Tires hissed a long angry sibilant over floors of water, and the wipers just smeared the world into faster rain.
I kept the van in the crown of the street, feeling for the high points the way I’d once felt for the clean lies in a diplomat’s smile. Water climbed the wheel wells and slapped at the undercarriage. The storm wanted to peel us off the road and stack us like driftwood. I wasn’t in a mood to be arranged.
“Left at Pierline,” June said, hunched over the console she’d converted into a river map of moving dots. Her hair frizzed into a storm halo; condensation beaded on her lashes and never fell. “Convoy’s three vehicles: a box van, two security SUVs. Tagger pings confirm barge vendor IDs.”
“We still have the lead?” I asked, and feathered the brakes before a submerged manhole could decide my steering for me.
“By two intersections and a bad decision.” Her mouth quirked. “Ours.”
I took it. I cut through a lane of parked scooters that had given up being useful and threaded the van between a toppled trash pod and an artfully cracked resilience-festival banner. Harbor Eleven loves pep talks with confetti; the river doesn’t.
“Wipers are losing,” I said. “Call out deep water.”
“Copy.” June tapped, eyes flicking against green-on-black. “Avoidation: right curb, ninety meters—storm drain collapsed.”
The iodine wind muscled through the vents and painted the back of my tongue. Drone rotors cicada’d overhead, struggling to hold grid in the gusts. The algae-lit glass of the Spire pulsed a faint hopeful green in the rearview like a sanctuary sign that didn’t know the sermon had been canceled.
“Update from the room,” June added, voice clipped to keep emotion from flooding the mic. “They screamed procedure and recessed. Liaison’s order still live. Logistics tells barge: ‘Prepare intake—weather cover optimal.’”
“People,” I said, and the word felt too small for the bodies inside it. “Confirm.”
She swallowed. “Thermal on the box van shows six narrow profiles, three long. I’m getting nurse-band repeaters under the tarp line. And… hang on.” She pinched and zoomed. “Micro-sweeps show depressant signatures. They sedated them, Mara.”
I tightened my grip until the wheel bit. I didn’t let my face do what it wanted. “Copy sedation.”
The tide clock over the marina flashed its three-minute lie from blocks away, a neon smirk through sheets of rain. Everyone plans. No one is ready. I dropped a gear and felt the van’s weight settle into intention.
“We’ll make the barrier road in ninety seconds,” June said. “Then the service corridor. Then docks.” She glanced at me. “Then what?”
“Then we make them need new orders.”
Who chooses the river’s story when the city won’t?
We hammered the turn onto the barrier access. The hurricane wall reared up to our left, concrete ribs and public-park arches ghosting by; under the arches the blind CCTV zones yawned like closed eyes. I had cached the microcharge hours ago because I never trust a single exit, not even the one I loved when I first found it. The hatch that had once been a promise was now a weld, recent and proud. Proof sat in my pocket on three drives. Justice needed noise.
“You sure?” June asked. She wasn’t asking about detonation. She was asking about the part of me I keep behind steel.
“No,” I said. “Do it anyway.”
She slid me the remote—a flat confession with a red kiss where a thumb goes. “You painted it deep. They’ll think it’s electrical until the second wave of alarms.”
“That’s the point.” I counted the convoy’s likely path, the radii of their turns, the chapter of the manual that tells men in jackets where to run when a building coughs smoke. “On my mark, trigger the hatch seam. Then push the Spire internal ‘fire in shaft’ cascade.”
“Copy.”
The van surfed a puddle so wide it should’ve had a buoy; spray sheeted over the windshield and for one blind second we drove by memory and malice. When the world returned it was narrower. The storm had shoved a pallet of festival stanchions into the lane. I picked the hole and threaded it. The wipers protested in a wet squeal.
“Mark,” I said.
June pressed the button. The van’s dash didn’t flinch; the city did. Under the arches, a belly-deep thud ran along the wall like someone knocking with their whole arm. Then the sound reached up and pulled alarms down by the throat. Red strobes bloomed inside the Spire’s ribs. A beat later, my phone hiccuped with a dozen unimportant apologies from the building’s automated conscience.
“Security routing recalculating,” June said, all machine. “There it is. Three units peel off the convoy’s tail vector and spin toward the Spire. Dispatch chatter full of ‘shaft breach’ and ‘possible structural.’”
“Good.” My chest felt like steel cooling. “Give them a bigger problem than us.”
“Alerts forwarded to the right eyes,” she said. “Also the wrong ones, because I’m feeling generous.”
The road dropped into the service corridor that threaded beneath the barrier park, concrete sweating in the humid breath of the storm. I smelled hot copper from an overloaded junction, wet rope from the marina, diesel from the tugs. For a second I was ten again, racing my sister along this same wall, counting barges, making dares we kept because nobody important had invented us yet.
“Visual on convoy,” June said. “Box van ahead, right lane. SUVs staggered. You want front or rear?”
“Rear. Give the box its illusion of speed.” I hit the turn signal to be polite to a city that would never be polite to us and slid into the pocket behind the last SUV, two car lengths back. Their brake lights smeared into red comets on my windshield.
“Blocking posture?” she asked.
“Too obvious.” I clicked the mic to a dead channel and made shapes in my mouth until my heartbeat decided it could live with the pace I’d chosen. “We shadow, pass on the left at the split, take the work pier by Dockyard K. That gets us a line on a tug.”
“You think the union lads will let us borrow their heart?” June’s smile showed for half a syllable. “They barter in favors, not IOUs.”
“I’m a favor with good timing,” I said. “And a story they already hate.”
The corridor split. I accelerated into the lane that climbed to the east slips and slid past the convoy as if the water had invented a temporary current just for us. The box van didn’t challenge. The SUVs didn’t like that. One tried to match pace. June flashed him the union sticker she keeps for gods and lies; the driver hesitated, then fell back into the herd.
We blazed out of the corridor into a canvas of lights: red strobes in the Spire distance, green LEDs along dock edges, the sick-white glare of industrial floodlamps bouncing off blown rain. The tide clock counted its wrong truth. The marina sounded like a band of angry kettles.
We hit the work pier. Dockworkers hunched under hoods, moving ropes and lives with the reflex of people who measure weather by the taste of it, not the app. A union steward I knew by sight—Pilar, throat tattoo peeking above a scarf—looked up, measuring us against her storm math.
I killed the engine and stepped into ankle-cold water that bit like the word no. “Pilar,” I called, lifting both hands where she could read them. “Need a tug and a line.”
“We’re busy finding the bottom,” she shot back, voice cutting through rain like it paid rent. She eyed the Spire strobes, then my face, then the convoy rising from the corridor like a bad prognosis. “You bringing trouble or taking it away?”
“Both,” I said. “Give me twenty minutes and I’ll make it worth a month.”
She spat rain and calculations. “Price is now. What’s the story, Quill?”
“Relocation,” I said, and forced the syllables through my teeth. “Human cargo. Sedated. Barge intake about to open its mouth.”
Her jaw hardened. “You got proof?”
June arrived at my shoulder, tablet held away from the rain beneath her jacket like a small fire under canvas. “Thermal. Band repeaters. Manifest headers—look.” She thumbed to a shot of the liaison’s order; the time stamp glowed like a wound. “We stop them now or they slip into international water and show us empty hands.”
Pilar looked from the screen to the convoy to the storm. The union barters favors; it also counts ghosts. “Take Nina,” she said, jerking her chin to a low, stubborn tug with peeling paint and a wheelhouse that looked like a grin missing teeth. “Bernal!” she shouted at a deckhand. “Untie that lady like she owes you money.”
“I do,” I said.
“You will,” she answered. “And you’ll owe me twice if you sink her.”
“I don’t sink friends,” I said, and meant every word and none, because I’d sunk more than I could count and called it protection.
We moved. The pier slicked under my boots; the rope burned my palm in a hot warning that stamina still matters. June vaulted the gunwale with surprising neatness and disappeared into the wheelhouse’s dim light. I threw our go-bag aboard and followed, landing in a smell of diesel, salt, and old coffee that promised neither safety nor failure, just honest work.
“Power on,” June said, coaxing the panel like a shy animal that could bite. The tug shivered awake, lights flickering then holding. “She’s grumpy.”
“She’s perfect.” I cast off the last line and pushed us into the black-green. The wind clawed my jacket open and I let it. “Charts?”
“On,” June said. “Barge drones adjusting for gusts. They’ll prioritize river mouth in two minutes if they see a convoy. We need to swing wide under the arches to dodge the cameras.”
“Blind zones under the park,” I said. “The city’s little mercy.”
“The city’s lazy wiring,” she corrected, but she smiled and I let the warmth land.
The convoy broke onto the pier road behind us. The box van’s tarps snapped; for a second a corner lifted and I glimpsed a pale arm strapped to a rail, a hospital band blinking its passive agreement. My chest went cold, then hot, then organized.
“They’re alive,” June said, voice small with all the bigness it refused. “They’re drugged but alive.”
“Then we keep them that way,” I said. I eased the throttles and the tug shouldered a slab of water aside with the stubbornness of a dock worker at last call. Rain needled my cheeks and tasted like pennies and weeds.
“Heads up,” June added. “Explosion pulled three-quarters of Spire security. Harbor patrol is thin. Drones are jittery. We have a window.”
“We have a slice,” I said. “Windows don’t hold in this weather.”
Do we take the river clean—or with teeth?
We nudged the bow into the lee of an arch. The park above hoarded its joggers and benches; the blind cameras forgot to remember us. The tide gnawed at the seawall with patient teeth. The tug groaned like a living thing with old bones and new grievances.
June held her headset tight over one ear. “Convoy radio says ‘ETA five.’ I’m hearing the liaison again—‘Barge intake set. Proceed now now now.’ They’re scared.”
“Good.” Fear makes patterns sloppy; sloppy leaves seams.
I looked downriver. The barge was a low-lit geometry problem translated into steel: rectangular promise, glossy lies. Its drone halo tilted in the gusts like a crown thinking about abdication. Between us and it, workboats bobbed in nervous agreement with gravity.
“We’re going to cut across their bow and make them choose between collision and conscience,” I said.
“They don’t have the second one installed,” June said.
“Then we install it with the first.”
I leaned on the horn. The tug’s bellow rolled under the arches and slapped the storm on the face. On the pier, men in security jackets turned; behind them, a stretcher bumped a threshold and a hand twitched under a tarp—the kind of small movement a body makes when a drug forgets one nerve.
“Mara,” June said. “Say it’s the right move.”
“It’s the only move,” I said. “And I’ll make ten more after it if I have to.”
We cut the last line of hesitation and the tug leapt like a dog that finally convinced you to throw the stick. Water hammered the hull. The wheel kicked in my hands and I loved the resistance because it told me the world still existed enough to push against.
“Drones recalculating,” June said, thumbs a blur. “I’m feeding them ghost echoes under the arches. Harbor patrol getting Spire calls—they’re rerouting north to the ‘breach.’ You bought us the chaos.”
“You did,” I said. “I just lit the fuse.”
The convoy’s lead SUV rolled onto the loading ramp. The box van crawled behind it, careful with its sleeping. A guard lifted a hand to wave the wind away and then realized wind doesn’t listen.
“We’re committed,” I said, and felt something in me cross a line it couldn’t uncross.
The tug’s bow rose, fell, and found the chop’s rhythm like a heartbeat you’ve agreed to share. I angled for the gap between a maintenance scow and the barge’s starboard shadow, the place where drones hate spray and men hate paperwork.
“Last question,” June said, and I heard the shape of my sister in her voice even though she knew better than to draw it. “When we get alongside, do you want me on the line or on the locks?”
“Both,” I said, because we were two people pretending to be more. “Throw the line. Break the lock. Make it look like weather made us do it.”
I breathed in salt and diesel and the electricity of a city forced to watch itself. The tide clock winked its lie. My hands set the angle, my jaw set the promise, and I aimed us straight at the choice.
“Hold,” I told June, and prayed to the only god I still recognize—the one that lives in timing and leverage. “On my count. Three… two…”