The intake room was smaller than Marren's office upstairs, all bare metal and a single table bolted to the floor instead of polished composite and flags. A Hydrarchy seal glowed in one corner, blue and smug.
Rell stood on one side of the table, wrists clipped together with a thin band of shockmetal. His hair stuck up in disordered tufts. Bruising darkened one cheek. He looked tired down to the marrow and still somehow too solid to break.
Marren sat at the table, immaculate in crisp blue. Venn leaned against the far wall, arms folded, expression bored.
All three of them jerked toward the door as it slammed inward.
Gin stepped through the threshold.
"Hi," he said. "Thought I'd drop by."
Venn's eyes widened a fraction. Then his mouth curled.
"You," he said. "Didn't fry you enough the first time?"
"Some of us are slow learners," Gin said.
Rell stared, stunned. "Farcast?"
Marren blinked once, as if updating a mental ledger. "Gin Farcast," he said, tasting the name. "Independent skiffer. Unauthorized Hull-9 migrant. Recent… incidents."
Marren folded his hands on the table. "You understand that barging into an intake proceeding constitutes obstruction. There are fines for that."
"Add it to my tab." Gin rolled his shoulders, feeling the Hemovore colony wake fully now that they were near another threat. "I'm here to contest a contract."
"We don't adjudicate feelings," Marren said. "Only obligations. Rell broke the contract. He owes."
"Funny," Gin said. "Because last I checked, I owed him. For a boat that floats." His voice cooled. "You're trying to make him pay for my debt."
"That's not how the law sees it," Marren replied. "The Hull has no contract with you. It does with him. He chose to assume that risk."
"That's a nice way of spinning it."
"Charity," Marren spoke, "doesn't keep Hulls afloat."
"And exploitation does?" Gin asked.
Their gazes locked.
The air in the room shifted. Sharpening around Marren's face, the calm amusement in his eyes, the way he kept one hand under the table.
Venn pushed off the wall.
"Sir," he said. "Allow me. We can add assault on a Hydrarchy officer to his charges if he survives."
Marren didn't look away from Gin. "Compliance Officer Holst is correct. You are in violation of multiple regulations, Farcast. You should walk out now and consider yourself fortunate we don't add trespassing to your record."
Gin's bones hummed in his ears.
He took a breath.
Slow. Deep.
Even in dry air, he felt it—the way his reef responded, drawing oxygen in, loading it into his blood, priming his muscles and mind. The world edged outward, each detail crisping.
"Unfortunately for you," Gin said, "I don't walk away anymore."
Venn laughed once, sharp and delighted as broken glass.
"That so?" he asked. "Because last time I grabbed you, you did a very convincing dead fish impression."
Gin glanced at him. "Last time, I tried a spear."
He lifted his hand.
Blood welled along his palm, a thin line where he'd drawn a nail across skin as he'd waited in the corridor. It beaded, then thickened, darkening, drawn out by the Hemovore strain's hungry pull.
Venn's smile faltered.
Dive-axes had been extensions of his arms since before the trench, before the reef, before he'd ever thought of himself as anything but a tired diver patching up other people's mistakes. The shape of one lived in his muscle memory: the hook of the blade, the balance of the shaft.
He held that shape in his mind and his blood answered.
It surged from the cut like ink in water, but instead of drifting it coalesced, turning iron-black and heavy as it hardened. An axe-head formed first—broad, single-edged, with a hooked beak on the back for catching bone or rope. The haft grew from it in a smooth, seamless length, anchored to his hand like a second forearm.
In two heartbeats, he held a dive-axe made of his own blood.
This one didn't look like a drunk sketch of a weapon. It looked like something he'd swung a thousand times in the dark below.
He hefted it.
It had weight. Balance. Familiar as breath.
"Last time," Gin spoke, "I made something I wasn't familiar with. Came out crooked. This one?" He smiled, thin and sharp. "I've used this my whole life."
Venn's back lit up with jellyfin glow, the faint bioluminescent lines along his spine flickering to furious life.
"I'm not afraid of your little party trick," he snarled. "I know exactly how this ends."
"Me too," Gin answered.
Venn lunged.
He moved like he'd moved in the office: fast, economical, no wasted motion. His hand shot for Gin's shoulder, fingers splayed, seeking skin or at least thin cloth.
Gin didn't back away.
He stepped in.
The blood-axe came up in a tight arc, the haft rotating in his grip, blade catching Venn's reaching arm at an angle. Metal bit skin with a hiss like boiling water hitting a skillet. Sparks of jellyfin lightning jumped from Venn's palm to the axe, racing along the iron-dark surface.
Gin's nerves flared, but the worst of the charge bled down into the weapon instead of his muscles.
"Oh," Gin said through gritted teeth. "Still unpleasant."
Venn swore, jerking back.
Gin shifted his weight, sidestepped, and as Venn came in again—this time from the side, trying to loop an arm around his neck—Gin dropped low. The jellyfin glow washed over him, heat kissing his scalp as fingers brushed air where his throat had been.
He drove the axe up.
The blade punched into Venn's shoulder just above the collarbone with a wet, meaty sound.
Venn screamed.
Lightning exploded across the room, wild and uncontrolled. The shock threw Gin backward, boots skidding on metal, muscles locking for a heartbeat as static clawed through him.
His bones locked down, microbe-colony clamping on the current, redirecting what it could. The world snapped back into focus.
Venn staggered, clutching at the axe buried in his flesh. Blood poured down his chest, his jellyfin lines flickering like a failing light.
"Careful," Gin panted. "You might short out."
Rell stared, stunned, shockmetal band forgotten around his wrists.
Marren finally moved.