The wounded courier presses the blackglass shard against her chest while Calder Voss works through the clinic console. Selene stands over the interface, watching every process.
Calder Voss
These identifiers are multiplying. The shard is not revealing an account list. It is generating live associations.
Columns of names and municipal routing codes cascade across the console. Calder verifies each signature, but new entries replace them faster than he can clear the queue.
Mara Venn
One route survived the rewrite. Municipal data exchange, Junction Nine annex. That is where Vey’s couriers move protected traffic.
Calder Voss
I can authenticate the destination, not the people waiting there. If Vey is compromised, the exchange becomes a trap with official access.
Across the clinic monitors, external sensors blink awake in sequence. No alarms sound, but a silent network sweep is mapping the freight clinic’s power draw and encrypted traffic.
Calder Voss
We have minutes, perhaps less. Decide where we move, and I will leave the console with a clean enough trail to slow the sweep.
✓ Quest Accepted
Escape the sealed clinic
“Is Vey compromised by the municipal exchange?”
NO, AND WORSE (Likely, rolled 94)
The municipal annex answers before Calder can finish the authentication. Every clinic monitor floods with Vey’s verified seal, then stamps it with a live internal breach alert.
Calder Voss
Vey is not compromised. She is warning us. Someone inside the exchange has already seized the courier channels and is using her credentials to bait a response.
The blackglass shard snaps cold against the wounded courier’s chest. Its route collapses, replaced by a municipal kill order naming the clinic as an unauthorized evidence site.
Mara Venn
That order just went live. They are not coming to question us. They are coming to erase the handoff and everyone attached to it.
Calder Voss
Worse. The annex has locked down the safe corridors, and the sweep has our biometric signatures. If we move through official access, they will track us straight to Vey.
The surgical rig retracts as the clinic doors seal under municipal authority. Outside, heavy service locks engage one after another, turning the freight clinic into a monitored box.
Mara Venn
Then we protect the shard, not the route. Find us a way out before that box finishes closing.
“Calder told us his name. Why don’t you share yours as well Courier? Or do you not trust me yet?”
SUCCESS (Good Interrogation, rolled +0)
Selene Nyx
Calder told us his name. Why don’t you share yours as well, Courier? Or do you not trust me yet?
Mara Venn
Mara Venn. And no, I do not trust you yet. But I trust what you have done for me, and that is enough to answer.
The courier, Mara Venn, lifts her chin from the sealed jacket. She is an adult woman with cropped dark hair, tired brown eyes, and a yellow emergency coat stained around its repaired side.
Calder Voss
Mara Venn. Good. Names make the record harder to erase. Selene, the clinic has thirty seconds before the locks report a completed containment.
Mara Venn
I trust Selene to keep me alive. I do not trust her motives, her secrets, or what she will do if the shard threatens her interests.
The freight clinic lights shift from amber to hard white. Calder pulls the console’s clean trail into a portable drive while Mara keeps the blackglass shard pressed beneath her coat.
Calder Voss
Now we have names, a live kill order, and one honest answer. Find the exit, Selene. I will make the system remember us somewhere else.
“You don’t trust me thanks I get it. Jesus you don’t have to drone on about it. *I say while looking for the exit.*”
FAILURE (Good Investigation, rolled -2)
Selene Nyx
You don’t trust me. I get it. Jesus, you don’t have to drone on about it.
Selene sweeps the hard-white clinic for an exit, checking seams, service panels, and the sealed freight doors while containment numbers flicker across every monitor.
Calder Voss
The doors are false options. Their locks report directly to municipal authority. Touching them completes the containment record.
Selene finds a narrow maintenance hatch behind the surgical rig, but its access strip is already live. Her scan reveals the hatch opens into a monitored waste conduit, not a safe corridor.
Mara Venn
That conduit will expose me to the annex scanners. I cannot carry the shard through a clean biometric sweep.
Calder Voss
And the hatch just registered your search pattern. We have lost the option of pretending the clinic is dormant.
Calder disconnects the portable drive and turns toward the console. The clinic reroutes power from the surgical rig, illuminating a sealed floor service panel beneath Mara’s chair.
“You don’t trust me thanks I get it. Jesus you don’t have to drone on about it. *I say while looking for the exit.*”
FAILURE (Good Investigation, rolled -2)
Selene Nyx
You don’t trust me. I get it. Jesus, you don’t have to drone on about it.
Selene scans the clinic while speaking, sweeping seams, vents, service panels, and the sealed freight doors. Every apparent exit resolves into municipal containment hardware.
Beneath Mara’s chair, the newly lit floor panel offers a maintenance release. Selene’s scan catches its buried return path: opening it would broadcast her biometric signature to the annex.
Calder Voss
That panel is not an exit. It is a confirmation point. Once opened, it tells them exactly who is carrying the shard.
Mara Venn
Then I cannot go first. The scanners will read me through the conduit, and the shard will be logged before we reach its far end.
Selene’s search completes its circuit and kills the clinic’s remaining false options. The hatch, doors, and floor panel now share one monitored record, making another sweep useless.
Calder Voss
We need to stop looking for a door. Use the panel as a controlled signal, or this box finishes documenting us.
Establish a safe handoff route to Vey
“You don’t trust me thanks I get it. Jesus you don’t have to drone on about it. *I say while looking for the exit.*”
SUCCESS (Good Investigation, rolled +3)
Selene’s scan returns to the floor panel. Beneath its municipal handshake, she finds a maintenance bypass tied to the clinic’s waste-cooling system, unlisted in the containment record.
She strips the panel’s broadcast lead and reroutes its confirmation pulse into the surgical rig’s dormant sterilizer. The clinic registers a routine equipment fault instead of a biometric match.
Calder Voss
That is an exit. The waste-cooling conduit feeds into an abandoned freight drain beneath the annex. No municipal scanner covers it.
Mara Venn
If the shard stays shielded, I can make the crawl. Tell me when the signal is blind.
The floor panel unlocks with a soft hydraulic click. Cold vapor spills upward from the dark conduit, carrying the smell of coolant and old concrete.
Calder Voss
Now. I will feed the clinic a false containment confirmation while you get Mara below the sensor grid.
The hatch stands open, revealing a narrow service passage descending beneath the freight clinic. The route is clear, and the municipal sweep accepts the forged fault report.
““Hmm.. waste cooling.. let me make sure your wound is nice and covers so you don’t get an infection before we go down. It’ll just be a minute tops.” *Then we go down the hatch.*”
SUCCESS (Good Agility, rolled +0)
Selene Nyx
Hmm... waste cooling. Let me make sure your wound is covered properly so you do not get an infection before we go down. It will take a minute, tops.
Selene kneels beside Mara at the open hatch, lifts the edge of the yellow emergency coat, and checks the repaired dressing under the clinic’s hard white light. The seal has loosened but remains clean.
Mara Venn
You are thorough for someone who keeps insisting this is only a job. Hold the light steady, Calder.
Selene reinforces the dressing with sterile film from the surgical rig, smoothing each edge until the wound is fully covered. Mara tests the seal with a careful breath, then tucks the shard securely beneath her coat.
Mara Venn
That will hold. I can crawl without reopening it. The shard stays shielded, and the conduit is clear.
Calder Voss
The false containment report is still running. Take her down now, and I will follow once the clinic’s record settles.
Mara descends first into the cold vapor, one hand on the ladder and the other guarding the shard. Selene follows immediately, then Calder lowers himself through the hatch as it seals above them.
Quest Complete
Escape the sealed clinic
Attribute Upgrade: Agility Good→Great