Gin didn't realize how quiet the world could be until Hull-9 stopped groaning behind him.
Out here, there were no rattling corridors, no shouting foremen, no pipes coughing steam like sick animals. Just the slap of water against metal and the low, patient creak of a boat that had opinions about being alive.
He stood near the bow and let himself feel it.
The boat was… bad.
Narrow. Low. Unevenly welded. Plates overlapped where they shouldn't, rivets didn't line up, and coral-rope stitches held together seams that had long since given up pretending to be permanent. Rust bled through old resin patches like scars reopening.
It looked like something that should've sunk three owners ago.
Gin liked it immediately.
"Alright," he said quietly. "Let's see what you're made of."
He started at the front.
The deck-mounted harpoon cannon dominated the bow — a thick, reinforced pipe braced directly into the railing. Metal bands hugged the barrel, dented and dark with age. Behind it squatted the pressure chamber, ugly and functional, with a hand-crank bolted into its side.
Gin wrapped both hands around the crank and turned.
It resisted — then moved.
A deep, internal thunk echoed through the deck as compressed air began to build inside the chamber. The sound wasn't subtle. It wasn't refined. It was honest.
He eased the pressure back down and stepped away, nodding to himself. Slow to charge. Loud enough to wake the dead. Strong enough to punch holes in things that shouldn't have holes.
That would do.
Just behind the cannon sat the square deck hatch, its edges scuffed and dented from years of hauling salvage and half-dead sinkers back into daylight. A cable-and-winch system sat beside it, old but intact. Gin crouched and tested the tension.
Functional. Barely.
The cabin squatted in the middle of the boat like a rusted shed bolted onto a bad idea. The door stuck when he tried to open it.
Of course it did.
He leaned into it, gave a short shove, and it popped free with an offended screech.
Inside was cramped but livable. A thin mattress shoved against the back wall. A bolted-down desk cluttered with rolled charts, forgotten tools, and a cracked compass with half its paint worn away. The steering wheel jutted from the front bulkhead, stiff and scarred from years of stubborn hands forcing it to obey.
Gin picked up the compass and turned it slowly.
The needle wobbled, hesitated… then settled.
North. Probably.
"Good enough," he muttered.
He lifted the floor hatch and peered down into the machinery pit.
The electric motor sat low and compact, wired directly into a salt battery bank mounted along the keel. Salt batteries were slow to charge but nearly impossible to ruin — perfect for the Blue Span, where everything was wet, corrosive, and unreliable. The motor itself was weak, built for steady movement rather than speed. It didn't roar. It endured.
This wasn't a racing boat.
It was a drifting one.
Above him, folded tight against the cabin roof, sat the solar-skin array. The umbrella-style mechanism was currently locked down — long metal arms tucked inward, flexible solar skins bundled safely away from spray and debris. When deployed, the array would stretch out into a wide, star-shaped canopy, drinking sunlight and feeding power down into the batteries, motor, lights, and desalination unit.
Solar skins were fragile. Useful. Precious.
You didn't unfurl them unless the weather agreed to behave.
Gin lowered the hatch and continued.
The rear deck held the remnants of the boat's old ambitions.
A retractable fishing pole folded neatly into its mount. Beside it sat a collapsible algae-frame — a simple lattice designed to be lowered into nutrient-rich currents. Algae grew fast out here, especially in warmer waters, and once dried and compressed it became protein paste: bland, reliable, life-saving.
Food didn't have to be good.
It just had to exist.
Near the stern, a shallow basin crusted with mineral growth marked an abandoned barnacle farm. Once, this boat had likely cultivated fuel-barnacles — engineered organisms that secreted combustible bio-slurry when fed properly. That slurry could be refined into biofuel for generators powerful enough to surpass even solar power.
The generator itself still sat nearby.
Dead.
Cracked fuel lines. Fouled filters. Barnacles growing where ambition used to live.
Without it, the farm was useless — just another relic of a past owner who thought they'd go farther than they did.
Gin straightened and looked over the whole mess.
Different metals. Uneven railings. A cabin door that screamed every time it opened. A motor that wheezed like an asthmatic animal. Half-functional farms and folded-away tech waiting for light.
It was a wreck.
It was a miracle.
It was freedom shaped like a boat.
-
Floating Currentscroll
(Origin unknown)
To whoever finds this,
If you're reading this, then she's still afloat somewhere—and that's all I ever wanted.
They'll tell you a boat is just metal and rope. They're wrong. A boat is a promise you make to the sea and break every day by surviving anyway.
I named mine Sweet Brine. She leaks when she's angry and screams when you push her too hard, but she's never betrayed me. Not once. The Hydrarchy can keep their Hulls and Currentspires—I'll take a deck under my boots and a horizon that doesn't ask permission.
Take care of her. Feed her light. Patch her wounds. Talk to her when the nights get too quiet.
And if you love her—really love her—she'll carry you farther than you deserve.
—R.M. somewhere free
-
Gin sat against the cabin wall afterward, chewing through a ration bar that tasted like compressed algae and regret. He unfolded the old map Horvik had given him and spread it across his knees.
Trade routes were marked in faded ink. Warnings scribbled in margins.
Dead currents.
Reef bloom.
Hydrarchy patrol zone.
He traced a route north with one finger.
"Alright," he said quietly. "We do this smart. Earn some Rimark. Fix you up. Then…" His gaze drifted to the open horizon. "…then we chase myths."
Nearest Hull wasn't far. Close enough to reach without stressing the motor.
Smart first step.
The thought of the island crept in anyway.
He exhaled slowly.
Not yet.
He'd need a crew for that. Supplies. Experience. Strength. Whatever had burrowed into his bones during that dive wasn't done growing — and he could feel, instinctively, that he was still weak.
That was when he heard it.
Drip.
Gin froze.
Another drop fell, beading along a seam near the stern. One of the overlapping hull plates had shifted, loosened by the swell.
"…You couldn't wait one day," he muttered.
He grabbed a wrench and resin kit, wedged himself into the narrow space, and forced the plate back into alignment. The metal resisted. He leaned harder.
The wrench slipped.
Pain flared as sharp metal sliced his forearm.
"—ah!"
Blood welled instantly.
Then it didn't fall.
It thickened.
Darkened.
Hardened.
Gin stared as the blood crawling down his arm crystallized into an iron-dark plate, jagged and alive, fusing to his skin with a soft, wet click. Heat surged beneath it, deep in his marrow — not pain, but pressure.
Awareness.
Something inside him stretched, satisfied.
Blood is material.
The thought wasn't a voice. It was closer than that. Bone-deep.
Spill, and I will shape.
Gin staggered back, clutching his arm as the metal flexed with his movement.
"No," he breathed. "That's— no."
Warmth spread up his limb, his bones thrumming like loaded machinery.
Forge, the presence urged, patient and hungry.
I am your weapon.
His stomach twisted violently.
Hunger slammed into him — sharp, focused, wrong.
Not food.
Not algae paste or fish or ration bars.
Something darker.
Red.
Gin swallowed hard, eyes flicking to the smear of blood still glistening on the wrench.
"…That's a problem," he said softly.
The boat rocked beneath him. The sea waited.
And deep inside his bones, the thing that had followed him out of the trench leaned closer — curious, invasive, and very, very thirsty.