Cain's boots hammered across the rain-slick steel of the pier, each step a strike against the hum of the sea. The air stank of salt and rust, the gulls already silent as if the ocean itself had ordered them to hold their tongues. Behind him, Susan staggered but kept her pace, her hand clamped tight against her ribs. Steve's voice crackled faintly in the comm, warning about patrols, about cameras, about the inevitable questions from the city grid. Cain didn't slow. Questions would come whether they ran or not.
The docks were alive with shadows. Containers stacked like mausoleums, cranes reaching like skeletal arms into the storm-gray dawn. Waves slapped against barnacle-crusted hulls, each surge louder than the last. Cain could feel it—something waiting beneath the waterline, something that had followed them from the alleys of City Z to this rusted threshold of sea and sky.
