Free Icon by Genevieve Valentine

young, when a woman had lowered her camera and pointed at the forest and told her she could save it all. Suyana hadn’t believed it even then, but it was something to fight for, and that had been enough.
    â€œLet me know when we need to move,” she’d said. “I’ll work on Ethan. We’ll get over there. Then I’ll meet whoever I need to meet. No other promises.”
    Columbina grinned. “After your premiere, then. We’ll talk about Sotalia. See you soon.”
    After she was gone, Suyana stood a long time just at the edge of the stalls under the shade of a tree, where no one could tell what she was looking at. Daniel was across the street. He had looked very carefully at Suyana all the time Columbina was leaving, like he was trying to make sure Columbina wouldn’t register to anyone checking the feed. Some girl had excused herself to walk past Daniel’s mark, and that was all.
    When Magnus came to pick her up, she’d been sitting on a bench, looking at the dot of green the park made among the towers of cement.
    â€œDidn’t you buy anything?” Magnus asked as he opened the door for her, an edge in his voice.
    She didn’t look for Daniel then; if he was worrying for her, it wouldn’t do her any good.
    â€œNothing’s worth it,” she said.
    Ã— × × × × × ×
    She left the white jacket in the car. Her earrings—silver, purchased in Lima—brushed her shoulders, and as they walked from the car up the dirt path to the facility, her heels sank a little into the ground with every step.
    It was ridiculous, but it worked enough as cover; grumbling about the soil gave her the chance to lean close to Ethan’s side for a moment, so he couldn’t see herlooking around like there was some better path, so she could mark where the perimeter cameras were and see where the brush was deepest around them.
    The canopy rose up behind the squat, bulging facility like it was trying to wave her over; the tops of the trees were swaying slightly from monkeys or the wind, and there were so many insects on the trunks that out of the corner of your eye it looked like the forest was breathing.
    It was just as she’d remembered it, a long time ago.
    â€œHow’d they get this place so deep into the jungle?” Ethan wondered, frowning at the pile of lumber beside the facility (made of the interlocking-pod system ecologists usually used on uneven terrain, lumps of unrisen bread dough three stories high).
    â€œThe lumber roads were probably already here,” she said. “Or the path for the gas pipeline.”
    Ethan glanced at her sidelong, just keenly enough to worry her, and she bristled and shrugged and said, “What? Magnus tells me the news!” as if she was offended and not terrified, and he cracked a smile a second too late.
    Their guides were waiting just inside the doors. He was a politician, you could tell from a hundred feet, and she was an administrator in the genetics division who looked like she hated them being there and was afraid of saying something she shouldn’t. The photographer, who had a site pass but nonational badge, took four or five pictures that wouldn’t come close to print quality and then vanished into the open hatch between two pods.
    As they went inside, Suyana messaged Magnus: Are you trying to get here?
    Both of the guides were very helpful and very enthusiastic, and talked at great length about their plans for seed preservation, and steered Suyana and Ethan away from any of the pods where people were working and any meeting room that had a whiteboard in it. Windows opened onto the forest everywhere you looked. In three directions it felt like the green had walked up and pressed its face against the glass, the plants were so crowded. In the fourth, the mud flat sat outside the window like an accusation.
    â€œSo, uh, you guys piggyback this location off the