Three days later, Tracy returns to Marin’s office in Barony Chita. The keep is warm, quiet, and sealed tight against the wind. Thomas stands by the door, jaw set, while Marin waits over a spread of manifests and copied symbols.
Marin Tohinta
We have a pattern now. The runners were not freelancers. They were guided, paid, and fed routes from inside the Barony.
The door opens a crack. A hooded figure slips in, pale with fear, hands shaking under a dust-stained coat. He keeps his face down as if the walls might report him.
The Informant
I know who sent them. Not the whole chain, just the hand above it. They meet near the salt works, and they speak about the machine like it is a rank, not a thing.
Tracy
The salt works is the link again.
Marin’s eyes harden. Thomas shifts to cover the door, one hand near his weapon. The Informant swallows and pushes a damp scrap of paper across the desk, marked with a meeting time and a Baronial seal cut in half.
Marin Tohinta
If the seal is real, then this reaches into my own administration. Tracy, this either exposes the mind machine's handlers, or it exposes a rival trying to weaponize our fear.
✓ Quest Accepted
Secure the informant’s lead on the runners’ masters
“I reach out to scan the informant's mind for any hidden traps or lingering commands.”
SUCCESS (Legendary Willpower, rolled +0)
Tracy lets her attention sink past the room and into the Informant's fear. The scrap in his hand is clean of tricks, but his mind carries a thin, ugly aftertaste, a coercive nudge meant to make him forget one name if he ever spoke it aloud.
Tracy
There is a hidden command here, and it is still active.
She follows the pressure thread by thread, and it leads to a trusted voice, a handler who never touches the runners directly.
The Informant
No, not him. Not again.
The command unspools under Tracy's touch. The fear stays, but the planted obedience goes slack, stripped bare enough to read.
Marin Tohinta
Well?
What remains is a name wrapped in salt dust and old authority, the man who sent the runners and kept them leashed from inside the Barony.
Quest Complete
Secure the informant’s lead on the runners’ masters
Quest Complete
Reveal who sent the corridor runners
New Gift: Psychic Interrogation