It's nearing sundown when Xeno arrives in the city the next day. Ansel must be getting worried. The streets are unusually still buzzing with activity.

There's a large crowd in the center pavilion, surrounding the City Bulletin. When he approaches, he catches a few tense phrases from the huddling crowd.

An explosion.

All dead.

He sees Madame Larke by the side. She's a small woman, in her late thirties, who he's known since he and Ansel were kids. Her features are sharp, but she always looks at them with an underlying softness in her eyes that it's hard to think of her as anything other than kind. Oftentimes, she drops by their shop to offer them some home-baked bread from her bakery. It's not like they're short on food, but she always insists that it's hard to say no. He catches her eye and sees her excuse herself from her companions.

"Oh, Xeno," she pulls on his arm, dragging him away from the crowd. "I'm so sorry. How are you and your brother doing? I just went to visit, but nobody answered the door."

"What... do you mean? Madame Larke, what happened?" Dread creeps in his veins.

"Oh, dear. You haven't heard?"

"No," he swallows, then asks more urgently, "what happened?"

"The Northern Council just posted an announcement that there was an explosion yesterday. It was... in the research division where your parents work. I heard it was an experiment gone wrong. There were no survivors."

Xeno staggers back, as though he's been physically hit by those words.

"There were no...?" It comes out as a soft whisper no one is meant to hear, but he thinks Madame Larke hears it anyway, from the way she purses her lips and looks away. No one likes to be the bearer of bad news. There's a sudden sharp ringing in his ears.

Xeno shakes her hand off his arm and rushes down the street. He runs home, to where Ansel should be. He'll apologize to Madame Larke another time. Right now, he needs to find his brother.

He bursts through the door. The counter is slightly messy, like someone had left in a haste and forgot to clean up.

He and his brother had decided, a few years back, to convert the first floor of their house into a little shop that specialized in selling Xeno's successful card sigils. At the side, they had a shelf filled with ancient texts about different theories from inventors with brilliant minds yet inadequate resources, and since Xeno has those resources now, he took the liberty of testing them out and making his own personal modifications to it. Xeno quickly scans the first floor. When he sees no sign of his brother, he heads up the stairs to where the bedrooms are. He checks his brother's room.

Empty.

Xeno goes into his parents' bedroom next. He steps inside, eyes wide, when he sees the state it's in. It's a mess. There are papers strewn all over the floor and the mattress had been completely upturned, but the desk is still, suspiciously, untouched. Xeno's brows furrow. It's almost like someone was searching for something...

He tenses up, gooseflesh rising from his skin.

…And hadn't gotten to that part of the room just yet.

A thought clicks in his head. In his haste to find his brother, he completely disregarded the feeling of wrong, wrong, wrong that had entered his mind when he surveyed the first floor. That shelf was not where it was supposed to be. His mind flashes to the scratches on the floor. The decorative vase was gone from the empty space as well. The shelf must have fallen, and someone had tried to make everything look the way it had previously been.

There's a soft creak from the floorboards behind him. He turns sharply, sword drawn. The man he points his sword at immediately raises his arms in surrender.

"Who are you?" Xeno means to ask, but before he even makes it to the end of his question, he feels a sharp pain bloom at the back of his head. He curses. He catches sight of another figure leaning down. He smiles tauntingly and hits him again.

Xeno passes out.

When he regains consciousness, it's with a little twitch in his fingers. Where is he? Where did they take him? He strains his ears, but other than the soft thumps of footsteps from above him, no one seems to be nearby. He opens his eyes, winces at the throbbing at the base of his skull as he sits up. They took away his overcoat, leaving him in his inner clothes. His hands are bound by a tight rope.

He's locked in a small room with a single arc lamp, on the ceiling corner far beyond reach, as his source of light. If he stands on one side, he'll probably make it to the opposite wall with three big steps. There are no windows. The air feels stale and a little damp - he must be somewhere below ground.

Where did they take him?

The door slams open. Looks like his question is about to be answered. "Get up."

The burly looking man approaches. Xeno's first instinct is to reach for his sword, but he doesn't know where they took that, either, so his fingers just twitch uselessly around the scratchy sheets of the hard bed. "Who are you?"

As expected, he gets no answer. The man roughly grabs him around the arm, dragging him out the door. Xeno growls. "Ease up, ratbag. It's not like there's anywhere else I can go right now other than where you're taking me."

The grip on his arm tightens. Xeno thinks that once he lets go, he'll see a hand-shaped bruise on him. Just peachy.

He's led to another enclosed space. The man shoves him inside and shuts the door in his face before Xeno has a chance to spit out any more expletives to his face. He huffs. In the center of the room, there's a long table with hard chairs on opposite sides of it - an interrogation room.

The door opens again. The person who walks through looks like a beanpole compared to the other guy who led him here. His cheeks look sunken, his eyes beady. He's got a menacing aura around him. Though, the effect is slightly dulled by the fact that his oil-slicked hair makes him resemble the likes of a sewer rat. Nevertheless, he looks like the crafty type, someone to beware of, especially as he pins Xeno with those condescending eyes.

"Sit down." His tone brooks no rebuttal, so, for now, Xeno complies.

"Xeno Ayre," the man says once they're both settled. He has his hands clasped on the table. Intimidation tactic. He's got a blue coat settled over his shoulders and an additional silver plated, compass-encrusted pin stuck on his lapel. "Welcome."

"Who are you?"

"Schumann Fink, at your service."

A fitting name for a shrew-like man. "Do the officers of the Northern Council usually kidnap their citizens?"

Shrewman fingers his pin, a seemingly unconscious action. "You exaggerate, Mr. Ayre. Think of yourself as more of an... extended guest."

"Oh?" Xeno's face hardens.

The man continues smiling, unperturbed. "Don't worry. We didn't bring you here to harm you," he pauses, then clears his throat. "I couldn't get away with that even if I tried, so I'll get straight to the point, Mr. Ayre, if you don't mind."

If Shrewman wants to play forced pleasantries, then fine. Xeno bares his teeth in a mocking smile. "Please."

"Your dad's papers, where are they?"

Xeno grinds his teeth. "He works for you, doesn't he? Shouldn't you know?"

"Worked. He's dead now. Your mom too. Finally."

The way he says those dreadful words are so calm that Xeno's temper flares. He drops the smile, not like it looked like much anyway. He spits, "So, what? You killed them for a bunch of stupid papers? You people are that petty?"

"Oh, but didn't you hear the news?" a sinister sneer stretching widely across Shrewman's face. "The research division experienced an accidental explosion. The Council had nothing to do with that."

Xeno sees red. He flips the table over with his bound hands and lunges forward. He'd love to throw a punch, but his hands are tied together, so he settles for wrapping his fingers around his bare neck instead. He'll strangle that smile straight off his face. But, all too quickly, he feels himself getting pulled off. He struggles as they take him out of the room, swears the whole way back to his prison, shouts himself hoarse even when the door is, once again, shut in his face.

~~~

They leave him alone for a couple days, but Xeno is still seething when they take him back to the interrogation room. He feels a sick satisfaction at the bruises he finds on Shrewman's neck.

"Where are the papers?"

Xeno turns his head, ignores the man seated across him.

"Where are the papers." It's less of a question now and more of a statement.

Xeno doesn't breathe a word.

~~~

They're playing a patience game. Xeno knows Shrewman thinks he can outlast him, and loathe he is to admit it, but Shrewman isn't wrong. Xeno has never been considered the most patient man. It doesn't mean he can't try though.

"Where are the papers?"

Xeno has a feeling that today is the day he caves. He's getting ticked off by the endless routine of laying in bed and getting dragged out of his room, only to hear the same questions in the same tone of voice by the same rat-faced disgrace of an official. He's just about ready to rip his hair off.

He doesn't have even any idea what papers they're looking for, nor does he know where they are.

"Where are the papers?"

Xeno tries to calm his rising blood pressure. With how intensely Shrewman is observing him, Xeno knows he catches the steadying breath he's trying to subtly take. "The papers, Mr Ayre. Where are the papers?" he repeats. Xeno doesn't know how it's possible, but his voice grates on his nerves even more today than it did in the past month.

"There was explosion. I assume those papers exploded as well."

Shrewman smirks. Damn it. Xeno hasn't even given them anything to work with, but he feels like he's lost whatever battle this is. Besides being a shrew man, Schumann is, apparently, also a petty man.

"Well, you assume wrong. Your dad was meant to bring them in the day he died, but they didn't. So?"

Jokes on him. Xeno can be petty, too.

"'So?' what?"

"The papers."

Xeno's eyes catch on the clock on the far wall of the room. The loud ticking of the seconds always grates on his nerves whenever he's in here, but now, he just smiles. "Don't you have somewhere to be?"

Shrewman follows his glance, clicks his tongue. Though, the only places he's been are his room and the interrogation room, Xeno is sure the building they keep him in is separate from the main headquarters of the Northern Council. Because his dad is - was - one of their head researchers, they allowed him to keep their mother in one of the spare rooms in their division. The facilities there make for better life support. He and Ansel visit twice a year (see also: the only time they're allowed inside), and the bustle here is nothing compared to what goes on in there, so this place must be one of its sub-branches. And every time Xeno is pulled into this room, he notes that Shrewman's boots are always covered in fresh dirt, like he's come from somewhere else.

The other man takes his leave and snottily moves his long overcoat behind him with a flourish that it swishes when he turns away. Xeno glares in distaste.

~~~

Not for the first time, Xeno wonders where his brother is. Did they get him, too? Did he escape? Where is he? Shrewman never gives him a straight answer, but with the way they're getting at each other's throats now, Xeno thinks he can piss him off enough that he'll slip up.

He's been in the same dingy room for almost a year, and he's been dragged to the interrogation room less and less every day. Just last week, Xeno made Shrewman and his men search for a secret entrance to a basement in his house that doesn't exist. Shrewman should have noticed it's all a made-up farce by now.

"There is no basement."

Xeno agrees easily. "There is none."

He spies the tightly clenched jaw and resists the vindictive urge to grin. "Where did you hide them?"

"Who says I did?"

"I'm done playing games with you, Mr Ayre."

"I already told you I don't know! What? Your boss chew you out or something?"

Xeno catches the way his eye twitches and his fingers curl into a fist. This time, he can't stop his lips turning up into a feral grin. Got you.

"So you do work for someone. Did he call you expendable, too? Hurt you in the feelings, did he?"

"That's none of your concern."

"If it isn't, then why are you in such a rush to pull the truth out of me now? Was it your idea to kidnap me? Did you think I'd be useful? Did it hurt your delicate pride when you found out how utterly wrong you were?"

"Shut up! The only thing you're going to useful for now is as bait for your brother," he hisses. He yells for the guards, and Xeno's not even mad when he stumbles to the floor after being shoved back to his room. He grins.

His brother is safe.