Read Chapter 22: The Secret Conference

The maintenance tunnel stank of rust and dead water. Finn pressed his back against the curved concrete wall, breathing through his mouth to keep the metallic tang of his own blood from triggering another wave of nausea. His arm had gone from throbbing to a dull, distant hum, which worried him more than the pain had.

Tess moved ahead of him, her silhouette sharp against the distant glow of the barrier’s service lights. She’d barely spoken since they’d slipped past the high-zone checkpoint, using the keycard Wu’s contacts had smuggled out months ago. The card had gotten them this far—into the guts of the Swan Road barrier station—but Finn knew the clock was bleeding faster than his wound.

“Sixty feet to the council chamber,” Tess whispered, her voice barely carrying over the drone of the pumps. “Service balcony runs above it. We can see everything, but we need better access than that.”

“The keycard,” Finn said.

Tess shook her head. “That card gets us into the lower maintenance levels. The council chamber is on the operational deck. Different security tier entirely.”

Finn leaned against the wall, the fever making the world tilt. He’d seen the schematic on Danny’s chart, the one line that had survived the water damage. It ran straight through the barrier’s lower levels, marked with Wu’s initials and a series of numbers that had meant nothing to him until now.

“Wu’s card is dual-function,” he said. “Master keycard. Tess. It opens everything.”

She turned to look at him, her face half-lit by the emergency strip above. “How do you know that?”

“Danny’s chart. There was a notation in the margin—‘W-prime, all tiers.’ I didn’t understand it until I saw the security schematic in Carver’s message.”

Tess was quiet for a moment. Then she pulled the card from her pocket, a black rectangle with gold lettering worn smooth at the edges. “If we use it now, they’ll know it’s in play. Wu’s security protocols will flag the access, and Voss will know someone’s inside the station.”

“He already knows,” Finn said. “We blew a floodgate tonight. He’s not going to assume it was an accident.”

She held his gaze for a moment longer, then nodded. The card slid into the reader beside a reinforced door marked MAINTENANCE PERSONNEL ONLY. The lock clicked, and the door swung open into a narrow staircase spiraling upward.

The climb was agony. Finn’s legs felt like they were moving through water, and by the time they reached the operational deck, his vision had narrowed to a sickly tunnel. Tess grabbed his arm before he could stumble into a monitoring station, pulling him into an alcove behind a bank of humming servers.

“You’re burning up,” she said, pressing the back of her hand to his forehead. “Finn. You can’t do this if you’re—

“I can,” he said, forcing the words out. “Get me to that balcony.”

The council chamber was below them, visible through a glass partition that ran the length of the wall. A long table dominated the space, surrounded by the high-zone elite Finn had only ever seen in propaganda broadcasts. Voss sat at the head, his face carved from the same cold stone as the barrier itself. Beside him stood a man Finn recognized from the night raid—the one who’d given the order to blow the floodgate early.

Anya’s words came back to him: *The high-zone accelerated the flood timeline. Someone inside is pushing for total lockdown.*

Voss was speaking, his amplified voice drifting up through a ventilation grate near the balcony. “—the low-zone response has been contained. The breach at the southern gate was premature, but it served its purpose. The residents are now confined to vertical refuges, their boats destroyed or stranded. They cannot mount a coordinated resistance.”

“The cost was higher than projected,” a woman said from the far end of the table. “We lost eleven operatives in that ambush. The boatman who led them got away.”

“And he’ll be dead by morning,” Voss said. “The wound he took is infected. I’ve seen the field reports. He’s running on fever and stubbornness, and neither will carry him much longer.”

Finn touched the bandage under his jacket, feeling the heat radiating from the torn flesh beneath. Voss was right. He had hours left, maybe less, before the infection took his legs completely.

“We move to the final phase at midnight,” Voss continued. “The southwest floodgate will be sealed permanently. Not just closed—welded shut. The low zone will become a catchment basin, and the water will be pumped into the barrier’s retention system over the following weeks. Once the level drops, we will begin demolition of all structures above the third-floor line.”

A murmur ran through the council. The woman at the far end leaned forward. “And the residents?”

Voss’s face didn’t change. “Will be relocated to the upper levels of the remaining buildings. The flood will make ground access impossible, and the relocation ships will not be able to land within the zone. They will be sealed in place until the water recedes—which, given the retention system’s capacity, will be approximately eleven years.”

“Eleven years,” the woman repeated. “You’re asking us to condemn several thousand people to—

“I’m asking you to accept the cost of survival,” Voss said. “The low zone is a drain on our resources. It has been since the first tide. We have spent twenty years maintaining pumps, barriers, and food lines for people who contribute nothing. The plan was always to close the zone permanently once the water level reached a sustainable height. That time has come.”

Finn felt Tess’s hand close around his wrist. Her grip was iron.

“He’s going to do it,” she breathed. “He’s going to seal them in.”

“Only if we don’t stop him,” Finn said. But even as he spoke, he knew the truth. He didn’t have a way to stop Voss. Not from here. Not with his arm dying and the fever eating him alive.

Tess released his wrist and reached into her pocket. She pulled out a keycard—different from Wu’s. This one was white, with a single blue stripe across the top.

“What’s that?” Finn asked.

“Master access to the barrier’s lower levels,” she said. “The floodgate mechanisms themselves. There’s an emergency release that opens all gates simultaneously. It’s designed for catastrophic pressure events—to prevent the barrier from collapsing if one section fails.”

“You’re saying we can open every gate at once.”

“If we can reach the control room. It’s two levels below the council chamber, in the pressure shell.” She paused. “It’s also the most heavily secured room in this entire station.”

Finn looked down at Voss, who was now signing a document being slid toward him by an aide. The permanent closure order. Once he signed it, the southwest floodgate would seal at midnight, and the low zone would begin its long drowning.

“Tess,” Finn said, his voice hoarse. “How did you get that card?”

She was quiet for a long moment. Below them, Voss lifted his pen.

“Anya’s spy,” Tess said. “Before the channel went dark, she sent one final transmission. She said to find you and give you this. She said it was the only way to open the gates from inside.”

“She?”

Tess met his eyes. “Wu. Mistress Wu. She’s been inside the high zone the whole time, feeding us everything Voss doesn’t want us to know. She knew the channel would go dark eventually. She planned for it.”

The pen touched the document. Voss’s signature slashed across the page in a single, black motion.

“Midnight,” Finn said. “That gives us less than two hours to reach the pressure shell.”

“We’ll never make it through security,” Tess said. “Not with—

“We’re not going through security,” Finn said. He pulled Danny’s water-damaged chart from his jacket, unfolding it to reveal the single legible line that had survived the flood. It ran beneath the barrier wall, a narrow maintenance route marked with three words in Wu’s handwriting: *THE OLD GATE.*

“There’s a way in from the water,” he said. “A maintenance hatch below the tide line. Danny marked it before he disappeared. It leads directly into the pressure shell.”

Tess stared at him. “You’re going to swim.”

“I’m going to swim,” Finn said. He could feel the fever sharpening his thoughts into something clear and dangerous. “And I’m going to open every gate in this wall before Voss can seal the low zone forever.”

Below them, Voss handed the signed order to his aide. The council began to rise, their conversation fading into the hum of the station.

“We need to move,” Finn said. “Before they lock down the operational deck.”

Tess nodded, slipping the white keycard back into her pocket. But as they turned toward the service stair, Finn saw something that stopped him cold.

On the far side of the council chamber, standing in the shadows beside a secondary exit, was a face he knew.

Danny.

He stood with his hands clasped behind his back, wearing the uniform of a high-zone security officer. His eyes met Finn’s through the glass for a moment—just a moment—and then he turned and vanished through the door.

Finn’s blood chilled despite the fever burning through him.

Danny was still alive. And he was inside Voss’s inner circle.