Behind the maintenance rack, Dallas finds the same smoldering paper pile from before, tucked low where a careless hand thought nobody would look. The edges are black, but the center still holds.
Dallas Fontaine
Internal memos. Mercer was carrying this, or trying to kill it.
He spreads the scraps on the concrete. Dates, routing notes, signatures. One line keeps repeating, a higher office, a cleaner seal, orders that never name Mercer as anything but the man who receives them.
The pattern turns cold in his hands. Mercer is not the author here, just the disposable middleman, burned when the message reaches too high.
A nearby shadow shifts, and Clara hovers at the edge of the corridor, pale and tight-shouldered, staring at the papers as if they might bite. She looks less afraid of Dallas now than of what the memos imply.
Clara
So he was covering for somebody above him... not running this whole thing?
Dallas folds one memo into his coat and leaves the rest in the ash. The answer is written plain now, and it is uglier than a single bad man. Someone higher up is still in the room, even if only on paper.
✓ Quest Accepted
Identify the higher official behind Mercer’s orders
+ New Item Acquired
Charred memo
“Show Clara the memo with the cleaner seal and ask if she recognizes the signature.”
SUCCESS (Legendary Psychology, rolled -1)
Dallas lifts the memo into Clara’s view, holding it steady where the cleaner seal catches the light.
Dallas Fontaine
Do you recognize this signature?
Clara
She leans in, eyes narrowing, then goes still. That seal is not Mercer’s work. It belongs to someone who signs from above him.
Her hand rises halfway, stops, then drops back to her side as if she does not want to touch the paper and make it real.
Clara
I have seen that mark before, on internal routing sheets. Not often, just enough to know it means someone important is hiding behind it.
Dallas turns the page slightly, and Clara’s stare catches on the signature line near the bottom, the one she clearly knows more than she wants to say.
Clara
That is not Mercer’s name. It is the higher office he answers to. I cannot prove it from here, but I know that hand.
She looks from the memo to Dallas, uneasy but certain now, while the buckled service door groans softly behind them.
Quest Complete
Identify the higher official behind Mercer’s orders