I plan our stroll like a magician plans a confession—plausible, public, and lit by nothing I don’t control. Dockyard K breathes diesel and frying batter; gulls saw their hunger into the wind. The hurricane barrier’s arches make their black ribs against a bruised sky, and the amber pools beneath them carve perfect camera blind cones where the city pretends it doesn’t need to watch. I keep us inside and outside those hollows like I’m walking a tightrope in the eye of a brand deal.
“Hold my arm,” I tell Elias, and I make it sound like flirting. “Eyes up, left of the cranes. Count two drones.”
“Two,” he murmurs. His palm finds the crook of my elbow, warmer than the iodine wind moving under my jacket. “You’re sure about this being… public?”
“Public is safer until it isn’t,” I say. “We’ll know when it flips.”
The cargo canyons carry our steps forward in a tunnel of salt and rubber. Forklifts idle; a vendor throws ice into a blue tub, each shard a bell against plastic. A resilience-festival banner flaps from a warehouse door—last storm’s triumph discounted to this week’s merch—and I wonder which of these people paraded that word while signing NDAs that stapled shut someone else’s mouth. The tide clock over the marina glows three minutes fast. I time my lungs to it out of spite.
“This is where the manifest said Lila was seen, right?” Elias keeps his voice low but it still catches. “Near a cargo lift.”
“Weeks before she vanished,” I say. I don’t look at him. I look at reflections: wet concrete mirrors the canopy lights, and in the puddled glare I count a third drone hovering like a cicada that’s learned patience. “We walk past the lift empty-handed, like we don’t understand symbols.”
We pass dockhands trading favors with jokes that cut both ways. A woman with a crate of cod barks a price to a man who answers with a repair promise. Harbor Eleven’s old economy still breathes out here—barter with teeth—while the biotech towers inland add algebra to their blood. Algae-lit glass winks faintly from the distance, green as a lullaby for guilty executives.
“You look calmer than I feel,” Elias says, the words compressed like he’s biting back more.
“I’m not calm,” I say. “I’m timed.”
The forklift to our right coughs and backfires. I flinch because I trained flinch out of myself years ago and this isn’t that sound; the sonic crack that follows is smaller than fireworks, bigger than denial. The storm wind grabs it, chews it, spits it back wrong. A crate corner near my head splinters white, neat as a chalk line.
“Down,” I tell him, and I shove his chest so hard we both hit the pallet stack. Wet wood smacks my shoulder. He gasps but stays where I put him because he’s as smart about panic as he is about code when I ask it the right way. A second muffled pop stitches the air and the forklift driver drops out of sight behind his steel like a card ducking a trick.
“Gun?” Elias whispers, breath already shallow.
“Muzzle-suppressed,” I say, scanning the canyon. The wind drags fish salt across my teeth. “Angles right-tier, high-low push.”
He swallows. “I hate that you make that sound like music.”
“It’s percussion,” I say, and I grab the flare gun from the inside of my jacket. I keep it pleasant for the passerby—bright orange, legal. I pop, aim down, and hammer it into wet concrete at our feet. The flare kicks hard. A red flower blooms and vomits smoke; the wet makes it thick and ugly, stinging my nose, painting the world with carnival blood.
“What are you—”
“Smoke buys stupid seconds,” I say, hauling him by his collar. “Move.”
We crab-walk along the pallets. The flare’s light writhes along the forklift’s scarred paint, and the driver’s eyes peek over the dash, wide as coins. I wave him low and he obeys because fear speaks more languages than money. Another shot nicks a pallet strap; plastic sings and slaps my cheek.
“Right there,” I hiss, and I press Elias flat. Through the red, a figure slides between crates with the clumsy rhythm of a man who trained on a treadmill but not on rain. He lifts his hand to brush water from his throat and I catch the glint I came to despise at Palmetto House—the small enamel lapel pin, glossy as an oath. A palmetto frond curls on black. He wears a suit jacket like a dare at the docks.
“Palmetto,” I say, only enough air for the one word.
“He’s from—” Elias starts, then shuts his mouth like he cut himself.
“He’s borrowing their confidence,” I say, and my mouth remembers a steward smiling with only his eyes. “Stay on me.”
The forklift to our left is still idling. I snake an arm up, slam the gear, and let the slow machine lurch forward to become a moving wall. Its backup beeper bleats into the wind; the sound bounces off metal and pours into the alley like a misplaced alarm. When it kisses the other forklift parked nose-to-nose, they make a clumsy X across the lane.
“That going to hold?” Elias asks.
“It’s going to confuse,” I say. “Confusion is a lockpick.”
We scissor between the forklifts, my back scraping paint, my throat full of flare. The suit with the pin fires through the smoke and I hear the thwip-thwip into wood; a splinter finds my jaw and draws a sharp asterisk under my ear. My hand goes warmer. I don’t touch it. I count.
“Two assailants,” I say, as a second shadow slips on the slick and curses in a voice trained not to. “One right, one rear.”
“Rear?” Elias says, and I feel his pulse through his sleeve where I hold his arm too tight.
“Gray tail from yesterday likes his pattern,” I say. “Yellow-light driver.” The memory slides into place: hesitation at every caution lamp, human habit where an algorithm wouldn’t blink. “He learned we prefer arches. He’s trying to box us in before we hit them.”
“Then we don’t hit them,” he says, catching on, good, God help me I like his brain when it runs with mine. “We go ugly.”
“Fish market,” I answer, already pivoting. I drop my shoulder, take the corner into action that smells like brine and bleach.
The market is a cathedral of tile and melted ice. Ceiling fans chop the wet air into ribbons; rotors outside answer like cousins. Vendors shout prices in voices that can win fights. I drag Elias beneath a hanging halo of squid; cold strings slap my cheek and leave salt like a kiss I didn’t consent to. Past us, the flare smoke fogs the entry and turns faces into smudges.
“Sorry,” I tell a woman whose fillet knife stops mid-stroke when she sees the blood on my jaw. “Fireworks went wrong.”
“Damn tourists,” she mutters, but she slips her foot out to trip anyone running too fast after us, and that’s what community looks like when the Spire forgets its gifts.
“Left,” I say, shouldering through a swinging door into a prep corridor. The floor is a skating rink of scales and melt. The tide clock’s neon reflection wobbles on the tiles from a window somewhere—three minutes fast, nagging me like an aunt. I count those minutes against the last three shots and against the decision I’ll make if we get cut off.
“You bleeding?” Elias asks, eyes on my jaw like he wants to touch it and doesn’t dare.
“Later,” I say. “Hands forward, light touch on corners.”
A crate slams open behind us; voices collide into the alley. I pull a steel handle and a freezer door yawns—white, vast, humming. Cold punches me in the teeth. I shove him inside, follow, and slam the door. The latch bites. Darkness; then a blue dead light winks alive, painting everything in morgue.
We stand in racks of boxed shrimp and salmon like pews for the devout. Cold needles our throats. I breathe steam and hear it bounce off metal. I press my ear to the door—footsteps skid on the corridor tile outside, then pause. The handle twitches.
“They coming in?” he whispers. Our chests brush when he turns; the freezer magnifies tiny clumsies into earthquakes.
“Maybe,” I say. “Or maybe they lock it and wait.”
“Can they—”
“Yes,” I say, not letting the rest through. I draw my small torch and bank the beam low, scanning stainless seams for an interior emergency pull. There is one, painted red, crusted with frost, the color of denial.
Elias’s breath makes ghosts that kiss my cheek. His hands shake when he rubs them together, and mine answer in a sympathetic flutter I hate. The freezer’s hum is a keel; my heart slaps it off-beat.
“Mara,” he says, and the name makes a crack in the cold that warms me too quickly. “Tell me what to do.”
“Breathe in four, out six,” I say. “Put your back on that rack so your silhouette is not next to mine when the door opens. Count the seconds between their steps. Give me their rhythm.”
He nods and obeys because he trusts me and trusting me is both the safest and the most dangerous thing he’s ever done. Our breath draws lines in the air like the city’s invisible maps. Outside, someone whispers—grainy through the steel—and the handle clicks again, patient.
I slide the torch beam to my wrist and gauge the tremor. It’s slight. Good. My jaw drips once and the drop freezes on my collarbone. I could be anywhere; I am here. I work my gloves on, flex fingers until the ache fades, and pull a small pry from my boot. A freezer door is an honest thing with a dishonest habit: it wants to seal, it commits to it, it doesn’t care who’s inside.
Elias whispers counts. “Six. Four. Two… pause. Then three, three.”
“Two bodies,” I murmur. “One leading, one checking blind angles.” I picture the lapel pin smirking in the market lights. Palmetto House in a wet alley, philanthropy meeting its reflection and finding teeth.
A thud shivers the door. They’re testing the frame. I look at the red pull again and don’t trust it to be attached to anything real. Harbor Eleven loves the theater of safety—resilience festivals and recycled glass trophies—while the emergency cords lead nowhere.
“You ever think about not doing this?” Elias asks on a breath that shakes harder than his hands.
“Every day,” I say. “Then I remember the weld on a hatch and the ghost of a badge.” I angle the pry against the hinge plate, hunt a seam, feel the metal’s petty secrets. “And your mother’s choice of lapel pins.”
He huffs a laugh he doesn’t mean to. It fogs and fades. “You saw it too.”
“He wanted me to,” I say. “That’s the point of club pins.”
The footsteps rearrange outside; the handle goes quiet. The silence isn’t relief; it’s a cat’s crouch. I take the pry away from the hinge and slide it under the door lip instead, judging give, measuring the path to broken fingers if they kick in. I raise the torch, let the beam kiss Elias’s face and then move, because if I linger I will remember the way he looked on the rooftop when he said safe.
“If they open,” he whispers, “we… what?”
“I blind, you shove, we snake right,” I say. “You grab the blue crate at your knee—it’s bait. Drop it left to make noise and feed them a target. We disappear behind it and walk out on the other side.”
“Walk?” he says, incredulous sneaking into brave. “In a freezer?”
“Confidence is a stealth suit,” I say. “Pretend you’re supposed to be anywhere and doors forget to ask questions.”
The handle scrapes. A voice says, “Cold in there?” in a tone that learned menace from podcasts. The lapel pin man has breath control. He learned in a room with carpets.
“Want a fish?” I call back, casual and bright, buying myself the cadence of his reply. My voice bounces absurdly off the boxed salmon like prayer.
A chuckle. “We’re not here for fish.”
“Then your map’s wrong,” I say, and I flash the torch full into the seam where the door will open, then kill it to load the darkness in my favor.
My phone haptic nudges my finger—blind, secret. I don’t look. I know what June would say if she were in this chapter with me: lag window closing. But this is our corridor now, and I have what I need—the number of their breaths, the slick of the floor, the way Elias steadies his legs like he’s decided to be a wall if I need one.
The latch clicks—a precise little sound that carries decision. Metal flexes. Cold licks my teeth. In the beat before the door gives, I taste lemon from last night’s transmitter and the iron from tonight’s cut, and I think of Lila’s joke about doors opening for laughter.
The seal breaks with a sigh. I raise the torch and the world goes white-blue, a burst that turns men into outlines and fear into geometry. The door opens just enough for a shadow to pour in.
“Ready,” I whisper, and I feel Elias nod where I can’t see him.
Outside the freezer, something else moves—heavier, slower—like a second door further down the corridor opening to meet us. I can’t see it. I can only count. One, two, three—then the unknown hinge groans.
I step, and the question following that groan walks in with me: did I just open our escape, or did someone open their trap from the other side?