The note went sour under Desmond’s palms before Marce even opened his mouth to say it.
“Off,” Marce said from the edge of the platform.
“Everyone off, right now, before—”
“Two hours,” Desmond said.
“I can set it in two hours.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I know the tide schedule and I know what happens if we don’t shore this tonight.”
Marce looked at the harbor, then at the sky, then at Desmond.
“You’re going to Field-Set twelve piles in a squall with a power you bonded four days ago.”
“Yes.”
“That’s stupid.”
“That’s load-bearing.” Desmond pulled his hands off the timber and turned.
The crew was scattered across the deck — Tomas coiling line, Bram sorting salvage, three others he didn’t have names for yet hauling scrap toward the shed.
All of them pretending not to listen.
“Tomas.
Get everyone to the south end.
I need the north clear.”
Tomas straightened, glanced at Marce, then nodded.
“You heard him.
South end, lads.
Move it.”
The crew moved.
Slowly, like men who weren’t sure the deck under them was going to stay deck.
Marce stayed where he was.
“The Marrow you Set in the posts took six hours to cure.
You’re talking about doing twelve at once.”
“I’m talking about keeping the pier standing.”
“And I’m telling you the alien coral doesn’t care about your schedule.”
Desmond felt the warmth at his sternum spike, the voice pressing low and covetous against his ribs.
Fast or slow.
Doesn’t matter to me.
But if you rush it, it sets wrong.
Brittle.
Like bone that didn’t knit.
He pushed the thought down.
“It’ll hold.”
“Will it?”
“It has to.”
Marce looked at him for a long moment, then shook his head and walked toward the south end without another word.
Desmond turned back to the piles.
Twelve of them, sunk deep into the harbor bed, holding up a hundred feet of decking and the salvage stacked on top of it.
The wood was rotting from the waterline up, the joints cracked, the whole structure listing two degrees to starboard and dropping another quarter-inch every time the tide pulled.
He put both palms flat on the nearest pile and let the Marrow-Sense spread.
The cold-light lattice bloomed in his vision — timber rendered as silver threads, rot as black gaps, the failing joints lit red where the load was wrong.
Underneath it all, the harbor bed itself, a bed of silt and stone and the half-buried corpses of things that had fallen from the sky and never been claimed.
The voice purred.
So much meat down there.
Warm things, cold things, things that used to fly.
Feed me those and I’ll hold your timber forever.
“Not today,” Desmond said under his breath.
He pulled the Marrow from his chest — not the slow, coaxed flow he’d used on the posts, but a hard draw, the way you’d pull a rope taut.
The bio-metal came fast, flooding down his arms and into the timber, threading through the rot, replacing, reinforcing, growing.
The pile shuddered under his hands.
The lattice in his vision thickened, brightened, the Marrow spreading through the wood like roots through soil.
He watched it cure — watched the silver threads harden, lock, set — and moved to the next pile before the first was finished.
The wind picked up.
The squall was close now, the sky gone grey-green in the east, the harbor chop starting to slap against the piles.
Desmond worked faster. The source of this chapter is novelping.com.
Pile three.
Pile four.
Pile five.
The Marrow flowed and Set and he didn’t wait, didn’t check, just moved to the next and fed it and moved again.
His chest ached.
His hands were shaking.
The warmth at his sternum had gone from a coal to a furnace, the voice rising, urgent now, not covetous.
Slow.
You’re going too fast.
It’s not curing, it’s just—
“Quiet.”
Pile eight.
Pile nine.
The squall hit.
Rain came down in sheets, cold and hard, and the deck went slick under his boots.
Desmond braced himself against pile ten and fed it everything he had left, the Marrow pouring out of him in a flood, and somewhere behind him Tomas was shouting and Marce was shouting back and the voice in his chest was saying something he couldn’t hear over the rain and his own heartbeat.
He finished pile twelve and stepped back.
The lattice in his vision was bright, clean, perfect.
Twelve piles shored, twelve joints reinforced, the whole north end of the pier standing straight for the first time in a week.
Desmond let his breath out slow and put a hand on the nearest pile to feel the note.
It cracked under his palm.
Not the wood.
The Marrow.
A sound like ice splitting, high and sharp, and the pile sheared at the waterline.
The deck dropped six inches.
Desmond had time to think brittle — had time to see the lattice in his vision go from silver to glass to wrong — and then the whole north section went down.
Not slow.
Not a sag or a list.
Just down, all at once, a hundred feet of decking and timber and salvage tilting, snapping, collapsing into the harbor in a roar of splintering wood and cold spray.
He went down with it.
The water was black and freezing and full of nails.
Desmond hit it chest-first, went under, surfaced gasping, and grabbed for the nearest floating thing — a plank, a crate, he didn’t know and didn’t care.
His boots were full of water.
His chest was on fire.
The rain hammered his head and he couldn’t hear anything but the roar and the crack and Tomas screaming his name from somewhere that wasn’t underwater.
He found a pile — one of the ones still standing — and hauled himself against it, coughing harbor into the rain.
The deck was gone.
Just gone.
A week’s salvage, twelve piles’ worth of Marrow, and the entire north end of the pier, all of it in the water or sinking fast.
Tomas was leaning over the edge of the south platform with a rope.
“Grab it!”
Desmond grabbed it.
They pulled him up — Tomas and Bram and two others — and dumped him on the deck like a landed fish.
He lay there, shaking, staring up at the sky, and heard Marce’s voice from somewhere above him, flat and tired.
“Told you.”
Desmond sat up.
The crew was gathered at the edge of the platform, staring at the wreckage.
Nobody was looking at him.
Nobody was saying anything.
The rain kept coming down and the harbor kept swallowing the salvage and the note from the Roost — the low, dry hum he’d gotten used to — had gone quiet.
Not silent.
Just…
waiting.
He got to his feet.
Water ran off his coat in streams.
His chest ached like he’d been punched, the node under his sternum still warm but the voice behind it saying nothing at all.
Everyone turned.
He looked at the wreckage, then at the crew, then at Marce.
“That was my call,” he said.
“I rushed it.
The Marrow sets slow or it sets wrong, and I didn’t give it the time.
That’s on me.”
Nobody said anything.
“Tomas,” Desmond said.
“Inventory what we lost.
Bram, check the south piles — if any of them are shored the same way I need to know now before they go too.
Marce—”
“I know,” Marce said.
“I’ll mark the safe routes.”
Desmond nodded.
“Good.
Let’s move.”
The crew moved.
Slowly, carefully, like men who’d just watched the floor drop out from under them and weren’t sure it wouldn’t happen again.
Marce stayed where he was.
“You all right?” he asked.
“No,” Desmond said.
“Good.
You shouldn’t be.”
Marce walked off.
Desmond stood there in the rain, soaked through, watching a week’s work sink, and felt the voice in his chest finally speak.
I told you.
Too fast.
You didn’t listen.
“I know.”
Next time, listen.
Slow, or I make you brittle things.
“I know.”
The warmth at his sternum pulsed once, then settled back to its usual coal-heat.
The rain kept falling.
The harbor kept taking.
And somewhere in the wreckage, the Marrow he’d rushed was still glowing faintly under the water, a signature bright enough for anyone with the right scanner to see.
Desmond turned and walked back to the shed.
The pier was still standing.
Barely.
And his crew had just watched the alien miracle he’d promised them snap like glass.
He’d have to rebuild more than timber now.
[The Roost] — FIELD-SET: FAILURE.
Cause: insufficient cure time.
Result: brittle lattice, structural collapse, salvage lost.
Marrow disbursed to harbor (SCANNABLE).
Note: I told you it would break.
Slow, next time, or I make you brittle things.
⚜ ━━━━ ROYAL PROCLAMATION ━━━━ ⚜
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