Chapter Thirty-Six
A pin dropping would've been a thunderclap in Commissioner Mason's office as Gregory, Peter, the intelligence officer Matt, Elder Bayron, and two other Lucario sat down at the Commissioner's table. Down the table's length, the Lucario sat to one side, the police on the other, with Peter at the head between them. Peter felt the Elder's eyes boring holes into his soul as he gripped his Sudoku book like a holy relic.
The receptionist brought in three mugs of coffee and three cups of tea, set them on the table, and tiptoed out as though the floor were covered in mines. Peter took a long swallow of coffee, ignoring its bitter bite.
"This is the outcome I had feared," Bayron said as he raised a cup of tea to his lips. "Bruno had spent far too much time in this city, and whatever happened will only exacerbate his instability. Dealing with him is our top priority."
Peter's eyes narrowed. "When you say deal with, you mean recover, right?"
The Elder bowed his head. "That remains to be seen. It is very likely he will have to be… put down."
Peter's knuckles whitened on the ceramic mug. "If you're going to ask me to kill my partner, then I would appreciate an explanation. What is happening to him?"
"I shouldn't tell you," he said. "That secret is the source of our strength and our greatest weakness." He looked into his mug as he swirled the the and took a long sniff of its aroma. Then his shoulders slackened. "You do deserve an explanation. I would appreciate it if what I am about to tell you never leaves this room."
Matt got up from his seat, opened the door, and gave the Elder a curt nod.
"We don't simply feel the aura around us," Elder Bayron said. "We absorb it, and make it a part of ourselves, as plants absorb the sun's rays." He held up his hand to the light shining from the ceiling. "In a more peaceful setting, it gives us a greater awareness of our environment and augments our powers. But in a city, with all the chaos and tumult of emotion, it consumes us." The Elder tugged his white robe closer to his skin. "Most commit suicide, but a few go mad and devour the aura around them. Worse, such Lucario emit enough of that aura to drive other life forms insane with them, especially Pokémon."
Peter swallowed. His stomach sank low enough to hit the floor, and his head swam. He took a deep breath, fingered the pages of his book, and told himself that he would find Bruno. He had to.
"How – how long do we have?" Peter's voice broke as he asked.
"A week at most." Elder Bayron frowned. "Five days is more likely. The good news is, he'll be a lot easier to find once he breaks. The Lucario from the Temple would know and provide reinforcements."
"We have Reason calculating all potential hiding spots," Mason said. "It'll take a few days for the results to come in, but once they do, we'll strike."
"And in the meantime," Bayron said, "I will return to the Temple and discuss what to do among my brethren. In the meantime, these two will help you search. They may find Bruno before your Metagross."
The two Lucario bowed their heads, and the three officers returned the gesture. Then the one to the Elder's left spoke.
"Are we to be working with that human?" he asked, nodding towards Peter. "He feels unstable."
"Jarem has a point," Elder Bayron said. A shiver ran down Peter's back when those wizened red eyes looked into his own. "Perhaps you should take the week off. I know it would be hard, sitting and doing nothing during such a crisis, but your disturbed mental state would interfere.
Peter closed his eyes. Fear and grief wriggled around his mind like slinkies, chaotic and violent as a child's scribbles. He forced the numbers into his head, digits of one through nine, and placed them in a square, forming the beginning of a Sudoku puzzle. The squiggles, pinned between the numbers, formed a wobbly, writhing grid. Then, one by one, he fit more numbers into place, carefully following the logical induction of Sudoku's rules. As another number found its spot, the lines straightened out and went still, and each time his thoughts went back to Bruno, to an empty seat in front of him, an uneaten donut and untouched cup of coffee left for his absent partner, and the silence filling his home, the lines knocked numbers aside and wriggled out of the grid. After what felt like an eternity, he had a perfect grid of eighty-one numbers, with all his fear and paranoia pinned inside.
Peter opened his eyes. Elder Bayron's expression hadn't changed. "I may be struggling, but I can still be calm. Even now, I'm in better control of my emotions than anyone else in the force, aren't I?"
The Elder shook his head. "Bruno said much the same and look what happened."
"Is there any other choice?"
Peter drank more coffee while he waited for the answer. He let the bitterness rush over his tongue and stuck the foul tang into his head like pins, driving them into his grid. Keeping that grid, holding that grid, was all he could allow himself to perceive. Anything else would invite chaos.
The Elder drained his glass and said, "You have a point. If Jarem and Kolar don't object, I recommend that they patrol the city with Officer Peter."
The lucario on the right, Kolar, said, "If he can maintain his composure, then I have no objections." Peter quickly compared the two lucario and noted that Kolar had a slightly shorter, stouter muzzle, while Jarem had longer spikes on his wrists and shaggier fur around the collar. Without losing his grip on the grid, Peter examined their faces and memorized them. He squeezed the pages of his book together, and his hand shook from the effort of keeping his grief in check, but he held firm.
"So, we'll begin today?" Peter asked. He raised his mug to his lips, thinking to calm his nerves with another sip of bitterness, but it was empty. He waited for a few bitter trickles to wet his lips before setting the mug down.
"Now, if you are able," Bayron said. "We cannot afford any delays."
Jarem and Kolar rose, and Peter leapt to his feet. With a salute to the Commissioner, Peter followed the two Lucario out to the front entrance. They stopped just short of the sidewalk. Peter nearly bumped into them and walked around to speak face to face.
"Do you have a plan?" he asked them.
"It's very noisy," Kolar said. "Is there anywhere more peaceful? It would be best if we stayed in one spot."
"Is there anywhere that Bruno liked visiting?" Jarem asked.
Peter thought for a moment. A stray thread of anger unwound itself, and he forced it back into place.
"There's a café on the east side of town, the Honeycomb. That was Bruno's favorite."
He drove them to a parking lot around the corner from the café. At first, he studied his passengers and noted that they couldn't sit still. Some passing cars made them flinch, and they shied away from a few buildings. However, their presence only drew attention to the empty space to his right, so he shifted his attention to the road, checking the license plates on every car he passed and making Sudoku grids out of them.
That was how he noticed his tail. One car, a pristine white Civic, followed them from half a mile out of the police station. He flipped his turn signal left and went right, and the car followed him without the slightest twitch into the other lane.
He turned towards a quieter section of town, where a criss-cross of one-way streets formed a cramped maze. He wound a dizzying path past closed meat-packing warehouses and butcher's shops, darting around corners as fast as he dared with his silver Camry. And yet, the Civic matched him turn for turn. Though it no longer made any secret of its following him, it didn't try to stop his vehicle either.
"We have a tail," Peter told his passengers.
"We noticed," Jarem said. "We don't sense any hostility from them, but we can't tell what their intentions are. Will you call for back-up and have them arrested?"
Peter pursed his lips. "They aren't breaking any laws, and back-up would get here too late if they tried to kill us. I guess all we can do is stop and see what they want."
He pulled over, and the white car parked right behind them. The passenger door opened, and a person wearing a white mask stepped out of the car. Their jacket, pants, gloves, and tennis shoes were all cheap white material, from the button to the zippers, stitching, and hems. Not a speck of skin or other color showed. In their gloved hand was a white envelope.
For a split second, Peter's hand gripped the gear-shift, and he almost put it in drive, but with a sigh he kept it in park and rolled down his passenger window by an inch.
"A message for the Commissioner," the masked person said. A voice filter made their gender indistinguishable. "You may open it, if you wish."
Before Peter could say anything, the messenger slid the envelope into the car and walked back to the car. The Civic's engine roared, and the car disappeared before Peter thought to follow it.
"Are you going to open it?" Kolar asked.
"Might be rigged," Peter said. "C-4 or Anthrax. I'll have the packages department deal with it."
Peter turned the car around and drove to the Honeycomb. He almost took the usual booth, right next to the entrance, and instead decided on a corner, nestled in between a bookshelf and an empty booth, shadowed by an absence of windows in the back.
The waitress walked over, gave them a warm hello, and gave confused glances at the white robes of the two Lucario. They both took tea, but Peter ordered nothing.
Jarem and Kolar asked him questions. It started as simple ice-breakers, what hobbies he had, favorite foods, how he liked his job, and they gradually worked their way into painful territory. They asked for stories about Bruno, about his training at the Temple and the days when he was first getting to know his partner, about the training courses at the police academy and their first emergency response.
Peter couldn't tell if they were testing him or making polite conversation as they worked, but he resolved to maintain his grid. When he grew too tired to keep the image in his head, he pulled out his book and finished puzzle after puzzle until he only a few pages remained.
Once the sun had set, after five rounds of tea, a quick lunch break at a sandwich shop across the street, and hours of exhausting conversation, the two Lucario stood. Peter's brain lagged behind for a moment before he paid the bill and followed them out the door.
"We can sense the Elder well enough," Kolar said as Peter drove back to the police station. "However, we couldn't find Bruno or the aura he had mentioned."
"There was a presence," Jarem said, "Something a bit stronger than the rest of the city, but I can only tell that it's farther west. We should search there tomorrow."
When Peter dropped off the letter with the receptionist, the two Lucario followed him in. But when he went back to his car, they both took the back seats.
"Aren't you going to stay at the police station?" he asked.
"Too stressful there," Jarem said. "And we thought it would be wiser to stay with you. We might sense traces of him if we remain long enough."
Peter inwardly groaned and made another grid as he drove them home.
Changelog
11/17/2018 – minor edits