I meet my own ghost in the visor—my shape flattened, my heat turned coin-brittle by his light—and I let the door take the hit. The panel kisses steel with a soft-clang I don’t like, but his arm is slow in the quarter second I need.
“Hold—” he says.
“No,” I breathe, and the syllable is a hinge. I pivot into the dead zone by the console, the way the architects intended no one to do, and his beam paints the empty corridor where I’m not. His radio coughs alive.
“Catwalk two, copy?” a voice crackles. “We’ve got a—”
“Intruder,” he answers, breath clipped.
The word stains the hall. Panic rises, quick and animal, but I trap it like a bird and fold its wings with my hands. I slide down the wall, counting racks to the service bend, every rib measuring noise, every tooth chewing on the same fact: the alarm’s too early. Four minutes early. My three-minutes-fast tide clock is screaming wrong in my head.
“Where?” another radio barks. “Predictive sweep says Lab C perimeter.”
There it is: either a mole or the model. Either someone sold me by name or the math learned my gait. I don’t have luxury for which.
“North corridor,” the visor says. “Door wobble shows use. Camera dead patch at—”
“I’m already gone,” I whisper, and I shoulder the service hatch that remembers me from entry.
The barge’s spine shudders. The algae light behind me makes a hospice of the machines I robbed, their glow holy to no one. I drop into the duct, fingers scraping the little reflectors I laid like crumbs, and the metal bites my palms hard enough to write. I crawl on elbows to kill the echo, breath shallow, drives hot against my ribs, and I keep my wet hand over the seam where the graze will be if I earn it.
“Catwalk two to Control,” the visor says into his chest, voice closer now, above me. “Initiate sweep pattern Delta. Drain outflow cams. Rotate spot north.”
“Delta confirmed,” Control replies. Drones thrum—cicada chorus keyed to menace—and the hull groans a bored warning to the coming rain.
“Copy,” I mouth, because mocking helps me think.
Two meters. Three. The duct elbows left toward the intake. I taste iodine and a wet battery. I hear my father’s lesson from our pier days: water keeps a ledger; you don’t pay twice. On the second elbow, something sharp kisses my calf; I freeze and listen. Footsteps. Two sets. A third at a jog.
“Mask up,” one voice says. “PR window’s in thirty. We bag and we’re done.”
“Copy, bag,” another voice answers, casual in a way that makes me want to break his fingers.
I reach the grate and wedge my copper back into the teeth I pried apart on the way in. The sea’s breath pushes in, jealous and cold. My shoulders burn; the duct hates me but I feed it discipline, inch by inch. When the grate gives, it gives with a sigh so soft I could cry. Outside, rain needles the surface. I blink the hood’s lens clear and settle into the black geometry under the barge.
“Control to all posts,” the radio says in the overhead echo. “We just got a tip. Repeat, tip confirms intruder on deck level three minutes ago. Likely still aboard.”
“Source?” someone asks.
“Anonymous,” Control says. “Pattern matches.”
The model, then. Or a person hiding behind it. I push that fury down to warm my hands later. I pull the grate forward and the barge jolts—just enough to ruin my timing. The grate slips and snaps a staccato against steel. A dropped wrench in the chapel of water.
A flashlight slashes the gap.
“I heard that,” the visor says.
So did I. Panic flies up again, black-winged, and I press it to the duct floor with my ribs.
“North intake,” he calls. “Movement.”
“Hold,” Control replies. “Spot moving.”
I lower myself into the intake throat and let the river’s chill claim me. The cold shocks my lungs like a punch from a friend who loves you enough to save your life. I clamp my mouth shut and make my body a sack of flour falling into a narrow shelf, the copper scrape bright in my teeth. A bullet’s whine rips the duct above; the ricochet hops careless and the second crack tears hot across my side. The graze burns with a clean, righteous heat.
“Contact!” someone yells. “She’s—”
I have no air for their pronouns. I curl into the throat, boots braced, and let the water take my weight. I count, because count is the rope I carry when nothing else holds.
“One,” I whisper, nowhere near air.
The intake purrs and tries to drink me. I grind my shoulder into the grate limb and ride the pull.
“Two. Three. Four.”
The storm’s first real sheet slaps the river like applause. The hull hum climbs. My side leaks warmth I can’t waste.
“Five. Six.”
I wedge my heel on a bolt head, feel slime and cold, and let the current blur me.
“Seven. Eight.”
A drone skims the edge; the rotors talk in cicada tongue. The light washes across the water-skin and pretends it sees everything.
“Nine. Ten.”
My lungs clamour and I pet them with memory: June’s voice laying out the window; Elias’s palm steady in the panic-shaft; Lila’s laugh cut off in a lab that measured it into risk.
“Eleven.”
I push off the bolt like a spring and ride the current sideways along the barge belly, counting the rivets with my skin.
“Twelve.”
I surface into rain-foam under the shadow of a workboat I begged off a crabber two nights ago. The hull smells of diesel and brine and men who keep decks tidy because decks bite. I wedge into the shallow cradle between strakes with my face half out of water and let my breaths be the size of coins.
“Spot north,” Control orders above me. “Hold it on the intake.”
A searchlight arrests the rain. It freezes the top skin where I was, not where I am. It holds for a mean, patient five-count that tastes like electricity on my tongue. The beam slides just enough to turn the water white gold over my left cheek, licks the tip of my mask, then sweeps on, bored by its own power.
I pinch my side and my glove comes away sticky. Not a fountain. A stripe. I can carry that.
“Teams, sweep pattern Delta-two,” Control says. “Predictive output updated: egress likely via waterline. Check boats.”
“Copy. Crabbers first,” a guard says. “We’ve got a permit log.”
“No you don’t,” I whisper into the hull. “You’ve got a community that barters favors.”
The crabber creaks and excuses me further underneath, into a sloped mouth of shadow that smells like old rope and fried batter. I memorize the distance to the aft ladder with the back of my head, then I scoot along the strake with the care of a thief who knows a hull is a confession booth.
“Triage the rumor,” another voice says on a radio I can’t see. “Board wants narrative alignment before the resilience festival stage hits stream.”
“Copy. Set ‘repair scare’ and ‘overcautious protocols,’” someone replies.
The city will clap for that. Harbor Eleven loves a resilience story with a merch booth. I breathe slow and pull the world down to the palm of my hand: drives, badge, reflector grit under my nail. I need to become wake, not object.
“North watch,” the visor calls. “Shadows under the crabber.”
I squeeze small and pretend to be wood. The spotlight yawns over again, languid, and pauses on the filmy slick where my head broke the surface. It hovers, indecisive.
“Hold,” Control says. “Back it up.”
“Copy, hold.”
The circle lands on the slick, bright as confession. I force my lungs into a trade: one second now for four later. I bury my face and accept a mouth of river that tastes like rusted copper and refinery rain. My chest pawed the bars. I hear the drone’s cicada song pitch up for a scan.
“Nothing,” the visor says, voice frustrated. “Waterline’s dirty.”
“Sweep on,” Control orders.
The light travels. I spit quiet into the river and let the air slide in.
“You good?” I ask my ribs under the breath.
“Define good,” my blood answers by not gushing.
I palm along the hull to the ladder and locate the knot of netting I hid for handholds. The drives press into my suit like scold and promise. The graze licks flame when I lift. I keep my profile flat, because angles are how light learns names, and I leverage myself to the ladder’s bottom rung. The crabber complains but pretends we’re friends.
On the barge, a siren changes note—no longer a general call, but a birth announcement of a sweep becoming a trap. Radios spit coordinates; footsteps beat a grid on the catwalks.
“Control, FYI,” a new voice cuts in, slick and supervisory. “We have a board member requesting status. They say ‘model predicted a breach tonight.’ Keep it clean.”
I smile, small and feral. Of course the machine wrote my fate as a bullet point. Of course someone wanted credit.
“Model predicted,” I whisper, “or someone gave it a map.”
The question lodges under my tongue and waits.
I angle up the ladder until my nose touches the slick planks under the crabber’s transom. If I go full aboard, they can silhouette me against algae glow. If I stay here, they can board and kick me into the light. I choose the third door I make myself: I slide the magnet from my sleeve, snap it to the hull’s lip, and snap my suit’s ring to the magnet. If the workboat shifts, I shift with it, a barnacle with a blood stripe.
“Check vessels,” Control repeats. “Start with permits ending in K.”
A light steps across the water again, but now the rain thickens into a curtain. The hurricane barrier arches beyond the harbor blink through the murk like knuckles of a sleeping god, their park paths deserted except for a couple fighting under a pavilion, their faces lit cold by screens. I imagine Elias there doing his distraction choreography, laughing too loud, kissing a rumor into an alibi. I owe him minutes. I owe Lila breath.
The drone nearest me dips. Rotor wash stipples my cheek. A speaker pops.
“Harbor Security,” a voice announces to the water. “For your safety, remain aboard. Routine check.”
“Routine,” I mouth, and I think of the red banner labeled REMOVE that called my sister friction for touching a clinic.
Bootsteps clunk on the crabber deck above me. Two sets. One voice coughs out a laugh.
“Look at this old thing,” he says. “Smells like fried squid.”
“You hungry?” the other asks. “After this sweep I’m getting festival noodles under the arches.”
“Copy festival,” the first says, bored. “Nothing here.”
Their boredom is the best weapon I have tonight. I press flat and let it work.
“Move,” Control says. “Spot to east. Intake clear.”
The light leaves for good. The drone hum loses interest like a cat. Footsteps walk away. The crabber’s hull eases back into its private argument with the tide. I unhook the magnet, pocket it, and let the river lift me twice just to make sure the drives will not clank if I move.
“June,” I breathe to the rain, because it feels like talking to her van. “I’m coming.”
I push off and slide along the hull to the mooring line I counted on the way in. The rope is fat and scratchy and tastes like low tide when I put it between my teeth to keep my hands free. My lungs haul, the graze burns like a matchhead, and the storm lays a palm on my crown and says go.
I climb the rope hand-over-hand to the crabber’s stern pocket, swing my weight, and drop into the shadow between cooler and crate. The deck is slick; I ghost it. A gull screams once for drama, then thinks better of it.
“Control,” the visor says, farther away now. “North clear.”
“Copy,” Control replies. “Re-task to south.”
I crouch by the coaming and take one luxury: I press my hand to my side and count three clean heartbeats in a row. Not perfect, not safe—alive.
Rain thickens into a living curtain that blesses liars. I crawl to the push-pole notch, slide into the water again, and let the crabber hide my long shape from cameras that expect fugitives to run on decks. I kick slow toward the marina teeth and the blind zone under the arches I mapped, drives heavy, breath minted between panic and prayer.
A final sweep of the spotlight skims the bay. It pauses on the ripple I left seconds ago. It considers my life’s shape. It sweeps on, bored by physics and budgets.
“All units,” Control says, a little sugar poured over the net. “Stand down to pattern Beta. Predictive confidence lowered. Intruder may have been a false positive.”
Or I beat your math.
I let myself believe in that for one breath. Then I tuck the hope away where it won’t get me killed.
Under the crabber, in the hush between rotor passes, I cut a whisper and let it drift into the rain. “Who tipped you?” I ask the barge, the model, the city, the person in a warm office. “And who’s going to tip me before the next window closes?”