Bulwark Penitentiary’s secure intake corridor narrows around Alexei, Duncan, and Gremlin. The restraint remains locked as modular cells seal behind them, each closure logged by overhead cameras.
Two facility officers, both sturdy adult women with cropped brown hair, medium builds, and charcoal uniforms with bright identification bands in charcoal uniforms wait at the transfer station with a recording tablet and portable scanner. Palmer and Angela remain at City Hall with the protected witnesses.
Alexei
Document every handoff, every scan, and every seal. Duncan gets no unrecorded movement inside this facility.
Duncan
That corridor protocol is mine. I authorized the staggered lockout after the last security review.
Duncan’s polished certainty falters as the scanner pauses, then requests a verification sequence absent from the transfer order. One officer checks the tablet twice.
Duncan
Someone altered the protocol before I arrived. If the system rejects me, they prepared this failure.
Alexei
Nobody improvises. We freeze the corridor, preserve the discrepancy, and determine whether the change protects the prison or compromises it.
✓ Quest Accepted
Establish whether Duncan's custody is secure
✓ Quest Accepted
Identify who altered Bulwark's transfer protocol
“I upload a discrete diagnostic program into the prison's systems to discretely find whoever altered the protocol”
SUCCESS (Legendary Technology, rolled +1)
Gremlin’s cybernetic fingers connect a sealed diagnostic wafer to the transfer station’s maintenance port. The program enters quietly, disguised as a routine scanner integrity check.
It maps authentication scars, compares the current lockout against archived configurations, and follows the alteration’s signed pathway without changing a single prison control.
the transfer officer
The scanner is still frozen. No command has been issued from this station.
A concealed audit returns a precise result: the staggered lockout was altered remotely through a dormant administrative credential, authenticated from a legal review terminal outside Bulwark.
Alexei
There. The change predates Duncan’s arrival, but his old credential authorized the access. Preserve the terminal identity and sever nothing yet.
Duncan
That credential was retired. Someone revived it to make the alteration look like my work.
The diagnostic seals its findings into the prison record: terminal identity, timestamp, credential history, and the exact protocol revision. The corridor remains frozen, but the author is no longer unknown.
“I upload a tracking virus to whoever used the credential”
SUCCESS (Legendary Technology, rolled +0)
Gremlin routes a compact tracking virus through the diagnostic wafer and into the preserved authentication pathway. It rides the dormant credential’s next verification handshake without touching Bulwark’s controls.
The wafer reports a successful installation. A hidden beacon begins recording the credential’s originating network, terminal activity, and any subsequent command attempts in a sealed evidence channel.
Alexei
It is in. The beacon is isolated from the prison systems, and every signal it catches will be copied into the case record.
Duncan
You are baiting whoever revived my credential. If they touch the pathway again, they will expose themselves.
A return pulse identifies the legal review terminal outside Bulwark and reveals a live encrypted session waiting behind it. The tracker marks the connection without opening the session.
Alexei
Confirmed origin, active session, clean chain of custody. We can watch the user move without warning them or contaminating the evidence.
The corridor remains frozen under camera oversight, while the concealed beacon settles into silent observation. Whoever used Duncan’s credential now carries a trace back to their own terminal.
Quest Complete
Establish whether Duncan's custody is secure
Skill Upgrade: Investigation Superb→Legendary