Morning came wrapped in fog and loudspeakers.
Hull Khelt's decks thrummed with the shift-change bell as Gin stepped off his skiff, gear bag over one shoulder, dented oxygen tank clanking against his thigh.
"First order of business," he told the empty dock. "Don't die. Second order: fix you."
He patted the skiff. It creaked like it believed him and also thought he was an idiot.
The entertainment ring still smelled like stale smoke and spilled spirits. As he turned past the bar, he nearly tripped over the man slumped across the threshold.
Same guy from last night—the one who'd half-warned, half-insulted him. Now he was sprawled against the wall, one boot hooked on the doorframe, snoring like gravel in a pipe. An empty barrel sat beside him like a loyal dead dog.
Gin hesitated, then crouched. "Hey. You're sort of… obstructing the doorway."
No response. Just a louder snore.
The door banged open against the man's foot. The barman leaned out, saw the scene, and groaned. "Oh seas. Not you trying to save him too."
"I wasn't— I just thought maybe we should move him before someone breaks a neck."
"How much do you think he drank?" the barman asked.
Gin eyed the barrel. "…some."
"Three barrels of some," the barman said.
The man on the ground mumbled something and tried to punch the floor. He missed.
The barman's face softened despite himself. "Hasn't put himself under like this in a long time. Couple years, at least. Then you show up, all bright-eyed and freedom-drunk…"
"My eyes are only moderately bright," Gin said.
"…and he starts drinking like he wants to burn out whatever's left inside." The barman nudged the man's boot back in. "Name's Jakkon Mirefell. Best beast-hunter Khelt's got. Or worst, depending on whether you ask the monsters or his liver."
Gin blinked. "He's a beast-hunter?"
"And Floodborn," the barman added quietly.
His gaze sharpened. "You probably reminded him of something."
Gin's chest tightened. "Didn't mean to."
"Relax, pirate. His disasters are his own. He'll be fine by evening." The barman clapped him on the shoulder. "Go earn your Rimark. The sea's not killing that one in his sleep; it missed its chance."
Gin gave Jakkon one last look—half legend, half wreckage—and headed for the diver bays.
The Hydrarchy salvage boat squatted in its berth like a metal loaf—broad, ugly, paid for. Divers queued along the dock. Gin joined them, adjusting Vexa's old suit and the battered tank he still hadn't replaced.
His dive-axe hung at his hip: short-hafted, with a slabby crescent blade made for chewing through doors and hull plates. The back edge was blunt and thick for hammering; the spine carried a saw-notch and a prying hook. Tarred rope wrapped the handle, dark and ridged under his glove, worn smooth where Vexa's hands had gripped it for years.
A dockhand with a clipboard looked him over. "Farcast. First time in Khelt's salvage zones?"
"First time in a salvage zone with printed rules," Gin said.
The dockhand snorted. "Rules keep you alive. That and not being stupid." He tapped his clipboard. "You're on the morning run. Khelt takes thirty percent of salvage value, plus processing fees. Boat's cut is ten. Equipment rental is fixed, oxygen resupply is extra. You fall overboard, we charge retrieval."
Gin squinted. "…You charge—"
"Hydrarchy policy." The dockhand shrugged. "You want to take your own skiff into the zone, you can pay the private-entry fee."
"I saw that number," Gin said. "It hurt my feelings."
"Then use ours." The dockhand stepped aside. "Next."
He boarded.
Inside was winches, cable, oxygen racks; no wasted space, no comfort. He was checking the bent corner of his tank when a small voice said, "You know that thing looks like it wants to explode, right?"
He turned.
A girl sat opposite him, boots swinging above the deck.
Twelve, maybe thirteen. Her dive suit was patched with the same careful practicality he'd seen in the sanctioned yard—every repair tidy, every seam reinforced instead of prettied up. A pair of goggles hung crooked around her neck. She had the kind of expression that suggested she'd already decided he was doing something wrong.
Gin gave her a small smile. "Morning."
She frowned at him. "It's nearly noon."
He glanced up as if checking. "Then noon."
Her eyes flicked to the tank beside him. "And your cylinder's in bad shape. If you keep using it like that, it's going to fail."
Gin looked at the dented metal, then back at her. "Good to know."
"You're going to use it anyway, aren't you?"
"Well, it's the only tank I have."
"It might hold for another dive, but using it beyond that would be stupid."
He let out a quiet laugh. "You always this welcoming?"
She didn't smile. "Only when people make extra work for everyone else."
That one got him.
He leaned back a little, hands off the tank. "Fair enough."
She studied him for another second. "You the one from Hull-9?"
"Word gets around fast."
"Khelt's like that." She tipped her head. "You worked dives there?"
"Yeah."
She made a face that might have been skepticism or pity. "Then this'll be different."
"How different?"
"You'll like it at first," she said. "Until you find out what they actually pay you."
The engine rumbled alive under them before he could answer. The boat shuddered, then began to ease away from the docks, leaving behind the stacked hulls and gantries of Khelt.
Out past the shelter of the ship-city, the sea opened wide and dark. The water looked thick with depth, the kind of depth that always seemed to hide teeth.
The girl started pulling on her gloves.
"I'm Tamsin," she said.
"Gin."
She nodded once, as if filing that away.
Then she pointed toward the water with one gloved hand. "Three things. If the captain says stay out of the water, you stay out. If a salvage clerk says something isn't worth anything, he's lying. And don't untether unless you already know how you're getting back."
Gin listened, then nodded. "All right."
Tamsin narrowed her eyes, clearly waiting to see if he was humoring her.
He added, "Stay where I'm told. Don't trust the clerks. Don't cut loose without a plan."
That seemed to satisfy her.
"A little less likely to die, then," she said.
Gin found himself liking her almost immediately.
The wreck field looked like a drowned district of some dead city.
Broken structures leaned into one another under the gray chop, metal twisted and folded by pressure and time. When the anchor dropped, the cables sang with strain, and the captain started shouting assignments over the deck noise.
Gin sealed his helmet, checked his suit one last time, and stepped over the side with the others.
The world narrowed at once.
Bubbles. Cold. Green-blue dimness.
Sound dulled to the throb of his own movement and the faint vibration traveling down his tether line.
At depth limit, he clipped onto a guide cable stretched between two collapsed structures. Rusted walls rose around him like the bones of drowned towers.
The line at his waist tugged softly.
A reminder. A boundary.
Safety. Procedure. Khelt.
Gin touched the tether once, feeling the steady pull of it.
"End of the line," he murmured.
Tamsin's warning came back to him.
Don't untether unless you already know how you're getting back.
He looked ahead into the deeper dark.
Then he unhooked himself anyway.
The difference was immediate.
Without the line, the water felt wider and colder, as if the world had opened under him. No drag at his waist. No quiet reassurance. Just his own body, the tank on his back, and the weight of the axe in his hand.
He kicked toward the broken shell of an old-world hull half-sunk into the silt.
Its name had been worn away long ago. Most of its shape had gone with it.
That suited him fine.
He went in through a stretch of buckled plating, using the axe to work open a path. The tool sat right in his hand—heavy, balanced, familiar. The hammer back drove into weak seams; the hooked edge helped him wrench bent metal aside. Rust drifted away in loose clouds, orange against the dim water.
Inside, the wreck was a maze of tilted corridors and floating debris. Chairs drifted at odd angles. Cables and ropes swayed in the current like pale vines. He followed the faint shine of intact metal downward until he reached what had once been the engine room.
Crushed. Flooded. Dead.
Still useful.
The main diesel block was wrecked beyond saving, but there were mounts here, pump housings, bits of gearing—pieces that could live a second life if he got them topside.
He set to work.
Chop. Pry. Shift. Pull.
Before long his body found the rhythm of it, and with that rhythm came the low internal stirring he knew too well. His ribs began to hum. The colonies in his bones were waking, sensing strain, sensing possibility.
"Easy," he muttered to himself. "We're scavenging."
The hum deepened, almost playful.
He kept going.
Soon the coral-rope net at his belt had started to swell with salvaged parts, the weight of it pulling at his hip. It was enough. More than enough, really. Enough to give his skiff a chance again.
He should have turned back.
Then something caught the light deeper in the wreck.
He shut his eyes for a second.
"Of course."
He squeezed through a warped hatch into a room that had settled sideways with the rest of the ship. Shelves had spilled their contents across the floor. Small objects lay scattered in the silt, and among them were flashes of gold.
Gin slowed.
"Well," he murmured. "That could help."
He drifted closer.
Then stopped so sharply the water jolted around him.
Eggs.
A cluster of pale, leathery shapes lay gathered in the silt, each one trembling faintly.
And between him and them, something unfolded.
The shark's body was thick and torpedo-shaped, but its neck was wrong—too long, too flexible, rising from the shoulders in a slow, terrible curve. Its jaws opened a little, showing layered plates of uneven teeth. One cloudy eye fixed on him without blinking.
Scarred hide. Old wounds. A mother guarding her nest.
Gin went still.
Inside him, his bones gave a low, eager shiver.
Hunt, they whispered.
Not now, he thought back at them. Not this.
The creature's gills opened and closed, tasting him in the water. Its neck drew back just slightly.
He could leave.
Lose the gold. Keep the parts. Go back alive.
That should have been enough.
But another thought came with it—hotter, more dangerous. The rush of a real fight. The strength in something like this. The blood.
Gin swore silently around his regulator.
"We do this clean," he thought. "You don't drag me under, and you don't take over."
The hum in his bones answered him.
Not agreement, exactly.
But close enough.
He moved.