Chapter 27: A Dark Legacy
After forty-seven years passed, Director Taka had stored his bottlecap collection in a private, specially constructed room right next to his office. Every night, he would take the cap from his daily root beer and throw it in with the others, forming a massive pile of caps that jangled and spilled into the hallway every time he opened the door.
Once he has swept all his caps back into the room, Director Taka would usually make his rounds through the Beta Sector, surveying all the experiments under his purview from pokemon healing stations to portable medical treatments, all in preparation of repurposing the sedated pokemon as pets and labor. However, on the last day, he walked past all the superficial experiments and went straight to the heart of Beta. There, Mewtwo worked at a computer, manipulating hundreds of keyboards and examining dozens of computer monitors surrounding it.
"How goes the calculations?" Director Taka asked.
"Everything is as you surmised," Mewtwo answered, "But there is a high probability that we won't be able to create a viable organism from the remaining cells. We can't even examine the sample's genetic structure due to all the interference."
"Well, we know it's human. Factor that into the calculations and try again."
"I already did, and the results were far more favorable, but we really shouldn't assume–"
"I'm not assuming anything. Video footage from the Delta Project shows it happening." Director Taka placed his hand on Mewtwo's shoulder, and Mewtwo stopped typing. "I understand you don't want this to end. I don't either. But my time runs short. Sooner or later, even our finest medical equipment won't keep me alive, and I want to get this project started with my own hands. It's up to you to take care of the rest once I'm gone."
"I understand."
"Then get ready. I will etch the rupture lines into the Alpha Ball in one hour. Make sure you're below me at that time."
Director Taka walked even deeper into Section Beta, to the storage rooms. Hundreds of cryochambers hummed along the walls, displaying pristinely frozen bodies behind digital windows. He walked past all of them and approached the sealed vault at the end of the room. With a single swipe of his keycard, the armored door swung open with a metallic chunk. The array of laser sensors flickered off, leaving exposed the tiny black vial at the vault's center. Director Taka wrapped it in lead-lined cloth and tucked it into his left jacket pocket, next to a metal box.
Director Taka kept his hand in that pocket as he walked outside of Section Beta and into the center of Sinex. There, guarded by two Agents, each accompanied by an aggron, and thick metal doors lined with Delta Alloy, was an elevator down into the Alpha-Beta room. Nora Winters walked past, holding a bundle of fiber optic cables under her chin while typing into her tablet.
"Director Winters, care to accompany me down to the Alpha Ball? It's the fiftieth anniversary."
Nora had kept the first half of her promise. Within five years of his succession, she too became a Director, replacing Sheldon when his health failed him. However, no matter how hard she tried, she could never get the unanimous vote required to remove Ashi Taka, nor could she remove Mewtwo from the Council and replace it with the missing vote.
Director Winters walked on without looking at him. Director Taka shrugged towards the Agents and showed them his card. They swiped it on the elevator terminal, and the doors opened for him. The elevator shot down with enough momentum for the Director's feet to briefly leave the floor, and in two minutes, with the assistance of gravity manipulation, the elevator made the mile-long descent down to the core. The Alpha Ball stood on a metal pedestal, held in place by Delta Alloy clamps and cables. Cameras and sensors scanned the room from every corner, and gun turrets lined every wall, each pointed towards the Alpha Ball.
Director Taka took out the metal box and held it in his hand. He pressed his thumb against a little square indent, which read his thumbprint before clicking open. The box popped, and the crab-like robot inside curled open. It walked across his palm on six spindly legs, and it had two thin arms that ended in microscopic lenses. It had a circular indent in its back, into which Director Taka pressed the black vial. Then he placed the robot onto the Alpha Ball. With a sharp clicking noise, it stomped across the Alpha Ball and clasped it between its legs. Then it teleported, taking the Alpha Ball without disturbing its Delta Alloy prison.
Once it was on the floor, the robot suspended the Alpha Ball on the ends of its legs and pointed its two arms towards the round dot on the ball. The vial on the back glowed, and a viscous black fog flowed down its arms and into the lenses, forming a tiny focused laser that cut into the Alpha Ball. The robot meticulously spun the Alpha Ball millimeters at a time, forming an intricate circular grid around the Alpha Ball's lock.
Halfway through his work, Ashi Taka heard the elevator coming down. He took a pokeball out of his pocket, summoning a metagross.
"Hold them off for ten minutes," he told it. "After that, start the countdown on the explosives."
The metagross grunted and planted its legs into the floor. The room was coated in a blue veil, and the elevator was crammed shut with psychic power. Pounding and hammering came from the elevator, but the doors held as the robot etched the final lines into the Alpha Ball. With a ding, the vial dimmed, and the robot teleported itself into the ventilation shafts below the room, appearing in front of Mewtwo. Mewtwo pried the lifeless robot off of the Alpha Ball, but instead of teleporting out, it decided to wait and listen.
"Alright, you can go now," Director Taka told the metagross. It teleported, leaving him alone with Director Winters and a dozen of her Agents. The Agents pointed their laser rifles at Director Taka, and Director Winters drew a pistol.
"What have you done?" she asked.
"It's not what I have done, but what I have yet to do, that you should be asking."
"Stop playing games!" She fired a shot, searing a hole into the Alpha Ball's pedestal. "Where is it?"
"Gone. You'll never find it."
"What did you do?"
Director Taka took out his tablet. "Looks like it happened. We should be feeling the quakes in a few moments."
"I've had enough. Agent Harrison, cuff him."
As the Agent stepped forward, the room was rocked by a thunderous rumble, and a loud screeching sound thundered down the elevator.
"That would be the explosives. Now we're all stuck down here. Thanks to the ventilation, we should have a day until we die."
One of the Agents tried the elevator, but it refused to budge. He called out his pidgeot and mounted it.
Director Taka smiled and leaned back against the pedestal. "Don't bother. The whole lab's in ruins. One of the benefits of being underground is it makes explosives far more effective."
And then Mewtwo heard the gunshot. He couldn't tell which one did it, but he knew it was Ashi Taka's body that hit the floor, with a hole singed through his heart. It took the Alpha Ball and the vial, called a final farewell up the ventilation, and teleported to the surface.
Epilogue: Methods of Madness
Chihiro examined the ten humans she had tied to chairs. Each one struggled to break free of their restraints, but their feeble Aura couldn't even touch hers.
"I am going to give you a choice. Serve me, or I'll make you." She walked over to the chair on the left and lifted the woman's head so they stared eye to eye. "What about you? What choice will you make?"
The woman spat at her face, but the saliva stopped just before her fur. Chihiro flicked it aside and tapped her finger against the woman's forehead, scrambling her mind with a swipe of her Aura. Then she undid the restraints.
"Rise," she ordered the human. When she stood, Chihiro asked, "Will you obey any of my orders?"
"Any you give me," she replied in monotone.
Chihiro grabbed a knife and handed it to her. "Then cut off one of your fingers. I don't care which."
The woman placed her middle finger on the table and slammed the knife down an inch below the largest joint. She remained silent as blood spurted from the stump. Chihiro healed the wound and turned to the others.
"What about you? It doesn't matter to me if you keep my minds, as long as you follow my exact orders."
One by one, the other humans knelt before her. Without their noticing, Chihiro wove a bit of Aura into their minds, a slow-acting hypnosis that would leave them far better servants after they were conditioned.
"Your first mission – find Arkus. Do everything you have to for that purpose, and don't come back until you find him."
Sinex had rebuilt its headquarters above ground, sealed off within the heart of the rebuilt Palsitore City behind a wall of Delta Alloy. However, even this couldn't prevent Mewtwo from slipping in through the ventilation shafts, worming his way through the facility until he came into the room of the current Alpha Director. It appeared in front of the Director, holding Chihiro's journal in its hand.
"I haven't practiced this very much, so don't struggle. I wouldn't want to kill you by mistake."
After hours of redirecting neurons, the Director answered its orders, bending over and waving its arms like a wooden doll. Then Mewtwo moved on to the next Director, and the next, and the next, until every Section answered to it and it alone.
"Our mission," Mewtwo told its puppet Directors, "Is to open the Alpha Ball." It held up the black vial and said, "Reroute all research into cloning these cells."
And so, work began to bring Darkrai back to life.