Daily Casefile · Forensic
The Vanishing of Vial Six
≈ 6 min
On a Tuesday in late June, station director Dr. Fiona Bryce reported that specimen vial TP-6 — containing a living nudibranch of a species not recorded in Scottish waters for forty years — had been removed from the cold-storage unit and replaced with a vial of ordinary shore shrimp. A visiting marine courier and a junior field assistant are both under suspicion. Your task is to reconstruct the exact sequence of events leading up to and following the theft, using the forensic record left behind.
The scene
Crannoch Point Marine Research Station, a coastal tide-pool study station perched above a rocky inlet on the Scottish west coast, present day.
The events
- Marine courier Declan Ord arrives and receives a transit docket for a separate sample shipment
- Gale submits a written equipment-fault report for the cold-storage unit's thermostat
- Field assistant Rowan Gale collects specimen TP-6 from Crannoch Inlet
- Dr. Bryce opens the cold-storage unit for the weekly inventory and discovers the substitution
- Dr. Bryce logs TP-6 in the station specimen register and locks it in cold storage
- Vial TP-6 is removed from cold storage and swapped for a shrimp vial
Play today’s Forensic.
This case first aired on July 18, 2026. A fresh forensic runs every morning — same rules, five minutes, one solution.