CHAPTER 1052: THE CRAFTING PROCESS (4).

They moved at Cain’s pace, quick without hurry, deliberate without waste. The avenue narrowed beneath a tired tram bridge, the rails above humming as the Grid woke. Hunter took point; Susan watched their back trail; Steve checked junctions with the portable set threaded through his coat.

"Three messengers," Hunter said a block later. "Split at the bend. One west to the river, one toward the Catwalk Markets, one down." He pointed at a black stairwell where cold air lifted dust in slow curls. "Tunnels."

"Down," Cain said. "The one who trusts the tunnels carries the core message."

They descended. The steps ended in a maintenance corridor where mildew bloomed dark on concrete. Steve pried open a fuse box and jacked in.

"Mapping," he murmured. "Two viable exits: Station Delta-Seven under the Foundry, and a discharge grate into the culverts."

"Lock the culverts," Cain said. "Make Delta-Seven look friendly."

Hunter vanished right, spooling cable. Susan kept her voice low. "You want the runner to transmit."

"I want him to feel clever," Cain said. "Clever people make reassuring mistakes."

Minutes later the culvert gate thunked shut, and Steve laid a camera loop across the corridor. Hunter returned with dust in his beard and a nod that made words unnecessary.

Footfalls came—the cadence of a trained courier. When the runner hit the blind corner, he rolled into Delta-Seven, palmed a switch, leapt into the carriage, stabbed a key into the console.

"Packet structure?" Cain asked.

"Compressed burst, slate-keyed, hopping the rail net," Steve said. "I can mirror without tripping the far end."

"Do it."

The burst ended. Cain stepped into the carriage. The man looked up, understanding caught between reflex and denial.

"We needed your route," Cain said, even. "You did well."

Hunter touched the courier behind the ear. The man sagged, breathing, asleep before his shoulder met the seat.

"Alive?" Susan asked.

"Today," Cain said. He tilted his head at the console. "Endpoint."

A map unfolded on Steve’s wrist screen—rings and sectors, a quiet corner of the Harbor nobody floodlit. He marked an unlisted dock, a warehouse with two owners and no taxes.

"They’re not centralizing," Steve said. "Passing sideways."

"Neighbors," Cain said. "Looks smaller. Scares fewer people."

He lifted the courier’s boot and saw a fresh smear across the tread. On the floor, another smear hid in the scuffs: Harvester ichor, thinned with oil, walked in from the battlefield.

"Scavengers behind the line," Susan said. "Or someone pretending."

"Either can carry a message," Cain said.

They left the courier bound and breathing and took a different stair to the surface. Dawn had not yet taken the Markets; canvas roofs sagged, and the aisles smelled of old citrus and wet wood. They cut south by alley seams and maintenance walks, angling for the Harbor mark. Hunter kept a count of passes; Susan marked witnesses; Steve killed and resurrected three feeds to make their path look like morning noise. City Z spoke in prices and in silences; today the river’s silence felt practiced.

The dock crouched behind a salt warehouse whose sign had peeled to a bluff. A barge sat low under tight canvas; the men on the quay had standardized knives and fishermen’s talk. Cain didn’t break pace. Being seen here meant business, and business could be steered.

"We’re early," he told the nearest guard.

"For what?" the man asked.

"For the response you’re about to send to a message you aren’t supposed to have."

A woman stepped from the warehouse gloom—fifty, perhaps, with river in her hair and city math in her eyes. "Speak," she said.

Cain gave her the clean version: Harvesters driven off; three messengers; one allowed to transmit; her dock at the far end. No flinch.

"You don’t look like council," she said.

"I don’t look like trouble either," Cain said. "Not unless I need to."

She glanced at Hunter, at Susan, at Steve. Decision settled in her posture—acceptance of the economics, not trust. "You’re here to make me choose."

"I’m here to adjust your risk," Cain said. He kept his voice private. "River changes Harvester behavior. If your people forward troop counts or stock lists, the things that come will slide under your hulls and crack keels. You know this, or you wouldn’t be using side channels."

Her mouth went flat. "What do you want?"

"Your next packet goes through a repeater I control," Cain said. "Pay and nods stay the same. Only the route changes."

"And if I decline?"

"You won’t," Susan said, mild and sure. "You keep your people breathing."

The woman’s laugh had no mirth in it. "You talk like you’ve already bought me."

"I’m offering the only insurance on the shelf," Cain said.

He set a scuffed metal marker on the railing. "Tell your sender the tunnels are hot, east grids are noisy, and you’ll use river towers until things cool. Two hours, then transmit."

She studied the marker, then him. "Name?"

"Later," Cain said.

"Two hours," she said. "If your reassurances drown me, I’ll remember your face."

"Good," Cain said. "I’m putting it everywhere."

They left the way they came. On the road back, Steve asked, "You sure she won’t warn the other end?"

"Yes," Cain said. "Warning looks like nerves. Nerves cost her money."

They threaded through the Markets as vendors raised shutters and shouted prices that sounded like hope. Cain let the team match that pulse for a block before speaking.

"Steve," he said, "prep the repeater. We’ll take their reply and the bounce after that."

"On it," Steve said. "I’ll skin it as maintenance."

"Hopper teams?" Hunter asked.

"Two, rotating," Cain said. "Eyes on the bridges and the rooftops above the repeater. Susan, be visible along the Catwalk—half real leads, half theater."

Susan nodded. "I’ll draw gossip. It travels faster than packets."

"It does," Cain said.

They paused beneath a faded mural where paint had run into a map of nothing. Morning’s cold had lost its bite. Cain looked toward the river and then toward the towers where the Grid’s heartbeat lived. The day was settling into shape: enough noise to hide in, enough order to move through.

"Two hours," he said. "We don’t spend them waiting. We spend them arranging."

Hunter peeled south without sound. Susan’s stride became something the market would remember. Steve muttered to his devices until they obeyed.

There would be a reply, careful in the received language of allies who never met, and Cain would read the parts it didn’t intend to show. The city would keep pretending it wasn’t listening, which was fine. Pretending still had uses.