The orange placard hangs from a barge rail like a shield with a time limit.
We stage at Dock Seven. Marine Ops gives us a flat barge with a chewed fender and two men who know knots. The UNDER-STRUCTURE INSPECTION placard rattles in the wind.
Mia checks Minnow's tether twice. Ariad shakes down her kit with bomb-tech focus. Juno runs the checklist like a drill instructor who cares. "Zone tag on. Anchors loaded. Lines set. Battery double. Legal cover triple."
Kade steps aboard last, coat zipped. He looks like a man doing a thing he promised he wouldn't and composing the sentence that explains why.
We push off. The city slides behind us. Outer pylons rise from gray water like vertebrae. The hum is calmer out here; wind eats it. Lattice wraps the bases in thin shimmer. Three-one-three notches etch the visible spike heads.
"Someone loved these," Ariad says—accusation and compliment both.
We tie to the first pylon. Minnow drops. On Mia's screen: wraps thick and tuned. Signal band matches the pier lattice. Two pylons over, the wrong pattern gleams clumsy and bright.
"Walk it," Ariad says. "Same trick."
We set a line from good to bad, draw big Kein Chalk arrows on the pylon skin—only we can see them. Juno braces bolts with a palm and light Ken, legal inside the tag. Kade watches horizon and clock.
A shadow moves starboard. Not a boat. Too fast for driftwood.
"Left," Mia says, tight. "Two signatures under us. Not fish. Not human like before."
"Seal?" Ariad asks, still new enough to hope.
"Not a seal," Mia says.
The barge rocks once. Minnow's tether plucks. On-screen, the lattice gleams; something brushes it; the shimmer jumps like it met a field it knows and also hates.
"Hold," Ariad says, and her voice shakes for the first time.
The second signature slides under the barge and bumps it like a hand under a table. Not huge. Not yet.
Juno's jaw sets. "Stay on task."
We shift load along Ariad's line. The bad pattern fades where we walk past. The good lattice takes it. The pylon hum drops a note. The barge steadies.
Kade exhales. "Back in," he says. "We have what we need."
"Two more," Mia says. The signatures peel away. Listening. Learning.
My phone buzzes. I shouldn't feel it on a boat. I do.
DON'T STAND ON WHAT YOU CAN'T NAME.
LOOK WHERE THE HUM BLEEDS OUT OF THE MAP.
"Zann?" Mia asks, eyes on her screen.
"Yeah," I say.
Juno hears the tone I use right before I do something stupid. "No," she says.
"Copy," I say, meaning maybe.
We finish the walk. We tie a tag ribbon on a spike like a surgeon leaves a suture someone else can find. We haul Minnow. We turn the barge.
On the way in, I see it: a line of spike heads with three-one-three notches pointing off the last pylon toward a dark stripe on the water nobody labels. Not bridge. Not cable. Direction.
Ariad sees it the same second. "That's a vector," she says. "Whoever did the lattice is pointing us somewhere."
"Inside the mile?" Kade asks.
"Outside," Ariad says.
He doesn't nod. He doesn't shake his head. He stares at the line like he's deciding whether he's a coward or a professional.
We dock. We unload. Kade signs things that say we weren't out there. Mia backs up all the backups. Ariad circles the vector on her printed map.
Juno leans on the rail and watches where the vector points. "Next," she says.
"Permit first," Kade says, identical to this morning.
We don't get one. We get two Marine Ops names, a barge window, and a clock that hates us.
Back in the van lane, Mia paints the harbor on the windshield: dots where three-one-three sings, mossy clusters where the sabotage pattern lives. Lines become intent instead of accidents. The vector arrow kisses the map's edge like it wants to leave.
"Walk the load from here to the headland," Ariad says. "See what lights."
"Samsara is beyond your mile," I say.
Kade hears it and pretends he didn't. "We touch what I can sign," he says. "No further."
My phone buzzes again. I look because I'm weak where my brother is concerned.
LOOK WHERE THE ANCHORS HUM OUT.
I don't show anyone.
We restock coils. Swap Minnow's battery. Log the gel wedge, the bolt cutter, the cost of foam on paint. Juno rewrites the checklist like she's shaping luck.
Marine Ops texts our next slot; the window is narrow and the tide isn't.
We shove off again before dusk for a final pass inside the line. The outer pylons hum polite when we follow rules and angry when we don't. The wrong pattern flares and fades depending on whether we give it attention, like a child or a trap.
At the last pylon inside the mile, the vector is clearer: three spike heads in a row with their notches filed just a degree deeper, like an arrow someone thought nobody would see.
Ariad touches the metal with two fingers and whispers, "Whoever you are, you're either saving us or setting us up."
Wind steals her words. Water takes the rest.
Kade stands on the barge with his coat zipped to the throat and says to the horizon, "This is where the permit ends."
"Then we prep," Juno says. "Because the problem doesn't."
We dock in blue light. Kade signs the log that says we did nothing special. Ariad folds the printed map once, twice. Mia pushes our backups to an offsite she doesn't name.
I stay with the rail, watching the dark stripe past the last pylon where the vector points and the hum feels like a line drawn under a sentence.
My phone buzzes one last time. Six words, a location ping in open water, and an instruction I already feel in my teeth.
COUNT TO THREE BEFORE YOU TOUCH ANYTHING. —Z
"Tomorrow," Juno says, reading the tide in her head and the fight in my face. "We prep tonight."
"Prep what?" Mia asks.
Juno doesn't blink. "A way to step over a line without falling off the map."
The vector waits offshore, and the permit clock runs out at dawn.