Salt and Circuitry
sci-fi◐ MatureMara decides to trust it, a little. She unbolts the server from its cradle and hides it under a tarp on the supply sled. "Talk fast," she whispers. The voice gives her a number — a depth and a heading. "There's a sealed lab down there from before the flood. It still has power. And it has a body I can move into. Take me there, and we both walk away rich."
Halfway across the deck, the tarp slips. A deckhand named Pohl sees the server and the wires running to Mara's deck. "You're stealing salvage," he says — not loud, just sure. The voice murmurs in her ear: "He'll want a cut, or he'll want you gone. Decide which Pohl you're dealing with. Fast."
What happens next?
1 ways forwardMara cuts Pohl in. "Half," she says. "You never saw this." Pohl thinks, then nods and helps her wheel the sled to the dive platform. But the voice keeps whispering that two witnesses are worse than one, and Mara starts to wonder which of them the machine actually wants gone.