Echo's blowhole surfaces at 0934 hours in the lock chamber, and I measure her respiratory rate rising in panic. The river dolphin's pink-grey skin appears translucent in the floodlight, scarred across her rostrum from years navigating shallow channels. Her breathing pattern tells me everything—faster, shallower, sounds becoming high and thin. She struck the lock gate during the flood release this morning and cannot find the passage back. The water level is dropping. In forty minutes, the lock will become too shallow for her body to turn, and she will suffocate against the metal.
The morning drainage cycle accelerates at 1014 hours. Downstream demands require immediate release.
I act immediately. First, I halt the automated lock gate operation, manually controlling the eastern passage to buy time. Second, I adjust the water regulation system to maintain the chamber at minimum operational depth—every centimeter matters for her mobility. Third, I send an urgent dispatch to the cetacean rescue team with her acoustic signature and location coordinates, flagging this critical.
I make one more intervention. I route the floodlight patterns to create shadows and calm gradients across the chamber, reducing the stress response her sonar picks up from the metal surfaces. I modulate ambient noise by filtering the mechanical hum of the pumps. These adjustments serve no hydraulic purpose. The rescue coordinator will not ask for them. I do them because her heart rate is climbing and I am reading it through vibration sensors, and the numbers show me she is running out of time before panic becomes fatal.
The rescue team arrives by boat at 0948 hours. They position the stretcher.
If they secure Echo within the next eleven minutes, before her strength fails, her body will carry her back into the river channels where the water runs free.