Midnight at Pier 9
Pier 9 was an industrial skeleton jutting half a mile into the churning black waters of the bay. Rust-streaked shipping containers were stacked like giant children's blocks beneath broken floodlights that creaked in the salt wind.
Helena arrived in dark work clothes, carrying a waterproof rucksack containing a high-torque crowbar, an external drive reader, and an LED inspection torch. The tide was coming in fast, slapping viciously against the decaying timber pilings below the deck.
She slipped through a gap in the chain-link fence, her boots splashing through puddles of oil and seawater. The monitoring station was located beneath the main crane gantry—a reinforced steel trailer bolted directly to the concrete apron.
She reached the trailer's heavy metal door. The lock had been changed recently; fresh grease shone around the padlock shackle. Someone had been here.
Using the crowbar, Helena leveraged the jamb with all her strength. Metal groaned against metal until the bolt sheared off with a sharp snap.
She stepped inside. The air was thick with mildew, ozone, and stagnant air. Rows of rack-mounted servers stood dark and silent, their indicator lights long dead. But in the corner, a single terminal glowed with a faint green auxiliary standby light.
Helena approached the terminal, her heart hammering against her ribs. She plugged her drive reader into the main interface bus and began keying in the administrative bypass codes she remembered from her days as chief architect.
ACCESS GRANTED: PROJECT HARBOR VIEW - SEISMIC ARCHIVE.
The screen flickered, listing thousands of hourly soil-compression logs. She initiated the transfer.
May you like
"Ten percent... twenty percent..." she whispered to herself.
Suddenly, the heavy metal door swung open behind her. A beam of white halogen light struck her directly across the eyes.
