Dallas keeps the barrel on Miller as the container shakes around them. Jackson Temple stays rigid by the rear wall, eyes darting to the rattling door. Outside, voices stack over the grind of a cutting wheel chewing into rusted metal.
Captain Miller
All right, all right, Tate is not here. He keeps a berth at the far end of the marina, private slip, tarped boat, guard on the gangway. That is where he sleeps when he feels cornered.
Dallas Fontaine
The answer matches the trail. The lie is in how fast he gives it.
Miller swallows hard and lifts both hands higher. Jackson stares at him like he might still try something. The cutter bites deeper, and a strip of light needles through the seam beside the door.
Captain Miller
If you want Tate alive, you move now. If you want him scared, you go alone. Either way, when that door goes, they are coming through fast.
The metal groans open another inch. Dallas has Tate's berth now, but the clock is down to sparks and steel.
✓ Quest Accepted
Reach Harlan Tate's private berth
“Grab Jackson and slip out through the rear hatch.”
SUCCESS (Legendary Agility, rolled +0)
Dallas snatches Jackson by the coat and yanks him low. Miller flinches as the flashlight skids underfoot and the rear hatch creaks open into black water glare.
Jackson stumbles first, catching himself on the hatch frame. Dallas follows tight behind, dragging him clear as the container shudders from another cut.
Cold pier air hits them like a slap. The rear opening spills them into the narrow gap behind stacked containers, out of the lantern slash from the breached front.
Captain Miller
Wait. Tate is not alone. The envelope went through a cleaner first, a woman at the records office.
Jackson Temple
He says it like a confession, but he is trying to buy time.
Inside the container, the cutter screams louder, and the front seam blooms with white light. Miller stays trapped by the narrowing gap while Dallas has Jackson in hand and the berth route ahead.
Jackson Temple
Dallas, the private berth is past the tarped boats, second gangway on the right. Move now.
✓ Quest Accepted
Expose the cleaner at the records office
“Force Miller to identify the woman at the records office.”
SUCCESS (Legendary Interrogation, rolled +2)
Dallas Fontaine
Who is she?
Dallas keeps the revolver steady, not at Miller’s chest anymore, but close enough to matter. The man’s breath catches in the salt air as he looks past the gap, weighing the cut metal and the dark water below.
Captain Miller
I never got her name. Records office. She wore a gray coat, hair pinned tight, and she took the envelope before anyone noticed.
Captain Miller
Not Bell. Not Tate. She said she was cleaning loose ends, and she had a city badge clipped inside her pocket.
Jackson freezes at that, then turns his head toward Dallas with a sharp, sick understanding. The cutter outside shrieks again, and the container shivers on its stack.
Jackson Temple
That is not Internal Review. That is the clerk I told you about, the one who erased the records.
Miller swallows hard and nods toward the lane, giving up the last of it. He points past the tarped boats to the private slip, then starts to say more as footsteps crunch on the gravel behind the containers.
“I move toward the private slip”
SUCCESS (Legendary Agility, rolled -1)