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Foreword

In 2001 I flew from San Francisco to Tokyo in a window seat. It was one of the first flights that displayed the plane’s location in realtime. Our flightpath followed a high arc over the North Pacific a thousand kilometers south of the Aleutian chain. I stared for hours at the unbroken ocean, filled with dark floating masses of seaweed and patches of green then blue then gray.

Suddenly: an island. An island where no island is recorded to be. We flew right over it, a long double spine of ridges hiding deep valleys. For more than half an hour I was able to study it, shocked to find such a large landmass here. It was four or five kilometers in length, curved like a kidney, its canyons filled with vegetation.

The plane’s position put us over 1600 kilometers north of Hawaii and about 900 kilometers northeast of Midway. On any map you can find, this vast region is blue water and nothing else. But how could an island possibly exist here? And if it did, how had it remained a secret so long?

Lisica is the fiction I’ve written about this very real island.

—DWD

1 – Hug Like Sisters

The endless gray sea remains unbroken in every direction…

…except for a single island, a column of dark rock that interrupts the emptiness like a comma on a blank sheet. The isle’s sheer cliffs rise hundreds of meters from a fringe of white surf on its rugged coasts. Crowned by deep green forest above, its canopy is wreathed in dense fog.

Only in the southeast corner of the isle does a waterfall overtop the cliffs. It spills into a great black pool ringed by an apron beach. A rocky lagoon with jagged black breakers stretches into the ocean from its dark sand, providing an open water shelter for coral and sea grass. Sea lions sleep on the rocks, watched over by guillemots and cormorants. Gulls and terns wheel above in thick profusion, crying out, their nests in the cliffs. It is spring and the hatchlings peek out like balls of cotton, crying to be fed.

Far above, atop the ridge that not even the pelagic birds reach, a child’s bare brown arm pulls aside an obscuring branch that overlooks the ocean. It reveals the gray horizon, unbroken to the south. A dull shell of maritime-layer clouds covers the island and lowers the sky to the tops of the trees. The cries of the birds and barking of the sea lions and roar of the surf fill the air.

After a long moment the sea lions fall silent, blinking at the south horizon. They roll into the water without a sound. Soon after they disappear, a US Navy research ship sails into view.

The ship, white above with a dark blue hull, drops anchor outside the lagoon and a Zodiac is lowered to the rocking sea, where it is loaded with lifejacket-swaddled passengers and gear. The pilot zooms through the breakwaters, smashing through ranks of waves from behind, and navigates through a gap in the barrier rocks into the lagoon. He runs the Zodiac up onto the beach.

Whoever it is watching them from the island’s ridgeline above withdraws from view and slips back under the cover of the trees.

Amy Kubota steps onto the beach, a huge smile on her round face. Silver streaks highlight her unruly black mass of hair. Before her feet touch the sand she is already cataloguing the extensive birdlife above her. But it’s business first. She claps her hands. “Start with the big ones, Jay. Let’s get the Zodiac back on the water as soon—”

“Aye aye, Amy!” Jay Darmer, her grad student, answers a bit too loud. He unfolds himself with expert balance and throws his rangy athletic body at the containers. “This one, Prad. But careful. Don’t capsize the—”

Pradeep Chakrabarti, Amy’s other grad student, stands with a wobble and lifts his end of a giant plastic bin. He is tall and slender with an aristocratic air. The Zodiac shifts as the surf runs up the beach and Pradeep almost drops the bin. He grunts with the effort and flashes a brilliant smile as he splashes ashore. “Baptism, Jay. It’s called a baptism.”

The Zodiac rocks with their departure and Flavia Donaceti squeals, sitting precariously in the center of the craft with her prized possessions. She throws her arms wide with a loud wail as a splash of seawater comes over the side and spatters her round eyeglasses. “Don’t! You boys! Ai! You make me wet!”

A throaty giggle from behind Flavia adds, “Yeh, boys. You can’t just make a girl wet. You gotta at least buy her a drink first.” Katrina Oksana’s Australian accent contrasts with Flavia’s Italian. Their laughs mix together as Katrina heaves herself out.

She leaps lightly onto land, backpack in hand. Katrina looks like a pony-tailed student taking a gap year. With a deep breath she inhales the fresh air. “Ahh. Home sweet home.”

Amy pulls on Flavia. “Come on, Flavia. It’s time.”

Flavia holds several laptops in their bags, as well as a giant black hard case. Her short legs have trouble clearing the width of the Zodiac’s sidewall. She can’t manage it all at once and she stumbles onto the sand, cursing the island in her native tongue and soaking her slip-on sneakers.

The pilot, a midshipman named Curt, hops out and grabs the nose of the craft. He drags it a few paces up the beach and begins unloading duffel bags into a pile. “Sounds like the Captain’s made contact, ma’am!” He shouts in a voice made hoarse from a life on the sea, and lifts the two-way radio clipped to his vest that still buzzes with news. “Your folks will be here soon!”

Amy just stares at him, head full of logistical details, unsure what he means. Then it clicks. “Oh! You mean the other ship! That’s great. Great news, Curt. I had no idea they were already so close.”

Katrina takes a bag from Amy’s hands and hustles it up the beach. The older woman first protests, then sighs and watches as the youngsters churn through the sand at a pace she can’t sustain. So she supervises instead.

Curt calls out, “I’ll be back with the next load. You all get these piles up to the structure there before the waves come in.”

Flavia groans in relief. “There is a structure? Oh, thank god. I was afraid we’d be in tents this whole time. Civilization at last. I get first shower.”

Pradeep crosses the crescent beach at a diagonal toward an old concrete bunker hidden among ferns and buckthorn. He calls out over his shoulder, “Yes, you’ll recall that the notes mentioned a kind of facility. No details about it, though.” He stands in front of it, regarding the concrete walls stained from decades of exposure to the ocean. “Ah. Well. This must be why.” It is a ruin.

A moment later, Jay steps into its empty doorway wielding a carbon fiber hiking pole like a sword. “Hello?” He edges his way in, squinting at the gloom. Columns of gray light stream through holes in the corrugated steel roof. “Here snakey snakey…”

From outside, Amy squawks. “Snakes? What kind? Let me see!” She pokes her head through the nearest window, eagerness adding wrinkles to the corners of her eyes.

“No, haven’t seen any yet.” Jay pokes at piles of debris. “It’s just that we used to play in an old abandoned bunker like this down in Big Sur and man did it always get jammed full of snakes.”

Amy frowns, the field biologist unable to square certain details. “At this latitude, though? And so close to the ocean? I don’t—” A sharp sound interrupts her. Something catlike twitches in the far corner and bounds up, darting through a back window before Amy can track it. “Whoa! Jay! What was that? I couldn’t tell! Some kind of mustelid?”

“Fuck. I didn’t see.”

“Me neither.”

“What’s a mustelid?” Katrina asks. “Sounds like a clam.”

Amy laughs. “The weasel family. Ferrets and such.”

Jay crosses the bunker to peer out the window it escaped. “Was it unique? Any details at all? Aw, man. Hope it’s a new species. Can you imagine? We’ll name her Mustela kubota.”

Amy laughs, waving a self-deprecating hand. “Oh, Jay, you’re so sweet. But we’ll see. How about we name it after whoever it bites first, eh?” She steps inside. “So… Safe in there?”

Katrina’s hand grabs Amy’s sleeve. “Spiders. In Australia any abandoned building like this would be absolutely stuffed with spiders. Watch it in there, mate.”

Jay cackles. “If only Katrina knew about our arachnid obsession! Prad! The specimen jars!”

“Not yet, Jay.” Amy sweeps a corner of the building clear of litter with her boot. “We need to get the bags above the tide line first. Curt was right. It’s rising.”

Pradeep’s head appears in the window. “Do we really know that? I’ve got a global tide chart here but this island isn’t on it.”

Flavia adds, “And I lost signal like six hours ago. I mean, where even are we? My map software isn’t working out here. It’s crazy, there’s no record of an island anywhere near here.”

Out of habit, Amy fishes out her phone and looks at it. No signal, of course. “I mean, so this is just a hypothesis, but let’s say Midway is the closest landmass. If this island mostly shares tide and weather pattern characteristics with its closest neighbor then—”

In the back corner, Jay pokes a pile of dried ferns that hide a nest of giant crabs. They charge, claws larger than his hands, and he falls back with a shriek, clacking the pole against their carapaces. “Back! Back!” But they surge past him toward the light of the door. “Okay, well, forward then! Look out!”

The crabs run for the door and they all shriek.

Pradeep shouts out, “Don’t let them pinch you!”

The crabs scramble outside and the chaos settles with the dust. They all gather at the door, giggling like school children. But Amy is already making notes on her phone. “Like a… variant of coconut crab! Amazing! Definitely genus Birgus. But so dark!”

Katrina shivers. “Careful. Those claws can go right through your leg. I swear. I’ve seen videos. Strong as shit.”

Flavia declares, “I am not sleeping in there. No way. Tents sound good now. Real good. Maybe up on platforms?”

Pradeep nods, pensive. “Yeah. Good plan. Tall platforms. Some kind of barrier on the legs. Got to keep it clear up above. Yeah.”

Ξ

As the others continue to unpack, Amy and Jay step quietly through a grove of mature redwoods, awed by the scale. Their trunks are up to five meters in diameter, rising a hundred meters above their heads. Amy carries a green frond, fallen from its canopy, studying it.

“For all intents and purposes this is…” she shrugs, shaking her head in wonder, “I mean, superficially is all I can say for certain,” she stops and peers upward, “but all these trees appear to be identical to Sequoia sempervirens, California Coast Redwoods.”

Jay snorts. “Untouched. Undiscovered. Holy smokes. This is crazy, Amy. I mean, when has this ever happened? Ever? I don’t think so. Sure, there’s like the Dawn redwoods in China but no way, this isn’t even what that is. This is an actual sequoia grove. They’ve never been found outside of California. This is—” He makes a garbled, incoherent sound. Amy grabs his hand and they share a sacred moment. “Shit, boss. We could spend the rest of our careers on this right here. This grove alone.”

“We can call it Tenure Grove.”

They giggle together in the gloom.

Jay urges them forward, deeper into the grove. The understory is sparse, the hillocks they climb covered in redwood duff and clover. He waves away a cloud of flies and presses on, only getting about a dozen trees deep before coming up against the base of the cliffs. Thick banks of ferns climb upward, eventually giving way to manzanita clinging to the vertical wall of rock and dirt.

He ranges at the base like a foxhound on the scent, looking for a way to ascend. “Crap. Too crumbly to climb. Is this volcanic? I mean, it’s gotta be, right? What’s the bedrock gonna be here, doc?”

Amy just shakes her head, watching the white gulls and terns wheeling far above. “The geologist is on her way. A damn fine one, too. Yeah, nobody’s climbing this cliff here.”

But Jay can’t be contained. “Maybe we can climb the waterfall instead. Here. This way.” He pushes through the foliage to their right, toward the east. “Oh. Watch out. That may be poison oak. Or… Maybe not. I think it’s actually an analogue.”

They force their way through a bank of flowering shrubs they don’t recognize, crowing about their likely provenance, and finally break through to the edge of the waterfall’s dark pool. Amy edges outward onto an outcropping of slick worn basalt and regards the falling plume. It isn’t the mightiest waterfall in the world but its heavy unbroken stream falls from on high, scattering mist and droplets across the grove, crashing loudly into the pool with foam.

After a long moment Jay returns to her, face streaked in mud, branches in his hair. “What happened to you?” Amy asks.

“Fell off.”

“You fell off the cliff? Are you hurt?”

“No. I mean, no like closed head injuries. Well, not any more, at least.” He peers upward. “Damn. Not a chance. I mean, we sailed around the whole island and those cliffs look like they ring the whole thing. This may be the only entry point. I was hoping there’d at least be a game trail or something here.”

“It is so cold. We’re basically at southern Oregon latitude as far as I can tell. This is a true temperate island. A major island with a temperate coastal cloud forest in the North Pacific. Unbelievable. We’re like, what, a thousand kilometers from land?”

“Yeah, that’s what I was trying to triangulate on the plane from our last landmarks and the sun. After a few hours it turned into a really fucking long and narrow isosceles triangle, that’s for sure. We are waaaaay out here. Over a thousand klicks is my bet. And we’re still super far north of Hawai’i. Amy, there isn’t any island of any size on any map in the world at this location. But nobody seemed to want to pipe up about it in front of the Navy dudes so I left it…”

“Yeah, this whole thing still has that weird military vibe, for sure. It hasn’t gone away at all. But look, Jay. They’ve treated us really first class so far and I’ve definitely joined sketchier expeditions. Or at least I did when I was your age. But don’t worry. Alonso is one of my oldest friends. I trust him 100% and if he says he’ll take care of us then he’ll absolutely take care of us. And we already made the dendrological find of the century!”

Jay holds his dirty hands up. “Hey, no regrets here. Work with a living legend, newly returned from the dead, and chill out on mystery island for eight weeks? Fuck yeah. Living the dream here. Come on, Amy. Uhh… we can try to get back to camp this way. Or not. Wow. So overgrown. Not even any game trails leading to the water. Why not?”

“No large ruminants here? Or at least none who can make it down the cliff to the beach? Maybe there’s populations above in the interior. But also, no ticks yet. Another sign there’s a chance no large mammals live here. Oh my god this place is a pristine genetic reservoir. Come on. We have to tell Prad.”

They backtrack the way they came.

Ξ

Pradeep and Katrina are busy building their third platform of fallen branches at the edge of a cluster of trees. He wields a foldable handsaw and she cuts notches in them with a huge bowie knife. They’ve stacked nearly a hundred logs.

“God these smell so nice!” Katrina crushes up the leaves under Pradeep’s nose. “Smell.”

“Yes, bay leaves. Fantastic. Well. Our cooking will taste good at least. How’s this? Sturdy?” The logs lay on frames held together by twine. They look rough but mostly even.

“Let me see.” Flavia pushes past them and spreads a black tarp over the branches. Then she shoves her hard case onto it. “Solid so far.” Flavia puts her laptop bags on the platform and lifts herself onto it. It only sinks a bit in the sand. “Not bad. But what about my shower, eh? What am I supposed to do, just wait for rain?”

Katrina, unimpressed with Flavia’s complaints, gestures to the east. “I mean, the waterfall’s right there, love.”

“Ha. You mean the one that’s ten degrees? No, grazie.” Flavia takes out a laptop and boots it up. She attempts to pair it with her phone. “So of course there is no reception out here until I set up the node. What was the last signal anyone got?”

“Well…” Pradeep consults his phone. “At 2:36am PST I got my last text. A friendly reminder that it’s time to renew my car’s warranty before it’s too late.”

“So… that’s about nine hours, assuming we moved across two time zones.” Flavia tries to calculate. “I don’t know how fast that helicopter flew, but it must have been over two hours. What is a nautical mile again? Let’s say we were moving twenty knots after we transferred to the ship. Then we sailed for seven hours?”

Katrina pulls a fistful of hard candies out of her pocket and offers one to Pradeep and one to Flavia. “My guess is way over a thousand kilometers from the mainland. And, um, I heard we weren’t gonna have any internet out here at all.”

Flavia laughs, cracking the candy with her teeth. “Impossible. Why would Doctor Alonso bring a research mathematician out to the middle of nowhere if she can’t access her online resources? That’s why I brought a sat phone—” she proudly lifts the chunky unit “—and a platinum tier prescription paid by a special EU research fund at Torino.”

“Oh, thank god,” Katrina sighs. “I was afraid I’d lose track of the Marvel Universe out here for eight weeks with no—” She stops, registering a voice shouting at them from the beach. Katrina turns, shading her eyes, and spots a woman running at them from another Zodiac that has just landed on the sand.

Pradeep waves and calls out to her, but the tall woman is in no mood for introductions. She nears them, gasping, and reaches for the sat phone. “No! You CAN’T!” This is Esquibel Daine, a medical doctor in her early thirties, and her face is filled with fury.

Flavia screams as Esquibel pulls it from her grasp. She shouts in a mix of outraged Italian and English: “No! Chi sei? What are you doing—? Quello è il mio telefono! You can’t—!”

Esquibel lectures her in an East African accent. “The rules were NO INTERNET. We made it quite explicit. They will KICK US OFF the island if we give away our location.”

“Whoa. Damn. Okay, okay.” Katrina tries to play peacekeeper. “Just slow down, little Miss intensity. Who is they?”

“Rules?” Flavia waves the word away like it’s an annoying gnat. “I mean, it really read just as a suggestion…”

Esquibel ignores Flavia’s protests, frantically studying the sat phone. “Is this on? Are you transmitting?”

“Che pazzia!” Flavia throws her hands up, irate. “You can’t just take my phone from me! If I’d known this would be some kind of police state I wouldn’t have come!”

Pradeep assures Esquibel, “No. She’d just taken it out of its case. Nothing happened. Nothing is on. No signals have been sent. Everything is fine. Now. Who are you?”

“It isn’t?” Esquibel drops her hands in relief. “Oh, thank god.” She calls out to the two others still getting out of the Zodiac at the surf line. “Still secure! It isn’t on!” She glares at Flavia one last time, then jogs back to the others with the confiscated sat phone.

Amy and Jay appear, drawn by the raised voices. Jay watches the argument with concern but Amy only has eyes for one of the other figures at the water’s edge. He is older, a bearish man supporting his weight in the sand with an aluminum cane.

“Alonso…? Alonso!”

Amy rushes to him.

Ξ

By sunset, the last of the Zodiac deliveries are being dragged up the beach by the younger members of the team. The wind whips fog and whitecaps across the surface of the dark waves.

Sitting in a camp chair, Alonso watches in helpless frustration. He wishes he could help but he can’t. So he just grips his cane and tries to accept that others must do the little things for him.

Triquet, a field archaeologist dressed in a pink satin vest and comically-large work boots, swoons at Alonso’s feet. Triquet has green hair and multiple piercings, their slender non-binary body tattooed with ancient Olmec and Toltec symbols. “Heavens to Murgatroyd I’m tired.”

“I’m tired just watching you.”

Amy appears at Alonso’s shoulder with a steaming mug. “The magic of hot liquids.” She places the mug in Alonso’s grateful hands. Then her gaze falls upon the prostrate Triquet. “Oh, you poor thing. Would you like a cup too…?”

Alonso gestures at Triquet. “Doctor Amy Kubota, this is Doctor Triquet. Triq, Amy is one of my oldest friends.”

Amy curtsies and gives Triquet a dimpled smile. “I can already tell we’ll be great friends. Green tea?”

Triquet rolls onto their back and gasps. “Tea? You’re a goddess.”

Amy amends herself. “Best friends!”

Alonso says proudly, “Triquet just landed a full research position in field Archeology at Pitt. Real rising star here, Ames.”

“Oh, great,” Amy complains. “Way to make me feel old. I was an adjunct til I was almost forty!” With a rueful smile she shuffles over to her platform to fetch another mug. In the gathering gloom the others claim platforms and start unpacking their bags atop them. Jay strings a hammock between two bay trees.

Flavia watches him, a little resentful of the hammock’s crab-proof clearance. But his system looks more complicated than she cares to track and when he isn’t done until he clips in a bugnet layer, she waves a hand in front of her face and sighs. “You know, the bugs aren’t even that bad here. When I heard Pacific island I thought… Non lo so. It will be a tropical jungle like Borneo.”

Esquibel has added a couple layers now that the evening chill is setting in. She drags her duffel bag to a spot in the sand beside Pradeep’s platform, an apologetic smile on her face. “Excuse me.”

Pradeep crouches atop his platform, fastening the corners of his pyramid tent to the platform’s logs. He finds a warm smile for Esquibel. “Ah. She’s back. And we still haven’t been introduced. I’m Pradeep. From Amy’s lab.”

“Yes. Hello. I am Doctor Esquibel Daine. Forgive me for before. I was concerned about our operational security—”

“Understood.”

“—and then Doctor Alonso himself. I had to get back to him to make sure he could… well, it turns out he had no trouble, really… getting out.”

“Nice to meet you. I look forward to eight weeks of working quite closely and happily together. All of us.”

She takes his hint with a stiff nod. “Yes. Well. I appreciate your words, Pradeep. Thank you. I do too. Now.”

“Fantastic. How can I help you?”

“These platforms can move, right?”

“Move?”

She sighs in frustration. “I don’t understand why you spent the day building platforms in the first place. We can’t build structures here. Very important. And these are against the rules.” Esquibel points at Flavia’s platform and his own. “Hers and yours are visible to satellites. We need to at least get them under the trees.”

“Aha. I see. And that’s important, is it?”

Esquibel raises her hands in the air in appeal. “Did nobody read the documents? You signed them.”

“I did. I did, Doctor Daine. But they were heavily redacted by the time they got to us. One entire page was black lines except the word FACILITY. We really have very little idea of what we’re doing here. If there’s any chance—”

“Yes. Of course. All in due course. But could you help me get the platforms under the trees first? Right up against the ferns.”

Pradeep decides with a smile and a nod to cooperate. They approach Flavia’s platform to explain what they are doing. But she is having none of it.

“What, are you crazy? The ferns are where the crabs are.”

“What crabs?” Esquibel tries to lift one of the platform’s corners. “Could you please get off for a moment?”

“Not if you’re taking my platform to the ferns. Aren’t you listening? The crabs are the whole reason we built the platforms.”

“Crabs? What are these crabs?”

Pradeep leans in and quietly describes the crabs to Esquibel, his hands spreading wide to encompass their size.

Esquibel recoils in horror. Without a word she picks up her gear and places it on the last unclaimed platform. Then she helps Flavia and Pradeep drag their platforms as far away from the ferns as they can get, to the far side of the beach where the platforms of Katrina, Triquet, Alonso, and Amy cluster beside the bunker.

Amy overheard their argument over the quiet surf and wind. Solicitous, she calls out, “You know, Esquibel, the distribution of coconut crabs reaches the Indian Ocean. They might be familiar. Have you ever seen any on Kenyan beaches?”

Esquibel pulls her platform grimly along the beach. “How would I know? I’m from Nairobi. Have they attacked anyone yet?”

Jay, the only one left on the west side of the camp, swings in his hammock and calls out, “As far as we can tell they’re afraid of us. They scuttled into these ferns and haven’t been seen since.”

Alonso watches them labor, silhouetted by the orange of the sunset. Their voices soothe him and the jaggedness inside him eases, giving him respite. After a moment, another figure steps in front of the sunset, facing him. He smiles. “Ah. Katrina Oksana.”

“Señor Alonso.” In the fading light the young woman is like some mythical naiad emerging from the surf. She searches his face. “Mucho gusto. Amazing to meet you in the flesh.”

He laughs. “Ai, Dios mío, you have an Aussie accent. Of course. I never knew. All the times I thought I heard your voice in my head. It was completely wrong. And you’re just so, ehh…”

She laughs and swings her ponytail of straight auburn hair. “I know. I look sixteen. But don’t worry. I’ll be twenty-three this summer. I can take care of myself out here. I promise. Thank you so much for this. For everything.”

“No, it is I who must thank you. From the bottom of my heart. You were my only light for far too long in the darkness. You must tell me. How is Pavel? It was Gerasim’s last question.”

“Getting better. Every day. He still doesn’t really leave the house but now he has our mom to take care of him. She just retired and gave me a break so I can do this. With Pavel, it’s just day to day.”

“Yes. Yes, I know it is.”

Katrina seizes his hand. They share hot, bitter tears.

Amy has returned with Triquet’s mug. She watches Alonso’s encounter with Katrina, her face troubled. “Alonso, I’m sure you’re tired after the long haul but if there’s any chance we can get just a few answers tonight I know my whole team—and, well, everybody here—is just burning up with—”

“Of course. Of course.” Alonso wipes his eyes and faces them. “You all deserve to know everything. Well. At least everything I know. Which isn’t all that much. But I chose these teams for this research project because I knew you could all handle this situation the right way. Professionally, with ethics and rigor. But also with humanity.” His prelude silences the camp. They all hang on his words. “So what are your questions?”

“Um, where’s the fucking hotel bar, Alonso?” Flavia demands. “I mean, what am I supposed to spend my per diem on here?”

Everyone laughs and the tension eases. Alonso answers, “Well, the closest one is probably about 1900 kilometers east. In Crescent City, California, I figure.”

“Where are we?” Pradeep asks. “What is this island?”

Alonso says, “Its name is Lisica.”

Katrina claps. “Ha. Fox.”

Amy asks, “Lisica means fox?”

“In some Slavic languages, yeh.”

“Huh.” Amy calls out in the darkness. “Hey, Jay. Maybe that wasn’t a mustelid in the bunker this morning.”

“Aw, shit,” his voice emerges from the gloom. “Yeah that could have been a small Vulpes. I wish I’d seen its tail.”

“Fox Island,” Katrina declares.

“The foxiest of isles,” Triquet purrs. “That’s hot. So why doesn’t it show up on any maps, boss man? What’s the big secret here?”

“And why,” Flavia interjects, “did we all have to sign such a restrictive NDA, Alonso? I mean, a lot of those clauses are barely legal. And totally unenforceable. I’d like to see you try to—”

Esquibel turns on Flavia. “Could you please stop trying to break the rules every five minutes? There aren’t very many and they’re very important and this is a unique and important oppor—”

Pradeep interrupts her. “Yes, Doctor Daine. But whose rules?”

Esquibel sighs and makes a vague gesture. “Our bosses. Who are also our funding sources. Who are also our clients. Well, mostly. Anyway, who do you think is in charge?”

“That’s right, mi amigos,” Alonso says quietly. “We are at the very tail end of a decades-long classified U.S. Air Force program. That concrete shoebox there must have been some kind of listening post. Who knows? It’s all they built here in nearly seventy years. Lisica is a hidden place. The prevailing currents and winds all lead away from here. It’s almost always under this fogbank. It wasn’t even discovered until the twentieth century. But now there’s a new global satellite agreement about to go into effect and they can’t keep it a secret any longer. So a couple Air Force scientists met me at my debriefing and pitched this project to me. Eight weeks on a pristine island to categorize as much of it as we can before the wrappers come off and the whole world learns of Lisica.”

A moment of silence, then Flavia laughs. “That is such bullshit! Impossible. Impossible. A secret island? No. In this day and age? One hundred percent impossible!”

Alonso nods in agreement. “That’s what I said. But Colonel Baitgie, he’s the commanding officer in charge of the Lisica mission, said this isn’t even the only one. There is an unspoken agreement among the governments and corporations of the world who own and operate satellites to keep places like this one secret. Who knows how many corners of the world remain hidden. Nice guy. A trifle too religious for my tastes but he did take good care of me once they got me stateside.”

“Debriefing?” Pradeep is only twenty-four, but his gravity is that of an older man. “Doctor Alonso, we’ve all heard mention now of… well, something. Some ordeal you underwent? But nobody—”

“I was tortured.” Alonso’s voice is a rasp. “In a gulag.”

Pradeep gasps and drops his eyes. “Ah. I see. I’m very sorry.”

Amy steps behind Alonso and puts a hand on his shoulder. “Oh, god, was it really that bad? Alonso and his partner Charles Wu were on a Central Asian paleogenomics field assay when we lost touch with them five years ago near the Kyrgyzstan border. We still haven’t heard any details…”

“One day we were at the dig, just me and a few local guides and laborers,” Alonso recounts in a rough voice. “Next thing we know we’re surrounded by gunmen. No insignia. Speaking one of the Turkic languages. That’s all I know about them. They said there was a fight back at basecamp. Charlie died, Amy. Charlie and Nadya both. I couldn’t get back in time. Charlie died in my arms.”

“Oh, Alonso, no…”

“Baitgie swore.” Alonso’s eyes swim with tears. “He swore he’d take care of Minnie and Sarah. Said Charlie would get a pension. The whole deal. You have to help me hold him to it.”

“Yes. I will. Minnie had another baby, you know. Like six months after Charlie left. A little boy.”

Alonso’s face finally crumples in grief. “Oh… He never knew…”

Ξ

In the gray light of the minutes before dawn, Flavia’s screams split the still air. Birds wing away from trees. Someone in a tent grunts. Jay’s head is the first to emerge from his hammock. Esquibel is the first to get her boots on and stumble toward the waterfall.

She gets to the edge of the wide dark pool moments later, reaching into a black satchel on her hip. But Jay and Katrina are right behind her so she removes her hand from it.

Flavia screams again and they all look in fear at the source of the sound. Then their faces split into relieved smiles.

Flavia is naked, turned away, standing on a rocky outcrop near the base of the waterfall. Every time a blast of cold water shocks her she screams again.

Jay laughs. “Signorina got her shower after all!”

In the luminous dawn, Flavia’s marbled pale skin and dark curls at the base of the falls transforms her into a Raphael masterpiece. She turns and with a wave beckons them to join her.

Ξ

As the camp wakes up, Triquet brings a tray piled with energy bars to Amy’s platform. Amy hands them a steaming mug in exchange. The pair eat their bars and share the silence, looking out at the beach and the lagoon beyond.

Alonso sits out there in his camp chair, at the surf’s edge, staring at the horizon. Triquet points at him. “I had a border collie used to do that.”

“He hasn’t seen her in five years.”

Triquet shakes their head, puzzled. “I once saw Miriam Truitt give a presentation on the dating of Eocene ultramafic lavas. She somehow made the subject fascinating. What a communicator. But I just can’t see it. They must be the oddest of couples.”

Amy only smiles. “He and I were lovers in grad school. Did Alonso ever tell you?” She looks sidelong at Triquet who plays along with a cartoonish shocked face. “We were so happy. Taking blood samples from wild horses in Nevada. But then Miriam showed up. And it was over.” Triquet makes a sympathetic face. “No no. Not in a bad way. We all became the best of friends. But they just fit together so well. Better than any two people ever should. And they’re both such giants in their fields. We could tell, even then, that they were on a whole different level of awareness. It was like a, like being in the middle of some implausible Hollywood storyline. When you ever hear the phrase ‘they were made for each other,’ it was coined for Miriam and Alonso.”

“And now he’s waiting for her.”

Amy smiles, her face full of tenderness. “That’s Alonso.”

Ξ

The hours pass but the sun never breaks through the low maritime layer. The sea is green. The gulls and terns cry on the thermals and the sea lions return, watching the humans ashore as they float with their glassy black eyes just breaking the surface of the water.

Everyone but Alonso is busy at the camp, building long lab tables under the trees from more logs and repurposed plastic containers.

Esquibel curses at the medical station she is building and holds up her hands in surrender. “I have no idea how to create sanitary conditions here until I can get a roof over my head.”

“Oh, we got a few tricks on archaeology digs,” Triquet tells her. “Not like clean rooms, but they should be sufficient. And it looks like fresh water shouldn’t be an issue here.”

Esquibel makes a face. “I’d like to get it tested first. But until we can do that, we have to boil or filter everything. Right, everyone? The water is suspect until further notice. I don’t want to have to treat any of you for giardiasis or, God forbid, lepto.”

Flavia points at the bunker and swears, “I am not going in there. Until it has been like cleansed with fire. All the crabs and snakes and spiders. Nuke it from orbit. Then maybe. We’ll see.”

Amy tut-tuts her. “Well that’s not very good guest behavior. And Jay wouldn’t get his specimens. Give us just a few days to catalog what we can and then we’ll be able to clean it out and move in.”

Pradeep holds up a cupped hand and stares at the sky. “Is it starting to rain? We should rig tarps. Can I get a hand?”

Instead, Katrina points at the horizon. “Look, a ship.”

At the water’s edge, Alonso stands leaning on his cane.

A sleek gray catamaran-style research vessel flying a Japanese flag pulls up at the mouth of the lagoon and drops anchor. Another Zodiac is lowered and eventually it arrows toward them.

Miriam Truitt stands in the prow, auburn hair streaming back. She strains toward Alonso. The rain starts to fall more heavily. When the craft beaches she leaps out and runs, as fast as she’s ever run, through the surf and deep sand to him. He hobbles toward her and a gasp of grief escapes her as she sees how damaged he is. When she reaches him she wraps him carefully in her arms and kisses his face, again and again, in benediction and worship. “I will never… ever… let you go… ever again.”

“Ah, Novia,” Alonso finally allows himself to groan, the pain so long buried finally rising to the surface. “They hurt me so bad.”

She hugs him possessively. “Never again. Mi niño is back.”

But he casts his head down and shakes it no. “No. The boy is gone. And—and I’m not sure how much of me is left.”

“Don’t say that.” She grips him fiercely again. “We get to grow old together. You promised.”

The rain mixes with their tears. They shiver, holding each other. Finally Alonso sags against her and allows himself to be loved.

Two others get out of the Zodiac. Maahjabeen Charrad is a stern-faced oceanographer in a teal headscarf who is preoccupied with corralling the two single-seat sea kayaks they tow. When she finally gets them both above the tideline she straightens and frowns at the island and its occupants like someone who is beginning a prison sentence.

The other, Mandy Hsu, is a coltish young woman who fights to disentangle herself from piles of cords and straps at the bottom of the boat. She waves at someone in the camp and bounces forward, eager and happy. “Esquibel! Esquibel! It’s me! Mandy!”

At the camp, all the others turn to Esquibel in surprise. At first she frowns to hear her name called out, but when Esquibel hears the name Mandy her stern face splits into the most beautiful grin, a sight none of them have yet seen, and she runs toward the girl with a cry of joy. “Mandy! I can’t believe it! Why didn’t anyone tell me you were coming? Oh, it’s Mandy! My Mandy girl!”

They hug like sisters.