The Meridian Cross lies on her side in ninety meters of black water. She took three men Mara loved down with her. Now Mara hangs above the torn hull, her own breath bubbling against her helmet, the signed salvage claim folded against her chest. Two hundred meters off, the Vares team's dive lights swing toward her through the dark. They have no claim. They came anyway.

Mara drops fast toward the wreck before Vares can beat her to it. She slips through the torn gash in the hull and into the flooded cargo hold. Whatever they want down here, she will reach it first. Her light catches the edge of a steel crate, chained shut.

Mara's light finds something worse than cargo. A Vares diver is already inside the hold, pressed into the shadows, watching her. He got here first through a second breach she never saw. He lifts one finger to his helmet: quiet.

Mara doesn't wait to find out what he wants. She kills her light and swims hard for the breach. He follows, faster than she expects, and grabs her fin. In the black they wrestle until she rips free and shoots up through the gash, lungs burning. She breaks the surface alone, alive, and swears she is never going down for that wreck again.