The New Threat
As dawn crept over the flotilla, painting the sky in bruised shades of grey and purple, a new, insidious threat emerged from the crippled scavenger skimmer. A creeping, iridescent sheen of oil and fuel was spreading from the wreck, a rainbow slick of poison nudged by the morning wind directly towards the intake for their newly modified water filter.
"It'll poison the water again," Anja breathed, the words a horrified whisper. She stood on the western platform, the brief, exhausted relief of their victory curdling into a familiar, gnawing anxiety.
Rupa stood beside her, her face grim, the lines of command etched deep by the sleepless night. "There is no end to it," she murmured, her voice a low rumble of frustration. "One head cut from the hydra, and two more grow in its place." She straightened her shoulders, the leader taking charge once more. "This cannot stand. And we cannot ignore the resources on that vessel." She turned abruptly. "Jaya! Niran! Hakeem! To my dwelling! Now! Emergency council!"
Council of War: The Skimmer's Fate
The small dwelling was cramped and tense. The smell of victory—smoke and adrenaline—had been replaced by the smell of the new crisis.
"It's a strategic necessity," Jaya argued, her voice flat and hard. "That hulk is a floating armory. Fuel, if we can siphon it. Metal plating far superior to our own. Weapons. We need to strip it clean before the sea claims it."
"That vessel is a death trap," Hakeem countered, his voice gentle but firm. "There are bodies aboard. Diseases we cannot afford to bring into this community. And the oil slick... the risk of contamination is too great. We should sink it and be done with it."
"We cannot leave it there to poison our water," Rupa declared finally, her voice cutting through the debate. "And we cannot ignore the resources. Jaya, you will lead a small reconnaissance team. You will board the vessel, check only for immediate dangers—unstable fuel cells, booby traps. You will not begin any salvage until you can declare that deck safe." Her decision was a balance of caution and necessity.
Salvaging the Enemy
The reconnaissance mission was successful. The hulk was declared secure, and the salvage operation began with a grim, focused urgency. Niran was in charge of dismantling the beast. To Anja's surprise, he requested her personally. "Jaya says you have an eye for what's useful in the wreckage," he grunted, his tone a mixture of skepticism and grudging respect. "She says you see the bones of things. We need your eyes on that skimmer."
The air around the crippled vessel was thick with the smell of burnt fuel, oil, and death. A small team towed it to a shallow, muddy sandbar away from the flotilla, and the work began. It was a complete, systematic consumption. The community, like a colony of determined ants, swarmed over the carcass of their enemy, breaking it down, absorbing its very bones into their own.
Niran's crew moved with a grim, focused energy, the air filled with the deafening screech of a grinder and the rhythmic CLANG of heavy hammers against stressed metal. "This steel is tough," Omar grunted, his muscles bulging as he and another mender finally pried a scarred, black armored plate free from the hull.
"Aye," Niran replied, wiping sweat from his brow. "And now it'll guard one of our own. This is our new shield." He slapped the plate with a calloused hand. "Every piece we take is a piece of their strength we make our own. Let's have the next one!"
Stepping onto the cold, tilted, oil-slick plating of the skimmer felt like crossing into another world. "Your job, girl," Niran said to Anja, "is to sift through the living quarters. The main cabin. Look for the small things. Tools. Wiring. Sealed containers. Things my hammers will break."
Anja pushed open the heavy, water-damaged door to the crew quarters. The squalor was absolute. Crude bunks were bolted to the walls, each a chaotic nest of greasy rags and discarded protein wrappers. This was not a living space; it was a holding pen for violent animals. Working methodically, she began to sort through the grim leavings, finding a cache of heavy nuts and bolts for Niran and a precious roll of insulated copper wire for Malik's endless repairs. In a tangle of old hoses near a bunk, her fingers closed around something small, smooth, and hard. It was a small, carved wooden bird, its surface worn smooth by countless touches.
Anja stood frozen, turning the bird over in her palm. It was a profoundly human object, utterly out of place in this den of violence. Whose was it? One of the dead men who had screamed and fought and tried to kill them only hours before? Had he carved it himself, a memory of a life before the water? Or was it a trinket stolen from a child during some other raid, a grim trophy?
She thought of Sami, of the small, clever things his hands were now learning to make. She imagined a child somewhere, crying for a lost toy. The bird didn't make the scavengers any less monstrous. It didn't erase the violence or the blood. But it made them tragic. It was a ghost in the machine, a tiny, silent testament to a humanity lost somewhere in the relentless violence of the drowned world.
"Anja!" Niran's voice boomed from the deck, startling her. "Are you daydreaming in there? Find anything useful?"
Shaking off the strange melancholy, she tucked the small bird into her pouch—a secret she didn't know why she was keeping—and continued her search.
The Smoking Gun
Her search then led her to the small, cramped officer's cabin. It was marginally cleaner than the crew quarters. Bolted to the wall was a small, locked metal footlocker. Using a crowbar from her salvage kit, she pried it open with a loud, satisfying crack of metal.
Inside, cushioned by more greasy rags, was a waterproof case. Anja's heart began to hammer against her ribs. She unlatched it. It held a small, handheld data slate—its screen cracked but possibly salvageable—and a thin, oilskin-wrapped logbook.
Her hands trembling, she opened the logbook. The handwriting was small, precise, and chillingly detached. It detailed patrol routes, fuel consumption, and salvage hauls. Then she found it. An entry from six weeks prior.
Phase 1 initiated. Deployed Agent R at designated coordinates. Current pull should carry bloom directly into target zone within 4-6 weeks. Proceeding with Phase 2: Observation.
Anja's breath caught in her throat. Her eyes scanned the page, her mind refusing to connect the words. She flipped forward. A more recent entry, dated just one week ago:
Bloom has reached target. Observable impact: fishing ceased, purifier systems likely compromised, power rationing in effect. Target is softened. They are blind and starving, as predicted. Ready for Phase 3.
It was all there. Cold, calculated, and undeniable. Agent R. Red. The red tide. The sickness, the hunger, the dying generator—it wasn't a series of tragic accidents. It was a weapon. A siege. A deliberate, protracted act of murder, planned and executed with cold precision.
The Escape from the Cabin
Her hands shaking, she grabbed the logbook and the data slate and scrambled from the suffocating cabin, her mind reeling from the sheer, cold-blooded evil of it. This wasn't a fight against desperate scavengers. This was a war against monsters.
She burst through the cabin door onto the tilted deck, gasping for air. The open sky felt too vast, the grey light too bright after the claustrophobic darkness of that cabin. Her legs threatened to give out beneath her, and she grabbed the railing for support, the logbook and slate clutched against her chest.
They poisoned us. Deliberately. Systematically.
The words from the logbook scrolled through her mind like a nightmare she couldn't wake from. "Target is softened. They are blind and starving, as predicted." The clinical detachment of those entries was somehow worse than open cruelty. They'd been watching. Taking notes. Waiting.
"Anja?"
She spun, nearly dropping the slate. Omar stood a few meters away, a heavy wrench in his oil-stained hands, looking at her with concern. "You alright, girl? You look like you've seen a ghost."
She opened her mouth to answer, but no words came. What could she say? I just found proof we've been under biological attack for weeks?Everything we thought was bad luck was actually murder?
"I need..." she managed finally. "I need to find Jaya. Right now."
The urgency in her voice must have communicated itself because Omar's expression shifted from concern to alarm. "She's back on the main platform. Defensive perimeter check. You want me to—"
"No," Anja cut him off. She forced herself to breathe, to think. "No, just... keep working. I'll find her."
She climbed down from the skimmer on shaking legs, her mind racing. The evidence in her hands felt impossibly heavy, as if the weight of all their suffering had been compressed into these few physical objects.
The Journey Back
The short skiff ride back to the Cooperative felt eternal. Anja sat alone in the small boat she'd borrowed, the logbook wrapped in its oilskin on her lap, the data slate secured in her salvage bag. Around her, the normal sounds of the community carried across the water—the rhythmic clang of Niran's crew working on the skimmer, children's voices from the school barge, Parvati calling people to the midday meal.
Normal life. Continuing on, unaware that everything had just changed.
She looked at the logbook. Part of her wanted to throw it into the bay, to pretend she'd never found it. Ignorance had a certain mercy to it. When you thought your suffering was random chance, bad luck, the cruelty of an indifferent universe—that was bearable, in a way. You could tell yourself you were just unlucky.
But this? This was targeted. Personal. Someone had looked at their community and decided to slowly murder them, to document their suffering like a scientist observing lab rats.
"Observable impact: fishing ceased, purifier systems likely compromised, power rationing in effect."
Sami's fever. The children's rashes. Tomas dead defending them from an attack that had been perfectly timed because the enemy knew exactly how weak they were.
All of it. Planned.
Her hands tightened on the logbook until her knuckles went white.
Finding Jaya
She found Jaya on the eastern platform, exactly where Omar had said—inspecting the new reinforcements they'd added after the attack. The warrior was running her hands along a section of salvaged armor plating, testing the welds, her movements methodical and professional.
"Jaya," Anja called out, her voice rougher than she intended.
Jaya looked up, and something in Anja's expression made her instantly alert. Her hand dropped to her weapon. "What's wrong? Another attack?"
"Worse." Anja closed the distance between them, glancing around to make sure no one else was in earshot. "I found something on the skimmer. In the officer's cabin."
She unwrapped the logbook and held it out. "Read these entries. The ones I've marked."
Jaya took the book, her eyes narrowing as she scanned the pages. Anja watched her face, saw the exact moment comprehension hit. Jaya's expression went from confusion to shock to a cold, murderous fury that made Anja take an involuntary step back.
"Agent R," Jaya read aloud, her voice deadly quiet. "The red tide. They..." She looked up at Anja, and for the first time since they'd met, Anja saw something like genuine horror in the warrior's eyes. "They weaponized the bay itself."
"For weeks," Anja confirmed. "They've been watching us die. The logbook has observation notes. They documented everything—the fishing failures, the generator problems, the rationing. All of it."
Jaya flipped through more pages, her jaw working. When she spoke again, her voice was barely above a whisper. "I told them. I told the council they were organized, that they were scouting us. But this..." She looked back at the logbook. "This is worse than I imagined. This is systematic extermination."
"There's more," Anja said, pulling the data slate from her bag. "This was with the logbook. It's encrypted, damaged, but if we could access it..."
Jaya took the slate, turning it over in her hands. She pressed the power button. Nothing. Tried again, holding it longer. Still nothing.
"Dead," she muttered. Then she looked at Anja with new intensity. "Or protected. Military slates have fail-safes. Even if the battery's dead, the data should be intact." She paused. "If this has their operational plans, their base location..."
"It would change everything," Anja finished.
For a long moment, they stood in silence, the weight of what they'd discovered settling over them like a shroud.
The Decision
"Rupa needs to see this," Jaya said finally. "Now. Emergency council."
"Will she believe it?" Anja asked. "I mean, I believe it because I read it, but it's just... it's so evil. So calculated."
"She'll believe it," Jaya said grimly. "Because it makes too much sense. Every disaster we've suffered in the past six weeks, all perfectly timed, all pointing toward this attack." She looked at the logbook again. "This is the missing piece. This explains everything."
She started toward the council dwelling, then stopped and turned back to Anja. "This is going to change everything. You understand that? Once the council knows, once this information gets out, there's no going back to how things were before."
"I know," Anja said quietly.
"War," Jaya continued, her voice hard. "Not just defense. Not just survival. This evidence proves they're not raiders—they're executioners. And that changes the calculation completely."
Anja felt the weight of the logbook in her hands. She'd thought finding the blue barrel was the moment that changed her life. But this—this was something else entirely. This was the moment that would define what came after.
"Let me do this alone first," Jaya said, making a decision. "I'll brief Rupa privately, show her the evidence. Then she'll convene the full council. You've done your part—you found this, you brought it to me. Let me handle the political fallout."
"No," Anja said, surprising herself with her firmness. "I found it. I should be there to present it. To answer questions. To..." She paused, searching for the right words. "To stand behind what I'm accusing them of."
Jaya studied her for a moment, then nodded with something that might have been respect. "Alright. But let me talk to Rupa first, give her a few minutes to process before we hit her with a full council meeting. She'll need that."
"How long?"
"Give me fifteen minutes. Then come to her dwelling. I'll have the council assembled by then."
The Waiting
Those fifteen minutes were the longest of Anja's life.
She sat on a bench near the mending bay, the salvaged materials and busy workers around her a stark contrast to the stillness inside her. She pulled the carved wooden bird from her pocket—the one she'd found in the crew quarters—and turned it over in her hands.
Someone on that skimmer had carved this. Had held it, smoothed it with their thumbs during long watches. Someone with enough humanity to create something small and beautiful in the middle of all that squalor and violence.
And that same someone had participated in the systematic poisoning of an entire community. Had watched children get sick. Had documented suffering for their commanders.
How did those two things exist in the same person?
"We're not fighting monsters," she realized. "We're fighting people who do monstrous things. Which is somehow worse."
Monsters were simple. You fought monsters, you killed them, you were the hero. But people? People had families. People carved little birds. People could be cruel and kind, could murder and mourn, could poison children and still feel human enough to want something beautiful to hold.
The world wasn't simple. It had never been simple. But Anja felt like she was truly understanding that for the first time.
"Anja?"
She looked up to see Sami approaching, concern on his face. "Malik sent me to find you. He said you looked upset when you came back from the skimmer."
She tucked the bird back into her pocket and pulled Sami into a brief, tight hug. "I'm okay, little bird. Just... had a hard moment. But I'm okay now."
"Are you sure?"
She looked at her brother—healthy now, clear-eyed, no longer feverish. Saved by the medicine from the aid barrel. Medicine that had arrived almost too late because someone had deliberately poisoned their water supply, knowing it would make them desperate.
"I'm sure," she said. "Go back to the workshop. I have something I need to do."
As Sami left, Anja stood and straightened her shoulders. Fifteen minutes must be almost up. Time to go show the council what she'd found.
Time to change everything.
The Summons
She approached Rupa's dwelling and found Jaya waiting outside, her face grim.
"How did she take it?" Anja asked quietly.
"About as well as you'd expect," Jaya replied. "Shock. Rage. Horror. She's calling the council now. They'll be here in minutes."
Through the dwelling's open door, Anja could see Rupa sitting at her small table, the logbook open before her. The leader's face was a mask of barely controlled fury, her hands pressed flat against the table as if she needed that physical contact to keep herself grounded.
"Rupa wants you to present the evidence yourself," Jaya said. "She thinks it will have more impact coming from the person who found it. Plus, you'll be able to answer technical questions about the slate, what condition it's in, what might be salvageable."
Anja's stomach twisted with anxiety. "I've never... I mean, I'm not good at public speaking."
"You don't need to be good," Jaya said. "You just need to be honest. Tell them what you found and what it means. They'll understand."
From inside the dwelling, Rupa's voice called out. "Anja. Come in."
Anja entered to find Rupa reading the logbook entries for what must have been the third or fourth time, her finger tracing the damning words.
"'Target is softened,'" Rupa read aloud, her voice hollow. "'They are blind and starving, as predicted.'" She looked up at Anja. "We thought we were unlucky. We thought the sea had turned against us. We blamed ourselves for not adapting faster, not working harder."
"They wanted you to think that," Anja said quietly. "That's part of how it works. Demoralization. Making us doubt ourselves while they watched."
Rupa closed the logbook carefully, as if it were a dangerous thing—which, Anja supposed, it was. "The council will be here soon. Jaya says you want to present this evidence yourself."
"I found it," Anja said. "I should stand behind it."
"This will not be an easy conversation," Rupa warned. "Some of them won't want to believe it. The implications are too terrible. They'll look for ways to doubt, to question, to hope you're wrong."
"I know."
"And when they can't doubt anymore, when they accept this is real..." Rupa's voice hardened. "Then we'll have to decide what to do about it. And that decision will tear at the very fabric of what we've built here."
Footsteps approached outside—Hakeem's voice, Niran's gruff response, the sound of people gathering.
"Are you ready?" Rupa asked.
Anja thought about the carved bird in her pocket. About Sami's fever. About Tomas dying to defend them from an attack that had been perfectly timed because someone had spent weeks making sure they'd be at their weakest.
"Yes," she said. "I'm ready."
The council members arriving, Anja standing with the logbook and slate, ready to present her evidence.