Floodlines

The city’s skin felt tighter now—sun baked, windows blinded, doors bolted so early it was barely evening. Mara parked four blocks from the desalination plant, eyes raking the emptied streets for shadows. Jax stepped out of a side alley, glancing both ways before joining her in the darkness. He looked paler tonight, coat slung loose, lips chapped. Mara saw the subtle tension in his jaw—the way he hid worry behind humor, but now he was stripped down to something raw.

“You ready?” he murmured. “Consortium’s doubled patrols in the southeast. Word is your name’s on lips that matter.”

She stifled the tremor in her hands, slid a backup pistol into her boot. “Let’s move.”

Their way led through a service entrance, a rusted grate half-buried beneath dead brush. Jax pried it open, waving aside the gasping stink of mold. Mara dropped in first, knees bending to absorb the shock, pulse hammering in her throat. Jax slipped down behind her, barely a whisper—he belonged to these shadows, born to places where law didn’t reach.

Their flashlights carved thin skeins of silver through the black. Pipes overhead rattled, and Mara half-heard, half-felt the city’s lifeblood gurgling past—more water than a thousand residents saw in a year. They followed the schematic Jax lifted from an old refinery worker: a winding arterial leading to the heart of Mirage’s illicit system. The air thickened, fetid with old seepage and something sharper—cleaner.

At the first junction, Mara halted. “Listen.”

Muffled voices. Boots sloshing through shallow water. Jax pressed them both against the wall, heartbeats syncing to the distant drip-drip-drip. Through a cracked hatch, they watched light play against corrugated concrete. Three figures in pale blue Consortium jackets dragged a limp form—bound, throat dark with blood—toward the base of a sump ladder.

Jax inhaled, sharp. “They’re dumping bodies.”

The victim’s name meant nothing, but the clothes—a ration processor’s vest—made Mara’s gut twist. Another witness, erased for knowing too much. She forced herself to watch, counting the rhythm of the guards’ movements and their empty, matter-of-fact words.

“Get the next one,” one grunted. “Council doesn’t want floaters turning up in Three Docks again.”

A heavy silence as they stared at the corpse, then at each other. Jax put a warm hand on her elbow—a rare comfort, jarring in this place.

They shuffled deeper into the aquifer maze, Jax retracing old smuggler routes. “Mirage is bleeding this city from below. Worse than you thought?”

“Much worse,” Mara whispered. She took a long breath—cold in her lungs now, not just fear or determination, but rage distilled. “Let’s find their ledger.”

Jax led them down a spur, ducking beneath a low beam tagged with the Consortium’s sigil. The map ended at a steel door, three security pads blinking in sequence. Jax swept sweat from his brow.

“Gimme ten seconds.” He jerked apart the panel, rerouting a couple of wires with a salvaged screwdriver. Mara stood watch, counting every heartbeat. Somewhere far above, a siren wailed. Jax grinned when the pad buzzed green.

Inside: a narrow chamber with a bundled terminal and racks of battered data sticks. Ration chips, passcodes, encrypted ledgers. Mara’s fingers flew, plugging in her own device to siphon files.

Footsteps clattered somewhere behind them. Jax muttered a curse, seizing the nearest data drive and pocketing it just as a flashlight beam cut through the jamb. Mara spun, weapon ready, as two Consortium enforcers stormed into the corridor.

“On the ground! Now!”

She fired a shot at the overhead pipe—a gout of steam blinded their pursuers. Jax threw open the emergency access panel, yanking Mara with him as they slipped through a crawlspace littered with maintenance debris. Bullets clanged off metal plate behind them.

Panting, lungs raw, they tumbled into the next tunnel: air thick with algae stink, the sound of boots echoing pursuit. Jax took the lead now, reading the faded chalk marks on the wall—old smugglers’ language—steering them through a side passage behind a spillway valve just as a patrol swept past.

Mara’s arms trembled with adrenaline. She pressed herself against damp concrete, listening to the enforcers follow, searching.

“Jax—if we’re caught—”

“Never plan for losing, detective.” He managed a cracked smirk, but there was no humor in it.

They ducked low, slinking through ankle-deep runoff, emerging finally in a chamber that echoed with silence. Mara took one shuddering breath, then another. Her pad blinked green: download complete. Jax produced his own purloined stick, holding it between two fingers.

The files, once opened, splayed their secrets—columns of names and bribe records, ration graphs, detailed maps of aquifer flow. One folder: Project M-22. Mara paged through transmissions tagged with the Director’s cryptic signature.

Hoarding reserves. Council directives for ‘controlled scarcity.’ Names of dissenters scheduled for ‘quiet removal.’ Locations of unregistered cisterns drawing from the old city grid.

Mara’s mouth dried. She felt, for a second, the urge to simply collapse into the filth. Here was everything—enough to bring down the Consortium, enough to set Oasis burning. But handing this over would mean painting a target on her back, on Jax’s. Maybe on every innocent the Consortium could reach.

Jax read her silence. “What now?”

She stared at her hands, at the digital weight of justice or doom. “We move. We get clear.”

Above them, the rage of sirens began—warnings neither celebratory nor victorious, but desperate. Mara tucked the pad away, fighting to keep her resolve hard.

They crawled out into a graffitied alley slick with dawn dew, only now aware of how close the city was to riot. Mara stared at the horizon, uncertain whether she carried Oasis’s salvation or its spark for destruction.

Jax gripped her shoulder before slipping away into the haze. “You owe me, Keane. Don’t get sentimental.”

Alone, Mara listened to the city’s thirst. Every choice from here was peril, but the truth—the whole truth—pressed on her like water behind the old vault walls. She wouldn’t drop it. But neither would she drown quietly.