The pier in Ensenada woke slowly beneath a thin veil of morning mist.
The ocean was hidden, muted by gray air and the quiet hush that comes just before sunrise.

The wooden boards were damp and worn, creaking gently with age. There were no tourists, no vendors setting up carts, no music drifting through the air. Only silence, broken now and then by the call of a distant seabird.

On a bench near the edge of the pier sat an elderly man.

He sat upright, his posture still disciplined despite the years weighing on his shoulders. His back was straight in the way only long training could shape. Time had thinned his hair and slowed his steps, but it had not erased who he was.

His name was Ernesto Salgado.

Resting closely beside him was a large German Shepherd.

The dog lay pressed against the man’s leg, calm and alert, its breathing steady. There was no leash, no visible identification. Yet nothing about the animal suggested it was lost. Its eyes were watchful, intelligent, deeply aware.

Ernesto’s hands, marked by age and old scars, moved slowly through the dog’s fur.

“You’re safe now,” he whispered.
“I don’t know why… but you are.”

The dog closed its eyes for a brief moment, as if those words reached somewhere familiar.

Then the calm shattered.

Sirens cut through the mist.

Footsteps echoed sharply against the boards. Voices overlapped. Radios crackled.

The quiet pier was suddenly alive with movement.

“Over there — near the benches,” someone called out.

Ernesto looked up, startled.