PROLOGUE
By eleven in the morning, the line outside the Biyaya distribution center had reached the stairwell.
A woman near the entrance was arguing with a security attendant about the number on her appointment slip. Someone behind her complained that the queue had stopped moving. A boy sat on the floor beside a stack of ration containers, counting the capsules in an empty medicine blister while his father spoke to a clerk through the service window.
Tala’s mother would have hated the disorder. She used to say that a badly maintained filtration system announced its problems long before it stopped working. Remedios Sarmiento had spent years inspecting municipal water stations, and she believed most failures could be prevented if someone bothered to examine the readings.
The people in the queue had come because the system was supposed to work.
The distribution center occupied the lower three floors of a public health complex, with treatment counters on the ground level and automated dispensers mounted along the walls. Its ceiling screens displayed the same blue-and-white graphics used in government announcements. Above the entrance, the national seal rotated slowly beside the Biyaya emblem.
At noon, the screens switched to a live broadcast of the annual Ayuda distribution.
The camera showed a plaza in one of the upper residential districts. Officials stood beneath a canopy while medical staff handed sealed treatment packages to selected recipients. Behind them, rows of residents waited in orderly lines. A woman accepted her package with both hands, then turned toward the cameras when an attendant asked her to face forward.
The Director of Public Vitality appeared next, addressing the nation from a prepared lectern.
The broadcast was already familiar to the woman waiting at the counter. Her household receiver showed the same announcement every year, accompanied by statistics about the number of patients treated, the expansion of public clinics, and the continuing development of the Arcologies’ medical infrastructure. She usually left it playing while preparing meals or sorting the family’s bills.
Today, she watched because her son needed treatment.
Bituin was sixteen, thin for his age, and tired of being brought to clinics. He sat beside her with his schoolbag between his feet. Every so often, he checked the appointment number on their display and compared it with the one shown above the counters.
“Still ours,” he said.
“I can see that.”
“I thought they might skip it.”
“They won’t.”
He looked at her, waiting for more. She returned her attention to the queue.
Their last treatment had arrived twelve days earlier. The dosage was intended to keep the synthetic nutrient in Bituin’s diet from accumulating into compounds his body could not process properly. His physician had adjusted the schedule twice in the past year. The current interval was shorter, and the family’s remaining Bio-Capital covered fewer doses than it once had.
They had already used most of their savings on his treatment. His father had taken additional repair work before leaving the family, and Tala had begun accepting jobs that paid in cash because unofficial transactions sometimes cost less than going through registered service providers. None of it could reliably cover the next several months.
They had calculated the expenses the previous night. Bituin did the arithmetic on an old school tablet while Tala checked the household account. The final figure had been too high, so she had deleted the cost of replacing their kitchen pressure valve from the list.
It could wait another month.
At the counter, a clerk called their appointment number.
The woman stood and helped Bituin gather his things. The clerk, a man with reading lenses clipped to his collar, scanned her identification implant and opened the household account. He asked Bituin to place his wrist against the reader. After a brief assessment, the screen populated with his medical classification and the details of his previous doses.
The clerk checked the information twice.
“Your account’s flagged for review.”
“Review of what?”
“Bio-Capital verification. There should have been a notice.”
“We haven’t received anything.”
He tapped through several windows. The broadcast played above his head, the Director explaining how the Ayuda program ensured continuity of care for vulnerable patients. The clerk lowered the volume of his terminal, though the announcement continued through the overhead speakers.
“There’s a pending adjustment,” he said. “I can’t release the treatment while it’s active.”
“His dose is due today.”
“I see that.”
“Then what are we supposed to do?”
He looked at Bituin’s assessment results and opened a request form. The woman’s identification appeared at the top of the screen, followed by her son’s medical history. A small box asked whether the household wished to appeal the suspension.
She selected yes.
The clerk printed a receipt with a tracking number. He explained that the request would go to the regional office, which would contact them if additional documents were required.
“How long?”
“I don’t have an estimate.”
“Can you give him an emergency dose?”
“That needs a separate authorization.”
“Then submit that, too.”
He did.
The clerk seemed embarrassed by the amount of paperwork gathering on his screen. He moved through it as quickly as he could, occasionally asking the woman to confirm a detail. When he finished, he gave her two receipts and told her where to check the status of the requests.
She folded both papers and slipped them into her bag.
Bituin had been quiet throughout the exchange. On the way out, he stopped beside a wall display showing the day’s successful distributions. The figure included all treatment packages released by the center since opening.
“Maybe it’s a mistake in the account,” he said.
“It probably is.”
“You think they’ll fix it?”
Tala would have said no. She would have gone back to the counter, demanded to see a supervisor, and searched for someone who knew which office had approved the suspension. Her mother used to complain that Tala could turn a simple repair into an argument with three departments.
The woman glanced at her son. He had begun rubbing the inside of his wrist where the reader had pressed against his skin.
“We’ll check tomorrow,” she told him.
They took the service lift to the residential level, then walked along a corridor lined with maintenance hatches and vending machines. A technician had left a panel open near the lift. The exposed wiring needed to be replaced, judging by the temporary patch wound around the connection. The woman made a mental note to report it to the building office.
Bituin asked if they could stop at the market.
They bought rice, eggs, and a small packet of dried fish. He carried the groceries while she checked the prices on the public board above the stall. The vendor had raised the price of eggs again, blaming an interrupted shipment from one of the agricultural platforms.
At home, Bituin took his medicine container from the kitchen cabinet and examined the remaining capsules. He arranged them on the table according to the prescribed schedule, then returned them to their container.
There were enough for two days.
The woman opened the household account on her terminal. A new notification had arrived while they were away. It confirmed receipt of the appeal and repeated the tracking number printed on her slip. No reason for the suspension was given.
She sent a copy to the clinic and attached the physician’s prescription. Then she called the regional office. An automated voice offered three menu options, directed her to the online assistance portal, and ended the call.
She tried again.
This time, a recorded announcement said the office was experiencing a high volume of requests following the Ayuda distribution. Callers were advised to wait for updates through their registered accounts.
She set the terminal on the table and began preparing lunch.
By mid-afternoon, Bituin had gone to his room to finish a school assignment. The broadcast was still running on the wall screen in the common area, now showing a compilation of recipients thanking the government for their treatments. The same families appeared several times, their interviews edited between shots of medical staff and distribution counters.
The woman turned the volume down.
She had to wash the dishes before the water ration changed. After that, she would clean the kitchen filters and check the pressure valve she had decided to postpone replacing. She could make the repair herself if the parts were still available at the market.
Before going to bed, she checked the regional account one last time.
The appeal remained pending.
She printed the updated status and placed it with the other documents in a folder near the door. In the morning, she would take everything back to the clinic. If the first clerk could not help, she would ask for a supervisor. If the supervisor sent her to the regional office, she would go there.
Bituin had already fallen asleep when she returned to the common area to collect the empty medicine container. She washed it, dried it, and placed it beside the household terminal so she could refill it once the treatment arrived.
The following morning, the government would publish the final figures for the Ayuda distribution. The report would include the number of patients served by the center, the total value of treatments released, and the percentage of scheduled distributions completed.
The family’s account would remain active in the database.
Their appeal would remain pending.
Several months later, Tala Sarmiento descended into the drowned ruins of Old Manila with a salvage rig strapped to her back and a list of equipment she hoped to recover.
She had spent the previous evening repairing a faulty depth sensor. Its readings still fluctuated whenever she passed close to large metal structures, so she carried a backup gauge clipped to her wrist. The replacement batteries had cost more than she wanted to spend, but the old ones could no longer hold a charge.
Her target was the upper floor of a municipal service building whose structural frame remained intact beneath the water. Most of the valuable equipment had been stripped from the surrounding blocks years earlier. She had found the building through an outdated maintenance index, which listed a storage room containing sealed controllers and environmental monitors.
The entry might have been inaccurate. Old municipal records were full of abandoned projects, renamed facilities, and equipment that had supposedly been transferred to offices that no longer existed.
Tala adjusted the pressure seal at her collar and checked her line before entering through a broken service window.
Inside, the building had settled at an angle. Filing cabinets lay against one wall, their drawers swollen shut. A collapsed partition blocked the corridor ahead, forcing her to squeeze between a support beam and a bank of dead terminals.
Her light caught a metal case beneath a desk.
She cleared the silt from its locking mechanism and examined the casing. The manufacturer’s label had almost peeled away, but the serial plate remained legible. It belonged to a government biological controller, an older model with an interface she had encountered only twice before.
Tala checked the surrounding area for a power source. Nothing appeared to be connected to the unit. She tested its casing, secured it in her equipment bag, and marked the location for a second visit.
The controller was heavier than she expected.
On the way out, her depth sensor registered a brief signal from somewhere inside the case. She stopped beside the doorway and checked the gauge against her backup. The readings differed by less than the usual margin.
She continued toward the surface.
By the time Tala reached the salvage platform, she had already decided that the controller might pay for a month of repairs and leave enough for Bituin’s next treatment. She cleaned the outer casing with a brush, checked for visible damage, and connected it to her portable diagnostic unit.
The screen remained dark for several seconds.
Then a line of text appeared.
BIYAYA NODE: LEGACY ACCESS DETECTED.
Tala leaned closer and read it again.
The diagnostic unit requested a verification credential. She tried the default maintenance sequence, followed by the manufacturer’s recovery code. Both failed. When she reached to disconnect the controller, another field appeared beneath the first.
REGISTERED BIOLOGICAL CONTRIBUTOR: REMEDIOS SARMIENTO.
Her mother had been dead for years.
Tala kept her hand on the connector and watched the screen refresh.
