The greenhouse stays dim under inactive security lights, ferns shivering from the breached partition. Nahuli edges toward the exit, the coolant shafts ahead and Kaelen somewhere beyond the walls.
A figure steps out from behind the ferns, disheveled and gripping a damaged data-pad. Serafina locks eyes with Nahuli and ignores the Botanist completely.
Serafina
The coolant shafts are rigged. Kaelen has remote-detonation charges in them.
The Botanist
That is not possible. I cleared this deck myself... unless he planted them after the breach.
Serafina lifts the broken pad, its cracked screen stuttering with a distorted shaft map and a red warning band along the lower ducts.
The Botanist swears under her breath, turning from the ferns to the vent access with a new, wary urgency. The exit is still there, but now it looks wired to punish the first wrong move.
+ Scene Quest Added
Bypass the rigged coolant shafts
“use the hacking deck to break the encrypted data drive”
SUCCESS (Good Hacking, rolled +0)
Nahuli snaps his hacking deck into the data-pad’s port and floods the cracked screen with a diagnostic cascade. The encryption shudders, then starts to unravel in bright, surgical bursts.
A hidden partition of the drive unlocks with a soft chirp. Schematics bloom across Nahuli’s scanner, and a second file unfurls underneath, tagged with a maintenance override.
Nahuli
There’s a backdoor, and it’s still live.
Serafina
You got in. What did you find?
The Botanist leans in from the fern line, eyes flicking from Nahuli’s tools to the warning-band overlay. Her hand tightens on the vent grate as if the deck itself might lunge.
The Botanist
If that override works, use it now. I can hold the access panel.
The new file finishes decrypting. It shows the shaft charges on a separate arming loop, with a narrow service pulse hidden inside the coolant control lattice.
“Track every single explosive, and detonate them remotely in a pattern to cause the most collateral damage.”
SUCCESS (Legendary Engineering, rolled -2)
Nahuli commits the override. His scanner floods the coolant lattice with a strobing map of hidden charge nodes, one after another, until every explosive answers back.
He flips the pattern into a remote pulse. The vents shudder in sequence, then the charges fire in a hard, controlled chain that tears open the shaft cover and dumps a storm of frosted vapor into the greenhouse.
Serafina
That did it. Move, before the deck seals itself.
The Botanist jerks away from the grated access, coughing in the cold burst, then grabs for the warped edge as the opening widens under her hands.
The Botanist
The access is clear. Get to the shaft now, before the fallback lock engages.
The maintenance file keeps scrolling on Nahuli’s display, now showing every detonated charge as a blanked-out node in the control lattice. Beyond the shattered cover, the coolant tunnel waits in a white glare.
Serafina
Can you keep the rest of the grid quiet, or do we have to run blind?
Quest Complete
Get to the coolant ventilation shafts
Skill Upgrade: Hacking Good→Great
Quest Complete
Bypass the rigged coolant shafts
Skill Upgrade: Hacking Great→Superb