Zhou Dahai took another step toward Sora. The rocks behind her were slick with spray, and the two packets of ration food pressed against her chest made it awkward to keep her balance.
“I’m asking you nicely,” he said. “Don’t turn this into a problem.”
“You already made it a problem.” Sora tried to keep her voice even. “I found the food. I’m not hiding it. We can take it to the collection point and sort it out there.”
“Who decided there was a collection point?” Zhou glanced toward the flat rock where she’d left the first three packets. “You? Or was it Reed?”
Sora held his gaze but didn’t answer. She wasn’t going to tell him that Kai had chosen the spot. She had seen enough of the way Zhou watched people to know that he’d use any excuse to turn the discovery into an argument with Kai.
“I chose the spot,” she said. “It’s flat, and I couldn’t carry everything at once.”
“A junior intern setting rules.” Zhou gave a quiet laugh. “That’s new.”
He held out his hand again. “Give them here. Ms. Voss said recovered supplies go back to camp. I’ll hand them to her and make sure you get credit.”
“Then bring me her instructions.” Sora heard her own voice sharpen. “If she wants them, she can tell me herself.”
The smile dropped from Zhou’s face. He looked genuinely offended, as though she’d broken some unspoken rule by refusing to be intimidated. Back at the office, he rarely spoke to interns unless he needed someone to fetch a document or take blame for a missed deadline. He wasn’t used to having one question him.
“Don’t get smart with me.” He lunged for the packets.
Sora twisted away, shielding the food with her body. His fingers caught the edge of one foil wrapper, then slipped off. She stumbled sideways and her heel scraped the edge of a narrow gap between two boulders.
“Stop it!” she shouted. “They’re mine. I found them!”
“Yours?” Zhou grabbed the back of her shirt and yanked her toward him. “You think you own anything out here?”
The fabric bit into her neck as she stumbled backward. Her left knee struck the rock with a crack that she felt all the way up her thigh. Pain flashed white behind her eyes. Blood welled beneath the torn skin, but her hands stayed clamped around the packets.
Zhou jerked her shirt again. She lost her footing and fell forward, catching herself badly against the stone. One packet skidded out of her arms and slid into a deep crevice. The other remained trapped beneath her forearms as she curled around it.
He kicked her between the shoulder blades.
Sora’s chin struck the rock. Her teeth cut the tip of her tongue, and a coppery taste filled her mouth. She tried to crawl toward the packet that had fallen into the crack, but when she shifted her weight, her injured knee folded beneath her.
Zhou put his shoe on the back of her hand.
“Last chance,” he said, breathing hard now. “Let go.”
The sole pressed down until her fingers began to go numb. Sora made a small sound she hated herself for making, but she didn’t release the foil. She thought of the purchasing office at Aetheris, of the inventory sheets she’d once stayed late to reconcile, of the way people like Zhou treated food, money, and authority as if they automatically belonged to whoever had the better title.
She had found five packets. Five. It was the first useful thing she’d managed to find, and she was already being punished for it.
“No,” she said.
Zhou leaned down and caught her hair, hauling her head up far enough that she had to look at him. “You think you can complain to HR? Call the police? File a case when we get home?” His breath smelled sour from hunger and dehydration. “There’s no HR here, Sora. Nobody’s coming to rescue you from me.”
He pried at her fingers one by one. She clenched them harder. Her nails scraped the foil, and pain shot through her wrist when he bent her thumb back.
“Stop!” she gasped. “Please—just stop!”
He slapped her across the face.
The blow snapped her head sideways. For a moment, the sea and the rocks blurred into a single white glare, and a high ringing filled her ears. Her hand opened before she could make it close again. The packet slipped free.
Zhou snatched it up. He crossed to the flat rock, swept the three packets she had already carried there into his arm, and tucked all four against his side. The fifth remained lodged deep in the crack where the rocks narrowed. He glanced at it, decided he couldn’t reach it quickly, and left it behind.
“See?” he said, straightening his shirt. “You should’ve listened the first time.”
Sora lay curled in a hollow between the rocks. Her cheek was swelling, blood ran from the corner of her mouth, and her knee continued to bleed through the ripped fabric. When she tried to push herself up, pain buckled her arm and she fell back against the stone.
Zhou had started to leave when he looked back at her. “One more thing. You tell anyone about this, and when we get home, I’ll make sure you’re charged with theft and assault. You know how this works. I’ve spent fifteen years in legal. You’re a nobody, and you’ve got no money for a decent lawyer.”
He waited, as though he expected her to beg him to reconsider. Sora stared at the blood on her knuckles instead.
“My parents paid for my education one term at a time,” she said, so quietly she wasn’t sure he heard. “You don’t get to threaten them.”
Zhou’s face tightened. Then he turned away and made his way back toward the mangroves, the packets tucked under his arm.
Sora watched him go until the rocks hid him from view. She wanted to chase him. She wanted to scream loud enough for everyone on the island to hear. But when she tried to stand, her knee gave way and she dropped hard onto her hands.
Wind slipped through the holes Zhou had torn in her shirt. The cold stone pressed against her cheek. She could still smell the food on the foil, a faint dry grain scent that seemed cruelly close when she could no longer reach it.
She stayed there until the pain stopped coming in waves and settled into something steadier. Then she dragged herself toward the flat rock, using the boulders to pull herself along. She didn’t know how long it took. By the time she reached the collection point, there was nothing left to collect—only a shallow scrape in the stone where the packets had been.
She lowered herself beside it and tried to think.
Kai had told her to call if she found something she couldn’t move. She hadn’t called. She hadn’t expected another person to appear and simply take it. Back in the office, there were policies and cameras and people who might at least pretend to care what happened. Here, Zhou had looked at her lying on the ground and decided the food mattered more than what he’d done to get it.
Sora pressed her uninjured hand over her mouth, trying to stop the shaking. It wasn’t working. She couldn’t tell whether she was cold, frightened, or furious enough to be sick.
Then she heard footsteps on the rocks farther down the shore.
She tried to call out, but her throat caught. The only sound that came was a thin, broken breath.