In the morning you go down to the track and run aimless laps without really seeing where you’re going. Gutierrez is nowhere to be found. So is Carol, unless you’ve missed her, which is entirely possible. (You are relieved not to see her, really; you don’t know what you’d say to her if you saw her here. Ask about the toothpaste? Or the other part—what came before you found the toothpaste—that which you refuse to name?)

  You shut your eyes and focus on the in-out-in-out of your breathing, your pumping legs, the acid burn in your muscles. You can’t afford to think about last night, you tell yourself. You need to plan ahead: Meng. The team. Facing the music.

  So you have two problems. First, the team doesn’t accept you—clearly they think you’re inferior. Second, you’re clearly inferior. Okay, three problems, because you’ve gone and shown the only thing you might have left to offer—your obedience, your trust—is broken: you did that the minute you went gallivanting off with Carol, out of position. And there’s no way Meng doesn’t know this; surely they have transcripts, surely Central has shared it with her, but if not then Holly would surely tell her; any good captain would keep their superior informed of discrepancies like this. And by now you really can’t just pin it all on Carol (Carol, who fucked you out on the field and then again on your bed, the second time with her fingers—no, focus), because you told the team you’d volunteered for it, and you’d told Oladele you had no comment, and you’re sure Holly and company aren’t feeling charitable enough after that disaster of a party to cover your ass and go along with your lie, if they ever were.

  To improve your reputation with the team and get them to take you seriously, as of yesterday, would have been difficult. To improve it now, you are sure, is impossible.

  So what does that leave you with? Bend over and get fucked?

  Would they really just let you go for this? At Alcatraz they told you, Just don’t fuck up. Following orders, surely, counts as part of not fucking up—but surely so does passing your final exam, and you never did. And they’ve still taken you. So maybe they’ll forgive this, too.

  Do you want them to?

  Shit, is that your pager?

  Frustrated, you jog over to the side of the track and descend upon your kit. Sure enough: what had been a muffled chirping in the background of each lap explodes into a plaintive three-note wail, and there’s your pager, wedged between your spare socks and your towel.

  Holly said you were due to meet in the cafeteria at six, right? It’s five forty-five now. The message on the cramped LCD screen reads: CHANGE OF PLANS. MENG’S OFFICE AT FIVE THIRTY.

  Well, shit.

  At breakneck pace you shove your kit together and take the stairs up, two, three at a time, too desperate to think to use the elevator. With every pulse of your blood you think, Stupid, stupid, stupid. Should’ve checked sooner. Fucking Meng. Fucking hell.

  Five minutes later you’ve made it up to the administrative floors: red-faced, covered in sweat, towel around your neck to try and soak up the worst of it. At least nobody is here; it’s early enough that most of the upper echelons of Atlas aren’t yet at work. You sprint through the empty halls, rounding every corner with a curse, and then you skid to a halt.

  Two helmeted guards flank the Atlas-emblazoned doors to Meng’s office. Fuck—you didn’t bring ID with you to the gym.

  “Hey, whoa,” one of them says in a Cantonese accent. “Name? You got an appointment?”

  “Don’t ask,” says the other one, “give her a moment to breathe, Nance, come on. Hey, isn’t she that new pilot—can’t you just handshake her helm with your daemon?”

  Handshake? What is that, like syncing? Or helm entanglement? Before you can ask, the door swings open. There’s Oladele, looking as perfectly coiffed as ever in her starch-white suit dress; her eyes widen when she sees you, and then she smiles—that same warm smile from before—and says, “Ah! Emma. Come in—we’re waiting for you.”

  Even redder than before, cursing a blue streak in your head (which I am forced to witness in all its gory detail, thank you), you are escorted past the guards—at whom you do not dare look—and into the windowless little room where Meng presides.

  You should run. You should run while you still can and never look back. But Oladele leans in, hand on your wrist—a lingering soreness from yesterday flares up at her touch—and whispers, “Just relax and take a moment, catch your breath, you’re alright,” and it’s like every muscle in your body freezes, deer in the headlights; you can’t run. And then you’re inside, and it’s too late.

  Meng is behind her desk, hands steepled, an unassuming leather suitcase beside her. She’s looking at you the way a laser looks at a plate. “Kanagawa,” she says. “Have a good beauty sleep?”

  Obviously not, but it’s a rhetorical question. “No, sir,” you say, “was running laps like you requested, sir.” And you ignore the quiet giggle from behind you: doubtless Gutierrez is grinning too, next to Venkatesh.

  Meng gestures at Carol, who’s leaning against the wall opposite you, at Meng’s left side. “See,” she says, “this is the kind of blind faith in orders that soldiers are lucky to find within themselves. Chang, make sure not to take advantage of it again the way you did yesterday.”

  “Got it,” says Carol, and you don’t miss the faint flush on her face despite her tonelessness.

  You glance at her, meet her eyes and, on the way, you glimpse, or perhaps imagine, the faint outline of your teeth on the side of her neck (which—as before—has become pink, too): ah, right, yes, yesterday. You look quickly away before you can glean anything from the rest of her face, suddenly, shamefully overcome.

  “Good,” says Meng. “Kanagawa, for the record, meetings trump exercise. Don’t let it happen again.”

  “Yes sir,” you say. “Sorry, sir.”

  Behind you Holly says, “Can we debrief? Labs has the report out from yesterday, don’t they?”

  “Yes, they do,” says Meng, “and you ladies had better be done with games, because there’s a lot of work ahead of you. Oladele, please.”

  “Certainly,” says Oladele. She’s got a console in hand, the same as you have back in your room except notably newer and cleaner, in sleek white and blue, to match her uniform. “Your targets from yesterday’s sortie were previously projected to be genetically similar to 2940 C—within sibling range. We had tentatively named them 2953 and 2954 C. We’re updating that now to 2941.1 and 2941.2 C. Labs now considers them to be offspring, not siblings.”

  “Right,” says Holly, “so 2940 C must be significantly older than we’d thought.”

  “No,” says Oladele, “forty-one-one and two are younger than we’d thought, likely in the range of five years old each.”

  Holly goes silent.

  “They’re reproducing,” says Oladele, “actively.”

  “Well,” says Debrah. “Shit.”

  Enika says, “That can’t be right. They’re sterile. Project Orion proved that. It’s not possible—”

  “Black swans. Orion conjectured it, with reasonable certainty,” says Lau. “It’s a hypothesis, Venkatesh. It’s not a fact.”

  “Bullshit,” says Enika. “We need more time. Tell them to verify results with Manila, or Sydney, or—”

  “We have checked,” says Oladele. “Manila is in agreement per their assays from last November. So are Sydney and Chennai. The data’s conclusive. I’m sorry.” And her tone brooks no argument, not even from Meng, who just looks on, fingers steepled, unmoved.

  Enika wilts. “Okay,” she says. “Okay. Fuck.”

  “So,” Holly says, “what do we do?”

  “We kill them,” you say. Everyone looks at you, and you immediately feel hot. “Right?”

  “Yes, Kanagawa,” says Lau, “we kill them. Scintillating observation. How?”

  “We bring in Manila and Sydney,” says Enika slowly. “Chennai if they’re done rebuilding and able to help. We aggregate all the data we can manage—from anyone who’s got it. Full library sweep of every target surveilled in the past six years. Let’s see how deep the new genetic matches go. I’d bet it isn’t just the cleos.”

  “Yes,” says Holly, “research, I agree, but how many are new children? Will they be enough—?”

  “For a preliminary strike team,” says Enika, “sure. Why not. Get the A-teams—ask for Shanghai too. That’s forty good Titans strong.”

  “Busan is already interested,” says Gutierrez. “They owe us one for helping with that hydra.”

  “Sure,” says Holly. “Colonel?”

  Oladele says, “We’ll discuss that with Central tonight,” and Meng doesn’t correct her, just says, “Consider your strategy.”

  “How will we hunt them all?” says Debrah. “There’s no way it’s only a handful. Not if we’re getting these readings—not if Manila and Sydney and Chennai have been too.”

  “You don’t know that,” Lau says, at the same time that Carol says, “We lure them in.”

  Everyone looks at her.

  “With the pheromones from yesterday,” she says. “Whatever made them flee to Lantau.”

  She’s not looking back at any of you, you notice, only at Meng, whose gaze she holds steadily, without flinching.

  “Carol,” says Lau, “what the hell are you talking about?”

  “Why do you think I waited at Buddha?” says Carol.

  Lau shrugs violently. “To get back at Holly for leaving you off the active roster so long?”

  “Ladies,” says Meng, “enough fighting. Chang, elaborate.”

  “There’s a peak in aldehyde shedding right around Buddha,” says Carol, glancing at Lau, then Holly (briefly, terribly, you remember unbidden Carol’s fingers inside you). “Pheromones. That’s why the targets fled there. They know it’s dangerous. They’re not stupid enough to go there ordinarily.”

  “So why—?” starts Debrah.

  “Because those readings imitate the parent,” says Carol, “and we just hunted two children.”

  “Bullshit,” says Lau, not hesitating even at Enika’s warning glance. “You don’t know that. You’re guessing.”

  Carol shrugs.

  “Okay,” says Lau, “so you have a hunch. You want us to act on it. How do we use those pheromones? Sample them, send them down to labs to study and synthesize—now what? What do you propose we do?”

  “Like I said,” says Carol, “we lure them in.”

  Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

  “Ant traps,” says Gutierrez. Everyone looks at her. “You know, filled with sugar water? The ants smell them and come flocking. Once they’re on the trap—” She mimes jaws snapping shut.

  “They’re made with glue, they’re not bear traps,” says Holly, “but, okay, so how do we set the traps for the Megs?”

  “Mines,” says Gutierrez. She holds up a hand. “Not to wound. To stun. Cryobloom cladding deflects ballistic shocks, right, mitigates them, but it doesn’t negate their effects entirely. Slow them down so we can get out there and finish them off.”

  “That could be risky,” says Debrah. “How close are we talking? How many mines? Where do you plan on putting the bait?”

  “I don’t know,” says Gutierrez, faster now, “have labs study the currents, figure out a good place to set up the source so it blows out and down south. Shore up the mines there. We’re good at taking assaults from that end, right? Or map out one of our dredged bays to the west in the exclusion zone—maybe use Shenzhen where we caught Arrowhead, I don’t know—”

  “Assuming labs can synthesize the right bait,” says Enika.

  “Assuming this is bait at all,” says Lau. “Assuming Chang isn’t just bullshitting us. Assuming she didn’t get lucky.”

  “I don’t get lucky,” says Carol.

  Holly holds up a hand. “We’ve never done anything like that before,” she says. “If this is viable at all, you’re proposing mass mobilization on a scale we haven’t employed, all so we can bring the danger to us. You’re talking about playing with fire.”

  “Right,” says Lau, “because we’ve been so careful before—”

  “We have,” says Holly calmly, “in comparison.”

  “No we haven’t,” says Lau. “But this won’t work anyway. It’s insane. If it does, somehow—”

  “It won’t be in your jurisdiction to decide,” says Meng. “Don’t get ahead of yourselves, girls. What matters right now is that you, as a unit, are sufficiently well greased to function together for a mobilization of any scale, including as a solo unit or pairwise. Are you?”

  The room falls silent. You remember yesterday, the sortie, the party, and something terrible and bitter curls in your throat; you swallow it down and do not say anything.

  It’s Enika who at last says, “Not yet.”

  Lau coughs a laugh.

  “We can fix that,” says Holly. “Kanagawa’s new, but with a little bit of training—”

  “A lot of training,” says Enika, “and after that maybe we can bring her on properly. Six months at least.”

  Meng looks at her. “And you believe she’ll be ready in six months.”

  Lau says, “Colonel, with all due respect—”

  “You disagree, Lau?” says Meng.

  “I think we should leave off Chang and Kanagawa,” says Lau, “until further notice. If Sydney and Chennai answer we’ll have more than enough. Doubly so with Manila. If we don’t—”

  “How do you know you’ll have enough?” says Meng.

  Lau’s face flushes, but she says, “An educated guess, sir.” (Like black swans, you think.) And, “We’ve never faced a threat too big for three teams to handle. Carol said—”

  “Aileen Shi would remind you well that we’ve faced threats too big for two,” says Meng, and Lau’s face snaps shut. “Be honest, Lau. You feel Kanagawa is too green to go on duty right now, even with her performance yesterday?”

  “Because of her performance yesterday,” says Enika. “She got in Shirley’s way. And she and Carol—”

  “It was my idea,” you say quickly. They’re looking at you, you know, all of them at once; you ignore the prickling heat that burgeons along the back of your neck and go on—“I mean, I pushed for it. I just—got tired of holding back. Doing nothing.”

  “I see,” says Meng. “And you felt this was appropriate because—?”

  You shrug. Your face is on fire. “I didn’t. I don’t know, I thought it was more useful than staying put.”

  There you go again, lying. Why? What for? You get a piece of tail for once and your loyalty’s sold? No, that’s not it.

  “Less obedient than you seem, are you,” says Meng, studying you. “Chang, is that right?”

  Carol says, “We both left position, per record. It was a joint move.”

  “Oh, like it was last time your Kanagawa left position?” Lau says.

  Carol straightens. Her eyes flicker.

  “Enough,” says Holly. “Colonel, yes, we can do this. Call in Chennai and Sydney and let’s see what we can get done. I’m going to personally see to it that we onboard Kanagawa as quickly as possible, and if we can agree she’s combat-ready by the time our sister units show up, we’ll put her and Chang on the strike team. Otherwise they can fall back with B-team for defense.”

  “Kanagawa on B-team,” says Lau, “and ask Sydney for a reserve to be Chang’s shield.”

  “I’m sorry, Shirley, did you think this was up for haggling?” Holly wheels on Lau, who, to her credit, doesn’t flinch. “Stand down. I’ve made our decision. If you have a problem with it, we can call a vote and see what the majority thinks.”

  Oladele looks at Meng, who glances at Holly and raises her brows: that seems to be as good an affirmation as any.

  “Put her on B-team,” says Enika. “I’m sorry, but Shirley’s got a point.”

  “Give her a chance,” says Debrah. “I was worse when I arrived at London my first day.”

  “No you weren’t,” says Gutierrez. “Don’t self-deprecate.”

  “Sorry,” says Hannah, whom you hadn’t noticed till now, tucked back in the corner, “what’s the argument? Didn’t Kanagawa go through graduation, same as any of us? What’s her combat experience?”

  “No,” says Lau. “No, she didn’t. She’s a dropout. Zero mission time. She’s here because Tokyo is here, and she’s a psych match. That’s it.”

  “Oh,” says Hannah. “Yeah, sorry, why not put her on B-team, then?”

  “Because of Carol,” says Lau.

  “I’ve told you it’s not because of Carol,” says Holly. “We all chose this—”

  “I didn’t choose this,” says Lau. “I don’t choose this now. Gutierrez?”

  “Has anyone asked Kanagawa what she thinks?” says Gutierrez.

  Everyone looks at you.

  Why is she asking you? Who cares what you think? You were never going to be among those who really decided if you had a spot on the team—sure, you said yes, but that was after everything was said and done. Lau obviously doesn’t give a shit what you think; and as for the others—as for Carol (Carol, who fucked you last night without hesitation, who knew Rachel), well— You never did ask Carol if it was really her choice. Does it matter? They’re asking you right now, not her.

  Last time they asked you this you answered, I think you’re all assholes. You’re not stupid enough to use that line again, in front of Meng, sober.

  Your cheeks burn. You wish they’d stop staring. Come on, Emma, be smart. What would Rachel have done? Not gotten herself here in the first place, surely, for starters.

  (You could say Lau’s right, that you were never meant for this—that you want to leave. But—)

  You say, “Holly’s right. Figure out your game plan, then decide who you want to play.”

  “Yeah,” says Carol, and she doesn’t need to be loud for everyone to look at her: “I’ll talk to labs about bait. We need to get Chennai and Sydney on board for now, first.”

  “Right,” says Holly, “that’s the idea. Okay—I’m making an executive decision. We’ll see how Kanagawa and Chang do over the next one hundred twenty days, or until we see fit to deploy a strike force. Then we’ll revisit the possibility of moving them onto B-team more permanently. Lau, I don’t want to see you pitching a fit in the meantime. Are we in agreement?”

  “Like hell we are,” says Lau. “Colonel, please—”

  “No. Tagouri,” says Meng, “your proposal is sound.”

  “Thank you, Colonel,” says Holly. “If we—”

  “Have a general plan of action on my desk by tomorrow, before mess,” says Meng, “and think about how many personnel you’ll need, from which teams, in what positions. You know better than any other unit right now what we’re up against and how to best solve it, Tagouri—all of you. I expect foresight to match. Oladele will meet with you if you want to talk details.”

  Does her gaze linger on Carol? Never mind; she’s looking at each of you in turn, Dare now, then you, and you shrink from the sudden intensity.

  Dare says, “What about Orion, sir?”

  Meng grins, brief, thin-lipped. “I’ll leave that for you to consider,” she says. “Evidently they’re wrong. Even science is not infallible.”

  “Yes sir,” says Debs.

  “Do they know?” says Holly.

  “That’s not our concern,” says Meng. “What is our concern I expect you to focus on from this meeting onward, and that means everything we’ve discussed, regardless of your personal feelings on the matter. All of you. Are we clear? Dare?”

  “Yes, Colonel,” says Dare, “I’d like to request permission to sweep the coast for any immediate remaining targets, as soon as we can, following labs’ summary of those identified to closely match 2941 C.”

  “Granted. Oladele will sort the details with Tagouri.” Meng surveys the rest of you. “Anyone else?”

  “If we’re asking Chennai and Sydney,” says Enika, “we should think about Shanghai, too. Wen said they encountered targets whose behaviors match ours.”

  “I’ll consider that,” says Meng. “Oladele?”

  “The colonel will have a meeting with upper leadership shortly to discuss today’s findings further,” says Oladele, “and we appreciate your candid thoughts in service of that. Please don’t hesitate to reach out if you have concerns. Central is always happy to listen.” And she smiles, close-lipped, warm, like she really means it. You avoid her gaze.

  “You’re making a mistake,” says Lau.

  “Perhaps,” says Meng. “We too aren’t infallible. Let me know if you still think so in a month’s time. Dismissed.” As you turn away, she holds up a hand. “Not you, Emma. A word.”

  You wait awkwardly in the corner, heart racing, head buzzing, while the other pilots—the real pilots—file past you out the door. What is she going to say to you? A warning? A scolding? Punishment?

  “You disobeyed Tagouri’s orders,” Meng says, folding her hands on the table. “Why? Really. Don’t give me that bullshit about meaning to be useful; I know you’re smarter than that.”

  This again? “I don’t know, sir,” you say, “I wasn’t thinking.”

  Her expression tightens in a way that might be an allusion to a smile—or a frown—hard to say.

  “A word of advice,” she says, “don’t try to take the fall for anyone else, even your own sword. It never turns out well. For either party.”

  Your heart thunders in your chest. She knows.

  “Unless that’s not what you were aiming to do, of course,” she says, “I hear you have issues with the team. Was it spite?”

  “No,” you say, truthfully. “I don’t solve disagreements like that.” And—“I was taught better.”

  “For a dropout,” Meng says, “you certainly could have been taught worse. Don’t let it happen again. If you’re trying to get yourself discharged, do it without endangering the integrity of your team. Do you understand?”

  “Yes sir,” you say. “I understand, sir.” Then—in a rush of weakness, wholly forgetting any etiquette you’d had—“Why me?”

  “Why you?” Meng says, and you nod. “Because you said yes.”

  You should really keep your mouth shut here, let it be. “Couldn’t have been just me,” you say instead. “Out of everyone who could’ve matched Tokyo.” Couldn’t have been nobody out there better than you, you mean to say, even if high psych matches for already-trained helms are pretty sparse.

  “It was,” she says. “Things are rarer than you think, Kanagawa.”

  She’s looking at you frankly, fingers steepled. She’s a small woman; she’s got to be a head or so shorter than you. But something in her expression puts you in mind of your father’s paintings of Susanoo, the storm god, who killed a goddess with one sweep of his blade.

  “I understand, sir,” you elect to lie, wisely.

  “Good,” she says. “Then I trust that if you really do just want out you’ll say so. Do you?”

  Well, hell—all of two days and she’s already asking you this. Are you really so pathetic?

  Never mind. Here’s your out, the one you’ve been desperate for since you left the cradle, dripping wet—while you wallowed in self-pity all night after. What’s stopping you from taking it? Not Carol; not Meng; sure as hell not Lau or Gutierrez, or any of the rest of Unit 49, who watched you sync that first day and laughed. Not the good of humanity—that never bothered you much. Not even your burning desire to find out what really happened to your sister the night she killed herself.

  No, what stops you here, pathetic though you are, is the memory of a time you were even more pathetic: staring down the ocean back in the Bay. The pit of nothing in your gut. The note you’d left behind on your desk. Kintsugi.

  Right now you know only this: You can’t bear to go back to being nobody.

  “No,” you say. “I don’t.”

  “Alright,” she says. “Come one hundred twenty days from now, you’ll have the chance to reconsider that. As will we. Until then, keep your head down and do your job—and, for the love of all that’s good, follow your orders. You’ve come in at a bad time; we’re going to need all the cooperation we can get. Tagouri remains your captain so long as you wear that suit. Listen to her.”

  “Yes, sir.” And then, because you can’t help yourself: “Is that all?”

  Now she really does smile, dry and quick. “Yes,” she says, “besides that you’ll keep up your morning laps through the end of the probation period. I’ll hold off issuing another demerit to you till you’re done, provided that you don’t further misbehave in the meantime.”

  “Yes, sir,” you say, “thank you, sir.” And you leave before she can see the look that comes over your face: not quite relief or regret or shame, accompanied by a pounding in your chest that feels like all of those at once, and a sudden weakness in your knees to match.

  All that really matters is this: One hundred twenty days. Sure, you tell yourself, could be worse. You’ll be counting them.