“You’re not point on this.”
“I’m faster in tight spaces. You know that.”
He locked down his reaction behind a neutral expression.
Laurel Tide wasn’t just moving Mara. Rows of cages meant dozens of lives funneling through this dock—victims they might never identify.
They moved together. Vivian worked the latch as Blake covered their flank. The hatch groaned open, releasing a wave of humid air that smelled of rust, sweat, fear.
Vivian dropped first onto metal grating. Her flashlight narrowed the world into rows of cages—some empty, others holding shapes she couldn’t see. A drip echoed somewhere deep.
“Vivian,” Blake murmured from above. “Talk to me.”
She swept her light across a cluttered table—wrappers, cans, cigarette butts. “Someone’s been here recently.”
Her beam slidacross a row of cages—most clustered together, but one sat by itself at the far end, half-hidden behind crates as if someone had shoved it out of sight.Not standard placement. Not accidental.A cold prickle crawled up her spine.
A small shape huddled inside, knees pulled to her chest.
Mara.
Vivian drew closer, heart tightening. The girl looked even smaller than in the video, her thin arms shaking, shoulders trembling with each shallow breath. Why she’d been separated from the others—Vivian didn’t know. But isolation in a place like this was never good.
She took a step.
A sound. A sob. Soft.
Human.
Then footsteps—too many, too close.
Before she could pinpoint it, movement flickered across the corridor—voices, footsteps. Vivian snapped off her light.
Five men herded several frightened women toward the exit ladder, faces bruised and exhausted. Not a rescue. A transfer. Laurel Tide moving product.
But more shadows spilled in behind them.
Two men burst from a side passage, cutting toward the group with brutal purpose.
“Forget the rest—get the girl!”
Vivian’s blood iced.
Mara.
Blake was already sprinting.
“Go!” he barked.
Vivian vaulted a crate and hit the floor running. Blake slammed the lead attacker into the bars of a small cage—Mara’s cage—but the man lurched again, reaching.
Not happening.
Vivian swept his legs out. He crashed to the metal, snarling. She caught his arm, wrenched it behind him, forcing him down. Blake pinned him with a forearm until the fight drained out.
Gunfire burst from deeper in the sublevel—shouting, scrambling boots. The remaining attackers peeled away, racing toward the noise. Trouble or salvation, Vivian couldn’t guess, but Laurel Tide was pulling back to regroup. In seconds, the corridor emptied, leaving only the groan of metal and the distant echo of men retreating.
Silence dropped like a curtain.
