It was the first day of the large-scale salvage operation, and the place was buzzing with a chaotic, desperate energy. Some people standing on the makeshift docks or clinging to the sides of boats couldn't understand the urgency. Why not just wait for the floodwaters to fully recede? Wouldn't that make everything easier? No diving, no danger, no need to salvage at all. But the logic of survival was simpler: if showing up and getting on a boat meant a guaranteed hot meal at the end of the day, they would do whatever the government said.
What they didn't know, and what wasn't being broadcast, was that the hydrological authorities had already run the models and projected the murky waters wouldn't fall significantly for at least half a year, maybe longer. That was the cold, secret reason for the frantic rush to salvage now. Soaking any longer in the corrosive, sediment-filled water would ruin electronics, rust metal beyond salvage, and rot organic materials into worthless pulp.
Each salvage worker, trained or desperate volunteer, surfaced gasping every one or two minutes, their hands often empty, but the ropes tied to their waists soon hauled up all kinds of strange, dripping prizes from below.
All over the dark water, people in bright orange or faded blue life jackets floated and bobbed like a strange, scattered crop. They were the independent scavengers, the small-timers who had come to pick up whatever loose, floating bounty they could, hoping to trade it for a few precious virtual coins at the collection pontoons. Even if an item couldn't be officially exchanged, they could still drag it home and find a use for it. A plastic basin was a luxury for washing. A clothes hanger could dry rags.
There was plenty of floating trash and still-usable odds and ends bobbing between the waves. Plastic basins, clothes hangers, and smashed cardboard boxes couldn't be exchanged for coins, but they were handy at home. A floating wardrobe door or a solid section of countertop, however, might be traded for a small, meaningful amount.
In short, for those with a little capital, renting a life jacket for 1 coin was not a total loss; it was an investment in buoyancy and time. The authorities' logic was coldly pragmatic: if life jackets were free, who would get one first in the frantic scramble? Fights would break out. If someone tore one or simply swam off with it, how would you hold anyone accountable in a seething, anonymous crowd of thousands? To avoid that trouble, it was simpler to charge a nominal rent. When things have a cost, even a small one, people tend to use them more carefully.
Half a modern city had been swallowed. How much stuff, from furniture to factory tools, was suspended down there in the gloom? The newly displaced, living with nothing, saw potential value in everything. Even a single, unbroken ceramic cup mattered, since you could fill it with rainwater instead of having to stick your whole head out in the downpour to drink.
The spectacle of so many people bobbing across the vast, debris-strewn inland sea was even grander and more tragic than the chaotic evacuation scenes from the sinking of the Titanic. Everyone picked through the cold water for anything useful, moving with the focused, hungry intensity of human scavengers. In her previous life, Jing Shu had only started her own underwater searches much later, when she was stronger and more desperate. By then, most of the easily accessible, high-value items were already long gone.
The distinctive, predatory shape of her amphibious shark submarine drew curious and envious attention as it nosed quietly across the choppy surface, ignoring the designated salvage lanes. Once she had changed into a proper dive suit and fitted her rescue gear within the sub's cramped cabin, she sealed the hatch, took a deep breath, and guided the craft beneath the water with a soft hiss of equalizing pressure.
She flicked on the powerful front-mounted floodlights, and twin beams cut through the murky green-brown void, illuminating swirling sediment and the ghosts of structures. She crept forward at low speed. This was the historic city center, once a dense and prosperous zone. She had to be careful not to clip any unseen building corners or snag on submerged cables.
She didn't need to target anything specific yet. With this much drowned urban material, there had to be something useful. She steered toward the largest, most monolithic building shadow nearby, a banking headquarters or a corporate tower. The amphibious shark submarine was relatively bulky for tight interiors, so smaller shops and narrow alleys were off limits.
Before the great flood, in her past life when she had lost her first apartment and everything in it, Jing Shu had sometimes fantasized about being able to search the underwater city like this, taking whatever she liked or needed from the silent ruins. She had never imagined she would actually realize that dark wish in this second chance at life.
Her heart raced with a fierce, primal excitement that had little to do with material need and everything to do with the thrill of the forbidden harvest.
She thought of the specific bounties posted on the official big-data exchange list. Many rewards had been offered by different private parties and smaller organizations. It wasn't just the government that had been forced to leave valuables in the city.
Plenty of wealthy individuals and prepper groups had failed to move their hidden stashes in time. As for the national grain reserves, those were stored in deep, secret, hardened depots. Those locations had been carefully chosen generations ago to avoid floods, earthquakes, and other regional disasters. They would be fine, a silent backbone for the state.
If she could, she would take a bounty or two along the way. Easy money.
Jing Shu expertly slipped the amphibious shark submarine through a blown-out window frame on the third floor of the hulking tower. The interior was dark, cavernous. It didn't look like a standard office, or a mall, or a residential space, perhaps a conference center or an atrium.
Visibility was terrible underwater, but the building's central cavity was big enough for her to roam with ease, the sub's lights painting the drowned walls.
People had clearly been here, and left in a hurry, before the final flood surge. There were many mundane things left behind, chairs tethered to desks, waterlogged cubicle partitions, floating reams of paper, but so far, nothing worth the precious space in her Rubik's Cube Space.
As she cruised slowly down a wide, submerged corridor, her lights glinted off a set of double doors made of darker wood. She nudged the sub closer. The doors were partially ajar, revealing what seemed to be a senior official's or executive's private office, now a silent aquarium. A storage room, its metal door bent, shared a wall with it, and there, near the floor where the flood's force had impacted, a section of paneling had sprung loose, revealing the edge of a hidden compartment.
You wouldn't spot it without looking directly at it, and only because the flood had knocked some furniture against the wall, dislodging the camouflage. The sight made her pulse quicken.
"Could there be treasure? Gold bars? Cash bricks? Confidential data drives?"
Jing Shu didn't bother with the slow, finicky work of picking a submerged lock. She extended her hand, pressed her palm against the cold metal of the safe door visible through the gap, and with a focused thought, shifted everything inside directly into the waiting void of her Cube Space. She would sort it later.
An instant later, the entire hidden compartment's contents vanished from the physical world and appeared in her mental inventory. She blinked, reviewing the haul. Besides a useless rain of decorative ceramic pots and bronze bowls, there were stacks and stacks of sealed, military-green metal cans. She examined one with her mind's eye: solid alcohol fuel, packed by the case.
She stared, incredulous. She had expected jewels, bullion, secrets. But Nima, the damn safe was stuffed with cans of cooking fuel. That was… well… anticlimactic.
Still, practical. She used her consciousness to "crack" a virtual can within the space. It had been submerged for days, but the seal had held; the white, waxy solid inside was intact and dry. Solid fuel was actually incredibly useful, quick, relatively smokeless, and convenient, perfect for cooking with a pot on the go or for emergency heat. More than anything, reliable, portable fuel was something her family stocks were lacking. Finding a first practical score, however mundane, was not bad at all.
She mentally tossed the useless decorative odds and ends out of her space, letting them drift away in the dark office, and kept only the cases of fuel. Then she resumed the hunt. There was a certain illicit thrill to taking what the whole drowned city had left behind, a private plundering of the apocalypse.
She found a lot of other little household items in subsequent rooms, a sealed tub of rust-proof nails, a plastic-wrapped bolt of heavy canvas, a toolkit in a floating plastic case, and following the principle of no waste, she stored them all. Near the end of the floor, behind another set of ornate doors, a huge, lavish suite appeared, complete with a sunken sitting area and a massive, canopied bed. She hesitated. The scale suggested opulence. Maybe there was something good here.
After a quick, sweeping visual inspection with the sub's lights, nothing immediately stood out as uniquely valuable. But the bed itself, a sprawling monstrosity with a sand-colored upholstered headboard and thick, waterlogged blankets, looked more and more familiar. A tickle of memory. She pulled out her waterproof phone, its screen glowing in the dark cabin, and pulled up the saved image of the big-data bounty list. She scrolled. There it was, listed seventh on the private bounty board: One thousand virtual coins, seeking recovery of a specific custom bed (sand-colored suede headboard, oak frame) from the Presidential Suite, Skyview Tower. She had been baffled when she first saw it. Who would pay that for a bed? Then she had noticed the attached note, written by the claimant, an elderly industrialist: "Thirty years of marriage on this bed. I cannot sleep without it. Sentimental value beyond price."
A thousand coins was nice, but it didn't matter that much to her. Jing Shu, in that moment, found she liked the idea of helping a stranger reunite with a piece of their shattered life. It felt like a small act of rebellion against the total erasure the flood represented.
So she extended her will, and the enormous, sodden bed vanished from the suite and appeared in a cleared corner of her Cube Space. When it was time to claim the bounty later, she would simply tow it behind the amphibious shark submarine like some bizarre, aquatic parade float.
She changed locations, guiding the sub back out the window and into the open water. This first tower had been too stingy, not much of real value beyond fuel and a bed. Her next stop was the flooded government administrative complex. Rumor among the salvage crews said there was plenty of useful material inside the secure basements and storage rooms. Maybe there would be supplies worth taking, paperwork be damned.
There were three main towers in the government complex, forming a semi-submerged triangle. A dozen official salvage boats were already clustered there, working with feverish speed. People crowded the decks and the water around them, a dense hive of activity.
"Hey! You in the shark sub! No private salvage vessels in this sector! This is a government-priority zone! Move along!" someone on the lead salvage boat bellowed through a crackling loudhailer, his voice distorted but angry, as he pointed a gloved finger directly at Jing Shu's cockpit.
She looked around at the sea of bobbing heads and the feverish, organized salvage. Why was she the only one being barred? Because her craft looked capable? Because she was alone?
Then, before the official could shout again, a roar of panicked voices broke out from one of the other boats. "People down! Three divers got tangled in cables and can't surface!"
The orderly scene dissolved into instant chaos.
"Hurry, get down there and cut them loose!"
"No good! It's too deep here! I tried! Couldn't pull them up! Couldn't even see them well enough to cut them free! They're all tangled together in the wreckage! I'm not going back down; it's a death trap!"
"What do we do? We don't have the equipment for this!"
In the frantic shouting, several pairs of desperate eyes on the boats swung from the tangled ropes leading into the depths toward the sleek, submerged shape of the amphibious shark submarine, which was already quietly easing backward, preparing to slip away from the trouble. Their gazes held a sudden, terrifying hope.