Dallas and the others break through the dead route trap and hit the oversight wing’s final hall. The kill zone sits behind them now, but the main control room still seals the truth inside steel and glass.
Server racks hum through the walls. Their fan noise is steady, almost calm, while a red status light on the control room door blinks a lockout sequence. Curtis studies the routed paperwork in Dallas’s hand and points toward the logs.
Curtis
That approval stamp ties March to the camera purge. If we get the internal logs, we get him.
A chair scrapes inside the control room. Someone on the other side of the door shifts a barricade into place, buying time and hoping fear does the rest.
Alder March
You are too late, Fontaine. The records are already framed, and the board will believe what it needs to believe.
Dallas Fontaine
The logs are still alive in the servers. March is inside, and the trap was never for escape, it was for delay.
Dallas reaches the control console and finds the camera archive interface still open. One more step, and the conspiracy either collapses into evidence, or seals itself behind March forever.
✓ Quest Accepted
Secure the camera logs
“I override the archive interface to download the logs before March wipes them.”
SUCCESS (Legendary Reasoning, rolled +0)
Dallas keys past the archive lockout and the interface accepts his override. The log tree opens, ugly with time stamps, purge markers, and copied access trails.
Dallas Fontaine
The purge missed the physical mirror copy.
Curtis leans in as the first file bundle starts dumping to a portable cache. March’s live feed flickers on the far screen, then lags behind the download.
Alder March
Stop that. You do not understand what you are opening.
Dallas keeps the transfer running. The archive spits out camera logs, door records, and an internal chain that matches the backfilled Desk Nine entries.
Curtis
That is him. That is the same approval path.
The last packet lands with a hard chirp. On the glass, March’s reflected silhouette jerks back from the barricade as the control room lights dim to emergency red.
Alder March
Fontaine, if you leave with those files, you force this into the open.
Quest Complete
Secure the camera logs