DENIED: Zarya-9

THE NIGHT SHIFT AT ZARYA-9

Winter 1986, the People's Republic of Belozor. You are the night-shift inspector at a highway checkpoint at the edge of the map. Cars pull up to the barrier. You take their papers, type their plates into the green-phosphor RVM-6 registry terminal, and mark every place where the state's records disagree with what is idling outside your window.

Approve. Deny. Detain. And when the record says the car was scrapped in 1972, when the driver has not blinked in three minutes, when the terminal answers with a Directorate 12 seal: Report, and do not ask questions.

The pay is per car. The heat bill is due. Your family writes every night. The anomalies are getting closer together.

FEATURES

• The terminal is the game. Query plates, read records, and pair every conflict on your checklist: the wrong model, a stolen plate, a forged stamp, a record that should not exist.
  
• Step out into the cold. Leave the booth to read the rear plate, check the cargo, sweep a document with the UV lamp, or photograph what you cannot explain, at twenty below.
  
• A rulebook that grows every day. Each shift opens with a new bulletin. Reading faster, spotting forgeries and knowing when to trust the terminal is the whole difficulty curve.
  
• Ten shifts, ten nights. After each shift, the barracks: pay the bills, read the letter on the table, listen to the radio, sleep. Mistakes cost money and draw the Directorate's attention; there is no game over mid-shift.
  
• Paperwork for the impossible. From Day 5, Directorate 12 makes the anomalies official. Plates that change between looks. A truck whose cargo hums at 47 Hz. Frost on the window spelling the next plate before the car arrives.
  
• Four endings. Obey, expose, flee, or drown. What you approve, what you report and what you keep decides how the last shift ends.

A complete story of about two hours. Keyboard and mouse.