Three weeks after Pier Nine goes dark, Dallas waits under a crane’s sickly yellow spill in the harbor yards. Fog drifts low over wet steel, and Jackson Temple steps out of it looking wrung dry.
Jackson Temple
You were right to keep digging. Mercer’s gone, but somebody else is moving into his lane.
Jackson thrusts a manila envelope forward. The flap is swollen with damp, and a customs seal sits on top of a copied route map, marked in grease pencil with the annex symbol Dallas knows too well.
Jackson Temple
Look at the red lines. Power feed, transfer points, chapel pickup, customs annex. It is the same circuit, just cleaner.
Dallas Fontaine
The annex is still the hub. Someone is running the same machine under a new name.
Jackson opens the envelope enough for Dallas to see a photo of fresh cable work beneath a sealed hatch, plus a ledger copy stamped with Mercer Holdings and a second imprint Dallas has not seen before.
Jackson Temple
This mark is new. The Harbor Unit found it under the customs subfloor. Whoever took Mercer’s place is tying the city’s lines into something worse.
The crane groans overhead as distant lights blink across the waterfront, one after another, like a circuit trying to wake up.
✓ Quest Accepted
Protect Jackson Temple from the new operator
✓ Quest Accepted
Expose who is using the customs annex circuit now