Featured in The Copper Press, 5 July, 2159 A.M.

Verdigris Reef is not truly a reef but the corroded hulls of four hundred sunken ironclads, stacked like playing cards where the Maas Rift splits the Oceanic Sea. Steam-tug crews call it a graveyard with sharp teeth; scholars call it the largest cache of pre-Conquest tech anywhere outside sealed museums. For Riko “Spitfire” Cardona, it was simply where the next payday waited beneath forty fathoms of toxic green water.

Riko captained the ramshackle salvage cutter *Grackle*, crew of five, all owing more coin than sense. A storm-season lull left the sea glassy; moonlight bounced off rusted turrets, painting them jade. Rumor said an entire cargo deck of prototype automatons lay intact in the belly of the cruiser *HMS Halberd*. Most called that rumor rot—who would leave working automatons to drown? But a broker out of Sapphire Quay offered three thousand crowns for proof. Enough for Riko to buy new lungs for her little brother back in East America.

So *Grackle* anchored beside the “reef,” air-hoses hissed, and Riko descended with two divers, carbide lamps slicing murk like dull knives.

The *Halberd’s* ruptured flank gaped, ribs of iron twisted by the meteor shockwave that sank it decades ago. Inside, corridors tilted thirty degrees; silt floated like ghost ashes. Riko’s lamp glinted off shattered automaton parts—gears, brass vertebrae. Nothing intact.

Then she heard it: a hum low as cello string, drifting through water. Following it, she found a sealed cargo vault door half torn from hinges. Beyond lay a single machine still whole: a female form wrought of copper and glass, hair a cascade of fine chain links. One arm ended in harp-like strings of silver wire. An inscription on the pedestal read:

A-09 “SIREN” | Project Lament | Acoustic Ordinance Prototype

Her junior diver signed frantically—danger glyph. Riko eyed the decay. No visible power source, no moving parts. And yet the hum deepened into melody—sweet, aching. She could feel it in her ribs more than her ears.

She cut the pedestal clamps. As soon as copper feet left the plinth, the hum ceased. Water sagged heavy, silent. Riko’s gauges spiked; oxygen felt thin. She ordered ascent.

Aboard *Grackle*, mechanics hauled the Siren with block-and-tackle. Its glass eyes glowed soft teal whenever wind whistled through harp strings—still nowhere near enough airflow to create sound. Crew joked it would sell for scrap weight at least.

That night Riko dreamed of beaches made of tuning forks. The Siren walked among broken shells, singing in a language of harmonic overtones that peeled rust from metal. She woke to the ship’s dog, Pitch, howling at the cargo hatch.

Inside, the automaton’s harp arm vibrated though no breeze stirred. Ship gauges flickered, then died. Engines quit. *Grackle* drifted, a powerless leaf atop black water. Crew panic rose. Radio static emitted faint echoes of the Siren’s melody—lines of Morse spelled over and over: RETURN.

Most wanted to jettison the artifact. Riko, teeth set on her brother’s hospital ledger, refused. She unscrewed a gauge panel, connected jumper leads to the Siren’s exposed power-studs. Instantly lights surged. The automaton’s head tilted.

A voice emerged—notes modulated into words. “HULLS. SING. HOME.”

Riko asked what home meant. The eyes brightened. “CALLING ALL. CHORUS.”

Then a shockwave burst from the harp, shattering porthole glass. Out on the reef, other wrecks answered—metal groans harmonizing across miles. Like pipes of a submerged organ, hulls began to resonate, pushing water in standing waves.

The crew screamed mutiny. In the chaos, the Siren strode to deck, harp arm strumming of its own accord. Each note coaxed plates of oxidized metal from the reef; they floated upward, magnetized, orbiting the automaton in an expanding halo.

Riko realized too late: the prototype was never meant as a weapon against enemy ships, but as conductor to salvage fleets—bring broken craft to surface by sympathetic vibration, then reforge them. But uncontrolled, it tugged everything metal—including *Grackle’s* engine block—toward itself.

Bolts sheared, deck plates warped inward. The cutter began disintegrating around them. Riko grappled the automaton, shouting to stop. The Siren’s eyes dimmed, and for a heartbeat the music faltered.

“Home… unfinished.”

She remembered the pedestal’s label: Project Lament—unfinished perhaps because the design lacked a termination command.

Knowing choice was loss, she cut the bow anchor chain manually. The massive iron link struck the Siren’s harp like a gong; feedback shrieked. The automaton staggered, halo collapsing, metal plates splashing away. But resonance snapped *Grackle’s* spine; the ship began to sink.

Riko lashed the Siren to a spare skiff with netting, shoving it into the waves before the cutter rolled. Survivors piled in, watching their livelihood descend in bubbling chorus.

Drifting for days, they finally reached Sapphire Quay half-starved. The broker examined the loot, declared it “beautiful but hazardous.” He offered her half the original price only if she included full rights to research. Riko signed, too tired to haggle.

Funds paid for her brother’s lungs—but weeks later newspapers reported catastrophic dockyard collapse: a resonance event lifting entire crane assemblies before dropping them. Witnesses heard a haunting chord “like a woman singing through glass.”

Riko keeps the article folded in her coat. Sometimes port fog funnels wind just right, and distant harbor lights flicker to a melody she cannot forget—a reminder that some songs, once raised from the deep, will never stop seeking an audience.