Don’t move!”
She couldn’t speak.
Her vocal cords were locked in a laryngospasm.
Her right hand—veined, spotted with liver marks, but bearing a three-inch circular gold signet ring displaying an **anchor crossed by an oak leaf**—shot out with sudden, terrifying hydraulic leverage.
Her fingers clamped around my right forearm.
Not a weak, pleading grasp.
An iron, mechanical vise that dug through my suit sleeve, the gold ring biting straight into the bone of my ulna with enough linear force to leave purple hematomas beneath my skin.
She pulled my face down until her lips were half an inch from my ear.
Her breath smelled of pure metallic ozone and sublingual nitroglycerin:
*”The manifest…”* she rasped.
The word was paper-thin.
A dry husk dragged over broken flint:
