The rain picked up, harder now, drumming against steel and soaking through the seams of every jacket and thought. Kade stood beside Captain Voss and Lieutenant Lawson, watching the water pool between the rotted planks and rivet-pocked steel, the dock bleeding gray beneath their boots. The downpour rolled off an invisible barrier around her as it continued to be diverted by the ring on her finger. She stayed dry. For now. Briggs and his Marines held position on the deck, their silhouettes cut in discipline, gear tight, weapons at the low ready, eyes sweeping. Kade’s cutlass hung at her hip, untouched, but her gaze did the work instead.

  “Bring your boys down,” Lawson said, voice clipped. He didn’t raise it. Didn’t need to. Briggs gave a nod, jerked his head toward the rail, and the squad moved with a fluid urgency born of repetition, not panic.

  They were off the ship in under a minute, boots hitting the dock with soft thuds. Briggs joined Lawson and Kade at the head, rain tracing lines across his head and down the thick cords of his neck. He gave Kade a brief, almost-grin, the corner of his mouth twitching like he’d thought of something vulgar and decided to keep it to himself.

  “Hope they’ve got decent coffee,” he said, not really to anyone.

  “If it’s not made from diesel runoff like that stuff you make, it’s a luxury,” Kade said. She didn’t smile, but she let the words linger long enough to dull the edge.

  Together, the group moved down the dock, past rusted mooring lines and toppled bollards, stepping away from the order of the Talon and into the chaos of the Tidebound Front. The transition was instantaneous. Lines vanished. Discipline frayed.

  The Fort was a creature of desperation, alive, ugly, and clawing for every breath.

  Bolted plates from cruise liners formed makeshift walls, scarred with overlapping seams and rusted edges thick as fingers. A Yarddog in patchy coveralls stood on a barrel, torque wrench in hand, cinching a jagged porthole cover onto the side of a corrugated hut. His partner handed him bolts pulled from a dented bucket marked with some now-dead shipping company’s logo.

  Past them, rain sluiced off tarp roofs strung between stacks of shipping containers, run-off funneled by bent gutters into cracked barrels repurposed as cisterns. Some were marked with paint, the colors familiar. Blue likely meant clean, red probably chemical, and white... best not to ask. A jury-rigged pump rattled somewhere nearby, probably sucking bilge water out of the lower levels and into whatever passed for filtration.

  Kade’s boots struck steel, wood, then concrete, each step a different texture, a different story. They built the whole place on improvisation and necessity. There were no sidewalks, no clean corridors. Just pathways carved by traffic, marked with glow-paint or hanging chains, flanked by old netting and scrap barricades. Sparks flew as someone ground down rebar into makeshift stakes. Another team loaded crates onto a suspended cargo lift powered by a repurposed bicycle crank. The rider, a wiry teenager in a salt-stained parka, didn’t even look up as the squad passed.

  This wasn’t a neighborhood. This was a barricaded bastion shoved into the ribcage of a dead city, wrapped in rust and raw nerves.

  They passed a rooftop garden, lettuce and beans sprouting from upturned helmets and oil drums cut in half. Too mature for ten days of growth. Someone had salvaged the plants, maybe hauled them in from an abandoned greenhouse or yanked them straight out of someone’s backyard before the fences went up. A forge fire glowed in the shadow of an old shipping crane, its operator hidden behind thick goggles, hammering out nails or blades or both. Above it all, flags flapped violently in the wind, anchor and crossed wrenches. The symbol of the Front.

  They were being watched

  Not by civilians. There wasn't such a thing in any more. These were survivors. Some were in overhauls, some in patched leathers, some in gear Kade didn’t recognize. Scavenged armor plates, modified hunting gear, old security vests stained with more than rust. Eyes followed them through every gap in the makeshift walls, from windows cut with torch lines to scaffolding platforms bolted into old ship hulls. Hands stayed near weapons. Not hostile, but aware.

  Kade scanned their surroundings with a critical eye, noting sightlines, movement, and potential threats without breaking stride. She caught Voss doing the same, slower but no less deliberate. Lawson’s gaze moved constantly, taking in corners, cover, and anything that didn’t belong.

  “These people aren’t just surviving,” Lawson said, just loud enough for Kade to hear. “They’re ready to hold the line.”

  “They'd have to be,” she said. “No one builds this kind of mess unless they plan to bleed for it.”

  Voss gave a small grunt. Approval or warning, she couldn’t tell. He adjusted the collar of his coat and kept walking.

  Briggs leaned toward her, voice low. “What do you think? Half of these collapse if we breathe on it wrong?”

  “Quarter, if we’re lucky.”

  “Thought so.”

  Still, there was something admirable in it. Crude as it was, the Front had built something out of the rot. Not sleek, not safe, but functional. Held together with willpower, scavenged steel, and salt-worn pride.

  They approached what looked like a former ferry terminal, now fortified with bolted plating and sandbagged walkways. The front doors were armored with salvaged hull sections. Two guards stood under a jury-rigged awning, holding halberds fashioned from long pipes, each tipped with a gear half ground to a wicked edge.

  Rain still came down in sheets, tapping a steady rhythm on the canopy above the door as Kade stepped into the building with Lawson and Captain Voss, boots leaving wet prints on scuffed tile. Several Marines peeled off with no need to be told, settling in under the overhang like watchdogs with no leash but discipline while Briggs and three others followed the officers inside. The guards at the threshold inside the door watched the officers enter with the scrutiny that only came from people who had bled for their walls.

  “What’s your business?” the taller one asked.

  “Dock Master sent us,” Captain Voss replied. “Told us the harbor master was the one to talk to about working out a deal for repairs.”

  The guards exchanged a glance, then gave a small nod. “Your security detail waits here.”

  Briggs didn’t protest. He just leaned against the wall with a grunt, folding his arms and watching the hallway like it owed him money.

  Kade knew it was fake disinterest though. Briggs was silently taking in the tactical situation as any Marine Sargent would.

  Kade gave him a small smirk and stepped through, following Voss and Lawson down a corridor lined with flickering lanterns and water-warped posters advertising shipping rates and union benefit programs. She passed a breakroom window plastered with now-outdated public service announcements.

  A woman in stained slacks and a high-vis vest, the sort of uniform you’d expect from a port dispatcher, met them halfway down the hall. Her clipboard looked hand-built, layered plastic with string bindings, the kind of detail that said there wasn’t a supply chain anymore.

  “This way,” she said, turning without waiting for acknowledgment or introductions.

  They entered an office that smelled faintly of mold, ozone, and stale coffee. It felt like a strange time capsule, with everything from before the Cataclysm still in place. A laminated employee schedule was on a corkboard near the door. Motivational posters hung crooked on the walls, one showing a tugboat framed in sunset with the words Teamwork gets us home. On the opposite wall, the Tidebound Front’s banner hung beside it.

  The harbor master stood as they entered, a man in his late fifties with a scar tracking down from the corner of one eye. He wore fatigue pants and a heavy work vest, sleeves rolled, hands calloused and marked by labor rather than command. Behind him, a large map of the bay area dominated the wall, its edges pinned with tape and fishing hooks. A second map, smaller and covered in scrawled notes and color-coded pins, lay spread across the desk like a battlefield.

  “Welcome to the end of the world,” he said. “You must be from the tall-sailed beauty that just came into my harbor.”

  Captain Voss gave a curt nod. “That’s right. I’m Captain Voss of the SMC Horizon Talon. This is Lieutenant Kade, and Second Lieutenant Lawson.”

  The harbor master looked them over as if he was inspecting tools, measuring not shine but utility.

  “You can call me Burrell,” he said, then pointed to a trio of mismatched chairs. “You’re not the worst thing I’ve seen walk into this office, so that’s a good start.”

  They sat. Kade stayed quiet, her eyes taking in the room. A photo of a woman and two teens sat on a shelf near a cracked window, beside a chipped ceramic mug that read #1 Dock Dad. Her gaze lingered a moment longer than it should have.

  Burrell noticed.

  “You looking for coffee or ghosts?”

  “Neither,” Kade replied. “Just orienting.”

  He snorted once, then leaned back in his chair with a creak that sounded like it had outlived a few disasters already.

  “Greatcoat, eyepatch... just missing a flintlock and a flag to plant, and you’d look like you sailed out of history.”

  Kade didn’t blink. “Monsters don’t care what I wear. Especially after they’re dead.”

  Burrell shrugged. “Fair. I don’t care either. But looking like the military makes people here jumpy. They see a coat like that, they assume Restoration Council. That doesn’t go over well around here.”

  Voss didn’t bite, didn’t even twitch. Lawson sat forward, elbows on his knees, face neutral. Kade kept her voice even.

  “We’re not here to fly flags.”

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  Burrell gave a small nod, but his eyes didn’t lose that calculating edge. “Good. Because the last people who tried to wave theirs didn’t last long once the barricades went up.”

  He let that hang for a breath, then shifted. “I’m guessing the Council didn’t send you?”

  “We’re independent,” Voss said.

  “Of course you are.” Burrell leaned forward now, fingers tapping lightly on the map in front of him. “So tell me, what exactly have you fine, outstanding folks of the SMC done since the lights went out?”

  Kade kept her expression still. The question came casually, but it had weight behind it. He was testing her. Not just for honesty, but for intent.

  She let the silence stretch, hearing only the distant patter of rain on the roof and the slow creak of the building settling beneath the pressure of time and water. The air inside was thick, unmoving, carrying the stale scents of dust and oil. Her eyes drifted to the map on the wall again, more to ground herself than to gather anything useful.

  Words had started more fights lately than bullets. She chose hers carefully.

  “Same as everyone else. Secured what we could, tried to keep people breathing. Kept the monsters from wiping out what’s left.”

  “You protect anyone outside your own ship?”

  “We didn’t have that luxury.”

  Burrell gave a dry sound, not quite a laugh. “None of us did.”

  He sat back again, but the tension didn’t leave the air. If anything, it thickened. His fingers tapped once more, this time slower.

  “When the sea tore open, and the city started dying, we were still here. Docks were full of families. Workers. No warning or instructions came. Just silence. You know what we got instead of help?”

  Kade said nothing. She already knew the answer.

  “We got told to wait. That someone was coming. My wife... she believed that.” His voice didn’t change, but something brittle flickered at the edges. “Said the government wouldn’t leave us behind. She died five hours in. Bled out, waiting for a promise no one intended to keep.”

  Kade continued to look at the map behind him, not seeing it.

  Newport had burned for days before they’d arrived, long after the screaming had stopped. Myers and a handful of holdouts were all they’d pulled from the wreckage. It had been called a rescue, even a miracle by some. But standing here now, listening to Burrell speak of abandonment, she couldn’t help but hear the echo. Was what the SMC did really so different from what the Restoration Council had done? They’d known the reboot was coming. Had a warning. And when it hit, they’d chosen to retreat into the dark instead of dying alongside the people they couldn’t save. That had been the logic, anyway.

  She knew that wasn’t how things had truly gone, not in full. But it still felt that way. Guilt didn’t care about facts. It cared only about the silence that followed. The Level Zero filter had made the Simulation’s intent brutally clear that there were too many people left playing its game. The system had culled with purpose.

  And what, really, was the right thing to do in the face of that kind of math? Stand and fall in a futile defense of everyone? Or retreat, salvage what they could, and give humanity at least a fighting chance to rise again?

  She knew it was survivor’s guilt. Named it. Faced it. It didn’t matter. It still coiled deep, a constant, gnawing thing.

  "No one gave us a choice," she said, quieter than she meant to.

  Burrell glanced at her but didn’t push. He let the moment sit for a while, just long enough for the silence to settle. Then, he quickly shifted gears.

  “So, enough discussion about the good times. What brings the finest uniforms in the district to my humble doorstep?”

  Once again, the quiet stretched just long enough for the tension to settle, before Voss reached into his coat and drew out a folded sheet of waterproof paper. He laid it flat on the harbor master’s desk and smoothed the corners with the same careful precision he gave to everything else.

  “We need repairs,” Voss said. “Dry dock access and engineers specifically. These are the damages.”

  Harbor Master Burrell Haskett took the page without comment, his expression unreadable in the flickering lantern light. Instead of speaking, he reached beneath the desk and pulled out a thick, oil-stained binder, the kind used by dockworkers long before the Cataclysm. Kade heard the dull thud as it hit the desk. He flipped it open without hesitation, scanning a table printed in tight columns and faded ink. Another drawer opened, and this time he retrieved a hand-bound ledger, its spine reinforced with gaffer tape and one corner marked with a bent nail.

  He didn’t need to check the index. Fingers moved with certainty as he turned to a page filled with small, dense handwriting.

  Kade leaned back slightly, watching. He wasn’t just reading the Talon’s damage report. He was cross-referencing it against real-world limitations, calculating from memory and confirming with records. She guessed the ledger tracked their usable wood, plate stock, maybe even what passed for resin. Every name scrawled in the margins probably tied to one of his so-called Yarddogs.

  He didn’t ask follow-up questions. Just read, flipped a page, then nodded once to himself before closing the binder with a quiet finality. He set the paper down and rested both hands flat on the desk.

  “It’s not that bad,” he said. “But you're right, Captain. You’ll need dry dock time and my best Yarddogs if you want that hull stitched up tight.”

  He didn’t speak with pride, just blunt confidence. These weren’t guesses. The man knew his crew.

  “Three days, maybe two, if they don’t run into something that bites.”

  “Two days?” Voss raised an eyebrow. Not disbelief, exactly. Rather, the scrutiny that came from years of being lied to by professionals.

  Burrell didn’t flinch. “My Yarddogs didn’t come from an HR pool. They’re engineers as in actually Engineer classes. Rigs, navy yards, container ships. They’ve patched worse in less time, with fewer tools and no sleep. You give them metal and breathing room. They’ll give you a ship that floats straighter than she did before. Their classes give them skills that allow them to cut down on repair time and increase the durability of said repair.”

  Kade gave a curt nod. Competence had its own gravity. But gravity always had a price tag. She leaned forward slightly, fingers resting on her knee.

  “What’s it going to run us?” she asked. “We’ve got gold. Simulation-minted. Or we can barter.”

  Burrell tapped a knuckle against the desk. His nails looked chipped and blackened around the edges, suggesting he spent more time with tools than politics.

  “Neither of those gets you what you want.”

  The room was quiet again, dense with everything left unsaid. Kade didn’t press. Burrell didn’t seem like a man who appreciated pressure. He had the bearing of someone who’d survived the opening hours of the Cataclysm not through rank or luck, but by making the decisions that left a permanent weight behind the eyes. She’d met enough like him over the course of her career in the SMC to recognize the type. Someone who didn’t trade in protocol or hierarchy, only in results. People like that didn’t accept deals based on what they were offered. They expected others to prove their worth the hard way.

  But his refusal of gold and barter landed harder than she expected. Not because it was unrealistic, but because of the way he’d said it. Dismissive. Final. As if the idea that trade could be enough wasn’t even worth entertaining. That kind of clarity didn’t come from uncertainty. It came from intent. He knew what he wanted from them before they walked through the door.

  It wasn’t a trap. Not obviously. He hadn’t postured or threatened, hadn’t played the game of veiled insults or territorial pride. Still, the shape of the conversation had shifted. Kade could feel the lines drawing in, not from aggression, but from careful maneuvering. This wasn’t about negotiation anymore. It was about testing.

  And while Burrell had done nothing to earn their distrust, the move was bold enough to force attention. She watched him in the stillness, the way he waited without tension, fully at ease in his space. The air in the office felt heavier now, thick with lantern heat and old salt air, like the building itself was holding its breath.

  Her gaze drifted toward the map again, tracing the chaos of lines and notations, markers of territory, possible supply caches, and whatever passed for control in these days. There was a bluntness in how Burrell operated that reminded her, uneasily, of Voss. A man who relied not on force of will, but on competence backed by a long memory. It made sense. Control, once stripped of authority, came down to who could get things done when the world stopped pretending.

  And Burrell had made it clear. Trust was the only currency he valued.

  “I don’t take orders from people who show up looking like government ghosts,” Burrell finally said. “Gold’s nice. Trade’s better. But trust still buys more than either.”

  She didn’t argue. The logic tracked with the response she was expecting. In a world where everything official had failed, nobody was buying uniforms anymore.

  “So what do you want?” Voss asked.

  Burrell opened a lower drawer and pulled out a second map, this one well-worn and dog-eared. He unfolded it on the desk beside the damage report, using a rusted socket wrench to hold down one corner. Someone circled a section of shoreline in red grease pencil.

  “Warehouse Seventeen,” he said. “Used to be a logistics depot on the far side of the bay. Before everything fell apart, it stocked military and commercial supply caches. Things that still matter. Hand tools. Water filters. Medical kits. Shelter tarps. Bulk rations. Maybe even hunting, boating, or cold-weather gear if we’re lucky.”

  Kade leaned closer, studying the map and matching it against what she had seen when the Talon sailed in. That side of the bay had not looked welcoming, with sunken hulls, half-collapsed piers, and rooftops barely holding above the tide line. Not to mention the number of monsters she had seen roving around.

  “You think it’s intact?” she asked.

  “I think it’s occupied.” His tone didn’t waver. “I’ve sent two groups to claim it. Neither came back. And I’m not throwing more bodies into a meat grinder unless I’m sure they can finish the job.”

  The implication that Burrell had just dropped wasn't empty comments from a blowhard. It was loaded. He hadn’t flinched while describing the loss of two teams. Selling them the job wasn't his intention. He was stating facts and being transparent about it.

  “You want us to do what they couldn’t,” Voss said.

  “I want trained soldiers to handle something that needs trained soldiers,” Burrell said. “You need engineers. I need a warehouse. That’s the trade.”

  Kade glanced at Voss. A slight incline of his chin gave her the go-ahead. Her voice was steady.

  “We’ll take your job,” she said, “but we’re not walking blind through a half-dead city. We want a guide. Someone who knows the streets and won’t lead us onto a collapsed overpass or a deadend full of claws.”

  Burrell gave her a knowing look, then nodded once.

  “Already planned on it,” he said. “I’m not stupid.”

  “Debatable,” Lawson muttered just loud enough for only Kade to hear.

  Kade didn’t look back at him, but her mouth twitched slightly. No laughter. Just acknowledgment.

  Burrell leaned forward again, tapping a calloused finger against the edge of the map.

  “If this works out,” he said, “I might have other jobs for your crew. The kind that needs steady hands and clear heads. I pay fair, in trade, information, or whatever keeps that ship of yours in the water. And who knows, maybe it ends up bringing stability to everyone.”

  Kade didn’t answer. Not yet. The offer hung in the air like the smoke of a shot that hadn’t quite landed.

  They left the office a few minutes later, the building settling behind them in dim silence, its heat and tension still clinging to their collars. Outside, the rain had finally stopped, but the ground hadn’t caught up. Mud clung to every step, pooling in cracks and low spots, turning the walkways into gleaming channels of stagnant water. Oil lanterns swayed in the night breeze, their light soft and fractured, casting rippling halos across the jagged outline of the Tidebound’s fortifications.

  The heat of the office clung to her coat as she stepped outside, as if the place resented letting her go.

  Briggs and his Marines remained in the exact same spot, quiet and steady beneath a rusted awning, their posture easy but never careless. No one questioned what was said inside the building. That would come later, in the low conversations shared under tarp and steel when eyes were elsewhere.

  They moved as a unit down the makeshift paths, their boots landing with the steady rhythm of habit. The night carried the dense weight of the storm’s aftermath, thick with the smells of damp concrete, burned wood, and salt pushed inland by wind and desperation. Somewhere nearby, a manual winch creaked and groaned against a stubborn load. Voices murmured in the dark, clipped and tired. Steam hissed from a pressure line and disappeared into the cool air like a ghost too weary to linger.

  Kade watched her footing as they crossed a broken stretch of pavement, the ground soft and unstable beneath the surface. Her boots sank slightly with each step, dragging just enough to remind her how close this place still sat to the edge of collapse. Ahead, the dock came into view, and with it, the Talon’s silhouette. She stood like a promise waiting to be kept, or maybe a weapon waiting to be asked for.

  “That last thing Burrell said,” she whispered to Voss. “Sounds like he sees us as a piece on his board. Something to play when the stakes are high.”

  “He might,” Voss said. “Doesn’t mean we have to move.”

  She nodded once, slow.

  “I don’t like how fast he offered up the warehouse. That wasn’t just opportunity talking. There’s more under that place than missing Yarddogs.”

  “He’s not a fool,” Voss said. “But he is desperate. Desperate men gamble with both hands.”

  The Horizon Talon came into full view, her hull gleaming under tarp-strung lantern light. She looked worn but intact, like the crew that kept her running. Kade paused at the base of the gangplank, gave one last look over her shoulder toward the Tidebound’s makeshift skyline.

  The favor had been accepted. The game was already in motion, and she had a bad feeling about the state of the playing board.

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