Justin pulled his access card from the log rack with the slate already tucked against his palm.
Erin saw him glance toward the deck camera before he moved.
That was the first thing he did that helped her.
He could take the slate, but now everyone knew he had taken it from a locked rack after Mara had placed it there.
Justin turned toward the control room.
Erin turned toward the aft ladder.
Her ribs protested before she reached the first rung.
Mara caught her harness from behind.
Justin called across the deck that Erin was done working and ordered Mara to keep her topside.
Mara did not challenge him this time.
She said she was only making sure an injured diver did not fall.
It sounded like self-protection, and Erin understood why.
Mara had already ignored one direct order. If she openly sided with Erin now, Justin could remove her from the rescue station too.
Nia came up beside them with the folded service chart.
The manual release for B-17 was two levels below, across the aft equipment gallery. If the chart was right, they could reach it without entering the water.
Erin started down.
Behind her, Justin entered the control room and shut the door.
A warning buzzer sounded before Erin reached the next landing.
The lower service doors locked.
Justin’s voice came over the platform speaker. He said an injured crew member was attempting to enter a restricted area and ordered everyone below to return to the main deck.
Erin kept moving.
At the first landing, a steel door blocked the gallery.
The indicator above it had changed from green to red.
Nia opened the small maintenance panel beside the frame and stared at the wiring.
Justin had not simply locked the door from the console. He had placed the lower deck into emergency isolation.
That mattered because overriding an isolation without confirming the hazard could turn Erin’s rescue attempt into the accident he was already describing over the speaker.
Mara looked back up the ladder.
For several seconds, she said nothing.
Then she asked Nia whether the isolation had been triggered automatically.
Nia checked the panel.
No.
The command had come from the control room.
Mara took out her radio.
She did not accuse Justin of anything. She asked him to state the reason for the isolation and identify the sensor that had triggered it.
Justin answered that he was protecting personnel from an unstable lower deck.
Mara asked for the sensor number.
There was a pause.
Then Justin ordered her back upstairs.
Mara lowered the radio.
That was the moment her position changed.
She had protected herself first. Then she had checked him. Now she had an answer that did not match the equipment in front of her.
She told Nia to open the door manually.
Nia hesitated.
She had been the one who told Erin that B-17 fed the backup generator room, and now she admitted that information came from the maintenance board she had trained on two years earlier.
The platform had been modified since then.
She could open the service door, but she could not promise the old route beyond it still matched the chart.
Erin looked at the red indicator, then at the ladder above them.
Going back meant leaving Luke below while Justin controlled every normal access point.
Going forward meant relying on a passage nobody standing there could fully verify.
Erin told Nia to open only the first door.
Nia used the mechanical latch.
The seal released with a heavy click.
No alarm followed.
Mara went through first and checked the floor, overhead pipework, and ventilation lights before signaling Erin forward.
The gallery smelled of oil and wet steel.
Erin moved slowly because every twist of her torso sent pain through her left side.
Halfway across, she stopped beside a handrail and waited for the dizziness to pass.
Nia reached for her.
Erin waved her off and tightened one loose strap on her harness instead.
Then they continued.
The B-17 release was where the chart showed it should be.
The compartment was not.
Someone had riveted a newer identification plate over the old wall marking, and the passage behind the release had been reassigned as an inspection access bay.
Nia stared at it.
Her memory had not been completely wrong. B-17 had once served the generator route.
Now it led somewhere else.
Erin placed her bare fingertips against the steel beside the hatch.
Nothing.
She waited.
Three knocks came through the plate.
Two.
Three.
Mara’s face changed.
Nobody had to argue about loose pipe anymore.
Luke was on the other side.
Erin answered with the same pattern using the handle of a wrench.
The reply came almost immediately.
Three. Two. Three.
She reached for the manual release.
Mara stopped her hand.
The indicator beside the hatch showed pressure on the far side.
Not enough to prove flooding, but enough that pulling the release blindly could force the door against them.
Erin crouched beside the small equalization valve.
Her ribs made the movement slow.
She cracked the valve only a fraction.
Cold air hissed through.
Then came the smell.
Diesel, damp insulation, and something scorched.
No seawater poured out.
Luke was trapped in air.
That should have been good news.
Then Nia checked the local panel and found why the beacon had been pulsing every seven seconds.
The emergency transmitter in the bay had almost no reserve power left.
Luke had been pressing its manual test control because the normal alarm circuit had been disconnected.
Mara asked who could disconnect that circuit.
Nia pointed to the service record holder beside the panel.
The pocket was empty.
Justin still had the slate upstairs, but Erin had copied the important code before he took it.
JV-04.
She asked Nia what that code could actually do.
Nia traced the local wiring labels and gave her a careful answer this time.
It was not a personal beacon code.
It was an authorization identity left by the last person who had placed the compartment’s alarm system into maintenance mode.
Justin’s code did not prove he had trapped Luke.
It proved his credentials had been used to disable the automatic alarm protecting B-17.
That changed Erin’s next move.
She stopped trying to force the hatch.
If the alarm had been intentionally taken offline, there might be other changes inside that nobody had logged.
She asked Mara to get the current maintenance record from the control system while she kept answering Luke’s knocks.
Mara radioed Justin again.
She requested the B-17 isolation record and said Luke Mercer was responding from inside the compartment.
Justin told her she was misinterpreting mechanical noise.
Luke knocked while Justin was still speaking.
Everyone in the gallery heard it through the hatch.
Mara pressed the radio button and held it near the steel.
Three knocks.
Two.
Three.
She released the button.
Justin did not answer for several seconds.
Then he ordered them to leave the gallery immediately.
Mara asked for the maintenance record again.
Justin cut the channel.
That refusal cost him more than the slate could protect.
Mara switched to the platform’s recorded operations frequency and reported an unaccounted worker alive in B-17, a disabled automatic alarm, and a command-level refusal to release the maintenance record.
The message went into the same operations archive used for ordinary incident traffic.
She gave her own name at the end.
There was no taking it back quietly after that.
Erin stayed beside the hatch.
Luke’s next series of knocks was weaker.
She answered once.
Then she stopped wasting his energy by asking him to repeat it.
Nia found a narrow inspection port above the equalization valve and removed its cover.
The opening was too small for a hand, but large enough to pass a line.
Erin fed a thin utility cord through.
After two attempts, something tugged it from inside.
Luke was close enough to reach the wall.
That was their first real gain.
It did not get him out.
For the next several minutes, they made almost no progress at all.
The hatch release moved, but the door would not open more than an inch.
Something heavy was jammed against it from inside.
Nia tried the release again from a different angle.
Same result.
Mara pulled once while Erin controlled the equalization valve.
Same inch of movement.
They had found Luke, confirmed air in the compartment, and established a physical connection to him, yet the steel between them had not moved enough for Erin to see his face.
Erin stopped them before they turned the same failure into a dozen useless attempts.
She asked Nia what could have fallen inside an inspection bay during the power failure.
Nia studied the updated plate and the piping labels above them.
Then she pointed toward a hydraulic line running through the bulkhead.
The compartment held a movable inspection cradle used when technicians worked beneath the generator support frame.
If power dropped while the cradle was extended, its safety brake would lock it in place.
If Luke had been beside the door, the cradle could be pinning the hatch shut.
The local hydraulic release was inside B-17.
Erin looked at the cord disappearing through the inspection port.
Luke did not need them to open the door first.
He needed instructions.
Nia tied a small wrench to the cord and marked the handle with tape so Luke could identify the correct direction by touch.
Erin passed it through the port.
Then Nia talked through the steel, one movement at a time.
Luke pulled the line once to show he understood.
Nothing happened for nearly a minute.
Then metal scraped inside the compartment.
The hatch moved another two inches.
Mara put both hands on the release.
Erin stopped her again.
There was still pressure on the far side, and Luke’s breathing could now be heard through the gap.
Fast. Rough.
Erin lowered herself to the deck and spoke through the opening.
Luke managed only a few words.
He said his right leg was trapped beneath the cradle frame.
Opening the hatch farther would not free him if the cradle shifted onto the leg.
Their rescue route had just become a lifting problem.
At the same moment, footsteps struck the gallery stairs.
Justin appeared at the service door with two crew members behind him.
He still had Erin’s slate.
He ordered Nia away from the hydraulic system and told Mara she was relieved from duty for violating an isolation order.
Mara did not argue about her job.
She stepped aside from the hatch, took her radio from her belt, and asked Justin to repeat the order on the recorded channel.
He told her not to play games.
She asked again.
One of the crew members behind him looked from Justin to the open inspection port, where Luke coughed audibly from the other side.
Justin changed his instruction.
He said nobody was to move the cradle until an engineering assessment was completed.
Erin asked where the assessment would come from.
Justin said shore operations.
Mara checked her radio.
Her earlier report had already been acknowledged by the platform’s operations desk.
The acknowledgment was simple: maintain contact with the trapped worker, preserve local controls, and send the current B-17 maintenance status.
Justin had the status record.
He had also taken the slate.
Erin looked at his hand.
For the first time, the object he had seized was a problem for him rather than for her.
She asked him to return it so Mara could transmit the code written on it.
Justin said the slate contained unreliable notes made by an injured diver.
Nia answered before Erin could.
She had seen JV-04 on the beacon display herself.
Mara had seen it too.
The deck camera had recorded Erin writing it.
Justin could keep the slate, but he could not make the code belong to someone else.
One of the crew members behind him asked a plain question.
Why had his authorization been used to put B-17’s alarm into maintenance mode?
Justin said the compartment had been scheduled for inspection.
Nia asked for the work permit.
He did not produce one.
That was the reveal Erin needed, but it was not yet the rescue.
She turned away from Justin and went back to Luke.
The maintenance issue could be investigated later. His leg could not.
Nia showed Erin the hydraulic diagram on the inside of the service panel.
The cradle had a manual pressure dump that would lower it a few inches if the brake was released from inside.
Luke had the wrench.
What he did not have was a way to see the valve behind the fallen frame.
Erin could see part of it through the inspection port if she lay flat and turned her head against the bulkhead.
The position drove pain through her ribs.
She did it anyway.
She guided Luke by inches.
Left hand higher.
Find the hard line.
Follow it down.
Feel for the square fitting.
Luke found it.
Nia told him to turn only a quarter rotation.
The cradle shifted.
Luke shouted once.
Erin ordered him to stop.
Everything in the gallery went still.
Luke said the pressure on his leg had increased.
Their best plan had made his position worse.
Erin closed her eyes for one second, then looked through the port again.
The hydraulic diagram assumed the cradle was level.
It was not.
One side had dropped farther than the other, which meant releasing the main pressure was tilting the frame onto Luke.
She asked Nia whether the two sides could be controlled separately.
Nia checked the diagram.
Yes, but only through a small balancing valve farther behind the cradle.
Luke could not reach it from where he was pinned.
Erin could.
Not through the door.
Through the inspection passage above B-17.
It was narrow, dry, and intended for maintenance access rather than rescue. It also required someone to crawl several yards over the compartment before dropping beside the hydraulic block.
Justin said absolutely not.
This time Erin did not fight him for control.
She asked Nia whether the passage was isolated from the damaged cradle and whether any electrical hazard remained active.
Nia checked both locally.
The passage was clear.
The circuit was dead.
Mara read the findings onto the recorded radio channel.
Erin removed the bulky part of her dive harness and kept only the line around her waist.
She told Mara that if her breathing changed or she stopped answering, Mara was to pull her back immediately.
Then she climbed into the inspection opening.
Every forward movement compressed her injured side.
She used her elbows more than her knees and stopped twice to control her breathing.
Below her, she could hear Luke through the steel.
Behind her, Justin continued telling Mara that Erin was acting outside procedure.
Mara answered that the actions, hazards, and local checks were being recorded as they occurred.
She no longer needed to call him a liar.
The record was doing the work.
Erin reached the drop beside the hydraulic block.
The compartment below was dim, but she could finally see Luke through the framework.
He was sitting against the wall with one leg trapped beneath the edge of the inspection cradle.
Beside him hung the emergency beacon.
Its maintenance cover was open.
A small paper service tag was still tucked behind it.
Erin asked Luke whether he could reach the tag.
He pulled it free and held it toward her.
Even in the poor light, she could read the handwritten entry.
JV-04.
Beside it was a date from three days earlier.
Luke told her why he had been in B-17.
Justin had sent him down to retrieve a vibration sensor after the platform began showing irregular generator readings.
Luke had asked for the work permit because B-17 was listed as restricted on the current maintenance board.
Justin told him it was a short retrieval and the paperwork would be entered afterward.
When the power fluctuation hit, the cradle dropped, the door jammed, and the normal compartment alarm did nothing.
Luke found the beacon and began using its manual test button.
He had been waiting for someone to notice.
Justin had noticed.
That was why the beacon code mattered.
It did not show a grand conspiracy hidden beneath the platform.
It showed a smaller, uglier chain of choices: Justin had placed the compartment alarm into maintenance mode, sent Luke into the restricted bay without the normal permit, and then tried to end the rescue after Luke became trapped inside the same unprotected space.
Erin passed the details back to Mara.
Mara transmitted them immediately.
Justin demanded that she stop broadcasting unverified claims.
Luke raised his voice from inside B-17 and confirmed his own name, location, and the instruction Justin had given him.
The crew in the gallery heard him.
So did the recorded operations channel.
Justin stopped issuing rescue commands after that.
The platform operations desk instructed Mara to maintain the scene and designated the senior mechanic already on deck to control the cradle release until shore management reviewed Justin’s status.
There was no dramatic arrest and no sudden team of strangers arriving to solve the problem.
The people already standing there still had to get Luke out.
Erin found the balancing valve above the trapped side of the cradle.
Nia talked her through the sequence.
The senior mechanic watched the pressure gauge from the gallery.
Luke kept his hands clear.
Erin turned the valve a few degrees.
The trapped side of the cradle rose less than an inch.
Luke pulled his leg back.
Erin stopped.
They checked him.
Then she moved it another fraction.
This time Luke dragged his boot completely free.
Mara and the mechanic opened the hatch as soon as he was clear of the frame.
Luke could not stand on the injured leg.
They slid him out on a rescue board and lifted him through the gallery without making Erin crawl backward first.
She stayed beside the hydraulic block until Mara called through the opening that Luke was clear.
Only then did Erin let the tension leave her arms.
Her hands started shaking.
On the main deck, Luke was placed on oxygen from the platform’s emergency medical supply and assessed for a leg injury and exposure.
Erin sat against the dive locker while another crew member wrapped her ribs and checked the bruising along her side.
The sea below was still gray.
Her missing cylinder was gone.
Justin stood near the control room with no radio in his hand.
The temporary change in command came through the operations channel after the rescue, based on the recorded transmissions and the conflicting maintenance status. The investigation would decide everything beyond that.
Mara walked to the log rack and opened it in front of the same deck camera she had used earlier.
Justin had returned Erin’s slate before stepping away from the controls.
Mara brought it over.
Erin looked at the wet pencil marks she had made while her hands were numb.
LUKE — B17 — MANUAL.
Underneath were the numbers she had copied before Justin tried to take it.
Three. Two. Three.
JV-04.
Luke reached from the rescue board and asked for the slate.
His voice was weak, so Mara placed it in his hand.
He added one short line beneath Erin’s notes: SENT ME IN — NO PERMIT.
Then he gave it back.
Erin did not keep it.
Mara placed the slate in a clear evidence pouch with the service tag from B-17, sealed the pouch, and logged both items under the platform incident record.
The slate had started the morning clipped to Erin’s harness as a tool for a rescue diver.
By the time Luke was breathing safely on deck, it belonged to the investigation Justin had tried to prevent.
