The freight machinery keeps its distant rhythm beneath the staging bay. The isolated console finishes packaging three separate files while the technician remains cuffed beside it, collar glowing faintly.
One display holds a clean export of approvals and recovery orders. Another contains a smaller profitable fragment, stripped of unrelated implant records. The full index preserves every cross-link.
the Helix technician
The archive lead is dangerous, but it is also proof. Quist authorized the route, and the originals may show who ordered the records buried.
A freight manifest scrolls beside the files, showing a maintenance lift descending beneath the line. Its access window remains open, though the console warns that movement may trigger local sensors.
the Helix technician
My implant data can buy protection if we offer the right fragment first. The full index is leverage, but carrying it makes us both harder to hide.
the Helix technician
You decide what leaves this bay, and whether we risk the archive. Vexa is still at Black Channel, so no one is coming to extract us.
The console waits without a network handshake. Three export icons remain illuminated, and the freight lift indicator changes from standby to ready.
✓ Quest Accepted
Bring the technician safely to Vexa
✓ Quest Accepted
Recover the archive originals
“I descend toward the off-books archive before the freight access window closes.”
SUCCESS (Legendary Agility, rolled +3)
Denver selects the freight manifest and guides the Helix technician onto the maintenance lift. The doors close before the access window expires, carrying them beneath the line through a shaft of blue service lights.
The lift descends without triggering an alarm. Aegis servos remain quiet, and Denver's isolated frame leaves no telemetry trace as the archive level rises through the console display.
the Helix technician
That is faster than the authorized route. Quist's manifest opens the archive itself, not just the approach.
The lift settles into a sealed sublevel. Its doors open on a compact archive chamber lined with cold-storage cabinets, an offline terminal, and numbered evidence cases beneath dust-coated lights.
The manifest access has also exposed a maintenance cache beside the terminal: a Helix signal scrambler, factory-sealed and tagged for executive transport. Its inventory mark matches Ilya Quist's office.
the Helix technician
The originals are here. And that scrambler is worth money, if we take it before the archive wakes its audit cycle.
The offline terminal accepts the manifest credential. A directory opens immediately, listing buried records by approval chain, with Ilya Quist's archive marked intact and ready for local retrieval.