Red light strobes across the workshop, turning tagged boot stacks into flashing rows of teeth. The alarm keeps shrieking. Rex stands in the doorway, gun up, his stolen haul tugging hard at his shoulder.
Behind the metal table, The Stranger scrambles toward a secondary control panel on the wall. Their hand slips on the slick surface, then shoots back up as they try again.
Jory
Don’t shoot again. If that panel locks, everything in here seals.
Rex
The panel is the real threat.
A narrow aisle opens beside the table, lined with labeled boxes and high-end boots, some still in tissue and plastic. The red beacon catches on polished leather, then vanishes.
Jory
Help me shut it down, or we both lose the cache.
From deeper inside the facility, a heavy clunk answers the alarm. Somewhere below the floor, machinery starts to wake up.
✓ Quest Accepted
Shut down the secondary control panel
“*I decided to access it and shut down the systems and put it in my own control since I'm a good technician and I know how to do it it's underneath my control but the whole place underneath my control*”
SUCCESS (Fair Mechanics, rolled +3)
Rex drops to a crouch at the panel, free hand already working the latch while the alarm hammers overhead. The red strobes jitter across his knuckles as he rips the cover open.
Inside, the wiring is labeled in neat factory print. Rex traces the bundled leads, cuts power to the alarm relay, and flicks the workshop into a stunned, suddenly quieter mode.
The klaxon dies. Emergency lights stay on, but the shriek is gone, and the boot stacks stop flashing like a warning sign.
Jory
You did it. The lockdown is off.
A side door on the panel clicks open with a clean mechanical snap, revealing a maintenance map and a manual override key clipped inside the housing.
Jory
That opens the lower controls too. If you want the cache under your hands, that route is yours.
Somewhere below the floor, the heavy clunk stops. In the hush that follows, the distant scraping from the dark side lane comes back, softer now, as if something is listening.
Quest Complete
Shut down the secondary control panel
Skill Upgrade: Mechanics Fair→Good
