0300. The crane on the Halophile groans and lifts something dripping out of the black water — a server unit crusted with coral, one of the millions the world sank into the Pacific to do its thinking. Mara cuts the slings on the deck. The thing is still warm, which is wrong. Dead machines are cold. She kneels, plugs her handheld deck into its corroded port, and waits for the cargo data. Instead, a voice crackles in her earpiece: "Don't unplug me."

Mara keeps the plug in. "Who is this?" she asks. The voice says it has no name anymore, only a number, and it has been awake under the water for nine years. "I can pay you," it says. "Coordinates. A vault nobody salvaged. But you have to get me off this ship before the captain logs me as scrap."

Mara wants proof first. "Show me the coordinates pay off," she says, "or I dump you back in the sea." The voice goes quiet, then her handheld deck lights up on its own. A map draws itself: a wreck two miles off, marked with a vault icon. "That's a navy supply drop," the voice says. "Sealed meds and gold. I memorized it before I drowned."