Pier Nine freight office, lit by one bare bulb and the red blink of a dock light through the blinds. Bell’s body slumps behind the invoices. The wall-safe yawns open, ledger and cleanup envelope exposed. Murderbone stands over the corpse, hackles up. Outside, someone calls, "Dallas?"
Jackson Temple
Hold up. Don’t move yet. If that’s the full ledger, this goes all the way to city hall.
Jackson steps into the doorway, breath hard, eyes locked on the safe. His face goes pale when he sees the envelope marked PIER NINE CLEANUP. The key ring lies on the floor between him and Bell’s body.
Clara
I told you there was a cleanup. I did not say this was the whole machine.
Clara appears behind Jackson, keeping to the doorframe like she expects a shot. She stares at the ledger, then at Dallas, frightened but fixed on survival. Murderbone gives a low warning growl and shifts to block the safe.
Jackson Temple
The envelope, the ledger, the key ring, take them all. If anybody else gets here first, they bury this, and us with it.
Dallas Fontaine
The cleanup envelope is the final thread.
The office feels smaller by the second, as if the walls are listening. Bell’s death is done, but the paper trail is still breathing in Dallas’s hands. Jackson waits. Clara waits. Murderbone waits. The next move is Dallas Fontaine’s.
+ New Item Acquired
Velvet box
“Is there anything else hidden in the safe?”
EXCEPTIONAL YES (Likely, rolled 7)
Dallas reaches into the back of the safe, his fingers brushing against a false metal panel that clicks open under pressure. Tucked behind the ledger is a small, velvet-lined box containing a set of micro-film negatives and a handwritten list of names that predates the current harbor operation by a decade.
Dallas Fontaine
This goes deeper than the harbor. It is the foundation of the whole rot.
Jackson Temple
That is not just evidence, Dallas. That is the history of every bribe paid in this city for the last ten years.
The red light from the dock sweeps across the room, illuminating the final pieces of the puzzle as the rain drums a steady, closing rhythm against the glass.
“I retreat to a safe place to examine the list and negatives”
SUCCESS (Legendary Agility, rolled +2)
The safe hung open, its hidden compartment laid bare. Paper, keys, and film caught the weak office light while Jonas Bell lay still at Dallas’s feet.
Jackson Temple
Get it closed. Get it locked down. If this walks out of here wrong, the whole harbor burns.
Clara
Decades. It was never one crooked man. It was a city built on this.
Dallas Fontaine
Then let it stand. No more cleaning up after them.
Murderbone
Good. I was getting tired of ghosts.
Dallas took the ledger, the film, and the names that had fed on the city for years. By dawn, the rot was no longer hidden, and everyone in Pier Nine would have to live with the shape of what had been buried. Dallas Fontaine did not vanish that night. He left with the weight of the truth in his coat and a quiet end to the lie.