Night
Every few hours, the moving van would stop. The men would pull over to the side of some quiet stretch of road, open the back of the van, and haul the cages out one by one. There were a dozen or so cages, and three men—the same three who had taken the twins. Night had decided to think of them as Tall, Short, and Bald. Tall was the tall man, Short the shorter man. Bald had been the naked man, or the pink thing, or the fur-less eevee, or whatever you wanted to call him. But he was not naked anymore, nor was he an eevee, and he was only a little pink, so Night had been forced to call him Bald. He wore a green bathrobe now.
Once the men had removed all of the cages, they would drag one away from the others to let the group of eevee out. Each cage held at least four. Once they had been taken out, Tall or Short would fill a small bowl with water from a bottle and throw some dry food onto the ground. Then the humans would watch over the eevee, who had five minutes to eat and drink and use the grass however they liked. Once their time was up, they would be herded back into their cage and carried back to the others. They repeated the process for every cage. It took more than an hour for everyone to be fed. When it was finally done, the humans would load them all back into the van and start down the road again.
Sometimes when they stopped, one or two or even all of the men would go off somewhere. They always had a new eevee with them when they came back.
Nobody tried to escape. They had all learned the price of disobedience on the day that Night and his twins had been forced onto the van, when an eevee in another cage would not stop screaming and barking and crying. Bald had gone to that eevee, transformed into the pink thing, and said a few words to him, too quietly for Night to hear. An hour later, the eevee had grown noisy again. This time it was Tall who had gone into the back of the van. He had opened that eevee's cage, lifted him up, and sent the back of his hand across his face. It had taken ten minutes for the barking to resume. The next time the van had stopped to feed the passengers, Short had thrown the eevee to the ground and stomped on his neck.
Night did not like to remember that. Three days had passed since then, but he could still hear the sound of the bones snapping, and the soft whine the eevee had made as he died. It was hard to hear anything else, with how quiet it was. Nobody spoke. There was no sound but the noises of the road around them.
The twins had not been separated. Night was grateful for that, but it made the cage very cramped. Night was in one of the corners, with Sky pressed against his right side and Bolt to his front. Both of them were asleep. It was too dark to see Jay, Blizz, and Flame, but he knew that they were probably sleeping too. Night himself had barely slept at all during their trip.
The van began to slow to a stop. Night used his paw to shake Sky and Bolt awake. "Wake up," he whispered. "They're stopping to feed us again." But as he spoke, he realized that something felt off. Their last stop had only been an hour ago. Why were they doing it again already?
When Bald came to open the van, Night saw that they had entered a large, dark garage. The three humans all climbed up to pull the cargo out.
"Is something wrong?" asked Sky, who was stirring beside him.
"I don't know," Night answered. "I think we've just arrived at wherever they're taking us."
Each of the men grabbed one cage and took it with them. Bald took the cage that held the twins. They left the garage through a nearby door and entered a clean white hallway. It stretched on for what felt like miles. There were hundreds of doors along the walls. Sometimes they passed humans in white coats. By the time they reached the room they had been heading for, Tall and Short were out of breath. Bald wasn't, even though he was carrying the heaviest cage of the three.
They entered the room, which was empty. The walls were as white as the hallway. Tall set his cage down and went to a large, discolored floor tile. He lifted it up, revealing a staircase underneath. He picked the cage back up and headed downstairs. Short and Bald followed him. The room they came to looked like the one they had just left, aside from the staircase against the wall. The humans set their cages down at the foot of the stairs and went back up, leaving the eevee behind.
"Where are they going?" Jay asked.
An eevee in one of the other cages answered. "To get the rest, probably."
Sure enough, the men returned fifteen minutes later with three more cages. It took two more trips to get them all.
Once they had all been carried into the room, Bald tossed his robe aside and transformed back into the pink thing. He began to speak to all of the captured eevee. "Welcome to the Lab, your new home. It's not a good home, but it's the last one you'll ever know." His voice was stiff and formal; he had obviously given this speech a hundred times before. "The Wardens will be here soon. Each of them will come and decide if they want any of you. If you are chosen, do whatever they say. Do not defy them. Be warned that Wardens have almost complete control over their Wards. They may punish or even kill one of their subjects at any time. There will be no trial. They need no reason. Nobody will care." He let that hang over them for a moment.
"There are eleven Wards," Bald continued. "Seven are used for experimentation: the Wards of the Changers, Dreamers, Watchers, Breeders, Fighters, Halfmen, and Deathseekers." Something about that last one did not sound pleasant to Night. "Two Wards are responsible for providing help to the Lab. The Stewards keep the place clean. The Rangers go out into the world and find us new recruits. The remaining two Wards are the Cells and the Dark Cells. They're used to hold the pokémon that aren't chosen by any of the Wardens.
"There is a hierarchy here. You answer to your Warden. The Wardens answer to the High Warden. The High Warden answers to the humans. Everyone has a place. Don't forget yours." With that, he was finished. He stayed quiet while they waited.
The first Warden ended up being a vaporeon. He looked exhausted as he stepped through the door in the back of the room. For some reason he was wearing a small hat made of straw. It looked silly on him.
"Good evening, Resin," Bald greeted as the newcomer approached.
Resin the vaporeon nodded at him, then scanned over the cages. "Would any of these eevee happen to be gods?"
"Doesn't seem likely," Bald said.
"Then I'm wasting my time here. Again." Resin sighed. "I don't know why that blasted absol makes me come down here every time a new shipment comes in. I think I'd know ahead of time if you found a new guest for the Dark Cells."
"I'm sure the High Warden has his reasons."
"Of course. Well, if you have nothing else for me, I need to get back to my post. I have real work to do." And the vaporeon left the room.
The second Warden came a few minutes later. This one was an eevee. He was old, maybe fifteen, and he wore a red bandana around his neck. Half the fur on his face had been torn away and replaced by scars.
"You'll need to come back later, Terrin," Bald said. "The other Wardens haven't had their look yet. You can take whoever's left once they're done."
"I didn't come to bring them to the Cells," Terrin said. His voice was low and raspy. "I'm here on behalf of the Halfmen, as a favor. They want all the young ones."
"They're starting their experiments again?"
"I didn't ask them why. I just followed orders."
"That was probably wise. All right, have a look, take whoever you want."
Terrin moved around the cages, studying every eevee. Every once in a while, he had Bald open a cage and pull one of the prisoners out. He had already collected seven by the time he got to the twins. He glanced at Bolt first, then Night, then Sky. He circled the cage, looking at them all. Eventually his eyes fell on Jay.
Terrin said, "I'll take the small one."
Blizz was growling as the cage door opened. Bald did not even acknowledge him. He dragged Jay out and sent him to stand with the others Terrin had chosen.
The Warden took one more eevee from one of the other cages, then began to leave with the group. Jay sent a long look back at his brothers, then followed Terrin out of the room.
The next to come was a flaaffy who introduced himself as the Warden of the Stewards. To Bald he said, "The stewards don't need any spots filled. I can't take any of these off your hands." The Warden of the Rangers said something similar. Both were wearing hats, like Resin.
Maybe the other Wardens will pass us up too, Night thought, and the five of us can live together in the Cells.
That hope was quickly dashed, of course. The fifth Warden, a female Lucario, announced that the Fighters needed a few new members. She searched through the cages, selecting three of the largest and strongest eevee. Blizz was among them. He muttered a quick goodbye as he was forced away from the others.
Flame was the next to be taken. The Warden of the Watchers, a kecleon named Basher, chose him and one other. Bolt whined as his twin left, but he did not have long to grieve. When a manectric, the Warden of the Dreamers, arrived, he called for every eevee that wished to one day evolve into a jolteon. Four eevee in the other cages spoke up and went with him. Bolt hesitated for a bit, then became the fifth.
The cage felt very empty after that. Only Night and Sky remained. Despite the extra room they now had, the twins stayed very close to each other as the remaining Wardens came and went. A togetic, the Warden of the Breeders, took about fifteen eevee, but left Night and Sky alone.
There were only two left now, Night remembered; the Changers and the Deathseekers. He wondered which Warden would come first.
The next time the door open, someone very familiar stepped into the room. It was a pink, furless eevee, the spitting image of Bald, except it was wearing a necklace.
As the other approached, Bald said, "Must you do this every time?" He sounded rather annoyed.
"You should take it as a compliment," his clone said. "I like this form. Besides, your reactions are always amusing." Then his body began to change, just like Bald's often did. But instead of turning into a human, the clone shrank. He stayed pink, but his flesh turned into something soft and amorphous. His limbs all retreated into his body and so did his head. All that remained was a shifting blob with a small face. A ditto. Night could not tell if it was male or female. The necklace it had been wearing disappeared into its body.
"If you say so, Nex." Bald's voice was cold. Evidently he did not enjoy the ditto's company. "Take some new recruits if you need them, and leave me alone."
Nex the ditto only chuckled. Night decided that it must be the Warden of the Changers.
The Warden went to their cage first. Nex's eyes lingered on Sky for a very long time. Then the ditto moved away, and Night dared to hope that they were safe. As Nex moved around the room, it never asked Bald to take any of the eevee out of the cages. It was not until it finished its tour that the ditto told Bald who he wanted.
Sky was one of the three it gestured toward.
Finally, Night was alone. Well, about half of the eevee still remained, but Night was the only one of the twins left. It was strange to think that it had been cluttered an hour ago. With Sky gone, he no longer cared what happened to him. Night found himself lying down with his eyes closed as he waited. He almost hoped that he would be left behind, forced to rot away in the Cells. Maybe they would even let him die.
A few minutes later, the last Warden took him.
