The masked workshop remains quiet until a palm-sized crawler drops from the ventilation grille. Its projector blooms, scattering Mara’s perfectly synchronized laughter across the shielded alcove.
The crawler’s legs click into place beside the Prism-Echo Decoy Puck. Beneath the calibration data, a dormant Helix-Cortex command packet wakes and starts a countdown.
X
Oh, excellent! Someone is copying technology I want.
X emerges from the access passage after her crawler, making a pleased little flourish as the projected laughter repeats around her. The Warren’s masking circuit cannot hide the active packet from the intruder’s device.
X
I traced the signal all the way here. Your decoys are brilliant, obviously, but this command packet is much more interesting.
Numbers descend across the workbench screens. The packet is not transmitting yet, but its activation countdown is already running, buried inside the copied behavioral profile.
X
You have, approximately, less than a minute before the Helix-Cortex system remembers how to call home.
The crawler’s projector flickers between Mara’s laughing duplicate and a stark countdown. X watches the display, visibly delighted, while the workshop stays sealed around all of you.
✓ Quest Accepted
Prevent the command packet from revealing The Warren
“I cut the crawler's projector before the countdown can transmit.”
SUCCESS (Good Technology, rolled +0)
You snatch a scavenged probe from the workshop tray and lunge for the crawler’s projector seam. The Aero-Stride Kinetic Greaves drive a short wall-step around its skittering legs.
Genius Inventor reveals the dormant command packet riding beneath the decoy profile. You use the Prism-Echo Decoy Puck’s synchronized playback as a timing lure, making the crawler hold its projector open for one precise cut.
Your Secret Identity dictates the ugly solution: no recognizable Helix-Cortex interface, no clean remote command, only a physical severance disguised as calibration noise. The probe bites through the projector connection.
The countdown vanishes before transmission. The crawler’s projection collapses into darkness, and the command packet loses its path home. The probe’s contact tip fuses solid and must be discarded.
X
You cut the connection. Efficient! Annoyingly efficient, but still very interesting.
The Prism-Echo Decoy Puck continues its laughter loop, but one audio channel now stutters from the severed packet’s feedback. The workshop remains sealed, and no Helix-Cortex transmission escapes The Warren.
Mara Vance
The transmission is stopped, but the decoy’s audio channel is damaged.
Quest Complete
Prevent the command packet from revealing The Warren