The main had broken overnight. Soon enough, Norba and her jackers were awoken by the foul smell emanating from the river. Handkerchiefs over their faces, they’d stumbled outside to see what was going on.

The smell was even worse outside. Refuse and waste drifted through the water, caking up on their motorboats’ hulls and leaking through cracks in the dock.

“Damn. Sewage break.” Hex said. Her eyes narrowed with distaste as she watched a clump of plastic bags drift by. “This must’ve been a big fucker. One of those municipal lines.”

“You know, this was bound to happen.” Norba stared at the water, arms crossed. “No city workers to maintain the lines means they’re gonna rupture eventually.”

There was a beat of uncomfortable silence. None of the jackers wanted to consider that the same held true for fuel mains.

“Not great for it to happen now,” one of the jackers grumbled. Even after all this time, Lacey struggled to remember his name. Rasp? Rack?

“What do we do?” Rivet asked, still rubbing sleep out of their eyes.

“Clean up what we can,” Norba said. “Get the big pieces of garbage. We can’t clean the whole river, but we can keep it from washing giant chunks of shit onto the dock.”

The jackers mumbled their assent. They fanned out across the dock.

Lacey and Rivet volunteered to check the other side of the warehouse. There wasn’t much to protect over there, but it was worth checking that nothing huge was going to hit the building.

Rivet led the way. They shuffled along the narrow walkway on the front of the warehouse, then hopped onto the couple feet of marshy ground that divided the building from the river. A massive squelch signaled their landing.

Lacey descended more slowly. She followed in Rivet’s footprints to avoid the clumps of biohazardous waste.

“I feel like there shouldn’t be this much trash,” Rivet grumbled.

Lacey grunted. She wasn’t shocked. In the city, people started stuffing whole garbage bags down surviving storm drains a long time ago. That’s where most of the refuse from the wreckage ended up, too.

Rivet stepped in a particularly sticky patch of mud and jerked to a halt. Cursing, they tried to wrench their foot free. Lacey paused to give them time.

That was when something unusual caught her eye. A canvas duffel rested on the shore an arm’s length away from her. It looked filthy but well made. Waterproof, by the looks of it. Definitely not the kind of thing someone would just throw away.

A couple squelching steps carried Lacey close enough to touch it. She hesitated for a moment. It did smell horrible, and she had no idea where it had been. But there could be something useful inside — and anyway, her curiosity was too powerful to resist. Lacey pulled the sleeves of her jacket down to cover her hands and unzipped the bag.

She had hoped for good clothes, maybe some tools, even non-perishable food. Instead, what she found was a pair of raggedy sneakers, a smartphone with a shattered screen, and a Nikon camera.

Rivet had stopped struggling. Now, they watched Lacey with a look of confusion. “What’ve you got over there?” they called.

“Not sure,” Lacey said. She ran her hands around the rest of the bag’s interior, but found nothing. “I think it’s just junk.”

“Well, that really sucks for whoever…hey, is that a DSLR?” Rivet leaned toward Lacey, peering over her shoulder.

“A what?” Lacey squinted at the bag.

“The camera.” Rivet finally yanked their leg out of the mud and hopped over to Lacey. “Let me see.”

Without waiting for permission, Rivet grabbed the camera out of the bag and held it up for inspection. They whistled. “Yep, it sure is. One of the newer models, too. Looks like a D950.”

Lacey wiped her grimy sleeves on her jeans. This jacket would stink for a while. “I have no idea what you’re saying.”

“It’s a nice camera, is what I’m saying.” Rivet nodded in approval. “Whoever lost this is probably pretty sad.”

“Doesn’t look like it was lost.” Lacey gave up on trying to clean her sleeves. She gestured toward the bag instead. “Who would lose a whole duffel bag with three things in it?”

Rivet gave a one-shouldered shrug. “No clue. Maybe there’s something spicy on it.” They waggled their eyebrows.

“Ha, ha. You’re twelve,” Lacey said. “Can that even turn on?”

“It’s supposed to be water resistant,” said Rivet.

“You sure know a lot about cameras,” Lacey observed.

“Comes from being a movie geek.” Rivet tried to act nonchalant, but Lacey could see their embarrassment peeking through. “You know, you start to get interested in amateur filmmaking, you start to learn some stuff about cameras.”

“Okay, so you are definitely explaining the plot of the amateur film that you made once we get back inside.” Lacey hoped Rivet knew she was grinning underneath her handkerchief. “Come on, turn it on already.”

“Fine.” Rivet rolled their eyes and pressed the power button.

Miraculously, the screen lit up. It was a little cracked, but none of the pixels were broken. The battery still had a fair amount of life on it, too, according to the display.

“Damn,” Rivet said. “I was kinda expecting it to be dead.”

' “Me too. We lucked out.” Lacey leaned in closer to see the screen. “What’s on it?”

“Well, the resolution won’t be great if we can’t upload it to a computer or a phone or something,” Rivet said. “We can still flip through, though.” They clicked on the gallery icon.

A fair amount of the storage space was used up, all apparently from one specific day. The preview showed mostly natural landscapes. Rivet selected the first picture, which grew to fill the screen.

Immediately, Lacey’s blood ran cold.

“It’s just a river,” Rivet muttered. They flipped to the next picture, similar to the last but zoomed out to show a hint of hills in the distant background. The next few were the same.

Rivet was right: it was just a river. A little section of the Willamette, far upstream. Most people didn’t go that far. The day they’d taken a passenger up there, the crew had thought it was unusual. Nothing was up there. They took the job, though. Why wouldn’t they?

Rivet kept flipping through photos until they got to a different shot. This time, it was a new location: a wider part of the river with a skeleton-like metal dock on one shore. A half-submerged sign far was marked with a white cross symbol.

“Where even is this?” Rivet shook their head.

It was the entry point for relief workers right after the quake, when the part of the river closer to the city was completely choked with debris. It had since washed away, but by that point, the boats had stopped coming anyway.

Rivet kept flipping. The photos got stranger: up-close pictures of boats, piles of boxes in a dimly lit room, blurry shots of people in motion.

“I don’t get it,” Rivet said. “What is this, some crazy wannabe National Geographic photographer?”

“A whistleblower,” Lacey said through numb lips.

“A what?” Rivet’s brow wrinkled.

“I know that place.” Lacey pointed at the screen. “That’s the job I took.”

Comprehension dawned in Rivet’s eyes. “The passenger who got in trouble.”

Lacey nodded once.

“Then what’s all this?” Rivet demanded. “It’s just normal stuff.”

“No, it’s not,” Lacey insisted. “It’s proof. Those photos are the reason he got in trouble with the people in Portland.”

“The ones who went after you,” Rivet said slowly.

“Yes. They work with the people who live there, in that ruined marina.” Lacey hadn’t seen the place herself, he must’ve walked further upstream, but that had to be it. “They give things to the people who came for me, but they’re a secret. No one else is supposed to know about them.”

The visible part of Rivet’s face was tense with concern. “Lacey, I know you’re scared, but you’re really freaking me out.”

“I’m freaked out, too.” Lacey crossed her arms protectively. “The people in that marina don’t mess around.”

“Lace.” Rivet put a hand on her shoulder. “What people?”

Lacey let out a fragile breath. “The ones who attack the supply ships.”