The municipal verifier pulses green as the authenticated cache settles into local memory. Its sealed status confirms the copy, but Niko’s wrist display flares with an incoming police bulletin.
The bulletin resolves into Niko’s biometric profile and a freight-system order: report every sighting immediately. Across the platform, cargo lights change from amber to hard red.
Niko
They have my face in the system now. Every automated route is going to close around us.
Cargo gates descend along the nearest exit, while stacked containers begin shifting into a controlled barricade. Mara is still behind on the warehouse roofs, separated by the freight lines.
Niko
The verifier is local, but the bulletin is not. We need to leave before the platform finishes sealing.
A maintenance route blinks briefly on the relay housing, then vanishes as another cargo control locks. The verifier remains warm in its contact bridge, holding the evidence copy ready for removal.
Niko
Tell me where to move, and I will keep the verifier with us.
✓ Quest Accepted
Escape the freight platform with Niko
“I grab the verifier and lead Niko toward the blinking maintenance route. "What I would give to be in my apartment right about now..."”
FAILURE (Good Agility, rolled -1)
Match
What I would give to be in my apartment right about now...
Match tears the municipal verifier from its contact bridge and pulls Niko toward the blinking maintenance route. The tether catches hard, wrenching the device sideways before it comes free.
Niko
Careful. It is still holding the evidence copy, but the relay is trying to keep its credential attached.
The route shutters as the verifier breaks contact, and the cargo barricade tightens across the platform. Match gets the device loose, but the direct passage is no longer usable.
A thin service indicator remains visible beneath the relay lip, pointing down through the platform instead of across it. Its manual latch is exposed, offering a different way forward.
Niko
The copy is safe in the verifier. That lower latch may bypass the sealed route, if we can reach it before the controls finish closing.
Niko tucks the verifier inside his jacket and stays close as Match reaches the platform’s edge. Below, the exposed latch blinks once through the rain, then dims.
+ New Item Acquired
Municipal Verifier
“I grab the verifier and lead Niko toward the blinking maintenance route. "What I would give to be in my apartment right about now..."”
FAILURE (Good Agility, rolled +1)
Match reaches beneath the platform and catches the manual latch. It releases with a stiff click, dropping a narrow maintenance stair into the dark framework below.
Niko
Down, then. The barricade cannot follow us through that gap.
Niko descends first with the verifier secured inside his jacket. Match follows, and the platform seals above them as cargo machinery grinds into its final lock.
The stair ends in a cramped service trench beneath the freight lines. A cable conduit leads toward a vertical access shaft marked for warehouse roof maintenance.
Niko
That shaft should put us beyond the freight controls. Mara may still have a clear route from the roofs.
Match leads Niko through the conduit and up the shaft. They emerge onto the warehouse roofs, rain striking the metal around them while the sealed platform falls silent below.
Niko
The copy is safe. Now we find Mara and keep moving before the system gets another look at me.
Quest Complete
Escape the freight platform with Niko
Attribute Upgrade: Agility Good→Great