Forty eight hours. That was the amount of time Command had given him. Luce didn't really blame her. She wasn't cutting corners on purpose. Gabriella Dale was a crazy woman who was too good at her job. If she was to uncover all the truths that he and Command had been hiding, the price would be paid by the entire Vigilant Squad Division.

The man they were after was Mist--the one most likely to be the leader of Last Hand. Mist had been an ex-agent of Vigilant Squad. He'd been scouted and enlisted a few years before Luce had joined the Division himself. That must've been nine years ago. Just one year since the war began.

VS Division had the policy of erasing all personal details of a newly recruited agent--including the first and last names. The agent's only identity after that would be the one that the division gives them. They would still be allowed to get married and have family but at work, they are what the division made them.

The record of these details was with the division, of course. But only a few months after Mist was enlisted, the records had been destroyed. All agent data wiped out of existence. And the person responsible for it was Mist himself. Other than extinguishing those records, Mist had also taken the liberty to kill the person who held Command's position back in the day--the only person who could've known Mist's true identity.

With the ex-command dead and all the records gone, Mist had become an urban legend in the division. None of his colleagues had known anything of substance about him. And he'd already covered any tracks that he might've left.

That single incident had sent the government into a frenzy. They'd created the VS Division to replace the police force for maintaining order in the cities (especially the ones that were sectorized). But after the mess that Mist had created, they realized the division wasn't too reliable on its own. The system could be exploited by someone crazy enough to go against an entire government organization. They needed someone to keep the V.S division in check. And thus the Clandestine Division was formed.

Fortunately V.S didn't recruit another lunatic like Mist but the damage that he'd caused them was already quite severe.

Luce had stayed up till two o'clock in the morning laying out his objectives for the next two days to come. He had to keep his investigation laser sharp. Trying to wing this thing wasn't stupid, it was suicidal. He'd made a list of people he was going to question regarding Mist. Some of them had left the country and were untraceable. Others had retired and took a bit of convincing to talk about it.

First on this list was ex agent Douglas Foss (Agent name: Olym). Douglas Foss was a new identify that the Division was responsible to give him on retirement. That was a compensation only for the agents whose records had been wiped by Mist.

Foss had retired five years ago and was currently married and a father to two middle school girls. He worked at a pharmacy and had hung up on Luce the first time he'd told him about himself and the purpose of the call.

Luce had rolled his eyes as he stood in the phone booth a few blocks from his living quarters that had been assigned by the Division. He'd used a phone booth on purpose because he was sure that his house phone was bugged by the Clandestines. And he didn't want to keep any records with the phone company by using his cellphone.

He'd called Foss again. "I swear this won't take more than five minutes," he said as soon as the man picked up the call.

"No."

"It's a matter of national security!"

"And that's not my concern anymore. It stopped being my concern five years ago. Let me live in peace now."

"And I promised you, it won't take more than five minutes. You can hang up the moment the fifth minute ends."

There was a long pause. Luce held his breath. Foss let out a sigh, "Fine, just five minutes. Shoot."

"This is regarding the incident with ex-agent Mist from eight years ago."

Another sigh. "Oh god."

"I'm trying to locate him and I was wondering if you'd be able to help in any way since you both had been recruited at about the same time and worked under the same Command?" Luce said.

"You won't find him like that. If it was that easy the division would've found him long ago."

"Sir, you've only given me five minutes to ask you questions. I'd prefer hard facts over personal opinions. If you don't know an answer to something, you can just say you don't know." Luce checked the time on his wrist watch. He had four minutes and thirty five seconds. "Next question, Is there anything significant that Mist might've told you about his past? Maybe some personal detail."

"No he didn't." Foss sounded exasperated.

"Would you know anyone who might've worked closely with him?"

Foss groaned. "This is bogus!"

"Sir I told you if you don't know something–"

"No, you are the one who needs to know how to carry out an investigation," Foss said. "The questions you are asking might help you catch a cheap embezzler. Not a national criminal."

Luce frowned. But he was listening. Foss kept going.

"We are talking about a man who has become a legend in the V.S squad. He did what everyone thought was impossible and got away with it," Foss said. "If you are serious about catching him, trying to track his personal details is futile. A man like Mist wouldn't have left behind such traces."

Luce found himself agreeing with the retired agent. "Well then...how should I go about it then?"

"You need to figure out the methods of his operations and match them with the period it took place in," Foss said. "That's the formula to tracking down someone as effective as Mist. Once you strike the right combination, you'll find him."

The time and method will give him the identity. That made a lot of sense in theory, not sure if the practice would go as smoothly. But Luce was floored either way. Foss was right, the standard procedure of hunting down fugitives won't work in case of a man like Mist.

"If you don't mind, can I ask you a last question?" Luce said.

"You still have two minutes so, go on."

"Why did you retire, Mr. Foss? Your method could've helped the division tracking down Mist."

Foss belted a dry chuckle on his end. "I lost faith in the administration," he said. "The division is rife with the tedium of law and procedures. All that an agent could do was follow orders of the Command. All that the Command could do was be forever afraid of the Clandestine. A place that is governed by so much fear can't possibly lead to anything good. They make you jump through hoops and pretend like your job is a service to humanity. But it's just a case of who is capable of sleeping at night after seeing the things they see at work."

Luce just stood quietly and listened to Foss's little speech. What Foss was saying could easily get him arrested for sedition. But the man didn't care. Luce respected that.

Thirty five seconds left. Before hanging up, Luce just said, "Thank you for all the help. The information was invaluable."

###

Luce had scrapped his previous method after the phone call with Foss. He'd been relying too much on standard procedure. Relying too much on what he'd learnt at the division. Mist would've especially covered his trail in a way that no one from the V.S would've been able to follow him with the way of working.

So Luce changed tracks. He went to the Great Archive of Ardvenia in Kingsville. The only library in the country that had all detailed accounts of the war.

Luce had to learn more about the war. Especially about the time when it began. That was around the time when Mist was enlisted.

Most V.S agents were ex-servicemen like Luce. Mist had to be one too.

The Great Archive of Ardvenia was four storeys tall and spread in five acres of land. Shiny marble steps led up to a big entrance door made of maplewood and a floor covered in a shag carpet.

Luce approached the librarian's desk that was raised on a tiled platform. The limp in his step made the usual light and heavy thumping sound in the quiet chamber with bookshelves for walls. "Can you guide me to the section that has all the information about the current war. Especially the specific documentaries about the military campaigns carried out by Ardvenia ten years ago?" Luce said.

"Of course. Just let me see your Reader's Card and–"

Luce flipped open the provisional V.S badge that Command had given him just for today. "I don't have much time to spare. This is a matter of national security."

The librarian frowned at the badge and then rang for an assistant who led Luce up a flight of stairs and then down a narrow hallway. Luce was escorted to a single large circular room. A bronze plaque suspended from the ceiling wall read: Accounts of the Decade Long War.

"There are interview compilations of soldiers conducted by esteemed war correspondents. There are detailed documentaries written by retired Generals and Commanders about specific campaigns carried out by the Ardvenian army. Anything and everything you might wanna know, you'll find it here," The assistant said with a flourish of her arm.

Oh boy, Luce thought with a sinking heart, this is gonna take a while huh?

###

Mist had assassinated the Command of his time before he had gone on to destroy the agent records. If the rumors had been true, he'd intercepted Command while they were out with their family. The time when they were most likely to be off their guard.

Without going into the ethics of the method, it was a deceptively simple strategy. You take out the king to make the fort vulnerable. Break the chain of command so the enemy will be too shocked to react. The perfect tactic for chaos. Mist thrived on chaos.

Luce had gone through the summaries of several military campaign documentaries from ten years ago. He'd further narrowed the research material down to the documentaries of the successful yet most chaotic campaigns. The ones that Mist was likely to have been a part of.

He narrowed it down even further by pinpointing the campaigns that had the least civilian casualties. Mist was a national traitor but he wasn't a deranged war criminal.

If anything, he was the complete opposite. He loved the commoners. Luce had seen the records of people who'd carried out the Sector 21 riots. Most of them had been plumbers, engineers, doctors, teachers, mechanics, garbage collectors and so on. None of them had any background in battle.

Mist may not have been a leader of any campaign and not in a position to decide how many civilians died in the siege. But knowing the kind of man he was still helped Luce to sift through campaigns and soldier accounts that involved large civilian death counts.

Luce wasn't sure about his method of research. And he wasn't sure if it was even bringing him any close to finding Mist. Afterall, it was all an elaborate guesswork in the end.

But something in his gut told him he was on the right path. The uncertainty just seemed to come from working in a way quite opposite of standard procedure of investigation. It was almost a bit thrilling.

Four hours of climbing bookshelves and flipping through pages that were turning yellow, Luce finally arrived at a list of fifteen names.

They were all names of captains and squad leaders that Mist might've taken orders from in the field. Next he'd asked the librarian for the latest phone directory and looked for the names from his list. He could only find the phone numbers to nine out of fifteen names.

He hoped one of the other six wasn't someone connected to Mist. He jotted the nine phone numbers in his notebook and rushed out of the library with his funny sounding limp.

He made his way to the nearest phone booth and hoped for the best.

###

Luce's phone calls had helped him out a lot more than he'd expected. He'd called all the captains and squad leaders and asked them if any of their subordinates had been scouted by the VS division and turned into agents?

Only three of these captains had answered with a yes. He then asked these three if any of these scouted subordinates fit the description of the people-loving chaos-freak that was Mist. Two of them had answered with a no.

The last one didn't give him a yes or no. The last captain, Clark Jones gave him a name instead. Ylsa Shrike.

"Ylsa was a captain that no one really remembers because she wasn't really a captain when she went to the field," Jones said. "Her own captain handed her the duty and authority of the captain in the middle of the siege while he died in combat. The man you described might've been on her squad. Their siege had been carried out by just seven soldiers, including Ylsa. They'd taken over an entire city with almost no civilian deaths."

Luce felt a swell of hope. "Where can I find Ylsa Shrike?"

"Due to a severe injury, she was given an honorable discharge. Last I heard from her, she was living in Grifftown with her family."

Luce had thanked Jones and hung up. Grifftown was a neighboring city; about six hundred kilometers from Kingsville. The train would take him there in about four hours.

But the trains would be overbooked. Thanks to Eli Hodges' rally that was just a few days away. Luce rushed to rent a car and hoped the highways wouldn't be jammed for the same reason.

As he floored the gas pedal, driving down the highway he felt an odd mix of anxiety and excitement. It had been eight hours since he'd begun his investigation of Mist this morning. He had forty more hours in hand before he could actually get to the man himself.

Just hang in there, Command, Luce thought, I'm very close to the objective. I can feel it. We can still save the Division.