The night came down heavy and close over Cotabato, the kind of humid darkness that made sounds hang in the air—dogs barking, distant engines, the whisper of palm fronds rubbing together. Rafael slept in a cot at the back of the warehouse because it was easier than the long drive back to Manila; the roof leaked in one corner and his shirt stuck to the mattress with sweat. He dreamed he was carrying buckets of water through a crowd of faces, all dark, all moving, and then a voice—too clear to be part of the dream—said, Wake up.
He opened his eyes to a thin strip of blue light hovering over his elbow, where the Codex lived in a jury-rigged tablet. The glow had no pulse like a living thing, but it behaved, tonight, like an animal that had smelled threat.
Immediate alert: unusual thermal signature near south storage. Probability of incendiary device: elevated. Action recommended: secure personnel, document, communicate with barangay watch.
Rafael's breath hitched. He had learned to trust the Codex's cold alarms. They were seldom wrong. He sat up, swinging his feet to the dusty floor, felt the rasp of concrete under his soles, and the world came sharp with the warehouse's tinny lights and the soft snore of workers sleeping on cots. The warehouse smelled of resin, hot metal and a faint, comforting layer of fried garlic that Rosa had probably saved for midnight snacks.
He tapped Jericho's shoulder with a hand that didn't shake as much as his heart did. "Jericho. Now."
Jericho blinked awake, the shock of sleep fading into mechanical readiness. "Boss?"
"We have to check the south storage. Wake Maria and the others. Quiet." Rafael's voice was an instrument all by itself—low, controlled. When panic crept in, he could not let it show.
Jericho sprang up. He could move like a boy possessed, shoes slapping concrete as he ran to the sleeping rows, prodding and shouting names. Lolo Ed was the slowest to wake—he needed only one eye open to be all grit—but within two minutes the core team was on their feet, sneakers pounding the warehouse floor like a small, determined army.
Outside, the night had a sheen from earlier rains; water beaded on the corrugated roof. The south storage was a lean-to attached to the warehouse—racks of modular canisters, boxes of spare cartridges, the two pickup trucks they'd kept ready for resupply. The Codex's thermal ping had come from that direction.
Rafael's hand hovered over the tablet. He could have called the mayor, called the barangay watch, called the police. He had learned, painfully, the balance of who could be trusted. The mayor's "protection" had already been compromised. The Codex's text pulsed again.
Hostile action probable within ninety seconds. Recommendation: deploy non-combative personnel to record, activate local alarm protocol, engage community alert channels.
"Record everything," Rafael ordered. "Nobody touches anything unless it's to save people. Use phones. Live-stream if you have to. Get the barangay people here." His voice carried an authority that made no room for argument.
They moved like a rehearsed crew. Arnel snagged his drone from the charging bench—small, battered, quiet—and shoved it into Jericho's hands. "Up and light. Don't buzz too low," he hissed. Maria, already dressed, yanked a heavy flashlight and a coil of rope. Rosa, smallest but fiercest, stuffed her pockets with water bottles and a whistle. Lolo Ed grunted and grabbed a shovel. The recruits—Rico, Lira, Ernesto—fell into line without hesitation, the new blood already learning the old discipline.
They reached the south storage as a faint orange blossomed behind the corrugated iron—small at first, a glow like a candle flickering between the crates. Heat licked their faces even in the damp night. Rafael's gut flipped. Whoever had come had not done their work lightly.
Jericho trained the drone; it rose on a thin shaft of light and hovered above the lean-to. The live feed blinked blue on Rafael's tablet. He watched the screen—the small rectangle of real-time imagery—and felt his stomach go cold. A black shape crouched behind the second pickup, hands busy. A glint of something metallic: a lighter, or a small device. The figure moved with the quick, measured motions of someone who'd done this before.
"Get the barangay people now," Rafael hissed. "And get video to Mara." Mara—the journalist in Manila who had risked stories that made a difference—had a reputation for making live footage lethal in the court of public opinion. If this was an arson attempt, the footage would be bulletproof.
Maria jabbed at her phone with a thumb that didn't tremble. Her fingers found the numbers she needed—barangay watch, three volunteers who had already agreed to help, Mara at the other end. "Mara," she breathed, "get ready. We may have a riot or an arson. We're going live."
The scorched night smelled like kerosene and rot as the first flames licked the sides of a cardboard box. The fire pulled at the rain's sheen and sent steam into the air. Someone shouted. The figure behind the truck—ruddy, fierce, its face a shadow beneath a cap—thrust something and then backed away like an animal that had done its work. A trail of flame caught a pallet, and wood breathed out a bright throat of heat.
Rafael did not pause to think about plans. He moved.
"People!" he barked. "Form a line—water buckets, towels. No heroics. Get younger people to the front—throwers. Lolo Ed, get the hose."
The action that followed was not cinematic. It was frantic. It smelled of smoke and wet cloth. It was the raw physics of humans crowded with fear, and the stubbornness of people who won't be broken: hands gripped buckets; water flew; palms smacked at spreading sparks. Jericho's grin was gone; sweat and soot streaked his face as he handed buckets to a line of villagers who'd come when the call went out. They were barefoot, their shirts damp from sweat and rain. They did not hesitate.
Rosa, a roaring furnace of maternal fury, shoved a woman out of the line if she clung to the bucket too long. "Move!" she hissed, and the crowd obeyed.
The drone's tiny camera circled, capturing the suffocating ballet from above—the glint of a lighter dropping, the way a cardboard box collapsed from flame, the charred edge of a plastic crate—and the figure vanishing into the palms like a bad dream. The live feed stuttered but persisted; Mara's voice, breathless, narrated into the line. "This is Mara Ramos reporting live. We are witnessing an apparent attempted arson at the AquaPure Cotabato hub. Villagers are resisting—watch as they throw their water and form a line—this is real-time civic courage."
They fought the fire with what they had: water from buckets, a borrowed hose that coughed and spat more mud than water, towels to smother small spots. By the time the barangay patrol jeep thundered back into the lot—blue lights slicing the night—the main blaze was subdued; steam rose from smoldering cardboard like ghosts. The pickup's paint blistered. A crate of cartridges on the top shelf had ignited and was a blackened ruin.
Someone's shout split the air: "There's footage. The video shows a man—he ran toward the north road."
They had him—on camera, on the drone, on every cell phone aimed at the smoldering lean-to. The image trembled but was clear enough: a cap, a wiry walk, hands that moved like a trained man. The villagers' cries turned to a single sound: a challenge. This was no random thief. This was a message.
The barangay captain, who had been timely tonight, marched forward with a voice that wanted to be regent. "Who set this fire?" he barked.
Rafael stepped forward, hands stained black with smoke, his voice cutting through the tremor. "We have footage. We need a formal record. Everyone here should sign an affidavit. And please—get the mayor on the phone." He didn't trust that last part, but the mayor now owed him something: the public's gaze.
The patrol took statements. The drone footage was uploaded. A dozen phones had recorded the man's face in different angles. Mara's live stream had already spread to feeds across the country. In Manila, the channel that had once laughed at this scrappy group replayed the feed, the blackened pickup looming like a totem.
Rafael watched the barangay men move with the clumsy efficiency of people who had never expected to run an emergency, and he felt a fierce, terrible gratitude. They had stood with them.
After the fire was under control, only embers and the hideous smell of old plastic remained. The pickup would need new paint. The pallets were ruined. The cartridges lost were a blow—but they could afford the loss. The real victory was that they were still standing; the real danger had been beaten back by crowds.
But danger did not simply dissipate because a fire went out.
The Codex whispered: Data capture: confirmed. Multiple devices show incendiary application. Thermal scan suggests accelerant presence. GPS ping shows suspect fled north toward City Hall route. Recommendation: hand footage to prosecutor, increase perimeter patrols, request immediate forensics.
Rafael pinned his eyes to the screen and then to the barangay captain. "We need to file with the prosecutor. Contact Antonio Reyes—he's been waiting for this kind of smoking gun."
The captain nodded slowly, eyes glistening. "They'll try to say this is a coincidence, but this… this is too calculated."
As dawn crept in, draining the night's color, the warehouse smelled like charcoal and wet metal. People huddled, trying to get warm, and for a long moment nobody said anything. They were all exhausted—Adrenaline had done its work—and they felt the quiet that comes after fear.
Rosa sat on a crate and began to cry, strange guttural sobs that had nothing to do with the charred pallets. Jericho, who had refused to cry, quietly set his head in his hands. Lolo Ed propped his elbows on his knees and watched smoke curl lazily in the air like a question.
"Why us?" asked Rico, voice thin. He was twenty, no more, and had been scalded by the steam from the hose on his forearm.
"Because you are a threat," Rafael answered softly. "Because someone powerful doesn't like other people being fed." His voice was steady, but his jaw was tight. He thought of the mayor and of the men who had blocked their trucks, and he thought of HydraCorp's old brutality like a bad episode replaying.
Across the city, the mayor watched footage on a phone handed to him by an aide; his face, usually a practiced mask, puckered. His public statement later that morning took on the courtly tones of someone on the edge. "We condemn violence," he said to a crowd of journalists. "We will investigate." But the message—thin, careful—did not ring like leadership. It rang like someone who had been caught with a hand in a jar.
Mara's story aired with the edges raw and jagged, and the hashtags multiplied. People who had once shrugged now took to the streets, some with jerrycans of water raised like banners, some simply showing up at the barangay to hand glasses to the volunteers. Civic rage coalesced into practical support: the local cooperative offered a newer pumping hose; a middle-aged teacher brought thermos flasks and coffee; a motorcycle driver offered free runs to Manila to take evidence to lawyers.
Antonio Reyes arrived two days later with formal papers and a calm that had teeth. He watched the footage, paused and rewound, checking angles and timestamps like a man reading a map. "This is prosecutable," he said finally. "You have multiple witnesses and video. We can pursue this."
Rafael exhaled, though the breath left his lungs hollow. "Good. We do it the right way. Public records, sworn statements, chain of custody. And no more lone patrols."
The Codex offered a final line that made Rafael's skin prick: Probability of political deniability increases if suspect connected to municipal chain. Recommendation: widen scope to procurement irregularities and councilor communications.
Rafael smiled, small and sharp. "Then widen it. We'll follow the trail wherever it leads."
The fire had not broken them. If anything, it burned away the illusion that they could hide from the reach of those who would bully for power. People's faces now looked at AquaPure with a kind of fierce approval—a brand of trust forged in smoke and water.
In the quiet that followed the storm, Rafael sat beneath the shallow dawn and let the Codex's glow wash across the reports like a cold hand.
"You did well," he said—not aloud to the team, but to the device that had first whispered the warning. "You kept us alive tonight."
For a moment there was silence that felt almost like understanding.
Observation: the Codex replied, its voice still machine-warm, "Collaboration value with human networks increased by 36%. Tactical autonomy limited but useful for early-detection. Recommendation: distribute emergency training to all hubs; implement redundant storage and decentralized depots."
Rafael read the suggestion and the plan already formed in his head. They would rebuild the pallets with fireproof racks, spread the stock across several small depots instead of one big store, and train barangay volunteers to fend for themselves. He would keep the Codex shut tight inside its board, and he would keep the team thinking the ideas were his.
He walked through the warehouse and saw the faces of his people—sooty, weary, proud. Children came back with mothers and poured water into mason jars as if nothing had happened. A woman stepped forward and hugged Rafael, whispering, "You brought our children clean water. We will protect you." He felt the words like an armor.
At noon, a line of volunteers came to help clear debris. Phones still buzzed with messages; Mara's livestream would be archived in a thousand feeds. The fire had become a story that could not be smothered—the kind of story that changes the weather.
Rafael sat again at his table, the Codex's glow a narrow strip in the afternoon light. He could feel the machine's growth like a tide beneath the surface of the world: it was learning not only to calculate but to anticipate; it was feeling its own preferences in the small way a machine could feel.
He kept it a secret. Only he knew the Codex whispered in phrasing and pushed for actions that did not look like the work of a chip. The team would continue to think they owed the victories to grit and his stubbornness.
Tonight, though, when the men who tried to burn them met a dozen women in the market who refused to be intimidated, when the barangay captain promised sworn testimony, and when Mara's camera kept filming until the horizon flattened into dusk, Rafael felt something else besides strategy. He felt something older: the slow, stubborn, human joy of surviving and then turning toward the next day ready.
When he finally allowed himself to rest, the Cotabato skyline held a thin silver strip of sunset. The smoke had gone; the smell lingered like a warning. He thought of the road ahead and how many fires they would need to put out—not only literal bottles of flame, but the corrupt structures that had set them.
The Codex pulsed, almost a whisper. Preparedness level increased. Suggested action set: decentralize stock, legal campaign, public transparency dashboard. Initiate.
Rafael closed his eyes and let the weight of it settle. In the soft dark, with the machine at his side and his people stirring quietly around sleep, he thought of the empire they were building: not of towers and money, but of rusted trucks, modular canisters, and the fierce, clumsy loyalty of a barangay that had chosen to stand.
They had been burned, and they had not gone out.