San Francisco, 1983

The city was sick.

It didn't show up on the news—didn't make the evening broadcasts between sports scores and weather blurbs. But anyone who lived near the docks knew. The water smelled wrong—sharper, heavier, like old pennies soaked in bleach. The seagulls circled wider. The rats were leaving. And sometimes, in the quiet just before dawn, the ocean would exhale something that wasn't air.

The bay had always held secrets. Sunken ships. Broken promises. Bones no one cared to claim. But lately, things were surfacing—half-melted fish with too many eyes, oily sludge that steamed under moonlight, dead seals rotted from the inside out.