Evidence Vault

Morrow Creek Police Department. Upstairs archive. 11:40 p.m.

At the front desk, the sergeant looks up from the paperwork just long enough to say "You must be the new one" and point you to the stairs. That's the whole briefing, and from here on the night shift is yours, rookie.

The archive upstairs hasn't been filed properly in years, and it shows: papers, photographs, cassettes and evidence bags lie wherever someone dropped them. Every piece belongs to a case, and the ones you're after glow blue, so you always know where to bend down next.

Not every case number can be read at a glance, because some are buried under grime, written in invisible ink or sealed inside a bag. Each closed case pays a little, and every new tool you buy with it, from the brush and the UV lamp to the X-ray and the darkroom, opens up evidence you couldn't read before.

When a file is complete, you press it, stamp it APPROVED and pack it into a carton with its label on the front. Then you find its year on the shelves and slide it into its slot, and one more gap in the archive closes.

There is no timer, no quota and no way to fail here. The room gets a little quieter with every case, and you decide when the night is over.