The hatch breathes cold air. Below it, the scraping quickens, metal on metal, like something testing a latch with patient hands. Dallas sees the shape of the trap now, a timing lock fed by the generator, and if the hum slips, whatever Bishop caged under Pier Nine comes up breathing.

Murderbone bristles at the rim of the hatch, ears flat, while Dallas spots a corroded service latch and a tagged cable running into the wall. The cable is the feed. The latch is the fail-safe. Bishop built two ways to lose.

Dallas moves. The overcoat flashes white in the harsh light as he yanks the housing open, finds the manual cutoff, and snaps it down. The hum shudders, drops low, then steadies into a thinner, strained purr. The scraping below pauses, as if the thing inside has heard him.

For one ugly second, the trap holds. Then a second indicator lamp across the room blinks red, showing the circuit has rerouted itself toward the pier stack. The entity is still contained, but only barely, and the next failure will not be local.

Dallas follows the tagged cable along the wall, fingers tracing the damp insulation until it vanishes behind the generator stack. The line is not feeding the hatch anymore, it is feeding upward, into the pier’s vertical service spine.

He pulls back a corroded access plate and finds the cable bundled with a second lead, fresh tape on fresh splice work, both disappearing into a narrow conduit stamped for the upper loading level.

Murderbone shifts at the hatch, then fixes his stare on the conduit, low and tense. The thudding below stays muted, but the red lamp on the far wall ticks once more, in time with the generator.

Dallas leans in farther and spots the cable’s destination plate, a maintenance junction marked with the same countdown notation from the notes under the stairs. The path is clear now, and it leads to the pier stack.

Cut off Bishop at the pier stack junction