Chapter 362: Dad Called Before We Reached the Gift Shop

My father called while my dead uncle was still visible through the crawler’s rear window, which felt like terrible timing from a family that usually planned its harassment professionally.

Lukas kept driving. Beyond the glass, Udder the Sea shrank into a bright patch beneath the harbor, taking the girls and every comfortable thing I had recently learned to miss with it.

I answered before the phone inside my body could ring again.

"A contractor called me about Harden," my father said. "One of the guards from the service berth. He said you took your uncle outside."

"He left out the part where Harden threatened the girls again, but the rest sounded accurate."

"Is he alive?"

I watched a maintenance vehicle pass above our sealed road, its work lights moving through the water beyond the tunnel wall.

"No, and I knew what I was doing when I left him there."

Lukas glanced at me without turning the crawler. I appreciated that, partly because the road curved around a support column and partly because I had already disappointed enough people without adding a traffic accident.

My father stayed quiet long enough for me to hear his breathing. The new lie detector supplied nothing, because the speaker was nowhere near me. A voice coming through my phone didn’t bring its owner within ten meters, no matter how close the argument felt.

"Come back to Ami. We need to discuss what happens next."

"You can discuss it with me now, because turning around won’t make him less dead."

"Matthew, this isn’t a conversation for a moving vehicle."

"Then imagine I’m sitting somewhere expensive, because that usually helps the family say what it means."

He told me Harden had people who would demand answers. I told him they could start with the people Harden had threatened, and neither of us pretended that was an agreement. Before ending the call, I made one thing plain: I wasn’t asking him to hide what I had done.

The silence afterward lasted until Lukas reached the rising section of the service road.

"Did your family offer roadside assistance with that, or was it only the threat package?"

"The assistance usually arrives carrying something it expects you to pay for later."

[System: Beautiful start to the holiday, mate. Nothing brings two blokes together like a scenic drive and a conversation that could lower the value of the entire bloody family tree.]

You could have waited until we reached sunlight before reviewing my relatives.

Old Mate sat on his private bar with a drink between his paws. He had found a tiny travel hat somewhere, which made him look like a koala who had been banned from three camping grounds for reasons the police refused to summarize.

The road climbed through a series of sealed chambers. Municipal workers checked the crawler’s booking, waved us forward and closed the heavy doors behind us before opening the next section. We stayed on dry pavement throughout, which suited Lukas considerably better than discovering whether the rental agreement included drowning.

A sign separated harbor traffic from the routes leading back beneath Ami. Twawi remained under the city’s old service layers, where Lyra and Cherry had built lives out of things the surface preferred not to notice. The underwater districts behind us belonged to the harbor, with their own roads and pressure doors. They weren’t the same place simply because both made tourists nervous.

At the final gate, sunlight hit my face and warmed the red surface around my eyes.

Two suns hung above the port haze. Freight towers blocked parts of the sky, and marked flying lanes passed between them, crowded with couriers who clearly considered personal space an optional subscription.

I kept my black wings folded. The sore edge reminded me that looking like expensive trouble didn’t mean I had stopped hurting.

The surface port smelled of hot rubber, salt and breakfast oil. A broad fish-faced worker sold iced water beside a sign promising city prices for the next fifty meters. Beyond him, another stall charged twice as much and offered complimentary sympathy.

Lukas bought two containers before we left the mains-fed district. I objected to paying for water while an entire ocean sat behind us, and he asked whether I intended to drink the ocean or complain until it became fresh.

I paid for the water.

Our map showed the Salt Road crossing the reclaimed flats before reaching Rattlewash, a freight town with workshops and rooms. Farther out lay salvage grounds, an old bone-cut railway and a coastline whose latest survey markers didn’t agree with the previous ones.

"That last bit sounds interesting," I said.

"That last bit sounds like we should buy another map," Lukas replied, turning onto the coast road anyway.

Outside the port, buildings thinned into pump stations and fenced salt beds. Workers in shaded carts checked water channels while small wind screens protected their equipment. Every useful stop had a roof, a repair bench and someone selling a drink at a price that made my father seem emotionally generous.

By the time the first roadside diner appeared, I had developed firm opinions about our lack of fried potatoes.

Its sign promised a free breakfast for unusual travelers. Beneath that, a painted serpent smiled beside a plate much larger than its head, demonstrating the first sensible ambition I had seen all morning.

Lukas parked inside the fenced forecourt. The owner came out wiping his hands on an apron, overlapping scales protecting his shoulders while the rest of him looked disappointingly capable of holding cutlery.

"Welcome, gentlemen. The breakfast offer applies to both of you, and there isn’t a catch."

The lie warning appeared before I finished admiring the painted potatoes.

I looked past him at the serving window, then at the camera fixed above the entrance. Its lens moved a little too neatly as I shifted in my seat.

"That’s excellent, because my friend gets upset when people lie before he’s eaten."

Lukas looked at me, recognizing the pleasant voice I used when breakfast had become somebody else’s problem.

Behind our crawler, the exit barrier dropped across the only vehicle opening.

The owner smiled wider and asked whether either of us had experience entertaining a live audience.