Chapter One: Experience Points the Way
A young man, no more than seventeen, lay inside of a wrought-iron cage, with solid bars about a quarter-inch apart lining it. His skin was a slightly pale shade of tan, proving that, while he typically bronzed himself under the sun, his recent incarceration had caused his complexion to fade back toward its natural state. His head was a mess of untamed, crimson locks that looked as though it had been rolled through every sort of dirt imaginable for months without care. He breathed lightly as he slept, and his chest heaved slowly with each passing second. He was a captive in Team Galactic's headquarters, and sleeping was about the only thing that passed time with any reliable speed.
The young prisoner wore a pitch black jumpsuit, one size too small for his five-foot-seven body. He looked as though he was cursing his captors for giving him the tight and itchy clothing, but it was certainly better than being stripped to nakedness. He had a somewhat thin, yet moderately muscled build that required him to wear a large size in clothing. It was fortunate that many of the Galactic employees shared his clothing size, as the prisoner's garb was nothing more than the Galactic uniform painted a pure ebony and sewn together crudely. Obviously, prisoners received nothing more than hand-me-down clothing, and were lucky to even have that.
The cell containing the youth was about six-foot-two in height, and five-four in length. The width measured an even two feet, and comfortably fit the prisoner inside. It wasn't too comfortable, though, as it housed no furniture, or anything else for that matter. Going to sleep meant doing so on the cold, metallic ground, and often left captives in pain, or halted their rest altogether. It was the barest of lives, and the only food given to the prisoners was a small ration of bread once daily, usually around nine in the evening. Water was given with each food ration, and was put in a small bowl that was only allowed to be used for two minutes. It was then taken away until the next night, when the process repeated itself.
The surroundings weren't any more cheerful than the lifestyle. The basement was dimly lit, and smelled of toxic waste and body odor. Not all of the odor was human, and most of it was considerably vile, though most of the prisoners ended up adjusting to it. It was barely possible to see anything inside unless an employee happened to be down there on a matter of business. The grunts usually carried candles, which didn't help matters much, but the higher officials were allotted lanterns and flashlights, which was a considerable aide to a prisoner's sight. Only the highest of the scientists and leaders had the key to the light switch near the stairwell, and seeing one of them in the filth was rarer than seeing a shiny Pokémon.
A faint light flickered on and off in the dark, dank distance, and the youth stirred softly, finally opening his eyes and stretching his arms. His blue eyes blinked as they adjusted to the waking world, and his arms tensed up as he stretched to ease his muscle aches, groaning with each pop he heard.
"Well, well, well... look who's finally up," a voice suddenly spat through the dankness.
"Huh?" the young man asked hazily. "Are you talking to me?"
"Yes, I am," the reply came back. "So, how long have you been here?"
The teenager looked over in the direction of the strange voice. He shrugged his broad shoulders and replied, "About a week, I'd guess." As he shook his head, his untamed red hair fell backward behind his ears. He stared at the iron bars of his cage and put his head in his hands, looking either exhausted, ashamed, or a combination of the two.
"You'll never make it out," the voice said suddenly in a gruff tone. "I've been here for... well, I believe about twenty-one years. I'd wager my last coin that you've been alive for less time than that. Unfortunately, they took all my coins and bills when they threw me in this stuffy old prison trap. I can't remember what I was even doing here when I got captured. I don't remember my true name anymore. This dank hellhole took all that I held dear, including my memories..."
The redhead looked up and nodded. "Legendaries alive... well, I remember my sister Kyra had called me over here to discuss some monetary problems she'd been having. Then the next thing I remember, I woke up in this cage. My name's Dylan... Dylan Jones." He nodded softly and looked at the ceiling of his makeshift cell. "Speaking of money, you'd win that wager you made. I'm only sixteen years old." He chuckled softly and showed a half-smile. His teeth were barely faded, with a near-perfect alignment. Only the space between his two front teeth seemed to be off.
"Dylan Jones..." The voice was silent for a minute as its owner seemed to be pondering. "You can call me Shade," it finally replied, adding a deep groan in the end. "That's what the guards and scientists seem to call me, at least. I don't know why you're here, but I hope you'll tough out your incarceration. In a cell with nothing to do, I'm surprised I never fell over dead from the pure boredom."
"Shade..." Dylan uttered suddenly.
"Yes?" came the reply.
"Since when did Team Galactic have such an elaborate prison scheme?"
"Hmm... Dylan, I'm not one hundred percent sure," Shade answered hesitantly. "I believe this is an old, underground facility of theirs. Only the high-ranking officials and inmates will ever find out about the history of the dungeon that we're entombed in. When Team Galactic was founded forty years ago, they originally built this place to store highly dangerous experiments and incurably wild Pokémon.
"Ten years later," Shade went on, "most of this large room was destroyed in a fire caused by one of the loosened experiments. History has forgotten who he was before Galactic got their mitts on him; now we only know him as 'Pyrus.' The only prior history of Pyrus that is certain is the fact that he was once a human being.
"His species and all other attributes are a mystery to even Galactic officials. They never kept records of anyone they experimented on, just in case the police ever found their hidden laboratory. After the fire was quelled by alert guards, the surviving experiments and Pokémon were moved to a warehouse about a quarter-mile north of here. In the chaos of the moving day, Pyrus fought his way past the guards and up the stairwell.
"Upon weaving his way to the ground floor, he outfoxed the greatest mind of the Galactic force: Cyrus. Disguising himself as a grunt, he was ordered by Cyrus to leave for the day and get some rest, as 'tomorrow our plan will swing into full force.' He willfully obeyed, and upon his exit of the Galactic hideout, no one ever saw him again... and this basement has since been all but abandoned."
"Wait," Dylan said, a little confused. "How did he escape without someone noticing him being an experiment?"
"No one is completely sure," Shade explained. "It's said that either his disguise was simply incredible, or that Cyrus slipped up really badly. I'm not going to try and doubt Cyrus, so I'll go with the disguise theory. And, technically, the correct term for his experiment type is Pokémorph."
"What's a Pokémorph?"
"A Pokémorph is a being that has the DNA of both a human and Pokémon source. The helices combine in a very complicated fashion, and the outward appearance reflects this unusual union by displaying the traits of both DNA donors. The most complicated one I've heard of involved two Pokémon donors and a single human. This is actually a fairly common method of punishment for non-compliant Galactic employees. In fact, it's estimated that as many as twenty-three percent of the experiments in the warehouse are former Galactic grunts."
"And are we in this warehouse now, or are the prisoners?"
"No, we're in the basement of the official headquarters building, like I said before. Apparently, you and I are a special case to be mocked and ridiculed by all the employees that pass us by. The warehouse was actually recently refurbished, about a month ago, and now houses most of the biological assets of the organization. The prisoners are now said to inhabit a storeroom in Veilstone City, the same city where Cyrus was unceremoniously killed by a wild Ampharos. That's a long, sordid story that I don't even feel like going into right now.
Dylan whistled in awe at all of the information he had just taken in. "So, we're in a former experimental facility?" he asked.
"Yep," came the answer. "Well, yes and no. Some experiments took place here, but this place mostly housed the finished productsof the experiments, not their actual performances."
"That means that I might be exposed to mutated DNA strands at this very moment?"
"Yes," Shade responded with a conceding sigh. "I've never known Team Galactic to wash any of their holding cells, cages, or other equipment in this lower floor. For all we know, your very chemistry might be changing as we speak."
Dylan seemed slightly unnerved at this and settled uneasily into a sitting position, wondering just how much of Shade's story he could trust...