RISING PHOENIX ACT SELECT

CHAPTER 3: READ/OVERWRITE

The next day, Marco arrived much earlier to Pisay than usual as several of his busmates had gotten sick. He avoided his usual routine of going straight to his first period classroom and instead made his way to the library. As he laid in bed the previous night, he had come up with a plan to retrieve the footage from Pisay’s wide array of CCTV cameras. He had an acquaintance from long ago named Glenn that could help him with this exact situation. As he walked towards the entrance of the library, he started to rehearse what he would say to Glenn in his head. He opened the wooden doors and made his way to the archive room behind the computer lab. He looked inside and saw Glenn on his laptop, right where he expected him to be.

Marco pressed his hand on the sliding glass door and slowly slid it open. Glenn continued to type on his laptop keyboard and paid no heed to Marco’s entrance. “Hey, Glenn…” Marco called out softly as he closed the door behind him. Glenn still paid no attention to him, causing Marco to drop the charade.
“I know you heard me, Glenn. Come on, I’m right here,” Marco told him.
“What do you want…” Glenn asked, clearly annoyed by Marco’s continued presence in the room.
“I need your help…I’m currently investigating the disappearance of our perio papers. It’s…really important,” he explained.

“Ah, yan…Block H ako, eh. Nandito pa rin ang mga papel ko. Kaya hindi ‘to tungkol sa aming mga papel,” Glenn snarkily retorted.
“Kita mo ‘yung pinto diyan? Pwede ka bang…umalis?” he asked as he made the motion of a person walking with his fingers. Hearing this, Marco had enough.
“Why are you being like this…?” he asked Glenn sternly.
“Ok, Marco. Why do you think you can just walk up to me and pretend that everything’s fine all of a sudden? Do you need me to remind you what happened the last time I helped you with something?” he fired back. Marco was taken aback, not expecting Glenn to be this combative.

“You’re STILL mad about what happened at the olympiad?! That was TWO years ago!” Marco exclaimed. “We were supposed to be a team, Marco! But you decided that helping me with the problems was too much for you!” he yelled at Marco.
“Walang hiya ka! That was so embarrassing! We came in dead last. I never heard the end of it for a month! Tsaka nagkamali kami sa arithmetic pa…ARITHMETIC!”

“You know what? Forget it! I don’t know why I asked you. You haven’t changed one bit. We are dealing with a matter of campus-wide importance and you would rather get hung up on a grudge than help right this terrible wrong!” Marco told him.
“Don’t you have any empathy for the people who lost their papers? We worked hard on that - I worked hard on that!” Marco continued to explain in a slightly more subdued manner than before. Glenn let out a slight chuckle.

“Nakakatawa, ‘no? You’re one to talk about empathy…” Glenn replied, proceeding to focus on his laptop once more.
“The world doesn’t revolve around you, Marco. Now you’re using me not because I’m the Math guy, but because I’m the CS guy. Bahala ka nga…” Glenn said with a sense of finality. Marco continued to stand there despite sensing this. Eventually, he piped up again.

“...how did you know I was going to ask you something CS-related…?” Marco asked earnestly.
“Oh, I just figured. I had a feeling you were going to ask me to hack into security cameras, tap into a Wi-Fi network…stuff like that,” Glenn explained.
“I haven’t exactly figured out getting into servers yet though.”
“So…can you do it…?” Marco asked.
“Wow…talagang wala kang hiya, ‘no?” Glenn told him.
“I can…but I won’t. Unless…” he continued, which left Marco waiting for a resolution.
“...mag-sorry ka para sa ginawa mo.”

Marco felt slightly annoyed by this, which Glenn knew was going to happen. “I thought I already did…” Marco brought up.
“No, Marco, ‘I’m sorry you were dumb enough to help me’ does not count as an apology,” Glenn clarified. Marco prepared to say the dreaded phrase.
“I’m sorry,” he said quietly.
“…anong sinabi mo…?” Glenn asked condescendingly as he scooted closer to Marco while cupping his ear.
“I hate you…” Marco muttered under his breath.

Marco let out a forced cough and tried again. “I’m sorry for not helping you during the olympiad,” he said out loud.
“There we go…now we can get to work,” Glenn calmly told Marco, who promptly sighed and sat next to him after hearing this.

“So…anong gusto mong gawin?” Glenn asked.
“Wait, can I just ask…where the heck did you get this laptop? Did you steal this from a military base or something…?” Marco asked as he examined Glenn’s laptop. It had extremely thick sides and seemed to be made of a steel alloy of some kind. It also had a small handle, allowing it to be carried like a briefcase.
“My dad’s military, and it’s a hand-me-down…so yes,” Glenn confirmed to a shocked Marco.
“Anyway, you got it right the first time. I need to look at the camera footage from every CCTV in Pisay after 3pm Thursday,” Marco told him. “I have a feeling someone stole the papers.”
“Oh,” Glenn replied. “Well, getting in’s the easy part. Nagawa ko yun ng maraming beses noon. Mga 5 minutes tatagal.”

Marco was slightly concerned by that casual admission but quickly focused back on the task at hand. “The hard part,” Glenn continued, “is sifting through all that footage. That’s hours of footage across tens of cameras. Nakakakain iyan ng oras.”
Despite hearing this, Marco was determined to find anything that could lead him to the papers. “We’ve got around 50 minutes before the first bell…” he said as he glanced at his watch.
”Let’s do this.”
“You’re lucky this thing has a fast-forward button…” Glenn joked as he brought up some software he developed to mess with the cameras. It had quite a few visible glitches, with some buttons overlapping on each other and camera feeds appearing misaligned. “And before you say it, Webdev isn’t my strong suit. So shut it,” Glenn remarked.

45 minutes later, they’d both become tired from looking through all the recordings. It felt like absolutely nothing of note was happening, and even more demotivating was the fact that they were still on footage from Thursday night. As Glenn continuously clicked and let go of the fast-forward button, Marco diligently looked through all the camera feeds at once to see anything suspicious. Glenn was quickly regretting agreeing to Marco’s request.

Just when Glenn was about to fall asleep from sheer boredom, Marco suddenly leaned forward, causing him to jolt awake. “May nahanap ka…?” Glenn asked frantically.
“I think I have…” Marco told him excitedly. He then pointed at a specific camera feed overlooking the entrance to the ASTB nearest to the FLOB.
“Look at this…it turns pitch black for a few seconds and then suddenly returns back to normal. That has to mean something.”

At this point, Glenn was back to being annoyed with Marco. “That’s just a camera glitch. Walang kahulugan yan…” Glenn explained to Marco as he was fighting back the urge to fall back asleep.
“Yeah, but for this long? It’s really unusual,” Marco said as he played the footage at normal speed. As the footage went from black to working, Marco noticed something that caught his eye.
“What was that...?” he asked.
“Does this thing have a button that moves by one frame?”

“Oo, meron ‘yan…” Glenn told him half-heartedly, which prompted Marco to examine the anomaly frame-by-frame. He slowly pressed the button, waiting for the exact moment it switched. When he got to it, he was shocked by what he saw. He saw a glitched still of two boys walking towards the entrance carrying boxes with both of their hands. They were both wearing their school uniform and black ski masks, concealing their identities. But most of all, they were wearing bright red masks shaped like a bird outstretching its wings. “Are you seeing this…?!” Marco hurriedly asked Glenn, not able to believe what he was seeing.
“My God…” Glenn replied as he looked intently at the frame.
“Who are these people...?”

All of a sudden, the screen of Glenn’s laptop glitched out and then went completely dark. Marco quickly slid his finger across the touchpad, but it continued to be unresponsive. “Ay…nakalimutan ‘kong i-charge…” Glenn said in an irritated tone as he began to reach in his bag for his charger. Marco, however, was not buying it.
“No…I saw your battery charge a few minutes ago, and it was nowhere near zero…”

“...somebody’s watching us.”

Marco stood up and frantically looked around, trying to see if anyone was watching them while Glenn continued to reach into his bag. He looked out the window connecting the archive room to the computer lab and saw someone standing near its entrance. The person briefly looked behind themselves before glancing at their tablet - and finally, made direct eye contact with Marco. Marco could see that they were wearing all black - face mask, coat, fingerless gloves and all. And most of all, they were wearing the aforementioned red bird mask, which he now noticed had orange dots lining the edges. Marco was struck with fear as the mystery person continued to stare back.

A second later, the mystery person began to brisk walk towards the library entrance to leave, which made Marco quickly spring into action. He rushed to the door to get out, but it jammed slightly while he tried to open it. “Marco, what are you doing?!” Glenn asked, still not understanding what was happening. Marco finally managed to get the door open and ran towards the library entrance. He swung the door open and looked around, but there was no sign of them. No one was outside to be a witness, leaving Marco defeated.

He stomped on the ground out of frustration and quickly rushed back into the archive room. “Are you gonna explain…?” Glenn asked, annoyed.
“Check the recent camera footage…NOW!” Marco ordered.
“Someone was watching us just now…someone with a bird mask, just like theirs!” Glenn was bewildered by what he was being told, and now he wished he hadn’t tried to look for his charger. He turned his laptop back on and quickly brought up his camera-spying software. He looked through all the current camera feeds, only to find every single one of them offline.
“They’re down…all of them…” he remarked. A few seconds later, however, they all came back online with no sign of the mystery person anywhere.

“We lost him...!” Marco said before he yelled out a rude word that can’t be written here.
“...all we can do now is show that picture of the guys with the bird masks to the admin. Go back to that point…” Marco told Glenn in a disappointed and defeated tone. Glenn went back to that point in the footage, only to find the black screen completely overwritten with a still frame of regular footage. It was at this point that Marco realized they were dealing with something else entirely.

The school bell suddenly rang loudly, signaling 5 minutes before the start of classes. Marco felt completely outsmarted and powerless at this point, but all he could do was set that aside and go to class.
“Ok, now I’m really interested,” Glenn remarked as he turned off his laptop and put it back in his bag. “I think we just stumbled onto something big, Marco. Kung kailangan mo ako, alam mo kung nasaan ako.”

Glenn put on his backpack and left Marco alone, who was still leaning on the table with his arms. Eventually, he gave up and left the library as well, not interested in getting reprimanded for being tardy. He entered his first period classroom just in time, the thought of what just happened still hot on his mind. He was far from done. Whatever was happening, he was going to get to the bottom of it.