Axel Silverfield
Phoenix Battalion
Castelia City, Unova
Affected RPers: N/A

As it was all happening, Axel was running out of time, and with panic in every direction, he was not finding the assailant even though he was certain he had found the exact spot where he had told the lie. However, if he couldn't find the lying assailant, there was another possible route he could take...

Find the one he lied to.

"You gotta tell me what's going on, pal!" Roland told Axel, trying to squirm out of the angel's grasp. "What are you looking for?"

And yet Axel remained silent. There was so much going on at once. However, after looking in the immediate area, he found a granok wearing the navy blue and black shoulder-padded uniform of a metro security guard. He was the closest one to the site where the assailant had told the lie, and if he couldn't find the assailant on his own, he had to rely on the granok's memory, as he was likely the first one the assailant would have approached for directions. It was the only chance he had left.

"You there!" Axel shouted to him to get his attention.

The heavy-built granok with his ashen, stone face, was trying to keep the civilians calm by giving guidance and directions, turned to see Axel, wondering what was going on now.

"Tell me," Axel quickly spoke to the security guard, "did a mechari just ask you for the fastest way out of the city? It had to have happened only a minute and a thirty-nine seconds ago. We think he was one of the assailants who set the bomb."

The granok was taken back at precision of the mentioned time, but with so much going on around him, it was easy to direct and forget, especially with every civilian needing help and moving in wayward directions. Even know, he was beginning to panic.

Axel bit his lip, and decided he needed another way to do this. His objectives were riding on this one last trick, and if it didn't work, the assailant was as good as gone. Holding up his hand, Axel casted a Recall spell to peer into the granok's memories, and thankfully, with the event being so recent, he wouldn't even have to search that far back. As Axel's hand glowed a strange mixture of blue and white, suddenly he could see things from the granok's point of view, and hear the things that were told to him only seconds ago.

Everything was a blur as Axel searched back in time, and the situation was still panic, disorientation, and disarray in the metro for the past minute and a half as every now and then, someone would approach him, asking for help or a situation. But then when he got to the exact point the lie was told, everything revealed itself.

A mechari with a broad, gray and red chassis and a metallic, viper-shaped face had confronted him. Once Axel had seen that face, it was burned into his mind. And then, the mechari's words were unmistakable in a demanding, forceful tone of voice.

"I need help!" the mechari demanded. "What's the fastest way out of the city!? Are there any lines still open!?"

"Terminal 17 goes to straight to Slateport, it's to the left," the granok told him as he quickly turned back toward directing the other civilians.

Terminal 17. Slateport.

He now had the terminal the attacker was heading toward and the destination. He now knew what the assailant even looked like as well. With everything he needed to find him, track him down, and arrest him, all he needed was to hurry.

Quickly responding, Axel rushed into metallic-walled Terminal 17, trying to push his way through the crowd heading down the stone stairs before it was too late. If the assailant made it to Slateport, the situation for processing a criminal suspect would become much more of a complication on foreign grounds out of the jurisdiction of the High Magi Council. The last thing he wanted to have to do was coordinate and communicate operations and objectives with a foreign law enforcement. It was the kind of thing that would waste time while the Oppressors were plotting another attack.

Using the face of the assailant, he tried to use a Recognition spell to figure out where the assailant was by using his face as the reference point of the spell. As Axel pushed on with his eyes glowing a pale grey as a result of the spell, the spell gave him the message.

He was within fifty feet of the metro portal... and closing.

And then, as if he had some bit of luck, there had been a clearing, allowing Axel to take flight and soar over most of the panicked crowd on the ground, trying to get their bearings. It was then that Axel had seen the back of the head of the assailant himself, within less than a dozen feet of the portal.

And that was when something struck Axel in the back of the head, and he was out like a light.

* * *

"I think he's waking up."

Axel felt his cheek pressed against something cold, firm, and metallic. When he looked up, he realized he was in a small room with the walls being cinderblocks. His aching head had been placed on a metal table, and when he finally took in his surroundings, he realized he had his hands locked behind the rusting, metallic chair he was sitting on by means of a thick, metallic shackle. It all seemed very plain to him, but it alluded to something completely different.

Across the other side of the table was another mechari, only this one was different. Her chassis was slender and made of light gray and lavender colors while her metallic chrome face was shaped like two lightning bolts meeting together halfway. Her eyes glowed a hellish red as she looked into his own.

"Tell us what you know about Project Double Five," she demanded in a cold, harsh tone.

"What...?" Axel asked, never hearing of that before. "I don't know what you're talking about."

It was then that another mechari standing behind him, a much larger one, had used his dark, gray metallic hand and slammed Axel's face down on the metal table, causing a massive surge of hot, biting pain to suddenly flare up in Axel's face. Axel gagged and growled as a result of the sudden shock and alarm, but there wasn't much he could do about it. She obviously wasn't the only mechari in the room, and even though he couldn't see the one that had slammed his head down on the table, Axel could tell he was quite strong.

"I'll ask you again," the female mechari told him. "Double Five. Who's your contact?"

"Go to hell," Axel spat at her.

Once again, Axel's face was slammed down hard on the table, and his whole face felt like it was in fire for a few seconds. And then, everything just ached. It was crystal clear he was getting nowhere with this.

"We can keep doing this until the big guy just snaps the whole damn thing off," she told him. "Tell. me. what. you. know."

"Esser..." Axel muttered with hesitation. "James... Esser. He was the one who briefed us on Double Five."

"Us?" she asked, wanting to know more about the other contacts. "Who else was involved?"

"Only two others," Axel continued. "Stan Rellis, codename Urchin and Nathan Holmes, codename Red Sunday."

The more it went on, the angrier the female mechari seemed to become. This was something she hadn't expected to hear, and now it was making her angry.

"Where the hell are they now?" she demanded.

"Urchin was instructed to assimilate an IT specialist within X-Fenix," Axel replied. "He was to monitor the central Maginet core to flag down any mentions or terminology links to Double Five and use the Step Ahead algorithm to forecast where the contact would be based on location of the contact and what resources they had based on the location. If they had a local network address, he would track it and give us the intel."

"What about Red Sunday?" she scowled, getting angrier.

"Shadow ops," Axel told her. "He was working on something called Second Wind, but I was never informed about it by Esser or who Red Sunday's handler would be during the operation. They had us working in different swimlanes with limited contact access."

The female mechari looked down, tried to collect her thoughts, and then just shook her head.

"Get him out of here and stuff him in a jail cell," she demanded. "I've got to figure out how to clean up Exodus's god-forsaken mess. Don't kill him just yet, we might need him for later."

As the large, heavy-built mechari unbound Axel and kept a firm grip on the angel, Axel wasn't sure how he was going to get out of this dark place, whatever it was, but there was one comfort he had.

Everything he had said for the past ten minutes during the interrogation had been a complete, utter lie.