September 2

Pegasus Wing Airport

Neptune Mercure

10:30 AM

I dialed Mr. Morix's phone number as I explored the halls of the abandoned airport. I found myself fanning at the air frequently so I wouldn't have to breathe in as much dust. A few coughs escaped my throat as the phone rang. I prayed to whatever higher power was out there that he picked up.

Pegasus Wing Airport was a strange place to hold hostages. I gave Occisor one point for selecting an exotic location to avoid being capture. It had been abandoned for nearly twenty years after the owner went bankrupt. Somebody had sued when a plane malfunctioned and killed everybody inside, which sent all the company's money down the drain. It cost money to tear the place down though, so it remained standing even now. It seemed like a breeding ground for all the terrifying creatures that lurked in the dark in my eyes.

Buddy had been lucky he knew how to track those sorts of signals. Oh, excuse me, Xwas lucky he could track the signal. I didn't know what I would have done if he hadn't been around. It certainly would have made my job of finding O much harder than it needed to be.

"Hello?" Mr. Morix asked from the other side of the phone. "What's going on? Is the search going well?"

"Something along those lines. We found the building. They're hidden somewhere inside the abandoned Pegasus Wing Airport. I can't say where exactly they are, but if we search for long enough, we're bound to find them. Any ideas on where they might be specifically?" I questioned of him. I was glad he was on my side through this. I got the feeling he didn't like me much for whatever reason, but I didn't bother asking. Right now, what mattered was bringing O home. I didn't want her to be suffering in the grasp of the assassins for any longer than was necessary. If we didn't play our cards right, she could easily be killed, which was the last thing I wanted.

"It looks like they're in a narrow room. I can see the walls through the camera. It's dark and hard to make out, but I feel like one of the smaller sidebar rooms will be the one," Mr. Morix told me. "If there are any planes on the property, you should check those first."

I stared out the nearby window and onto the lot where the planes usually loaded. I smiled when I caught sight of a cluster of planes off in the distance. "There are some here, yes. I'll send my men over to see which one has her in it. Tell me if you figure anything else out."

"She'll be home by the time the day is over, yes?" asked Mr. Morix. I could hear the worry pressing at the edges of his voice. "And she's going to be alive, right? You're sure about this? I need her back as soon as possible."

He was as panicked as I was, which was saying a lot given how freaked out I had been ever since the abduction. I hadn't been able to sleep, but it wasn't like I felt tired to begin with. Adrenaline was keeping me going through all of this. If not for that, I would have passed out on the ground a long time ago. I didn't know how much longer I would be able to last, but I didn't care about it. I could think about that later. Sleep couldn't come in such a dark situation.

"I promise," I assured him. "For now, you need to focus on the trial. I don't want you getting in trouble for having your phone out. I know how harsh Judge Diaphan can be at times."

That seemed to be the wrong thing to say judging by his tone of voice. "Do you know her?"he asked.

I fell silent. I didn't want to explain it to him, nor did I really have the time. I shook my head despite knowing he couldn't see the action. "We can talk about that later. For now, concentrate on the trial. If you learn anything else about where they might be, shoot me a text or call me. I don't care which. We'll have her back to you as soon as possible," I said hurriedly, praying the change of subject would spare me from an interrogation session.

I hung up in a rush before he could ask me anything else. I let out a sigh of relief and glanced around the airport. There were cobwebs everywhere. I was lucky to not be afraid of spiders with how many of them were crawling around on the ground. They weren't particularly large, but I knew of a few people who would freak out upon seeing them.

Well, I knew one person in particular.

My shoulders slumped over as I thought about Chrysalis. I hoped those lawyers had heard the truth about her. I didn't know how they would be able to press on without knowing everything. I hadn't gotten the chance to ask Mr. Morix if he had explained it to them. I was halfway tempted to question him on the matter, but I didn't. I knew there were greater things to focus on at the moment. I could ask him if he told them later.

"Listen up!" I exclaimed. All the police officers in the room looked up. X, who was typing away at his computer on an empty bench, met my eyes for a brief moment before returning to the screen. "Somebody watching the trial says the room Occisor is in is small and narrow. He suggested they might be an airplane. Everybody is instructed to go out to the loading area immediately and search every single plane. While it won't be as effective, we must move as one unit to avoid being taken by surprise and killed. Now, let's move out!"

Everybody followed my instructions with a murmur. The soft din quieted a few moments later. I looked over at X before walking to his side. "How is it going?" I asked.

"I don't think they have anything for me to hack into. On top of that, I doubt I'll be able to figure out exactly where they are. Us getting this far is probably about all I can do," X frowned. I could tell his inability to help further was bothering him, but he didn't comment on the matter.

"I appreciate the help you've given me thus far. I know I wouldn't have gotten here if not for your assistance, X. Thank you for everything," I smiled at him. He gave me a weary glance before continuing to tap at his keyboard swiftly. I didn't have a clue how he could type that fast, but I didn't have time to ask him about it. Instead, I turned on my heel and started to follow the officers working with us out to the loading grounds. It was time to bring this to an end. After all this time, all this suffering, we were going to take care of Occisor once and for all. The thrill rising in my chest refused to be quelled, so I let it take me from one plane to the next as we peered into windows and prayed we found O.

September 2

Courtroom No. 6

Lily Shield

10:35 AM

"Are there any other questions you have for us?" asked Ms. Murdayre from the other end of the TV. I could see she was tapping one finger against her forearm impatiently.

"There is a little more we want to know," Deirdre cut in. I could hear the desperation hiding behind her voice. Ms. Murdayre either didn't notice or simply chose to leave it alone.

"Then get on with it. We have better things to be doing than talking to you," Ms. Murdayre said harshly.

"How did you manage to sneak into Interpol to kill Y?" Deirdre asked. I got the feeling she already knew the answer from the knowledge we had been given by D's testimony the day before, but since the details were unclear, we could use it to postpone Ms. Murdayre's verdict. Even if it just spared us a few minutes, it would be worth it.

"It's rather simple really. After learning what Y looked like through paying agents to tell us, I dressed up as her and managed to get inside. You remember Colin Asasm from a few years back, yes? Well, he told you all he was unemployed, but that was not the case. He's always been working as our resident hacker, breaking into anything we need to get into," Ms. Murdayre began to explain. "He was able to bypass the security system that allowed people into the building and fool it into thinking Y was walking inside since I was dressed up as her. I was forced to do the deed since I looked the most like her, not that I really minded."

"We completely forgot to ask about that yesterday," Yuri murmured. "We didn't think to ask how the fake Y got into Interpol without any issue. I'm glad we asked her about it since we wouldn't have known otherwise."

"He was a hacker all along," I whispered. "I suppose that makes sense. No regular person would be able to break into Interpol no matter how well you knew the coding. You would need somebody who did it for a living or was otherwise incredibly talented. It takes skill to hack into things."

"I can understand why they would need him then... I guess the reason he hasn't shown his face since the case last year is because he's been busy doing hacking work... In fact, I bet he's the one who helped create all those false identities for them," Yuri suggested. "I mean, if he could hack into the right databases, he could insert information that wasn't real. It's like editing an article on Wikipedia, but on a much grander scale... Okay, I admit, that's a bit of a strange comparison, but that's not important right now."

"What has he been doing this past year?" I asked. "Has he been hacking all this time?"

"Yes, as a matter of fact. It is as the little one says. He was the one who set up the false identities with his hacking skills," Ms. Murdayre nodded. "And then, when we needed him most, he was able to break into Interpol and let me inside. He was also the one who turned off the power after I had escaped. The other three members of our little group were waiting outside to help me escape. We had found a large rope ladder I could use to drape over the edge of a building to get away after committing the crime. While I could have used the front door, we didn't know when somebody would be discovering the body of Y, so we went with a safer option."

"And then you took the rope ladder with you so as not to arouse suspicion it was somebody from the outside," Deirdre realized. "You were hoping the police would accuse somebody on the inside of the company so you could get away without an issue."

"Originally, we were supposed to give our confession after the trial had ended, but we got our hands on our prize much sooner than anticipated," Ms. Murdayre continued. "We figured that we might as well go on and brag since we weren't going to need to bother with anything relating to this case once again. Once we had our hands on Oracle, the plan was to kill her and move onto the next thing. We wouldn't need to think about Interpol or any local police ever again."

"It's bold of you to say something like that," Chief Prosecutor Bespoke commented. "You truly are confident in your skills, aren't you?"

"Why wouldn't we be? We had everything we needed at our fingertips. It wouldn't be long before Oracle died and everything went back to the way it once was. We were in the homestretch. We couldn't resist the temptation to taunt the people who had supposedly been helped by Oracle these past two years," Ms. Murdayre told us. "Plus, it meant we could see drama on the news. I suppose you can call that a hobby of ours."

I bit back a remark about how sick they were for the sake of Chrysalis and the other hostages. I took in a deep breath and let it out to quell my anger. "Hm... How exactly did you hack into the security system at the time of the crime? I mean, how did your partner know when to activate the hacking thing that turned everything off?"

"He waited for me to make my escape through the window. There was a slamming sound. I hear that disturbed two witnesses, N and our little O. Once they were out in the hallway, we turned off the power, though we didn't realize we had locked them out of their offices at the time. That was complete coincidence. We figured we could get one of the Interpol agents to take the hit for us. We didn't know which one it would end up being at the time, though we knew the police would suspect somebody inside the building. In the end, that person just so happened to be M, which worked out perfectly for us," grinned Ms. Murdayre. "Not only were we taking care of Oracle, but the head of Interpol was out of the way too. It hadn't been part of the plan, but we weren't objecting. Interpol could be problematic at times, and if they decided to pursue us, we would be in trouble."

I looked to Deirdre with a small frown. I knew she was thinking about how ironic that was. Ms. Murdayre was calling Interpol problematic, saying Occisor would be in trouble if Interpol went after them, completely unaware that X and Neptune were tracking her down as she spoke. I kept my mouth shut. She would realize the irony of her statement soon enough. For now, I could stay quiet and play along with holding off the verdict alongside everybody else in the courtroom.

However, I didn't know where we would go from here. There wasn't much we could ask her about now that we didn't already know about. I had a few questions from two years ago, but I wasn't entirely sure if she would be willing to give an answer to those. I still didn't understand how Occisor had formed or how Pieter Fury tied into everything. Maybe I could kill two birds with one stone and ask them about it, learn the truth behind his relation to them, and hold off the verdict simultaneously. It sounded like a good enough idea to me. It just depended on if she decided to play along.

"I... I have a different question, though it isn't entirely related to the case. I hope that's alright," I said, fiddling with the hem of my dress with a frown.

Ms. Murdayre didn't say anything, but I saw the way one of her eyebrows raised, so I knew she was listening.

"Why did Occisor form in the first place?" I asked. "We know it was about the time of GC-9 that you all got together, but I'm afraid I was never told much aside from that."

Ms. Murdayre seemed to grow tense. She paused for a few moments, as if she didn't know what to say to that. I hoped that she wasn't about to flip out on us and do something to O. That would not have been good. All of Neptune's work would have been for nothing, and on top of that, Mr. Morix would probably lose it.

"Are you going to answer the question?" Judge Diaphan asked, speaking up for the first time in a while. I found myself biting my lip. A remark like that was bound to just make things worse. Was she trying to provoke the dangerous assassin into killing people or something?

Ms. Murdayre eventually shrugged and nodded. "Fine. I'll tell you. We came together a few months before the GC-9 incident two years ago. We were all on the run for various reasons, but we seemed to find solace in one another. I can't tell you much more than that. It could anger the others."

She hesitated and tilted her head to one side, as if she was listening to something off the screen. After it was over, she let out a sigh and spoke once again. "Alright. I'll tell them. Occisor forged between five dangerous people with different skills. We couldn't make it in a world that wanted us gone on our own, so we came together. At first, the engagement was meant to be temporary, but it lasted much longer than we intended. We're still together today, though none of us are quite as active as we were when we first began our work."

"Active? Do you mean that you killed more people than this back in the day?" Chief Prosecutor Bespoke asked in shock.

"As a matter of fact, yes. It was before the GC-9 incident. A few people were getting in our way. They were trying to learn the truth about who we were. They were investigators mostly, trying to figure out what happened to a group of murderers who vanished mysteriously. They died for their attempts so we could stay hidden," Ms. Murdayre explained. "I don't particularly regret it. It was a nice change of pace after not doing much of anything for months. We were able to kill an entire family during those first few months... Well, almost an entire family. That lawyer was too stubborn and refused to be taken into the afterlife no matter what we did to him. He was always irritating."

"Wait a moment... Lawyer?" Yuri asked. "Who is this lawyer you're talking about?"

"I don't know if you'd know him. He hasn't been around in quite some time. Have you heard of Pieter Fury?" Ms. Murdayre questioned.

I heard a gasp escape my lips, though I hadn't consciously made the sound. I glanced to Deirdre and Yuri, both of whom were as surprised as I was. I looked up at Ms. Murdayre on the screen next. I could see O's eyes widen from behind her. She mouthed something to me. Luckily, I was good enough at reading lips to get her message. 'Ask her more.'

I nodded, halfway to myself and halfway to her. We continued staring at each other for a few more seconds, which made me realize how similar she looked to Chrysalis, which made sense given what we had heard. Her eye shape was the same as the girl I had been working alongside for so long. It was a shape similar to Mr. Morix's as well, though the relation was somewhat distant since they weren't full-blooded siblings. I wondered internally, not for the first time and certainly not the last, how it had taken us so long to learn the truth. I hadn't even put it together on my own. That had been Deirdre's doing. I had to be told before I figured it out, and even then, there were still many things I didn't understand and knew I wouldn't comprehend until I heard the full story for Chrysalis herself.

"What happened with Pieter Fury?" I questioned of Ms. Murdayre. "Don't leave out any details. Tell us everything."

"Don't tell me what to do," snapped Ms. Murdayre. "I was planning on telling you anyways. Nobody's seen Pieter Fury in nearly two years now. Why hold back now? There's no point when he can't get mad about it. He's probably dead in a ditch somewhere."

I saw O slouch over slightly, a sheen of hopelessness covering her eyes. Tears began to flow down her cheeks, though she made no sounds, just staring helplessly at me pleadingly. I felt my heart break, but I didn't say anything to keep Ms. Murdayre from growing angry with her.

"Then go right ahead," Chief Prosecutor Bespoke told her. "We won't stop you." I noticed that his hand was clenched tightly, so I wondered if he was trying to learn something from this too. It would make sense given that he had once been a worker in Oracle alongside him before his abrupt disappearance. From the sound of it, nobody who had worked to found the project knew much about him before he encountered his adoptive family. His whereabouts and motivations for where he left for and why he disappeared were unknown as well. Occisor might have been the key to learning at least the first section. Mr. Morix had mentioned that Pieter seemed to know them when GC-9 took place, so it would make sense that they held some knowledge about his origins.

"Pieter Fury had learned about a group of killers who had escaped their trials the course of the few months prior. He grew curious and decided to track them down. He got the help of a few other police officers to find out where they had disappeared to. The police officers wound up being murdered at various points during the hunt for the lost culprits. It was Occisor responsible for their deaths, as I'm sure you simpletons already figured out. We couldn't have anybody realizing where we were or who we once were, so we eliminated them at the soonest opportunity," Ms. Murdayre explained.

"And Pieter was wrapped into your mess from there," Yuri murmured.

"He snooped where he shouldn't have, so he paid the price. He and the rest of his family were kidnapped by the other members of our little party. We killed his family hoping it would get him to talk about what he knew and who else knew it. He feigned ignorance, so we turned to... other methods of getting what we wanted. He knew what would happen, but he pressed on anyways. The fool didn't realize that by keeping quiet, he was giving up everything," Ms. Murdayre continued. "His family perished at our hands for his silence. He was with us for months, but after all that time, he still refused to speak the truth. He managed to slip away from us, but we didn't bother pursuing him. He didn't know what names we were going by these days. We had been careful to keep that information away from him."

"So, while he was with you guys... You tried to torture the information out of him, didn't you?" Chief Prosecutor Bespoke asked with a frown. "You're the reason that he wore that eyepatch all the time. He never told us the reasoning behind it, but it was because of what you all did to him during those months he was your hostage."

I thought back to the one picture of Pieter Fury. In it, he had indeed been wearing an eyepatch. It covered up one of his eyes completely. I figured it was just a stylistic choice, but it seemed as if there was a much darker meaning behind it.

"If you want the specifics, all it took was a small amount of acid. He was lucky it didn't spread to the rest of his face. He barely survived. In fact, if he hadn't escaped a few hours after the fact, he would have died," Ms. Murdayre told us. "We didn't bother going after him, as I already mentioned. He didn't know our names, and if he had managed to hold up an innocent façade for all those months, he probably didn't know anything. Still, I'm glad we did what we did. Nothing can quite beat the thrill that comes with that sort of bloodshed... Judge me all you want, but I'm sure you would feel the same if you had the chance to do what I have done."

I didn't say anything for a few moments after that. I couldn't believe we were finally learning the truth behind Pieter Fury. I hadn't expected to find anything out about him for a long time. I figured we would be in the dark until Chrysalis managed to track him down, but now, even if his location was still unknown, we knew where he had come from. Judging by the torn apart look on O's face, she was thinking of her lost brother. It pulled at my heartstrings more to know that she had been taken on the way to find him. All of this had happened to prevent her from finding her brother wherever he was in Germany.

Now, his sudden departure made a lot more sense. His family had been killed for his research involving Occisor as they tried to make him talk. When he was taken in by Natasha Morix, he feared they would come back and hurt the family that had taken him in when he had nothing. He didn't know Occisor had given up on their pursuit of him. He ran away to keep them safe. Pieter Fury did not go mysteriously missing because he had died or because of the Oracle project. We had been under a false assumption all this time. He left because he was trying to protect those who were still left.

I figured it tied into the murder of Natasha Morix too. She was killed by Occisor, and he knew as much. He thought they were coming back for him and began with his adoptive mother. He stuck around for a brief period, but as soon as the case was deemed unsolved, he packed up his bags and left to keep Mr. Morix, Prosecutor Lin, and Chrysalis safe. Pieter had gone missing to protect Chrysalis from Occisor, and at the same time, Chrysalis was putting herself at risk from Occisor's machinations to make sure he was safe as well.

I looked past Ms. Murdayre and to O. She was eerily silent, staring down at her lap. She wasn't saying anything, but tears were flowing down her face. I assumed she was staying quiet to keep her true name safe as well as to keep from invoking the rage of Occisor. She was in the palm of their hand, so there wasn't exactly much she could do to fight back.

"Where is he now? Do you know what happened to him?" Chief Prosecutor Bespoke asked. "You have to know something. You were the ones who took him and had him for so long."

"Can't say for sure. After he left us, we didn't look into his whereabouts. Like I said, we didn't bother. We figured he wasn't lying to us all this time, and he hadn't told anybody who we really were, or at least who he thought we were," Ms. Murdayre went on. "He could do whatever he wanted for all we cared. It didn't involve us anymore. His actions were his own again. Why spend so much time and effort trying to track somebody down who couldn't hurt you at all? Besides, even if he did know our names, we use fake identities all the time. It wouldn't have done anything. Plus, we left our base of operations as soon as he escaped. He could do nothing to harm us at that point. It wasn't worth it."

"Pieter..." I heard Mr. Morix whisper from above us. I turned around to see him leaning forward in his seat, staring at Ms. Murdayre with sad eyes. I got the feeling he was smart enough to have figured out exactly what I had determined. Tears were glossing over his eyes, but he was otherwise silent aside from the murmur of his younger brother's name. I hadn't ever seen him show any wide range of emotion until the day before, so this was still new for me, but I felt awful about it.

"Pieter is still lost in Germany... I wish we could have gotten more out of her, but we don't have a way of learning the truth from Occisor. They don't know. If years of research from Mr. Morix couldn't find him, I don't know if anything can," Yuri said quietly and hopelessly. I caught onto her sly censorship of Oracle with Mr. Morix's name. I figured Ms. Murdayre wouldn't think anything of it since she probably already knew of their relation. Their hacking expert had probably dug it up at some point.

"Don't talk like that. I'm sure that somebody will be able to find him at some point, and when he does turn up, we can talk to him about everything. He might not be willing to speak with people he doesn't know, but I'm sure Mr. Morix can get him to open up," I told her. "We can't lose hope with him yet. At the very least, we know he's in Germany, and that means he's still alive. We can still hear all that happened to him over the course of the past two years."

Even if our words were quiet, when I looked up to the screen, O seemed to be reacting to them. Her shoulders trembled as she cried. Salty tears dripped onto her shirt, but she didn't seem to care. She didn't even try to struggle against the ropes that held her in place. I wished I could reach through the screen to console her, but I knew that wasn't possible given this situation. I swallowed back my unhappiness and looked around at the others in the courtroom.

Chief Prosecutor Bespoke was glancing up at Mr. Morix again. I heard a buzzing sound, like a phone that was vibrating. I stole a glance at Mr. Morix and saw him taking yet another call. Could it have been Neptune? Had she found Occisor? Was she the one who had called before? I hoped that was the case, as I didn't know how much longer we'd be able to hold off this trial.

This chapter injects the angst directly into your bloodstream

-Digital