“Right,” Desmond said.
“We’re going to talk about whether we stay or whether we fold.”
The crew was already arranged for it, like they’d known he’d say it out loud eventually — a half-circle around the camp stove.
Marce leaning against the wall with his arms crossed and his eyes already narrowed, the look he wore when he’d decided something sensible that Desmond was about to argue with.
Bram at the front, knees pulled up, picking at the cuff of his jacket.
Kofi and Lin somewhere between Marce’s caution and Bram’s nerves, watching him like he was the one beam holding a structure they weren’t sure about.
He put the coffee pot on the stove and waited for it to hiss.
The smell came first — burnt grounds and something metallic underneath, the tang of water that had sat too long in the tank.
Marce didn’t move.
“Thought you already decided that when you called us in here instead of running the sell.”
“I’m deciding it now.
With you lot.
That’s why you’re sitting down.”
“Boss,” Marce said — the patient version, the one that came before an argument already lost.
“The cordon nailed a cleanup notice to the gate last night.
Federal seizure.
They’re coming for the wreck, and when they do, anybody still working it goes on a list nobody wants to be on.”
“I saw the notice.”
“Then you saw the date.
Days, not weeks.
We don’t have time to finish the site, and if we’re still here when they roll up, we’re not just losing the metal — we’re losing the pier.
They take the whole footprint, everything we’ve built.
We walk now, we keep the shed.
We keep the tools.
We keep clean.”
Bram held his breath, watching.
He poured the coffee into the tin cups and handed them round.
Nobody drank yet — the stuff tasted like hot pennies on a good day.
The warmth at his sternum pulsed once, faint, like a second heartbeat half a beat off.
He pressed his palm flat against the table and felt the wrongness settle.
“The core’s still untouched,” Desmond said.
“Nobody’s been inside it but me, and I didn’t strip it.
I opened it, mapped it, and walked away.
That’s three months of real metal if we work it smart.
Enough to carry us through lean and into the next job flush instead of begging advances.”
Marce shook his head.
“Three months if we had three months.
We don’t.
We’ve got days.
You can’t pull that much metal in days without cutting corners, and cutting corners on alien scrap is how crews end up smaller.”
“Forget three months.
Four good runs before the cleanup hits.
Core metal first — the dense stuff, the kind the walk-ups pay weight on — then we pull back and let them have the shell.
We’re not racing the cordon.
We’re taking what they haven’t priced yet and leaving before they notice.”
“And if they notice?”
“Then we fold.
Same as if we folded now, except we’ve got the payout in our pockets when we do.”
Kofi spoke up from the back.
“What if the metal’s hot?
The stuff you pulled yesterday made the buyer nervous.
If the core’s worse—”
“It’s not.” The lie sat in his mouth like something cold.
He swallowed it, kept his voice level.
“The rib I pulled yesterday was surface corrosion.
The core’s clean.
I checked it before I sealed it back up.”
Marce held his gaze for a long five-count.
Desmond didn’t blink.
Didn’t reach for the warmth pulsing under his own shirt, though every nerve in him wanted to press a hand flat there and make it stop.
“You’re asking us to bet the site on a hunch,” Marce said.
“I’m asking you to bet it on the numbers.
Four runs.
Real weight.
Fair split, same as always.
And if it goes wrong, I’m the one they put on the list, not you.
I opened it.
I logged it.
My name’s in the cutter’s registry.
You lot were sleeping when I went in.”
Not quite true, but true enough that Marce couldn’t call it without admitting he’d been awake when the stumble happened.
And Marce wasn’t going to do that.
“Vote.” He set his cup down.
“Stay and finish, or fold and scatter.
I won’t hold it against you either way, but I need to know now so I can plan the next four days or pack the tools.”
Bram’s hand went up first.
Small, scared, his whole body folded around it like he was trying to make himself smaller while he did it.
“Stay.”
Lin tapped the rim of his cup once.
“Stay.
Four runs, then we’re gone.”
Kofi glanced at Marce, then back, then shrugged.
“Stay.
But if it goes hot, we’re out before the notice expires.
No argument.”
Marce didn’t raise his hand.
He uncrossed his arms, picked up his cup, and drank the coffee in one go like it was something stronger.
“Right.
Four runs.
You plan the loads, I’ll run the numbers, and if the sweeps show up early we scatter and you’re the last man off the site.
That’s the deal.”
His shoulders dropped a half-inch.
“That’s the deal.”
The warmth at his sternum spiked, sudden and bright, and the hum came up through his teeth like the whole structure settling into a note it had been waiting to hold.
He pressed his hand to the table and the hum evened out.
Bram’s head came up.
“Boss?
You all right?”
“Fine.
Knee.”
Marce stood up and dusted his hands off on his trousers.
“Right.
I’ll check the gate, make sure the notice didn’t come with friends.
Kofi, Lin, you’re on inventory — I want a count of what we’ve got versus what we need to finish four runs without buying new gear.
Bram, you’re with me.
Boss, you’re on the load plan.
We meet back here at noon and you tell us what the first run looks like.”
He let out a breath he hadn’t counted, and the crew moved, and for the first time since he’d cracked the core he had something shaped like a plan instead of a lie built around a truth he didn’t understand.
It held until Del Mercer walked through the door.
She didn’t knock.
Stepped in, clocked the coffee pot, clocked the crew filing out, and settled her gaze on him with the same flat expression she’d worn walking off the pier the night before.
“Morning,” she said.
“Del.”
“I’m here for my piece.
The exotic rib.
The one you said you’d hold for me.”
His hand found the edge of the table.
The rib was in his jacket pocket, pressed flat against his chest where the node pulsed faint and warm and wrong.
He could feel it through the fabric — the hum it wasn’t making, the warmth it wasn’t showing, because it had learned to hide the same way he did.
The lie he was about to tell her was the same one he’d been telling himself since the scanner beam passed overhead.
“It’s gone,” he said.
Del went still.
“Gone.”
“Marce sold it at first light.
Walk-up buyer, cash deal, before I could stop him.
I told him to hold it, but he didn’t know it was spoken for.
I’m sorry.”
She studied him — a welder checking a joint that was lying about its seams.
Careful.
Measuring.
Already seeing the failure before the load hit it.
“Marce doesn’t run walk-up deals without clearing them with you first,” Del said.
“Hasn’t in three months.
So either he’s gone independent, or you’re lying to me, and I know which one my money’s on.”
He said nothing.
The node pulsed once, slow, like it was listening.
“Right,” Del said.
She turned toward the door, stopped, half-turned.
“I pay fair and I pay fast, and the only thing I ask is that the deal stays clean.
You just burned that.
Don’t call me when you’ve got another find.
I’ll be buying somewhere else.”
She walked out.
The door swung shut, and he stood there with his hand on the table, the warmth at his chest, the coffee going cold in the tin cups.
Bram’s voice came from the doorway.
Quiet.
Uncertain.
“Boss?
Was it really gone?”
Bram’s eyes were too wide, his hands shoved into his jacket pockets like he was trying to hold onto something already slipping.
“Yeah,” he said.
“It’s gone.”
Bram nodded and didn’t ask again.
He turned back to the table and started drawing the site map for a salvage run won on a lie, led by a crew that had chosen to follow him, carried on the burned trust of the one buyer who would have touched the strange without flinching.
He pressed his palm flat to the table and felt the structure settle, and told himself it would hold.
It didn’t feel like it would hold.
But he’d said it anyway, and now four men and a federal cleanup clock were riding on it, and the warmth at his sternum pulsed steady and calm like it had already decided the answer was yes.