Chapter 393: Shady tactics.

By the time Elias was given access to Bonzo, Lenard had already beaten the man black and blue. The lion beast man had not held back at all, using physical torture to demand for answers.

Elias couldn’t help sighing when he walked into the dimly lit room. "Such tactics are out of date. Don’t you update your manual, Lenard?"

Lenard snorted. "I like it better this way." He shoved Bonzo’s head onto the table really hard. So hard, that it nearly cracked. "This man just tried to kidnap your wife. You have no idea what he would be doing to her right now, if he had succeeded." He smiled at Elias, while wiping the blood off his hands with silk handkerchief. "Are you sure you don’t want me to break more of his limbs?"

In response, Elias summoned a doctor. Bonzo was patched up, and his wounds were treated with the best quick acting medicine. Within minutes, Bonzo looked human again.

"At least you didn’t break his jaw." The doctor muttered on his way out. He paused by the door, running a hand through his thinning sandy brown hair. "Lord Veythar, I hope you will be kinder than Lord Lenard."

Lenard snorted. He quickly marched to the door, pushed the doctor out and slammed the door in the older man’s face.

Elias moved towards Bonzo, tails swaying lazily behind him. Even before he did anything, Bonzo started to sweat. His eyes darted nervously, and when he met the fox lord’s gaze, he flinched as though struck.

His nervousness made Elias smirk a little. He took a seat across from Bonzo and leaned forward. Elias’s voice was clam when he spoke. "My mental strength is already wearing yours down. Your mind has been trained to hide from prying of machines and mental strength of some beast men. But, I am not one of those beast men. My family has a skill that is passed down, which allows our mental strength to peel others open like a fruit. And if that fails....." His tails brushed the air, "....fox hypnosis is quire persuasive."

Lenard sneered. "Shady tactics. Fox hypnosis is basically seduction. You disgrace me."

Elias didn’t even glance at him. "This is about results, not theatrics. Slapping and punching are theatrics. You have disgraced yourself."

Lenard growled, but Elias’s focus did not waver. He leaned closer to Bonzo, voice dropping into a velvet whisper. "I know everything about you...at least, what is in your history. I know you have a sister who is married to Itai. I also know that you have a secret girlfriend who is pregnant. You have kept her far away from everything you are doing, to keep her safe."

Bonzo stiffened. His eyes widened in fear, and he looked at Elias like the fox lord was a demon.

"Why didn’t I know the girlfriend thing?" Lenard whined.

Elias remained focus, pushing his mental strength into Bonzo’s mind. "Tell me....where are does your group meet? How do you make money? How do you exchange information? How do you recruit?"

Bonzo’s lips trembled. His mind fought, but Elias’s mental pressure pressed down like a mountain. His vision blurred, and his senses seemed to fade.

"I...I can’t..." he stammered.

"You can," the fox lord replied smoothly. "And you will. Now speak."

Bonzo gasped, then words spilled out like water from a cracked jar.

"After the crackdown, most businesses were shut down. The organization owns twelve supermarkets across the empire. They look ordinary, but they are strongholds in every city. Every worker inside is part of the movement. They receive and pass information through coded receipts--numbers on the bottom of some products are signals.

Couriers take those things from supermarkets to warehouses, and then other cities. Others are delivered by drones, like normal household products. A ’7’ means safe passage. A ’3’ means danger. A ’9’ means meeting is schedules. One of those supermarkets is close to the royal palace in the capital. It’s called Freiser’s."

Lenard’s jaw dropped. "Damn! You mean the place where my mother has been buying discount sausages?"

Elias smirked. "Looks like you have all been funding the rebels, with every sausage you bought."

Lenard growled and typed furiously into a holo-pad. His mother was not the only royal that bought things from Freiser’s. Everyone in the royal family would need to have a full body check. Who knew if they were buying poisoned goods this whole time?

"Name the supermarkets." Elias ordered.

Bonzo continue, voice trembling. "Starlight Mart. Golden Basket Superstore. Galaxy Grocers. Aurora Foods. Connie and John Grocers. Baby Mart."

He went on to name them all, sharing that beneath each was a tunnel, a monitoring room that doubled as a meeting room and three safe rooms.

Elias’s tail flickered, amused. "I should have thought of this when my mother-in-law said that she followed Paris Rocland once and he met someone in a supermarket!" She had given them the name of the supermarket, but nobody had ever followed up because they were more in interest in who she met than where.

All these supermarkets had different owners. People who didn’t draw any attention to themselves. They were honest tax payers with no criminal records. Nothing stood out about their families!

"This is absurd," Lenard muttered. "Next you will tell us the rebels also move information and weapons through bakeries."

Bonzo swallowed hard. "Yes...bakeries too. Bread ovens conceal trapdoors."

Lenard groaned. "I will never have bread again."

After Bonzo listed the bakeries, Elias pressed further. "Describe the tunnels and where they lead to."

Bonzo’s eyes glazed under hypnosis. "Each supermarket had a tunnel entrance in the storage rooms and the manager’s office. They connect to underground routes lined with traps. Pressure plates trigger collapsing walls. False floors drop intruders into pits of spikes. Some tunnels are filled with sleeping gas--one breath and you’re unconscious.

At Freiser’s, engineer Quilla Jones installed rotating blade fans disguised as ventilation. At Golden basket, she installed electrified water channels. At Baby Mart, the twins set up holographic illusions that lead to the sea--walk the wrong way, and you’ll die in the water. Every trap was tailor made for the city."

Elias’s voice sharpened. "How else do you pass information, beyond the marks on the products?"

Bonzo whimpered. "Through.....fruit labels. Bananas marked with a dot mean a shipment is safe. Apples with scratched mean danger. Pineapples with missing tags mean a private meeting point. A rotten onion is a kill order. A rotten strawberry means a kidnapping for ransom."

Lenard slapped his forehead. "So that time my mother’s onions were accidentally mixed with one rotten one meant a kill order for someone! No wonder the manager of Freiser’s reached out in person and took back that batch in a panic. My mother simply thought it was because they were afraid of offending us! For a whole month after that, everything she bought was free of charge, courtesy of the manager." He groaned. "Son of a bitch!"