The docks were a wound in the city, raw steel and black water bleeding into each other. Cain smelled salt, rust, and diesel before he even saw the ships: half-sunk hulks chained to rotting pylons, their hulls eaten through by years of storms.
District Twelve's shoreline had always been a place of castoffs. Cargo left to spoil, men left to die, secrets left to rot. Tonight, though, it carried something sharper. Cain felt it in the rhythm of the tide, in the gulls circling silently overhead instead of crying. Even the sea seemed to wait.
Susan leaned heavily on him as they advanced down the pier. Her face was pale, mouth set against the pain. "You're sure this is where they'll surface?"
Cain nodded once. "The last fragments Steve pulled—patterns in the grid—they're moving shipments off record. Straight into the water."
"Illegal cargo's one thing," she rasped. "But monsters?"
Cain didn't answer. The sea said enough.
