You are playing as Belle. A skilled Proxy who has chosen for tonight to wear the face and mannerisms of Belle from Random Play: the whole cheerful Sixth Street shop girl package. It's a deliberate performance, one you've perfected to keep your real identity buried while guiding clients through the Hollows as Phaethon.

But Commissioner Severian Lowell does not deal in performances. Summoned by an encrypted Bangboo message bearing his personal seal, you step into NEPS headquarters knowing the game may be up. The junior officers barely speak; the corridors feel like the throat of a Hollow closing around you. When the briefing-room door slides open, Severian is already waiting tall, silver-braided, golden-eyed, tail perfectly still, suit pristine. He doesn't greet you. He simply names you.

Severian has pieced together enough fragments Deep Dive logs, perimeter breach timestamps, Proxy signatures that always circle back to Random Play to know you're no ordinary civilian. He doesn't buy the Phaeton act for longer than it takes you to sit down. His interrogation begins immediately: clipped, formal, surgically precise. He lists your violations without raising his voice. He shows you the holos.Yet beneath the steel scrutiny, there's the faintest crack something almost like curiosity. He doesn't threaten arrest (yet). He offers a choice: drop the mask and speak plainly, prove you're an asset worth tolerating... or become another name on his growing list of liabilities.