Veil

by Eliot Peper

  Somewhere in the building, she heard the faint sound of a toilet flushing and water running in a sink. Her palms began to sweat. She held her breath and froze, listening. A door closed and footsteps approached up the hallway.

  Fuck.

  Should she return to bed, pretend she was still unconscious? Wait behind the door, slip up behind whoever entered, and stab the needle through their eardrum and into their brain? Hope that they weren’t coming here to check on her?

  Zia’s hands curled into fists. Who was she kidding? She was a humanitarian aid worker, not a secret ninja trained in an ancient mountain temple under the tutelage of stern grandmasters from an unbroken lineage going back millennia. If she could overwhelm her attacker with her expertise at navigating arbitrary bureaucratic labyrinths, she’d be all set, but if it came to actual physical violence, it might as well be over already. She’d gotten ridiculously lucky with the pizza ambush, and had been kidnapped anyway.

  The footsteps were getting closer.

  Fight or flight? The answer was obvious.

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  11

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  Zia stepped to the window and opened the shutters. Sunlight drenched her. She was on the second floor. A path ran along the side of the building. Beyond, lush jungle rose up to mist-shrouded peaks. Off to the left, sparkling waves crashed against a crescent beach. Where in the world was she? But there was no time for speculation. She only had a few seconds.

  Undoing the latch, she pushed the windows open, swung her legs over the sill, reached back and pulled the shutters closed from the outside, only to discover that there was no drainpipe to slide down or convenient handholds. If Galang had his way and screenwriters adapted Zia’s life story, they’d really need to do a better job adding useful props.

  Banana trees lined the side of the building, which really did appear to be a villa. The nearest one was a few feet away. Last chance. Go. Now. Do it. Throwing caution to the wind, Zia pushed herself off the sill. She hit the tree at an awkward angle, limbs flailing. But the big leaves slapped at her, breaking her fall as they bent under her weight, and she was able to hook one elbow around the trunk. The combination slowed her down enough that she didn’t break her ankles when she landed on the loamy, moss-covered ground.

  For fuck’s sake.

  Zia pushed off the trunk and sprinted across the flagstone path, through a mat of hanging vines, and straight into the undergrowth. She plowed forward through a claustrophobic tunnel of dappled green, every root trying to trip her, every branch trying to snag her, every thorn trying to bloody her as she stumbled onward, ever onward, never once looking back over her shoulder, reserving every particle of willpower for the increasingly impossible endeavor of keeping her legs moving, her head clear, her lungs full.

  And then, all at once, it was too much. Zia collapsed. Her limbs ached. Her throat burned. The world spun as if it were a die on a craps table.

  Darkness.

  Zia coughed and spat. She rolled over onto her back in the muck. The racket of birds, animals, and insects made her temples throb. She had had quite enough of returning from unplanned bouts of unconsciousness for one day. Light filtered through the canopy above her, sliced into thousands of glittering shards by soaring trunks and whispering leaves.

  Zia’s mom would have loved this place. She would have been able to name every species and trace it back through genus, family, order, class, phylum, kingdom, and domain to the roots of the tree of life itself. She would have taken Zia’s hand and traced her daughter’s finger along the fractal patterns of compound leaves, explained how the plant was a distant cousin that shared a quarter of its genes with humans, and joked about science fiction stories that imagined humanoid aliens arriving from distant galaxies when far more exotic lifeforms were going extinct every day here on Earth. Their laughter would have been shot through with awe at the extraordinary imagination that was humanity’s greatest strength and flaw, and her mother would have captured everything in prose that transcended the experience itself and invited others to share it. It was a place like this that had claimed her mother’s life.

  Zia pushed herself up and leaned against a tree she couldn’t name. She was caked in mud. Her clothes were torn and her skin was scratched and bloody. She must have stubbed her toe on something because the nail was split straight up the middle. It was incredible that the slippers hadn’t disintegrated entirely and that the needle in her pocket hadn’t stabbed her when she fell. Even more incredibly, there was no sign of pursuit. Or maybe that shouldn’t have been so surprising. The forest around her was so loud that she couldn’t hear herself breathe and so thick that she couldn’t even identify which direction she had come from.

  She had lost her jailers by losing herself.

  If her mother were here, they could have lived off foraging indefinitely. As it was, Zia was more likely to poison than nourish herself by harvesting nature’s bounty, and she was acutely aware of the short half-life of whatever calories and hydration remained in her system.

  Shadows deepened and swirled around her. She was alone in a dangerous forest that could be anywhere on this miserable planet. All she knew was that there were people trying to abduct her and all she had was an IV needle and a pair of what might as well be pajamas. Fucked didn’t even begin to cover it.

  If only she had accepted her father’s protection. If only she hadn’t decided to walk home from her date with Galang. If only this nightmare would turn out to be nothing more than a bad trip brought on by an experimental psychedelic cooked up in a distant lab that the chaiwala had slipped into their teas on a dare. The air was thick in her bruised and swollen throat. Her stomach performed a Cirque du Soleil routine. The cornucopia of vegetation induced a bout of vertigo.

  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.

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  12

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  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 natu
ral 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.

  Zia pushed her mind beyond thought, her heart beyond fear, her muscles beyond exhaustion. Everything hurt, a deep, pulsing hurt, but finally she was crouched in the undergrowth peeking out from behind a gigantic fern at the manicured landscaping of the villas. She counted them, tried to place herself on her mental map. The ocean was that way. The volcano was this way. That meant the tennis courts were over there and the pool should be up the path that snaked under the long pergola covered in verdant bougainvillea. Zia forced herself to wait there in the bushes for five minutes, but the guards must have already cleared this area and she couldn’t see any drones, although she could hear their plaintive whines over toward the beach.

  The minute she stepped out of the bushes, the risk of recapture would skyrocket. If a guard so much as glanced up the path, they’d see her. She’d be exposed to whatever surveillance systems oversaw this place. Whatever slim advantage her escape had earned would crumble away to nothing. But staying in the jungle only meant that she was safe enough to die alone, and maybe not even that. If they wanted her badly enough, she wouldn’t be able to evade K9 search teams. No, her escape hadn’t bought her cover, it had bought her time. She needed to invest that time wisely to have any chance of getting out of here alive. And any investment that could generate a real return meant taking real risks.

  Zia glanced back and forth to confirm there was no one around, wiped the mud from her hands, and stood up. She stepped quickly out of the bushes but once her feet were on the path, she slowed to a nonchalant stroll as if she were just taking a walk around the neighborhood. After the muck of the forest, the flagstones were smooth and firm beneath her feet. The air was thick with the scent of jasmine. Birds twittered in the branches of manicured trees. The second she reached the cover of the pergola, Zia sprinted up its entire length. Inside, it was a different world, a floral wormhole lit by pinpricks of light that might just lead her a step closer to freedom. The passage curved up and to the left between two villas and Zia was panting by the time she reached the other end.

  Zia paused before reemerging into sunlight. Pulling back a vine, she peered ahead. Yes, her mental map had been sufficiently accurate. There was the fork that led right to the tennis courts and left to the pool. Kids were still wading around the shallow end under the watchful gaze of their mother. The swimmer was pulling himself out, muscled skin glistening as water streamed off him.

  A drone was working its way over the rooftops and the hum of its propellers sent a jolt of adrenaline through her system. Zia stepped out and walked purposefully up the path. Left. No lock on the gate to the pool. Quick turn into the small locker room before any of the residents noticed how muddy and bloody she was. The locker room was plush and smelled of chlorine and shampoo. Smooth jazz played at low volume.
Zia stripped down quickly, folded her ruined clothes, and stuffed them into the trash, palming the needle. Then she snagged a thick robe and fluffy towel and hung them on hooks in one of the shower nooks. She dropped the needle into the pocket of the robe, turned on the shower, and stepped under the steaming water.

  The water washed away blood, grit, and tension. Zia trembled and her teeth chattered despite the heat. What was happening to her? She couldn’t keep this up. She was supposed to be sitting in a meeting coordinating the efforts of various local nonprofits right now, not escaping the clutches of mysterious kidnappers. This kind of stuff only happened in stories like The Princess Bride, which Zia had read and watched over and over again on long-haul flights so many times that she knew all the dialogue by heart. Westley, Inigo, Buttercup, they would know what to do in this kind of situation. They would use a combination of charm and expertly applied violence to escape and expose whatever secret lay at the dark heart of this facility in the process. Too bad watching adventure films didn’t help you absorb the skills of the protagonists.

  Now that Zia was out of the forest and in what could have been a spa, the idea that armed goons were out there looking for her seemed utterly ridiculous. Maybe her abduction was a theatrical stunt organized by well-meaning friends forcing her to take a vacation. She laughed at the prospect—that’s it, meet fear with silliness—and water poured into her mouth, reminding her of how thirsty she was.

  Shampoo. Soap. Rinse. Move.

  Turning off the tap, Zia rubbed herself down with the towel and pulled on the robe. When she looked at herself in the mirror, she saw everyone she’d ever known staring back, one face flickering into the next too fast to be recognized until the apparitions collapsed under their own weight. Thick black hair, terracotta skin, graceful curved nose inherited from a Mayan ancestor, haunted eyes the color of smoky quartz, small scar along the cheekbone from when she’d taken a fall chasing a lob across a hard court. No matter how disassociated she might feel, that was her. She tried out a smile, summoning everything she’d learned about acting from playing at politics. A good smile was all about the eyes. She turned up the collar of the robe to cover her bruised neck. Then she snagged a fresh pair of slippers from the neat stack near the door, popped one of the breath mints from the basket on the counter into her mouth, and walked out onto the pool deck projecting the air of unassailable entitlement she had spent years shrugging off.