The Body-Salvage Rumor

The confrontation left a trail the festival could not explain away.

Around the Reborn, rumors gathered with the shape of an investigation: Boost symptoms, salvaged body parts, and a necro-black market operating close enough to the New Centrum's public announcement to make the timing feel ugly. Someone might be paying with more than coin. Someone might be treating bodies as currency, inventory, or repair stock.

The Reborn's anger made more sense in that shadow.

If damaged resurrection, Boost instability, and body salvage were part of the same hidden economy, then the campus spectacle was not only covering political ambition. It was covering supply chains. Labs. Records. Cold storage. Decisions made in rooms where people became components.

The leads pointed toward the Phoenix Lab.

Restricted logbooks. Hidden refrigerated evidence. Astrid's excluded expertise. Beeper's possible report the next day. Every thread suggested the New Centrum's first public act had already produced its first buried scandal.

The party did not have to pursue it immediately for the hook to matter.

The road was opening in more than one direction: one path toward official QUEST assignments, another into the lab infrastructure underneath the celebration. Both belonged to Act 5.

One promised duty.

The other promised answers.