in a close potential future

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# **BLACK TIDE PROTOCOL**

A chill, perpetual dampness hangs in the air of the Flevoland Bunker, a scent of rust, stagnant water, and recycled oxygen. I've been here three months. Three months since I traded a corner office in Brussels' EU quarter for a stolen cot in a flooded province the Netherlands declared a banned zone. My name is Leo, and this is freedom.

The "communal screen"—a patched-together monster of salvaged parts—flashed a silent, priority alert. A single line of text cycled through: *`NATIONAL FORCES: SCAN & CLEAR OP. GRONINGEN-CORRIDOR. ETA 12 MINS.`*

The Bunker, our home in the submerged skeleton of Almere, erupted into a silent, practiced frenzy. This is what we lived for.

## **The Graveyard of Almere**

The official maps show Almere as a blue smear, a casualty of the **Black Tide**—a force 13 storm that pushed the poisoned North Sea to breaking point. The **failure of primary dams and dykes** did the rest, placing Flevoland squarely in what the statisticians call an 'extremely low risk' scenario—the kind that happens once every hundred thousand years, until it doesn't.

They weren't entirely wrong. The flooding here isn't a raging torrent; it's a permanent, settling plague. The national water impact assessments predicted this: in low-lying polder land, the water doesn't drain. It **stays for weeks, shallow but pervasive**. Our city is a testament to that. From my cockpit, Almere is a digital ghost, a "digital twin" gone feral. We use their own predictive models against them, the hydrodynamic simulations meant to protect now guiding our raids. The water is a flat, oily plain, broken by the skeletons of suburban rooftops and the relentless green of mutant algae. The only reliable roads are the **elevated railway lines and the A6 bridge**, their arches creating a labyrinthine network we know by heart.

## **The Arsenal of the Free**

We didn't stand a chance in a straight fight. Our power was in evasion, in hitting where and when they least expected.

*   **The "Mosquito Fleet":** Our primary transport and rapid strike force. A mix of **flat-hull fin-attached boats** that could skim over submerged parks, and our crown jewels—three retrofitted **Formula 1 hovercrafts**. Stripped of regulations and fueled by military-grade synth, they were blindingly fast, their scream echoing off dead buildings as they kicked up rooster tails of spray.
*   **Eyes in the Sky:** For reconnaissance, we relied on **ultra-light airplanes** with near-silent electric engines and a pair of **"mosquito" helicopters**—single-person rotorcraft barely larger than their pilot, perfect for slipping through sensor nets.
*   **Ground-Pounders and Jetbikes:** For operations on the more stable ruins or the bridge itself, we used modified **off-road trucks** with snorkels that made them look like mechanical insects. For pure, unadulterated speed and terror, nothing beat the **jetbikes**.

Our arsenal was a patchwork of ingenuity and black-market connections. Our contacts, international weapon dealers who asked no questions, kept us supplied with non-ballistic weaponry—pulse lasers and sonic emitters—perfect for disabling sensitive electronics on the Dutch frigates that sometimes dared to venture too close.

## **The Dance of the Dragonfly**

"Their force is a platoon-sized element," Anya, our leader, stated, her voice calm in our helmet comms. "Two **NH90 helicopters** and a squad from the **Netherlands Marine Corps**—the same ones who are **specialized in amphibious warfare**. They're good. We are ghosts. Execute Protocol Kappa."

I was assigned to the "Dragonfly," a mosquito helicopter. My job was to be a distraction, a flicker of impossible data on their sensors. I lifted off from a hidden pad on the central library roof, the rotors a whisper. Below me, the hovercrafts vanished into the concrete canyons of the old city center.

The Dutch force came in with textbook precision. The NH90s were formidable, but we knew their patrol patterns from a hundred near-misses. As they descended, their searchlights cutting cones through the mist, our ground teams activated a series of EMP lures we'd planted on the bridge. Their sensors would be flickering with false contacts.

My moment came when one of the helicopters swung its nose toward the eastern sector, where our primary power relay was hidden. I dropped the Dragonfly like a stone, flaring up directly in the pilot's line of sight before darting behind the skeletal frame of the former train station. I was a gnat, an irritant, but I drew his gaze for a critical three seconds. It was all the time the lead hovercraft, the *Razorback*, needed. It shot out from beneath the bridge, a blur of motion and sound, laying down a cloud of chaff—not to hide itself, but to mask the thermal signature of the relay.

They buzzed and circled for another hour, a show of force with nothing to punch. We were phantoms in their own drowned city, using the water they couldn't control as our shield. Finally, with fuel running low and no target to engage, the helicopters retreated, their thumping rotors fading into the distance.

Silence returned to Almere, broken only by the lap of water against concrete.

Back in the Bunker, the air was thick with the smell of sweat and victory. Anya clapped me on the shoulder. "Clean flying, Leo."

I just nodded, pulling the neural link headset from my temple. I looked around at the flickering screens, the stacked crates of equipment, the faces of people who fought for every breath of autonomy. In Brussels, my value was measured in quarterly reports and compliance metrics. My "purpose" was a paragraph in a corporate mission statement.

Here, covered in grime and adrenaline, I finally understood the words I'd once read in a discarded psych text during my old life: the ingredients for fulfilling work are **Autonomy, Mastery, and Purpose**. In this sunken, forbidden graveyard of a city, drenched in the eternal damp of a broken climate, I had found all three. The Dutch state could declare us banned. But in a world flooded by their failures, we were the only ones who were truly, finally, free.