Dallas, Jackson, Murderbone, and Dayton step into the oversight wing. Fluorescent light bleaches the hall, and a relay click ticks somewhere behind the walls like a bad heartbeat. At the end of the corridor, Office 12 glows with a desk lamp, door ajar.

Murderbone bristles, nose low. Dallas catches a fresh smear on the trim, boot polish over drying blood. Someone is still inside, and the door has not been left open by accident.

The Oversight Clerk backs away from the desk, one hand on a drawer, the other shaking over a phone line. Behind him, a second set of footsteps stops in the hall, measured and heavier than his. Someone else has arrived to erase him.

Jackson squares to the doorway, Murderbone crouches to spring, and Dallas sees the opening, one terrified clerk, one sealed office, and the mastermind’s last clean route waiting to be cut off.

Dallas lunges through the doorway seam, slipping past the clerk's reach and driving straight at the man in the hall. Jackson shifts aside to clear the line, Murderbone launching low behind the movement.

The handler whips around too late. Dallas slams him into the corridor wall, hard enough to rattle the smudged trim and knock a discarded Harbor Unit badge skittering across the tile.

The clerk lunges for the desk phone, but the line is already dead. Inside Office 12, the relay click sharpens into a frantic stutter from the vent above, like something inside the wall just woke up.

Dallas pins the handler before he can reach the papers on the blotter. The office beyond him is exposed, drawer half-open, and the desk lamp throws a clean view across a ledger sleeve stamped with the handler mark.