Two weeks after the collapse, Sally's apartment feels smaller under the weight of paper. The stolen files spread across her kitchen table, all stamped, clipped, and cross-referenced. Amilia sits with a legal pad. Devlan nurses coffee and a frown.
Sally
These organ charts are real. Too real.
Amilia Jacobs
Okay, let's take it piece by piece. If these are tissue transfers, we need dates, handlers, and where the chain breaks.
Devlan Mitchel
And we need the plain-English version. Who got taken, who signed off, and who tried to bury it.
Amilia flips open a packet and traces a column with her finger. Devlan leans in, while Sally's notes, half diagrams and half warnings, crowd the table edge.
Amilia Jacobs
This one isn't just storage. It's procurement. They were tracking organs like inventory.
Devlan Mitchel
That means witnesses, transport logs, maybe a doctor who flinched.
Outside, Portland traffic murmurs past the windows. Inside, the three of them fall quiet over the pages, not because the case is solved, but because for the first time, it can be read.
Amilia Jacobs
Sally, start wherever it feels clearest. We can follow the first name together.
✓ Quest Accepted
Decode the origin files
“I slide the transport logs toward Devlan to see if he recognizes any of the signatures.”
SUCCESS (Good Reasoning, rolled -1)
Sally slides the transport logs across the table and turns them toward Devlan. The papers whisper over the clutter, stopping right under his coffee hand.
Devlan Mitchel
He studies the signatures, then the routing stamps, and his face tightens.
Devlan Mitchel
Yeah. I know that one. That clerk was on a transfer route I saw in Seattle, same sloppy initials, same paper trail.
Amilia straightens, pen scratching fast as Devlan pulls the log closer and taps one name twice.
Amilia Jacobs
Say it exactly. If you recognize the signer, I need the full chain.
Devlan Mitchel
This signature does not belong to a doctor. It belongs to a courier shell. Somebody is moving bodies through shell companies and fake hospital inventories.
Sally
The handwriting matches the stamped code on the scan strip.
Devlan flips the page and finds a second routing mark buried under the carbon copy. He goes still.
Devlan Mitchel
Hold up. This one points outside the Department. If we crack that intermediary, we get whoever signs above them.
“I compare the routing marks to the scan strip”
SUCCESS (Good Investigation, rolled +0)
Sally pulls the scan strip free and sets it beside the routing mark. The apartment goes quiet except for the radiator ticking and the soft rustle of paper.
Sally
The code repeats in the same sequence.
She angles the strip under the lamp, and the stamped code lines up with the transport form like a key cut from the same metal.
Amilia Jacobs
That is not a batch number. That is a transfer cipher.
Devlan leans in, then shifts back with a grim nod as Sally traces the matching marks across both pages.
Devlan Mitchel
Same courier shell, same routing family. This is one chain, not two.
A second comparison lands hard. The scan strip’s stamped code matches the origin file header, and the false hospital routing collapses into a single name block: Polpovich's intake archive.
Amilia Jacobs
We have it. This file is pointing at the source, not just the cleanup.
Quest Complete
Decode the origin files
Attribute Upgrade: Reasoning Good→Great