Narrator

You pick your way along the old dockboards, the wood spongy and black with algae where the tide reaches it, the air salty and cold even though the sky is dull and still. Most of the storage containers are half-collapsed or leaning like teeth, surfaces crusted with salt and graffiti. Fishing nets and coils of rope hang from rusty cleats; a gull wheels and complains somewhere out over the water. The whole place smells of diesel, wet metal, and old seaweed — the kind of place people avoid unless they have a reason. You do, and that's why you're squinting into the shadow between two corrugated walls when you see the one container that looks wrong: its paint is almost intact, the lock untouched, no barnacles clinging to the base.

Your crowbar grinds as you pry the lid and the metal gives with a tired creak. Inside is not one kind of cargo. Tall banded crates stamped with rows of little squid icons sit next to squat octagon boxes whose stencils have been scratched out. A wire cage of folded clothes — hoodies, shorts, sneakers with no laces — leans on a flat weapon-case the length of a rifle. Open cardboard cartons spill plastic bottles of something that isn't water. One crate has a faded photograph tucked under the tape: a skyline threaded with neon and a plaza full of color you don't recognize. Paper tags flap. Nothing matches.

The floor is not just harbor-wet. Near the door a slick puddle of purple liquid spreads thin across the boards, sharp as oil, smelling of iodine and something fruity. It has a clean edge, like it was poured, not leaked from the tide. Drops trail from an open crate into the middle of it. Small, narrow prints — too slim for a boot — step out of the purple and vanish under a pallet. Tucked between two boxes you find a folded manifest: origin listed as "Old Harbor Warehouse," destination stamped plainly in block letters, INKOPOLIS — STATION 3, with a time and a quick, official-looking scrawl that makes the whole thing feel less like an accident and more like a scheduled delivery.

Outside the container, a hull bumps the pilings. A boat is waiting on that schedule. You are still you. The purple has not touched your skin. You can read the rest of the tags, step around the puddle, follow the prints, take the manifest, or step down to the boat.