Chapter 1: Black Water

The first thing the sea takes is your breath.

It punches it out of you, steals it, forces your lungs to remember what panic feels like.

Kai Tanaka hits the water and the cold crawls through his wetsuit like it knows his name. The shock is instant. It clamps around his ribs, bites down on his muscles, tries to make him seize up. He lets it. For half a second. He lets his body register it, then he tells it no.

Not tonight.

The wind slaps spray into his face. Salt stings his eyes. The surface chops and tilts, a restless skin stretched over something deeper and meaner. Above him, the helicopter hovers, rotors screaming, spotlight cutting a pale tunnel through the storm.

“Swimmer in the water,” comes the voice in his ear. “You have eyes on target?”

Kai turns, head low, scanning through rain that feels like needles. His mouth is full of it. Salt and diesel and that sharp metallic taste that rides on fear.

“There,” he says, and his voice comes out rough through the mic. “I see him.”

A life jacket bobs in the black like a weak pulse. A man clings to it with stiff hands, head rolling back as if his neck is too tired to hold it. The boat that threw him here is half a shadow in the distance, barely visible when lightning flares.

Kai kicks hard. Strong, steady strokes, the kind he doesn’t even have to think about anymore. His legs burn anyway. The water is heavy. The waves keep shoving him sideways, trying to turn him into driftwood.

He reaches the man and grabs the harness.

“Hey,” Kai says, loud, close, like his voice can anchor the guy. “You’re okay. Look at me. Look at me.”

The man’s eyes are glassy. Pupils wide. Lips blue. His teeth chatter like they’re trying to break. He tries to speak but only a sound comes out. Thin. Useless.

Kai checks his airway, keeps one arm hooked under the man’s shoulder straps. He feels for the pulse at the neck. It’s there. Fast. Weak. But there.

“Ready for hoist,” Kai says into the mic.

A cable drops. It swings, wild at first, then steadies when the crew times it with the wind. Kai clips the man in, double-checks the lock, then slaps the harness once.

“You’re going up,” he tells him. “I’m right behind you.”

The man’s eyes roll toward him, and for one second Kai sees something human in them. Relief. Maybe. Or just the instinct to cling to whoever is holding him.

The cable tightens. The man rises.

Kai treads water, head tilted up, watching until the man disappears into the belly of the helicopter.

Then the radio crackles again.

“Kai,” the rescue coordinator says. “We have a second person. Same boat. Last seen near the stern. We lost visual.”

Kai’s throat tightens. His stomach drops. Not with fear for himself. With that familiar, ugly dread that comes when you know time is already running out and you don’t get to ask for more.

“Copy,” he says. “I’m moving.”

He pivots toward the boat.

The vessel is a thirty-foot fishing charter, white hull, blue stripe. Or at least it used to be white. Now it’s smeared with darkness, rainwater, oil, and sea slime. It tilts hard in the waves. The stern lifts and drops like it’s breathing.

Two figures are still on deck. One is sprawled near the railing, holding on with both arms as if letting go means dying. The other is crouched, head down, vomiting over the side.

Kai reaches the hull and grips the ladder, hauling himself up just enough to scan.

“Coast Guard!” someone yells. “Over here!”

Kai’s eyes cut across the deck. He counts. One. Two.

Not three.

“Where’s the second person?” Kai shouts.

The man near the railing lifts his head. His face is slick with rain, pale and frantic. He points, jerky.

“He went under,” the man says. “He went under and he didn’t come back up. He was right there. Right there.”

Kai’s chest tightens.

“How long?” Kai demands.

The man’s mouth opens, closes. He looks toward the sky like the answer might be written there.

“I don’t know,” he says. “A minute. Two. It happened so fast.”

It didn’t happen fast. That’s the lie people tell themselves so they can breathe again. The truth is always slower. The truth is always crueler.

Kai takes a breath. Cold air. Wet air. It scratches his throat.

“Description?” Kai says.

“Male,” the crouched man says, wiping his mouth with the back of his sleeve. “Twenty-something. Dark hair. Hoodie. He was wearing a hoodie. He shouldn’t have been. We told him. He didn’t listen.”

A hoodie. In this water. In this wind. In this temperature.

Kai’s jaw clenches.

“Helicopter,” Kai says into the mic. “I need spot search. Second victim male, twenties, dark hair, wearing hoodie. Last seen stern side, port. Mark it. Give me the drift.”

The spotlight sweeps, searching. The storm laughs at it. The beam shakes. The water swallows everything it touches.

Kai steps back off the ladder and drops into the sea again. The shock hits fresh, even though he’s already soaked. Like the ocean is reminding him who’s in charge.

He dives.

The world becomes muffled. The roar disappears. Sound turns thick. His own breath is loud inside his hood. His eyes sting from salt and cold.

He kicks downward, arms slicing through black water. He scans for shape, for movement, for anything that isn’t just darkness and bubbles.

Nothing.

He levels out and swims in a grid, counting seconds in his head. He knows this drill. The body doesn’t drift neatly. It rolls. It sinks. It rises. It becomes someone else’s problem if you lose it long enough.

Kai breaks the surface and sucks in air.

The wind smacks his face again.

“Any visual?” the coordinator asks.

“No,” Kai says. He tastes blood where his teeth cut his lip. He doesn’t remember doing it. “Give me the drift.”

“Wind twenty-five knots, gusting. Surface current running south-southwest. Estimate drift point forty yards off stern,” the voice says.

Kai swims there.

The water keeps trying to grab his ankles. The waves keep pushing him off line. His shoulders burn. His hands go numb. He forces them open and close as he moves.

He dives again.

Underwater, it’s colder. Quieter. Worse.

He sees a flash of something and his heart jolts.

A sleeve? A shadow?

He pushes toward it, lungs already tightening. His fingers brush fabric. Not the thick knit of a hoodie. Something lighter.

It’s a strap.

Part of a life jacket, torn loose.

Kai grips it, yanks it up, and breaks the surface with a sharp breath.

“No body,” he says into the mic, voice clipped. “Just debris.”

“Kai,” the coordinator says, and there’s strain in the word now. “We have to make a call. You’re coming up on your window.”

Kai’s throat tightens. His lungs feel like they’re full of ice.

“Give me two more minutes,” he says.

Silence. Then: “Two minutes.”

Kai dives again.

He pushes deeper, ignoring the ache in his chest. Ignoring the voice in his head that keeps counting oxygen like it’s money and he’s running out.

His fingers skim through nothing.

Then he sees it.

A shape below him. Pale in the dark. A face turned toward the surface like it’s trying to rise.

Kai’s body reacts before he can think. He kicks hard, arms reaching, and grabs the hoodie.

His hand closes around fabric. Heavy. Waterlogged. He tugs and the weight pulls back, stubborn.

He drags the body upward.

The man’s hair floats like seaweed. His eyes are closed. His mouth is open just a little, as if he tried to take a breath and found water instead.

Kai breaks the surface with him.

Rain hits the man’s face and doesn’t change anything.

Kai hooks an arm under the man’s chest and flips him. His hands find the chin, the jaw, the airway. He checks for a pulse at the neck.

Nothing.

He checks again, harder, like pressure might pull life back.

Nothing.

“Kai,” the coordinator says, voice urgent. “Time. You have to come up.”

Kai swallows. The act feels impossible. His throat is tight. His chest feels like it’s been wired shut.

“I have him,” Kai says. His voice is flatter now, because if it cracks he won’t get through the next part. “He’s unresponsive. No pulse.”

Silence again. Then: “Copy. Prepare for hoist. Bring him up.”

Kai’s hands shake as he clips the harness to the man’s limp body. He keeps touching him as he does it, like the contact means something. Like the sea hasn’t already decided.

“You’re coming up,” Kai whispers, close to the man’s ear, even though he knows the guy can’t hear him.

The cable tightens. The body rises.

Kai watches it lift toward the helicopter. A dead weight swinging in wind. A life turned into cargo.

His stomach twists. His jaw clenches so hard his teeth ache.

“Swimmer ready,” he says.

They hook him in. He rises.

The rotors hammer his ears again. The helicopter belly opens and hands grab him, pull him onto the floor. The smell hits him fast. Fuel. Sweat. Rubber. Warm air that feels wrong after the ocean’s bite.

He strips his gloves off with stiff fingers, trying to get feeling back. His hands are red. Raw. Shaking.

A medic is already working on the first man, oxygen mask on, IV in, chest rising unevenly.

The second man is laid out beside the stretcher. Covered partially with a foil blanket that doesn’t hide what matters. Pale lips. Slack face. Stillness.

Kai stares at him for a long second.

Then he looks away.

He does not get to fall apart in the air.

They land at the station an hour later.

The ground feels strange. Solid. Too steady.

Kai peels the wetsuit down, skin prickling with cold as the air hits him. His hair drips onto the concrete floor. His muscles tremble from exhaustion and adrenaline.

He smells like salt and ocean and the inside of a storm.

In the locker room, he scrubs his hands under hot water until they sting. The water runs pink for a second, from small cuts he didn’t notice. Then it runs clear.

He keeps washing anyway.

He feels the station’s fluorescent lights drilling into his skull. He feels hunger and nausea at the same time. He feels tired in a way that isn’t just sleep-deprivation. It’s deeper than that. It’s the kind of tired that sits behind your eyes and changes the way you see everything.

“Tanaka,” Captain Ellis says.

Kai turns.

Ellis stands in the doorway, tall, broad, face carved from duty. His uniform is dry. Crisp. Like he never got near the water.

“Sir,” Kai replies.

Ellis walks closer, eyes steady. Not unkind. Not warm either. Practical.

“Good work,” Ellis says.

Kai nods, because that’s what he’s supposed to do, but the words feel wrong. Good work doesn’t bring back a dead kid in a hoodie.

“Sit,” Ellis says.

Kai sits on the bench. The metal is cold under his thighs. His legs ache. His shoulders feel bruised.

Ellis holds a tablet in his hands. He taps it once, then looks at Kai.

“We have a problem,” Ellis says.

Kai’s stomach drops again.

“What kind of problem,” Kai asks.

Ellis’s eyes stay on him. “The incident footage.”

Kai blinks. “The helicopter camera feed?”

“Yes,” Ellis says.

“It should be in the system,” Kai replies. “It always uploads after landing.”

Ellis nods once. “It didn’t.”

Kai’s throat tightens. “What do you mean it didn’t?”

“I mean the main feed is missing,” Ellis says, calm, like he’s reading a report. “The deck camera from the chopper. The one that captured the recovery.”

Kai’s skin prickles.

“That’s not possible,” Kai says.

“It’s possible,” Ellis replies. “It’s happening.”

Kai leans forward, elbows on knees, hands clasped. His fingers tremble slightly. He hates it. He forces them still.

“Was it corrupted?” he asks.

Ellis’s expression doesn’t change. “IT says the upload was initiated, then interrupted. The file is blank.”

Blank.

Kai can almost hear the ocean again, the way it swallowed that body, the way it swallowed sound, the way it swallowed proof.

“Sir,” Kai says slowly, “I didn’t touch the system.”

Ellis’s gaze stays steady. “I’m not accusing you of anything.”

But the words don’t land clean. They land heavy, because there is an accusation hiding inside the calm.

Kai swallows. His throat is dry. His tongue tastes like salt and metal.

“Who has access to the footage?” Kai asks.

Ellis pauses for just a beat. “You know the answer. Anyone with clearance.”

Kai’s jaw clenches.

Outside the locker room, the station phones ring. Radios crackle. People move through the corridors like nothing happened.

But something did.

Ellis shifts his grip on the tablet. “Internal Affairs is coming in,” he says. “Protocol.”

Kai’s heart thuds, hard.

“Protocol,” Kai repeats, voice flat.

Ellis’s eyes harden slightly. “The public is already watching. The press is already sniffing. The family will ask questions. Missing footage makes it worse.”

Kai’s stomach turns.

“What are you saying,” he asks.

Ellis exhales. “I’m saying you need to keep your head down. Answer questions. Don’t talk to anyone outside the chain. Not a word.”

Kai nods. He hears it. He understands the rule.

But something ugly rises in his chest anyway.

Because he knows how this works.

When an institution is scared, it looks for a body to lay the fear on. Not the dead one. The living one.

Ellis steps back. “Get cleaned up,” he says. “Go home. We’ll call you.”

Kai stands slowly.

His legs feel unsteady.

“Sir,” he says, and his voice is quiet now, “that footage was proof. It was my proof. It was the proof of what happened.”

Ellis’s face is unreadable. “Then we’ll find it,” he says.

But he doesn’t sound sure.

Kai walks out of the station into the night.

The rain has eased into a mist. The streetlights glow soft. The air is cold and damp and smells like wet asphalt. Seattle is quiet in that way it gets after a storm, like the whole city is catching its breath.

Kai pulls his hood up and heads for his car.

His phone vibrates in his pocket.

He checks it.

Unknown number.

A link.

He stares at it for a second, then taps.

A podcast page loads.

A title in bold letters.

THE SEA TOOK HIM, BUT SOMEONE HELPED.

Under it, a thumbnail.

A blurred image of the rescue scene, cropped tight.

And his name in the description.

Kai’s stomach drops so hard he feels it in his throat.

He stands in the mist, breathing through his nose, heart pounding, and the city feels suddenly too open. Too exposed.

Someone is telling a story.

And they’re telling it with his face.