Beneath the East Dock Vault

The shielded service office lies behind two unmarked transit doors. Inside, dead terminals crowd a cramped room around a scarred workbench, while one functioning light hums overhead.

The courier places the black archive case on the workbench and begins cataloguing its contents in silence, gloved fingers moving through sealed partitions and encrypted labels.

Euran sets his tool pouch beside the case. His mismatched prosthetic fingers flex once, then he touches the irritated neural port behind his ear.

The courier keeps working without looking up. A terminal wakes beneath their hands, projecting Vanta Meridian records across the wall in pale blue columns.

The question settles between the humming terminals. Euran’s hand pauses over the neural port, while blue Vanta Meridian records flicker across his face.

The courier’s terminal chimes. A recovery-desk file expands across the wall, exposing a sealed authorization chain that ends at a government security partition.

Selene’s expression shifts before she can hide it, the sharpness leaving her face. Her hurt look lands cleanly, disarming Euran more completely than any threat could.

Euran’s prosthetic fingers withdraw from his neural port. He looks at her instead of the government partition, guilt tightening his jaw beneath the terminal’s cold blue light.

The admission costs him. His port flashes amber, registering the stress spike and briefly locking his damaged interface. The courier’s cataloguing stops.

The words leave Selene quietly, but the courier’s hands stop over the archive case. The functioning light hums louder in the sudden silence.

The government authorization chain collapses as the courier’s terminal forcibly seals its display. A red audit mark burns into the system, recording the exposure and consuming the office’s remaining disposable access key.

Euran steps between Selene and the courier without touching either of them. His damaged neural port flickers amber, while the Vanta Meridian records remain copied to the archive’s sealed partition.

Selene sighs and reaches past Euran’s guarded stance. Her fingers take the damaged neural port behind his ear, steady despite the courier’s sudden attention.

She opens the port’s maintenance seam and bridges its damaged contacts with a slim tool from her sleeve. Amber diagnostics stutter, then resolve into clean green lines.

The neural interface unlocks without resistance. Selene isolates the burned feedback loop, reseats the connection, and closes the housing until the port sits flush against his skin.

Selene whispers the promise against Euran’s ear, soft enough that only he can hear. Her fingers remain at his repaired neural port, shielding the final diagnostic glow from the courier.

The port’s green lines stabilize completely. Beneath the repaired interface, a dormant diagnostic cache unlocks and projects a hidden credential trail across Euran’s wrist display.

Euran lowers his wrist, keeping the new data between himself and Selene. His guarded stance eases, and the amber warning light behind his ear finally goes dark.

Selene steps back from Euran and turns toward the workbench, letting the repaired neural port and its hidden trail become mission data instead of conversation.

The courier resumes cataloguing the archive. Sealed partitions shift beneath their gloves, matching the recovered route against Vanta Meridian’s copied records.

Euran transfers the credential trail to the archive’s secure partition and tightens the case locks. His repaired interface remains steady, green diagnostics fading beneath his skin.

The courier closes the last sealed partition and lifts the case. The service office falls back into its low electrical hum as the route to East Dock waits.

Selene hums under her breath for a minute, then hops onto the terminal. Her fingers split the East Dock authentication trail into mirrored branches and follow every route tied to Euran’s credentials.

Blue code floods the workbench display. Old dockyard access logs, Vanta Meridian relays, and municipal recovery records unfold in sequence, exposing every compromised credential echo.

Selene isolates the contaminated records, replaces the false authorization chain with verified dockyard history, and scrubs the tracking hooks without disturbing Euran’s legitimate access.

The terminal confirms completion. Euran’s credentials now resolve as ordinary archived access, while the copied evidence remains sealed inside the black archive beyond the cleanup.

Selene says it lightly, but the terminal’s blue glow catches the precision of her hands as the last compromised credential branch seals into clean, ordinary records.

Euran studies her across the workbench. His repaired neural port stays green, and his posture loses the guarded tension it carried when they entered.

The courier lifts the black archive case. Beyond the sealed office doors, Night City’s traffic hums through the walls while East Dock waits under borrowed credentials and fading rain.

Selene turns the terminal toward him. His credentials resolve through every municipal checkpoint as ordinary archived access, with no active trace or recovery hook remaining.

Euran studies the clean credential display, then retrieves his tool pouch. His repaired neural port stays green as the office door unlocks onto the quiet transit corridor.

Selene reaches out and caresses Euran’s cheek, her fingertips resting against his skin for a brief, unguarded moment before she catches herself and pulls back.

She follows the line with a nervous laugh, retreating toward the terminal as though the clean credential display suddenly demands her full attention.

Selene closes her eyes for one measured breath. Euran’s request settles somewhere dangerous and private, but her face gives nothing away when she opens them.

The reassurance lands cleanly. Selene exhales softly, then turns back toward the terminal before the warmth in her expression can become evidence.

The office door remains open behind him, revealing the dim transit corridor and the rain-muted glow of Night City beyond. His repaired neural port stays steadily green.

Selene says it softly into the open office, then turns to the terminal. The corridor remains empty after Euran’s departure, his green neural signal fading beyond the transit doors.

She pulls the credential trail from the archive’s sealed partition and overlays it against municipal maintenance traffic, dormant Vanta Meridian relays, and East Dock exchange schematics.

Three false routes collapse under Selene’s forensic pass. The surviving handshake resolves beneath the old East Dock exchange, inside a shielded records vault connected to a private Vanta Meridian recovery node.

A live location locks onto the terminal: sublevel four, vault corridor C, access window active now. The handler is physically present and broadcasting through Cross’s stolen credentials.

Selene copies the coordinates, burns the tracking query, and seals the archive evidence behind a clean decoy trail. The credential handler is found, and the route is hers.

Selene laughs once, low and bright in the empty office, then slips the archive’s decoy trail into the terminal and heads for East Dock. Rain needles Night City’s alleys as she moves through maintenance corridors and shuttered transit access points.

Her clean credentials open the exchange’s service entrance without challenge. Beneath the old freight platforms, she descends to sublevel four, following the surviving handshake through vault corridor C.

The shielded records vault waits behind a sealed security door. A young adult woman with a narrow build, brown skin, cropped silver hair, and a white corporate coat stands at an active console, one chrome eye pulsing amber.

The credential handler turns from the console as its displays populate with Selene’s arrival data. Magnetic locks engage behind her, sealing the vault corridor, while the stolen credential broadcast remains live.

Selene plants her hand on the console and slams its armored lid shut. The impact kills the display, trips a sharp local alarm, and sends a painful shock through her palm.

The handler’s chrome eye flickers amber beneath the vault’s emergency lights. Selene’s threat has stripped away her corporate composure, but the alarm has marked the vault as compromised.

The handler’s chrome eye contracts to a hard amber slit. With the console crushed shut, the vault’s emergency display reroutes through the wall, exposing the operation file.

A second file unfolds across the emergency display: authorization stamps, payment channels, and the names of three recovery agents assigned to erase the aftermath.

The alarm continues its thin electronic wail, but the evidence has already copied itself into Selene’s secured interface. Voss, Quell, Rusk, Pell, and the handler now stand exposed.

The handler’s amber eye flickers as the secured evidence cross-checks her answer against the copied operation file. The vault alarm keeps wailing, thin and merciless.

The emergency display marks each location in red: Rusk near the original warehouse, Pell outside East Dock, Quell and Mara below the command node, and the handler trapped in the vault.

Selene draws her gun and fires once. The credential handler drops from view, and the vault’s alarm continues without interruption. The matter is finished.

She opens the handler’s terminal, routes a routine status report through the recovery desk, and marks the vault operation stable. The message receives an automatic acknowledgment.

Selene strips her presence from the vault cameras, corridor scanners, and East Dock surveillance hub. Every recorded angle resolves to maintenance noise and an empty passage.

The command node accepts the false report. Quell’s network continues waiting for confirmation while Selene exits the records vault through a service route mapped beneath the exchange.

She descends to sublevel six, bypassing sealed checkpoints and dormant patrol drones. The command node’s surveillance grid remains blind to her as she reaches the shielded holding corridor.

Behind a reinforced door, a weak life-sign marker identifies Mara Quell’s room. Selene reaches the holding room where Mara Quell is confined, with no alarm following her into the corridor.

Selene bypasses the reinforced door’s local lock and eases it open without waking the alarm grid. Inside, Mara Quell sits against the holding room wall, wrists secured in a restraint cradle.

Mara is an older adult woman with a lean, weathered build, close-cropped dark hair threaded with gray, and a torn charcoal security uniform beneath a faded corporate coat.

Selene crosses the room and cups Mara’s face, lifting it toward the emergency light. Mara’s bruised cheek turns into Selene’s palm, but her eyes stay sharp.

Selene reaches past Mara’s shoulder and presses the release stud on the restraint cradle. The mechanism clicks, servos unwind, and the cuffs open at once.

Mara lowers her freed hands slowly, flexing stiff fingers beneath the emergency light. The cradle’s status strip changes from red to green, confirming the restraints are fully disengaged.

Mara pushes herself upright against the wall, testing her balance before standing. Her torn coat settles around her lean frame, and the room remains quiet beyond the open door.

Mara steps clear of the restraint cradle and gestures toward a maintenance panel beneath the room’s dead display. Its diagnostic light blinks faintly, awaiting a local command.

Retrieve the final report