Chap­ter 16 — Sing Speaks begins in the heart of the jun­gle, where thick canopies mute sun­light and every sound car­ries ten­sion. For days, Pro­fes­sor Max­on, von Horn, and Sing pressed on through tan­gled vines and mud­dy trails, try­ing to locate Vir­ginia. Yet despite their urgency, no help could be mus­tered from local tribes, who feared Muda Saffir’s retal­i­a­tion. Com­pli­cat­ing mat­ters fur­ther was the silent threat of a venge­ful band stalk­ing their trail, seek­ing ret­ri­bu­tion against von Horn. Each return to camp brought no news, only exhaus­tion and grow­ing mis­trust. Unknown to the pro­fes­sor, von Horn wasn’t sole­ly moti­vat­ed by the girl’s res­cue; his hid­den agen­da was the trea­sure buried not far from their base. Sing, atten­tive yet qui­et, observed the lay­ers of greed and ambi­tion with care, wait­ing for the right moment to reveal a truth he’d long kept guard­ed.

In a remote shel­ter away from the expe­di­tion, Vir­ginia had remained beside Bulan, who was gripped by fever and delir­i­um. His inco­her­ent mur­mur­ings often repeat­ed a phrase—“Nine nine­ty-nine Priscilla”—which puz­zled Vir­ginia, but it was the sin­cer­i­ty in his tone that struck her. Through his weak­ness, he con­fessed his love, though the shad­ow of his ori­gin as a sup­posed exper­i­ment lin­gered heav­i­ly over both their hearts. When Bulan’s fever broke, he awoke to the sight of Vir­ginia, but their moment was shat­tered by the sud­den arrival of von Horn and Max­on. Von Horn, obsessed with destroy­ing what he saw as a crea­ture and an obsta­cle, raised his pis­tol. Before the shot could be fired, Sing inter­vened, dis­play­ing courage and clar­i­ty, dis­arm­ing von Horn and lev­el­ing a star­tling accu­sa­tion. He claimed Bulan was nev­er one of Maxon’s cre­ations but a ship­wrecked man suf­fer­ing from amnesia—someone Sing had secret­ly placed among the oth­ers to pro­tect him and to offer Vir­ginia hope.

The ten­sion thick­ened as Sing’s rev­e­la­tion left the camp in shock. Von Horn’s threats grew more intense, and he denied Sing’s claims, call­ing them fab­ri­ca­tions meant to dis­rupt the group’s uni­ty. But Sing, usu­al­ly silent, stood firm, remind­ing Max­on of von Horn’s manip­u­la­tions and thirst for the trea­sure. The pro­fes­sor, grap­pling with decades of ambi­tion and a cri­sis of con­science, demand­ed proof and ques­tioned his own role in shap­ing a man’s fate. As Max­on hes­i­tat­ed, Vir­ginia stepped for­ward with unwa­ver­ing con­vic­tion, declar­ing that Bulan’s soul—not his origin—defined him. Her state­ment shat­tered the remain­ing wall of prej­u­dice. Her loy­al­ty to Bulan wasn’t based on log­ic or cer­tain­ty, but on the man’s actions, his respect, and the puri­ty of his love. The emo­tion­al weight of her words made Max­on pause and con­sid­er an alter­na­tive truth.

For the first time, Bulan was giv­en room to speak for him­self, and though his past remained unclear, his hon­esty was evi­dent. He offered to dis­tance him­self from Vir­ginia, know­ing the cir­cum­stances could breed more tur­moil. Yet Vir­ginia would not allow it. She insist­ed that love was not con­di­tion­al on her­itage or mem­o­ry, but on char­ac­ter and trust. Her words chal­lenged every con­ven­tion Max­on had built his work upon. This exchange shift­ed some­thing in the professor—an under­stand­ing that love and loy­al­ty were more valu­able than sci­ence unchecked by ethics. Though not ful­ly con­vinced, Max­on agreed to treat Bulan as a man deserv­ing fur­ther con­sid­er­a­tion, with the con­di­tion that they return to their base and inves­ti­gate Sing’s claims thor­ough­ly.

Their return marked a turn­ing point in the nar­ra­tive. Not only had the mys­tery sur­round­ing Bulan’s iden­ti­ty begun to unrav­el, but old alliances had start­ed to frac­ture and rebuild under new terms. Sing, who had long played a qui­et observ­er, had now become cen­tral to the sto­ry’s moral com­pass. He had seen through von Horn’s decep­tion and had risked much to tell the truth. The group’s deci­sion to recon­sid­er Bulan’s place among them wasn’t just a shift in attitude—it was a dis­man­tling of long-held assump­tions. The jun­gle, once a place of chaos and vio­lence, had become the back­drop for a more pro­found trans­for­ma­tion: from dis­trust to trust, from uncer­tain­ty to under­stand­ing.

As the group moved for­ward togeth­er, uneasy but res­olute, they car­ried more than just sup­plies or ques­tions. They car­ried the seeds of rec­on­cil­i­a­tion and the begin­ning of heal­ing. Bulan, still unsure of his name or past, stood taller, no longer bound by the label of “crea­ture.” Virginia’s faith in him had giv­en him iden­ti­ty. And Pro­fes­sor Max­on, who once viewed the world through the nar­row lens of sci­en­tif­ic pur­suit, now found him­self nav­i­gat­ing the far more com­plex ter­rain of human emo­tion and redemp­tion. This chap­ter does not resolve every mys­tery, but it reframes the journey—away from inven­tion and con­trol, and toward accep­tance, for­give­ness, and the idea that human­i­ty can­not be man­u­fac­tured; it must be lived and proven.