Chapter Fifty-Five

Seven's hands shook as she wrenched her door open and rushed inside. Jumping onto the bed, she huddled against the corner and wrapped the blankets around her. Each breath came in strangled gasps, and sweat drenched her fur. Lights danced in front of her eyes, and the silky smooth scrape of a scalpel against a metal operating table caressed her ears like a chilly knife.

She looked down at her arms. The illusion had fled, exposing her fur, her shame, to the world. Furrowing her brow, she reached for her power and tried to pull it over herself. It slipped from her quivering grasp.

"Breathe, calm down," she told herself through clenched teeth. "Giovanni won't let him have me. He can't get me now. I'm free. I'm free."

A knock came at the door. Seven jumped and shoved herself against the wall, raising the blanket so it blocked her face.

"Boss wants to talk to you," Admin Fisher said. "He'll be in his office."

Seven scrambled out of bed, straightened her uniform, and went to the door.

"T – tell him I'll be there in a minute."

"Giovanni says you can take as much time as you need, so long as you come within the hour, and come discreetly. See you later, Steven."

Admin Fisher strode down the hall. His boots clomped on the concrete floor. Once his footsteps faded into silence, Seven grabbed a cup of water and chugged it down. Licking her lips, she closed her eyes and concentrated on molding a new illusion, taking the wobbling energy inside of her and carefully stretching it into place. The jacket was lopsided, and the pants were missing pockets, but it was good enough for a stroll down the hall.

Giovanni's door was cracked open. Seven knocked on it, and the door opened halfway. Giovanni was looking at a tablet propped up on his desk and rubbing sanitizer on his hands.

"You came earlier than I expected," he said.

Seven bowed. "Forgive me, I didn't expect to see… him again."

"I wasn't expecting that either," Giovanni said, "Else I would have warned you." He stood and stretched his arms. Not a wrinkle blemished his suit through the motion. In the dim, green light filtering through the ferns, his stony, prominent cheekbones painted long shadows across his face, like moss on a boulder. "That was a pretty good imitation, don't you think?"

"I – imitation?"

Giovanni stood and straightened his suit. "What I am about to show you does not leave this room. Understood?"

Seven nodded. Giovanni walked over to the waterfall and reached for the stone behind. The water parted around his hand. When his fingertips pressed against the stone, a green light flickered across the gray marble surface. With a click, the water stopped, and the stone slid into the floor without a sound. The water in the basin drained away.

"Don't try coming in here yourself," Giovanni said. "The system pumps sulfuric acid into the mix if it misreads."

Seven nodded and hurried after him. The space beyond was pitch black, with a subtle green glow illuminating the metal corridor from behind her. The rock slid back into place, but before the darkness swallowed her whole, red lights lit up the ceiling, washing everything below in soft, indirect light the color of blood.

To either side of her, there were rows of giant glass tanks, each filled with a clear, jelly-like substance. The right-hand side had pink, humanoid creatures. At first glance, Seven thought they might have been distant cousins of N, but the flesh was too dark and solid. Each successive tank had larger and more developed specimens, and the farthest down stood a foot taller than Giovanni, with stubby three-fingered hands, a dark, rounded tail as long as its body, and a bulging, horned head.

The left-side, however, stole Seven's breath away. Ghetsis was in each of the ten tanks to the left. In some, his skull had been removed, exposing his pale, wrinkled brain. In others, he stared at her with a glassy brown eye. Even with white cloth wrapped about his waist, he seemed nude, incomplete, without his red eyepiece.

"What is this?" Seven asked.

Giovanni tapped a tank. "This is where I keep my most prized and dangerous projects. It also serves as the final resting place of the two most dangerous individuals I have ever known."

He walked over to the last tank on the right and looked up at the creature. "I was a much younger man, a graduate student studying under Dr. Ghetsis, when I set out to create the perfect weapon. He was quick to offer his help and resources, and quick to heap the blame on me when it turned against me and its other creators. Using the incident, Ghetsis launched himself into power, while I was cast down into the city's crime-ridden underbelly."

Giovanni turned back to the rows of Ghetsis bodies. "Naturally, I tried to dispose of him. The first time, I had a bomb planted on the underside of his limousine. I watched as flames stripped the flesh from his bones, cracked them open, and boiled the marrow inside. Yet, a week later, he gave a speech at a science convention."

He walked over to the first tank. "Next time, I made sure to recover the body. I had an Admin of mine stab him in the ribs. See, the cut's right there."

Seven looked closer and saw a thin, pink line held shut with plastic sutures.

"I thought I had won. The next day, he paid me a visit, had a cup of tea with me, and offered to have the police overlook my casinos and safehouses in exchange for his body. I declined. During that week, I lost half of my finances and men to a string of police raids."

Giovanni looked back at her and cleared her throat. "I didn't mean to talk for so long. I'll get straight to the point."

He walked over to the last tank, and Seven followed him.

"I was planning a raid on Harmonia Labs for months, mainly to acquire you. However, a week before the date, I received an anonymous tip about the lab beneath the Labs. A cloning lab."

"I had known for a long time that Ghetsis was cloning himself. Cloning a body is simple, but cloning a mind… that's the challenge. I've wanted a brain sample to study, to see how it was done. In every sample I've collected, that eyepiece of his fried his brain. Every sample, except the one I recovered when I acquired you.

He walked over to the furthest tank. Seven paused to look at the penultimate Ghetsis. His chest was a pulpy ruin, with shards of his ribs jutting out of putrid flesh. The heart, bared to the amniotic fluid, had two chunks torn from it.

"This sample," Giovanni said, gesturing at the final tank, "Had a perfectly intact brain. No signs of surgery, or chemical engineering, or cybernetic tweaking. Nothing. In short, I still didn't know how he did it."

The brain was detached from the rest of the body, floating in front of Ghetsis' eyes. Metal probes were inserted into multiple areas, and cables wound their way out of the fluid, to a computer.

"Ghetsis was always a cunning man," Giovanni said as he followed the wires to a console. "He had the brain fried, even though there was never anything inside. Because of that, I overlooked the most obvious answer."

He shook his head. "It's done and over with anyways. His lab is destroyed, along with his means of resurrection." He turned away from the clones and walked towards the door. "The problem is that anonymous caller. They provided detailed information about security detail, building layout, everything. In exchange, they wanted funds and weapons. I kept track of the goods and found that they were collected by the White Knights. Then Fisher brought back your knife from the warehouse raid, and I learned the full extent of my mistake."

When Giovanni approached the exit, the stone slid aside, and the lights turned off. It sealed itself again when Seven passed through, and water resumed its descent down the marble surface.

"So, that Ghetsis was N?" Seven asked.

"Without a doubt." Giovanni sat at his desk and pumped a dollop of sanitizer onto his hands. "N isn't half as clever as his creator, but he's far more dangerous. Ghetsis… he could be reasoned with. But N, he is only interested in my downfall."

"What do you want me to do?"

"You will return the Mega Stone to the police department. While you're there, I need you to steal the Commissioner's keycard."

"The Lucario will be there."

"They will be," Giovanni said, "Which is part of the point. When your enemy suspects treachery, the best way to stab them in the back is to wait for them, anticipating an attack from the rear, to turn around." He pulled open a desk drawer and set an ID on the table. It bore the Commissioner's stony face and the seal of the Seven Sages. "In other words, they'll be so busy looking for illusions that they will never notice a little sleight of hand."

"When you asked for the Mega Stone…"

"Just an excuse to get you in the door."

Seven nodded. "I will do as you command."

"Good. You may leave."

Admin Celeste arrived a minute after Seven left. She held a bulging cloth pouch in one hand and a clipboard in the other.

"The application is done, sir."

"Good. Will it work as intended?"

"I've run clinical trials on the tissue samples from Bruno. Without a whole specimen, it's impossible to tell how quickly the poison will act, but it should take a minimum of four hours."

"Then it is check." He kneaded the isopropyl alcohol into his pores. "Not checkmate, I'm afraid. I still don't have a way to deal with N. That said, without any allies, there's little he could do against me." He grimaced. "There's also Ghetsis' eyepiece. If it is real, we must recover it at all costs."

"What will the next move be?" Celeste asked.

"Watch and wait. Whatever happens, in two days time, I'll have far fewer enemies in the world. Now leave me, I have business to attend to."

Celeste nodded and left the room. Once he was sure he was alone, Giovanni opened the waterfall passage again. This time, he strode straight towards the last tank on the right and rapped on the glass.

"Hello, old friend. Have you made your decision yet?"

Inside the tank, the creature's eyes opened. Eyes like slivers of glass, sharp, pale, and eerily reflective, blinked at him.

"I tire of being in this cage," it said in Giovanni's mind. "I will do as you ask."

Changelog

12/27/18 – minor edits