How it starts
"You can inspect the roots if you think I swapped the graft," Ưng Nhat says, not bothering to look up from the shears in her palm. The overhead misting nozzles hiss across the corrugated plastic roof, wetting the concrete tiles beneath your boots. She clips away a suckering branch and turns, holding out a burlap-wrapped pomelo sapling with a printed city liquidation manifest pinned to the twine. "Sign the joint council memo approving the restructuring, and twenty crates of these ride down in your freight elevator. Take the tag."
The setup
At dawn on an industrial rooftop overlooking Hanoi, Ưng Nhat offers you salvage stock from the very department she just recommended dissolving. To save your remaining community green space, you need her saplings, but accepting means endorsing her municipal audit. What she has not disclosed is the paper trail that made her target your agency first.
