The first sirens began just after midnight.
Ulysses had returned to his apartment in Quezon City, though sleep was impossible. From his balcony, he watched the swollen moon still glaring down, its light staining the streets in red. He'd tried to write his article, but every line collapsed under the weight of what he had seen. How do you report on the impossible?
Then came the sirens.
At first, he assumed another earthquake alert. But when he turned on the television, the scrolling headline froze his breath:
TSUNAMI WARNING ISSUED – MANILA BAY REGION
The anchor's voice shook as she read the bulletin. "Residents along the coast are urged to evacuate immediately. Waves exceeding fifteen meters are expected within the next hour."
Fifteen meters. Fifty feet.
Ulysses grabbed his bag, shoving notebook, camera, and recorder inside. His instincts screamed to flee inland—but his journalist's gut said otherwise. If the sea was rising, the story was there.
Against reason, he hailed a taxi south toward Manila Bay. The streets were chaos. Cars jammed intersections, horns blaring. Families on motorcycles carried everything they could strap on—bags, children, even chickens in cages. Soldiers waved people inland, shouting through megaphones: "Evacuate! Evacuate!"
The driver cursed as they crawled through traffic. "You're crazy, sir. Everyone's leaving the bay, and you want to go there?"
"I'm a reporter," Ulysses muttered, gripping his camera. "Just take me as close as you can."
They reached Roxas Boulevard just as the first wave struck.
The sound came before the sight—an earth-shaking roar, like mountains grinding together. Then the water appeared, a black wall rushing out of the bay. It smashed over the seawall, tearing apart concrete, sweeping cars like toys. People screamed as the torrent swallowed everything in its path.
Ulysses leapt from the taxi, splashing into knee-high water already racing through the boulevard. He raised his camera, snapping blurred shots of people scrambling up lamp posts, clinging to traffic lights, hauling children onto rooftops.
The wave surged higher. The taxi driver screamed and sped away, but the flood caught him, flipping the car like paper. Ulysses stumbled against the current, salt water burning his throat as he fought to stay upright. His camera strap kept it tethered around his neck, bouncing against his chest as he clawed his way onto a delivery truck abandoned in the street.
From that perch, he watched Manila drown.
Storefronts shattered. Jeeps overturned. Entire kiosks floated like driftwood. And through it all, the moon loomed overhead, red and pulsing, as though calling the sea to dance in fury.
Ulysses fumbled his notebook open with wet hands, scribbling against the wind: The sea roars like a beast unleashed. The city is helpless before it.
His pen slipped, ink bleeding across the page. He almost laughed at the futility. What good were words against a tidal wave?
Still, he wrote. Because it was the only weapon he had.
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End of Chapter 9