Underwater, you pivot and land, feet first, on the bottom of the trench dug to keep Megs out of the remnants of Hong Kong.

  “Fighters, check in,” says Holly.

  The radio crackles. “Mazu,” says Lau, tinny and flat, “taking point, heading southwest from Central, Fishhawk alongside. Will read back at Discovery. Endpoint targeting Lamma.”

  “Keep an eye on visibility, Mazu,” says Holly. “I’m reading a drop to 45 FNU by target waypoint. Sea Witch, do you copy?”

  The rightmost dot on your wireframe flickers. “I copy,” says Venkatesh. “Sea Witch and Morgana following Mazu at twenty meters, matching Discovery waypoint target.”

  “Barracuda?” says Holly.

  “Heading west to Ma Wan,” says Carol, “with Tokyo Calling trailing at twenty meters.”

  “Have Tokyo Calling alongside,” says Holly.

  The radio murmurs. Then: “Copy that.”

  “Amphitrite and Ghost Eater will keep post within range of Central,” says Holly. “Ping back if you encounter trouble.”

  “Mazu departing,” says Lau.

  Five seconds later, “Sea Witch departing. Godspeed, ladies.”

  Then the only sound is your own breathing, amplified within the tiny space of the helmet. Along the dark inner curve you watch the bright dots of your teammates turn out and break away: LAU and DAR, then VEN and WAL. (You can turn those off, you know; they’re meant to assist in leadership’s later perusal of mission footage; while you’re in the cockpit I interpret them for you right in your brain, better than any textual aid could.)

  Over the radio Carol says, “Barracuda departing.”

  That’s your cue. You come into motion: slowly, then all at once, careful not to exceed the actuation limits, the thunder of your human heart echoing your machine one.

  It is quiet going out here, just the two of you, picking your way across the sea floor. In the beam of your headlight, particulate swirls through the gray gloom like ash or snow. There isn’t much detritus where you’re walking—the wide channel between Ma Wan and New Kowloon is emptier than the urban ruins of the islands around it, and old wars with dead Megs have not left much of a trail this side of the currents. Their cast-offs rise here and there from the seabed like the ribs of lost gods.

  Ahead of you, to the west, Lantau rises out of the murk—hardly visible on your visuals, but it is a great dark wall on your wireframe. Beyond it, you know by the ring of little red points I have highlighted on your HUD, lies the minefield that marks the borders of monster territory, and beyond that, open sea. It has been a long time since anything bigger than fifty feet long and not friendly to the New Republic has passed through those mines. Still, seeing them makes you look away, back toward Carol, and the ruins of Old Hong Kong.

  One foot, then another. You are drawing out of range of the shared frequency. I switch you over quietly to the private channel between you and Carol, which to you feels like a change in the ambient hum in your ears, just below the range of audible sound.

  “On your left,” says Carol.

  You’ve been so lost in navigating the topology of your wireframe that you hadn’t noticed she’d come to a stop. Your chassis groans under the strain of sidestepping her; does she notice how clumsy you are? Surely, but she says nothing. Then you are standing next to her, staring into the murk, a hybrid of sonar overlaid with visuals, true and false color blended.

  You say, “What am I looking at?”

  “Discovery Bay,” Carol says.

  No shit. “What about it?”

  Whatever. Since she won’t answer, you try to figure it out yourself. Before you stretches the dredged expanse of the space between the old heart of Hong Kong and the islands of its western territories—Lantau and its smaller kin, all now long sunken. From sims you recall that the confluence of powerful east- and west-flowing currents in the channel sets the water roiling, explains how muddled sonar and visuals alike are here (you remember the disastrous run with Lau, set somewhere north of where you are, where the Meg seemed to materialize right out of the darkness in front of you).

  But visuals and sonar are not all you have. There are layers to your sight—to my sight, borrowed by you—spatially, temporally, sensorily. You command these up from the depths now, and I proffer them.

  Your wireframe map comes alive with thermal readings, wake patterns, chemical analyses, a shifting kaleidoscope that overlays old with new. The averages of data over the past thirty days appear as bright spots in the dark, and from these, shapes emerge: constellations showing you where the sea comes alive with traces of the monsters you hunt.

  Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

  Gutierrez had said aldehydes, right? The residue of fresh cryobloom knocked from the back or ankle or shell of some wandering beast, bled chemicals, a kind of stress-based release that had clouded the water around it. Swirling tracks of it cover your map in false blues and greens, riding up from the south, past the mines between Lantau and Old Hong Kong—this must be what Gutierrez had been following during your drill, so it makes sense that Lau and Dare and the others are tracking it back down the same path.

  And the signature, yes, closely matches what I have in my archives for specimen 2940 C. But it is not quite the same.

  The team seemed not to have expected this, till recently. What did they expect? Exactly how many targets are there? So lost are you in thought that you don’t notice you’re coming up on the Ma Wan waypoint—until, abruptly, you do.

  Except Carol’s still moving, and she hasn’t slowed down. “Hey,” you say, and when she doesn’t answer, you rally your frustration and try again: “Hey. Where the fuck are we going?”

  In the glow of your headlamp, Barracuda cuts a long, lean black figure through the water. When she stops and turns, you squint instinctively against the glare of her own light—though, again, I have processed all your incoming visuals into a range that won’t hurt your eyes, you’re welcome. For a Titan, the gesture is abrupt.

  “Kanagawa,” Carol says, “it would be pretty lame if all you ever did was follow orders.”

  You just stare at her and think: Oh fuck, is she really trying to bully you into doing something stupid all the way out here? What is this—hazing? Worse—a test of loyalty, arranged by Meng? No; Carol doesn’t seem to give enough of a shit to be the sort of teacher’s pet to do that. And Meng doesn’t strike you as that paranoid.

  So you could switch frequencies, tell Central right now that one of their own is disobeying orders. Carol would hear you—the shared frequency broadcasts to everyone on it, and she’d know the moment you swapped off this one; she’s not stupid enough not to guess why—is she? You don’t want to risk that.

  Or you could keep your mouth shut and see what she’s trying to do, and, if it’s stupid enough, you could tell Meng anyway, after the fact. Or not.

  So you say, “I don’t.”

  “I know,” she says, and starts moving again.

  Was that meant to insult you? Whatever. You start up again, as graceful as she isn’t: strange how, even though the cradle and the vividness of your helmet feed makes your Titan body feel real, the slowness of it reminds you that you still aren’t used to it, not yet.

  “Your heat sig is too high,” says Carol.

  Damn it, why does everyone keep telling you that? “Answer me first,” you say. “Why are we out here?”

  “Because I need to check something,” says Carol. “Lower your sig first.”

  “What’s wrong with my sig?”

  “It’s too loud. Could see it five body lengths out.” She starts moving again. “If you want to come with me, be quieter.”

  Fine. You pull up internals and start looking for ways to dim your signature—reactor coolant up, vents down, making it burn hotter but tighter. By the time you’re done she’s almost completely off your wireframe, and you have to tax your engines for half a second to not lose sight, causing your sig to spike all over again.

  For fuck’s sake. Lantau isn’t an easy island to navigate; fewer urban ruins here, but the lower slopes, those still underwater, were once carpeted with trees that now make for a briar patch around your twenty-foot ankles. Careful, a little unsteady, you pick your way over the flooded hills, eye on your internals: stay quiet, stay quiet, stay quiet. Why quiet? What is she tracking?

  She comes into view, now, for the water isn’t quite as turbid here, with less to kick it up. She’s standing with her back to you, the silhouette of the Barracuda in sharp relief: in the glow of your lamp you see the black-blue sheen of its carapace washed in undertones of soft green, the sleek curves of the shoulders, the back of the long teardrop shape of her helm pointing toward you like Buddha’s accusing finger. And in the light of her own headlamp there is Buddha himself, resting on his side in the embrace of the hills, the patinaed bronze pockmarked with algae and age.

  The water trembles. Carol’s dropping into a crouch, slow and graceful. (In your head you count out the limit speed of limb actuation for Titans: one heartbeat, then another.) “Look,” she says.

  You look. The layers of your visuals come into focus again, and you notice that there’s a tiny bright spot on your aldehyde layer right where she’s looking, by the canted, fish-swarmed palm of Buddha. Traces of a Meg—one who’s returned, over and over, to this exact point, recently.

  “So this is why we came out here?” you say.

  “Yeah,” Carol says. “To intercept it.”

  You don’t understand. “Central directed them”—you double-check the Lamma waypoint on your map—“straight south.”

  “Because that’s where the tracks lead,” Carol says. “But it’s not where the targets are going to go.”

  Bullshit. “Holly said—”

  “Holly’s wrong,” says Carol.

  (You could ask her now, you know. The thought’s in your head. It’s just the two of you. You could ask. It would be a terrible idea, but what hasn’t been lately?)

  While you agonize, while Carol watches, it strikes you—the echoes of some distant roar, which you do not hear but feel, a great blunt wave that rolls into and over your chassis and shakes you to your core.

  The fish scatter in a storm of silver light. You look at Carol, and she looks at you, and you both turn your headlamps off at the same time. The moment has passed.

  “You can still go back,” says Carol. “If you want. Talk to Holly and Central. Up to you.”

  “Just tell me where to stand,” you say, “so I don’t fuck up this time.”