  Hot gas around a supermassive black hole (SMBH) should be captured within the
gravitational "sphere of influence", characterized by the Bondi radius. Deep
Chandra observations have spatially resolved the Bondi radii of at least five
nearby SMBHs. Contrary to earlier hot accretion models that predicted a steep
temperature increase within the Bondi radius, none of the resolved temperature
profiles exhibit such an increase. The temperature inside the Bondi radius
appears to be complex, indicative of a multi-temperature phase of hot gas with
a cooler component at about 0.2-0.3 keV. The density profiles within the Bondi
regions are shallow, suggesting the presence of strong outflows. These findings
might be explained by recent realistic numerical simulations that suggest that
large-scale accretion inside the Bondi radius can be chaotic, with cooler gas
raining down in some directions and hotter gas outflowing in others. With an
angular resolution similar to Chandra and a significantly larger collecting
area, AXIS will collect enough photons to map the emerging accretion flow
within and around the "sphere of influence" of a sample of active galactic
nuclei (AGNs). AXIS will reveal transitions in the inflow that ultimately fuels
the AGN, as well as outflows that provide feedback to the environment.
