"The last thing i want is for my administration to end in an economic collapse." Timente barked in his office, pounding a fist on the table before he shooed away his advisers to do everything they could to "keep the atmosphere of stability". He then moved on to signing death warrants which were the long papers with an absurdly huge number of names listed, he never had the time to even read them and signed them right away as if he were simply shifting through autographs.
Someone then knocked at his door.
"Pasok!"
"Magandang hapon po punong!" A suited man greeted before giving out a clenched fist.
"What do you want?"
"I bring you reports from the science team gin'oo..."
"About..?"
The young man gulped. The paper he was carrying in his hand was bad news, one that could potentially start a mass panic across the capital or Luzon, or even worse, the whole bayan and everything that lies within the Pacific rim. He gulped a few times as he feared that he might get accused of being an "enemy to public order".
"Geological reports... Unusual seismic activity is potentially posing a threat to the entire bayan, especially the Marikina fault system."
"Potential?" Adriano coldly raised a brow.
"Opo... We have a potential earthquake in our hands, a big one."
Then there was silence in the room. An unusual silence that softened the messenger's heart beat then made it race again, even harder than how he was when his nervous self first entered the room. He braced for the punong to sign a death warrant specifically for him as the man sitting in front of him was already reaching through the cabinets underneath his table. He assumed he was getting some bond paper to begin printing his execution orders. It was the end....?
But Timente simply shrugged. A hmph slowly devolved from a chuckle into a loud burst of laughter.
"Potential... shouldn't cause an alarm..." Timente said looking visibly disinterested. "Especially in a time when we don't need anymore alarms which may cause panic in the population. Now leave..."
Then the man scurried out of the room where a small entourage was waiting for him, the specialists from PhiVolcs, a branch of the science team dedicated to Earthquake and Volcanic monitoring.
"Kumusta?" One of the scientists, Doktor Darwin asked with a smile.
"The same answer... Walang paring pagbabago." The messenger guy rolled his eyes. "No good... He seems to be unconcerned about the fact that millions of people will be killed anytime soon."
"Oh..." Darwin patted his back. "You know politicians... they make their perception of reality incongruent to the facts to give justification to their own inconsiderate interests..." The notion only seemed to make the messenger guy even more visibly frustrated. "We should go wash our hands now, after all, it's far too late for everything."
The guy then noticed that something about the 40 year old science head seem very unsettling, he seemed to be very comfortable of the idea that millions of people are going to die and they aren't supposed to do anything about it. He continued to hold a contented, if not contented, morbidly delighted smile.
"How do you know?"
"We're not at fault when fate makes it clear that the common shortcomings of the elite in today's age will be their own great undoing..." Darwin said with his grin only becoming wider than before. The other scientists beside him were becoming uncomfortable than they began to increase their respective distances with the head scientist as they continued walking back to the trains.
Back at the island of correigdor, the scientist entourage came to visit the former ruins of the US barracks which were just recently refurbished along with the Malinta tunnel to turn them into true secret facilities to serve as hangars for yet even more secret weapons and research projects the science team is commencing, much to the dismay of historians who wanted the site spared.
"Welcome mga kapatid..." Darwin said as he stepped off the yacht that was used to transport them to the island's pier.
"..to the island of the correigdor!" The head scientist then held out an empty wine glass and used a pen to made chimes for a toast as the rest of the entourage stepped off the yacht unto the pier.
"We used this island to emphasize the fact that our science team is the team of correctors." The man smiled, his wide grin a bit familiar for the others with him for a reason unknown to them.
"What's the connection to the island?" The messenger guy, who's name was revealed when the lighthouse flashed upon his name tag 'Professor Murayon' raised a brow.
"Oh you silly man." Darwin chuckled as he gave a hard slap to the man's back. "Correigdor means 'corrector' in Espanyol!" He laughed shortly before he spat as he nearly choked on his own spit. When the light house flashed at the spot of the group once more, Murayon shortly caught a glimpse of Darwin's spit which was a bit dark and reddish in color, almost as if it was blood. Though the man simply dismissed it as simply red gelatin which he forgot to chew.
"Anyway.." the Doktor cleared his throat. "The Spanish used to run an outpost here to detect hostile ships on the horizon and warn the authorities of Intramuros before they could get any closer and also... this was a notorious site of colonial correctional facilities."
"Hence the name..." Murayon said before he volunteered to be the first among the group of scientists to go through the still empty and poorly lit offices, which were deliberately made so because the regime did not want the island to be "imposing" enough to enemy satellites and to the civilian population.
After a few minutes of walking, the entourage finally made it to their respective office with Darwin accompanying Murayon in showing him the office were most of the new quake monitoring equipment and advanced electromagnetic seismographs were being kept.
"A huge network of special electromagnetic seismographs have been scattered all over the country, with the power to predict electromagnetic anomalies in the earth's crust which are a typical phenomenon weeks before earthquakes occur." Darwin said as he flipped and typed through a multitude of colorful buttons and switches which activated a large screen that immediately projected a 3d map of the country down to a rough x ray of the earth's crust a few miles down. Some patches of the map were blurry in shape and imagery which mirrored how only a few sensors were strategically placed in so-called "geological hotspots" such as the Sulu Trench, the celebes sea, Marikina fault and other minor faults.
"These anomalies usually warn us that the tension is getting to high and thus they can no longer take any more stretching. So far, anomalies are recorded all throughout the Philippine segment of the ring of fire...."
The head doktor then clicked an option to reveal red patches that tinted a huge area of the map, it was in Metro Manila and the surrounding areas which it was the darkest. The sheer scale of the anomaly was enough to make Murayon's jaw drop.
"It's huge..."
"Talagang talaga.... And a million people or more will pay for Timente's negligence."
Meanwhile inside the laboratory where Murayon was stationed, he quickly hid under the table as the shaking started while Darwin on the other hand was unusually sound asleep despite the shaking knocking off the bed and was recorded to be nearly 9 on the Richter scale. A great screaming erupted from Manila and no one knew when this was going to stop, barely a minute has even passed and so much was already lost and it seems that this wasn't going to stop anytime soon.
