Gremlin and Alexei descend through the familiar service tunnels beneath Recycling Lot #13, carrying the hearing’s verified materials in sealed, court-tracked cases. Palmer and Angela remain at City Hall with the witnesses and security detail.
The hidden maintenance station opens around them: fabrication benches, spare parts, diagnostic lights, and improvised safeguards humming beneath layers of scavenged armor and circuitry.
Alexei
The witnesses are protected for now, but escorts create patterns. Patterns become targets, especially when every political ally of Duncan is watching the hearing.
Alexei sets her hardened console beside the first-aid station and checks the room’s entrances, then reviews the evidence capsules without connecting them to the lair’s wider network.
Alexei
We need rotating routes, disposable communications, and a way for residents to report pressure without exposing their locations. I also need to know what continued disclosure costs your network.
Gremlin
The lair’s safeguards are isolated from the public relay.
Alexei
You know this ground better than anyone. Build the plan here, where the equipment is yours and no official channel can quietly rewrite the rules.
✓ Quest Accepted
Forge a candid protection alliance with Alexei
✓ Quest Accepted
Create a safe way for pressured residents to report threats
“I’ll build an isolated dropbox from the fabrication benches for threat reports.”
SUCCESS (Legendary Technology, rolled +1)
Gremlin selects a fabrication bench and separates its tools from the lair’s main systems. Shielded panels, a one-way receiver, and scavenged power cells become an isolated reporting dropbox.
He fits the enclosure with physical tamper seals and a disposable uplink that records threat reports without storing names, addresses, or identifying route data.
Gremlin
The dropbox has no return path to the public relay.
Alexei
Good. A resident can report pressure, and the report cannot lead anyone back to their door.
Alexei tests the intake with a dummy filing. The box accepts the report, strips its origin metadata, and forwards only a signed alert to her hardened console.
Alexei
This gives us a protected intake point and a clean evidence trail. I can publish the system’s existence without exposing its users.
The finished dropbox locks beneath the bench lights, its indicator glowing amber. Outside the lair, the city’s pressure campaign now has a safer way to reveal itself.
Quest Complete
Create a safe way for pressured residents to report threats
“I help Alexei vary the witnesses' escort routes”
SUCCESS (Great Reasoning, rolled +0)
Gremlin spreads a maintenance map across the fabrication bench, marking six escort routes between the lair, protected clinics, and alternate civic entrances. He removes repeated timing and turns each departure into a distinct pattern.
Alexei
Use the routes that look least efficient. Anyone watching for police habits will dismiss the irregularity as noise, while the witnesses stay impossible to predict.
Gremlin links the route schedule to the dropbox’s one-way alerts, assigning each witness a rotating pickup window and a separate fallback destination. No report contains a name or address.
Alexei
This works. I can issue the assignments through separate briefings, change escorts without creating a central list, and keep Palmer’s detail outside the pattern.
The rerouting consumes two shielded power cells and leaves a brief maintenance signature in the lair’s exterior grid. Alexei records the expenditure and flags the signature for later masking.
Alexei
The witnesses have varied routes now, but your equipment paid for the speed. I will replace those cells through official channels before anyone notices the gap.
Alexei seals the route cards into separate evidence envelopes. The escort plan is ready for immediate use, distributed without exposing the people it protects.
“I check in with the protected witnesses”
SUCCESS (Good Willpower, rolled +2)
Gremlin activates the lair’s isolated check-in console, routing a one-way request through Alexei’s hardened channel. No witness names or locations enter the system.
Alexei
The channel is clean. Palmer’s detail has the witnesses gathered separately, and each person can answer without revealing where they are.
One by one, protected voices answer through scrambled audio. Their words carry fatigue, but no immediate alarm, and the system strips every identifying trace before storage.
the protected witnesses
We are safe for now. The escorts changed, the routes stayed unpredictable, and nobody has approached us with another threat.
Angela
They are accounted for. I have checked every entrance twice, and Palmer is keeping the hearing team together until the next movement window.
The console records a clean status report and distributes only the confirmation hash. Outside the lair, the escort plan remains compartmentalized and active.
Alexei
Everyone is secure, Gremlin. Your system gave them a voice without giving their enemies a trail.
Quest Complete
Keep the threatened witnesses willing to testify
Attribute Upgrade: Reasoning Great→Superb
“I mask the lair’s maintenance signature”
SUCCESS (Legendary Technology, rolled +1)
The maintenance signature pulses beneath the lair, a faint electrical fingerprint left by the rerouting work. Gremlin isolates it from the station’s ordinary scavenged noise.
His cybernetic arm adjusts a bank of salvaged regulators while shielded panels redirect the excess draw into dormant machinery and grounded scrap beyond the lot.
The exterior grid settles into its old irregular rhythm. The signature disappears beneath harmless fluctuations from compactors, floodlights, and aging power cells.
Alexei
The trace is gone. Anyone checking the grid will see junkyard noise, not a protected operations hub.
Alexei compares the before-and-after readings on her hardened console. The maintenance gap is sealed, and the route system remains powered without exposing the lair.
Alexei
That buys us time and keeps the witnesses’ protection invisible. I am marking the signature as masked, not merely reduced.
The amber indicators return to their steady glow. Beneath Recycling Lot #13, the safeguards hum quietly, indistinguishable from the junkyard above.
Quest Complete
Forge a candid protection alliance with Alexei
Skill Upgrade: Investigation Great→Superb