The Island.
It barely needed its name qualified, since everyone knew about it. The Mox’s Island, the Centaur Island, the Isle of the Centaurs — but it may as well have simply been The Island, because nowhere else on Earth was an island like it. The videos were impossible, but they were real, and the sworn testimony of the occasional visitor confirmed it. A few of the centaurs were even allowed to say a word or two on camera — under Lakapius’s and Argiala’s strict control, of course. Every government in the world hated it — the secrecy, the fact that the Moxes had power that they couldn’t have, the sheer unwillingness to cooperate with any attempts at diplomacy or interviews.
As it loomed up ahead, a black dot bouncing on the horizon as her speedboat raced toward it, Elle knew what she was getting into.
Far in the Atlantic, beyond the diplomatic control of the Canaries, a singular dot isolated from the rest of the world, not just in distance but in philosophy and in *species*, it was almost a reality unto itself. Rumor had it that Lakapius ruled it with an iron fist, and that despite its idyllic pastoral appearance, it was armed to the teeth. Rumor had it that Gallia, the supermodel so famous she only needed one name, had been kidnapped and taken here and transformed against her will — or maybe she secretly snuck here to escape and never came back? Rumor had it — honestly, every rumor circulated about the place. There was no Internet here, no newspapers, no TV, no radio, no media, nothing to influence the rumor mill for better or for worse. So the outside world had to contend with guessing, the occasional video from the Moxes, and whatever they could figure out from the blurry satellite photos.
And that was why Elle was here.
Any reporter could bust a Costa Rican drug lord, or spill the beans on corporate corruption, or take down a government official. But the Moxes? They had billions of dollars, their own private island, and the ability to perform genetic modifications that crossed the line past fantastic into pure fantasy. The island was journalistic gold, and at last it had proven too tantalizing for Elle to resist. She’d argued with her editor, convinced him she was going whether he liked it or not, flown to Spain and then the Canaries, paid the boat captain handsomely for risking these waters, and now here she was, only a few miles off the shore of the most isolated slip of land in the world, racing toward it through the brisk salty air, trying to reach it before the sun crept over the horizon.
She watched, taking a deep breath, and pulled her jacket around her shoulders. The speedboat captain nodded to her and pointed. They’d selected a landing spot before leaving, a narrow beach on the south shore. He’d drop her off, and after she landed, she was on her own for the next twenty-four hours. If she survived, he’d be back to pick her up just before sunrise the next morning, but if there was even the slightest hint that he was in danger, she was on her own for good. This was risky, but there was no better way to get the story.
A half-mile out, the boat slowed, and came to a stop. The captain lowered the engine to idle. He loosed the straps on the inflated raft, and lowered it into the water.
“Are you certain that you want this, lady?” he said to her, his Spanish accent thick in the humid air.
“Absolutely,” said Elle, her eyes steely and hard. She brushed her blond ponytail off her shoulder. “Just make sure you’re back tomorrow, on time.”
The boat captain grimaced, but said nothing, helped her into the raft, and lowered her backpack in after her. “Oh four hundred hours,” he said. “Not a minute later, or I do leave without you.”
“Got it,” said Elle.
“Good luck. You will need it,” he said. The captain nodded to her, turned the wheel, and the boat spun about and then sped off, disappearing into the night.
She watched him a moment, then took hold of the paddles and started rowing. The ocean rolled a little here, but it was fairly calm, and she made slow but steady progress, inching toward the shoreline. By her watch, it was still well before five, but even so, a hint of orange was starting to creep into the sky in the distance. If she didn’t want to be discovered, she had to move faster: So she redoubled her efforts, hoping that all her rowing workouts would give her an advantage. The shoreline crept closer and closer, and finally, just before the whole sky began to grow lighter, she reached the beach, and came to a stop on the sand.
Quickly, she clambered out and pulled the inflatable up on the shore behind her. Tugging, she hauled it up the beach and into the tree-line beyond. A thicket grew here, a tight stand of trees right on the edge of the shore, and it was her best possibility to both observe and hide. She would have loved to get a good view of the Grecian-style temples that the satellite photos said lay up on the north side of the Island, but this would have to do. Even a few minutes of video and audio of *centaurs*, of real centaurs, uncut and unedited and unsupervised, would be worth the entire effort of the trip, to say nothing of the book she could write afterward about what she’d seen. If she got really lucky, there might even be a Pulitzer waiting for her at the other end of this.
She hid the inflatable under some bushes, and packed some leaves in against it, then got her camera and recording gear out of her backpack. Her plan was simply to lay in the trees in camouflage gear, buried in the leaves under the bushes, with her telephoto lens and a long-distance microphone, and pick up whatever she could during the day, and then escape under the cover of nightfall.
It was a good plan.
She lay in the leaves, camera at the ready, waiting for the sun to come up, certain that as risky as this was, it was the story of a lifetime…