The fog clung to the suspension cables like solidified corpse glue, and ice crystals mixed with blood shavings rustled down with every meter of steel cable that Erin's climbing buckle slid over. The ghost of a reflective undershirt loomed in the fog ahead of her, and the clicking of her pocket watch's gears resonated with the steel cable at a frequency that made her temples jump -- the death beat of the day her father disappeared when her mother smashed the living room clock.
"Erin Harper!" The vocoder-processed growl exploded through the fog, "Look at your ten o'clock." The moment the drone's glare pierced the fog, she saw twelve amber resin caskets embedded in the hollow main cable, and floating in the newest one was the little girl in the crinoline dress -- the very same mayor's daughter who'd gone missing from this morning's news.
Thomas's license plate suddenly floated down from the sky, and when Erin grabbed it, she noticed a yellowed receipt taped to the back of 0037: a Navy pocket watch sold at the Golden Gate Bridge Souvenir Shop on October 17, 1998, signed by her father with a flourish of "James Harper". Erin recalled how her father had said that that was the day he discovered an unusual hazard on the bridge, and that he had bought the pocket watch to record the special moment, not realizing that it would later become a key clue.
"Your father is the real ferryman." The dark figure turned at the edge of the maintenance platform and removed his helmet to reveal Leo's grimacing face. He ripped open his reflective undershirt, and the LED strip implanted under his skin displayed blood-colored numbers that were counting down the seconds -- when twelve main cables snapped at once, all the bridges in the Bay Area would topple like dominoes.
Her mother's face flickers through the scope of Erin's sidearm. Surveillance video was being synchronized across all the electronic screens in San Francisco: her mother tied up in an abandoned cell on Alcatraz Island, the tide gauge behind her showing the time of high tide coinciding with the countdown. The heel of Leo's boot crushes the dial of the pocket watch, and the microchip embedded in it begins to send pulses to the Bay Area transmission grid.
"Multiple choice time." Leo tapped the barrel of his gun against the resin coffin in the main cable, "Preserve the five hundred people in City Hall, or save this little coffin containing your father's right hand?" The moment he lifted the lid of the coffin beside him, Erin saw that the oyster shell-covered ring finger of the right hand was holding her mother's missing wedding ring.
The swarm of drones suddenly collided out of control, the burning wreckage crashing into the bay like hellfire. Erin lunged for the console in the heat wave, the whole bridge ringing with the toothsome sound of twisting metal the moment the gears of her father's pocket watch jammed into the emergency brake valve. Suddenly she sees the truth of the control screen -- the last received coordinates of the stress data stream are not Alcatraz, but the IP address of her garage. It turned out that her uncle had been monitoring Erin's movements for a long time through the hidden devices he had installed in her home, and had also exploited her mother's fear, making her mother an unwitting accomplice to assist in some of the preparations .
"Where do you think the lilies that Mother stuck in the entryway every week came from?" Leo's pupils glowed with the same mint-colored fluorescence as Thomas', "She's in the basement lubricating the hydraulic presses every time you're up all night investigating a case." His gun suddenly turned downward, the bullet shattering the glass floor and revealing his mother in the lower hatch assembling a bomb. Erin's mother, who had long been threatened by her uncle and feared for her daughter's safety, was forced to cooperate.
Irene's climbing rope is cut as she dodges, and on the way down she grabs hold of Leo's harness. As they hang entangled at 227 meters, she smells the scent of spearmint wafting from her opponent's carotid artery - the same scent as the wilted mint sprig on her father's nightstand the night before he disappeared.
"Game over." Leo suddenly let go and allowed himself to fall backward, a metallic sheen showing beneath the torn skin at the corner of his mouth. Erin ripped off his tactical gloves at the last instant, and the tattoo of a boat anchor on his ring finger was an exact duplicate of the mysterious man in Thomas's treasured photographs -- the legendary DEA undercover agent who should have died in a boating accident twenty years ago, the real "ferryman."
When the SWAT team stormed the garage, Erin was staring at the half-finished resin casket in the hydraulic press. A bone meal and polymer mixture remained in the mixer her mother used for baking, and a dozen iced cake boxes labeled with the victims' names were frozen in the depths of the freezer. Home surveillance showed that the garage lift had been activated the night of each past murder.
News arrives from Alcatraz that Leo's "body" has disappeared en route to the morgue. Erin flips through her father's dusty logbook and finds equilateral triangles drawn in blood on the last page -- the three vertices mark the coordinates of her garage, the south tower where Thomas jumped overboard, and where she's standing at the moment.
The drone wreckage salvage team raises the last of the resin coffins from the bay, visible through the cracked amber surface that seals the uncle who should have died twenty years ago. The notepad in his hand reads, "When the Harper family line is reunited in the steel cables, the Golden Gate Bridge will gain immortality." Erin realizes that behind her uncle's crazy plan is a twisted obsession with bridges and power, and he thinks that through this bloody ritual, he can put himself in control of the lifeblood of the Bay Area.
As the clock struck midnight, fluorescent blue liquid began to ooze from the wound on Erin's wrist. The forensic report reveals that the "asphalt" that stained the scene three weeks ago is actually a nanorobotic solution that is now weaving a metallic neural network through her veins -- technology that, according to patent documents filed before her father's disappearance, allows human consciousness to permanently merge with the steel cables of bridges.
The fog thickened, and twelve bells chimed from the base of the newly poured north tower. Irene stood on the access platform and watched as her right hand gradually became transparent, resonating an A-minor chord with the steel cables. A moment before complete dataization, she finally heard the actual content of the foggy ramblings, "Welcome home, my ferryman."
Erin's consciousness began to blur, but in this haze, she recalled the ancient legend that her father had once told her: in the era of the fog-locked Golden Gate, there was a Ferryman of the Mist, who controlled the balance of life, death, and destiny, and who would appear whenever the Bridge was in trouble.
Just as her consciousness was about to be fully integrated into the steel cables, a warm glow emanated from within her. It was the last program left by the father, his deep love and protection for his daughter. The glow activated another function of the nanobots, and they began to repair every hidden danger of the bridge, restoring the structures that had been maliciously damaged as if they were new.
In the days that followed, the city regained its usual calm. The bridge became stronger under the guardianship of the nanobots. The police followed the clues provided by Irene and completely dismantled the hidden criminal network, eliminating all the remaining parties involved in the conspiracy.
Although Irene lost her physical body, her consciousness was like the soul of the bridge, always sensing every vibration of the bridge and every trace of the wind blowing over it. She became the guardian of the bridge, sheltering the peace of the city.
And in the depths of Alcatraz, where the mysterious figure disappeared, a stone engraved with strange symbols lies quietly in the corner. Perhaps this is just a prelude to a larger conspiracy, and one day in the future, a new crisis will quietly descend on this bay .