I balanced the tablet on my knee and zoomed until the river and city felt close enough to touch. Two pins blinked at me like rival heartbeats. One glowed at the hurricane barrier’s park, Arch Seven—the blind pocket where the cameras kept polite distance. The other pulsed from the Vance Spire, twenty-seventh floor, where the corridor smelled like chilled glass and boardroom breath.
“Two pins,” I said. “Love and blood.”
The tug rocked; tarps snapped. I tasted the iodine wind, salt thin as a razor on my tongue. Behind me, the barge heaved a tired sigh, metal answering storm; ahead, the barrier’s algae-lit ribs hummed their expensive calm. Drones stitched the low sky with a cicada thrum that made my burned palm itch inside the glove.
“Read me the uptown feed again,” I said.
June’s typing sounded like rain on a pie tin. “Unmarked van at the service dock, no delivery log. Two contractors in gray slickers, faces half-warmed to cameras then shy. Your building watcher says the concierge got a call from ‘legal’ to override the freight lock.”
“And the arches?”
“The whisper-net is stubborn and weird, which is how you like your saints,” she said. “Ping triangulated from a handset we saw in Dockyard K last winter. Message says, ‘She waits where clocks lie.’ That’s Arch Seven. I can almost smell the algae.”
I angled the tablet; the map shrank into lines of blue and green over satellite blur. The tide clock at the marina watched from the corner of my eye, three minutes fast on purpose, a civic joke we leaned on and never laughed at.
“Give me the part you were going to bury in euphemism,” I said.
June stopped typing. Then: “Intercepted chatter on a contractor channel we seeded with a fake payroll portal. Plan is to make Elias recant live—camera to face, script in hand. They’ll hit his apartment, force a call to the clinic to ‘correct misinterpretations.’” She cleared her throat. “They want him scared enough to be credible. That’s the word they used.”
The tug cut through a slice of flat water, and the moment of quiet made room for a noise my body knew too well—anger turning the dial on my respiration. I pressed my burned palm against the crate until the heat of it traveled through glove and splinters.
“You can’t split,” June said, calm, almost kind. “You know that.”
“I’ve been splitting since I was twelve,” I said. “Lunch money into thirds, attention into fourths, grief into a million.”
“That math saved us,” she said. “This choice doesn’t want math.”
I watched Arch Seven darken where a lamp had failed months ago and no one had filed the ticket. I saw the corridor at the Spire in my head: algae glass tuned to corporate serenity, elevator chime set to a sound that makes rich people feel efficient. I heard my own rulebook argue with my sister’s name.
“Patch me through to Elias,” I said.
“He might be on silent,” she said.
“He’s on me,” I said.
June’s key chattered; the line between us thickened and then split like a river around a piling. “You’re live,” she said.
“Elias,” I said, keeping my voice low enough to be a scalpel. “You have visitors dressed like paperwork.”
Static at first, then the soft compression of his home filters. “I hear it,” he said, quiet. “I’ve been waiting for the knock I was told never to open.”
“They want a recant,” I said. “They’ll have a script. It’ll sound reasonable with teeth.”
“Would you like me to be brave or obedient?” he asked, humor dry as a bone he didn’t wish on me.
“Neither,” I said. “I want you to follow the stupid plan I built for nights I hate. You’ll text the concierge the code word ‘resilience’—she owes me a favor from an NDA date. She’ll fake a fire door test. You’ll ride the service elevator down two floors, then up one, then to sublevel. Panic-shaft to the river. You’ll leave your phone on your counter streaming pre-recorded music that makes you less punchable.”
“You want me to run,” he said.
“I want you to live,” I said.
The tide clock ticked its lie into the eye, too loud for a public sculpture. I watched it anyway. The city loves the clock because it forgives lateness. The ocean does not.
“Where are you?” he asked.
I didn’t answer. I listened to the breath between us and the drones and June’s fingers and a gull that had the indecency to laugh.
“Mara,” he said, softer. “Where.”
“Between the arches and you,” I said, which was true and not helpful. “The whisper-net says Lila is in the blind pocket.”
He inhaled like he’d been punched. “Say it again,” he said.
“Under the seawall,” I said. “Arch Seven, where the cameras blink.”
“Go,” he said, and the word had weight. “You go.”
“June,” I said. “Tell me the van’s distance.”
Keys. “Two minutes to your building’s freight dock,” she said. “One minute if the concierge wants to see her next birthday from a city not named Prison.”
“She won’t,” I said. “I did her niece’s expunge. She’ll stall.”
“You did that?” June asked, a half-second of awe then a whole second of recalculation. “Right. Dock workers barter favors; biotech elites date within NDAs; you make friends with expungements.”
The tug sighed into idle, captain raising a hand with a question. I pointed toward a skiff slung along our side, an apology to the water for how much time I planned to steal. Algae glow from the barrier painted my wrists green. The smell of the river climbed the back of my throat—salt and iron and the old tin smell of moored regret.
“Mara,” June said, gentler again. “You can’t split.”
“I know,” I said, and the knowing hurt like a tooth you stop pretending isn’t cracked.
“Say the choice,” she said.
I stared into the map long enough to feel ridiculous and then holy. Two pins. Lila’s shadow under the arches I’d taught her to use as escape hatches when we were kids; Elias, on a high floor with a panic-shaft I had mapped with my tongue between my teeth and the knowledge that love is a lever anyone can pull to break your hands.
“I pick Lila,” I said.
The world didn’t end. It adjusted around the sentence, and I understood the shape of all my losses.
“Copy,” June said, and her professionalism slipped into something like a hug I didn’t deserve. “I’ll shepherd your prince.”
“He’s a man who needs a better word than prince,” I said. “Patch me back.”
“Still live,” she said.
“Elias,” I said. “You ride the plan like a rail. If they get in, you walk toward the kitchen and trip the carbon monoxide false positive. The building’s algorithm will prefer evacuation to negotiation. You’ll be a hazard, not a hostage.”
He exhaled a laugh that wasn’t. “You flirt like a fire code.”
“Text the concierge now,” I said. “Word is ‘resilience.’”
My tablet pinged. A read receipt. Then: RESILIENCE ACKNOWLEDGED, STAND BY. The building’s automation sent me a courtesy I wasn’t supposed to receive: test pattern over the service stack, lights going amber.
“I’ll call you when you hit the shaft,” I said.
“You’ll be under the arches,” he said.
“I will,” I said.
“Find her,” he said, and I heard the thing he didn’t press into the sentence: and find you.
The captain shouted; he had a skiff half-dropped, lines hissing through his palms. I crossed the deck, boots finding grip where there shouldn’t be any. The storm’s eye pressed a cool hand against the city’s brow. The tide clock moved its lie, steady, smug.
“June,” I said, clipping the mic to my collar where my heartbeat could keep it company. “Loop the blind zones’ exterior cams to show nothing but rain. If Sable’s people check the arches, I want them walking on old water.”
“On it. And I’ll make the Spire’s elevator logs look like a drill for a resilience festival,” she said. “They love drills that let them clap later.”
“Give the concierge a union lawyer’s number,” I said. “If she needs to pick a side, I want her to feel the future in her pocket.”
“Sent,” June said. “And—Mara—listen. I’m routing some of the clinic’s stream to your private channel. If Elias gets grabbed on camera, you hear it.”
“I won’t let that be the first sound I lose,” I said.
The skiff hit the water with a dunk that sprayed my knees. I dropped in, motor coughing, hand on the tiller. The algae glass of the barrier threw back a ghost of my face and made me look greener than hope. Under Arch Seven a darkness pooled like a promise that kept its knife behind its back.
“One more thing,” June said. “If I lose you for thirty seconds, I’m sending a drone with a flare to your last coordinates. Don’t scold me with your safety sermon; I collect my people, too.”
“I’ll scold you later,” I said, and my mouth remembered how to be a person.
“You won’t,” she said, sure. “Go.”
The skiff nosed toward the arch. The drone rotors above sang their electric song; my burned hand throbbed in time, heat pulsing old pain into useful anger. I looked down at the tablet strapped to my thigh: two pins still blinking, one beginning to earn its blink back.
“Elias,” I said, lower. “Wake the shaft.”
“Already moving,” he said. “Elevator to sublevel. I left my music playing in the kitchen. A little melancholy, in case anyone thinks I have a soul.”
Something clanged in his audio—a door chain landing in a dish, a shoe catching on a mat. He didn’t narrate it; he breathed through it. I heard the low hum of the Spire’s algae wall; it calms executives who pay for calm. It did nothing for my pulse.
“June?” I asked.
“Service dock just accepted a fake vendor code,” she said. “Override from ‘legal’ worked. But the concierge delayed them with the classic: ‘Are you here for the resilience drill?’ They’re confused enough to be dangerous.”
“How many?” I asked.
“Three,” she said. “But the van driver stayed with the engine running, which is four. No markings. One has a courier pouch big enough for a statement and a weapon he hopes he won’t have to show. They want leverage, not theater.”
I cut the skiff’s engine and drifted under Arch Seven. The sound changed: the city’s broad hum narrowed into drip and echo. Water spoke to concrete with old intimacy. I smelled algae, damp metal, the faint sweetness of someone’s shampoo left a lifetime ago.
“Lila,” I said, not with my mouth.
I slid a flashlight beam along the wall in three short flashes—the pattern we used to call each other to dinner across the pier when our father worked late and the radio drowned everything. The light hit chalk—the barest nub of chalk—three strokes and a dot, the way she signs her name when she wants only me to see it.
“She’s here,” I said, throat useless for anything elegant.
On my comm, a distant chime sounded—elevator bell—then Elias’s whisper. “Sublevel. I’m at the panic door.”
“Thumb and breath,” I said. “Then pull, then count to eight and pull again. The door hates urgency and rewards rhythm.”
Behind his whisper came another sound: the building’s main door opening above, voices that practiced nonchalance and never had to carry heavy things. June read the spectrogram in real time.
“They’re in,” she said. “They’re smiling at the concierge like she’s an appliance. One of them is rehearsing apology language. They will ask for a recant and promise to protect ‘the vulnerable.’”
“Vulnerable,” I said, and my hand found the skiff’s rail until my glove creaked.
“Go,” Elias said, not to himself.
“I’m here,” I said, because I needed him to know I hadn’t put the ocean between us without leaving a line.
Chalk gleamed again under my light. New strokes, fresh smears. I whispered her name, real volume, and got drip and echo back. The arch held its blind pocket like a cupped hand. The tide licked at the skiff’s ribs, impatient.
On the other channel, a knock traveled down a hallway and into my ear. It was the kind of knock that pretends to be a favor. June’s breath went shallow.
“You’re at the door,” I told him, speaking to two places at once. “Don’t answer.”
The tide clock across the marina clicked its lie into the brief calm. The city planned; the ocean did not. I stood into the skiff’s bow, one hand on the arch’s slick stone, and chose again, and again, and again, the way a body chooses air.
“Mara,” June said, steadying me with my name. “Say it once more so I can stop arguing with ghosts.”
“I choose Lila,” I said. “And I secure Elias by making him obey me.”
“Copy,” she said. “I’ll be his spine until yours gets back.”
“Open,” I called softly into the arch, voice not much bigger than a prayer. “I’m here.”
A shoe scuffed in the dark, then stilled. On the other channel, a voice at Elias’s door said, warmly false, “Mr. Vance? We’re here to help you make a clarifying statement.”
The skiff bumped the arch. My light slid forward, white and sure, and the city’s two pins pulsed hard enough to hurt my eyes.