Chapter III
Descent
Dad was angry. Phonos knew he was, but she couldn't pinpoint what she had done. For some reason, he was snapping at the other scientists and seemed more impatient than usual, and when her sister Annie came in to bring him a cup of coffee, he had banged his hand against the desk and told her to stop walking in without knocking. When Phonos had asked what was the matter, Annie had simply told Phonos to…she wasn't sure what it meant, and she was sure that from the way she said it she guessed it was something that shouldn't be said, but she had told her to 'piss off'. She supposed it was a way of telling her off that she wasn't familiar with. When Annie was ten, Phonos thought to herself, she would bet that Annie had never needed somebody to tell her to piss off.
She must have done something exceptionally bad to prompt a scolding she wasn't already familiar with.
She squirmed anxiously in her seat, watching Dad work and almost seeing the veins bulge in his forehead.
"Don't cry," she told herself sternly, folding her arms and gripping her left forearm as tightly as she could. Crying was self-indulgent, and only bad things happened when she cried. She wouldn't let herself behave so childishly.
Dad scribbled away on the papers at his desk, looking absolutely furious and Phonos felt the weight in her chest grow heavier and slowly sink deeper down. She stupidly opened and closed her mouth, desperately wishing she could be of use. But if even Annie, who was very kind and pretty and well-loved by him, would be told off when he was in this mood, Phonos didn't want to chance it. She knew that much about her family, at least.
The silence continued as Dad opened an envelope and reached in for the contents, his eyebrows pulling closer and closer together and his teeth gritted furiously.
"Goddamnit!" he shouted all of a sudden, slamming the paper into the desk with violent force, and making Phonos jump in her seat. He looked up at Phonos with an accusing, frustrated gaze and leaned back in his seat, shoving the paper aside. She could have sworn she could have heard, amongst his angry mumblings, the name 'Dr Tsume'.
She stayed perfectly still, not even daring to fidget despite how much she wanted to and how much her stomach was squirming. She needed to calm down before she did something bad and made Dad even more irritated and unhappy than he already was. Was it her or that letter that had him irritated? Phonos couldn't figure it out, and despite the pressing, desperate need she felt to fracture lengthy silence between the two, she daren't say anything.
"You are probably wondering what you're doing here," he said all of a sudden, startling Phonos and making her flinch for what felt like the millionth time in the past fifteen minutes. She made an effort to sit up straight and retain a perfect posture, as she had been taught to do.
Another empty silence. Anxieties gnawed away at Phonos' mind; was Dad actually expecting her to talk? If so that was completely unforeseen, and she had no idea what to make of it. Head swimming, she trained to retain eye-contact, but Dad's gaze was fierce and intensely frightening, and Phonos couldn't keep it up.
"Quite frankly, it's because I'm tired of Dr Tsume's stubbornness not to put you to any real use. You have become a real liability in this establishment, and your little household tasks don't hold water for what we're trying to hold down and achieve here," he said, and Phonos felt profoundly stupid for thinking that he wanted her to actually say something, "And since of course, Dr Tsume still wants to study your so-called soul, like hell you even have such a thing, we've got to listen to what she has to say and can't just have you terminated or fired like everything else around here that doesn't do proper work."
Phonos was getting the distinct feeling he wasn't so much talking to her as he was ranting at her. The thought was of no comfort to her at all.
"I believe it's time to put your abilities to use. Ten years of pampering you is quite enough, in my opinion and Dr Tsume's orders be damned if she thinks we can afford to have you lodging here without being of any use for much longer," he said. Phonos had to keep the excitement out of her face. She was going to do something useful for Dad? Maybe this would at least help him get out of his bad mood, and she could stop being as worthless as she was. Dad looked at her, as if trying to decide something particularly difficult and then leaned back in his leather chair, picking up the paper lying on the desk, "Our sources tell us that our spy in the Indigo Plateau, has been discovered and arrested for leaking information about the whereabouts of the powerful Kanto Pokemon Mewtwo who has been under the Kantonian government protection for some time now, to us."
Phonos listened attentively, not entirely sure where Dad was going with this. She couldn't help but be eager to hear more though – this was a real chance to do something useful for Dad, and maybe Mum as well, if she needed this helped all of them. Even Annie might be pleased in her cheering Dad up later, though she knew better than to expect too much.
"It is absolutely vital that you do not reveal that you are a Ditto, or that you work for us. You simply disguise yourself as an older trainer and enter the plateau. Once there, make sure to transform into something that wouldn't be noticed and spy on the Elite Four. Report back any information as often as you can. Do not stick to one method of communication. You must be perfect in this – nobody in Kanto wants any of us here to gain access to this information and it will cause a lot of trouble if somebody else is caught. You must be perfect. Do you understand?"
Phonos startled slightly at the question, which sounded entirely non-rhetorical. However, she nodded, attempting to contain the pride and excitement that was about ready to burst from her. She had nothing but useless and worthless all her life, despite being designed to be some sort of perfect weapon of the Institute, and finally she had a chance to do something of any actual use.
"Yes, sir," she said finally.
She was ten years old but in that instant, she had given her childhood away.
