6

Your feet clatter loudly on the steps as you sprint down, the sounds of commotion and alarm pressing hard on you from behind. You emerge in a narrow, steel-walled corridor and immediately spot what you are seeking: a battered iron door, solid and forbidding, helpfully labeled Laderaum. The cargo hold.

You shoulder the door open and look around. The hold is a cavernous space, but it seems to carry no cargo except for a single large packing crate in the center of the room. The lack of cover means you can see all around. Nobody else seems to be within. You know the stolen artifacts must be in that crate.

You step forward into the hold, and then you hear it: a tread, immediately behind you. Someone must have been waiting for you, pressed up against the wall beside the door. You try to spin around and face them but have no time. A heavy, searingly painful blow crashes into the back of your skull, and everything immediately goes black.

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