"Looks like it's time for us to move. The main event starts very soon," Taylor announced, checking his watch with a practiced flick of his wrist.
"I won't be joining you at the museum," Vane replied coldly, his fingers flying across his console as he punched coordinates into the portable teleporter device. "I have other matters to attend to."
Taylor frowned, his hand pausing. "You're going after Darian? Are you serious, Vane? We can easily break him out later, once we've secured the relic."
Vane stopped typing and looked up, his expression fiercely intense. "For your information, the probability of freeing Darian right now is significantly higher than us successfully securing the Nexus Sapphire at that chaotic exhibition. Besides, even if I fail, the risks won't be nearly as catastrophic as engaging in a multi-faction bloodbath at the museum. I've already fought one of their vanguard wardens, Taylor! I know what we're up against."
"It seems our paths diverge here, then," Taylor replied evenly. He fished a wrapped lollipop from his jacket pocket and casually tore it open.
Popping the candy into his mouth, he cast a cold, departing glance over his shoulder. "Do whatever you want. It's an exercise in futility anyway."
Without another word, Taylor and the remaining strike team stepped into the teleporter matrix, vanishing in a flash of light toward the museum coordinates.
Left alone in the dim hideout, Vane immediately focused on tracing the Investigation Division's localized network.
*"Where is their stronghold? Where are they keeping Darian? Is that facility heavily fortified right now, or did they completely empty it for the exhibition?"* he muttered to himself.
He booted up his master console and initiated a brutal brute-force bypass, attempting to harvest surveillance feeds from the city's central mainframe.
*"Let's see what kind of firewall architecture this city is running. I need to map out their core protocol to prepare my payload."*
Preemptively masking his trail, Vane cloned his entire local drive, transferring every byte of his classified project data onto a secure physical flash drive. The moment the transfer completed, he executed a hard wipe, purging his computer's local memory down to the root directory.
"Alright. That should insulate me from a counter-trace."
With his machine running on a clean slate, he re-established his backdoor exploit into the municipal CCTV network, pulling historical footage from the cameras wrapping the museum perimeter. A specific timeline immediately caught his eye.
"Two targets on foot... sprinting toward the museum between 10:00 and 11:00 AM."
He switched feeds, pulling up a high-definition angle from the public park. The footage confirmed his suspicions: the duo had breached the museum perimeter during a standard lockdown window meant for exhibition staging.
Vane scrubbed the timeline forward, jumping to 1:30 PM. Another anomaly appeared on screen.
A few minutes later, one of the targets emerged from the structure, deploying a Metagross to initiate a high-speed exit. Shortly after, two additional high-value targets casually walked out of the main lobby.
Leaning closer to the glowing monitor, Vane routed his tracker through adjacent traffic cameras, tailing the two departing figures as they navigated toward the city's western overpass. He chained his exploits from camera to camera, maintaining visual custody until the targets finally disappeared inside a non-descript commercial building.
"Target acquired," Vane muttered, a sharp, triumphant grin breaking across his face.
"Their stronghold is anchored right next to the bridge."
He cross-referenced the coordinates on a digital grid map. "Sector 24, Ariestal District." He located the building instantly, but as he analyzed the live packet stream, a jarring discrepancy caught his eye.
He looped back to re-verify his historical CCTV data, only to find that the streaming packets were looping in an identical, perfectly mirrored pattern. A cold sweat broke on his forehead. The realization hit him like a physical blow: *he had been countered.*
"How is this possible?! Who intercepted my stream? How did they slip past my active masking?" Vane hissed, frantically throwing commands into the terminal to isolate his network from the intruder. But before he could sever the handshake, a terminal prompt forced its way onto his display.
*"What kind of payload is this? A script? A logic bomb? No... they wouldn't waste time staging a virus if they already had total root access,"* his mind raced, trying to predict the nature of the mysterious breach.
Steeling his resolve, he opened the text file. The message read:
[ Hey there, genius. Did you honestly think bypassing municipal-grade encryption would be that easy? Did you think this city was completely devoid of an active defensive grid? I don't know where you learned your script-kiddie routines, but you're a special kind of stupid if you thought these city feeds were just sitting open for the taking. Oh, by the way—nice data partition. I took a full copy of your computer's local files before you wiped it. Thanks for the intel! ]
Vane stared at the screen, his fingers curling into tight fists. It wasn't an external hacker; it was an autonomous, specialized counter-intrusion protocol embedded directly into the city's defensive architecture.
"Who engineered this nightmare of a system?!" Vane snarled, slamming his fist onto the desk. But he quickly checked his pocket, his anger melting back into a smug grin as his fingers brushed the physical flash drive. "Lucky for me, I anticipated an automated counter-measure like this."
He unclipped a premium capsule from his belt. "Alright, Reuniclus. It looks like we're doing this the old-fashioned way."
"Reuni... clus!" the Multiplying Pokémon cried out, its gelatinous green body glowing as it materialized beside him.
Meanwhile, inside the silent archives of the Investigation Division's stronghold, Aron was sorting through classified operational logs when his Rotom Dex abruptly began to blare a high-priority alert.
"Seriously? Who is pinging me at an hour like this?"
He swiped the screen, his eyes widening as he read the security log. The network defensive grid had just flagged a severe, localized breach attempt on the city's central surveillance matrix.
*"Who executed this exploit?"* Aron thought, bolting out of the archives and racing back to his master workstation. He opened his diagnostics, but his local terminal was completely blank; no telemetry data was being pulled into his interface.
*"Whoever did this is a veteran professional. They bypassed the standard security tripwires entirely,"* Aron analyzed, his brow furrowing as he stared at the clean logs.
*"Or... they're completely paranoid, utilizing high-level black-box protocols to hide their signatures."*
He leaned back in his leather chair, letting his head rest against the headrest as he narrowed down the suspects. *"Who has the motive for a city-wide sweep right now?
Team Epitaph? Highly unlikely; they have no operational need for it. Black Lotus? They couldn't care less about infrastructure, and this doesn't serve their agenda. That leaves the New World Association..."*
Recognizing a dead end, he opened a secure mail client. *"I might need to leverage Miranda's database for this."* He quickly typed out a short message:
> To: P. Miranda
> Subject: NWA Query
> [ Requesting immediate clearance for any intelligence files you have regarding active New World Association cells in this sector. ]
>
Across town, the notification popped up on Professor Miranda's terminal. She skimmed it and immediately fired back a reply:
> From: P. Miranda
> [ Negative. My database is clean on that front. You know the drill, Aron—the New World Association isn't a unified entity. They're fractured into dozens of volatile splinter factions. Good luck tracking which one is currently in town. ]
>
Aron read the message and tapped his desk, his mind working through the tactical puzzle. A sudden realization sparked. He opened his terminal and typed a final reply:
> [ Never mind, Professor. I just figured out another way to get our answers. ]
>
Inside her laboratory, Miranda stared at the screen, thoroughly bewildered by the abrupt shift. *"If you already had a way to find out, why did you bother asking me in the first place?"* she grumbled internally.
Aron stood up, signaling to his partner. "Let's go, Smeargle."
"Smeargle!" the Pokémon chirped, following closely behind as Aron navigated through the lower levels of the base, halting outside a heavy, reinforced containment cell. Inside, Darian was lying completely motionless on a steel cot, trapped in a profound, artificial slumber induced by Ren's Esper *Mind Prison*.
Aron pulled out his Pokédex and dialed Ren's encrypted frequency.
Out at the crowded museum gates, Ren felt his Rotom Dex vibrate against his belt. Seeing Aron's ID flash on the screen, he answered with a soft groan. "Aron, seriously? We've only been gone for a few minutes."
"Ren, I need you to release Darian from your Mind Prison immediately," Aron commanded, his voice dead serious.
Ren's expression tightened on the other end. "Are you crazy? You want to wake him up right now? Is this really Aron talking?"
"I'm completely serious. A new variable just introduced itself, and I need to extract additional operational intelligence from him right now," Aron explained, effortlessly dragging Darian's limp, sleeping form off the cot and hauling him toward the adjoining interrogation room.
"Fine. Disengaging the anchor now," Ren conceded.
Deep within the shifting, illusory corridors of the Mind Prison, Darian's astral form suddenly dissolved into a haze of light. Fye Ling, who was stationed as the internal warden within the psychic space, gasped, adjusting her glasses in utter disbelief. "Wait—what just happened? How did he break containment?!"
Before she could process the escape, Darian's consciousness violently snapped back to the physical world. He awoke with a start, gasping for air as his eyes adjusted to his surroundings. He wasn't in his cell anymore; he was bolted to a chair inside a stark, soundproof interrogation room.
The overhead floodlights flickered to life, casting a blinding, sterile white glow across the table. Sitting directly across from him was Aron, his eyes cold, calculating, and utterly unyielding.
"You're probably wondering why you're back in this chair after we already ran you through the standard protocols earlier," Aron said, his voice cutting through the silent room like a blade. "To put it simply: the situation changed, and I need a few more pieces of your puzzle."
Darian stared at him, the color slowly draining from his face as he realized his nightmare was far from over.