Nova had no idea what sat above the Grand Administrator in Original Team's structure, but the title implied a hierarchy — if there was a Manager, logic suggested something above that. A Chairman, perhaps. An Executive Board. Something.
"Are you saying the problem started at headquarters?"
That was exactly the kind of detail Nova had been hoping Taylor would fill in himself. The lie only needed a framework — the target would build the walls.
"Then who are you, and why come all the way to the Desert to find me?"
They were at the core of it now. Nova laid out his prepared story.
"I was an operative under the Grand Administrator's direct chain. One-way contact only — he knew me, but the executives didn't. I handled tasks that needed to be done without any senior faces attached to them. A few days ago, I lost contact with the higher-ups without warning. I only found out what had happened when I saw the news. With the Grand Administrator gone, I couldn't act on my own. I had to find whoever was still standing among the executives in the Norlandia Alliance.
You were the first person I thought of, Boss Taylor. Lune Town sits outside the usual Security Officer coverage — you were the most likely to have stayed clear of all this. I went straight there, but the branch had already been hit. By the time I arrived, there was nothing left."
Taylor's expression shifted. "What?"
"I ran into one of your people afterward — someone who had made it out of the branch before it went down. He only knew you had gone to the Desert. So I came."
Nova paused, then added, "Once I was out here, the Trapinch colonies made it obvious — malicious drugs, all of them. I followed that trail the rest of the way."
Taylor was quiet for a moment. He ran through it again.
A direct operative under the Grand Administrator, kept off the books from the executive level — that would explain the unusually strong Pokémon. Someone in that position would need to be capable. The loyalty angle held up too; if the organisation had collapsed around him, seeking out a surviving executive was the rational move.
What actually gave Taylor pause was the claim about the Lune Town branch.
His supply of malicious drugs had gone quiet over the past several days. The batch meant for this month had not arrived. He had put it down to logistical delays, but if the branch had been raided and dismantled before anyone could get a message out —
That would explain it.
Taylor had set up a private communication route between the Tamar Desert and the Black Rock Desert bordering tamar desert before he began operations out here — a series of small relay stations installed along the route to keep an emergency channel open between him and the branch. If anything significant happened, his most trusted contacts there were supposed to reach him immediately.
The reason he had not simply believed Nova from the start was that channel. Something as major as a Leadership ambush should have triggered it.
But what if the branch had been destroyed before anyone had time to send word?
The people who knew about the relay stations were Taylor's closest inner circle. In any serious raid, those were exactly the people who would have held the line longest — and taken the heaviest losses.
Nova, for his part, was very clear on how that had gone. He had been the one who put those people down. He had collapsed the building himself. Unless Taylor's subordinates had developed abilities well beyond their station, no one was going to be picking up that line.
The sleight of hand Nova had performed was clean: he had tied the credibility of his false identity directly to the fact of the branch's destruction. Taylor had walked into the logical frame without noticing it. In reality, the two things had nothing to do with each other.
Taylor told Nova to follow him. He had not recalled Arbok, which made his level of trust completely clear.
Nova kept Nidoking and Corvisquire out. He was here to deceive and find an opening — putting his team away would have only made things harder for himself.
The two of them walked a short distance in silence, the atmosphere between them holding steady at deeply uncomfortable. They stopped at a stretch of sand that sat noticeably lower than the ground around it.
Taylor called out a second Pokémon.
"Golbat, come out."
Nova ran a quick scan.
Level 44. Still a Golbat.
A Golbat that had not evolved into Crobat at level 44 had only one explanation — it had no meaningful bond with its Trainer. Golbat required genuine friendship to evolve. This one clearly had none. It was barely on speaking terms with the person holding its Poké Ball.
That said a great deal about how Taylor treated his Pokémon.
The Golbat looked worn down. It drifted out of its ball with no energy, hovering beside Taylor with the posture of something that had given up caring. When Taylor gave it an order, it obeyed, but only just.
"Golbat — Hurricane. Clear the sand."
Golbat climbed above the depression and began beating its wings. The wind it produced was unimpressive — barely stronger than what Corvisquire generated with Tailwind, and without any of the direction or intent behind it.
Taylor did not react. To him, Golbat was a tool that could produce wind. If it ever became too much trouble, Arbok could handle the rest, and he would find another Pokémon that knew the move.
Nova filed all of this away quietly.
A Trainer who treated his Pokémon that way would not have a large reliable battling force. Outside of Arbok, Taylor likely had nothing that could actually fight. If it came down to a straight battle, Nova's odds were better than he had initially assumed.
Golbat worked at the sand for a while. The wind was weak, but eventually it shifted enough material to expose a cleared area roughly the size of half a court.
Underneath the sand was a sealed metal hatch.
Nova looked at it and felt something settle in his chest. This was what a cross-border criminal organisation's field base was supposed to look like — sealed, hidden, purpose-built. The cluttered, chaotic branch back in Lune Town had always seemed like the wrong kind of place for serious operations. This was different.
Taylor pulled a remote from his bag and unlocked the hatch. He turned to Nova with a thin expression. "You've come a long way. Go ahead."
"After you, Boss Taylor," Nova said immediately, stepping back. "I couldn't possibly go ahead of an executive."
Taylor gave a short, cold sound and dropped into the hatch first. Nova followed, with Nidoking and Corvisquire behind him. Arbok came in last.
The whole thing had taken both of them an enormous amount of restraint and mutual suspicion to arrange into that order.
Taylor moved through the passage ahead, his expression doing things it had not been doing outside.
Just get inside. Once you're in, we'll see how you plan to get back out.