Sable Koro leaned against the loading dock wall and watched another body cart roll out of the sealed district. She smuggled cures for a living. Tonight she had none. Behind the quarantine gates, people coughed themselves dead, and the one thing that could save them didn't sit in any crate she could steal. She didn't even know where it existed. A runner without cargo was just a woman with a fast ship and empty hands. She pushed off the wall and went looking for the only person who might know something before it happened. Marvin Nowcast sat cross-legged on a stack of shipping pallets, a skinny kid draped in a purple robe covered in painted symbols. Glass beads clacked around his neck when he moved. Half the dock thought he was a joke. Sable had seen his tricks work. He could see the future — but only twenty-four seconds of it. Useless for most things. She was out of most things. "I need to know where the cure is," Sable said. "The one for the coughing sickness. Somebody's making it. Somebody's hiding it." Marvin blinked his wide eyes at her. "Can't see that far. I see the next twenty-four seconds. That's the deal." He picked at a bead. "But something's coming. Right now, I mean." "Coming how?" He held up one finger, counting under his breath. Sable waited. She was about to call him a fraud when a clerk in a supply uniform hurried around the pallets, clutching a folder to his chest. He nearly ran into her. "Him," Marvin whispered. "He drops that." The clerk's foot caught a loose pallet slat. The folder flew open. Papers scattered across the wet concrete. Sable moved before she thought, kneeling to gather them. Manifests. Shipment logs. One page listed a sealed crate flagged for a private lab inside the Spire's upper levels. The contents were coded, but the destination note was plain: antiviral stock, restricted, do not distribute to quarantine sectors. The clerk snatched at the papers. "Those are Marvin Creswell's records. Give them back." Sable's grip tightened on the page. She'd heard that name at the docks. A supply clerk who moved things for the right price. "Marvin Creswell," she said. "He handles this crate?" The clerk swallowed. "He signs off on the restricted stock. Everyone knows he'll bend a rule if you pay him." He grabbed the folder and fled. Sable stayed crouched on the concrete. She had a name now. She had a location — the upper Spire, a private lab. The cure was real, and it sat behind the exact wall meant to keep it from the dying. Marvin hopped off the pallets and squinted at her. "You look happy. That's rare." "I know where it is now." Sable folded the stolen page into her jacket. "Which means I finally have something to steal." She looked up toward the Spire's guarded upper levels and felt the old cold weight settle in. Finding it had been the easy part.

Sable found the supply clerk in a loading bay under the factory floor. He sat behind a scarred desk, stamping crates without looking up. She dropped the stolen manifest page in front of him. "You signed this. Antiviral stock, headed for a private lab. Not for the sick." The clerk glanced at the page. His face stayed flat. "I sign a lot of things." He kept stamping. "That paper proves I do my job. It doesn't buy you anything." He was right. Sable had the proof and no coin, no favor, no threat that would move him. Marvin Nowcast slipped in behind her, beads clacking, purple robe dragging on the concrete. The skinny fortune teller had followed her from the docks. He could see twenty-four seconds ahead, no further. Useless for planning. Sable had brought him anyway. "Wait," Marvin whispered. He held up a finger, counting under his breath. "Something drops. Big. From the ceiling." Sable looked up. A crane rail ran across the bay. Bolted to it hung a machine the size of a truck. It was shaped like a whale, black armored plates layered over its body, blue lights glowing along its flanks. A cargo lifter. Marvin's count reached zero. The rail groaned. A cable snapped. The armored whale swung loose and dropped toward the clerk's desk. Sable grabbed his collar and yanked him back. The machine slammed into the concrete where he'd sat. Dust and sparks burst up. His stamps scattered across the floor. The clerk stared at the wreck, then at her. His hands shook. "How did you—" "Doesn't matter." Sable pulled him upright. "That thing was rated safe this morning. Somebody up top wanted your desk empty. You saw the manifest. You know what's hidden in that lab. You think they'll leave a clerk who signed for it alive?" He wiped his mouth. He looked at the broken machine. He looked at the page in her hand. "They told me it was routine restricted stock. I didn't ask." "Ask now," Sable said. "Help me move the crate, or wait for the next cable to snap." The clerk was quiet a long moment. Then he crouched and dug through the fallen papers. He pulled out a plastic card and pressed it into her palm. "Lift access. Upper levels. My code opens the cold vault where they keep the antiviral crate." He swallowed. "But it logs every entry. The moment you scan it, they'll know. You'll have maybe ten minutes before they seal the whole floor." Sable closed her fist around the card. She finally had the way in. She also had a clock that started the second she used it. Marvin peered at the wrecked whale and grinned. "Told you something was coming." "Yeah." Sable pocketed the card and turned toward the lift. "Now something worse is."

Canal plans to release the cure with the mechanical whale into the atmospheric river, so everyone can be cured. and during this trip we have a better understanding unstable, and why this means so much to her we learn more about her past, and Marvin grow closer to her and the chemistry builds during the road trip on the truck to the pharmaceutical manufacturing plant