Gin hadn't expected to find Tamsin there.
Curled on the bow of his skiff.
Khelt's lower docks groaned softly around them, metal ribs shifting with the swell. The air tasted like salt and engine exhaust and stale fish, the usual perfume of the underbelly. His boat rocked in its berth, ropes creaking in a slow, tired rhythm.
Tamsin sat with her knees pulled to her chest, goggles hanging loose around her neck, fingers knotted in the hem of her jacket. Her shoulders shook in tiny, angry tremors.
"Hey," Gin said quietly, hopping down onto the deck.
She flinched. When she twisted around and saw him, her face crumpled.
"I'm sorry," she blurted. "I'm so sorry—"
Gin blinked. "For what?"
"For dragging you into this," she said, words tripping over each other. "If I hadn't— if I'd just kept my mouth shut at the yard— if I hadn't asked you for help—"
"Whoa, whoa." Gin crossed the deck in two steps and crouched in front of her so they were eye-level. "Pretty sure I was the one who marched into Hydrarchy headquarters and tried to jab their favorite compliance officer with a wonky spear."
Her mouth trembled. "Jakk was right," she whispered. "You nearly died, he got himself into even more debt for you, and my dad's still— still—"
Her voice broke.
Gin's shoulder ached in agreement. The jellyfin aftertaste still crawled along his nerves, a faint static buzz under the skin.
He ignored it.
"Listen," he said. "I've made a lot of bad decisions in my life. The kind that just… happen to you because you don't do anything. This one? This was mine on purpose. I walked into that office with my eyes open."
"Because of us," she insisted.
"Yes," he agreed. "But you and your dad can't help it if I like you."
Tamsin sniffed, scrubbing at her eyes with the heel of her hand. "You're an idiot."
"I get that a lot."
She inhaled sharply and looked away, toward the maze of docks and catwalks. The light from Khelt's upper levels painted her in a web of rust-orange and shadow.
"They moved him," she said, still sniffling a little bit. "After Jakk… after he talked to Marren. They signed the amended note." Her voice twisted around the words like they hurt. "They're processing him for the dry-works now. I just had my visit."
"And?" Gin asked.
"And he told me to go home," she whispered. "He said to listen. Said the system's ugly but it's stable, and if we just keep our heads down—" Her hands clenched. "He was trying to make jokes about dry-works food. He wouldn't meet my eyes."
Gin pictured Rell's scowl, the steady hands that had coaxed his boat back from the edge of uselessness, the quiet competence. A man who'd kept Khelt's hulls from splitting open because work needed doing.
Thinking about that man locked below decks, cut off from light and sky and the smell of resin and salt, made something in Gin's chest knot.
He sat back on his heels.
"I need you to tell me where they're keeping him," he said.
Tamsin snapped her gaze back to him. "No."
"That's not the word I was expecting."
"Don't go," she said, voice rough. "Jakk was right. You'll walk in, they'll break you worse, and then what? My dad's still in dry-works. You're dead. Jakk goes back to drinking and pretending he doesn't care. Nothing changes. It just gets worse."
Her eyes shone, not with the raw panic of earlier, but with something heavier. Hopelessness, settling in like rust.
"Please," she whispered. "Just… let it go. He said he'll manage. People survive dry-works. Jakk said he'd— he'd keep an eye on things. That's the best we get."
Gin had survived a lot of things.
None of them had ever gotten better because he'd 'let it go.'
He thought of Hull-9—of patched valves that started leaking again days later, of people who only shrugged and said that was how things were. He remembered that line from the Currentscroll: The sea is bigger than your cage.
"Jakk was right about the beating," Gin said. "He wasn't wrong about that. I walked into something I didn't understand and got myself fried for the trouble."
She flinched like he'd hit her with the memory.
"But," he went on, "things won't go like before. I know more now. About them. About me. And I am extremely, obnoxiously motivated."
His bones pulsed approval. Finally.
Tamsin shook her head. "You can't just—"
"Hey." He nudged her shin lightly. "Look at me."
She did. Reluctantly.
"I'm not going there to die," Gin said. "I'm not going to make the same mistake twice."
He tapped his temple. "Battle homework. Jakk said Holst's jellyfin strain works on contact. He has to grab me. That was where I let him in. So I'm going in with something between us this time. And I'm not fighting alone."
Her brow furrowed. "Who—"
He tilted his head. looking inwards.
She caught it, the faint glow under his skin when his reef stirred. She'd seen it before with the shark.
"I can't promise it'll work," he said. "But I can promise I won't stop trying."
Her jaw shook.
"That's a terrible promise," she said thickly.
"I'm very bad at the reasonable ones."
They sat in silence together.
Finally, Tamsin exhaled, long and shuddering. "Intake's four levels down from the main Hydrarchy office. There's a side corridor the patrols don't use—staff passage from the sanctioned yard. I used it for my visit. If you go that way, you won't have to get past the main guards."
She hesitated. "I'll come with you."
Gin shook his head. "No."
Her eyes flared. "What?"
"I walk in with you, they've got two hostages instead of one. Stay close enough to scream for help if I fail, far enough they can't grab you first."
"That's a horrible plan."
"Do you have a better one?"
"Don't go at all," she snapped.
"Besides that."
She pressed her lips together.
"Didn't think so," he said lightly.
She swore at him in shipyard slang he'd never heard from her before. It made him weirdly proud.
"Fine," she said. "I'll show you the door and then I'm hiding where you tell me. But if you die, I'm going to be really mad at you."
"Fair." Gin pushed himself up and offered her a hand. "Deal."
She stared at his hand for a heartbeat, then took it. Her grip was small and fierce.