The loading bay glows red like a wound. Elevator doors stand open, and beyond them the museum archives stretch out in narrow aisles of steel and dust. On a desk ahead, a fresh terminal hums, still active.
Dallas Fontaine and Elena Vane step in together, Murderbone at their heels. The line printer beside the terminal spits a single page, half-fed, as if someone left in a hurry.
Dallas Fontaine
Desk Nine is live. Someone is still working the trail from inside the building.
Elena snatches the printed page and turns it toward the light. It shows a transfer window, a stamp code, and a route into Covington records. The corruption is not buried, it is being managed in real time.
Elena Vane
This is the choke point. If we hit it now, we catch whoever is still feeding the ledger.
A bootstep clicks from the far aisle. Dallas angles his body toward the sound, revolver low, while Murderbone bars the corridor with a silent snarl. The next move could expose the whole machine.
✓ Quest Accepted
Secure the live Desk Nine logs
“Move silently down the aisle toward the sound of the bootstep.”
SUCCESS (Good Stealth, rolled +1)
Dallas slips into the aisle like smoke, shoes finding the gaps between the floor tiles. The bootstep sound stays ahead, then stops.
He reaches the end cap and sees a museum clerk crouched by an open filing drawer, one hand on a stack of Desk Nine forms, the other holding a desk bell wrapped in cloth.
Elena Vane
Dallas... there are copies here. Fresh ones.
Elena lowers the printout and angles her body toward him, relief hardening into alarm as she spots the forms. Murderbone stays planted at the aisle mouth, staring down the dark beyond the clerk.
Museum Clerk
Don't come closer. They said I only had to move paper.
Dallas Fontaine
The bell is for summoning help, or warning someone to destroy the drawer.
From the clerk's pocket, a route slip peeks out, stamped and damp with fresh ink. The terminal behind him still hums, waiting for a command.
Stop the clerk from erasing the Desk Nine trail