The meeting boat leaves early without lights, a smudge of dark on darker water, and irritation tickles the back of my throat. Protocol says twenty minutes to dusk and a courtesy beacon. Protocol says nothing about ghosts.
“No running lights,” I whisper into the wind, mostly to keep my pulse honest. “You want to be unseen, then be seen by me.”
I lean over the rail and sniff the night. I taste iodine and diesel, a brine cut with metal that brings my sister back in flashes I refuse to hold. Drone rotors whir above the river like bored cicadas practicing menace. Under the hurricane barrier, the public park is open and empty, its blind CCTV arches doing civic duty as cover. The tide clock on the marina café points three minutes fast like a liar with tenure.
My phone buzzes my palm with the tone I reserved for people who owe me a future. The concierge. I bite the inside of my cheek and open the screen in the rain.
I’m sorry.
Two words, one siren. I swallow. “What did you sell,” I ask the logged air, “and what did you keep?”
I reply with fingers that remember hot steel: “Define sorry.”
No bubbles. The meeting boat angles its bow toward the river mouth, then slows, then fades into the storm’s gray. I track it with the camera lens of my eye and the cheap lens of my phone, both inadequate. My irritation becomes a wire under the skin.
“You were supposed to buy me time,” I murmur, and the arches return my voice with softer versions I don’t recognize. I pivot to the blind zone between two pylons where the CCTV skips a few seconds like a record with a crack. I log how the gap looks from below; I mark where a person would vanish if they wanted to.
My screen lights again. Not the concierge. City feeds. Police scanners. The voice-to-text spills over: Units diverting to Dockyard H, possible flare-off, crowd disturbance near resilience stage. I picture the temporary lights, the inflatable “RESILIENCE” letters stored since last year’s storm, ready to be hauled out any time donors want to clap. I watch the patrol icons migrate on my map like schooling fish.
“Decoy convoy,” I say, and spit politely into the rain because manners matter even when you’re being robbed. “Clever. Get the cops to love a festival and leave the water free.”
I call my own voicemail and let myself talk to the only machine that doesn’t lie to me. “Note: Thursday meeting has shifted again,” I say. “Boat left early, no lights. Police being pulled inland by a staged disturbance. Sable likes stagecraft. Liaison likes clean exits. The concierge sent an apology with no noun. Interpret as ‘I split the difference.’”
A gull skims the water with all the arrogance I want. I tuck into the shadow under Arch Three and let my jacket take the rain. The algae-lit glass of the Spire across the river hums soft green, pretending calm for executives who mistake color for conscience. I press my palm against the cold concrete of the arch and count the texture dots like prayer beads.
My phone buzzes a second time, the concierge again. I had to give them something. I didn’t give them everything.
“What did you feed her?” I whisper, more water than voice. I text back: “What’s left for me?”
Your timing. But not your door. A beat. Please don’t come back here.
I turn to watch the boat vanish into storm film. The word timing rips the Velcro off a thought I didn’t want. “You updated the model,” I tell the river. “You asked it what I do when I get the vote I wanted.”
A train horn says it would like to be a ship. I pocket my phone and jog along the boardwalk, avoiding the patches that shine too smooth under thin light. I pass two dock workers bartering favors—one holds a coil of rope, the other a bag that smells like fried batter and shame. “You didn’t see me,” I say, just loud enough to be heard as myth. One snorts; the other raises his chin. We all understand work.
The storm steps closer. I run through the park ribs, counting arches the way I count breaths when water holds me down. “One for entry, two for delay, three for ghost,” I mutter, then catch myself grinning at the stupidity of it. Irritation loosens and something meaner slides in: the sting of betrayal with a professional handshake.
My phone pings with a weather alert. I slice it away. Another alert arrives beneath it, private channel, June’s daemon, a single syllable: Coil? I don’t answer; the schedule still holds by the lie of the tide clock. What doesn’t hold is the location of the room and the path to the microphones.
The concierge writes again. They know you like the blind arches. She said: ‘she’ll use what we gave her, but she’ll subtract visibility.’
I stop under a dead lamp and let rain write V shapes on my face. “She fed her my habits,” I say, not shocked, not surprised, just newly bored with being predictable. “And the model learned to taste my minutes.”
—micro-hook— The meeting boat blinks a single pinprick of red far upriver and swallows it again like the river is mouth and throat both. The tide clock hops forward its three-minute fraud and I feel the petty satisfaction of a liar on my side.
I move. Speed without noise, legs low, shoulders soft. The wind smells colder under the barrier, like the storm imported factory air. I cut between benches where lovers usually pretend to be private. Harbor Eleven does romance like contract law; elites date inside NDAs, dock workers trade hours and engines and the good oil. While we sign and barter, the algorithms draw lines around our bodies and call it care.
“You’re late,” I say to the storm, letting it flirt back with needles. I slip along a maintenance path behind the marina café, where algae-light from a branded wall spills fake serenity onto puddles. My shoes whisper in the slick; my grazed rib complains and I ignore it with the kind of attention that qualifies as cruelty to self.
I dial the concierge because I prefer voice when I want to hear fear. She doesn’t pick up. I leave a message that tastes like salt and iron. “You warned me and you warned them,” I say. “Split truths snap in the middle. I owe you for the first half. I’ll bill your boss for the second.”
A low hiss whistles from the river. I catch a new shadow: smaller craft, no storm canopy, moving perpendicular to the meeting boat’s track. I crouch and lift the pocket monocular June pressed on me the way a mother hands a child a bedtime story. The small craft hugs the pilings at Dockyard J, where logistics boys smoke and say they don’t. No lights. Two bodies. One with a case.
“Transfer piece,” I breathe. “You’re moving a sliver while the cops dance inland.”
Police radio chatter rises again, all performative urgency. “Copy disturbance escalating, requesting backup near festival stage.” I smile without humor. The resilience stage: a platform where Harbor Eleven congratulates itself on surviving systems it refuses to fix. “Clap louder,” I tell the river. “Clap until the dead stand up.”
My phone zings with three messages in a stack. First: a city push about temporary road closures “to facilitate emergency response.” Second: a private ping from a board assistant I once bribed with cab fare and a credible rumor—room change confirmed; smaller chamber; no windows. Third: the concierge, a final flicker.
I didn’t tell them about Red Hall. I swear. I told them you’d use the arches. She laughed and said the arches were public knowledge. I’m sorry.
I read it twice and feel the sting correctly this time: not the burn of betrayal but the bruise of someone pressed until their blood made maps. “You gave her enough to lock the front,” I say to the stone. “You left me a side door.”
I text her back, fingers steady now. “Then don’t watch the news. And keep your niece inside.”
I tuck the phone and let the recalibration click through me like a firearm stripped and cleaned. New routes, new delays, new lies that make better truths. The model anticipates my timing. Good. I can’t unlearn my clock, but I can change who rings it.
I pop a small tin from my pocket and smear reflective paste along the inside of my wrist and the edge of my collar. It confuses the cheaper cameras into thinking I’m a light glare. I lift my hood, cut across the plaza, and address the maintenance drone parked under Arch Five. “Night, sweetheart,” I say, and the unit chirps once because I whispered its admin word two weeks ago over a bowl of noodles.
On the far road, six black SUVs roll by in formation—no plates, matte paint, the kind of confidence that thinks it counts as invisibility. Two police sedans pivot to escort; a third blocks an intersection like it’s a movie. The convoy heads toward Dockyard H where the festival distraction supposedly bloomed from nothing. I count headlights, brake lights, reflections, and the number of drivers who turn their heads at the same angle. “Decoy convoy,” I say again, this time with gratitude. “Thank you for leaving me alone.”
I duck into the park bathroom—the one with hand dryers that roar like aircraft and a window stuck half-open to the rain. I wash my hands for the cameras that don’t exist and talk to my own face. “They know your timing. Give them two timings. Feed the model a shadow.” I dry my hands, then drape the paper towel into the trash with a flourish that any watcher would call stress. I wait three breaths. I leave. Then I walk counter to my own plan for exactly forty-seven steps before snapping back onto the line that matters.
—micro-hook— My phone vibrates at my pulse’s pitch. A restricted number slides in a single line of text across my lock screen: The model thanks you for training.
I blink the rain out of my eyes and laugh once because outrage needs oxygen. I swipe to reply and stop before ego types for me. I tuck the phone away. “You’re welcome,” I tell the night, and then I sprint, because the only reliable way to break prediction is to put your body where your file says it won’t go.
I cut through the alley of salt-streaked kiosks that sells squid in daylight and contraband batteries at dawn. The deck boards drum under my shoes, hollow and urgent. I veer under Arch Seven and pull a coil of nylon from the bench where I taped it days ago. I sling it across my chest and catch the bitter smell of old rope and new rain. I climb the service ladder halfway and stop, hanging in the wet, a pendulum in a black metronome. I let the seconds pass, feeling the muscle twitch settle. I count backwards: twelve, eleven, ten—the river’s lullaby—and let the model’s imagined Mara make her move elsewhere.
The small craft at Dockyard J slides away from the pilings and vanishes into the boat channel cut by money. The meeting boat is gone-gone now, a rumor the river will deny later. The police convoy turns left at a light that never changes for anyone like me. The resilience stage lights flare on in the rain, confetti without paper.
I drop back to the boards and hiss through my teeth when my rib pings. I lay a hand over the gauze under my shirt and tell the ache it can have twenty seconds of attention when we finish. My phone buzzes one more time and I stare at the line like I’m reading a fortune.
Board starts in nine. Room is sealed. No sender name. Not June’s cadence. Not Elias’s politeness. Not the concierge’s raggedness. New number, old pressure.
“Nine minutes,” I say to the arches, to the drones, to the tide clock lying on my behalf. “You want my timing; here’s my misdirection.”
I lift the burner I hide in my sock and send a single-lane blast to twenty-seven people who don’t like me but like what I do. “If you love Harbor Eleven, prove it,” I say into the cheap mic. “Watch the union feed in eight and keep the stairwells clear. If anyone flashes logistics credentials with the new initials, ask them about pierogi carts.”
I pocket the burner and start walking toward the smaller chamber I’ve never used, the one the concierge didn’t give up. Rain needles my face; algae glow limns my path; drones hum their prayers. I taste the storm and the stakes and the quiet thrill of being misread.
“You’re right to thank me,” I tell whatever listens when power gets cocky. “I train every machine I meet. I also train myself.”
I reach the last blind arch and halt, because the tide clock clicks forward again and I hear the city answer me not with sirens but with a single, distant cheer from the resilience stage—a sound like hope rehearsed. I stick two fingers into my collar and feel the microdrive warm where it rests. I breathe once, then twice, then I ask the only question that gets me moving:
“Who do I betray first—their model, or the version of me it memorized?”