Questions and lies.

[ACMI: Confusion]

Joule, GV and Saten were teleported back to all the wreckage. As they waited for Anti-skill to get here, Joule paced over to the wreckage from Misaka's attack.

Hesitantly she reached for the salt and went to touch it. When her parasite remained silent, she took some of it into her hand and lifted it up, before letting the grains slide back to the ground.

Why salt?

"Joule?" GV looked over to her "Are you… okay?"

Well, a tough question to answer. Literally and metaphorically. She didn't know how she was, but the matured parasite's effect on her rendered her utterly incapable of communicating all of that.

She was mute. Unable to speak, or even to send him a message saying she was okay with telepathy. Even Lumen couldn't help as she was gone.

It had been a long time since Joule had felt this alone, even when GV and Saten were right here with her.

"Ah." Saten pounded her fist into her palm as if she'd just had an idea "Joule… you're current appearance, wouldn't Anti-skill question you about that?"

They probably would.

Joule's four pupils glowed. The world distorted. Fractured and reformed.

Now to the common eye, Joule looked normal. It was something like a second skin over her real body. It even hid the growths at her neck behind a large scarf that just appeared around her neck.

The scarf was an illusion but against her skin, and against the skin of anyone who might care to check, it felt entirely real.

"Joule…" GV muttered worriedly, but before he said anything else, they all heard the alarms of an Anti-skill vehicle approaching.

As the van arrived and parked, the officers jumped out and looked at the mess and then at the three of them.

"Survivors located!"

They headed over, continuing "Hey you three, are you hurt? Could you tell us what happened here?"

Joule nearly subconsciously dipped into her scarf, letting it cover the lower half of her face while GV and Saten lied.

"It's our fault, partially at least." GV noted before Saten shook her head.

"No, it's mine, you aren't to blame for my choice."

The story they had concocted was something like: "Criminals were holding a hostage and threatening to use explosives, Saten caught one and managed to throw it away, but in doing so destroyed that building."

Of course, there was the problem of how the salt had gotten there, but that was a boon instead of a flaw. The longer they could keep lying, the longer they had to try and figure out if Uiharu was there.

When they arrived, they were taken to three separate questioning rooms.

Joule sat in one and her questioning went a bit differently than the others. First it took a minute or so for Anti-skill to figure out she couldn't talk right now, nor did she know Japanese sign language (She had been learning in her free time, but she was not that good yet).

Apparently the decision to give her paper came when GV suggested it in another room. She took the paper gratefully. Finally she had a way to communicate.

She wrote the story as the others had rehearsed and while her questioner read it aloud (To allow the voice recorder to pick it up, she expected), she tried to use her power.

The AIM jammers were already active and they were giving Joule a slight headache, but her dragon-formed illusions were still functioning. That said, she wasn't sure if she could create any new illusions, or make any use of her other powers either. How to describe it?

Let's say that she had two sides to her powers: Her telepathy and her songs. The AIM jammers were stopping her from using the telepathy, but the dragon had already been doing that. That had made the parasite tighten its grips on her songs and was refusing to use it's powers to help her while in this state.

The questioner asked how she'd lost her voice, as they had records from only a few days ago about her being able to talk. Ah, the others hadn't thought to get that as part of the story.

Outside the room, behind one-way glass, members of Anti-skill were watching the three questioning.

"This is bizarre." one noted.

First was Saten, who was obviously lying. The lie detector was calling out almost everything she was saying as a harmless bluff.

Then there was GV, who was harder to read. The lie detector was still mostly throwing up the fact that he was lying, but not all the time, and they didn't seem to be as harmless as Saten's.

Then there was Joule who due to her non-verbal state had to be read via body language alone and that was playing havoc with the lie detector. It was like she wasn't expressing any emotion at all. The detector seemed half-convinced she was some sort of advanced robot.

"A Level 0 and two level 4s." his partner noted "Are they just pretending to have done it?"

"Every time a hole is picked in their story, they come up with different excuses." The first man noted "They probably just came up with the story together. Are we sure they aren't covering for someone?"

"Not based on the leading questions we asked them."

"The problem is, why?" The first man noted "A level 0 I could see doing this on a bet, maybe she had a late night and was convinced to do this and now can't back out of her story."

"But," His partner drew the conclusion for him "That doesn't explain the level 4s going along with it, or how that one lost her voice."

The interior phone started ringing and the first member picked it up and put it to his ear.

"Umm… the level 0 suspect has changed her story."

Saten had broken first and admitted "Come to think of it, maybe we didn't do anything."

Due to the late night, they were all just told to rest in the detention block for the night, so all of this could be sorted out in the morning.

Just as planned. Well, they had planned to get locked up, not which room specifically. They couldn't go to the protective custody rooms (And thank their luck for that, those would have been way harder to escape) as those were full of drunks, so they were put in the Night Guard's room instead.

None of them had communication devices on them, though Joule had been allowed to keep some paper. GV had also hidden his gun before Anti-skill had even arrived at the battleground.

"Are you okay Joule?" GV asked quickly.

She wrote "I'm fine, still can't talk though, or use my powers. The Jammer didn't help." and showed him.

Her face was still nearly paralysed too, or at least unable to emote. Neither of her friends could therefore read her worry.

Saten shook her head "Anyway, now we're in, what next?"

The three of them quickly worked to set up simple dummies to rest in their beds, made out of spare blankets and pillows. Hopefully anyone who looked in wouldn't notice the fact that two of the other beds had needed to be stripped.

After that, there was really only one way out: through the window. It was barely wide enough for Saten and Joule but GV had problems fitting through. He finally groaned and focused, trying to block out the AIM jammers just enough.

"Sift out the manual calculations," He muttered "do everything reflexively so it can't mess up."

For a fraction of a second he flicked a mental switch and burst into electrons, prevading right through the small opening.

The window was on the ground floor luckily so none of them hurt themselves that badly on the way out. Other than GV.

As he reformed on the other side, Joule noticed something was wrong. His body was covered by tiny wounds across his skin and he seemed stunned.

"GV?" Saten asked

"I'm… okay." he muttered as lightning ran through his body "Galvanic Patch."

It closed most of the wounds but Joule worried for him. If all those wounds had happened internally too, would he suffer brain damage? As he stood up he seemed fine but…

"Come on." He nodded to Joule and Saten "Uiharu will probably be in the girl's detention block, right?"

Saten nodded "Right, but there's a big wall in the way."

Then that would be their next stop.

End of chapter:

A note on AIM jammers: Joule and GV aren't really "Only adepts" anymore. They received ability development and are now Adepts and Espers. The AIM jammers are therefore messing with the bits of their powers which experienced academy city's power curriculum. Their telepathy and electrokinesis respectively. Their Adept powers (Skills) aren't affected but since GV's skills also rely on his electrokinesis, something is still wrong with them.