The apartment sits in bruised evening light. Dallas Fontaine answers on the second ring, coffee gone cold beside him. Elena Vane watches from the table, still and sharp, while Murderbone lifts his head at the sound.
Chris Nogren
Fontaine, listen to me. I am in the archives, and I found a pattern. These so-called administrative removals, they are not local accidents. They repeat, over decades, same filing gaps, same approvals, same disappearances.
Dallas Fontaine
Start at the beginning. What did you find?
Chris Nogren
Museum accession books, board minutes, donor ledgers. Whole names vanish between one record and the next, then reappear on transfer forms with the wrong initials. It is deliberate. Someone has been cleaning history, not just paper.
Elena’s face hardens at the table. Dallas hears a faint scrape at the door, then nothing, just the building settling around them like a held breath.
Chris Nogren
There is more. I pulled a restricted reference card before the stacks were sealed. It points to a private storage wing, and to a name I do not like saying over the phone. If you want this, come now. Someone else already knows I looked.
✓ Quest Accepted
Secure the museum evidence
“Check the hallway through the peephole to see if anyone is waiting outside.”
SUCCESS (Legendary Perception, rolled +0)
Dallas eases to the door and bends toward the peephole. The hallway beyond is dim, empty at first glance, then a shape shifts at the far end, half-hidden by the stairwell shadow.
Dallas Fontaine
Too still. Someone is holding the line out there.
He studies the angle again. A man in a clean collar stands just out of direct view, one hand near the wall, waiting without pacing.
Elena Vane
Dallas?
Elena stays back from the door, her posture tightened by the news, while Murderbone rises from his sit and pads close to Dallas’s leg.
Down the hall, the clean-collared man turns his head as if he hears the shift in the apartment. He does not advance, but he does not leave either.
Chris Nogren
If you are there, do not open the door for anyone.
Dallas sees enough to know the hallway is watched, and that the watcher already knows this apartment is awake.
“I tell Elena not to answer the door. Murderbone and I exit via the firescape to my car and set off to meet Chris”
SUCCESS (Legendary Agility, rolled +1)