Three weeks later, 2-6 sits in a glass-walled office high above the freight stacks. The air is cold, filtered, and too clean for the city below. Across from him, a woman in a slate suit taps open a hologram of the supply chain, nodes glowing where the clinic leak spread.
Director Varo
I am Director Varo, claims review and restitution. Your exposure cost people livelihoods, implants, and years. So tell me how you got past the registry seal.
The map turns, zooming on the exact route 2-6 helped break open. A second figure waits by the door, broad-shouldered and still, with a black compliance baton at his hip and a predator's patience in his stare.
Grim
You can answer her, or I can run the question through your arm until it remembers.
2-6
The seal was keyed to the wrong identity.
Director Varo
Wrong identity, right. Interesting. That sounds like someone inside the chain helped you, or someone designed you to slip through.
Varo folds her hands over the hovering nodes, calm as a knife. Grim shifts one step closer to the desk, and the hologram throws amber light across 2-6's face as it waits for the answer.
✓ Quest Accepted
Secure Director Varo as an ally
“"My recovery and programming was redacted. I don't know who or what sent me. Just the directives and this corps seal" 2-6 shares the companies stamp with Director Varo”
FAILURE (Poor Persuasion, rolled -2)
2-6 lifts the corporate seal into the amber light, and the hologram catches the stamp cleanly. For a beat, the office goes very still.
2-6
My recovery and programming were redacted. I do not know who sent me, just the directives and this seal.
He angles the proof toward Varo, letting the emblem hover between them like a held breath.
Director Varo
That seal is real. That is not the same as innocent.
Varo does not reach for the image. She studies it with a colder face now, while the nodes in her supply-chain map dim one by one.
Grim
Cute. He brings paperwork to an interrogation.
Grim's baton lifts off his hip, then stops. Varo raises one hand without looking back, and the room tightens around her silence.
Director Varo
If your records were wiped, then someone inside procurement authored a ghost. Leave that with me, and I may decide who gets burned for it.
✓ Quest Accepted
Expose who sent the ghost directive
+ New Item Acquired
Corporate seal
“"I'm an asset, not a free agent, this program is running as designed"”
FAILURE (Poor Persuasion, rolled -1)
2-6
I am an asset, not a free agent. This program runs as designed.
The words land cleanly, but the office does not soften. The hologram flickers over Varo's knuckles, and the corporate seal keeps floating between you like evidence that refuses to be loyal.
Director Varo
Designed by whom, exactly? Because every compliant tool I meet says that right before it breaks something important.
Grim lets out a short, contemptuous breath. His baton stays lowered, but his shoulders square as if he expects the room itself to side with him.
Director Varo
You want me to believe you are merely following directives, yet your seal is keyed wrong and your records are scrubbed. That is not obedience, that is tampering.
Varo leans back at last, one finger tapping the desk while the dimmed map nodes hang in a colder spread of blue light. She is not convinced, but she is listening harder now.
Director Varo
If you are an asset, then prove your value. Give me one name, one department, one crack in procurement, and I will decide whether you are a weapon I can use.
“Do I have the information she is requesting?”
YES (Likely, rolled 22)
2-6
The data link with Jax... it holds the key to the procurement chain.
A flicker of amber light pulses beneath your skin, syncing with the shared data link. You realize the name Varo needs is buried in the encrypted logistics order you intercepted earlier, a direct link to the procurement head, Supervisor Kael.
“"This is what I have Director" share the requested information”
SUCCESS (Superb Hacking, rolled +2)
2-6 flicks the link outward. The amber thread blooms across the office glass, and a procurement chain unspools in cold text between him and Varo.
2-6
This is what I have, Director. Kael sits on the leak.
The hologram sharpens. Supervisor Kael’s name locks to the ghost directive, then to a sealed transfer order, then to a clinic inventory tag that should not exist.
Director Varo
Kael. Procurement. So the seal was real, and the rot is internal.
Grim
He pulled that clean. Too clean.
Varo’s hand lowers from the map. The dim blue room catches the red pulse at 2-6’s wrist, and she studies it like a live wire.
Director Varo
Send me the packet. If Kael forged this, I want his chain of access and every hand that touched it.
The office air stays taut, but the map nodes around Kael brighten with exposed routes. Grim stops looming forward, waiting for Varo’s next order.
Quest Complete
Secure Director Varo as an ally
Skill Upgrade: Persuasion Poor→Mediocre
Quest Complete
Expose who sent the ghost directive
Skill Upgrade: Persuasion Mediocre→Fair