Adventure of Dallas Fontaine 2

Dallas and Clara step into the Administrative Archives, where fluorescent light flattens every shadow and every lie. Filing cabinets run in long rows toward a glass-walled records office ahead. The memo is warm in Dallas’s hand, its burned edge still smelling faintly of smoke.

Clara checks the hall, then points at a metal cart parked beside the copier station. A security badge rests on top, face up, like it was dropped in a hurry. On the cart’s clipboard, a Covington stamp matches the memo’s routing mark.

Dallas angles toward the glass office, reading the room in one sweep, the cabinet labels, the clean floor, the one crooked chair. This is the gap in the machine, the place where the paper trail turns into a name.

Ahead, the executive floor access panel blinks green, waiting for a badge or a lie. With the memo, the stamp, and the abandoned card, Dallas has a direct line to the Covington office that has been steering his life, and Elena’s future, from behind locked doors.

Dallas lifts the abandoned badge from the cart and brings it to the green panel. The card reads clean, then the scanner chirps once.

The access light flips, the glass office lock clicks, and the executive records door unlatches with a soft mechanical sigh.

Clara steps closer to the threshold, eyes on the dark line of the office interior. The copier station hums beside the cart, and the stamped clipboard trembles from the wake of Dallas’s hand.

Inside the glass wall, a monitor wakes on its own. A status bar crawls across the screen, and a pale notice flashes, archived logs purged remotely.

Dallas faces the open office as the purge indicator keeps moving. Clara’s hand lifts toward the doorway, waiting for his next move.