That was the language they used, "suspected," as if there was any other explanation for a dead girl in borrowed clothes and wrists that told stories.

  The body was already covered, but not zipped. Face still exposed.

  Female. Early twenties. Eyes half-open. Not swollen, not bloodied. Just surprised.

  Too clean. That was the first tell. She only had one sandal on her, her blouse was pressed, her hair conditioned. She didn't belong here, and the barangay tanods knew it. No one recognized her. And in places like this, everyone knows everyone.

  "Student ID," one of the techs said, gloved fingers handing over the plastic card in a Ziploc. "Found in her bra."

  Lino took it. Zaira Navarro. UP Diliman. Political Science, Year 3. The face on the card matched the one in front of him, though the smile had long since vanished.

  "Time of death?"

  "Roughly 3 a.m.," the tech replied. "We'll get more precise once we open her up. Preliminary: ligature marks on both wrists. She was tied. There's bruising on her left shoulder and hip. Might've been thrown around."

  "And cause?"

  The tech hesitated. "Looks like she tripped on an exposed rebar here. Snapped her neck. Fast and unlucky."

  Lino crouched by the rebar. It was heavily rusted, the kind that cuts you just by looking at it. One misstep in the dark, hands bound, adrenaline rushing? Easy.

  But the real story was in what wasn't here. No drag marks. No blood. No struggle beyond the bruises. The place had already been picked clean, either by the rain or by someone who knew what they were doing.

  The footprints were long gone.

  No one screamed.

  No one helped.

  A silence too loud to ignore.

  His deputy, James Arambulo, young, too young, still had that "I can fix this" look in his eyes. He met Lino outside, beneath the dripping gutter.

  "We've got a witness," he said. Voice clipped, like he was trying to sound older than twenty-six. Didn't work. Not yet.

  They crossed the narrow alley and ducked into a makeshift home pressed against the edge of the highway. Scrap metal, laundry lines, warmth, and struggle.

  Inside: a woman, cradling a baby wrapped in a yellowed towel, skin flush and breathing shallow. Fan spinning pointlessly above. Bottles of expired cough syrup lined the shelf like rusted soldiers. She sat on a monobloc chair that creaked with her exhaustion. Didn't offer them to sit. Didn't need to.

  Lino crouched down to her level. "Ma'am. Your neighbor said you might've heard something last night."

  She nodded slowly. Didn't cry. Didn't blink too much either. The kind of woman who's seen too many nights and not enough sleep.

  "The baby was crying. She's sick, so I was trying to put her back to sleep. I heard... screaming. A girl. Real scared." She tightened the grip on the child, gently rocking. "Then men. Three, maybe four. Shouting. Running."

  Lino said nothing. Let her keep going.

  "I looked through the gap in the door, just a little. I saw them chasing. She was fast, the girl. They ran after her but gave up. Got in the van and drove off. Fast."

  Lino asked, "Color?"

  "White."

  "License plate?"

  She shook her head. "It was too dark, the rain was too strong. And I was afraid. I had my baby."

  Of course. She did what anyone would.

  Lino stood and looked at James. "Get them to a clinic. Now. Make sure the baby gets looked at."

  James nodded, gently guiding the woman and her sick child toward the door. The monobloc chair stopped creaking.

  Lino stepped outside and lit a cigarette he didn't plan to finish. The smoke mixed with the humid air, hung around his collar like guilt.

  He looked down the street.

  Traffic cameras. Two of them. Rusted boxes watching the road with blind, bureaucratic eyes.

  Maybe they'd seen the van. Maybe the city remembered something.

  Lino went back to the alleyway. The girl was still there, the techs now dusting around her like undertakers at a dress rehearsal. The tarp had slipped slightly. Her face caught a sliver of morning light through a cracked roof panel.

  There was nothing new. Just the same story told in silence. Panic. Flight. A final fall.

  "Wrap it up," he muttered to the nearest tech, already halfway turned around. "Bag her proper. Bring her in."

  They nodded. No questions. The kind of job where questions made things worse.

  Out in the lot, his Fortuner sat like an old soldier. Mud-caked, dented on one side, paint faded to a matte sadness. Reliable. Like him.

  James slid into the passenger seat, still checking his notes on his phone.

  Lino started the engine. Diesel grumble. Familiar hum.

  "Pull highway footage," he said. "From last night. Two to four a.m. Look into the girl too, Zaira Navarro. UP Diliman. Political Science. I want class records, orgs, anything weird."

  James just nodded and typed.

  The road was slow. The world moved past in wet, gray layers.

  Lino didn't speak. He just drove.

  Zaira had made it out. That's what stuck. She got away. Got out of the van. Outran grown men. Got free. That meant something.

  And then she died.

  A misstep, a jagged edge, an exposed rebar.

  Fate was a bastard. Always was.

  He hated these cases. Trafficking. The smell of it was always the same: Fear, desperation, and silence. Like someone screaming into a padded room.

  He gripped the wheel tighter. Didn't even realize it.

  The drive stayed quiet. Wipers off now. Just the rumble of the Fortuner and the low, rattling breath of Manila trying to wake itself.

  Then, three turns from the office, engine still warm, James spoke up, eyes still on his tablet.

  "Sir... the footage was scrubbed."

  Lino didn't take his eyes off the road. "Clarify."

  "All traffic camera data within a three kilometer radius of the scene. From 2 a.m. to 4 a.m. Gone. Wiped. But... it was sloppy. Real sloppy. Left metadata trails, timestamps. They didn't even spoof the system logs."

  If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

  Lino let that settle. Someone wanted the footage gone. Not just a fluke. Not bad luck. Deliberate. And amateur.

  "Send it to Cyber. Have them trace the breach."

  James nodded.

  A beat of silence. Then Lino added, mostly to himself:

  "A lot of agencies have access to MMDA's camera grid. Can't jump to conclusions. Not yet."

  But the line had been crossed. This wasn't some opportunistic grab gone wrong. This had hands in it. Gloved or not.

  James glanced back at his phone. "I also found the names of Zaira's parents. Both teach Anthropology at UP Diliman. Professors."

  Lino exhaled slowly. Turned the wheel. The office could wait.

  "Change of plan. We're going to UP."

  James looked up. "We're telling them? Now?"

  Lino nodded. "Someone has to."

  A pause. Then, quieter: "I've never had to do that before."

  Lino didn't look at him. Just kept his eyes on the road.

  "You never get used to it."

  Amy Rivera

  August 27, 2035

  A Virus of the Body, a Virus of the Heart, and a Body in the Mud

  The three plagues of the young woman: Rhinovirus, Betrayal, and Death

  Amy Rivera had a bad Monday morning. A sunlight-hurts-your-eyes kind of morning. The kind where your limbs feel like damp laundry and your brain, a lukewarm puddle. She caught a cold last night. Cubao rain, heartbreak, and bad decisions dripping down her spine, but there was no way she was missing Introduction to Anthropology at 8AM.

  It was her favorite class. Rituals, myths, bones in the ground and secrets in the blood. And the professor? Her best friend Zaira's dad. A tweed-jacketed relic with the voice of a weary prophet and a smirk like he knew everything. Amy liked him. He made the ancient feel like gossip.

  She shuffled down the stairs in her threadbare college hoodie, a wet tissue balled in one fist. The house was still, the kind of silence that absorbs your footsteps. Down in the kitchen, the maid had already laid out tocino and eggs. Her favorite. Little glistening islands of comfort on a white porcelain plate. The coffee steamed like a holy offering.

  Dad was gone. Probably summoned at dawn to the sterile vaults of Makati finance, where fluorescent ghosts of capitalism whispered in air-conditioned tongues.

  Mom was already a painting: Makeup perfect, lipstick militant, gold earrings catching the light like small suns. She was dressed for war: today, the battlefield was her gallery in QC. A big day, a big showing. Artists with oversized scarves and unpaid debts would be circling her like vultures. But she paused when she saw Amy.

  "You look like shit," Mom said gently.

  Amy tried a smile. "Thanks."

  "Stay home. You'll infect all your friends."

  Amy shook her head. "It's Anthro this morning. I like Anthro."

  A sigh. A mother's sigh. Equal parts frustration and pride.

  "Fine," she said. "I'll drive you. But you're taking meds."

  Amy protested, but a spoonful of pink syrup was already marching its way down her throat, tasting like artificial strawberries and pharmaceutical despair.

  Outside, the rain started up again. Of course it did.

  On the way to school in her mom's car, beige leather interior, faint smell of old perfume and tax-exempt wealth, Amy stared out the window as the rain carved ghost-lines down the glass. Makati melted into Diliman in smudged brushstrokes: billboards, jeepneys, election tarps sagging with wet promises.

  She spoke like someone coughing up debris from a flood.

  "Last night was shit."

  Her mom glanced sideways but didn't interrupt. She'd learned that art galleries and daughters required the same skill: knowing when to let silence do the work.

  "Our band, we had to cut the set short in Cubao. Storm got too strong. Fuses blew. Everything went dark and dramatic. Ironic actually, when the band's called Children of the Storm"

  Amy paused. Picked at the frayed edge of her sleeve. Rainwater memory clung to the back of her throat.

  "Zaira had to leave in a taxi, she couldn't get any through the apps but she managed to hail one on the road. I stayed behind to pack the gear. That's when I saw it."

  A breath. Thick with snot and something heavier.

  "I was coiling the mic cables when I checked my phone. That's when I got the notification, someone sent me a link to a video."

  Her mom glanced over, but didn't say anything.

  "It was him. Sandro. And some guy. They were..." she sniffled, wiped her nose on the back of her hand, "...they were together. Like, obviously. No shame. The other guy was dumb enough to post it with the sound on. You could hear everything. See everything."

  Her mom winced.

  Amy gave a half-laugh, small and bitter. "Yeah. I know."

  "Sandro's one of your bandmates, right?"

  "Yup. Super fun dynamic for rehearsal later today." She coughed. "Anyways, he showed up after. Said he 'wanted to talk.' I didn't even speak. Just showed him the video."

  She leaned her head against the window, eyes glassy.

  "He started crying. Said he was sorry."

  "For cheating?" her mom asked gently.

  "No. For getting caught." Amy coughed again, this time into her elbow. "And because the video was 'unflattering.' Like that was the part that mattered."

  Her voice dropped into a grumble, tired and full of snot.

  "We ended things. In the rain. Screaming like drama club rejects. That's probably where this cold came from."

  She sniffed, crossed her arms.

  "I just hope he caught something worse."

  Silence again. The car hummed like a spaceship slicing through drizzle.

  Her mom reached over, touched her hand. "You're strong, anak. You've gotten back up from worse."

  Amy didn't answer, but the words settled somewhere warm between her ribs.

  At school, the rain was thinning to a whisper. Amy stepped out into puddled concrete and quiet chaos. Umbrellas, backpacks, early morning regrets. She climbed the steps to her building, lungs heavy, head fogged, heart unsteady.

  Zaira wasn't in class.

  Probably overslept, she thought. The storm had gotten to all of them.

  The lecture today? Secret Societies. Underground cults, lost languages, whispers behind mahogany doors. Zaira's dad Adrian was in fine form, speaking like he'd once been part of one.

  Zaira would've eaten it up.

  Amy took extra notes. More than usual. Her head was floating above her body, but she made sure to write everything down. For Zaira.

  The class emptied in soft murmurs and squeaking chairs. Amy gathered her things, stuffed her tablet into her tote, ready to disappear into the day like she always did, just another student evaporating into the corridors of knowledge and hangovers.

  "Amy," came the voice.

  Measured. Gentle. Laced with a tremor like an old cassette tape replayed too many times.

  It was Zaira's dad.

  She turned. Something in his posture made her stomach coil. He wasn't standing like a man who just finished a lecture. He was standing like someone who'd been hit by something invisible and was trying to pretend he hadn't.

  "Can I have a moment?" he asked.

  Amy followed. Words clung to the roof of her mouth.

  "She didn't come home last night," he said once the door clicked shut behind them. No preamble. No softening of the blow.

  Amy blinked. "I... I saw her leave. After the gig. She took a taxi."

  The memory played in her head like an old TikTok video: Zaira's silhouette fading into headlights, the red rear lamps bouncing off the wet street. Amy had waved. Zaira had waved back. That was it. The final frame.

  "Should we call the police?" she asked.

  That's when it happened.

  Three dull knocks on the doorframe.

  A man entered, wearing a suit that had once been crisp but now looked slept in. His tie was off-kilter. His eyes weren't.

  "Lino Ilagan" he said, voice firm and dry as concrete. He held up a badge that screamed Bureau without needing to be read. "I'm with the NBI. Are you Adrian Navarro?"

  The professor straightened, faltered. "I'm him."

  Lino's eyes flicked to Amy, then back.

  "I have news about your daughter Zaira."

  Amy's vision constricted. Everything outside the edges of her sight felt blurred, like the periphery of a dream. The world was curling, shrinking into itself. This wasn't happening.

  This couldn't be happening.

  They were led, silently, through sunlit hallways that felt wrong underfoot. Too clean. Too mundane for whatever was coming. Adrian insisted on bringing Amy along.

  The faculty room was empty. A vacuum with LED lighting. Zaira's mom, Lorraine Navarro, sat there already, upright, still, like she'd been waiting an eternity. Her hands were folded over her lap like she didn't trust them.

  Another agent entered. Younger. Shakier. "James," he said quickly, before melting into the background.

  Amy's brain was already drawing up theories, diagrams, timelines. Had Zaira been robbed? Kidnapped? Trapped by the floodwaters? Maybe she was in the hospital, bruised but breathing. There were a hundred versions of this story.

  But not the one that Lino said.

  "Zaira is dead," he announced.

  And everything dropped out. Like a trapdoor under the floor of her chest.

  Amy stopped breathing. She wasn't sure if her heart had just paused or if the noise in her ears was drowning it out.

  Lorraine made no sound.

  Adrian came undone, crumbling into himself, weeping from a place that didn't use words. The sobs were deep, shapeless, a rupture in time.

  Lino stood like he'd seen this before.

  Too many times.

  And hated it every time.

  Lino stood with the posture of a man who'd grown accustomed to the shapes grief takes in a room. Bent bodies, quiet moans, the void that forms around a single name no one dares repeat. His apology hung in the air like dust caught in strip lighting. Sincere, but procedural. The world kept turning, and he had to turn with it.

  "I'm sorry," he said again, gaze steady, kind but immovable. "But I need to ask some things."

  He didn't even finish the sentence before Amy spoke. It poured out of her like pressure from a cracked pipe. No prompt necessary.

  "I was the last one who saw her," she said.

  And with that, the words came freely. Too freely. Cubao. The storm that turned sidewalks into rivers. Their band, the hurried tear-down, the blackout. The taxi with no app, no GPS, no safety net. A goodbye that wasn't meant to be one. She said all of it, like an incantation. Trying to summon the world before the news.

  "I took a picture of the plate," she added, fumbling through her phone. "I always do that. A habit of mine when it's not through an app."

  James took the phone from her gently. "That helps a lot." he said. His voice was young, freshly trained to stay calm but not yet hardened by repetition. You could hear it still bothered him.

  Lino scratched something down in a notebook. Ink on paper. The first ghost of a paper trail.

  "Did Zaira have enemies?" he asked. Voice low. Not cynical. Just tired.

  Amy gave a short laugh. Bitter. The kind that doesn't come from humor.

  "It's not a short list," she said. "We were activists. Zaira more than me."

  A breath. A recalibration. Memory doing its work.

  "She'd been interviewing workers. Said there were sites with no real safety standards. Big ones. Construction crews with no harnesses, no helmets, no unions. Her latest one was in Binondo. I remember because she called it a 'ticking time bomb.' And because it's some high-profile building. Tallest condo in the district, or something like that."

  Lino paused. Tapped the side of his pen. That registered.

  "Thank you," he said. And he meant it.

  There was a quiet moment. Something soft and awful settling between them.

  Then Zaira's mother broke it, barely above a whisper:

  "How did you find her?"

  Lino didn't answer right away. His eyes met hers, unreadable. There were lines around his mouth that deepened when he lied. They didn't deepen now, but his hesitation did.

  "She was found in Tondo," he said eventually. "A slum area next to the Port."

  Amy blinked. That wasn't on any route home. That wasn't anywhere near Cubao.

  "She slipped," Lino went on, voice turned downward. "An exposed rebar. Wet concrete. Broke her neck. It was instant."

  There it was, the kind of sentence that shuts the air out of a room.

  Adrian collapsed into himself again. Not metaphorically. His shoulders folded like a crumpling frame, his sobs breaking loose, raw and guttural. Hands gripped the edges of the chair as if clinging to gravity itself. Amy looked away. It felt indecent to witness.

  Lorraine moved now. Slowly, deliberately. She crouched beside her husband, arms wrapping around him in an embrace that was more anchor than comfort. Her own face was stiff, eyes wide, the shock still settling in like fog over water. She held him, even as her own world reeled.

  Lino closed his notebook gently, its finality quiet but deafening.

  "If there's anything else you remember," he said, voice low, already stepping back into the corridor of harsh lights and institutional silence, "call us. Anytime."

  Then they were gone.

  What lingered was the soft hum of fluorescence, the pale glow of Amy's phone with the taxi plate still on screen, and a grief so new it hadn't yet learned how to scream.