The station sits in blackout silence, its windows boarded, its clock dead. Silver slips through the concourse, boots soft on ash-dusted tile.
At the far bench, an SS interrogator waits alone, a stack of decrypted V-weapon plans spread across his knees like bait.
He does not reach for a pistol. He only looks up, tired eyes fixed on Silver, and slowly slides the papers toward the empty seat beside him.
The Interrogator
If you came to shoot me, you are late. If you came for the plans, sit down first.
The Interrogator
These documents are a trap. Someone wants the resistance to find them.
A thin draft hisses through the platform tunnel. Somewhere beyond the dark tracks, metal clinks once, then goes still.
The Interrogator
You have a choice, soldier. Take them and walk into the net, or listen to me before the train comes.
✓ Quest Accepted
Verify the decrypted V-weapon plans
“I slide into the seat and keep my hand near my holster.”
SUCCESS (Great Agility, rolled +2)
Silver takes the seat, slow and controlled, with one hand staying near his holster. The bench creaks under him, and the papers lie between them like a verdict.
The Interrogator
Good. Then we can speak like men who expect to live through the hour.
The Interrogator
Read the margins. The cipher is real, but the destination is false. Someone fed this route to both sides.
He taps a line on the plan, then another. His tired hand does not shake, but his jaw tightens as if the names there still cost him something.
The Interrogator
My office intercepted the copy after it left Berlin. That means the leak is closer to you than to me.
The Interrogator
If you carry these out, you do not deliver intelligence. You deliver your unit into a shell of lies.
The Interrogator
Will you hear the full chain, or do you want the part that names the man who signed the trap?
“I ask for the full chain”
FAILURE (Fair Reasoning, rolled +0)
Silver
I want the full chain.
The interrogator studies Silver for a long second, then lets out a thin breath. He does not give ground with his shoulders, but the fight leaves his eyes.
The Interrogator
Then start with the courier in Ghent. He never reached Berlin. The packet changed hands at the station after that, through a clerk who only answered to a name, not a rank.
The Interrogator
That clerk met your contact three days later. By then the route on these papers was already dead, and the real one was riding inside the copy you were meant to trust.
He slides one page free and turns it so Silver can see a stamped margin, half-smudged but legible enough to mark the betrayal's shape.
The Interrogator
There. The signature is a cover mark, not an author. If you follow it, you will find the bait, not the source.
For a beat, the station seems smaller, as if the tunnel dark itself is listening. The interrogator waits, hand resting on the exposed margin, ready to show the next name if Silver presses for it.
“I ask for the next name”
SUCCESS (Great Willpower, rolled +1)
Silver keeps his gaze on the stamped margin, waiting. The interrogator’s fingers tighten once on the page, then ease, as if the name costs him something.
The Interrogator
Greta Vale. Registry clerk at the station office, but that was never her real work. She moved papers for your people and mine, depending on who paid.
He turns the sheet again, exposing a second mark beneath the first, a cleaner stamp hidden under the smear.
The Interrogator
This is the hand you can trust from the packet. The rest is theater, built to send resistance men chasing the wrong rail line.
Silence settles between them. Outside the concourse, a train horn sounds far off, thin and plain, and the dead station seems to listen harder.
The Interrogator
You asked for the chain. Now you have the second link. If you want the one who recruited her, you will have to decide whether to keep trusting me.
Quest Complete
Verify the decrypted V-weapon plans
Attribute Upgrade: Agility Great→Superb