New York 2140

Vlade visits his friend, Rosario O’Hare, who used to work on a subway squad. Vlade asks her if there has been any new activity around the Cypress station, but she hasn’t heard anything.

Rosario, Trina Dobson, and Jim Fritsche buddy-dive with Vlade later that week and find a shipping container fitted with air tanks and a sewage system. Vlade knocks on its side and receives a knock in return. They swim to the surface and call the police. Within the hour, the water police have brought two bearded men to the surface.

The Citizen describes dark pools of money and explains why the market is impossible to regulate without substantial reform. Even the most adept traders are largely unaware of everything that happens in the financial system, and the dark pools evolve every day, defying anyone to understand how they work. He also describes how marine life eventually returned to New York following the flood. 

Vlade tells Gen about finding the missing men and Gen meets with them that afternoon. They have no memories of their abduction and Gen suspects they were dosed with milk of amnesia in their food while they were captives. They were held for eighty-nine days.

Gen meets with Officer Goran Rajan in the Fed building. Gen asks him to monitor with cameras the spot where they found the men, and to let her know if there is any activity. Goran thinks that feeding the captives was handled remotely, but that they might be able to see drones returning to the container.

Gen and Olmstead give Mutt and Jeff a ride to the Met Tower dining hall. After dinner, Gen escorts them to their hotello, where Mutt tells her what they did the night they were snatched. He explains Vinson’s shady dealings and why they were fired. Jeff has screenshots of Vinson’s deals that would indict him. Gen assigns security to the two men.

The next day, Goran reports that there was no suspicious activity near the container, but he has also learned that Pinscher Pinkerton, which has been linked to several disappearances, handles security for Henry Vinson and Alban Albany.

The residents of the Met Tower debate the merits of selling the building and vote no on the offer, but Charlotte is uncomfortable by the vote’s small margin. She knows the vote could go differently with a higher offer. Vlade takes Charlotte upstairs to hotellos and describes finding Mutt and Jeff. Then, while Mutt and Jeff tell Charlotte their story, Vlade comforts Amelia Black, who returns crying because the bears are dead.

The boys tell Charlotte the story of the gold coins. She is impressed, but worried that they have not informed the authorities yet. She also knows that they could conceivably use the gold to buy the building themselves. They invite Gen up to weigh in on the matter. Gen says they should melt the gold and keep it.

Jeff worries that the system can mobilize far more money than they can, and that they won’t be able to win. Charlotte encourages him to change the system again, using a different approach.

Franklin spends the afternoon researching dock piling foundations and submarine demolition. That night he meets with Charlotte, the boys, Mr. Hexter, Mutt and Jeff, and Amelia Black. Charlotte tells Franklin the boys have inherited a trust fund of billions and want to help the co-op. They need his financial advice. Hypothetically, how he would destroy the current economic system? Franklin answers that the surest way is for everyone to stop making payments of any kind—the government could never arrest everyone, and the system would grind to a halt. 

Amelia goes ice-skating with Nicole to distract herself from mourning the bears. When she reaches the intersection of Broadway and 28th Street, the ice breaks, and she falls through. Several people pull her out of the ice, take her into a building, and put her into a hot shower.

Soon, she flies to the northeastern coast of Greenland. She lands in a place called New Copenhagen and meets with sympathetic friends in a pub. As she drinks, she gets angrier about the death of the polar bears, and more enraged at the purity activists.

The next day, she asks Frans to take a longer route home so that she can think. She watches a recording of her former undergraduate advisor, an ecology theorist named Lucky Jeff who argued for moral absolutism: “What’s good is what’s good for the land” (360). While flying over Canada, Amelia sees a damaged sky village. Half of its balloons have popped. Amelia films the residents coming out of their homes, dangling from ropes as they work to fix the damage. She lowers the ship until some of them can cling on, and then brings them safely to the ground. As she does so, she decides that she will continue to fight for what she believes in, no matter what. 

Gen and Olmstead meet with the Wolves, a data team of the Lower Manhattan Mutual Aid Society. The Wolves have found information implicating another group in the kidnapping: a group that performs assassinations for hire. They also have more data on Vinson. Using it, Gen gets a search warrant, hoping that the show of force will get Vinson to reveal something, even if they can’t move against him on actual charges yet.

At his office, Gen questions Vinson about Jeff’s kidnapping and Vinson’s relationship with Pinscher Pinkerton. Vinson claims that he has not seen Jeff in years, calls in his own security force, and tells Gen that he does not believe the warrant is valid. Vinson’s guards escort her and her team from the building.

During the encounter, Claire has planted recorders all over the building, so they may get something out of the visit.

The Citizen describes how architects tackled reconstructing and the reinforcing surviving buildings after the Second Pulse. 

The boys and Mr. Hexter try to make an iceboat. Mr. Hexter helps them attach blades to the bottom of a boat box. As they work, they talk about their next project, now that they have found the Hussar. He tells the boys about the lost manuscript of an unpublished novel by Herman Melville called Isle of the Cross. He thinks anything from Melville’s house would be valuable. Mr. Hexter attaches a sail to the iceboat, and they take it out on the harbor, where they glide along. The front skate breaks, so they walk the iceboat back in from the harbor.

Jeff, Mutt, and Charlotte argue about the difference between justice and vengeance. Jeff makes no distinction between the two—for him, retribution is a worthy goal: “At this point justice and revenge are the same thing! Justice for people would be revenge on the oligarchs. So yeah, I want both. Justice is the feather in the arrow, revenge is the tip of the arrowhead” (399). He believes that the only way to change the system is to manufacture a disaster. Mutt counters that they have a lot of star power and talent in their building: the two of them, Charlotte, Gen, and Franklin. 

Idelba meets with the treasure consortium in the Met Tower. She wants her cut of the money—it has been two months since they negotiated fifteen percent for her and Thabo. After a brief meeting in which there is no resolution, Vlade and the boys show Idelba how they are melting the gold with a portable crucible.

Outside, Thabo is working with the dredge when he pulls up a drone. Vlade puts it a strongbox to give to Gen. He thinks this will prove that they are being attacked, because believes the drone was there to drill cracks in the building. Vlade invites Idelba to spend the winter with them. 

Claire reports to Gen that the drone exploded when they opened the box, but its remains contained a needle drill that could puncture waterproofed walls. Claire’s research also reveals that a company with links to a predecessor of Pinscher Pinkerton security purchased the drone. This new link encourages Gen to believe they are getting closer to charging Vinson with a crime. 

Franklin updates Hector on the floating houses project, and Hector is encouraged by Franklin’s progress. He advises Franklin to start talking to prospective congressional candidates, since he will need their support to secure zoning permits.

At Pier 57 Franklin shares the news with Jojo, who is there drinking with friends. She tells him that the housing was her idea and walks away from him. Franklin can’t tell whether she is trying to steal his idea, or whether she was confused during their earlier conversation and remembers herself coming up with it. On his way home, Franklin nearly runs over Stefan, who is sitting in his rubber dinghy. Roberto is down in the diving bell, looking for Herman Melville’s belongings. Franklin makes Stefan pull Roberto up and takes them to the Met Tower.

The boys tell Franklin and Charlotte that they are orphans. Vlade wants them to stop using the diving bell—he has known people who have drowned. His voice is sad, and the boys notice that his mood changes.

Franklin eats with Charlotte, who asks him again about a householders’ strike in which everyone stopped paying their bills. She also asks him to buy into the co-op. If he does, she’ll help him meet politicians who will help with his housing project. When they finish talking, both are smiling at each other.

A week later, Charlotte has dinner with Larry. Charlotte asks what his plan would be if the intertidal housing bubble popped during his tenure. The prices are going up while the buildings are crumbling, which isn’t sustainable. He should nationalize the banks in the event of the bubble popping, which would avoid the need for trillions of dollars in bailout money, (a situation similar to the housing crash of 2008). Nationalizing the banks would put the American people in charge of global finance. Charlotte does not add that she plans to pop the bubble while Larry is in charge.

Larry likes her idea: He would be in charge during a time of chaos and could write himself into the history books in a major way. 

The Citizen again describes the weather in New York, comparing each season. This time he describes the seasons as they occur after the flood. 

Spring begins and plants bloom on the rooftops. Stefan and Roberto hunt for Herman Melville’s gravestone using a map of an aboveground cemetery Mr. Hexter had given them with an X in the area where he thought the grave should be. They find the gravestone, but it is too heavy for them to move. A storm begins when they make it back to the boat.

Massive waves threaten to capsize them. They find shelter in the lee of a crumbling Bronx building, and try to wait out the storm.