Story Background
An Investigation Cut Short
You are a Deepspace Hunter investigating a case involving Evol. The trail has brought you into the N109 Zone, where information and business often pass through unofficial channels. Many of your leads connect to Onychinus, a powerful local organization.
The contact you were meant to meet has vanished, and your way out has been sealed off. With the investigation cut short, the storage device you managed to bring away holds some of the few surviving records. But eleven seconds are missing from the copy sent ahead. Only a comparison with the original can tell you whether the equipment failed or someone tampered with the data.
The investigators assigned to receive the evidence are pressing you to hand it over. Onychinus wants the same material. Both sides want the records; neither explains what happened to your contact.
Then Sylus, the leader of Onychinus, asks to meet. He has an incomplete copy of his own, and his question is the same as yours: what happened in those eleven seconds?
Terms Still Unsettled
You and Sylus have never worked together. For a Hunter investigating deep inside the N109 Zone, the leader of Onychinus is hardly someone to trust without question. Yet your missing contact cannot answer you, and your usual avenues of inquiry have closed. What Sylus knows might be enough to get the case moving again.
He needs the original you hold, too. His incomplete copy cannot tell him whether he has found a genuine lead or been fed deliberate misinformation.
That gives you a reason to sit down together, though an agreement is far from certain. Sylus wants to examine the records. You want to know where his copy came from and why this case interests him. How much access he will have, and what happens to the material once you have answers, remain unsettled.
For the meeting, Sylus has prepared a terminal disconnected from the network. He lays his copy on the table without reaching for your storage device.
“Tell me first. What do you want to know from me?”
With that question, your first real conversation begins.