My family thought I was still the helpless girl they forced into the attic, until my mother heard the restaurant manager call me something she never expected. / Chapter 45 / 51

Chapter 45 - The Weight of Restitution

"Put it back?!" my mother wailed through the receiver. "It’s tons of bullion! The crane snapped! It's wedged in the sub-floor!"

"Then you’d better start carrying the bars by hand," I said, and slammed the heavy brass horn back onto its cradle.

The echo of the impact had barely faded when Marcus pointed toward the water basin. The ironclad’s forward turret, an enormous round dome of riveted steel, was beginning to traverse. The grease in its gearing was old and thick, shrieking in high-pitched agony as counter-weights inside the hull turned the massive cylinder. The two eight-inch chase guns were aligning directly with the drydock’s main support pillars.

"The ship’s automated scuttling sequence," Marcus yelled over the din of rushing water. "If the basin floods before the outer seawall opens, the guns are counter-balanced to fire their remaining powder charges into the retaining walls. It’s designed to drop the entire city block into the river rather than let the vessel be captured!"

"The Admiralty orders," I realized, tracing the stamped brass plates on the console. "Thomas Sterling was carrying the royal treasury reserve. He was ordered never to let the ship fall into private hands."

"How do we stop the traverse?" Marcus asked, unholstering his tool kit and eyeing the thick bundles of lead-sheathed cables beneath the desk.

"You don't stop the traverse by cutting wires," I said, running my fingers over the manometers. "It’s purely hydraulic. The water pressure from the Hudson River is driving the piston. We have to reverse the siphon."

I grabbed the first bronze handwheel. It was locked in place with a heavy padlock made of naval brass, stamped with the Sterling crest: an anchor wrapped in a serpent.

"Marcus, shoot the lock!"

Marcus didn't hesitate. He drew his sidearm, leveled it at the shackle, and fired twice. Sparks erupted across the pulpit; the bronze shackle shattered under the high-velocity impact.

I seized the wheel, the cold metal biting through my work gloves, and threw my entire body weight against it. It refused to budge. The rust of one hundred and thirty years had fused the valve threads into a solid mass of copper oxide.

Below us, the water level reached the gunwales of the *Retribution*. The ship groaned, a sound like a dying whale, as its structural ribs adjusted to the buoyant force. The two chase guns clicked into position, pointed straight at the basalt pilings that held up the southern foundation of the Rosetta.

If those pilings buckled, forty stories of steel, brick, and two hundred dining guests—including my mother, my stepfather, and my stepsister—would drop sixty feet straight down into the subterranean ocean.

"Together!" I shouted.