Focus on your breath. She could hear her dad’s voice, feel his hand squeeze her shoulder before she stepped out onto the court for her very first tournament. But there are so many people, Papi. And the other girl is twelve. I can’t— He knelt in front of her. Look at me, sweetheart. Look at me. Who cares what they think? Fuck them. She had never heard him swear before. It felt dangerous and raw and special. You’re a León. The only important games are the ones we play against ourselves. Nothing else matters.
One thing at a time. One thing at a time was the only way anything got done in this world. If she could find some higher ground, she would be able to orient herself. Zia’s hand clutched at the memory of a racket. Not too tight. Not too loose. Just right. Imagine you’re holding a delicate little bird.
Nausea receded. Zia took one step, and then another.
+
12
+
Zia hauled herself up onto the next branch, breathing hard. Whatever you do, don’t look down. She looked down. The forest floor was twenty feet below. Her stomach jumped into her throat and a wave of dizziness washed over her. She forced her gaze up to look at the gnarled burl six inches from her face and then pressed her forehead against it until the world stopped spinning. This tree was her Cliffs of Insanity. Just a few more branches and she’d have the perspective she needed to orient herself. Reach. Grab. Heave. Her hands were raw and sticky with sap. She hadn’t climbed a tree since she was a little girl.
With a grunt, she reached the fork in the trunk facing the gap that a falling branch had torn in the canopy. She wedged herself into the fork, wrapped her arms around the nearest boughs, and squeezed her eyes shut. Then she opened them and stared out through the leafy aperture.
Zia had gotten lucky, or chosen well. Maybe both.
This tree stood on a steep section of sloping ridgeline and she had a commanding view. The ocean stretched to the horizon, a patchwork of blue, green, and gray traversed by measured sets of waves that reared up before crashing down the line of the cove, whitewash churning up onto the picturesque sliver of beach. Natural beaches had all but disappeared as sea levels inched higher and higher. That meant that this one was probably artificial, and absurdly expensive to maintain. That it appeared to be natural underscored its opulence.
Up from the beach was a cluster of luxurious villas connected with pedestrian paths and gardens. In the afternoon sun, the red-tiled roofs and creamy stucco appeared to glow from within. After a moment, Zia picked out the house she had escaped from. She hadn’t come nearly as far as she’d thought. Sun glittered off the surface of a shared pool and two players volleyed on a clay tennis court. Zia’s skin crawled. Uniformed security guards were jogging up and down the paths and along the beach. Drones buzzed above them, clearly running a search pattern. Zia pressed her palms against the rough bark and forced her muscles to unclench. She was in enough trouble as it was. A panic attack would only make things worse.
The whole scene might have been a posh resort except for the high-tech industrial facility that lay beyond the villas. Massive hangars lined an airstrip. Antennae sprouted from rooftops like technological fungi. Solar arrays tracked the sinking sun. A small marine tanker was pumping off liquid into pipelines at a harbor built into the next inlet.
What the hell was this place? Who ran it? What could they possibly want with her? Impossible questions metastasized. She had been thinking that she might be the victim of a professional kidnapping by an organized crime ring, but this facility went beyond the scale of any cartel she was aware of. This looked military, or something close. Nation-state level stuff. She remembered Li Jie dropping hints about the various clandestine projects his parents’ intelligence network was tracking in Beijing. But there were no flags anywhere, so a black program? What were they doing? Maybe an off-book signals intelligence facility? And why would a country want to abduct her? As a high-profile humanitarian aid worker, she’d annoyed politicians the world over demanding meaningful reform, but surely they had bigger fish to fry, not least each other.
Zia thought of her team in Chhattisgarh. How long had it been? What would they be thinking? Would Himmat sound the alarm? Would it matter if he did? She thought of her father. No chance that he’d notice her absence. They hadn’t talked in years. She thought of Galang, off chasing leads in New Malé. Was this connected to him somehow? Did he have dirt on someone dangerous whose strike team accidentally targeted her instead? Guilt twisted her stomach. What if they had Galang too? What if he was even worse off than her? Zia had been so worried about herself that she hadn’t even considered what might have happened to her friend. There were too many threads, and no way to weave them into a pattern.
A glint of silver caught her eye. A plane accelerated down the runway. It wasn’t a commercial or military model she recognized. Its wingspan dwarfed any aircraft she’d ever seen. Its whitewashed hull had no windows and bore no insignia but was peppered with exotic sensors. The beast lifted off and banked overhead in a graceful arc as it gained altitude, angling off across the water and up into the palatial cloudscape of bulging cumuli.
As much as Zia wished she could escape as easily, she forced herself to return to Earth. Behind the pocket of coastal development, virgin jungle carpeted steep slopes and branching valleys that led up to a central peak cloaked in a halo of fog. No other land was visible from this angle, which meant she was either at the tip of a long peninsula or, more likely, stranded on a volcanic island. That meant the only way to get on or off the island was by air or sea, which in turn meant she had to infiltrate the airfield or the harbor and stow away. Zia chastised herself for not paying more attention during that damn security training. She had… approximately zero relevant skills and her only relevant experience was sneaking out of the chateau with her friends so that they could bluff their way into sketchy nightclubs. Oh, Zia could schmooze and navigate social intrigue like a champ, but clandestine operations were not her forte.
But hold on, there might be another way. Even if it wasn’t a way out, it might give her more to work with than a needle. If she could get her hands on a phone, a computer, or any kind of communications device, she could call for help, let people know she was here. They could track her location, call in the cavalry. At the very least, knowing that people were out there looking for her might give her some leverage over her captors if they caught her again.
Zia peered out from her perch, thinking. No matter what, she’d have to skirt around the villas to get to the industrial facility. She squinted. Yes, someone was swimming laps in the pool and a group of kids were splashing in the shallow end. And where there were people, there were phones.
Going down was even worse than climbing up, and Zia’s descent was only slightly less disastrous than her recent encounter with the banana tree. When she finally slithered down to the blessed ground, she vowed never to climb another tree if she could help it.
Holding back burgeoning dread, Zia focused on wayfinding. She had memorized the topography and noted key landmarks, but a rainforest from within was far less legible than a rainforest from above. If only her mom were here to help her navigate this warren of green on green on green. So Zia tried to channel Miranda’s ghost, tried to see this primeval tangle through her naturalist’s eyes. It smelled like growth and rot and life and death and soil. Yes, there was the trailing end of that foothill, there was the sheer face of exposed rock, there was the stream that must be fed by the waterfall she’d glimpsed higher up.