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 stays still and watches the Vares diver. Slowly he points at the crate, then at himself, then taps his chest where a name patch would be. He mouths a word through the glass that stops her cold: her husband's name. This man knew him.

Mara lowers her shears. The diver leads her to a hidden panel in the hold and opens it, pulling out a sealed pouch of documents he stashed down here years ago. He was crew on the Meridian Cross's last run, the only one who got out. He has guarded the proof ever since, waiting for someone with a claim to bring it up. Together, they surface to end it.