I'm standing here again — the night the ship starts taking on water. I remember how this day ends: the warning signs were there the whole time — no one listened. This time, I'm getting everyone out before it happens.

The lower service stairwell of the Titan of the Pacific was an endless vertical spine of diamond-plate steel, humming with the relentless vibration of twin propeller shafts churning through cold seawater. The smell of roasted prime rib and gardenia perfume evaporated within twenty steps, replaced by the industrial stench of hydraulic fluid, sulfurous exhaust, and overheated grease.

I took the metal steps three at a time, my boots ringing out against the risers like rapid-fire hammer strikes.

Last time, I had waited until 9:30 PM to inspect Sub-Level Four. By then, the micro-fractures in the starboard sea-chest intake valve had already expanded under sixty pounds of hydrostatic pressure, weeping a steady spray of brine onto the high-voltage switchboards.

Not tonight.

I slammed my palm against the biometric pad outside the primary engineering control room on Deck D. The pneumatic lock hissed, and the reinforced fire door slid open.

The control room was a glowing cathedral of cathode-ray terminals, digital telemetry screens, and analog pressure dials. Standing before the master propulsion console was Chief Engineer Bill Henderson, a burly, red-faced Scotsman with thirty years of maritime grease under his fingernails. He was nursing a lukewarm mug of black coffee, watching a bank of green indicator lights with lazy, half-closed eyes.

Beside him sat young Leo Vance, a twenty-two-year-old junior electrician on his first deep-sea contract. In my memory, Leo was the boy whose body I had tried to drag through the flooded ventilation duct until the rising water stole his breath.

Seeing him alive, chewing on the end of a yellow pencil with a grease smudge across his forehead, sent a violent ache through my ribs.

"Nathan?" Henderson turned, raising an eyebrow at my disheveled hair and the white-knuckle grip I had on the doorframe. "What the hell's got into you, lad? You look like you just pulled a corpse out of the ballast tank."

"Shut down the starboard auxiliary intake, Bill," I said. My voice wasn't shaking anymore. It was cold, sharp, and flat as forged iron. "Cut power to the number two stabilizer and throttle shafts three and four down to half-ahead."

Henderson stared at me for three long seconds, then let out a raspy, phlegmatic bark of laughter. "Throttle down? Are you out of your mind? Drake is upstairs entertaining half the tech executives on the West Coast. We're running at twenty-four knots to hit Dixon Entrance before sunrise. If I touch those governors, the old man will have my pension before breakfast."

"The starboard sea-chest housing has a structural shear fracture along the intake weld," I said, stepping directly between Henderson and his console. I slammed my hand down on the telemetry desk, right next to his coffee mug. "The strain sensors aren't reporting it because Drake’s maintenance contractors bridged the diagnostic relays in Seattle to pass the safety audit. In forty-five minutes, the valve casing is going to split under cavitation pressure. It’s going to drown your switchboards."

Henderson’s smile faded, replaced by an irritated scowl. "We ran ultrasound on that weld in drydock two weeks ago, Nathan. Clean as a whistle."

"Look at the transducer feed on Channel Twelve, Bill!" I roared, leaning over the console and punching four commands into the keyboard before he could swat my hands away.

The screen flickered. A jagged line of yellow telemetry spiked across the graph. It wasn't flat. It was oscillating with a microscopic, high-frequency shudder—the unmistakable acoustic signature of metal fatigue tearing along a weld seam.

Leo leaned forward, his pencil dropping onto the keyboard. "Chief... he's right. The frequency is harmonic. The pump casing is flexing."

Henderson blinked, the color draining slightly from his ruddy cheeks. He scratched the gray stubble along his jaw, caught between thirty years of engineering instinct and the terrifying weight of corporate orders. "Even if there’s a flutter, Nathan, it’s within secondary tolerance limits. We don't cut power to the ship on a flutter. The Captain has standing orders from Drake—twenty-four knots, straight through the channel."

"The channel is twenty fathoms shallower than the charts show, Bill," I hissed, leaning into his face until he could smell the desperation on my breath. "The winter storms shifted the gravel bar off Rose Spit. At twenty-four knots, the hydrodynamic suction—the squat effect—is going to pull our stern down by seven feet. We're going to drag our keel across granite at thirty miles an hour."

"Where the hell are you getting this data, Mercer?" Henderson demanded, backing up half a step, his eyes darting between my manic expression and the pulsing yellow line on Channel Twelve. "The navigational charts were updated in January!"

"I got it because I watched this ship tear in half!"

The words tore out of me before I could filter them. The control room went dead silent, save for the rhythmic clatter of the diesel injectors down the corridor.

Leo looked terrified. Henderson looked at me like I had completely lost my mind.

"Right," Henderson said slowly, reaching carefully for the internal telephone mounted to the bulkhead. "That's it. You've had a nervous episode, Nathan. You've been pulling double shifts since we left port. I'm calling the bridge. Dr. Evans is going to give you a sedative, and you're going to spend the night in sickbay."

His hand closed around the receiver.

Before he could lift it to his ear, I lunged forward, grabbed the coiled cord, and yanked it out of the junction box with a shower of blue sparks.

"Nathan!" Henderson yelled, raising his fists.

"Leo," I said, turning my gaze onto the terrified young electrician, ignoring the veteran engineer stepping toward me. "Your sister, Clara. She's working the linen room on Deck E, isn't she?"

Leo froze, his breath hitching. "How... how do you know Clara's on board? She boarded under a catering contract."

"Because in three hours," I whispered, my voice cracking with the ghost of a memory that hadn't happened yet, "the watertight doors are going to seal Deck E. And if you don't help me right now, you're going to spend the last twenty minutes of your life listening to her scream through six inches of flooded steel."

The boy’s face turned translucent. He looked at Henderson, whose fists were trembling in mid-air, and then back to the yellow spike pulsing on Channel Twelve.