Max wakes up with a crick in their neck. They sit up, stretch, get out of bed, start walking aft towards the galley, and are suddenly overcome with the sensation that there's something they're supposed to be doing. Something they're forgetting. They arrive at the galley, grab the electric kettle from the edge of the counter by the wall where it lives, fill it with water from the potable tap at the sink. What could they be forgetting? They plug the kettle in, grab the big unmarked silver bag of coffee beans that may or may not have fallen off the back of a starbucks truck, put a couple of spoonfulls of beans into the manual grinder, start turning the handle and pacing between the galley and the map room. Okay, what did they do yesterday? They were at the cannery, talking to Arnold, telling him about their studio practice, and he was responding by talking in money. Kept talking about someone named Tam, who Max still doesn't know anything about. Then they went home, went to bed, and had a weird dream about a talking drone. The switch on the kettle clicks, shutting off the heating element and indicating that it's done. The drone named Tinkerbell that lives under their pillow. They walk over to the counter, grab a mug from a cabinet and a cone and filter from next to the kettle, assemble the components on top of the coffee mug and fill the funnel with coffee grounds and then hot water. Then for a second Max believes in fairies. They walk into the hallway, look around to make sure no one is in earshot (who would be?) and say, as if commanding a dog, "Tinkerbell." They wait three seconds and nothing happens, of course. They walk back over to the coffee, fill the cone with water again, stir the grounds with the chopstick that lives next to the kettle, and pace back into the hall.

"Good morning! I hope you slept well."

Max freezes. They instruct their head to turn to the left, aft.

"What?"

"I said good morning! I'm sorry about how things went last night, I know that was a lot to dump on you all at once. How are you feeling?"

Max turns left and stalks forward as if to get the jump on an animal.

"What?"

"I see. Are you going to be heading over to the Darts? They're down by Port Lekanoff."

They approach the bed and slowly, slowly, so as not to startle it, remove the pillow, and

"OH! HELLO THERE! IT'S GOOD TO SEE YOU."

They throw the pillow back and run, literally run, up top and haul anchor. While the anchor chain is still running in they pull in the crab pots that are hanging from lines over the side, and by then the anchor is up and they're back at the pilot house.

The powertrain for the Portobello is the batteries and main drive motor out of an old electric car, so there's nothing to start, but also instead of a throttle lever they have a rotary dial. It turned out to be really annoying to find a throttle lever at a reasonable price that spoke canbus, but it's pretty easy to find industrial knobs and dials. They bring up Port Lekanoff on the chart plotter and get under way.

"Oh! You are heading out. Great. Say hello to Al for me. Alice is probably going to be more help but I think you should loop in both of them."

About thirty seconds later Max is safely in the channel and can afford to not be at the wheel for a minute. They go below decks.

"Tinkerbell."

"Yes?"

"The stuff you said yesterday, about the murder and the organ harvesting, how sure are you about all that?"

"Like I said, I saw where they were doing the murder with my own eyes."

"You sure that couldn't have been something else?"

"Like what?"

"I don't know."

"I don't either."

"Where are they getting the victims from? It couldn't be from here, there's hardly anyone here and if someone went missing everyone would know about it."

"That's what I'm trying to find out now, and one of the reasons I'm in the bunker. If they're bringing in people it has to be by boat or airplane, and now I can see all the boats and airplanes that go in and out."

"And? Have there been any?"

"There is one boat that I'm looking at right now, yeah." Three second pause. "You're drifting out of the channel."

Max runs up to the helm and moves the rudder to point them back towards the center of the channel.

"Actually, Max, could you bring me up there with you? It might help if I introduce you to Al over the radio. I would come up there myself but I don't want to get pillow jammed in my rotors."

Max jogs downstairs, forward to their bed, and gingerly removes the pillow, arm at full stretch as if they're pulling it from a set of rotating knives. Tinkerbell's rotors tick back and forwards a fraction of a rotation a few times, spin up, and then it zips to the center of the room and sticks there. The light then strobes for a fraction of a second, and Max interprets this as the high-beam "after you" signal. They head up to the pilot house, and once safely up there Tinkerbell follows, and then zips up to about twenty feet in the air.

"We're getting pretty close," Skye says, "maybe we should radio Al."

Max picks up the radio mic. "Portobello to Motor Vessel Driftwood, do copy?" Five seconds. "Portobello to Motor Vessel Driftwood, do copy?"

"Driftwood to Portobello, copy"

Skye chimes in: "Hey Al. I don't know if you've met my roommate Max."

"Don't believe I have."

"Well consider yourselves introduced. Max has something they'd like to discuss with you, and I'm currently indisposed so I'm afraid I can't make the introduction in person. Actually what I'm indisposed with is part of what they'd like to talk to you about. I was wondering if you'd be so kind as to grant them permission to come aboard."

"Uh, sure, come on up."

"Actually, uh, Max," says Skye, "if you put some tape or something over Tinkerbell's speaker hole you can probably take me with you."

Max can now see two metal fishing boats up ahead, anchored off the port like Skye said they would be. They cut the power and wait to drift to walking pace, and then drop anchor. As she drifts to a stop the Portobello's anchor chain pulls tight. Max then goes downstairs, grabs a roll of grip tape from one of the drawers in the map room, walks back up top. Tinkerbell descends down to roughly their shoulder level and hovers, allowing Max to grab it from below, after which its rotors shut off. They cut off a piece of tape with the leatherman they keep in their back pocket and stick it over the hole on Tinkerbell's front that looks like the entrance to a roach motel, the inside forming a resonance cavity to amplify the sound from the little speaker hidden at the back.

"Okay, say something.", says Max.

"Check check one two. Shibboleth."

"It sounds, I don't know, nasal? It's fine though."

"Great! I'm in your hands now, shall we head over to Al's?"