A hull kisses the ladders, and the pier's hum climbs like a throat clearing.
"Lark, blind them," Juno says.
Mia drops the drone low over the bow. LEDs strobe. The quiet boat jerks, helm instinctively shielding eyes. The driver peels off, cursing. Good. Not gone. Farther.
We shove our tied diver up the ladder. No cops at dawn. Juno ties him to a bollard herself. "Don't chew the plastic," she advises. He glares, says nothing.
"Back in," she says.
We go deeper. The hum is stronger; the lattice wraps more pylons, webbing that doesn't cast a shadow but bends light. My thin Kein Thread looks crooked against it, like reality's been nudged.
"The pattern's continuous," Mia murmurs, typing. "Not random. Spacing is…not city standard."
"What's standard?" I ask, sliding along a brace.
"Even bands pegged at load points with steel ties," she says. "This is offset, triangled—brace for tension in two directions."
"Which is good," Juno says.
"Which is clever," Mia says carefully. "If it were approved. It isn't."
At the fifth pylon, the lattice thickens. A nest. Brace spikes—the same kind from the stolen crate—hammered into wood above the shimmer. Their heads are filed with a specific notch pattern: three, then one, then three.
"Code?" I ask.
"Signature," Mia says quietly. "Someone wants finders to know who did it."
"Who?" Juno asks.
Mia's silence is a list she hates.
"Sample," Juno says.
Mia lowers a chisel and a small bag on a cord. I turn my blade sideways and pry a flake. It resists like glass, then pops like sugar. Cold in the glove. It steams for one second, ashamed of the trick, and goes still.
"Got it," Mia says. "Bagged."
Pressure spikes behind my eyes, sharp as surf in a cave.
"Move," Juno says instantly.
Water sucks in like something took a breath below. The beam shudders. The lattice brightens, just a shade. The glow rolls outward: pylon to pylon, contact to contact, like a circuit closes.
I don't think. I hook-shot the Anchor Gun at a clear span and fired. The spike hammers clean wood. My clip line yanks me tight as my beam jerks and drops an inch.
"Up," Juno orders.
We backtrack along my blue Thread. It's straight. The world isn't.
The two divers who fled reappear in our path, masks off now, eyes wide. Their fear has nothing to do with us.
"Out," one says, pointing past us. "Out out out."
"What did you do?" I snap.
"Nothing," he says, and I almost believe him. "It woke."
Juno shoulders past, not shoving him into the lattice even though anger would love that easy lesson. She saves harm for choices, not panic.
We clear the worst of the web and climb up the ladder. Mia leans down and hauls with her whole weight. Juno goes first, then I. The hum slides back to a purr. The lattice fades to a shy shimmer, like it went back to sleep.
We roll onto the boards, gasping. My hands shake. Juno refuses to let hers. Mia holds the sample bag between two fingers if it might bite.
"Tell me that's city work," Juno says.
"It isn't," Mia says, already shaking her head. "And if it were, it'd live in a binder Kade never lets us see."
"Kade," Juno echoes, flat, already hearing careful shoes.
They arrive exactly then. Inspector Kade's coat refuses to get dewy. He takes in placards, harnesses, mud, and our faces. His gaze lands on the sample. He doesn't reach yet—that's the tell. He'll take it, but he'll make it sound like our idea.
"Good morning," he says. "Busy."
"We filed the tag," Juno says. "Below-deck inspection. We had interference. One detained. Two fled."
He nods like he wrote those facts last night.
"What is under my feet?" I ask, before blandness steals the hour.
He glances between planks just as the sheen decides not to exist. His eyes do not widen. He's very good at his job.
"A poor repair, by the look of it," he says mildly.
Mia laughs without humor. "City doesn't repair with glass nets."
Kade finally offers his hand for the sample. Juno does not give it. She waits.
"Chain it to the lab," he says, switching tactics. "Make it official. I'll sign the courier."
Juno slides the bag into a hard case, clicks the locks, and writes the chain herself in thick black ink. Kade watches the pen, not the case. Filing things behind his eyes.
"Your man downstairs?" he asks.
"Tied to a bollard," Juno says. "Likes humming."
Kade's mouth considers a smile and discards it. "I'll take him."
Two Board techs materialize, gloved, quiet. They photograph everything that won't look like what we saw and haul the prisoner away.
Kade turns to go, then pauses with a hand on the frame. "Dilhevia," he says casually. "How's your shoulder?"
"Sore," I say.
"Use the clinic. We'll need your arm straight if you file for 1★ next quarter."
Compliment as a leash. He's telling me to think about Stars, not lattice. He steps off, taking our evidence and some oxygen.
The pier hums again, softer. The harbor reenters: gulls, ropes, cursing.
Mia exhales. "Okay. Leads."
"Don't say guesses," Juno says. "Say leads."
"Leads," Mia amends, ticking fingers. "One: someone is bracing public pylons off-permit with non-standard material. Two: the scheme is clever. Three: the doers are split—thieves, engineers, and something else. Four: somebody wants us looking." Her tablet pings. She tilts the screen.
Six words: WOOD HUMS LOUDER AT LOW TIDE.
Same cadence as the drop. No sender. No trail.
Below, the lattice flickers like a fish back.
"Five," Mia says. "We're not the only ones listening."
Juno smooths a lifted corner of the orange tag, stares where the hum feels thickest. "We won't win this with one arrest and a memo."
"We never do," I say.
She studies my face—measuring whether I'll step outside her lines. She must not like the answer; she looks away before we have to fight about it.
"Next step," she says. "We need a civil—"
"Engineer," a voice says behind us.
We turn. Woman with a backpack, hair in a scarf, hi-vis vest over a gray hoodie. Half our age, half our patience. She flashes a Board contractor badge: Ariad Laghari, CIVIL OPS — STRUCTURES.
"Kade called me out of bed," she says. "Who touched a pier without me?"
I point between planks.
Ariad kneels and peeks. A noise in her throat—neither fear nor admiration. "That's not spec," she says. "And if it's what I think, we're going to have very expensive problems very quickly."
"What do you think it is?" Juno asks.
Ariad weighs how much truth she's allowed. "Not glass. Not epoxy. Locks like both. The pattern's good—whoever did it cares more about the pier than the city does."
"Great," Mia says. "So our terrorists are civic-minded."
Ariad's eyes flick to me. "Terrorists?" she repeats, neutral.
"Label," I say.
"Labels are for budgets," she says, standing. "Show me everything. Then don't touch it again until I tell you where to put your boots."
The pier murmurs through our soles as Ariad adds, "And call whoever sent that text. They're writing your map."