He woke with wet cuffs and a name badge: Lena Ives, EMT-2. The ambulance doors rattled. Water slapped the undercarriage. A radio coughed coordinates like prayers.
"Lena!" his partner shouted over the engine. "We got a submerged sedan under Pier Nine! You tracking?"
He was. He had to be.
The Echo here wasn't a coronet and a scowl; it was triage burnout, the temptation to call a loss early to save energy for the statistics. It sounded like a practical voice. It sounded like quitting disguised as efficiency.
He squeezed the bar above the door to feel something solid.
"Tracking," he said. "Let's go."
They went.
Water is a different kind of knife. It cuts time into smaller pieces. He used all three heartbeats of his Override to choose a route through the floating ruin, felt the metal groan, and kicked in a window that wanted to stay a mirror.
Inside the sedan: a child in a car seat, a father whose lips were already blue, a mother whose hands were bleeding from clawing at the belt buckle.
He made choices the way he'd decided decrees—procedure first, then mercy that didn't mortgage tomorrow. He passed the child out to his partner, started compressions on the father, and talked the mother through her own breath until hers synced with his count.
They lost the father. They saved a family of two who would grieve into three again someday.
He stayed human about it.
ENCOUNTER: Submersion rescue (Severe) +60 XP: Saved lives at personal risk. +15 XP: Resisted Burnout-Echo under duress. +10 XP: Truth Found — identify structural weakness in Pier Nine flow that will kill later if unaddressed. STREAK NEW WORLD: +10% (day 1) TOTAL: 303 / 400 (L4) Perk Point +1
He took Safehouse Mark (portable) and claimed a break-room with a busted coffee machine and a view of the waterline as his spot to breathe without the Echo whispering shortcuts.
He taped a note inside the locker: No warrant without ledger. No triage without names. It made no sense to anyone else. It made all the sense to him.
Host: Lena Ives (EMT-2)City: Bayview FloodplainSAFEHOUSE: Station Break-Room (portable mark active)Perks: Anchor Memory I | Thread-Sight I | Lucid Override I | Safehouse Mark (portable)Start Status: Global 90d | L4 (303/400) | Streak 1 day (+10%)
1) 06:12 — First Light, Brown Water
Sirens feather the rain. The radio coughs coordinates.
"Lena, Pier Nine service stairwell—two trapped."
We grind to a wake. The stairwell is a throat of churning silt. A teen clings to a handrail; an older man's face flickers in and out of the water like a bad memory.
I clip my tether and breathe in the copper/ozone of flooded gridlines.
CHECK: Resist Burnout-Echo ("call it and move on") DC 12 Roll: Resolve 3 + Empathy 4 → SUCCESS +10 XP
We go in on the surge's exhale; we come out on the inhale. The teen heaves into my partner's arms; the older man vomits brown water, then air.
ENCOUNTER: Submersion stairwell (High) +45 XP: Two lives at risk, both saved Subtotal: +55 XP → 358/400
I log their names. Not just ages or vitals. Names.
"No triage without names."
The Echo quiets, annoyed.
2) 09:40 — Pier Nine, A Prediction
Thread-Sight hums when I look at the pier footers: a faint overlay of later—concrete spalling like stale bread, a micro-burst pushing a forklift into three volunteers.
THREAD-SIGHT I: Preview chain (single) Consequence: "Footing #3 fails under next surge → mass injury" +10 XP: Truth Identified (actionable) Total: 368/400
I file a hazard bulletin and call Harbor Ops. The line routes to the Metrics Director—Kade—whose voice is a spreadsheet.
"Your authority doesn't extend to pier closures, EMT-2."
"It extends to survival," I say. "Close Footing Three."
"Negative. The pier moves 1.8M pounds of relief per hour. We cannot justify a halt."
I key the EMS interop channel—open broadcast. "All units at Pier Nine: move off Footing Three now. Treat as red-zone until an engineer signs it."
Kade inhales like litigation.
ACTION: Public safety override outside scope (high risk) +15 XP: Pressure Decision in defiance of metrics Total: 383/400 3) 11:03 — "Choose"
Storm squall + jackknifed lorry + stalled bus under the viaduct. Four trapped. A fifth: driver side—crushed torso—breathing shallow. The algorithmic triage tool on my wrist tags them Black (expectant). The Echo likes that word. It sounds clean. Efficient.
The driver's eyes are not efficient. They are asking me to count to three with them.
I hit Lucid Override.
LUCID OVERRIDE I: 3 heartbeats of clarity (spent) Decision: Pry bar + jack spread → free rib cage enough to ventilate while partner extricates back row Cost: Lose 2 minutes for rear passengers Risk: Rear seat hypoxia
Three heartbeats to commit. Then ten unclean minutes to make it true. We lose one rear passenger to arrest; get ROSC on scene after two shocks. The driver lives to the ICU.
I record the name of the one we lost aloud, not into the tool. The rain carries it anyway.
ENCOUNTER: Multi-vehicle entrapment (Severe) +50 XP: High-risk split decision with partial loss +10 XP: Moral Exposure (kept names; resisted dehumanization) LEVEL UP → L5 (443/500) Perk Point +1 Streak: 2 days (+15%)
Kade meets us at staging with a printed reprimand inside a plastic sleeve to keep it dry.
"You defied triage guidance and broadcast unauthorized," she says.
"Footing Three clear yet?" I ask.
She stares past me. The reprimand flaps, perfectly laminated.
4) 14:21 — The Ledger That Bites Back
Dispatch flags a "non-emergent fall" at a maintenance office by the wharf. It smells like binder glue and river mold. A tech sits with an ice pack and a panic in his throat.
"They told me to backdate the pour," he says. "Footing Three failed its crack test last quarter. We were supposed to patch and hide."
"Who told you?"
He swallows. "Ops vendor—Darnsford Marine—and someone at City Works who signs as CW-71."
My body remembers a palace ledger and a midwife, but the scene remembers itself differently: a maintenance log, a cold fax, a signature that shouldn't be.
I photo the board, time-stamp the fracture map, and forward it to Temple—no, to Harbor Tribunal—Bayview's public hearing clerk. My partner murmurs, "You want to live to your next shift?"
"I want to live with my next shift."
TRUTH FOUND: Falsified maintenance protocol (High) +30 XP Total: 473/500
Kade's voice returns on private channel. "EMT-2, cease investigatory actions. Your function is transport."
"Transporting evidence," I say, and kill the mic.
The Echo chuckles—be careful; being right feels a lot like being cruel if you sharpen it—and I let it pass like a cough.
5) 17:08 — The Moment the Water Decides
Surge wall alarms. Pier Nine goes from loud to screaming. A forklift skids across wet decking, then stops short at a line of cones that weren't there this morning—someone moved them because of my broadcast. The volunteers behind that line live because they aren't under Footing Three when it lets go.
Footing Three drops like a bad tooth. The deck buckles. A volunteer goes into the drink; I go after. He doesn't fight me; the water does. We come up in the lee of the shredded footing, coughing concrete.
The forklift driver is pinned but breathing—water climbing into the cab. Kade appears at the edge, pale, mouthing protocols. I hand her my radio.
"Hold this and talk slow," I say, and wedge the hydraulic spreader where the cab meets the guard.
It's not elegant. It's not efficient. It's how we live.
We get the driver out. We get everyone out.
Then the pier groans and gives the rest of itself to the bay.
CRITICAL EVENT: Infrastructure collapse (Severe+) +70 XP: Preemptive evacuation saved multiple lives +20 XP: Personal risk in collapse zone +10 XP: Converted adversary to asset in crisis (Kade assisted) Subtotal Earned This Scene: +100 XP LEVEL UP → L6 (573/600) Perk Point +1 (Total unspent: 2) Streak: 3 days (+20%)
Kade stares at the hole where the pier used to be. The sleeve with my reprimand is somewhere in the bay.
"You were right," she says, and looks like it hurts less than she feared.
"Being right didn't fix it," I answer. "Moving people did."
She nods once. It's the beginning of a ledger.
6) 20:55 — Hearings and Harbors
Emergency session, Harbor Tribunal. The maintenance tech testifies. Photos roll. The clerk reads the vendor's contract aloud like a ritual to banish a thing. The crowd is quiet—the kind of quiet that builds new rules.
Kade speaks on record: "EMS issued an unauthorized hazard broadcast that prevented fatalities. I recommend we formalize discretionary red-zone authority in field."
It feels like a small stone placed in a flood wall. The water still exists. The wall gets better.
MILESTONE: Policy pivot achieved without martyrdom +50 XP Streak applies (+20%): +60 total Act II Subtotal (since start): ≈ +270 XP (before clear) Total: ~ 573 + 60 = 633/700 (L6) Act II Clear — 7 Days
I sleep three hours in the break-room Safehouse, forehead on my forearms. The city keeps breathing. The Echo paces, thin.
When the week clicks over, the system opens like a door.
ACT II CLEAR: "Hold the Line Where It's Wettest" REWARDS: +120 XP (Act Clear) Boons: CLEAN SLATE (1x) — convert one minor Karmic Debt to neutral branch GLOBAL COUNTDOWN: 83 days TOTAL: 753/800 (L7) Perk Points available: 2 (from L5 + L6) → now 3 after L7? (No: +1 per level → we gained L5 and L6 only; L7 reached post-clear, next point at L7→L8) CURRENT PERK POINTS: 2 KARMIC DEBTS: 1 (latent) — the rear passenger who coded while I saved the driver → **eligible for CLEAN SLATE**
I sit with that. Debt isn't guilt; it's unfinished consequence. Still, if I carry it forward, the system will test me with a mirror of that choice at a worse time. If I wipe it now, I lose the lesson's teeth.
I pull out a pen and write the rear passenger's name in thick block letters on the inside of my locker door. Then I touch the Clean Slate sigil.
CLEAN SLATE: Applied to minor Karmic Debt Outcome: Future pressure event neutralized; memory retained (anchorable)
I open Perks. Two points burn a hole in the panel. Backstep (10s) (clean) costs 2. I could hoard for Anchor Memory II later. But the final loop will punish single mistakes. Ten seconds of rewind, clean, can make a survival chain hold.
I choose.
PERK ACQUIRED: Backstep (10s) — clean Cooldown: 1x per scene, long cooldown across scenes Note: Cannot undo Act-level commitments; only micro-timelines Perk Points remaining: 0
The city exhale is real. The orange/metal taste fades.
The door opens again—three options ghosting across my vision:
SUGGESTED NEXT HOSTS: 1) Archivist, City That Eats Names (Memory Hazard)
2) Junior Analyst, Precrime Corp (Ethical Hazard)
3) Back to Baseline (Home) — **Final Loop preparation** (Extreme HIGH RISK)
I close my eyes and hear a laugh through rain on a window. Anchor Memory holds.
"Not yet," I tell the Echo, the city, the system. "One more ledger before we go home."
I select Archivist.