Old man MacGyver's Arc

Chapter 2 of 3

The harbor master's office sat at the end of the commercial pier, a squat building that smelled of salt and old paper. MacGyver pushed through the door without knocking. The threat had freed him from pretending this was casual curiosity. He was done being careful. The worn ledger book sat open on the main desk, its frayed edges catching the afternoon light. MacGyver recognized the ship's name immediately—the entry for his sibling's voyage filled an entire page. He leaned over the desk and scanned the dates and cargo listings. Everything matched the official story he'd memorized weeks ago. Too perfect. Too clean. Someone had rewritten these pages recently, the ink still dark against the yellowed paper. He ran his finger along the margin and felt where new pages had been carefully sewn into the binding. But something drew his eye to the corner of the room. An old archway stood there, its frame covered in carved vines that had been painted over years ago. The paint was flaking now, revealing wooden details beneath. MacGyver stepped closer and noticed the space behind the arch had been bricked up poorly. One brick sat loose at the bottom. He knelt and worked it free with steady hands. Inside the gap, folded pages waited in the darkness. He pulled them out and spread them on the floor. The original log pages showed a different story entirely. His sibling's ship—the one with the lion figurehead at its prow—had been scheduled to sail two days earlier than the official record claimed. The cargo manifest listed medical supplies, not the trade goods in the rewritten version. And there, in the crew list, three names had been crossed out in red ink the day before departure. The same three names that appeared on the falsified ledger as having been aboard. MacGyver folded the pages and tucked them inside his sash. He had proof now. Someone had changed the timeline and the cargo to hide what the voyage was really for. The question that had been eating at him finally had an answer—but that answer opened a darker possibility. His sibling hadn't died in a storm. They'd been sent somewhere else entirely.