The steel door swings wider, coughing salt air and ozone into the corridor. Beyond it, a tunnel slopes toward the harbor service spine, and the relay hum shakes dust from the beams. Elena’s map jitters, then locks onto Pier Nine.
Dallas Fontaine
Pier Nine. The surge is rerouting through the docks.
Jackson Temple
That is not a dead end, Dallas. It is a feed line. Mercer is pushing power straight into the waterfront grid.
Jackson lifts his sidearm and steps into the red strobe, while Murderbone bristles at the threshold. From deeper in the tunnel, wet footfalls slap against metal grating, fast and careless.
Elena Vane
The routing map just changed. If that line reaches Pier Nine, it branches under the customs annex again, and whatever they are feeding gets a full circuit.
A figure flashes at the far bend, then vanishes into darkness. The hum spikes, and a distant breaker slams shut somewhere below the harbor. Dallas now has the link, Mercer is not hiding the circuit, he is moving it.
✓ Quest Accepted
Intercept the surge at Pier Nine
✓ Quest Accepted
Stop the citywide activation path
“Check the relay map for a manual override to kill the power before it hits Pier Nine.”
SUCCESS (Legendary Investigation, rolled -3)
Dallas snaps his attention to the glowing junction sketch, tracing the feed line with a gloved finger. The diagram shows a maintenance bypass at Pier Nine, then a manual cutout labeled in faded grease pencil.
Dallas Fontaine
There. A manual override.
The mark is old but legible. It points to a breaker cabinet in the pier relay room, not the harbor grid itself. Dallas has the kill path.
Jackson Temple
Tell me you see a shutoff, because I am not liking that hum.
Jackson leans in over the map, his sidearm still up, while Elena steadies the jittering device with both hands. Red relay lights pulse across their faces like a warning heartbeat.
Elena Vane
If that cabinet is real, we can cut the surge before it reaches the pier.
Dallas fixes the route in his head. The circuit is not drifting anymore, it is committed, and Pier Nine is the pressure point.
“I head for Pier Nine's relay room”
SUCCESS (Legendary Agility, rolled -1)