Vale leans into the isolated console without touching Reina’s bridge. Half-closed security shutters seal the relay station, trapping Razor and the team inside while rain-muted transit noise fades beyond.
Tomas Vale
Venn built a false emergency protocol into Saint Marrow’s archive. Trigger it, and the system reports a containment breach while silently rewriting the originals.
Gwen Armitage
Then give me the preservation path. I want the original files intact, with a chain of custody that survives whatever story Venn tells afterward.
Vale brings up a maintenance lattice on the isolated display. Three dead channels illuminate beneath the archive route, each marked for emergency recovery and automatic evidence destruction.
Reina Sato
His claim matches the shard’s copied exchange. The false protocol sits above the access token, but I can isolate its reporting layer before we open anything.
Tomas Vale
Use the recovery channel, not the intake command. It copies the originals to a sealed buffer before the emergency protocol knows the archive was entered.
Milo shifts against his restraints near the entrance. Gwen keeps him covered while Vesper watches the locked shutters, and Reina waits over the dormant shard for Razor’s next move.
“I demand a harmless test copy first”
SUCCESS (Legendary Willpower, rolled +0)
Razor
I demand a harmless test copy first. No live access, no archive changes, and no signal that can trigger the emergency protocol.
Tomas Vale
Agreed. The recovery channel can generate a read-only sample from the buffer. It will touch nothing beyond the isolated mirror.
Vale enters a narrowly scoped command. Reina keeps the shard dormant as a translucent directory blooms on the isolated display, containing a small encrypted fragment and its access metadata.
Reina Sato
Test copy complete. It is read-only, cryptographically separate, and carries no executable protocol. I can verify it without opening the original archive.
Gwen Armitage
Record the hash and preserve the sample as evidence. If it stays isolated, we have a safe model of the recovery channel before committing to the originals.
Reina seals the sample under a fresh checksum and attaches the terminal state to Gwen’s evidence chain. The display confirms no clinical-network contact and no alteration to the archive.
Tomas Vale
That is the harmless path. The same sequence will preserve the originals when you authorize the full recovery.
The sealed test copy rests beside the dormant shard, intact and independently verifiable. Behind the half-closed shutters, the station remains quiet while the team has a proven recovery method.
✓ Quest Accepted
Secure Vale’s continued access cooperation