CHAPTER 155: THE VAULT AT SEAThe open lagoon didn’t smell like the deep sea; it smelled of the city's underbelly—creosote, diesel film, and the warm, brackish rot of mangrove roots exposed by the low tide. The water wasn't blue. It was a slick, churning sheet of obsidian glass that caught the purple glare of the bleeding sky, throwing fractured neon reflections against the rusted hull of the Vane-Absolute.The floating vault was a monstrosity of industrial architecture. Half a mile of unpainted, reinforced steel, it sat low in the shipping channel like a drowned fortress, its massive automated cooling vents spitting out twin plumes of white, boiling steam that sizzled as they hit the falling rain. There were no windows, no human crew on the decks—just the rhythmic, deep-frequency thrum of the primary server racks vibrating through the steel plate, a sound that matched the heavy, erratic pulse in my own marrow."Keep your head down, Zora," Dante rasped, his voice cutting through the h
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