Chapter Thirty-Seven

The plate was gone, the bed too. First, Seven took the pillow. Then she took the covers. The mattress went next, and last of all, the frame was removed, leaving him nothing but an empty room with a hole in the middle, which Bruno learned to his horror was his bathroom. The hole was taken away too, covered with a plate welded to the floor. Now, if he had to relieve himself, he could let it lie on the floor or trust his balance and sense of space to keep him from backing into the wall of plasma. Though the plasma made for an efficient method of waste removal, singed hairs on his tail marked the few times he nearly erased his own ass from existence.

After there was nothing left to take away, Seven added things. Hidden beneath the floor was a radio that would make ear-wrenching noises at random intervals, keeping him awake through night and day. The temperature varied wildly, from bone-chilling days to nights hot enough to make his fur wilt. Seven also controlled the lighting, alternating between absolute darkness to eye-burning brightness. Days and nights stretched to mind-numbing extremes and flitted by in a heartbeat,.

But worst of all were the goddamn puzzles. Meals, once thrown onto the floor, now came in intricate contraptions. His mind, dulled beyond coherent thought, quickly became frustrated with the puzzles, and in fits of rage he would smash them apart. Seven gave him one of those soft, infuriating smiles every time he scooped chunky paste out of the broken puzzles. He cracked a tooth on a piece of plastic. It throbbed every time he ate.

Even that did not break him. He stubbornly clung to the image of home, to Peter scribbling in his Sudoku book, to sitting in the antiquated movie theater chowing down on popcorn with real butter, to the thrill of chasing criminals down winding alleys and the feeling of worth and importance every time another lawbreaker got cuffed and stuffed in a police car.

And despite all the assaults to his senses, the prison felt peaceful. A different noise, one clamoring at his soul, had ceased when the plasma encircled him. For the first time in months, he felt as though he could breathe in without choking on it. Thanks to this, despite the mind-numbing noise, lights, frustration and sleep-deprivation, images of home grew sharper in his head, and the deeper he fell into a waking meditative trance, his mind like an oil bubble sliding across a roiling sea.

But as the eternity wore on, Seven spoke with him more and more. Her presence burned him, not the gentle warmth of the sun or even the searing heat of open flame, but the carcinogenic burn of uranium, breaking down everything it touched, twisting it, sowing havoc in every fiber of his being. He could taste it now, so clearly, a disgust with the world, a disgust for humans, a disgust for Pokémon, and most of all, a disgust for herself, as thick and vile as sludge on his tongue. The roiling ocean, once raging and pure salt water that his oil-like mind slid over, turned into a noxious, stinking filth that pulled his mind under, mixing it with the tar and reek of Seven's soul.

Even with the constant bombardment of Seven's own frustration, even when creeping thoughts Peter abandoning him or having died during a mission without him, his soul refused to waver. What kept him sane was the certain knowledge that if he gave into the despair his soul drowned in, he would never see Peter again.

Seven, on the other hand, found herself slowly losing her grip on her patience. She had already gone far beyond what she had intended, and some deprivations she had inflicted on Bruno were punishments that Ghetsis had never used on her. Though he had often threatened to take away the toilet when she was acting recalcitrant, he never did. Watching him squat before the plasma wall, inches from destroying himself atom by atom, stung her conscience like a wasp.

As days turned to weeks, Giovanni and the other Admins started asking pointed questions about the efficacy of her methods. Fisher advocated physical torture and volunteered to do it himself if she felt too squeamish, while Colson proposed having a Beeheyem dissect Bruno's mind and save everyone the trouble. Though Giovanni kept sending her gentle reminders that time was short, between the White Knights mobilizing and the police regrouping, along with rumors that the two had plans to work together to take down the Rockets, he left the decision in Seven's hands. She wished he hadn't.

Stuck between the mounting pressure from the other Rockets to get results and her growing guilt over inflicting the same torture she endured for years, she broke first. One night, she laid into Bruno with the shock collar, sending volts through his neck for minutes at a time. His eyes bulged, and he fell to the floor. One hand clawed at the collar around his throat, and the other clutched at his heart as it fluttered and faltered under the repeated shocks.

When Seven was done, Bruno clumsily rose to his feet and backed away from her. His eyes were wide with panic, and they darted around the room, as if looking for escape.

"Just answer the damn question already," Seven snapped. "Just answer, and none of this shit has to happen anymore."

Bruno shook his head, and for a second, Seven felt a pang of hope. "Is that the answer then, no?"

Bruno kept his head still, and the rage returned. Seven strode forward, and he backed away until his back was a quarter-inch away from the crackling plasma. He glanced back, swallowed, and then kept his eyes on the floor.

"Just one push," Seven said, "And there'd be nothing left of you but a puff of air." She grabbed Bruno by the fur on his chest, and he shuddered beneath her grip. "I already know the answer. Yes, there's more, we've seen them lurking around, hunting for you. So just say it already! Are there more of you?"

Bruno closed his eyes. Seven nearly shoved him back into the plasma, but instead, she yanked him forward. He tumbled to the ground. Seven pinned him beneath her and threw punch after punch at his face, bloodying his muzzle and making his eyes swell shut. After five minutes, by which time each punch hurt her more than it hurt him, she got to her feet, wiped her bloody fingers on her shirt, and walked away.

Bruno barked something. Seven turned around, but he hadn't moved from the blood-stained patch of floor.

"Would you like a translation?" Thoth asked through her tablet. When she nodded, the screen said, "I'll never tell you anything."

"Why?" Seven asked. "You have nothing to gain by holding out."

Bruno looked up at her through one eye that, through its swollen eyelid, peered out through a thin crack.

"I know he's looking for me. He'll find me."

Seven made a point of reading her tablet, as if to tell Bruno that's how she understood him. Then she said, "He might find a corpse, if I'm feeling generous." The words made her stomach lurch, but she forced them out.

Bruno chuckled, a weak, raspy sound halfway between human joy and canine barks. "If you were going to kill me, you would've done it already."

But Seven already had a different idea. She remembered the cop that chased her right behind Bruno. If that's who Bruno meant, then she might find a way to break Bruno's will by following him and capturing the moment he proved unfaithful. Him giving up, moving on, as he inevitably would, must break Bruno.

So, beginning that night, she looked through Team Rocket's records, scanning dozens of faces in the police lineup until she found her target, Peter. Name, address, birthday, personal identification, financial and medical records, everything she needed to find her was all within Team Rocket's databases. The next morning, she took a body camera and audio recorder, and got dropped off by her Grunts at a fast food burger joint two blocks from Peter's home.

In a nondescript illusion and wearing civilian clothes with a wide-brimmed white hat, Seven ordered a hamburger meal, found a corner seat with a perfect view, and ate the greasy food slowly without tasting it. Once she finished, she lingered an hour longer, taking periodic sips from her soda and never taking her eyes off of the front door. When he stepped out with two Lucario behind him, Seven flinched. She debated turning back, but remembering the previous night, the blood dripping from her bruised fingers, Bruno's swollen eyes and battered muzzle, she made herself press on.

The trio stopped at a café first. After window-shopping for five minutes at a clothing boutique across the street, she took a seat as far away from them as she could while keeping them within sight. She sipped her tea, taking care not to block her camera with her arms, and kept a wary eye on the Lucario. Their ears twitched, and she got the uncomfortable notion that they sensed her presence. When one of them turned around, she bent her head, hiding herself behind her hat as she took a nervous sip. It turned back without a word.

Seven followed them out of the café, to a movie theater, then another café, a burger restaurant, and finally, back to their own place. During each transit, Seven dashed into a clothes store and swapped out her costume, trading the white hat for one of straw, then she wore a couple hoodies, and she rounded out her disguise collection with a wig, a baseball cap, and a long, fluffy black scarf. She nearly lost the trio a few times, but Thoth hacked into traffic cameras and found them quickly enough.

Snippets of conversation drifted over to her, most of it about finding Bruno. She caught one Lucario saying that, at this point, Bruno is almost certainly dead, but Peter refused to hear it. He said that if Bruno was still alive, he would've snapped by now, and Seven nearly snorted at that.

By nightfall, once Peter and the two Lucario went home, Seven was left with a sinking feeling that, although Peter would give up one day, she couldn't possibly keep tailing him with those Lucario around. While mulling over the problem, she thought of a novel solution and chuckled to herself as she got in the car.

The next day, she had every second of the video she recorded downloaded onto a flashdrive, stored a copy on her computer just in case, and brought it, along with two chairs, a table, and a bottle of water and jerky for herself, into Bruno's room. She started the video and passed the laptop over to Bruno, who sat across from her.

Through the whole seven-hour video, Bruno never said a word or looked away. His jaw tensed, but he gave no other outward sign of emotion. Once it was done, he barked something, and Thoth translated it to, "They're still looking for me."

"They were looking for you, I guess," Seven said as she popped a piece of jerky in her mouth. "The Lucario are convinced you're dead. They said you'd have broken by now if you were still alive."

"But Peter is still looking," Bruno said. "I know he'd never stop." Tears speckled the corners of his eyes, and his jaw clenched tighter.

"He will," Seven said. "He can't keep looking forever, and one of these days, he's going to figure the other Lucario are right and move on. It might even happen soon, judging by how they're spending so much time together.

Bruno's shoulders slumped, and tears trickled from his eyes. Seven smiled to herself, stood, and left the room, leaving the table and laptop as well. Though it wasn't a dramatic break, she had finally cracked his armor, and with a little more time, Bruno would split wide open.

Her joy was marred only by a burning sensation in her eyes that she couldn't blink away.

Changelog

12/23/18 – minor edits