"He's awake, sir."

"Thank you."

Gavin sweeps into the room like a bad storm, anger flashing like lightning in his eyes. It is not directed at Rowan Wrynn, and it softens ever so slightly as his gaze shifts to the injured recruit. He was off to a rough start in Rocket.

"Chin up, Wrynn, you made it out alive." His lip quirks with sympathy he doesn't otherwise express. "Looking for something?"

Gavin glances about the room as if the gesture might summon the missing phone, then shrugs. "I can offer a burner, if you know his number."

Old Rocket, you wouldn't have dared admit there was someone you cared about. Failure cost more lives than your own. But though Gavin is hardened from the forge of old, he has adopted different methods than his mentors. The phone is extended to Rowan Wrynn; the lock screen boasts a picture of Cavalli's silver Corviknight, which disappears as a thumbprint is registered. "No details."

Should he sneak a glance at Gavin's expression, Rowan would see it darken.

"Yes, he's told me." Mishaps, captures, they came with the territory — didn't mean he had to like it. He pulls no punches in his honesty. "You're in no state to help. You'd only be a liability. Admin Decker has it handled."

Killian Decker is closer to the situation than Gavin would have liked, but he understands. Were it Emma Wolfe in danger, he'd stop at nothing to get her back.

Gavin does, in fact, know a great many people. He thinks nothing of it until the phone is handed back to him and the contact information of Adrian Malcolm lingers.

"Does he know you're in Rocket, Rowan?"

Malcolm may not have crossed the threshold into their organization quite yet, but it wasn't for lack of scouting. He was a powerful trainer with a chip on his shoulder that Gavin hoped to sway to their side before the League got hold of him.

"Because he may just guess."

If not for the heart monitor loudly informing him of Rowan Wrynn's alarm, his expression would suffice. He hadn't dropped in with the intention of alarming the patient, but some things couldn't be helped.

"He does," Gavin confirms. "Will that be a problem?"

He didn't know the conversations they had in private. Perhaps Malcolm loathed Rocket to the core of his very being.

"You could play it off, perhaps, but he knows this is a burner."

Gavin does not understand. He is, above all else, a selfish man. His own needs have always come first. He would be neither alive nor in a position of power under Rocket's reign if it were any other way.

But he listens, at least, and attempts to process.

"He doesn't know my name." Which, as it would turn out, was not true. Gavin exists for now in blissful ignorance. "Only that Rocket are interested in his talent and that we could help each other, if he'd let us."

Rowan Wrynn's next question is loaded. Gavin eyes him carefully. "What do you know?"

He seems miffed; whether at himself or at Adrian Malcolm, Gavin isn't sure.

"It seems you're both keeping secrets."

He can't imagine keeping something so vital from Emma Wolfe, but Rocket had not been a barrier between them. They were both of the old days, even if Emma had left where Gavin had remained, and there had been an understanding in that knowledge.

He moves on, passing over drama between lovers.

"A Ranger with half his face covered, you say." The description is distinct enough that he forms a picture in his mind and resentment in the pit of his stomach. If only he had been wise enough to stay away... "I know him, I believe. Raziel Beckett."

"Good." He leaves it at that.

Gavin's eyes narrow at the mention of shadow Pokémon.

"Did you see any sign of crystal growths on its body?" Necrozma's ilk were unique even among their own kind. It helped to identify the survivors of the Blackout. "You would have seen the phenomenon before, with my own."