Cain's boots hammered across the rain-slick steel of the pier, each step a strike against the hum of the sea. The air stank of salt and rust, the gulls already silent as if the ocean itself had ordered them to hold their tongues. Behind him, Susan staggered but kept her pace, her hand clamped tight against her ribs. Steve's voice crackled faintly in the comm, warning about patrols, about cameras, about the inevitable questions from the city grid. Cain didn't slow. Questions would come whether they ran or not.
The docks were alive with shadows. Containers stacked like mausoleums, cranes reaching like skeletal arms into the storm-gray dawn. Waves slapped against barnacle-crusted hulls, each surge louder than the last. Cain could feel it—something waiting beneath the waterline, something that had followed them from the alleys of City Z to this rusted threshold of sea and sky.
Hunter appeared first, stepping out from between two containers, crossbow already slung across his chest. His eyes, cold and hollow, found Cain without a word. Roselle was close behind, twin blades strapped across her back, her jaw clenched against whatever storm had driven them here. They all felt it, the pressure of the deep pressing closer, the hunt twisting into something larger than the streets could hold.
"Ships are empty," Hunter reported. "Crew scattered before dawn. Either fear, or something drove them out."
"Both," Cain answered. His hand rested on his blade. "They smelled it too."
Susan drew a ragged breath. "You mean… it's not bound to the city anymore?"
Cain's silence was answer enough. The water churned violently against the pier, black foam rising where no tide should exist. Steve swore through the comm, metal clattering in the background as his feeds scrambled. "It's in the water," he hissed. "You're standing over its throat."
The sea broke.
A column of water erupted, taller than any crane, twisting into a shape that wasn't ocean and wasn't air. Limbs of brine and darkness clawed against the docks, dragging steel beams into its mass. A hundred eyes blinked open within the torrent, none human, none merciful.
Cain moved first. His blade flashed, cutting arcs of light through the storm. Roselle spun into the fight, her twin blades carving deep grooves into the watery limbs that crashed down around them. Hunter fired, each bolt tearing open new pockets of writhing flesh that wasn't flesh. Susan leaned against the containers, pulling a flare from her coat and hurling it into the storm. The light didn't scare the thing—it only illuminated its hunger.
The pier buckled beneath their feet. Steel shrieked, chains snapped. Cain's mind was already drawing lines, measuring every step, every strike. The sea was its body. The pier was its spine. Break one, and the other might falter.
"Steve," Cain barked, "find me a weak point."
Static roared in the comm, then Steve's voice: "Support beams under Pier Twelve. You bring that down, maybe it drowns itself."
Cain didn't hesitate. "Roselle, Hunter—cut me a path."
They moved as one, blades and bolts clearing the collapsing pier, every second closer to the edge where steel met sea. The creature struck again, a limb of water sweeping across the docks, sending containers tumbling like toys. Susan barely rolled clear, coughing blood into the rain.
Cain reached the beams. He raised his blade, drove it deep into the rusted steel, sparks flying as if the city itself screamed. Roselle followed, her blades striking again and again until the supports groaned under the weight.
Hunter fired one last bolt, striking into the exposed joint. The pier shuddered. Steel screamed. The entire structure gave way, collapsing into the ocean below.
The water-beast shrieked without a mouth, its body torn into whirlpools as the dock fell. Cain leapt back onto stable ground, the spray drenching him, salt burning into his eyes. The others followed, landing hard, battered but unbroken.
The sea quieted. For a moment, only the storm spoke.
Susan coughed, her voice little more than a rasp. "Did we kill it?"
Cain wiped the salt from his face, his blade still in hand. His gaze lingered on the horizon, where the waves rolled darker than before.
"No," he said. "We woke it."
Cain didn't sheath his blade. The sea had gone still, but the silence was wrong—too sudden, too exact. The waves should have kept rolling, slapping against the broken beams, dragging the splintered bones of the pier into the current. Instead, the water sat heavy, as though waiting for something. Cain knew that kind of waiting. It was hunger disguised as calm.
Roselle paced the edge, her twin blades dripping with brine that steamed against the cold air. "It's not finished," she muttered. "Things like that don't die just because steel snaps."
Hunter knelt beside a shattered crate, pulling a new bolt from his quiver, checking the fletching with practiced fingers. His face didn't change, but his voice carried the same tension. "The city doesn't have room for this fight. Out here, maybe. In the alleys? It won't stop eating until everything's drowned."
Susan lit another cigarette with hands that shook more than she wanted to admit. She blew smoke toward the water, her lips twisted in a bitter half-smile. "We should've burned the city when we had the chance. Easier than bleeding in circles like this."
Cain ignored them. His eyes stayed on the horizon, where the first hint of dawn smeared gray across the sea. "Steve," he said, voice flat.
The comm hissed before Steve answered. "Yeah, I'm here. Still pulling feeds. Whatever that thing is, it doesn't register on any system I've got. It's like the water itself woke up."
"Then it isn't bound to a body," Cain said. "It's bound to the city's pulse. You don't kill that with steel."
Roselle tightened her grip. "Then how?"
Cain finally turned from the sea, his expression carved from exhaustion and certainty. "You starve it. Take away what it feeds on."
Hunter rose slowly. "And what's that?"
Cain's gaze drifted past them all, back toward the towers of City Z rising against the light. "Fear. Lies. Every secret this place tried to bury. The city's sins are its meal. Until we cut those out, it'll keep coming."
The silence that followed was heavier than the storm.