Back out past the watchful B-team girls, out through the bead curtain, out and down the mildewed hallway, out and away from the punch table—with every step the feel-good wears off, and the shame sets in.

  You’re drowning. In your throat you taste salt and copper, and a lump is swiftly growing in it. What were you thinking talking to the pilots like that? Who are you to bring up Rachel? Three fucking days in, no less.

  Fuck this. You need air, and Debrah is moving too quickly, and it’s too loud in here, and you can’t bring yourself to try to tell her you’re leaving anyway; easier to just go. She’ll forgive you, and if she won’t, oh well.

  Somewhere in the crowd you slip sideways between two reveling dusties, and then out. It’s easy to get lost here, lucky for you. Head down—nobody knows your name; nobody calls it out. You remember the way vaguely; you slink past the young pilots and out into the blank gray corridor, the short flight of stairs, thinking of the porthole you remember from earlier, the golden glimpse of the sea—here is the sudden sharp smell of salt, and there, yes, is the door with the porthole, emblazoned with EMERGENCY EXIT—ALARM WILL SOUND.

  It opens on your second push and then swings shut behind you with an anticlimactic little thump. You are alone, and you are free.

  And there, yes, is the sea—blisteringly gorgeous, draped in all the colors of the setting sun: tinfoil silver, yellow so bright it’s nearly green; in the troughs of each wave, along their lee sides, royal purples and Tyrian reds, deep blues and wine-dark shadows. After everything it nearly makes you want to cry.

  There is a slender metal railing atop the stained white bulkhead that you go to and lean on, and here you shut your eyes and wait for your head to stop spinning, and you breathe in, long and slow. You’re sobering up faster now; the cold and the salt spray are like slaps to the face. Feels like shit, doesn’t it?

  In technical terms, that was some really dumb shit you just pulled.

  You wish, frankly, that they’d been meaner to you. You didn’t want Holly to send you away with hardly a warning. You know there’s a reason Lau’s pissed; you know you don’t deserve to be here; it would be easier if they’d all just say it, instead of pretending to put up with you.

  What if you tell Meng tomorrow that you broke protocol, that it’s your fault you were out of position? Not quite true—and maybe they won’t believe you, clearly they blame Carol as it is—but still, what if it’s enough to get you booted, to earn you your ticket back out? In that case you need to ask her tonight, before the meeting with Meng, before everything has a chance to blow up in your face. And to do that you need to find her first. Christ, this has been such a waste of time -

  Behind you the door opens, and you’re not alone anymore.

  You don’t want to see whoever it is. You keep your head down, your eyes shut, and listen to the sound of boots on the deck coming closer, and then you hear a sigh and a click, and then the hiss of a cigarette lighting up.

  “Smalls?” Oh, fuck. “Hey, you clock out early or what?”

  “Fuck off, Gutierrez,” you mumble.

  She laughs. The smell of cigarette smoke wafts toward you, thick and sickening. “Hey,” she says, “I netted you free booze. That’s no way to thank me.”

  You really don’t want to talk. You lift your head anyway and open your eyes. You say, “You groom all the new joins like that?”

  “You say that like it’s a bad thing.” You can hear the pout in her voice. “I’m hurt.”

  You don’t answer. The sea shushes.

  “Wow.” She exhales, and you choke on smoke. “Was it that bad, Kanagawa?”

  You shrug. “I think Holly and Enika hooked up,” you say, and Gutierrez laughs softly. “Brought up my sister. Got told off for it.” You remember the way Enika called you a cadet. “Got high and told them you’re all assholes.”

  Gutierrez considers this. There’s a smear of lipstick on the corner of her mouth, you notice; she wasn’t wearing any when she showed up. “You say that like it’s a bad thing, too,” she says at last.

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  “No shit, Sherlock.” Comes out a little more bitter than you’d intended.

  Gutierrez looks at you. “Did you mean it?” she says.

  You can’t help but be honest: “Yeah.”

  Gutierrez shrugs. “Okay,” she says, “well, my two cents: if you mean something then maybe it’s worth saying, even when it’s also, yeah, kind of a dick move. Even if it pisses people off. Sometimes you’ve gotta get angry at each other to get shit done.”

  “Thanks,” you say, “that’s reassuring.” And maybe you do mean that.

  Gutierrez doesn’t answer right away. For a moment you think—relieved—maybe your whining has finally annoyed her into leaving. Then she says, “You see that out there?”

  You squint along the direction of her cigarette. There in the distance are the tops of old skyscrapers swallowed up by water and time, emerging like the masts of wrecked ships you’d seen in old paintings, a whole forest, black and jagged. To their right rises the massed dark shoulders of Lantau, and one shoulder is far rounder than the rest: the corpse of one of the cleos, you realize with a start, its great silent shell dragged up into the lower reaches of Lantau’s flank, easily five hundred feet across. Around it crowd recovery ships and buoys marked with blinking red lights—like scavengers to a whale fall.

  “Your hard-won prize,” says Gutierrez. “Hong Kong saved again. Feels good, right?”

  “Sure.”

  “So,” says Gutierrez, “we brought the targets down. Mission accomplished. All good, except you two ran off without telling us, and you pulled that stunt with your arm—” it twinges as she says that—“and none of that was part of the plan, and it wasn’t necessary, either. And now Meng’s pissed. What do you call that?”

  “Failure,” you say.

  “No, well,” Gutierrez says. “I mean, it worked out in the end, but yeah, you did fuck up, and you’re going to get shit for that for sure. Not enough to get kicked, probably, but… Let me put it this way. Why do you think Carol didn’t warn us?”

  You shrug. “Easier to ask forgiveness than permission?”

  “Right,” says Gutierrez, “but if she’d told us her idea and then gone ahead and done it, maybe we could’ve pivoted to work with that, and Holly would’ve saved her reprimands for later. But she didn’t tell Holly her plan and then she did it anyway. If you’re going to do something no matter what, why not be honest about it?”

  You say, “What’s your point?”

  “My point is,” Gutierrez says, “if you really think we’re assholes, go ahead and say so. At least we’ll have warning for the next time you pull out a shitty right hook.”

  “That what you do?” you say. “Warn people before you swing at them? Sounds like a dumb way to fight.”

  Gutierrez puffs out a cloud of smoke in a violent sigh. “Kiddo,” she says, “I don’t do pep talks for just anybody. Just shut up and be grateful.”

  “I get that a lot,” you tell her, and she just half-smiles and takes another drag. Somehow she seems different, you think, than most of what you’ve seen of her in the little time you’ve known her so far. Quiet, almost. Not really, but still.

  “Why were you stalking Carol?” she says into the silence.

  Apparently you’re not sober enough, not ashamed enough. You blurt out: “To ask her why she wanted me here.”

  Gutierrez snorts. “Carol didn’t even make it to your first sync,” she says. “You think she’s why you’re here?”

  You flush. “Fine,” you say, “then why?”

  Gutierrez sketches a circle with the end of her cig. “God works in mysterious ways.”

  You consider that. Sounds like the sort of thing your father might have said, once. Would he? Only the sea answers in a great susurrous roar.

  “Hey, Gutierrez,” you say, “why the hell do you pretend to like me?”

  She turns to regard you with—surprise? Amusement? “Oh, Emma,” she says, “I’m not pretending.”

  “Fine,” you say. “Say you really do like me. Why?”

  She lowers the cig. Her hair has haphazardly dried into a glorious brown aureole that haloes her head in gold in the light of the setting sun. Even the faint scab where your nail clipped the side of her face is gilded. She’s almost beautiful.

  “Oh,” she says, “that’s easy. Because you’re the team butt monkey now.”

  And Gutierrez grins and tips the ash off the end of her cigarette, over the side of the railing; then, while you briefly consider just punching her again, she takes another drag, turns back to the setting sun, and flicks the whole thing into the sea, burning tip and all. Exhaling, she says, “You’re cute, Smalls, but you’re overthinking it. Just do your job, don’t tell Meng to her face how you feel about her, you’ll be fine. And don’t worry about Carol,” she adds, “that’s just how she is.”

  Is that a hint of bitterness? “Was she like that to Rachel?” you say before you can stop yourself.

  Gutierrez just shrugs. “Don’t know,” she says. “Never met her.”

  Right. Stupid question. Gutierrez was one of the replacements, hired after the fact from the Angeleno lineup.

  “Hey,” says Gutierrez, “look at it this way—I came away from my first party with a black eye. Could be worse.”

  Does she wink? You pretend not to notice. You wait till the door shuts again and then let go of the breath you’ve been holding. On the railing, your knuckles are the color of paper. Your gut feels like it.

  Hey, Holly said it—not everything is about your fucking sister. Maybe there’s hope left for you to prove yourself, after all: if only you don’t fuck this up tomorrow.