The maintenance tunnel follows the prison perimeter beneath wet streets. Amalgam travels alone, leaving Maestro behind the wedged loading-bay doors, until a concealed hatch opens beneath a shuttered pharmacy.
Dr. Imani Vale, a middle-aged Black woman with close-cropped silver hair, a sturdy build, and round glasses, admits him into the cramped clinic without alarm. Her dark green coat hangs over blue surgical scrubs.
Dr. Imani Vale
You made it out. Set the components on the examination tray, and keep the damaged housing clear of the contacts.
Sterile lamps brighten the hidden room. Vale arranges the regulator, sensor coils, and data wafer beneath a scanner, while monitors hum behind cabinets of emergency medical supplies.
Dr. Imani Vale
The regulator is broadcasting a handshake. The coils are repeating it, and the wafer stores the route data. Maestro embedded a tracking protocol in all three.
Dr. Imani Vale
I can strip the tracker, but the purge may erase the only lead to Maestro. If I preserve the lead, he may be able to find this clinic.
A diagnostic map resolves into pulsing lines across the monitor. One signal points toward the prison, while another flickers from somewhere within the city, awaiting Amalgam’s decision.
✓ Quest Accepted
Preserve the clinic’s secrecy
✓ Quest Accepted
Locate Maestro
“Build a monitored decoy drone and transfer Maestro's signal to it to distract him while i track him”
SUCCESS (Good Technology, rolled -1)
“Build a monitored decoy drone and transfer Maestro's signal to it to distract him while i track him”
SUCCESS (Good Technology, rolled -2)
“Build a monitored decoy drone and transfer Maestro's signal to it to distract him while i track him”
SUCCESS (Good Technology, rolled -2)
Amalgam clears a palm-sized drone from clinic salvage: a camera lens, folding rotors, and a compact transmitter built around the regulator’s intact core.
Dr. Imani Vale
I can monitor its telemetry, but the transfer will light up every diagnostic screen in this room.
Dr. Imani Vale isolates the handshake while Amalgam routes the wafer’s tracking protocol through the drone. The clinic fills with sharp electronic chirps.
Amalgam
The tracker is riding the decoy, not the clinic.
The drone’s transmitter takes Maestro’s signal and begins broadcasting from the shuttered pharmacy roof. On Dr. Imani Vale’s monitor, the prison-bound pulse pivots toward it.
Dr. Imani Vale
He has accepted the false source. I have his response path, and the live trace is moving toward the riverfront.
A warning fuse pops beneath the scanner, killing one bank of clinic lights. The decoy remains airborne, Maestro follows its signal, and the riverfront route resolves across the monitor.
Quest Complete
Preserve the clinic’s secrecy
“Make myself a new arm”
SUCCESS (Good Technology, rolled -1)
“Make myself a new arm”
SUCCESS (Good Technology, rolled +3)
Amalgam clears the examination tray and redirects the clinic’s fabrication unit. The regulator becomes a power core, the sensor coils unfold into artificial nerves, and the drone transmitter supplies a responsive control lattice.
Vale locks a carbon-fiber brace around his shoulder while articulated components assemble over the salvaged interface. Blue diagnostic light travels from collar to fingertips as the new arm calibrates.
Amalgam
The signal latency is negligible.
Dr. Imani Vale
Move it slowly. Good. The feedback is stable, and the regulator is generating more output than your old arm ever managed.
The hand closes, opens, then rotates with precise mechanical smoothness. Its fingertips project a compact toolset, and a faint pulse map appears across the palm.
Dr. Imani Vale
That is not merely replacement hardware. The wafer’s route data is now indexed in the arm. You can track Maestro’s response path without transmitting from here.
The monitor redraws the riverfront trace through the new arm’s palm display. Maestro’s decoy pursuit has become a live trail, leading toward an active broadcast source beneath the city bridge.
✓ Quest Accepted
Depart the clinic safely
+ New Item Acquired
Salvaged cybernetic arm
“I move quietly toward the pharmacy exit, keeping the new arm powered down.”
SUCCESS (Fair Stealth, rolled +0)
“I move quietly toward the pharmacy exit, keeping the new arm powered down.”
SUCCESS (Fair Stealth, rolled +0)
Amalgam powers the new arm down, dimming its palm display and silencing the servos. He crosses the clinic on quiet steps, keeping the fabricated limb close beneath his coat.
Amalgam
The pharmacy exit is clear, and the arm leaves no active signal.
Dr. Imani Vale
I will keep the clinic dark. The decoy still holds Maestro’s attention at the riverfront.
Vale kills the remaining work lamps and unlatches the concealed pharmacy door. Streetlight spills across dusty shelves and the shutter controls beyond.
Dr. Imani Vale
Your trace remains stored locally. When you power the arm again, it will show you where his broadcast source is moving.
Amalgam slips through the pharmacy exit without disturbing a bottle or hinge. Outside, rain beads on the pavement, and the city carries distant traffic toward the riverfront.
Quest Complete
Depart the clinic safely