The wall holds; the truck is chained; Kade wants our chalk to disappear.
He leaves with our evidence and three gel cowboys. The gray-jackets pack fast. The hammer woman drifts close to Ariad without looking like she does and murmurs, "You're doing it right. They'll make you stop."
"They can try," Ariad says, and that's when I decide to like her.
The ladder guy glances at me, then taps the rim of his goggles twice—the way Zann used to when he wanted me to notice a thing without making noise.
I don't move. I file it.
Cleanup. Juno logs the incident in clean sentences. Mia scrapes gel off a bolt head with a toothpaste cap and bags it. I erase Chalk where it'll confuse tomorrow's crew and leave the lines that matter.
Kade lingers with hands in pockets like the dock fits there. "You're going to get hurt," he says to the air.
"Who?" Juno asks.
"All of you," he says. "But first, someone else." He looks at me when he says the last part, a finger on a bruise.
"Anything else, Inspector?" Ariad asks, polite as a knife.
He blinks out of whatever feeling he thought he cast, smiles a millimeter. "Welcome to the process," he tells her, and leaves with the truck.
⸻
We slouch in the van lane because the van still smells like coffee and foam. Mia projects a grid on the windshield: piers, docks, dates. Every time we found a hum, a lattice, a forged work order, she adds a dot.
Three-one-three blooms across older spans like a rash.
"It's a map," Mia says. "Somebody's bracing everything the city forgot."
"Middle Way," Juno says. The first time, she labels it out loud. In her mouth, it's not a curse—just a problem to fix.
"Maybe," Ariad says, pointing at a gap. "Or a splinter group. Or someone keeping up with someone else's bad math."
My phone buzzes. Unknown. A video link. I open it because I'm bad at being sensible.
Body-cam angle I recognize: my eye line—except it's behind my back, at Pier Four yesterday when I leaned toward the water. Nobody was there.
The clip pauses on my hand over the glow. A finger draws a circle around the seam, underlining bolts we missed with neat digital marks.
Text overlays like a whisper: STOP CHASING SHADOWS. WALK THE LOAD.
Mia leans in. "Zann?"
The breath leaves my lungs as I tripped. "Maybe."
Juno watches my face for half a second too long, then looks away. She hates wasting time on people we can't touch. She's right. I hate that she's right.
Ariad taps the last dot. "Next," she says. "We do the thing nobody pays us to do. We walk the load. See where it goes."
"Where?" I ask.
"Under the river mouth," she says. "Old power conduit. Everyone pretends it isn't there."
"Great," Mia mutters. "Rats and secrets."
"Bring earplugs," Ariad says. "And a bigger Anchor Gun."
"Bring another Star," Kade would say. He isn't here.
We gear audit. Lines re-coiled. Anchor Gun cleaned. Foam scraped from my blade's throat. My shoulder throbs in that steady post-fight way.
"Clinic," Juno says.
"I'm fine," I lie.
"Clinic," she repeats.
I get wrapped, endure a lecture about overuse and foam residue on steel, and come back to find Kade at our fresh placard with two suits and a smile that isn't.
"Contractor Laghari," he says. "Thank you for responding."
"Thank you for calling before anyone cut a brace," Ariad says without warmth.
He signs a stand-down. The placard in our visors flips from ACTIVE to REVIEW.
"Until my review concludes," he says, "no further under-structure activity."
"We have an educational walkthrough scheduled," Ariad says, blandly.
His smile twitches. "Of course."
He leaves dry as always. The hum keeps humming. The city breathes.
Ariad shoulders her pack. "You two nap in shifts," she tells Juno and Mia. "You," she tells me, "eat something that isn't caffeine."
I find a bar that tastes like sawdust and sugar. The tide creeps toward noon.
Mia stares at the water, then her phone, then me. "Tell me you hear the fourth note now."
"I do," I say.
"Good," she says. "If I'm hallucinating, you're driving."
11:57. Another text: ANCHORS HUM SHARP AT NOON. COUNT TO THREE BEFORE YOU TOUCH ANYTHING.
"Your ghost is right about masking," Ariad says. "Current noise hides vibration signature."
"You okay bending the stand-down?" I ask.
"I'm okay not losing a pier because a man with dry shoes wants a cleaner memo," she says.
Juno weighs law against tide and nods once. "We stay legal until we can't. Educational walkthrough. Observers only. We don't touch unless I say."
"Copy," I say.
⸻
Noon paints the water white. We don harnesses at the river mouth. The conduit's intake is a black grin under the old span, fenced in by guilt and broken signs. The hum here is layered—three low notes, and a sharper fourth that nails the back of my tongue.
We tag an "assessment walkthrough." Our visors draw a thin blue ring—legal enough if you squint.
"Eyes, not hands," Ariad reminds. "Count to three before any contact."
We go down. The river mouth eats sound and spits it back, stranger. Lark whirs overhead, lens ticking through bands. The pylons are older, carved with initials from people who are bones now. The lattice is here too—thicker, taught to hold something heavier than planks.
Mia drops the puck and touches two fingers. One tone, two, three. On the fourth, the lattice brightens almost politely.
"See that?" Ariad whispers. "It's key to the sharp."
"Three-count," I breathe, and hold my hand an inch from a brace. One. Two. Three. The pressure behind my eyes eases like the lattice recognized a rhythm and decided I wasn't a threat.
"Walk the load," Ariad says, and we do. We chalk stress courses—blue veins across old wood—until the map tells us a thing no memo would: the braces are steering weight away from the conduit's lip and into buried pins that don't exist on any city drawing.
"Buried where?" Juno asks.
"Under the apron," Ariad says softly. "Somebody drilled anchors at low tide and didn't file a single permit."
"Who can do that?" I ask.
"People with money and silence," Ariad says. "Or people with nothing to lose."
My phone buzzes in the dark. Unknown: COUNT TO THREE BEFORE YOU TOUCH ANYTHING scrolls again, then a second line: LEFT OF THE THIRD PIN.
I look left of the third pin. There's a hairline we missed—thin as fishing line—running down to something not wood.
"Metal," I say. "Not city steel."
Ariad nods once. "We're not alone down here."
We aren't. A soft clack carries over water—the sound of a knife hitting a sheath. Two shapes crouch in the conduit mouth. Wetsuits, low masks, knives turned backward. They don't move closer. They watch like sentries.
"Hands," Juno says, voice low.
They don't lift them. One taps their goggles twice.
I don't say Zann's name out loud. The hum says it for me.
"Count to three," Ariad repeats. "Then back out."
One. Two. Three.
We retreat on blue lines we drew for ourselves, anchors holding, lattice humming sharp and low, like a thing pleased we followed rules it didn't write.
Topside, the light hurts. The placard still says REVIEW. Kade's review won't fix what we saw.
Ariad clicks her pen and says, "We need a permit for destructive testing." She looks at Juno. "And a friend at City Works who doesn't belong to Kade."
Juno nods like she already has a name she doesn't want to use.
Mia wipes foam dust off my blade with a look that says Stop letting your weapon kiss chemistry. "Next move?" she asks.
I look at the river mouth and feel the map running under my boots. Stop chasing shadows. Walk the load.
"Under the apron," I say. "Where the drawings lie."
My phone vibrates again—one line, no sender: IF YOU FALL, FALL WHERE IT CAN HEAR YOU.