RISING PHOENIX ACT SELECT

CHAPTER 19: SCAVENGERS

Wednesday arrived, and Marco went on campus along with Glenn and Prairie. All of them had come up with various excuses as to why they were there, but they all knew what they were really here for. Glenn handed the necessary equipment to Marco in a backpack and stayed in the library with Prairie.
“Check, check…” Glenn said as he tested the earpieces he gave Marco to wear. Marco gave him a thumbs-up as he heard him loud and clear.
“These should have a longer range, so losing connection shouldn’t be an issue. I’m gonna make sure all the cameras that could see you are frozen…good luck,” Glenn told Marco, who promptly took the backpack and waved goodbye to him and Prairie.

Marco then strolled up to the elevator shaft in the Admin Building, his nerves starting to get to him. When he got there, he placed his bag down and talked to Prairie, who volunteered to be on the other end of communications.
“Nasa harap ka ba ng elevator?” Prairie asked, to which Marco said yes.
“Sige...kunin mo yung pryer,” she ordered, leading Marco to take out a large contraption designed to pry open metal doors.
“Remember what we discussed…put it in the gap and twist the knob…!” Glenn instructed from afar. Marco followed his instructions and pried the elevator doors apart, exposing the deep, dark interior of the elevator shaft. Marco made sure to pry it open just enough for him to fit.

“How deep is it…?” Prairie asked as Marco looked down through it.
“Looks about 10 meters tall…?” he told her. Before she could give out an instruction, Marco put the pryer down and took out the other gadgets in the bag - a grapple and a belt. He fastened the belt on his waist and attached the grapple to the buckle quickly in case someone was approaching nearby.
“OK, sinuot mo na ba yung belt at yung grapple?” Prairie asked, which Marco once again said yes to.
“The other side of the grapple has a drill, right? Make sure you shove it into the wall as hard as you can…!” Glenn ordered as Marco looked over the edge of the doors. His hands shaked a bit as he looked for a spot to embed the drill, knowing how deep the shaft went. Finally, he found a good spot and shoved the drill in. Thankfully, it went in deep enough to be secure. Marco got up and took a deep breath - he was going to have to jump down.

“Hingang malalim, Marco, mabilis lang 'to - ”
“Just jump already!”
Holding his breath, Marco jumped down the shaft. The grapple worked at slowing his fall, but he was still screaming on the inside. After what felt like forever, Marco’s butt hit the ground as he panted heavily.
“Nasa baba ka na?”
“Yeah…”

Marco slowly got up and unbuckled the grapple, which made it zip back up to the top of the shaft. He dusted himself off and continued forth. He could see some light, and when he took a left, he saw an ominous sight.
“Marco, anong nakikita mo?”
“There’s a really old-looking door here…and a single lightbulb hanging over it.”
Marco slowly walked up to it and examined the doorknob, noticing that it had a keyhole in it. He dug into his pocket, pulled out the rusty key, and carefully inserted it into the keyhole. It seemed to fit perfectly. He closed his eyes and twisted it to the right - he heard something click…and the door creaked open.

Elated, Marco slowly pushed the door open and looked inside. What he saw awed him - the Records Room was a gigantic, rectangular space with fluorescent lamps on the ceiling, complete with their distinct droning hum. Their light colored the room a nauseatingly bright blue, which reflected off the unfathomable number of filing cabinets. They stretched from floor to ceiling and covered nearly every square foot of the room, save for some walking space between them.

They were neatly arranged into rows in the middle of the room and covered all the walls on the sides. One could tell which filing cabinets belonged to the older batches, as they were discolored and slightly rusted, while the newer batches’ records were put in more recently bought filing cabinets. Strewn about were some boxes of records that hadn’t been sorted and a couple of ladders for reaching the higher cabinets.

“Nasa loob ka na?”
“Yup. This is it.”
“Nakapasok na siya,” Prairie told Glenn, which led to them giving each other a light high-five.
“Batay sa floor plan, mukhang yung mga dokumento ng mga naunang batch ay nilagay nila malapit sa pintuan,” Prairie informed Marco.
“Yeah, I think I can tell…” Marco said as he saw the cabinets go from old to new as he looked down the aisle.
“You know, if they’re still putting records here, how exactly do they get down here to put them…?” Marco asked as he took a right and walked down the hall created by the filing cabinets. Suddenly, he heard a door open on the other side of the room.

Marco quickly ran to the end of the hall as quietly as possible and hid at the end of the last row of cabinets.
“Someone’s here…” he whispered to Prairie, which terrified her.
“What happened…?” Glenn asked, sensing something amiss.
Marco then heard a set of footsteps get closer and closer to him. He held his breath as he heard the footsteps go from his left to his right. He then heard whoever this was pick up some boxes and put them on what Marco thought was most likely a trolley. Shortly after, he heard some filing cabinets open. Whoever this was seemed to be clearing out records for some reason unknown to him.

All the filing cabinets were labeled with the year of the batch records they contained. And when Marco looked down to the end of the hall, he saw the cabinet of the batch one year behind him - the one that would theoretically have Ramone’s file in it. Making sure not to make a sound, Marco brisk walked as fast as he could to the filing cabinet. Suddenly, he began hearing footsteps again, causing him to quickly hide behind the nearest row of filing cabinets.

The footsteps swiftly stopped however, but Marco’s heart continued to beat out of his chest. Carefully looking back beforehand, he continued walking to the filing cabinet with Ramone’s file as fast and as silently as possible. Every second felt like life or death as he was out in the open. Finally, he made it. The filing cabinet consisted of 8 separate cabinets, each of which contained the files sorted in alphabetical order.

“V…Where’s V…” he frantically thought to himself before his eyes gravitated to the bottom-most right cabinet. He bent down and carefully slid it open, revealing a multitude of neatly organized folders labeled with each student’s first name initial followed by their surname.

As Marco carefully flipped through the folders, he heard the worst thing he could’ve at that moment. The footsteps started again - and they were getting closer.

Marco flipped through the folders as fast as he could while still reading the surnames labeled on the tab, desperately trying to find the one that said Villanueva on it. The clack of the mystery person’s shoes on the tiled floor echoed through Marco’s head as he felt himself getting closer alphabetically to the Villanueva surname. The clacks grew louder…and louder…and louder. But then he found it - R. Villanueva. Problem was, there were two of them.

In a blind panic, Marco felt like he had to pick only one of them to take. But which one?

He could hear the footsteps approaching the end. He was about to be seen.

Make a decision, Marco! he thought to himself,



TAKE ONE!



After a few seconds, the mystery person made it to the end of the hall. He was pushing a trolley filled with boxes of records. When he turned and looked down the hall, he saw...nothing out of the ordinary. Suspecting nothing, he continued to open nearby cabinets. Unbeknownst to him, Marco had taken a folder and made it out of sight in the nick of time. Still aware he was in danger of getting caught, Marco quietly made it to the door the mystery person came in through, which seemed to be the exit.

Marco looked behind him and realized that the door here was the same as the door he came in through, except in better condition. He pulled out the rusty key once more and, making sure to make as little sound as possible, he inserted the key into the keyhole and twisted it. Wincing, he slowly pulled the door open, praying to himself that it wouldn't make a sound. Thankfully, it didn't, and neither did him closing it. He laid his back on the door and slid downward, awash with the feeling of relief.

Meanwhile, Prairie and Glenn were freaking out internally the whole time as they heard faint glimpses as to what Marco was going through. After one heart-pumping minute of this, they were also relieved when Marco finally came back on.

"I made it out...I got it."

"Jusko. Bumalik ka na dito!" Prairie told him.

Marco stood up and checked the folder he took, remembering that he may have swiped the wrong R. Villanueva. Another wave of relief washed over him when he read the name on the file - "Ramone Alekhine T. Villanueva". However, Marco was not out of the weeds just yet. He now found himself in a cramped, dimly-lit underground corridor surrounded by rough concrete walls and lit with a handful of dim light bulbs. He wasn't able to see the end of it, but he was able to see a gap on the right wall around the middle of it.

"Prairie, I'm in a long hallway now...do I go straight ahead or take a right?"

"Di ko alam..." Prairie answered as she looked at the floor plan again on Glenn's laptop.
"Wala akong nakikitang hallway sa floor plan ko...di kita matutulungan diyan."

Marco was annoyed that he had to make a big decision again. He didn't want to leave something like this up to chance.

"Are you sure it's not there? Check again...!" he told her.

"Pasensya na, Marco. Wala akong impormasyon tungkol dito. Kailangan mo gamitin ang kutob mo."

Although still annoyed, Marco agreed to do it. Trusting his gut, he decided to go straight ahead as carefully as he could, so as not to accidentally scratch himself on the walls. As he got to the end, there were no more lightbulbs to help him see, so he had to feel what was in front of him. After a short while, his hands grabbed onto what appeared to be a ladder. He started climbing...and climbing...and climbing, folder still in hand. This ladder seemed to be endless, and he was starting to get fearful from how high he was off the ground. Suddenly, his head hit the ceiling.

This was the exit, he realized. He felt around for a handle and grabbed one. He moved it to the side and was blessed by the sight of sunlight. He moved the cover out of the way, climbed out, and moved it back on. He had escaped the Records Room. Before he celebrated, he rushed back to the Admin Building to get the grapple he left at the elevator shaft. He pulled the elevator doors back together as best he could and finally walked out of the Admin Building.

"Mission accomplished," he told Prairie and Glenn as he headed towards one of the drop-off gazebos. Upon hearing this, the pair were overjoyed and lightly high-fived again in the library before beginning to pack up. Marco sat down at the nearest gazebo and began reading the file. There he saw Ramone's address, which he could tell was put in recently from the whiteout underneath it.

"Pasig...?" he thought to himself as he read it in his head.
"I can commute there if I'm careful enough," he thought further as he remembered that his mom was going to another conference tomorrow. He snapped a picture of the file, keeping the address to himself. Once again, he didn't want anyone else getting hurt because of him.

He was going to go it alone.

The elusive Ramone had been found.