That was the entirety of the plan.
Burt looked at the water. Looked back up at them.
Then he ran.
He went off the end of it without breaking stride, hit the water feet first, and went under.
Here was the thing about Noah swimming that the harbor had no framework for: he was not swimming the way people swam, which involved the surface and a relationship with air that required periodic maintenance.
He was moving through the water the way something moves when it has decided the water is terrain rather than obstacle, white chi flooding through his legs in continuous pulses that drove him forward in thrusts no human swimmer could sustain. Behind him the water churned into a jet stream, a visible wake that pushed outward from his passage and rocked the smaller fishing boats still tied at the nearest dock.
The dragon had gone down two hundred meters out.
Noah covered it in eleven seconds.
