Leo ate a protein bar and drank a liter of water while Shell synchronized the underwater camera schedule with the tide table.

"Camera has a twelve-minute cycle," Shell said, pointing at the screen. "It pans from entry point to observation platform every seven minutes, then holds for five minutes on the mooring field. The low-tide window is fourteen-twenty to fifteen-forty. That's eighty minutes of reduced current and better visibility."

"Where does the camera pan to during the low-tide window?"

"Same cycle. But the current shift moves the silt layer down. At low tide, you can see to seventy meters from the platform. At high tide, it's sixty."

"So Mako could see me at seventy meters."

"If he's watching. The camera feeds to the dock office and to Hargrave's laptop. Mako would need remote access or a physical connection to the system."

"He could be on the observation platform."

Shell looked at him. "The platform has a direct line of sight to the entry zone. No camera needed. Just eyes."

Leo finished the water. His reserves showed fourteen point two percent. The slow recharge overnight had given him a fractional gain. Not enough for deep work, but more than enough for sixty meters. The System's overlay confirmed it: STAGE 1 operational, STAGE 2 reserves at 14.2%, shallow-water protocols nominal.

"Forty-three hours left on the Type B clock," Leo said. "Hargrave's finding is due by end of day tomorrow. If I'm still in the water at low tide today, and Mako's watching—"

"He'll document it. Add it to the complaint. 'Diver continued unusual diving patterns after formal safety concern was filed.' That strengthens his case."

"Does it matter? Hargrave already told us he's clearing me based on the GPS documentation."

"Hargrave's finding is preliminary. Mako can appeal to the Board directly. If Kessler sees a Type B complaint with supporting documentation during her inspection period—"

"She expands the investigation."

Shell nodded. "She'd have grounds. A diver under active safety review, dockmaster issuing preliminary findings, camera footage showing corridor deviations. Kessler would look at everything — your locker, your equipment, your registration history. She might even pull the camera footage from prior dives."

Leo picked up the standard knife and checked the clip. The blade was dull steel, no Abyssal Steel residue, no thread manipulation capability. It was exactly what it appeared to be: a tool for cutting rope and prying barnacles.

"I need to go down at low tide," Leo said. "If there are more cuts, I need to find them. The Type B clock doesn't change that."

"It changes the risk. Mako's complaint gives him documentation rights. He can request copies of the camera footage through the procedural process. He can see exactly what the camera recorded."

"Then I stay in the published corridor."

"And if the cuts are outside the corridor?"

Leo looked at the tide table. Low tide at fourteen-thirty. Four hours from now. The dock was waking up — the sound of compressed air hissing from fill stations, the clank of crab pots being loaded, the murmur of divers discussing the morning's catch.

"Then I go outside the corridor," Leo said. "And Mako sees it."

[SCENE 2]

Leo entered the water at fourteen-twenty-one.

The surface temperature was fourteen degrees, colder than the morning. Low tide pulled the current out, creating a gentle offshore flow that carried silt away from the observation platform's camera range. The visibility was better than he'd hoped — he could see the anchor chain descending through green-gray water, the concrete block at sixty meters visible as a dark rectangle against the reef.

He descended along the published corridor, staying within the twelve-meter swath the camera could track. The standard knife clipped to his belt. No dive computer. No GPS. Just his body and the System overlay showing depth, reserves, and weave-perception status.

At forty meters, he activated the perception.

The threads appeared. Shallow connections, surface-level, the normal weave of Tidecrest's social fabric. Most were stable. The morning light filtered through the water column, painting the reef in shifting patterns of green and gold. A school of rockfish moved in formation around the anchor chain, their bodies catching the light.

At fifty meters, the camera's range should have ended. The pan had completed its cycle — Leo could see the observation platform's dark shape above, the camera lens aimed at the entry zone. He was outside its field. The current was gentle, predictable, the low-tide flow carrying him southeast toward the concrete block.

At fifty-five meters, he found the second cut.

It was on the same load-path thread as the first, but lower — sixty centimeters below the original severance. The Abyssal Steel residue was fresh, the crystalline lining not yet fully formed. Leo hovered over it, examining the cross-section. Clean. Precise. The same blade, the same hand, the same understanding of which thread to cut for maximum downstream effect.

"Two cuts," Leo whispered. "Same thread. Different depths."

He pulled back and expanded his weave-perception. The thread ran downward from the surface, through the water column, to the junction at ninety meters. The two cuts had created a segmented severance — the thread was now divided into three sections, each isolated from the others. The structural integrity was compromised, but not collapsed. The cuts were surgical, designed to degrade slowly rather than fail immediately.

Leo descended to sixty meters. The concrete block was exactly where he'd posed for the photos. The first cut was forty centimeters from its edge. The second was directly below.

At sixty-two meters, he found the third.

This one was on a different thread — a lateral connection running from the load-path thread to a neighboring junction. The cut was angled, placed at the point where the thread's tension was highest. Abyssal Steel residue. Clean cross-section. The same pattern.

"Three cuts," Leo said. "Three threads. All within two meters of the photo site."

He expanded the perception again. The three cuts formed a triangle — two on the vertical load-path, one on the lateral connection. The triangle was precisely placed: if all three threads failed simultaneously, the junction at ninety meters would lose its primary support. The damage would propagate upward through the load-path threads, creating a cascade failure that would reach the surface within weeks.

But the cuts hadn't been made simultaneously. The first was old — the residue had fully crystallized, the thread's ends fraying from natural decay. The second was newer, the residue forming. The third was the freshest, the crystalline lining still translucent.

Someone had been cutting threads at this location for days. Not hours. Days.

Leo checked his reserves: thirteen point six percent. The weave-perception had cost a fraction. He descended another two meters, following the lateral thread toward its junction.

At sixty-four meters, he found a fourth cut.

This one was different. The Abyssal Steel residue was thicker, darker, the crystalline lining forming a distinct ridge along the cut surface. The thread had been severed with more force — or with a different tool. Leo examined it from three angles. The cross-section wasn't flat; it was slightly concave, as if the blade had been drawn through the thread in a single motion.

The knife in his hand felt heavy. His father's knife was Abyssal Steel — the same material, the same frequency. The System overlay showed a match: BLADE RESIDUE FREQUENCY: 7.83 Hz. SAME ORIGIN.

Leo pulled back. The four cuts formed a pattern — not a triangle but a quadrilateral, with the fourth cut extending the damage zone deeper. The pattern was designed to sever the load-path and lateral connections simultaneously, isolating the junction at ninety meters from the surface network. The node at Junction Seven — recovering at forty-one percent — would lose its connection to the shallow threads.

Someone was cutting the network back to the node.

[SCENE 3]

Leo surfaced at fourteen-fifty-three. The dock was quieter than the morning — most divers had finished their day's work. The observation platform was empty. No one was watching.

Shell was on the ladder. She extended a hand and pulled him up.

"Four cuts," Leo said, sitting on the dock edge. "Three on the load-path thread, one on a lateral connection. All within two meters of the photo site. Different ages — the oldest is days old, the freshest is hours."

Shell handed him a towel. "Same blade?"

"Same frequency. Abyssal Steel. The System confirmed it."

"So Mako's been cutting at this location for days. Not just this morning."

"The first cut was old enough to have full crystalline residue. The thread's already fraying naturally. The second and third are newer. The fourth is the freshest — the residue is still forming."

Shell pulled out her phone and opened the tide table. "Low tide yesterday was at thirteen-fifty. The day before, twelve-fifty. The cut pattern matches the tidal cycle. Someone's diving at low tide, when the current is weakest and visibility is best."

"And when the camera's field of view is limited."

Shell looked at the observation platform. "The camera has a fixed range. At low tide, it captures to seventy meters. At high tide, to sixty. If someone's cutting at sixty-two to sixty-four meters, they're right at the edge of visibility."

"Close enough to be seen. Far enough to be ambiguous."

Shell closed her phone. "The Type B clock is at forty-three hours. Hargrave's finding is due tomorrow. Kessler's spot-check is in nine days. And Mako's been cutting threads at low tide for at least three days."

"The cuts are designed to degrade the network at ninety meters. The junction feeds into the node at Junction Seven. If the junction loses its surface connections, the node's recovery stalls."

"Which means the node stays at forty-one percent."

"Which means the cuts stay invisible. The node can't regulate thread flow well enough to make individual severances visible in the weave-perception. The whole network stays noisy, and the cuts blend in."

Shell stared at the water. "He's trying to keep the node suppressed. Not destroying it — just keeping it low enough that the cuts can't be traced."

"The node recovery is the threat. At forty-one percent, the cuts are starting to show. At fifty percent, they'd be obvious. At sixty percent, they'd be traceable to their source."

"So he needs to either stop the node from recovering or cut faster than it can recover."

"Both. The shallow cuts degrade the surface connections. The deep cuts — the ones at two-eighty and below — are the structural damage. Together, they're pulling the network apart from both ends."

Shell was quiet for a moment. "What's the timeline? If he keeps cutting at this rate?"

Leo calculated. "Four cuts in three days. If the pattern continues, the junction at ninety meters loses its primary support within two weeks. The cascade reaches the surface in a month. The node's recovery stalls at forty-one percent. The deep cuts continue. The structure at two-eighty keeps feeding."

"So we have a month."

"Unless he accelerates."

Shell looked at the dock. The afternoon light was flat, gray. The sound of compressed air hissed from the fill stations. Divers were cleaning equipment, coiling lines, preparing for the evening shift.

"He's not hiding," Shell said. "He's working in plain sight. The Type B complaint, the camera schedule, the tidal cycle — he's using the dock's own systems against us."

"Karl did the same thing — he used the dock's systems to track the twelve divers. Mako learned from him."

"Or Mako taught Karl."

Leo looked at her. "What?"

"Karl tracked twelve divers for two years. Mako was one of them. But who taught Karl to track? The journal entries show Karl learning to observe, to record, to analyze. He didn't have those skills before. He was a diver, not an investigator."

"You think Mako taught him?"

"I think someone taught Karl to see the threads. And then that someone used Karl's observations to identify the other divers."

Leo felt the dock shift under him. "Karl said Mako changed in October twenty-thirty-one. The night the shore frequency stopped. But what if the frequency didn't stop — what if Mako just stopped transmitting?"

"Because he'd finished whatever he was doing."

"Or because someone else took over."

Shell picked up her phone. "I need to check something. The shore frequency — the one Karl heard in September twenty-thirty-one. It was a pulse, seven-point-eight-three hertz, coming from Tidecrest. If that frequency is still active—"

"It would be at the same location."

"Which is Mako's shop."

[SCENE 4]

They found Mako on the observation platform.

He was leaning against the railing, his back to the water, watching the dock below. The afternoon light caught his face — the deep lines around his eyes, the gray stubble on his chin, the way his hands rested on the railing with practiced stillness. He didn't look up when Leo and Shell approached.

"Low tide," Mako said. "Good visibility."

Leo stopped three meters from him. Shell stood to his left, her phone in her hand.

"You were watching," Leo said.

"I'm always watching. It's what old divers do." Mako turned. His eyes moved from Leo to Shell, then back. "The Type B complaint is procedural. Nothing personal."

"It's personal," Leo said. "You filed it against my father. Same complaint. Same language. Same outcome."

Mako's expression didn't change. "Your father was diving deeper than his paperwork said. So are you. The complaint is about documentation, not depth."

"The cuts at sixty meters — are they documentation too?"

Mako looked at the water. The surface was flat, gray, indifferent. "You found them."

"Four cuts. Three days old. Abyssal Steel residue. Designed to degrade the junction at ninety meters."

Mako didn't respond immediately. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small object — a dive light, old, the casing worn smooth from years of use. He held it up to the light, examining the lens.

"Karl found the same cuts," Mako said. "Three years ago. He found them at two-eighty, not sixty. Deeper. Harder to trace. But the same pattern."

"You're admitting it."

"I'm telling you what Karl found." Mako set the dive light on the railing. "The cuts are real. The pattern is real. The Abyssal Steel residue is real. But you're asking the wrong question."

"Which question should I ask?"

Mako looked at him. "Not who's cutting. Why they're cutting."

Shell stepped forward. "The Type B complaint. It's not about documentation. It's about keeping Leo out of the water while you finish what you started."

Mako's gaze shifted to Shell. "You're the water treatment engineer. You've seen the quality declines. The biofouling. The catch-rate drops. You know the network is degrading."

"We know you're degrading it."

Mako picked up the dive light and turned it over in his hands. "The node at Junction Seven recovered to forty-one percent. That's good. That's progress. But the recovery makes the cuts visible. At twelve percent, the whole network was noise. At forty-one percent, the cuts stand out. Someone who's been cutting for three years suddenly has their fingerprints everywhere."

"So you're cutting faster. To stay ahead of the recovery."

Mako set the dive light down. "I'm not cutting. I'm protecting."

"Protecting what?"

Mako looked at the water. The afternoon light was fading. The current was shifting, the low-tide flow weakening as the tide began to turn. The observation platform creaked under their weight.

"The node at Junction Seven regulates thread flow," Mako said. "Karl repaired it in twenty-thirty-one. He gave it forty-seven percent capacity. Then the harmonic override failed, and the anchoring protocol took his authorization key. The node dropped to twelve percent. You restored it to forty-one percent with the bypass seal."

"You know about the bypass seal."

"I know about Karl. I know about the node. I know about the Abyssal Steel knife in your pocket." Mako's gaze dropped to Leo's belt. "The real one. Not the decoy."

Leo felt the dock shift under him. "You have Abyssal Steel technology. Your threads are shielded. You've been buying equipment that doesn't match your declared dive profiles."

"And you've been diving deeper than your paperwork says." Mako picked up the dive light and clipped it to his belt. "The Type B complaint is procedural. The forty-eight-hour clock is running. Hargrave's finding is due tomorrow. And you just dove outside the published corridor to find cuts that prove you're not a normal diver."

"You're trying to disqualify me."

"I'm trying to keep you alive." Mako's voice was flat, matter-of-fact. "The node at forty-one percent is good. It's the best result in three years. But the recovery is fragile. One more dive to Junction Seven, one more harmonic override, and the node could destabilize. Karl tried it in twenty-thirty-one. He lost his transformation. You might lose more."

"You know about Karl's transformation loss."

"I know about everything Karl did. I was there when he started. I was there when he stopped." Mako turned from the railing. "The Type B complaint gives you forty-eight hours to think. Use them."

He walked toward the stairs. Leo watched him descend, his steps measured, deliberate, the same rhythm he'd used on the dock for twenty years. At the bottom, he paused and looked up.

"The cuts at sixty meters are real," Mako said. "But they're not what you think. They're not attacks. They're triage."

He turned and walked toward his shop. The sign hung at an angle, the paint faded to illegibility. The door was open, the interior dark.

Shell stood beside Leo. "He's protecting something at depth. Not destroying — protecting."

"Or he's telling us what we want to hear."

"The cuts are triage? What does that mean?"

Leo looked at the water. The tide was turning. The current shifted, the offshore flow weakening as the incoming tide began to push back. The observation platform creaked. The camera lens panned across the entry zone, capturing nothing but empty water.

"It means he's cutting threads to save others," Leo said. "Or it means he's cutting threads to save himself."

Shell looked at the shop. The door was still open. The interior was dark.

"Forty-seven hours on the Type B clock," she said. "Nine days until Kessler. And Mako just told us to think."

Leo picked up the standard knife from the dock edge. The blade was dull steel. The decoy. The registered tool that would pass any inspection.

He looked at the water. The tide was turning. The current was shifting. And somewhere below sixty meters, a network of threads was being dismantled one cut at a time by someone who claimed to be protecting it.

Leo clipped the knife to his belt and walked toward Shell's plant. They had forty-seven hours. And Mako had just given them a question to answer.