Diving without a tank was stupid.
Gin knew that as the green water swallowed him, as the surface noise cut off with a soft whump and the world shrank to cold and pressure and breath he didn't technically have. His busted cylinder spun away above, a useless, dented ghost.
His ribs burned.
Not with lack of air—yet—but with that new ache, the strange blood flowing through his veins. Ever since the trench, his skeleton felt like it housed a second set of lungs: not for air, but for blood. Oxygenated, overclocked, hungry.
You're an idiot, he told himself.
His bones hummed back, not disagreeing so much as bracing.
On deck, during recall, they'd already hauled Tamsin's tether hand over hand, cursing the whole way, only to find an empty clip swinging at the end. No line led down to her now. No lifeline for him to follow.
That left him with memory and stubbornness.
Tamsin's grid. Seven.
He'd studied the layout: two ruined hulls collapsed into each other, a tangle of beams and containers, a rusted crane arm jutting like a broken finger. He fixed that image in his mind and angled his body toward where it should lie beneath Khelt's shadow.
He kicked hard.
The water was clear. Sunlight filtered in long, slanting columns, catching particulate like drifting dust in a flooded cathedral. The salvage boat's hull loomed above, a broad, dark smudge against the brightness.
Below—
A darker tangle took shape, growing from suggestion into wreckage: twisted ribs, jagged steel, the crane arm stabbing upward just where the map had promised.
He was in the right place.
A movement near the torn mouth of a cargo bay drew his eye—a cone of reflecting light, jerking and weaving.
Tamsin.
Her salvage bag bulged, dragging her sideways with every kick. Her fins churned, determination written in the set of her shoulders even through the suit.
Gin almost laughed around the burning in his chest. Of course.
Then he saw the shadow behind her.
Long-bodied. Longer neck. Head like a blunt spearhead lined with plates. The male long-necked shark moved with an awful, patient glide, each coil of its sinuous throat bringing it closer.
The mate of the one he'd pinned earlier.
Angry.
Hungry.
And lined up perfectly with Tamsin's blind spot.
Cold slid down his spine, chased immediately by a hot, iron surge.
"Hey," Gin muttered, bubbles streaming from his teeth. "Over here."
He yanked his dive-light from its clip and flashed it, strobing the beam across the wreck mouth like a lighthouse having an argument.
Light caught on Tamsin's visor. She twisted, saw him, saw his wild gestures—up, up—and then, belatedly, the shadow.
Even through glass and distance, he felt the curse she probably shouted at him and the sea and her own greed.
The shark's attention slid with the movement of light.
Its pupils contracted, black coins locking onto Gin.
Good boy, he thought. Come on, then.
It came.
Mouth opening, plates flexing, rows of teeth unfolding like a nightmare flower. Up close, the jaws were obscene—big enough to take him in one bite, crush him into paste before he could regret any of his life choices.
His arms burned. His chest burned. His bones sang.
"Alright," Gin told his own body. "Let's be very clever or very dead."
He flicked the axe into his left hand and, and hacked a shallow line across his thigh.
The pain was nothing.
The reaction was everything.
Blood didn't drift. It cohered, thickening instantly, darkening from red to iron-black as it boiled out into the water. Heat flared through his humerus as the Hemovore strain surged awake.
The stream twisted under his will, lengthening, hardening, forming into a narrow, iron-dark pole several meters long, anchored to the gash in his leg. It slid through the water smooth as forged steel, tip bracing against the inside of the shark's upper jaw just as the monster snapped down.
The impact rattled his teeth.
For a heartbeat, the beam of blood-iron held, limbs locked as shark and human tried to occupy the same space.
Gin snarled wordlessly into his helmet, muscles screaming as he pushed back. The pole bowed.
Cracks spidered through the hardened blood.
"Come on, come on—"
It snapped.
The shark's jaws slammed shut on empty water and crumbs of hardened blood. The broken pole tumbled down its throat in glittering pieces.
Gin kicked desperately aside, the rush of water from its failed bite spinning him end-over-end. The male wheeled immediately, fury twisting its long neck into a loop.
Through the whirl of motion, Gin tried to seize the blood fragments inside its mouth, to pull them like fishhooks, but—
Nothing.
Dead. Disconnected.
Fresh only, he thought, dazed. Or still attached. Good to know—
The shark came again.
Time lurched.
His awareness sharpened, the world slowing to a syrupy crawl. He could see each tiny bubble fleeing his lips, each tremor of muscle along the shark's throat, each drifting flake of rust. The oxygenated reef-blood in his veins dumped its payload into his system, flooding his brain with clarity.
He weighed options with unnatural calm.
No tank. Limited breath. One big angry shark. One very small axe.
He cut himself again.
This time the slice ran along his forearm. Blood surged out and he forced it long and straight, another lance growing from his wrist like a second, cruel limb. He simply held the weapon in front of him.
The shark coiled, changing approach. Its neck looped, bringing its head around behind him in a maneuver the female had used—trying to snap prey up from the blind side.
He'd been counting on that.
As its bulk rushed past, he braced both boots against its rough hide, shoved against it, and let the beast's own momentum catapult him backwards.
Straight toward the open mouth.