Content warnings for depression, hallucination, (remembered, undescribed) self-harm, and other bad mental health things, some strong language, some violence. If anything else comes up, it will be warned for before the chapter in question.

01: A REQUIEM FOR PAST SELVES

You could say it starts with divine revelation. It would certainly make a good story if that was true, and like all good stories, the best part is that it actually almost is. You could also say that it started with bureaucracy, and although this is less interesting it does have the advantage of being much more definitely true.

So let's start with that: paperwork and terror, the two pillars of the civil service. Here she is, alone at her desk in the middle of the night. The only one awake in the house. Secretive. Afraid.

Her pen hovers over the form. Technically, this is fraud. Probably. But nobody's going to know, right? And isn't it worth it, considering?

She doesn't quite have the nerve to do it just now, so she skips that part and goes on to the next. Address: that's much easier, there's no question about that. 146 City Road, Pewter, Lanmering Riding, Kanto, 88-7N-09. Okay. What's next? Age. Also simple: 19. Old enough that the next section of the form doesn't apply to her; it's intended for parents and guardians filling this out for their kids. (The reminder that she is nine years late to the party grates. But she will be okay.) So she can skip that and go ahead to – oh god, it's the financial stuff. Is she eligible for any of the following grants or bursaries? Eligibility can be checked online on the League website. She's already been there and looked around, but unfortunately she's too old for most of them. There's one, though. A Recognition of Material Disadvantage Grant, which despite the pompous and somewhat alienating name does probably apply to her: she's over sixteen, she can demonstrably not afford a trainer journey, she never had one when she was younger. She ticks the box and turns the page.

If yes, please fill out a BN6 form, copies of which are available at your local Gym or League office, or digitally via the League website. "I have filled out and attached the relevant form": she looks in her desk to make sure she still has it, nods nervously to herself, and checks the box.

That's all this is, she tells herself. It's checking boxes. It's telling them what they want to hear. Proof of residence – okay, that's going to be tricky. That will contradict what she wants to put in that first box. Everything that ties her to this place has someone else's name on it. She thinks about it for a second, then opens up the Kanto government website, ancient laptop whirring noisily with the strain, and finds the form she's after. The thing is, that requires a witness, and she isn't sure she knows anyone sufficiently authoritative who she can trust with that. But if she could find someone, she could attach a scan of her passport, and then a copy of this form, too, and then none of this would be fraud and everything would, somehow, work.

She feels her heart beating very fast and hard, like a fist pummelling the wall of her chest. Is she ready for this?

No. She isn't. But she's going to have to do this sometime, isn't she, so she might as well get it over with.

She saves the form to a suitably obscure folder to print later, then erases her web history (just in case) and closes her browser. Breathe. Okay? Okay. She turns her attention back to the form.

Her eye goes back up to that first entry, right at the top of page one. Two words, block capitals.

FULL NAME.

Slowly, deliberately, marvelling at her own courage, she writes it out:

ARTEMIS APANCHOMENE.

And that is where it really begins. With an absurd name stolen from someone else's history, written almost-fraudulently across the top of an application for an Indigo Plateau League trainer card. If you're going to rename yourself, you might as well go all in, right? She could be a Katherine or a Niamh, an Abigail or a Tessa, even if she dared (which she doesn't) an Avani or Shreya or Radhika – but what the hell. She's not going to get this chance again. No reason not to shoot for the moon. In this case, literally.

Artemis thinks about this as she rides the bus down to the Pewter Gym. She got the letter yesterday, after months of exasperating correspondence while League clerks demanded more forms and more clarification. By this point, there are probably enough copies of her deed poll floating around the Indigo Plateau offices to wallpaper the Champion's room. Still, she got the letter, Dear Ms Apanchomene, we are pleased to inform you that your application has been successful and all that, and now she's on her way down to the Gym to pick up the promised card. She could have had it delivered, but she's getting tired of waiting nervously by the door to snatch up letters addressed to MS ARTEMIS APANCHOMENE before her parents see the unfamiliar name and start wondering. Besides, she needs to speak to the officials at the Gym anyway. She's going to need a pokémon, after all, and right now she's not really equipped to get one herself.

She supposes she could ask her parents. They are technically part of this too; this is after the arguments, the lines drawn in the sand, the compromises and conditions. But they don't really like it. They think it's too late really, that she missed her chance the first time around and now honestly she probably shouldn't be wandering the country on her own anyway. Besides, aren't you lucky to be able to handle school, given your (ahem) condition? You really shouldn't pass this opportunity up.

So no, she won't ask them. She's done the negotiating, she's got her compromise, but she won't involve them any more than she has to. They don't want to be involved, and honestly that's not even such a bad thing. She's doing all this with her new name, after all. The one they don't even know she has.

Artemis holds onto the strap as the bus sways around a corner and tries not to think about any of it. The future is right there in front of her, gigantic and utterly inscrutable. Once she has that card, she'll have the last thing she needs to throw herself into it. And after that, she's on her own.

She swallows. It's the kind of decision that looks bigger and nastier the closer you get, like a mountain range that's fuzzy in the distance and jagged as hell up close. But she's committed now. The change of name is legal; she's already registered it with the bank and the university. In the end, sick with nerves, she approached her friend Chelle's mother, who is mostly oblivious to her daughter's friends but very kind, and after a brief and difficult explanation of the situation asked if she would witness the deed poll for her. It was far and away the most awkward conversation she's ever had, but it got results. And now it's official. Her name is Artemis, and sooner or later she'll have to stop lying about it, and so, well, here she is. No turning back.

A lot of planning has gone into this. A lot of work, a lot of sleepless nights, a lot of money. Artemis clings onto the strap and hopes that it turns out to be worth it.

The Gym is a long, graceful building in the heart of downtown Pewter, with several other less attractive buildings clinging onto its sides like barnacles on the flanks of a whale. It looks old, and it looks busy. Artemis sees trainers (all younger than her) and a startling variety of pokémon: bellsprout stomping flat-footed on forked roots and pidgey fluttering and cooing, sure, but also a lanky Mr Mime that moves like a broken puppet and a polished-looking scizor nearly as tall as she is. Its pincers look like they could shear through solid concrete.

She takes a breath. Okay? Okay. Let's go.

Inside, the Gym looks less old than dated; the ugly stone cladding is probably meant to indicate that you can expect rock-type battles, but really it just gives the impression of having last been redecorated in 1976. Still, it's not exactly driving people away. The lobby is heaving, full of noise and strange pokémon smells, and Artemis has to wait in line for several nerve-wracking minutes before she gets to speak to the receptionist.

"Hi," she says uncertainly. "I'm … here to pick up my trainer card?"

"Sure," replies the receptionist. He is very polite. He doesn't stare too much, even though Artemis has come today as herself, not who she pretends to be at home. "What's your name, please?"

"Artemis Apanchomene." It's the first time she's introduced herself with this name, and it's exciting and also kind of terrifying, but she's practised saying it and doesn't stutter at all. The receptionist searches his computer, then his files, and comes up with a document. He asks her date of birth and address, and then, satisfied she isn't an imposter (more satisfied, in fact, than Artemis is herself), hands her a rectangle of laminated plastic.

"Here you go," he says, smiling. "It's official. You're a trainer."

Artemis smiles back, despite herself. It is official. She is a trainer. She has the card right here in her hand and okay, it's not the most flattering photo but who cares, right? It's here. This is happening.

"Yeah," she says, and then remembers herself. "Well – not quite. There's one more thing …"

The receptionist nods understandingly.

"You don't have a pokémon?"

"Yeah. Kinda hard to be a trainer without that, you know?"

"Yep, it really is. Okay, well, we don't have any at the moment – they always find partners fast – but we offer sessions with our Gym trainers where they take you out to catch one. Is that something you'd be interested in?"

"Uh, yes please."

"Great. The next appointment I've got is Saturday at two pm. That okay with you?"

Artemis starts.

"So soon?"

"I've got later ones if that doesn't work – Tuesday at eleven or four, Friday at―"

"No! No, no, that's fine." Artemis tries a smile. God. What is she afraid of? This is what she's been working towards, right? A trainer card, a pokémon. A ticket out of Pewter and the life she has here. "I just, um, I just thought you'd be all booked up for ages."

The receptionist nods understandingly.

"You'd be surprised," he says. "Lots of people already have pokémon. Their parents help them get one or whatever." He looks a little nervous there, maybe wondering why she who is so obviously not a child is here at all, but he covers it well. "Anyway, uh – Saturday at two, then?"

"Yeah. That's great, thanks."

Artemis leaves, thankful to get out of the crowded lobby and into the cool spring air of the street, and tries to wrap her head around what she's just done. The card, she thinks: let's take that first. It's here, in her hand. ARTEMIS APANCHOMENE, 11/11/1998, 146 CITY ROAD, PEWTER. Photo and everything. Now, any time she likes within the next four months, she can let the League know she's going, and ten days later the money will be in her account.

Or to put it another way, sometime within the next four months, she has to do this.

She swallows, and gets on her bus. It's okay. She's got four days till Saturday, anyway. Enough time to think it over, and chicken out if she wants to. Not that she can. She won't get a second chance with the trainer journey thing, not with the League and not with her parents, and besides she has to leave, she has to. Leaving is scary, but staying is worse. Staying is only putting off the moment when everything comes to a head, and she's forced to go whether she likes it or not. Better to exit on her own terms.

Artemis looks at her shiny new trainer card, now a little less shiny with handling but still hugely, unnervingly new, and then she puts it away in her pocket. She's only got a few minutes till her stop. It's probably time she started preparing.

The days go both faster and slower than she was hoping for. On the one hand – heading out into the world to catch herself a pokémon? Hell yeah. Isn't that what everyone wants as a kid? It's definitely what she wanted, but things didn't work out that way. First there was the illness, then the recovery, and then just when her parents' grip on her started to slacken a little they found her scars, and then there was no chance they'd let her travel Kanto on her own. And okay, they might have had a point there; she really was in a bad way back then, she can't deny it. Now at last she has the chance again, and it's going to be amazing.

But on the other hand – when she does this, she really has committed. To Artemis, to her new face, to a life that she knows she can never bring home. Once she catches that pokémon, it's time to get going, and that's where all those plans start turning into actions. And that's a change, a positive change maybe but also a big one, and Artemis would be lying if she said she wasn't afraid of that.

She isn't even sure how she's going to handle this. Is she going to tell them? Probably not. They won't believe her. That's the thing about her: nobody ever has to believe anything she says, if they don't want to. Because she's just imagining things, right? Like she always does.

She used to think that too. She fought this for so damn long, trying to convince herself that this like so much else was just in her head – but in the end, isn't this kind of thing always in your head? Who gets to decide whether someone's a girl or not, anyway? Surely only the person involved. So, to hell with it. She's a girl. Nobody will believe her, but she is.

Next question: what is she going to do about it?

And this is her answer. Get out of town, cut some ties, and decide what the hell comes next.

It's not much of a plan, but it's escape, for a year at least. And Artemis really, really needs to escape.

The stress takes its toll. She has at least one bad night, although nobody gets hurt and she sees nothing that she shouldn't. Artemis takes her meds, grounds herself as best she can, and sticks to her guns. Saturday is the day. Nothing's going to change that now.

She spends most of her time in her room, reading articles about training online. Soon enough she'll have a whole country to wander; for now, she restricts herself to roaming digitally, devouring everything she can find about the nuts and bolts of pokémon training. She learns that flying-types don't just dodge ground attacks because they're in the air, but because they have an elemental resistance: don't waste your time trying to snipe with mud shots, even if you think a missile of packed dirt might logically smack that fearow out of the sky. She learns that geodude are are capable of short bursts of speed if they hoist themselves up on the palms of their hands and use their arms as legs. She learns that certain ghost- and psychic-type moves like psyshock cause shrapnel or ripples on the psychic plane that spread through the minds of nearby observers, and that those with mental illnesses should be wary of getting too close to the point of impact.

Everything she reads, she remembers. It's easy if you have the knack for it, and Artemis always has done. Now she needs that skill more than ever: she has to make this work. Otherwise, well. This won't be much of an escape, will it?

When Saturday does come, it almost sneaks up on her, somewhere in the midst of the hours lost down online rabbit holes. She makes tea for everyone in the morning, as the old routine of the house dictates, and when she brings the cups to her parents she is reminded that today's the day.

"It's not too late to back out," her dad tells her. "You know that right, ――?"

He says her old name but she carefully doesn't hear it.

"Okay, dad," she says. "I'm not doing that, but, um, thanks for the reminder I guess?"

He raises his eyebrows at her. Paternal. Slightly condescending.

"You're sure you want to go through with this?" he persists.

"We've been over this," she says. "I'm going."

And she does. At one pm she leaves the house; at one twenty she's at her friend's house, where she changes clothes and faces ("Thanks, Chelle, I owe you"; "'S nothing, Artie, good luck!"); and then, at two, she presents herself and her less-shiny, still-new trainer card at the Gym.

"Hi," says the receptionist. "It's … Artemis, right?"

"Yeah," she replies, surprised. She supposes she's probably quite memorable, although for all the wrong reasons. "Yeah, that's me."

"Here to catch your first pokémon?"

"Yep."

"Okay, let me see … sure. Take a seat, and I'll send Jerry over to get you."

"Okay," says Artemis, suddenly feeling weak with nerves. "Okay, um … thanks."

The receptionist sees her fear and does his best to smile encouragingly.

"No need to worry," he says. "You'll do great."

She manages a smile in return. It's not a very convincing smile, but hopefully he gets the idea.

"Thanks," she says. "I appreciate it."

The Gym is not so busy today. A few trainers, no pokémon extraordinary enough to really draw her attention; one kid has one of those mossy geodude that can learn the odd grass move, but they're not exactly rare. Artemis picks up a magazine from the table and begins to leaf through it, looking at glossy photographs of trainers and pokémon. She can't quite concentrate on any of the text right now – too nervous, or too excited, or both – but the act of turning the pages helps to settle her a little.

"Artemis?"

She looks up from her magazine to see a boy a depressing number of years her junior standing next to her. He can't be a day older than fifteen, and this is the guy who's going to be showing her the ropes. Great.

He also looks nervous. Artemis supposes she'd better get used to that. She's tall and bulky in the kind of way that argues strength, and her hair is all wrong for a girl; she's going to end up unsettling some people. It's okay, she tells herself, although of course it isn't really. She's big enough to intimidate, and that will help protect her. As if that were all that mattered.

"Yeah," she says. "That's me."

"I'm Jerry. This is Leroy." He indicates the rhyhorn at his side, a big, squat creature that looks almost flattened by the weight of its stone armour. "We'll be helping you catch your pokémon."

"Okay, cool." Artemis stands up, and immediately both she and Jerry become extraordinarily aware of her height. It's quite something. Even her family was surprised, when it first became clear she was just going to keep right on growing: neither of her parents are more than average height, although her grandfather Nikhil is supposed to have been something of a giant. "Um," she says, trying not to stoop. "So … where are we going?"

"Uh, yeah, okay," replies Jerry, trying in return not to stare. "We'll be going out to the woods. Viridian Forest, you know, it's gonna be full of trainers this time of year, so we'll be heading out west instead. There are some good spots round there where we can usually find something."

He recalls Leroy – too heavy for the bus, he explains – and leads Artemis out of the Gym and along to the bus stop, a few dozen yards down the street.

"What kind of something?" asks Artemis, doing her best to keep the conversation going. This is clearly a question that Jerry is more familiar with.

"Well, it all depends," he says. "There'll probably be some rattata and pidgey out there, but honestly we don't normally recommend them as a starter – too nervous, so they're kinda difficult to manage if you've never worked with pokémon before. What we'll be looking for are things like mossy geodude, blackwing spearow, nidoran – basically stuff in the sweet spot between 'strong enough to kick your ass' and 'too weak to battle'."

It's not very funny, but Artemis laughs anyway, out of a sense of duty. Jerry's trying, damn it. She should too.

"Okay," she says. "Sorry, you probably get that question every time."

Jerry smiles.

"No, it's fine. I mean, it would be weirder if you didn't ask. Everyone wants to know."

They get on the bus, and Jerry holds out a hand to stop her paying.

"Hang on," he says. "I got this." He touches a card in a clear plastic wallet to the reader, and the driver waves them through. "League privileges," he tells Artemis, as they take their seats. "It charges it to the Gym's account."

"Is that okay? I mean, I'm not League―"

"But you are working with us today." Jerry shrugs. "Brock's rules. He doesn't think it's fair if you have to pay to come get your first pokémon."

Artemis can see a little bit of the kid in him there, peeping out from behind the Gym trainer persona. He swells a little as he speaks, proud to be associated with one of Kanto's top trainers. She almost smiles, only she doesn't want him to think she's mocking him.

"Right," she says. "That's nice of him."

"He's pretty great," agrees Jerry eagerly. "You'll see when you battle him."

"That's … probably not gonna be for a while yet. I don't think I'll be ready for a Gym challenge any time soon."

"Well, y'know. Fortune favours the bold and stuff."

Artemis thinks that that's kind of a silly maxim, correlation and causation being what they are, but she doesn't say anything. Jerry is being nice. He doesn't have to be. No one does.

"Maybe," she says, and lets the thread of the conversation fall.

Outside, the buildings move at an angle; they are coming down the hill on which the Gym is built now, turning west along Longdean Street, past the old video store and the bowling alley. Artemis hasn't been to this part of town in years; she's moderately surprised to see the video store's sign is still up and the FOR SALE notice still in the darkened window. She would have thought something else would have moved in there by now.

Pewter in the summer. Traffic, heat, sunlight turning the backs of streetlamps and the metal fittings of windows into lines of white fire. Someone walking an ivysaur that's got all lively with the heat and light and keeps running ahead of them down the street, constantly on the verge of knocking something or someone over.

This weather should hold. Artemis has checked the forecasts, and it's going to be one of those summers. A good time to find her feet and get used to travelling, before the cold of winter starts to set in.

It's starting, she realises. This is it. This is day one. By the time she gets back home, she's going to have a pokémon.

She watches the street, the cars and cyclists and windows glinting in the light, and feels a slow smile creeping across her face.

It's starting. And she's beginning to feel like she might be ready for it.

Here is the compromise she has worked out with her parents: she can go, if she can (a) fund it herself, and (b) secure herself a place at university for the following year. (A) was tricky, but the League grant sorted it out; the regulations are set up so that people in Artemis' position get the chance to go without depending on parental funding. She's heard that this is down to the Elite Four's Agatha, who's supposed to have started her career going up against a similar kind of parental reluctance as Artemis is, but maybe that's just rumours.

(B) is much easier. Artemis is good at schoolwork. There's a knack to it, and she has it; that's one of the reasons it took so long for anyone to notice that there was anything off about her mental health. If you're really unwell, you're not supposed to be able to cope with life. Never mind if you're barely managing it, if you're seeing ghost people and making it through each day by the skin of your teeth; if you're coping at all, you must be okay. Until you start bleeding, and even then you're obviously only after attention. So: the place at university. She got that, and she got it deferred as well. Easy enough. She doesn't know if she'll take it up, of course, but like so many things about Artemis, her parents don't need to know that. Yet.

She will tell them everything, one day. She thinks. Or maybe she won't. Either way, right now there is a lot about her that she can no longer contain but which she doesn't dare reveal.

Which means, basically, it's time to make like a big damn hero and run away from her problems. Sitting here, watching Pewter thin out around her as the bus reaches the outskirts, Artemis finds that the guilt barely even registers. She has to get away: there's no shame in it, that's just a fact. Something's got to give, and she'd much rather it do so without pushing her relationship with her parents past the breaking point.

"This is our stop," says Jerry, interrupting her thoughts, and she follows him back out into the summer heat. They're on the corner of a long, curving road lined on one side with expensive-looking houses, and on the other with fields sloping up towards the woods to the west. Everything looks unreal in the glittering light, like a still from a movie, or maybe it looks too real. Artemis isn't sure she's the best judge of that kind of thing.

Jerry lets Leroy out of his ball again, to stamp his feet and squint around fiercely at their surroundings. Artemis wonders if he recognises the place. How smart is a rhyhorn, exactly?

"Are you ready?" asks Jerry, smiling up at her. "Here, I got something for you."

He fishes in his backpack and brings out a few poké balls – just ordinary ones, the kind Artemis has seen more times than she can count, but today they seem different and she stares, stupefied.

"For me?"

"Yeah. It's your starter, you're gonna do the catching."

"I don't know how good I'm gonna be at that."

Jerry shrugs.

"Guess you're gonna find out." He says it cheerfully and probably means well, but it feels to Artemis almost like a threat.

They cut across the field, heading uphill towards the forest. From here, the Pewter traffic seems distant and muted; in its place, Artemis hears birds and crickets. She can't remember the last time she heard them so clearly.

She looks at Jerry and Leroy, and sees the way they match paces, Jerry automatically slowing every time Leroy starts to fall behind. The two of them seem very well matched, and suddenly it seems ridiculous to her that she could ever hope to achieve that kind of relationship with anything.

Some of this must show on her face, because after a minute or two Jerry offers an awkward attempt at reassurance.

"I wouldn't worry," he says. "Most people do manage to catch something."

Artemis wants to say that that's not the most persuasive way to put it, but it seems a little mean-spirited, so she holds back.

"Yeah?" she asks, instead.

"Yeah. It has to be you, see. You gotta make it clear to the pokémon that you're the one asking to partner with it. If it doesn't want to work with you, it's probably gonna be hard to capture it, and it definitely won't respond to training. There's a good chance it'll just smash its way out of the ball, too."

"They can do that?"

"Not immediately, but yeah. Most poké balls are really more of a convenience thing, for like transport and stuff. It's really hard to catch something that doesn't want to be caught."

Artemis imagines a poké ball exploding in her pocket and a geodude, a spearow, a psyduck bursting free and running off back to the wild. She swallows. It will be fine. Most people … well, okay, maybe she isn't most people, but hopefully she isn't such a jerk that whatever she catches is just going to abandon her like that.

They reach the shade of the trees, and the light quickly fades to something less eye-melting. Artemis blinks a few times, trying to adjust. She should probably invest in some sunglasses before she leaves town.

Leroy sniffs deeply and shuffles his heavy feet among the fallen leaves. Jerry smiles and rubs his head affectionately.

"Yeah, okay, dude," he says. "I know you like the sun, but it's warm enough here, okay? We got pokémon to catch."

The two of them lead Artemis deeper into the woods, moving at what feels like random but which she suspects might just be some indirect way of covering more ground. She needs to learn this stuff, she tells herself. She can't fail, can't come crawling back home. This has got to stick.

Time passes, which is maybe the only thing that reliably happens out here in the forest. Artemis sees a chocolate-brown wood rattata and a couple of spearow, but none are interested in fighting or finding human partners; they vanish behind trees or into bushes as soon as they catch sight of her. Or maybe it's Leroy. She's pretty sure rhyhorn only eat grass, but hey, he intimidates her, so she imagines anything smaller than him must be straight-up terrified.

"Hold up a sec," says Jerry suddenly. "There. D'you see?"

Artemis looks, but has to admit that she does not.

"No," she says. "What am I looking at?"

"That rock."

Now it's been pointed out to her, she can see it: a mossy little boulder, far too regular in shape to be natural, and with a weird lump on one side that looks like folded arms.

"Okay," whispers Jerry. "Here's what you do―"

But Artemis never hears what she's meant to do. It's not that she isn't paying attention, but that at that moment, in a split second at half past three on a summer's afternoon, night falls.

After that, the geodude doesn't seem particularly important any more.

Both of them stand there frozen for some time. Artemis feels the old fear bubbling up inside her, a kicking, thrashing energy that saps the strength from her muscles and makes her hands shake uncontrollably, but she manages to hold onto her voice, just, and she whispers to Jerry:

"S-sorry, but are you … are you seeing this?"

"Yeah." He sounds almost as scared as her, which is frankly not comforting. Leroy is crouching at his heels, tail waving and crest raised, lowing into the sudden, unnatural dark.

"Okay," says Artemis. "Okay." This is a good start. She has not hallucinated in some time, and in many ways it's good to know that she hasn't started again now. On the other hand, if this is real, then something much, much worse than mere hallucination is going on. "What do we …?"

She trails off, hearing music. Or – is that music, exactly? It's definitely noise, definitely organised into some kind of rhythm, but she can't identify a voice or an instrument. It's high and sweet and beautiful in all the wrong ways, ways that make the hairs on the back of her neck stand up.

"You hear that?" asks Jerry.

"Yeah," she replies.

Neither of them move. Both of them know that this is not a sustainable course of action.

The birds and the crickets have fallen silent. The only sound now anywhere in the forest is the music, or almost-music.

"I should check that out," says Jerry slowly, reluctantly, fighting his own voice to get the words out. "I – I'm a Gym trainer. I … You stay here. I'll be back."

Artemis can hear the terror in his voice, the please don't leave me on my own, and she can't not respond. She shakes her head and touches his arm.

"That's one of those lines that when you hear it in a horror movie, you know the person's gonna die," she says. "No. We should stick together."

Maybe she's better at faking it than she thought, or maybe it's just his nerves, but Jerry actually laughs a little.

"Yeah, okay," he agrees. "Which way is it coming from, d'you think?"

"That way, maybe?"

"Sure. Leroy?"

The rhyhorn stamps and sniffs, agitated. His tail lashes back and forth like a battering ram.

"C'mon, buddy," says Jerry, reaching out to stroke his head with what to Artemis looks like the kind of bravery that loses a hand. "It's gonna be okay. Probably just a ghost or something. C'mon now. C'mon."

The words stop forming sentences, but it's not important; Jerry keeps his voice quiet and soothing, and in a minute or two Leroy has calmed down. He's not happy, obviously, his eyes are flashing and he keeps snorting like an angry bull, but he's willing to follow.

And after that there's no waiting any longer. The three of them steal through the untimely midnight, trying hard to not be seen or heard by god knows what, and as the music gets louder they begin to hear another noise beneath it. Something long and low and deep. A grinding sound like a knife being sharpened, if the knife was the size of Jupiter.

"There's something up ahead," says Jerry, the sudden noise making Artemis jump. "Oh – uh, sorry. But – d'you see it?"

"Yeah," she replies. "Yeah, I see it."

A red light, shining between the trees. It looks like it's a little way off. Artemis chews her lip.

"Uh, as like a professional Gym trainer," she says, "what do you … I mean, any ideas?"

"Um … no?"

"Okay." She swallows. "Just thought I'd ask."

They pick their way between the bushes towards the light. Neither is entirely sure this is a good idea; in fact, both are certain that it probably isn't, but at this point viable alternatives are looking a little thin on the ground.

Leroy snarls, a loud grating sound like stones smashing together, and Artemis almost starts out of her skin.

"Jesus―!"

"Sorry!" hisses Jerry. "Leroy! Please, buddy, we gotta – we gotta be careful here, okay? Careful."

He growls a little, and he certainly doesn't look calm by any stretch of the imagination, but he stays quiet. Jerry wipes his forehead and apologises again.

"Sorry."

"It's okay," says Artemis. "I think we're getting close."

The light is flickery and its illumination uncertain; still, she thinks she can tell that whatever it is that's glowing, it's big. She doesn't know if this is more or less encouraging than if it were small. Probably it's less, but she's here now, and okay she feels like a small man is trapped inside her chest and trying to beat his way out with his bare fists but she's here, and it's there, and there's not so very far to go until she at least knows what it is that's scaring her so badly.

"I think he's okay," says Jerry, with a last look at Leroy. "Let's … keep going."

He couldn't sound much less enthusiastic if he tried. Artemis tactfully ignores it. She stays alongside him as they push through a thick tangle of bushes, and then suddenly they have emerged onto a bare hilltop and she sees it and her eyes go wide and the world seems to fall away beneath her.

There is a spire of red light bridging ground and sky.

It burns like nothing she's ever seen, surface spitting sparks and forks of red lightning that flare and die to the beat of that unearthly music. It may have a top, but she cannot see it; it seems to just go up and up and up, disappearing among the stars that have become massively, absurdly numerous, as if all of Kanto's light pollution had been eradicated at once. The base is too bright to look at, but Artemis smells something like burning, although she can see no smoke.

Distantly, over the swell of the music and the awful rumble of the grinding, she hears Leroy bellow and flee. She thinks he has the right idea, although she doesn't seem to be able to follow suit. Now that she looking at the thing, she cannot seem to move.

Breach, whispers the spire of light. There has been a breach.

Its voice is cold and clear and very distant. Artemis knows without quite knowing how that it is speaking from somewhere further away than there is space in the world.

She feels her mouth moving in response. It takes her a little while to realise that she is apparently speaking.

"What are you?"

The answer is unintelligible, a series of shapes and images flashing before her mind's eye in a way that makes no sense: globs of splattered colour, squares, punctuation, numbers, a newborn baby all bloody and fresh, something that might be the astrological symbol for Venus.

"What is that?" Artemis hears, and dimly she categorises the voice as Jerry's. "What does that mean?"

The spire flickers and burns and keeps on singing its awful song.

Me, it says simply. I am who I am.

Artemis wants to scream, but doesn't; feels like she will fall, but doesn't. She can hear her blood rushing in her ears, vibrating with the music of the spire.

"What do you want?" she asks, horrified, pleading, and the spire shifts the key of its song slightly.

Nothing, it says. I am here because I was called. I will be here until I am uncalled.

"But why?"

I did not ask. The spire contracts, expands, belches out sheets of red sparks that hang unnaturally in the air before dying. I am of the breach. I am vaunt-courier. I am omen.

"Of what?"

Of breach, it says. Of breach. There has been a breach.

Its glow intensifies suddenly, red staining the grass and bloodying the sky―

And then everything is over.

Something releases her. Artemis falls to her knees in the clear light of day, shaking and trying not to cry, and beside her she hears Jerry being violently and copiously sick. The stars are gone. The sun is back.

In the distance, far below in Pewter, the cars go back and forth like nothing ever happened.