Cyndar slips under the Helix Arcade through a service throat of wet concrete and vibrating pipes. Above her, neon leaks through the grates in thin, colored bars.
Shelly
Locks are coming down now. I’m inside the local security layer, keep moving.
The blast doors at the tunnel fork hiss apart just enough for her to pass, their seals grumbling like tired metal.
Cyndar kremshelli
The server rack is not standard arcade hardware.
A black server rack blinks in the side chamber, cabled into the wall with fresh routing and no dust on its vents. Someone has fed this place recently.
Shelly
I’m seeing encrypted bursts, outbound only. It’s a relay, Cyndar. Someone is pushing agency data out through the arcade network.
A maintenance terminal wakes beside the rack, its screen full of access logs and one repeated tag, redacted by a higher clearance than Shelly’s.
Shelly
That tag matches an internal bureau route. If we pull this feed, we get a name, or the hand that hides it.
✓ Quest Accepted
Secure the digital evidence of the mole’s identity
✓ Quest Accepted
Uncover who sold Cyndar out
“Pulls out a flash drive, and searches for a port”
SUCCESS (Great Reasoning, rolled +1)
Cyndar draws the flash drive from concealment and rolls it once between her fingers, then scans the rack’s face for a match. A slim maintenance port sits low behind a loose cable bundle, half-hidden from casual inspection.
She kneels and clears the cables aside. The drive lines up cleanly with the port, the kind of fit someone counts on when they come back in a hurry.
The terminal screen flickers as the device seats, then steadies on a locked handshake prompt and a fresh access timer.
Cyndar kremshelli
That port was meant to be used again.
Shelly’s voice crackles in her ear, tighter now. “I have the handshake. Give me a second and I can mirror whatever sits behind that tag.”
A small cursor blinks on the maintenance terminal, waiting for the next command. Somewhere deeper in the arcade, a door unlatches with a soft mechanical click, as if someone else has just noticed the link come alive.
+ New Item Acquired
Flash drive
“Assured the flashdrive has completed its download, Cyndar removes it, and silently moves to concealment”
SUCCESS (Great Stealth, rolled +3)
Cyndar pinches the drive free and closes her fist around it as the terminal’s handshake timer dies to black. She slides back from the rack into the shadow of the cable run, the loose bundle hiding the motion from the corridor seam.
The screen refreshes once, then spits a second screen capture into Shelly’s channel, a directory string with a hidden relay path buried inside it.
Shelly
Got it. They are not just logging traffic, they are staging it through a concealed maintenance corridor. I am pulling the route now.
Beyond the rack, that unlatching door stays open a crack, pouring a thin blade of light across the floor and then pausing, as if someone on the far side is listening.
Cyndar kremshelli
The hidden corridor is part of the relay chain.
Shelly exhales sharply in Cyndar’s ear. "There is a tag on the dump, old enough to predate the current access mesh. Somebody wanted this buried and reusable."
A soft click answers from deeper in the arcade, not an alarm, just a door settling shut again. The concealed route is mapped now, but the open crack ahead dares Cyndar to move or stay still.
Quest Complete
Secure the digital evidence of the mole’s identity
Attribute Upgrade: Reasoning Great→Superb