The river hum drops to a base note and my phone signs a name it never signs.
We climb as sirens bloom upstream. Board vans. Harbor cops. Mess, the usual. Kade's people bag gel canisters and shoot angles that make him happy. The gel crew is face-down, zip-tied. Same men. Not married to jail—married to paychecks. That's its own threat.
Rao ghosts toward daylight. I step in his way because my worst trait loves answers where answers don't live.
"Who's Pattern B?" I ask.
He considers, then shrugs. "Pick a badge with a contractor inside it," he says. "Or don't. Either way, your good pattern fails if you stop walking it."
"Zann?" I try.
He tips his head toward my pocket like he can hear the buzz. "You'll never catch him if you keep chasing his shadow," he says, and walks past with his hands high, boots printing wet.
Hammer woman nods a salute at Ariad. The calm man never quite looks at us; he stares through river and metal like they're already drawings. Kade lets them go—for now. Either he wants a bigger fish, or he knows headlines need cleaner rooms than tunnels give.
Mia kills the tag. Juno reads tide like a clock. "Out," she says, and nobody argues.
On the bank, the city exhale is obvious—bridge traffic, gulls, a tug's horn. Ariad zips her kit and slings it. "Good news," she says dry. "Your city didn't drown today."
"Bad?" Mia asks.
Ariad nods at the river. "This is the small part."
My phone. I look because I'm weak where my brother is concerned.
WALK THE LOAD TO SAMSARA OR WATCH NIRVANA SINK.
— Z
He signed it. He never signs it. The words put a small stone under my ribs.
Mia leans in. "He signed?"
"Yeah."
Juno watches my face like a math problem and looks away before she solves it out loud. She hates wasting time on people we can't touch. She's usually right. I hate that.
We slouch in the van lane because inside still smells like coffee and foam. Mia projects a grid on the windshield: piers, docks, dates. Each hum, lattice, forged work order becomes a dot. Three-one-three blooms across older spans like a rash.
"It's a map," Mia says. "Somebody's bracing what the city forgot."
"Middle Way," Juno says. First time she labels it aloud. In her mouth it's not a curse—it's a problem she intends to fix.
"Maybe," Ariad says, pointing at a gap. "Or a splinter. Or someone keeping up with someone else's bad math."
"What are Samsara and Nirvana?" I ask, half to the room, half to the phone.
Mia pulls up the asset list. "[[Samsara]] is the upstream floodgate retrofit nobody funded. [[Nirvana]] is the entertainment pier out at the headland. Both on the edge of the grid."
"Walk the load," Ariad says, like a mantra. "We see where the stress actually goes, not where the drawing pretends."
"Next step," Juno says. "We need proof and a plan. Mia, map every three-one-three brace across the harbor. Cross it with camera outages and 'repairs' with time stamps that don't math. Ariad, pull inspections with missing hours and any change orders that vanish between drafts."
She turns to me last. "Kanon. If you're going to chase a shadow, make it cast a shape."
"I know where the shape is," I say, and I hate how true it is. "He just sent it."
"We'll go," Juno says, meaning the word nobody likes in public. "But we do it with permits or with cover we can defend."
"Or we do it fast and pray," Mia mutters.
"Both," Ariad says.
We inventory. Lines recoiled. Anchor Gun cleaned. Foam scraped off my blade's throat. My shoulder throbs the steady post-fight way. Juno gives me clinic eyes.
"I'm fine," I lie.
"Clinic anyway," she says.
I get a wrap and a lecture about overuse and chemistry on steel. By the time I'm back, Kade is 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 replies, glacial.
He signs a stand-down. Our visors flip ACTIVE to REVIEW. "Until my review concludes," he says, "no further under-structure activity."
"We have an educational walkthrough scheduled," Ariad says, bland.
His smile twitches. "Of course."
He leaves the way he arrives: dry shoes, dry hands, dry words. 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 not caffeine."
I find a bar that tastes like sawdust and stubbornness. The tide clock crawls toward afternoon. Mia stares at water, then her phone, then me.
"Tell me you hear the fourth note now," she says.
"I do."
"Good," she says. "If I'm hallucinating, you're driving."
We watch the river's throat while civilians step over our cones like it's a game. Somewhere under them, braces sing to each other and decide which parts of our city get to keep standing.
The gel crew is being marched past by Board windbreakers. The tube man looks seasick on dry land. The driver won't meet our eyes. They aren't zealots; they're labor. I can arrest labor all day and I won't catch a brain.
Ariad taps the windshield grid. "Walk the load from the river mouth to the headland," she says. "See what lights up."
Mia shades in arcs. Samsara sits upstream like a clenched fist; Nirvana juts into the sea like a dare. Lines between dots start to look like intent instead of accidents.
Juno rubs her jaw. "We'll need a friend at City Works who doesn't belong to Kade."
I picture a name I don't like using. "[[Perales]]?" I say. "Inactive badge on our Yard Twelve runner."
Ariad nods once. "If they're real, they'll know where all the skeletons are braced."
I pocket my phone and tell myself I won't answer the next message. I will. I always do where Zann is concerned.
Juno stands. "Gear in twenty," she says. "Then Samsara."
We move because that's the only thing that keeps the hum from getting inside your bones.
My screen lights again—one line, signed: COUNT TO THREE BEFORE YOU TOUCH ANYTHING. —Z