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The shriek tore through the humid air like a blade, sharp, sudden, and unmistakably human. Beki rose from the mango tree she'd napping under, her rider's reflexes snapping her attention toward the chaos. Mali, the Laotian stablehand who'd never so much as flinched at a rearing reindeer, was sprinting down the crushed-shell path like the dead were chasing her. Beki watched as Mali vanished toward the beach, her panicked cries of "Sua! Sua!" dissolving into the crash of waves.
Beki didn't run. She exhaled through her nose, slow and deliberate, the way she'd calm a spooked animal. "What the fuck was that all about?" The question coiled her gut as she moved toward the storeroom to investigate; something had rattled Mali to the core, beyond superstition.
The door hung ajar, swaying gently on its hinges. Peering in, Beki saw the usual jumble of boxes, bags, and crates. What in the hell had scared Mali? Nothing seemed amiss. Beki's fingers flexed instinctively toward the knife sheathed at her thigh as she stepped into the storeroom.
Darkness swallowed the far corner. Her pupils dilated, grasping at shapes that refused to resolve. Then, movement. A rustle, the wet click of lips parting. A growl rolled through the blackness, low and throbbing, the sound a tiger might make stretching awake in its cage. Beki's pulse hammered against her ribs. Not in fear, but in anticipation.
From around a stack of crates. Two amber eyes blinked open, luminous as struck flint. A snow leopard slunk into the dusty light. The creature's tongue flicked out, tasting the air between them. Beki didn't lower her blade. She knew the way predators thought; she had fought off several that mistook smallness for weakness. The leopard's pupils narrowed to vertical slits. Then it laughed.
"Impossible." Beki's knuckles whitened around the hilt. First, snow leopards didn't live in the tropics, especially not on this island, where every creature was accounted for, every gene mapped by her team of meticulous biologists. Second, the coloring. The beast was wrong; its coat burned orange as a furnace, with blackened circuitry patterns. Glyphs shimmered along its spine, pulsing in time with its ragged breaths.
"Fuck me. That's not fur. It's a gaming skin. That little bastard," Beki groaned as she realized what she was looking at. A hologram. A very realistic hologram. And she knew who was behind it. That immature little genius from Electronics and AI.
"Biraj!" Her roar shook the rafters. "Get your skinny Nepalese ass out of here right now! You think this is fucking funny?" The projection flickered, pixels dissolving into the shape of a wiry-limbed boy folded behind the crates, his dark eyes wide with the thrill of near-discovery. He clutched a hexagonal emitter to his chest like a stolen jewel. "Uh. Maybe?" His voice cracked halfway through the syllable. The holographic snow leopard flickered out with a sound like tearing silk.
Beki advanced as slowly as a glacier. Every muscle in her body coiled with centuries of practiced dominance, the exact pressure she'd use to corner a stallion testing its boundaries for the first time. Biraj scrambled backward and realizedhe was trapped. His breath came fast, but not from fear. The little shit was enjoying this. She could smell it, that hot, peppery adrenaline mixed with the synthetic cinnamon of his neural enhancers. His pupils were blown wide, drinking her in like she was the first real thing he'd ever seen.
Her sandal pinned the emitter to the floor with a crunch that made him whimper. Not the sound she wanted. Beki wanted the moment his bravado shattered, that delicious hitch when clever boys realize they're not playing games anymore. She crouched until her shadow swallowed him whole. "Five times," she hissed. "Five times I've had to deal with your tricks. Five times you promised to halt your shenanigans." She grabbed a handful of hair, yanking his head back to expose the frantic flutter of his pulse. "Know what happens to colts who can't learn?"
Biraj's breath hitched when she flipped him facedown, his cheek pressed
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