Amilia Jacobs lays the recovered hardcase open under the hub lights. The drive clicks into the console, and the blurred roster blooms across the screen, row after row of names and redacted faces.
Amilia Jacobs
That is not a roster. It is a trap.
She zooms in, jaw tightening. The same names repeat in shifted order, with mismatched dates and copied clearance stamps. It is built to look official from a distance, and false up close.
Amilia Jacobs
It is fabricated. Not to identify anyone, to poison trust. They wanted us doubting each other.
Psyche Delic goes pale in the corner. Outside, the pounding on the door keeps up, but the room is suddenly colder than the metal walls.
Psyche Delic
No, no, no... if they see this, they will know I passed it along.
Amilia drags one fingerprinted page under the lamp and turns it toward Sally. Under the fake names, there is only a pattern, a weaponized lie meant to split the team before the breach ever begins.
Amilia Jacobs
We were never chasing a list of traitors. We were holding the Department's knife by the blade.
✓ Quest Accepted
Expose the Department's fabricated roster
“Force Psyche Delic to reveal who actually created this fake roster.”
SUCCESS (Legendary Willpower, rolled +2)
Sally steps in close, holding Psyche Delic with her stare while the door shudders behind them. The monitor glare cuts hard across his face, and the fake roster flickers between names like a wound opening.
Sally
He knows who built it.
Psyche Delic
I did not make it. I only routed the feed. The one who built the roster is the Gray-Coat on the floor.
Psyche jerks a shaking hand toward the unconscious official, then recoils as if he has said too much. The buckling door groans louder, and a strip of blue light from the access seam pulses under the console.
Psyche Delic
He called it a loyalty screen. He said the names had to be wrong, so nobody would know who was really standing with them.
Amilia straightens sharply, eyes locked on the official and the scrolling lies. The room narrows around that answer, and the team’s target shifts from the Department’s hunters to the hand that forged the split.
Quest Complete
Expose the Department's fabricated roster