The paralysis is hauntingly familiar. It is the same invisible energy that spasmed through her muscles in the Cave of Origin, making them ache and grind defiantly against her demands like the rusted gears of an old machine. It is, quite frankly, terrifying to be mentally awake with no control over yourself.

It is when Cillian Quinn enters that she is finally able to peel her eyelids apart. Her face scrunches, an involuntary swing of her head she can’t control brings it the side. Her mind is slow to put the pieces together. Even when blurred vision makes out the silhouette of the underboss she’s unable to recognize him. He says words but they sound foreign. Lex wants to speak but her tongue feels thick and numb in her mouth, “The wha- ?“ A few rapid beats of her eyelids clears her vision, “Gavin?” Her confused look leaves him to look around the room.

The pieces start to come together.

Cillian Quinn

Alexandra Briarwood looks at him, and Gavin forces himself not to look away.

He will not allow himself to feel empathy. There is nothing but an emptiness that spreads as a void, consumes.

"Don't make me repeat myself."

It was too convenient, he thinks, how she'd been the League's only capture in an operation they'd known too much about.

As the pieces slowly click into place, her eyes grow wild as the paralysis starts to wear off. Her shoulders roll, shifting against the phantom SHADOW HOLD that binds her. He speaks again but her mind is too busy trying to make sense of what is going on.

Gavin hasn’t moved, she can feel his empty glare searing into her. It is met with one bursting with fury.

“What the hell is this?! Let me go!” she struggles against her capture. She’s in no position to make demands but it doesn’t make sense in her mind, not yet.

Cillian Quinn

As she struggles, the SHADOW HOLD tightens. A tendril of void winds around her throat and draws tight enough to choke.

Miasma spills from the palms of his hands, pools at his feet. He breathes it in, feels it hit him like a pulse of adrenaline in his veins. To Alexandra Briarwood, it would feel like nothing at all, save for the physical shadows tying her down.

He doesn't answer. After only a few seconds, he clicks his tongue.

The hold around her throat abates, allowing her another chance to speak.

This isn’t the first time Lex has been shaken down. Normally it started with fists and didn’t end until she submitted. She always knew it was because of her defiance and the hate she held in her heart for her old boss. Gavin doesn’t answer so her mind wanders until the void curls around her neck like an Ekans. Slowly it squeezes. The pressure brings a panic to her eyes. Her mouth opens to gasp for air, but none is allowed to pass. The panic only makes her struggle harder, the SHADOW HOLD’s bond are unforgiving.

A few seconds feel much longer. A sharp gasp returns air to her lungs when the void releases its grip. The shakiness in her breath carries into her voice, “What do you want from me?” There’s still some stubborn defiance that bleeds through her tone and into her glare when it meets Gavin. She can’t help it, it’s part of her. She doesn’t know the question; her brain hadn’t processed it. Hell, she didn’t even know why she was here under such extreme circumstances. She had done nothing wrong. In her mind, she saved a life and prevented the capture of two additional Rockets.

He should be praising her.

Cillian Quinn

"I don't want to be here all day."

There's a bored, distant, wholly unfamiliar cadence to Gavin's voice. Where ordinarily he is stoic, here he is the absence of stoicism — and everything else.

This is how he survives.

"I don't want to make this worse, Alexandra, but know that I can." He paces around her once more, slow, a full circle before he comes to a stop and peers down. Hollow. He repeats himself, slow, with emphasis on every word: "What do they know?"

I don’t want to – no, shouldn’t – be here at all, she thinks to herself as the same defiant glare follows the empty, hollow man as he circles around her like a Mandibuzz. She barely recognized this Cillian Quinn.

The threat is clear, and one she wholly believes. Although she still demands to know why she’s here in the first place, the lingering hold of the void around her neck make her slightly more compliant.

They. She could only assume he means The League, “I-I’m not sure,” she fumbles over her words as her voice finds itself again after the chokehold. She knows he won’t be satisfied with that so she quickly continues to clarify, “I don’t know what they know about me but I didn’t tell em anything about Rocket,” There's more confidence in her tone. Is that what he wanted?

Cillian Quinn

She's right; he's not satisfied with the initial answer, but the hand that lifts as if to command Dhelmise is dropped back to his side when she hastens to clarify.

She sounds confident, but such things can be feigned.

"Did they harm you?"

“No,” the answer is quick, simple, there’s nothing more to say about it. They weren’t ruthless in their tactics. The Ranger may have surrounded her in a bit of fire but it never burned her.

Lex didn’t come out completely unscathed. Her pride took a fucking beating.

Cillian Quinn

"Convenient."

She is quick to answer, and without a considerable amount of venom. But they're far from finished.

"Convenient, as well, that you slipped off by yourself, abandoned your team..."

He trails off, allows the implication to hang.

Lex isn’t very clever, but it doesn’t take a high IQ to pick up on what Gavin is implying. Against her better judgement, the thief’s eyes narrow and voice dips into a defensive growl, “I’m not a fuckin’ traitor,” she was offended it even crossed his mind, very offended, “And fuck you for thinkin it,” Lex’s biggest flaw is letting her emotions get the best of her. The rage she felt from sitting here in Gavin’s office, bound by an invisible force, being falsely accused of conspiring with the enemy may have been her most powerful emotion yet.

Cillian Quinn

Gavin clicks his tongue.

She's choked off partway through her second snarl, the shadow hold tightening at his command. He allows it to suppress her breath for longer, this time — long enough for panic to kick in, before he signals to Dhelmise again.

"Watch your tone." The chokehold retracts.

"Someone leaked information on Sootopolis. Someone tipped off the League."

Cold detachment gives way to genuine, directionless anger. Gavin has begun to pace, exhaling miasma with each breath that slowly fills the room. His silhouette seems to flicker where the fog is most dense.

"Two of our agents attacked, injured, and yet you're taken into their custody without a fight. Tell me, Alexandra, what am I supposed to think?"

Her words are cut short by the vice grip of the SHADOW HOLD. Lex struggles to find her breath, face flushing red as the blood flow is impeded. Panic widens her eyes, she watches Cillian Quinn helplessly as she struggles against her binds so vigorously the chair she sits in hop shifts beneath her.

A loud, sudden gasp is followed by a series of coughs as she catches her breath. What should be fear that consumes her, the rage only flares up. She doesn’t deserve this. Did Killian Decker know anything about it? No, he couldn’t. He wouldn’t allow something like this to happen to her.

“Yeah. I was there,” she growled in a husky voice, raspy from the pain that linger around her neck. She knew they were prepared, outnumbered, and trapped, “The Ranger said something about the cops getting a tip but he was vague about it,” she uselessly explains, recalling her conversation with Razz Kingsman.

“The Ranger had a pokemon. Some sort of Rotom with a dark electricity. Gardevoir teleported to dodge and I got hit with the DARK ELECTROWEB instead,” she repeats what she had written in her report. Obviously, Gavin didn’t believe it, “I saved their fuckin’ lives,” she reminds the Underboss in regards to Rowan Wrynn, especially.

What was he supposed to think? She’d tell him: “You should be thanking me for only one of us getting caught.”

Cillian Quinn