The tunnel opens into a maintenance bay lit by a flickering terminal. The Courier stops beside it, breathing hard, and flips his route map across the screen. 2-6's arm twitches again, but the cursor catches the first line: clinic access, same date, same transit window.
The Courier
Tell me that is not what I think it is.
The terminal spits up matching tags, route nodes stitched to a private clinic log. One name repeats in both files, a sealed patient transfer attached to the courier line. The map was never just delivery, it is a cover path.
2-6
The clinic record and route map share the same transfer code.
The Courier
My sister's clinic had no right to those tags. That company carted data through our route, and somebody scrubbed the trail.
2-6's fingers jerk toward the terminal on their own, then fight back half a beat later. The nano-bots push harder, turning the motion stiff and wrong, as if they want him away from the files before he can finish the link.
On-screen, the connection locks in. The route map is the handoff path, and the sister's clinic records are the cargo hidden inside it. The answer is finally visible, and so is the next target, whoever forged the transfer.
✓ Quest Accepted
Access the encrypted clinic records
✓ Quest Accepted
Identify who forged the transfer
“Take a deep haul off my vape. And try my wireless link”
SUCCESS (Fair Willpower, rolled +0)
2-6 drags a deep haul from the vape, and the nano mist catches in his throat like cold static. His hand steadies just enough to touch the wireless link to the terminal.
The screen blooms with access glyphs. Clinic traffic spills open in layered tags, patient seals, and transfer windows, all of it readable for one breath before the terminal tries to shiver the connection away.
2-6
The records are open. The transfer trail is real.
A sharp pulse lances through 2-6's arm, and a thin thread of blood beads under the cuff where the implant seizes. The link holds anyway.
The Courier
Then tell me who forged it.
One routing stamp flashes clear, a corporate handoff mark buried under the clinic seal. The forged transfer points back to the same private logistics office that scrubbed the route map.
2-6
Same office. Same hand behind both files.
The Courier leans closer, eyes fixed on the name block as the terminal flickers and the wireless line starts to smoke at the port.
Quest Complete
Access the encrypted clinic records
Quest Complete
Identify who forged the transfer