The Fraying Edges
The days settled into a rhythm that was both demanding and reassuring, but the Cooperative's fragile peace began to fray at the edges. One afternoon, the single bulb that illuminated the mending bay flickered and died, plunging them into a sudden, unnerving darkness.
"Merciful heavens!" Niran cursed from his corner. "Malik! Is that generator of yours napping again?"
The darkness held for ten breathless seconds before the light sputtered back to life with a weak, yellowish glow.
That evening, Rupa's face was grim as she made the rounds. "Stricter power rationing," she announced, her voice carrying over the low murmur of conversation on the central platform. "The fuel reserves are dangerously low. Only essential lights after sundown."
The announcement was met with a tense, unhappy silence. In the line for the evening ration of thin seaweed broth, Anja saw Tomas huddled not with two, but four other older fishermen near the mooring posts. It wasn't just idle grumbling; it was a serious meeting. Their faces were grim in the dim light, their voices low and urgent.
Anja, wanting to understand the currents of this new society, moved away from the line, pretending to inspect a coiled rope nearby, placing herself just within earshot.
"A three-day probe is an insult," Tomas was saying, his voice a low, bitter snarl. "It's a fool's errand designed to fail. She sends one skiff, it comes back with a half-empty hold, and she gets to say, 'See? I was right to be cautious.'"
"But the fuel, Tomas," another fisherman, a wiry man named Ben, countered. "Jaya's right about the risk. If that one skiff runs into trouble or finds nothing…"
"It's a bigger risk to sit here and starve!" Tomas shot back, his passion silencing the group. "You all know the northern currents. You know the deep-water shoals are there. I'm not talking about a gamble; I'm talking about a calculated hunt.
Three skiffs provide security. A full week gives us the time to actually find the schools, not just dip a net and run home. One good haul of tuna and we're not eating this green sludge for a month. Our children have full bellies. We have oil from the fish. We have leverage."
He gestured with his empty bowl toward Anja, not with malice, but with a fisherman's blunt pragmatism. "We're taking in strays—and I don't blame the girl, she's a hard worker—but we're doing it on an empty pantry. Rupa's building a roof while the foundations are rotting away. We need a catch. We are fishermen, and we have forgotten how to hunt."
Anja quickly turned away, her face burning. But for the first time, she heard more than just bitterness in his voice. She heard a plan. A risky, defiant plan, but a plan nonetheless. It was the voice of a man who believed that survival required a leap, not a slow, careful crawl into oblivion.
"'Rationing'," one of the men spat, looking at his half-empty bowl with disgust. "It's been rationing for a month. Now it's just starving, but with a prettier name."
"It's the patrols," Tomas grumbled, his gaze flicking toward the mooring where Jaya's skiffs were kept. "Burning our last fuel chasing shadows. And for what? So we can feed two more mouths from a pot that's already empty." He nodded subtly in Anja's direction.
The other man sighed, his shoulders slumping. "My kids are getting thin, Tomas. They complain of stomach pains from this stuff."
"And Rupa's answer is a new garden that won't bear fruit for months, if ever," Tomas said, his voice a low, bitter snarl. "She's building a roof while the foundations are rotting away. We need fish. We need fuel. We need to focus on us, not on every stray that floats by."
Anja quickly turned away, her face burning, the meager warmth from her bowl of broth turning to ice in her stomach.
A few days later, a patrol skiff returned early, moving too fast, carving a deep V in the water. Anja saw Jaya, the patrol leader, leap from the boat before it was even moored, her face a mask of iron.
"Saw a fast-moving skimmer, unmarked, five klicks north," Jaya reported directly to Rupa. "Watched us through a scope for ten minutes, then sped off towards the old refinery ruins."
"Scavengers?" Rupa asked, though she knew the answer.
"Worse," Jaya replied, her expression hard. "Organized. Well-equipped. They weren't looking for a random target. They were scouting."
A shiver of cold, familiar fear ran down Anja's spine.
The Bleeding Water
The most visible threat arrived with the morning tide a week later. Anja awoke to a new smell, acrid and metallic, that scraped at the back of her throat. The water surrounding the flotilla was no longer grey-green. It was a sickening, viscous, ugly scum the color of rust.
Fishing was suspended entirely.
Anja went to find Sami, a knot of dread in her stomach. She found him with other children at the edge of the main platform, staring at the strange, red water. Leela was with them, her face calm but her eyes full of a deep, profound concern.
"Anja, look," Sami whispered as she approached, his voice a mixture of fear and awe. He pointed a trembling finger at the water. "The water is bleeding."
The child's description was so chillingly accurate it stole the air from her lungs. A dead fish, its belly bloated and pale, drifted past.
"It's not bleeding, Sami-jaan," Anja said, her voice steadier than she felt as she put an arm around his shoulders. "It's just… sick."
"Can we make it better?" he asked, his eyes wide with a child's faith that the adults could fix anything.
Before she could answer, the walkway lights above them flickered, dimmed to a dull orange, and then returned, weaker than before. The brief failure was a jarring reminder of their dwindling power.
Anja's gaze involuntarily flicked north, toward the jagged, distant silhouette of the refinery ruins, and Jaya's grim warning echoed in her mind. They were scouting.
The Lifeline Cooperative, their sanctuary, was facing a convergence of crises. Their power was faltering. Their food source was poisoned. And the shadow of human wolves, organized and observant, loomed on the horizon.
Anja pulled Sami closer, his small body a fragile anchor in a world that was once again threatening to dissolve around them.