From a prompt thrown at me during the Castle Fanfic Stream Con

Hidden In An App

The original idea was to get out and buy a house AI, a hypertech gadget that could interface with any smart object in the house through the internet connection and control them, with a voice interface that would act as a person without a body. L.U.C.Y. that was the name, was programmed to learn from conversations with the owner and provide quick replies, like an evolved SIRI that could do way more than provide an address or type a text message as you spoke, often messing up the words with funny results.

One afternoon, after hours spent sulking in his underwear in front of his computer screen, typing lines and lines of crap out of anger, he had showered, dressed and walked out of the loft, heading for the only place in New York that sold that kind of gadget, only to find out that the home AI he wanted to purchase had recently gone sold out and new units wouldn't be delivered to the shop until after Easter next year, as the manufacturer had issues keeping up with the orders.

With a long, defeated sigh, Castle walked out of the shop and headed back to the subway, until he felt his phone vibrate in his pocket, against his hand. He pulled it out and saw an email from the shop. It was proposing a beta-testing deal for an app that would be launched next year and needed thorough testing before release. He would receive the code to download the application, still in its alpha state of programming and he had to use it as much as he could, reporting bugs, issues and crashes through the debug option. Easy as taking a walk to the park.

Bored out of his mind, Castle typed back that he'd gladly join the list of testers and pushed the phone back in his pocket, reprising his walk to the subway station.

It wasn't until a few weeks later that he finally heard back about that testing project he had signed up for. He got another email from the developer of said app with some of the details. He knew them, they had developed one of the first widely spread augmented reality game for phones, he had even enjoyed it too for a while, before time became increasingly scarce and he had found himself deleting it because he wouldn't use it anymore.

According to the email, the dynamics were the same, an augmented reality application that required to walk around and do things when they popped up on the screen. Following the link he downloaded the app and much to his glee, the app involved catching Pokemon.

As he created an account and read through the instructions, Castle found himself lost in his memories of the mid to late nineties, when Alexis was still a child and they would enjoy the Pokemon cartoons on TV and play the games on their Gameboys. He even recalled that afternoon they had spent trying to capture Mew with the infamous glitch in Pokemon Red, when Alexis had prophesied something like the new app, which was supposedly called Pokemon Go.

Good memories, they were.

So he started testing. When he wasn't at the precinct trying to win his wife back or at the PI office bothering Alexis and Hayley as they tried to work, he walked around town as long as the battery lasted - not long, since that thing was an energy sucker - or the iPhone overheated - that was another major issue he had quickly reported - and caught Pokemons, reported bugs, then caught more Pokemons and reported more bugs and crashes.

He actually reported more bugs and experienced more crashes than caught Pokemons. Not being able to play with another real person but only against the CPU was getting boring quickly, also he kept catching Pidgeys and Rattatas, the two basic Pokemons that mimicked the fauna of a big city like New York. He tried walking in different areas, even took the subway to the opposite side of Manhattan, hoping he would find different little monsters to catch, but except some random Jygglipuffs and one Bulbasaur he caught in Central Park, he kept catching the same Pokemons. He only got different Pokemons from the hatching eggs, when the GPS tracker decided to work and actually picked up each meter he worked, and not pick one meter every ten. Hatching ten kilometers eggs was a nightmare. Yes, to was working wonders for his shape, in a month of daily testing he had already lost a few pounds but hey, a working game would be even more exciting to play!

One night, when he found himself unable to fall asleep after a long case and the dreadful knowledge their bed would be half empty one more night, he put on some clothes and went out with his phone, a newly charged battery pack in his pocket and little else than his ID and some money, in case he got hungry and wanted a snack along the way. He headed north and looked for more Pokemons, though the boredom had seeped into that activity too. He kept going only because the trial period was nearly over and he thought the idea was nice and the more the developer had to work on, the better the app would be when it would come out.

He walked past the 12th Precinct and further, almost blindly, stopping only to perform some action inside the game. The phone was warm in his palm and he was quite engrossed in the game, as the day-night cycle brought out different Pokemons - not that many, but it was nice to see a Haunter or a Ghastly among the Pidgeys - so he was getting more loot than the average, when he found himself in front of an ex strip club that once flourished but that had closed down years before. From what he knew, there had been plans to turn it into a club, but no one ever bought it and it remained there, closed and desolated.

He turned to the phone when a strong vibration signalled there was a Pokemon in the area, but in the corner of his vision he saw something he knew.

Kate's Crown Vic from the precinct. He double checked the plate and it was hers. What the hell was she doing in that part of town?

Then he saw a flicker of light in the former stripclub. Someone was in there. What? Was that the place she spent all her nights, when she didn't crash on the couch in her office?

He dared to walk to the front door and pushed on it. It was open.

Grunting, he put his phone away and felt it almost burning in the pocket of his jeans so warm it was, and walked in, trying to be as quiet as he could. A not so easy feat, given his notorious clumsiness.

There was indeed someone inside, the heating was turned on - October had been slightly chillier than the usual that year - and he could hear the typical buzz of numerous computers running at the same time, but most of all he heard two agitated voices having an argument. One of those two voices was his wife's.

"No, I'm not filing for divorce!" she almost shouted to the unknown second person. "I've fought enough to be with him, I won't file for divorce!"

"But Kate…" It was Vikram, the new IT tech of the precinct. "If you really want to protect him you have to make them believe you and Castle are not working together, they know you two always work in tandem, you never work separated!"

"Well I've given up on living with him, on being with him, I don't feel like his wife anymore, what more do I have to do?" she sounded completely exasperated, like she was about to give up on something more. What were they doing holed up down there? "We were talking about children Vikram, and now look at me!"

"Kate, we're working on dismantling a rogue CIA group that's threatening the national security, don't you think this is worth a little sacrifice?"

"Not if that sacrifice consists in hurting him! I've hurt him enough in the past seven years, but I'm not going to hurt him more than this. Have you seen him? It breaks my heart every time he walks in my office! I second guess this damn decision I took every fucking day and now you want me to file for divorce? No. Not a chance Vikram. It's my way or no way, these people might be a threat to national security but I'm not putting my marriage on the line more than it already is. I'm not filing for divorce and push more in that direction and I swear to God I'll drop everything and go back home."

From his dark listening spot, Castle shivered hearing those words. Now things made some sense.

"You can't be serious Kate, your friends back at Washington were killed because of these guys and you want to give up?"

"Yes, if it means going back home with my husband and have a family again! And now if you'll excuse me, I need some fresh air."

He heard her high heels clicking on the linoleum floor as she approached the door and he scrambled out of the door, but before he could disappear down the street, she had spotted him. "Castle?" she called. "What the hell are you doing here?"

With a sigh, he turned towards her and shrugged his shoulders. "Would you believe me if I told you I was beta testing an app?"

She sighed herself and smiled. "Knowing you, yes, I would believe you, but what kind of app makes you wander around this part of town at this hour?"

He picked his phone from the pocket and unlocked the screen, before showing it to her. "No way!" she gasped in disbelief. "They're making an augmented reality Pokemon game? Wow!"

"I'm kind of surprised you know what a Pokemon is."

"Hey, I went in high school in the nineties, of course I know what a Pokemon is! Damn, I spent more than one night trying to capture Mew using the famous glitch!"

He chuckled. "Alexis and I did the same."

Silence fell between them, as she toyed with the app on his phone. "Wow, you've got a lot of Pidgeys!"

"They spawn like crazy. I caught a Cubone on the way here thought."

"Those were cute, I remember them. But how does it work? You walk around and Pokemons pop up on screen?"

He nodded. "That's the idea, but the GPS doesn't work properly and some dynamics are still broken. That's why they're doing the beta testing before release."

"Hope you're having fun with it."

"Yeah well… sort of. It gets dull quite easily, unfortunately. But I have to say that I found something better than entertainment, hidden in that app."

Kate smiled, briefly. "Really? What would it be?"

"I think I found my wife."

It felt like a heavy weight had been pulled off his shoulders and his chest, and for the first time in more than a month.

"I guess you heard us arguing then."

He nodded. "Yes, I did. And I have to say that if I had heard those words the night you left, it wouldn't have hurt so much. I would have understood why, at least."

She took a deep breath and out of the blue, kissed him. It was brief and short-lived, but it was something. "You're right. I'm a mess and I always fuck up everything. Listen, it's late, I'm tired and I'm about to strangle Vikram with one of his ethernet cables. Why don't we meet tomorrow for breakfast, so I can explain better? At this point, you already know we're up to something, why not tell you the whole story?"

"Even if it would put us both in danger?"

She laughed, loud. An argentine laughter that warmed his heart. "Castle, really, you've been poking and prodding for weeks, one day or another I would have caved. Really, if tomorrow you'll ask me to drop it and come back home, I would."

"You know I would never ask you to give up on something, don't you?"

"Yes, I do, but… this is big Castle, bigger than anything we have faced up to now."

He gently pulled his phone from her hands, put it back in his pocket and placed his hands on her shoulders. "Kate, we have faced a lot together and I bet we can face this one too. We just need to find a way, as we always do. Come on, go inside and catch some sleep, we'll talk tomorrow."

"You sure?"

He nodded. "I'm sure. We haven't been very reasonable in the last few weeks, it's time we grow up a bit and act like adults, even if I was out playing Pokemon when I found you. Sleep well, Kate."

"You too, Rick. I love you."

He smiled. "I know."

Mark, you asked, I delivered. Hope you enjoyed it with all the typos I must have missed while editing.