The convoy moved like an announced execution. Orders came in clipped lines. Men folded themselves into positions; radios clicked and voices went low. Dojin rode in the back with her hands visible and her face a flat mask. The lead counted, the tech checked kit, the shields locked positions. There was no talk of courage. There was only the ledger—places to close, people to name.
They found the service door with fresh scuff marks. The techs peeled the panel fast and clear. Inside, a manual relay blinked faint and hot; someone had kept a node warm on purpose. The lead gave a short command. The sandbox swallowed the handshake and spat a child's lullaby into Dojin's skull: a half-line, a cough as punctuation. Her throat tightened. She said the word the lead wanted to hear.
"That room," she said. The sound in the room folded into facts.
An incoming ping tried to thread back through the building's wiring while they worked. A trace lit on the reader and crawled neat lines across the screen—barge berth, manifest relay, a looping manifest scrawled KEEP PANEL WARM. The tech swore under his breath and traced the path. Someone had left a warm wire in the dark, a test to see how close the net could come. Hands moved quicker. The team closed the crate, sealed drives in blue tubs, and moved to the water.
The barge that carried them out smelled of oil and old rope. Men shifted on deck, silent and quick. At the unlit cluster two piers down a shadow man slid a coil of rope, passed a folded manifest. The lead broke it open with gloved fingers. The time stamp matched the relay's heat. The door code matched the echo signature. The lead nodded. They left the light off and moved on shadow steps.
They put Dojin on a boat that cut a dark line through the river. She kept her hands where anyone could see them. She did not carry the pad. She did not carry questions. The river air took the salt and pressed it into her sinuses. It had a clean hardness that sharpened the rest of the convoy.
At the service door someone worked a panel with a practiced hand. Keys slipped, little tools shivered in locks. A courier stepped away. The team struck in one motion. Handles turned, boots slammed, a man hit the deck with wet metal under him. He launched his shoulder, tried a kick, reached a jacket for a device. A tech slammed a reader to the relay; it lit with the River South signature.
"You don't belong here," he spat, breath wheeze-quick. "They notice witnesses."
They cuffed him pidgin-quick and hauled him to the light. He spat curses and a name like a thrown stone. He had clean hands and a sunburned jaw that curled like a question. He kept his mouth for later. For now they carried blue tubs and sealed evidence and cut the power to the panel.
At HQ the lead pushed a field report across the table. The relay matched Marquez's pattern, the manifest linked to Marshall 27, the chain stepped down like teeth. S.‑K. moved closer on the list; the ledger filled with tighter lines. The tech printed a set of routes and clipped them into a folder.
They ran Dojin through a quick Corrupty scan. The number jumped two ticks. The nurse told the lead this required monitoring and a short rest. The lead said to stay close and locked a pair of escorts inside the clinic's quieted halls. The escorts sat in the corner like gray doors.
News moved through the black channels at a speed that made the Association look slow. Listings vanished. Brokers shelved product and burned windows. Inventory that had been tradeable turned into danger. Prices did not just rise; they convulsed upward and left panic in their wake.
The market's reaction showed as blunt action. A buyer with clean hands shoved a vendor behind a crate and slapped a strip of bills onto his palm. A vendor who had joked with customers all week sold a half-drive under a tarp, hands shaking when he counted the cash. Two men with weathered faces circled a stall, asked names, left a folded note on the table. That night someone keyed out a car and then lit it slow; the owner's vendors said nothing and watched the flames eat the sheet metal like a lesson.
Dojin kept feeling the half-echo in her jacket like a small hot thing. One IV bag, one night—this was the arithmetic she lived on. The same capsule would now command a price that brought sleeves and belts into the alley. Men bought with leather fists and quiet knives. Trust traded for insurance.
An envelope tucked under her door changed the game from rumor to intent. FIND THE DOOR. RIVER SOUTH. DONT BRING THE PAD. The handwriting was cramped, urgent. No signature. No threats that smelled of pleading. The message sat like a blade under a paperweight.
The escorts tightened. They posted two at the clinic and left one walking the corridor at night like a slow-moving shadow. They scanned vents and counted delivery men. They moved through nearby alleys and left names with shopkeepers who would answer radios if trouble scratched the glass.
The Association froze a handful of shell lines and seized two couriers before dawn. Lawyers moved a different clock; paper moved slow where fists moved faster. The top of the chain kept clean shoes and filigree accounts. The Association chewed on the edges of those channels and pushed a warrant through the court in steady bites. Men in office towers answered in papers and polite lies.
The lead gave Dojin a barge of their own to tail a broker who still moved shipments. The broker met them at dawn like a man meeting an invoice—short, precise. He handed a folded manifest and took nothing in return. The manifest had a door number and a time and a line that read KEEP PANEL WARM. A phrase like a hotspot glowing in their hands.
They watched the door until its shadow leaned right and a figure moved with a parcel tucked under one arm. Keys clicked. The man slid a small panel and worked wires with the care of someone who had done it a thousand times. He did not glance back. The lead gave the strike signal and the team closed like a jaw. The man fought for two breathless seconds and hit the deck under wet iron. He swore at Dojin with a curse that carried the shape of warning.
"You came," he breathed. "Now they notice."
The team cuffed him and stuffed drives into evidence tubs and leaned the relays against gloved hands. The lead looked at Dojin with a gravel-glued voice.
"You did good," he said. "Stay close."
The pad blinked CORRUPTY +10 and the escort men moved like the building held their patience. The lead left a small aid packet on her desk: two IV bags and a voucher for follow-up. It was not charity. It was an entry in a ledger that kept score.
The market took on the edges of an organism in spasms. Brokers who had been casual now counted faces and required vouches. Deals moved into private rooms and boats, then into warehouses with muscle posted by nights. Protection fees climbed. A vendor who tried to keep prices steady woke to a fist where his ribs had been. The old calculus of small trades crumpled: risk multiplied, profit thinned, fear settled into people's mouths like dust.
Dojin sat with the half-echo and did the sums. Sell now and men will know her name. Keep it and Lee‑Hae goes short of oxygen. The ledger was cruel and precise. The half-echo hummed like a small, guilty animal.
She slept in injections of rest. The river kept its memory, carrying scents and histories against the hulls. The door grew closer. It also grew hotter. Each step toward the lock scraped more at the thin skin Dojin kept between survival and ruin.
Trauma Log: ENTRY 008 — RIVER RAID. CONTENT: MANUAL RELAY DISCOVERED; HANDLER CAUGHT; CORRUPTY +10.
They told her to rest. They told her to report in the morning. The river kept its mind and the city kept its score. Rooms still asked for hands. The door had teeth. Every step toward turning a key required a trade in blood or silence.