Disclaimer: Pokémon and its related properties are copyrighted to The Pokémon Company and Nintendo, respectively
A Yearning for the Mud
Chapter Forty-Eight – Sleeping with the Enemy
Weeks had passed, and with the temperature dropping with the invitation of fall, so did the number of remaining students. Wallace had taken to charting the updates from Neo and Cole's classrooms, as well as his own findings and Arlette's surveillance of dorm halls and rooms they didn't have access to. Using numbers, they pulled offline, Neo estimated the original student body had been reduced by nearly 75%.
With the revelation that Sienna Oakburn was missing, Wallace tasked Arlette to check on the other professors, her findings came back equally as bleak with over half of the faculty building being vacant. He'd tried his best to warn Professor Sutcliffe but only ended up sounding paranoid and sleep deprived which was met with his advice to visit the clinic.
"I listened to some people in the administrative building and even in the office of public safety, they didn't say anything about missing students or the school looking more empty," Arlette said as she floated by Wallace on their way a breakfast meeting in the Student Union. "I know you said you tried that already, but I just thought I'd give it a try." When Wallace didn't reply, only kept his gait toward the entrance, Arlette moved in closer, her hands wringing together. "Wallace, maybe it's time you stop trying to solve this on your own."
He stopped so suddenly in the middle of climbing the short flight of steps to the front doors that elgyem tumbled off his shoulder and caught himself before smacking the ground. "And do what?"
"Call the police," she said with slow intent like she was speaking a foreign language for the first time.
Wallace pressed his lips into a line and suppressed his initial response with a cough as he continued climbing until he reached the door. "Would they even believe me?" he asked as he yanked open the heavy glass door to the Student Union and let elgyem float on by.
"Cole and Neo believe you now," Arlette said as her face was split by the glass as she passed through.
"Because I had proof, and it wasn't even me, it was Neo. How am I supposed to make a person believe someone who they've never met existed?"
"Find someone who did know they existed," Arlette answered, as if it was that simple. "I've been thinking. Whoever is responsible is here on campus, that's a give in, right?"
Wallace nodded as he climbed another set of stairs, one of three that would take him to the dining room on the second floor. It hadn't occurred to him that someone unrelated to the campus would be behind the vanishing student. At first it seemed to be an act specifically for him, one that, if left unchecked, would leave him isolated and alone with memories of ghosts haunting him.
"So, what if the campus is the only place affected?" she asked. "I know it's hard to find that out, if random people you never knew existed are missing in other parts of the region, but what if it's just the school?"
"Then what?"
"Then there have to be people out there who remember those that have gone missing," she said, zooming into his path to block his way to the door, despite not having a physical body. "Think about it. If I was missing, who would you ask, outside of the school, to remember me?"
Wallace passed through her as he pulled the dining-room door open and prepared to swipe his badge for the cashier, only to find the usual attendant missing. He huffed before he moved around the space and started walking toward a table on the far side of the room near the windows, a crowd had already gathered at the table he'd specified for Neo and Cole. "I'd ask Andrew," he said, the only answer he could think of.
"Exactly, he's not here on campus, but he knew me, so he's perfect," Arlette said. "So, let's think, who has vanished, but you have some way of contacting someone that knew them off campus?"
Wallace paused in mid-stride as the point Arlette had been trying to drill into him struck gold. "Don's little sister has been here before, she would never Nat, she adores him," he said, excited filling him, then quickly fizzing out. "I wouldn't know how to talk to her or their parents. I only met them once, when Nat was attacked, they came with – they came with their cousin! Don's cousin was here. She's a little younger than us, but she – she goes to some trainer school! Damn, I don't know where!" Wallace gripped the sides of his heads and glanced to elgyem who regarded him with a big shrug. The idea of teleporting crossed his mind, but the location was the biggest question of all. "I couldn't have elgyem teleport somewhere he's never been before."
"Would Cosmo be able to talk to her for you?" Arlette asked as she pointed ahead of them to the table. Among several students, Wallace spotted the back of Cosmo's head, his platinum blond waves recognizable from the distance. While on the topic of the Freelily's he pondered for a moment how each of their boys ended up with different-colored hair.
Moving closer, Wallace caught the eye of every student he'd requested he gathered for their breakfast meeting. Eleanor, Serena, Cosmo, Garret, Shannon along with Neo and Cole. Everyone had at least two plates of half-eaten food before them and glasses of water, milk, and juice were scattered around the table. "Is this everyone?" he asked, he'd expected a few more and their absence likely meant the worse.
Cole held a folded piece of paper between his fingers that he passed off to Wallace. "We went to all the rooms you told us about, they were empty," Cole said, sliding a folded-up piece of paper across the table to him. "A few more people should be coming, your old roommate, Nicki is on the way."
Wallace grabbed unfolded it, finding a list of names were written inside, all crossed out. Tempest, Kolton, Alina, Azalea, Calvin, Ignatius, Travis, Alexia, and Willow. Wallace's heart throbbed for all the names on the list, some more than others, like Willow. Two weeks after moving out with Nicki, she went missing. He tossed glances to the doors and the elevator to the dining room, the idea to blow up on Nicki when they arrived cross his mind, but it wouldn't do any good as Nicki wouldn't remember Willow at all, let alone allowing for her to be taken. Instead, he balled the paper up, his fist shaking out of restrained frustration before a voice broke his focus.
"This had better be worth it."
Wallace peered over his shoulder to find Alice there with Nicki with plates of food in hand. The two looked like a pair from an online fashion catalog. Nicki wore a pair of baby blue overalls with the legs cut off and an oversized pink jacket while Alice had mirrored them in the opposite way with a pink strapless dress and baby blue heels. Pink-red tint covered both of their cheeks and black hearts had been drawn under their eyes.
"Knowing Wallace, it won't be," Nicki said as they dramatically swerved around Wallace to find a seat at the table.
Alice giggled as she placed her plate down and dragged a chair beside Nicki and leaned into them. "Go on, we're all gathered here today, as you requested," she said, making a grandiose gesture with her hand.
"Right," he said, finding it hard to focus with Nicki and Alice staring so intently at him above their drawn-on hearts. Averting his focus, he found the others at the round table doing the same, though Garret was one whose eyes he never saw land on him. "Okay, uh, about a month or so ago – I don't know - I noticed that one of the students on campus was gone. Like gone, just… gone. But not just gone, vanished. Every trace of them was gone. Nothing they owned, nothing that mentioned them. Even the memories of that person had been erased. But they're not the first. Other students and maintenance workers for the university have had the same thing happen to them. Before anyone starts, I know how it sounds, but I have proof that there are people all used to know that are no longer around and that you've all forgotten them. Neo, can you start?"
"On it." Without giving the crowd a chance to discuss their skepticism, Neo fired up his tablet and started flicking through files when another voice interrupted their meeting.
"Are we have a little gathering?" Reed asked.
Wallace clenched his jaw and turned, unsurprised to find Reed flanked by Don and Julian, but another addition to the group did shock him. A small girl with a blunt bob of dark hair stood at Don's side, fingering the chain of a poké ball necklace. As expected, Don avoided his gaze.
"Hi, Wallace, remember me?" the girl asked once their eyes met. "I'm Mieko, I was a part of the counseling group where you got your totodile egg."
"Right," he said. "You were helping Denvy with the group, why are you still on campus?"
"I work here, actually," she said, sounding a little offended. "In the administrative building as an assistant. I help my brother out, he's a secretary," Mieko said, smiling.
"Mieko has been a big help to the NRR," Reed cut in. "I felt it was so important to get someone connected with school administration on board with our little club to keep everything as open and transparent as possible. Don't you agree, Serena?"
"Handle it b -," Serena said, amid checking her nails, but her voice died in her throat. Slowly, she sat up and started to glance at the faces around her.
"Serena?" Wallace asked. "Are you okay?"
Serena's head moved into a slow shake before she wet her lips. "I just feel like something was supposed to happen, and then it didn't."
Before Wallace could question it further, Reed clapped his hands so loud it echoed through the nearly empty dining room. "Anyway, we didn't mean to interrupt, but Don mentioned Cosmo invited him to a meeting you were holding, and I figured you must have just forgotten to invite the rest of us and thought we'd invite ourselves." Reed and his pack grabbed chairs from a nearby table and piled in near Cosmo.
"We didn't forget, we were hoping you'd already been taken actually," Cole said. "Can't catch a break."
Wallace tried not to laugh. Though he hadn't told Cole everything about Don, when he laid out that he didn't care for Reed and that Don had been avoiding him, Cole decided he wouldn't care for Reed either.
"Emotions are running high today I see," Reed said, crossing his legs. "We're not here to fight, just to listen to what Wallace has to say. If there's danger lurking around our school, from what Don told me, I want to make sure the NRR is aware and doing what we can to protect our club members."
"Just your club members?" Cole asked. "Pretty self-absorbed of you."
"Wallace, I have it," Neo said, shaking his tablet in the air as he shuffled past Eleanor to Serena's seat and laid the tablet down.
Removing him from the death stare match between Cole and Reed, Wallace moved to Serena's side. "Serena, that day you were outside the room in the boy's dorm, it wasn't an accident, you were looking for someone." Standing behind Serena he pointed to a picture of the floor plan Neo had taken on the tablet. He expanded the photo until one room was the focus of the screen. Two names, Brent Harbin and Nasturtium Freelily. "That room you had the key to belonged to Nat Freelily," he said, looking up and scanning the present faces for any kind of reaction, but no one gave him the satisfaction. "He shared it with Brent, the boy that talked to you who you said you didn't remember."
"Nat," Serena said like she was testing the name out for the first time. She rested her hands beside the tablet and touched the screen lightly. "Why would I have the key to his room?"
Like with Andrew, he wanted her to discover the connection on her own, rather than feed it to her, but time wasn't on their side for that approach. "You said you were there to see someone," he said. "You must have known Nat lived there, even though your memories of him were gone." Swiping, Wallace pushed the picture of the floorplan aside and replaced it with a picture of Serena in the clinic at Nat's beside in her homecoming dress from last year. Nat was propped up in bed, completely covered in bandages, with about half of his head visible. "Neo found this online, it's after Nat was burned in the stadium. There was a big fire in the stadium last year. Anyone remember that?" He got a few mumbled responses and a couple of weak head bobs. "Nat was there and trying to put it out, but he got hurt. You'd put so much work into getting homecoming together but didn't want to spend a minute of it there without Nat so you left to be with him."
Serena sucked in a breath and cupped her hands to her mouth as she tried to hold back a sob. "Why don't – how could I forget something like this?" she laid her hands on the sides of the tablet before she hovered over the screen as if she was recommitting the moment to memory. "Nat?"
"Nat Freelily," Wallace said again as he grabbed the tablet and looked to Don who had his eyes on the floor. "He was, is, Cosmo and Don's older brother." Wallace swiped again to find the next picture Neo had prepared a selfie of the three brothers together with Cosmo in a headlock under Nat's arm and Don looking fearful that he might be next. He placed the tablet down in front of the brothers and stepped aside. Reed and Julian shifted to get a look and, in the process, Julian bumped the table and toppled a glass of juice that splashed onto the tablet.
Many gasped, but none as loud as Neo who shot up, trying to reach his tablet across the table. "Get it! It's not a moisture-proof model!"
"Here, I got it," Julian said as he dragged the tablet through the pooling juice on the table. As he pulled it closer, he reached for a napkin, but the tablet slipped through his fingers and dropped to the ground.
Wallace froze at the sound of shattering glass as Julian jumped back and dove for the floor. Neo rushed around the table and slammed into Julian, knocking him out of the way as he tried to grab the tablet, the liquid on the outside proving hard to hold the device. Using the bottom of his shirt, Neo wiped the back clean before he pried it off the floor and whispered to himself as he flipped it over and revealed a cracked screen and globs of black and purple across the display. Through the distorted colors, Wallace felt his hope drain away as the image of the Freelily boys was indistinguishable from a child's messy paint project.
Neo's cheeks burned red as he stood up, glaring down at Julian. "You did that on purpose!"
"No, I swear!" Julian said, throwing his hands up in surrender. "I was just trying to get a look and it was so slippery, I'm so sorry. Really, I am."
Beside him, Reed pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed. "You ruin everything, Julian," he said. "Wallace, I'm sorry about Julian, last week he dropped a figure I bought at the school store, he's got butterfingers. What you were saying sounded so well researched. Do you have something else to show us?"
Wallace watched as Julian slumped back into his seat and kept his head down, looking afraid to catch Reed's eye. "I do," he said, pulling his phone out and flicking through his gallery as he moved toward Nicki. "Our old roommate, her name is Willow." Wallace handed the phone to Nicki on a picture he'd taken of the two of them doing each other's nails on Nicki's bed. "I asked Willow to move in with us and you two became friends fast. You helped her move out and then left with her and now she's gone."
Alice craned her neck over to see the phone as Nicki's mouth hung open before they handed it back. "I don't remember," Nicki said.
"That's the point," Wallace said to the group. "Would Nicki invite anyone into their room and paint their nails? If that's not the kind of thing you make a habit out of, who is this girl to you and why don't you remember her?"
Nicki's mouth opened and closed before they sat back in their seat and folded their arms in their lap. "I don't know."
"Because someone wanted you to forget them. Neo and I, we had a bunch of pictures collected, but I mean if you give me a chance I can find them again or more," Wallace said, as he tried to get to the school's website up to find another picture, anything to trigger someone's memory. While looking through shots of students taken and submitted to the school site, he came across one of Shannon with Travis and Ignatius. "H-Here's one," he said, rushing to Shannon's side. "They were your friends; you were crushing on Iggy," he said, pointing to the point with the lucario and the snapback.
"I mean, he is my type..." Shannon leaned over the phone and then zoomed in on his face and smacked her lips. "But I crush on a lot of boys," she said with a shrug. "Call me a flirt."
"I'm sure I can find a picture of Azalea and Alina for you, Alice, they were your friends, the AAA Girls," Wallace said as he grabbed his phone and started flipping through photos faster. "Um, hold on, just give me a second."
"Wallace," Eleanor said, her voice soft and reassuring. "If this is happening, why are you the only one to remember these people?"
"Yeah, what makes you so special?" Mieko asked. "If this is true you wouldn't know any of this, right?"
"No. Ellie, Mieko, stop, just – let me find some more pictures, you guys have to understand this. It's the only way to keep you safe," Wallace whined, his voice breaking as he started to wipe without looking at faces. "I'm not crazy!"
A hand on his back slowed him until Cole grabbed his hand, stopping him from swiping as his phone froze for a moment trying to catch up with what he was asking of it. "Relax," Cole said in his ear.
Wallace looked up from his screen to the faces around him, many were wide-eyed and blank-faced, a few others, like Eleanor, looked concerned for him. Nicki and Alice looked bored, while Garret and the NRR looked as if they'd just wasted time they'd never get back.
"What do you think of all this, Cole?" Mieko asked.
"Do you two know each other?" Wallace asked, breathless.
"We've met before," Mieko said, shrugging.
Cole remained tight-lipped, his hold on Wallace intensifying before Reed inserted himself again.
"Wallace, you said that understanding was the only way to stay safe," he said. "Do you believe we're in real danger? Outside of what he's claiming about memories and people we should know; do you think we are in danger?"
Wallace bit into his lower lip until he tasted blood. "Something is happening to these people, something is taking them, or someone," he said. "And anyone here could be next."
"Then I suggest we all gather tonight at the Religious Life Center to pray for protection and guidance," Reed said, rising to his feet. "If we are all in danger, staying together under Arceus' light is the best thing we can do right now. I'll let the rest of the NRR know too, if nothing else there is strength in numbers. Right?"
Wallace watched as those around the table started to murmur to themselves and get up to leave. With Cole's hold on him, he couldn't move far to stop anyone from spreading away from the table. "Eleanor! How did you get that scar on your cheek?"
On her way to Neo, Eleanor stopped, her eyes flicking up from the ground and then to Wallace. Slowly, her hand found her face and traced the clean scar line across her cheek, a lasting gift from Chara. Cole's words echoed in his mind, people don't just vanish, they leave things behind.
"Think Ellie," Wallace said, shaking Cole off as he looked over the table. A butter knife globed with a red paste caught his eye. He swiped it up and pretended to drag it across his face, an act that felt like an insult to Eleanor after what they'd gone through following the safari trip. "What happened to your arcanine? Even if your memory has been affected, I refuse to believe you don't know what happened. It's not something you can forget, some things you feel in your blood."
"The safari." Eleanor straightened up and clutched her face as she staggered, causing Neo to rush to her side to steady her. "We were in the safari, you and I, I – I found you. It was just us," she said, slowly at first before the words spilled from her lips. "I was there to help the students and I found you, you were hurt and scared and crying… Who hurt you? It made me angry to see you like that, but I wasn't hurt then." Tears streamed from Eleanor's eyes as she rubbed her face, her fingers dragging across her scar tissue. "Then I was, but who hurt me? Who hurt you?"
"Wallace, let's stop," Neo said, holding Eleanor up as she started to wobble, her breaths coming out harder as her chest jumped with each sob. "I don't think is the way to do it."
Wallace nodded and backed down, allowing those around him to get up and stretch their legs. The group held a few conversations, but slowly people started to migrate further from him.
"Don't let Garret go, I have something for you to tell him," Arlette hissed in his ear.
Wallace dropped the knife to the table and nodded as Neo walked Eleanor toward the elevator. "Please, before you go, just stay in touch with either Neo or Cole or me. I know how some of you feel about me, but I just want you all to stay safe."
"The NRR will be meeting outside of the ICO tonight for any who are interested," Reed said as a final attempt to gather members before Don, Julian, and Mieko followed him toward the exit, followed by Cosmo.
"Cosmo, wait," Wallace said, plan B for convincing Don and Cosmo clicking in his brain. "I was wondering if you could get me in touch with your cousin. Rosanna?"
Cosmo paused and adjusted his glasses as his eyes scanned Wallace from top to bottom. "Why the interest in my cousin?"
Wallace pulled his face into a big fake smile. "Nothing, we chatted a bit last time she was here, and I lost track of her email. I was supposed to send her something."
"Send her what?" Cosmo asked, turning to face him as he folded his arms.
An SOS. "An autograph, from Andrew," Wallace said, that seemed like the kind of gift girls would be interested in.
Cosmo held Wallace's stare for a breath before he rolled his eyes and shook his head. "Should have known, I can find stars hidden in pockets of distant galaxies but can't begin to comprehend the minds of her and her friends. I don't look forward to my sister growing up," Cosmo said as he slipped his phone out from his pocket and his thumbs tapped away. "I'll send you her contact file," he said before he turned and waved bye over his head.
"Nice," Arlette said. "Oh Wallace, here comes Garret!"
Wallace turned to see Garret with his head down heading toward the exit, but before he was out of reach Wallace grabbed his wrist. Garret's eyes blazed as he turned on him, his lip curled up like he was ready to bite. "Arlette wants me to tell you she meant what she said," he repeated.
The few words shared seemed to disarm Garret and as Wallace let him go, he backed away, his eyes darting across Wallace's face before they fell, and he retreated across the room to the closest exit.
"What did that mean?" Wallace asked.
Arlette smiled and shook her head. "Nothing you'd understand, but I wanted him to know."
"Well, what do I say when he asks how I knew to say that if he asks?" Wallace asked, turning he found Serena still seated. "Serena, what's wrong?"
In the midst of it all, Wallace hadn't noticed that Serena never left her seat. "It's not clear, but there's a memory of the boy I was looking for that day, Nat," Serena said, running her hands through her bleached hair. "But it's like I'm trying to convince myself of it being real, instead of just knowing that it is. Still I can't let go of it. Like trying to fill in the blanks of a dream, you know you're just telling yourself a lie."
"Keep thinking about it, about him, let me know if you want to talk about him at all," Wallace said. "Stay safe too, do you have a roommate?"
Serena nodded. "She's fine, but – do you really think someone is targeting us? Like anyone of us could go missing next and no one remember us?"
"I do," Wallace said.
"We don't know how they're being taken or why or if there's a method or pattern, just that one day they're here and then they're gone," Cole inserted. "So, stay frosty."
"Do we know what's happening to them?" Serena asked as she stood up and smoothed out the front of her dress. "Are they, dead?"
"We don't know," Wallace said. "But if that was the goal, what's the point in making everyone forget they ever existed?"
"Seems like a complicated means to a simple end," Cole said.
Serena nodded, though their lack of information didn't seem to comfort her. "I'll text you when I make it back," she said.
Once the table was empty, elgyem drifted from Wallace's shoulder and started to rearrange the silverware on the table to his liking. Wallace watched Serena leave before Cole dropped a hand onto his shoulder. "There are at least a couple of dozen students in here," Cole said. "Are you going to talk to each of them and give them a heads-up?"
"I don't know them, or anything about them, I wasn't able to convince Don and Cosmo of their own brother, how I can make strangers believe something." Wallace shook his head as he surveyed the room, anyone of them could be next and their friends would never know if he didn't figure this out. "I want to keep people safe, but I also want this to stop. But it feels like I'm no closer to either of those goals."
Cole's hand slid across his shoulder blades until he grabbed his other shoulder and pulled him in for a hug. Wallace pressed his face into Cole's chest without restraint and took in a whiff of his cologne, cinnamon, and firewood like he spent his free time camping. "This is probably a bad time," Cole said, taking a deep breath, the vibrations in his chest startling Wallace. "But we never talked about what I said about you moving in."
Wallace flared his nostrils, it was a bad time, but he'd dodged the conversation for a while. After Cole asked him to move into his room he'd skipped replying and woke the next day to 32 texts and three missed calls and had avoided the question ever since. Prying himself away, Wallace righted himself and tried to rid himself of Cole's scent, though now he had a craving for French toast by the fireplace. "It is the wrong time, but Cole, I honestly don't know what to feel when it comes to you. I mean, I appreciate your help and your friendship more than you will ever know. I don't know how I would have made it through these last few weeks without you and Neo, but I don't know if there's anything beyond that. I mean, I don't know if you feel something for me beyond that, because I can't tell."
"I don't know how I feel about you exactly, only that I feel different around you, like a different version of me, maybe a better version," Cole said as he backed again and leaned against the table, fidgeting with a fork his wandering fingers found there. "I've never thought about another guy like I think about you and it makes me feel uncomfortable sometimes," he said in a hushed tone. "So, I've been doing what I normally do with girls, dropping hints and waiting to see what you do or how you react."
The thought of Cole hitting and flirting on girls didn't sit right with him, Cole had lived an entire life before they met. "I've noticed," Wallace said with an awkward laugh, Cole's occasional picture message showing that he was home safe had started to involve fewer clothes. "But when I felt like doing something and kissed you, you reacted in a way that did not say you felt the same, so I've just stepped back and enjoyed being your friend."
"It took me by surprise," Cole said as he jabbed the table with the fork and inched closer until he could reach out and take Wallace's face in his hands. "Plus, I'd just found you in the middle of a panic attack. Wallace, I think like you," he breathed, bringing his face closer.
Wallace turned his head at the last second, squeezing his eyes shut at the feeling of Cole's burning lips against his temple. The contact sparked a fire inside of him that he quickly doused with a shower of reality. "I can't do this right now. I need to focus on what's happening around us." Wallace pressed his hands to the base of Cole's neck and pushed back. "Help me save everyone and then we can talk about us. Deal?"
"Deal," Cole said, grinning.
After getting Rosanna's number, Wallace shot off a lengthy text introducing himself, again, and his request to video chat along with his information. Between his breakfast meeting and waiting for Rosanna's call he made a trip to the student store and picked up a few things to fill his newly vacated room.
The room didn't look much different, but he moved Wink's pool under Nicki's old bed meaning the water-type had the entire space of the bed to roam and hide. With the purchase of a bed and some toys, he made Mila a bed in one corner of the room while ariados had made a home in the other making frighteningly large web designs that entertained elgyem who rested on his windowsill.
"Are you nervous?" Arlette asked as she lingered around his doorway, watching Mila chase Wink from under Nicki's old bed and across the room to Wallace's bed.
"A little?" Wallace said, shaking his hands out as he paced the floor before the call picked up and a trio of gasps emitted from his computer. Sliding into his chair, Wallace found the familiar ruffled haired blonde that was Don's cousin, Rosanna, staring back at him.
She was flanked by two more faces, one freckled and framed by tangles of blood-red hair, the other more familiar to him. Her pink hair was thin and fell across her face in large chops, her soft features hidden as she nibbled at the end of her sweater's sleeve. When she saw him her doe-like eyes popped open. "It's you," she breathed.
"You know him?" the redhead asked as she gathered her long hair in her hands and pulled it back into a ponytail. "Am I the only one who has no clue who this guy is?"
"Weren't you searching his name on your phone during study hall?" a soft, cool, voice asked from the background. "Hence why you have detention next week."
The redhead stiffened and seemed to swallow down a few choice words before she rolled her neck around. "Thank you, Maddy, I appreciate it. You're a great secretary, I wish I could afford to pay you more. So what if I was looking him up, doesn't mean I found much."
"I'm Wallace Pearce," he said, waving to his webcam.
"Wait, – Pearce?" a male's voice asked in response. "Can I see? I heard he's –"
"Go away," the redhead stretched her arm out and Wallace flinched at the sound of someone gasping followed by a loud thud. "It's not about you, Kevin."
"Hi Wallace," Rosanna said, scooting closer. "Ignore them," she said with a slight laugh.
Wallace nodded but quickly lost focus as something near the base of Rosanna's neck started to move. He strained his eyes to focus as something green emerged from the collar of her blouse and two beady eyes were stared back at him.
"You remember my sewaddle, Tailor," Rosanna said, scratching the top of the pokémon's head and ruffled his leaf before he inched his way into her hair and vanished in the tangles. "I guess you met Alita already, this is Aleigha," she said, presenting her friends.
"Ar – " Wallace cleared his throat, catching himself, as he looked over his shoulder and motioned for Arlette to join him. Without a doubt, the pink-haired girl at Rosanna's side was the girl he'd seen as the memorial for Arlette. She was her cousin, Alita. He finally had a name.
Arlette perked up as she floated over to Wallace's desk and stared down at his laptop screen, silent for a moment before she gasped and backed away, coming back instantly. "Alita?" she breathed, inching closer. "She's gotten so big, so beautiful."
"You alright?" Aleigha, the redhead, asked as she waved at the camera screen. "What's with this guy?"
"I'm fine," Wallace said before sucking a deep breath. "Nice to meet you all. Thanks for agreeing to talk to me, I don't want to take too much of your time, I just need your help with something actually and wondered if it was possible for you to come to visit my school."
"Visit campus again?" Rosanna asked, her brows shooting up. "Wow, last time I was there, Nat had just been attacked."
"I've heard bad things about this place," Aleigha said, resting her arm on Rosanna's shoulder. "People die there," she said, her eyes darting to Alita before she winced at her own choice of words.
Alita seemed unbothered by the remark as she adjusted a strand of her hair behind her ear. "People die everywhere," she said.
"This actually has to do with Nat," Wallace said, not wanting to dwell long on the night Chara and James hunted them through the clinic or his school's other unfortunate events. "More about Don and Cosmo, but Nat too. It's kind of urgent, but without teleporting I'm not sure how fast I could get you here though."
"Just how did you plan on getting us there anyway?" Aleigha asked, bumping heads with Rosanna for screen time.
"Us?" Wallace and Alita asked in concert.
Aleigha blew air through her lips and backed up. "There's no way you're bringing Rose out there by herself, she is going to be backup. Naturally, we're coming with her. Got enough money to bring all of us out there?"
"I hope you don't plan on making a trip overseas without adult supervision," the older voice in the back said.
"We're sophomores now," Aleigha said, backing up and cocking her hip out. "We can handle this. You're only a year older than us, you know that right?"
"I'm so student body president," the voice said.
Wallace studied Rosanna's face as she seemed to lose focus on their conversation, her eyes drifting to something below the screen as another girl came into view of the screen. Tall with bone straight blonde hair that reached her waist and an unamused look on her face as she moved past Aleigha.
"Pleasure to meet you, Wallace, I'm Madeleina Grant. I'll be accompanying Rosanna as well," she said and without another word she was gone, replaced by Aleigha's reddening face.
"So, as I said, are you going to be able to get all us there? Because to leave we need train tickets, and plane tickets, and food, and water, and shelter, among other things," Aleigha said, listing things off as she counted on her fingers.
"Of course," he said, the issue hadn't been getting someone to campus, it was just a matter of time, something he wasn't sure how much he had left. "It's just that it's kind of urgent."
"You said Alita took my pokémon at my memorial, if she still has them my gardevoir would be able to teleport them here," Arlette added, whispering.
"Uh okay, Alita? Question, last time I saw you, you had taken Arlette's team," Wallace said, his words drawing more focus from the pink-haired girl. "Her gardevoir would be able to teleport you all here if you still have her."
"O-Of course, I would never get rid of them," Alita said turning away from the camera. "I brought them back to campus with me after vacation because I wanted them to be close to me."
Wallace clenched his fists under the desk for the small victory of getting them to campus. "How soon can you get here? It's Friday. Do you have anything to do this weekend?"
"We're free as pidgeys!" Rosanna said, forcing a smile. "We'll get some things together and be there soon. I got your number, so I'll call you when we get there, and we can meet?"
"Wait, I want to go!" the boy said as a hand appeared in front of the screen.
"Sounds good, see you all soon," Wallace said with a wave as he closed his laptop and sat back, content.
"That was easy," Arlette said. "I can't believe Alita is coming here, I wish I could..."
Wallace curled the corners of his lips up as he watched Arlette seem to shrink away, tucking her head down as her words trailed off. "I'm sorry you won't be able to talk to her."
"I'll be alright," she said. "Seeing her is enough I guess; we never had a lot of time together growing up. What are the odds she goes to the same school as Don's cousin? Do you have a relative at that school?" she asked with a laugh.
"Not that I know of, thankfully," Wallace said as he looked down his phone. The last thing he needed was another Pearce in the mix, he was still dealing with the effects of his uncle Nolon claiming he was mentally unfit to claim his father's life insurance money.
I need a favor. After firing a text off to Nat, Wallace gathered elgyem and headed out with Arlette. Despite having organized a breakfast meeting that morning he hadn't eaten all day and wanted to get something on his stomach before it got too late. "Watch the room," he said to his team. Wink was the only one who acknowledged him with the snap of his jaws.
Following the halls to the stairwell, Wallace stopped at the sound of fists banging against the wood. Down the hall from the stairwell opening, he spotted someone leaning against a door, their balled fists banging irregularly.
"Is that?" Arlette asked, peering down the hall.
Wallace abandoned the idea of a hot meal and eased his way down the hall, straining to get a good look, though once he heard the voice, he was sure. Moving with even more caution, Wallace and Arlette approached a room nearly halfway down the hall with Don standing outside, lazily beating on the door.
"Cosmo! Let me in," Don groaned, his forehead pressed to the door. "I don't have the energy for this right now."
"I'm calling public safety if you don't leave!"
Wallace gawked at the scene, besides annoyed, Don seemed to be his normal self and it was without a doubt Cosmo's voice he heard coming from inside. Were they fighting?
"This isn't funny anymore," Don said with a smack of his open hand against the door as his eyes caught Wallace inching closer. "Let me in."
Under Don's emerald stare he wanted to turn heel and high tail it away. Immediately after returning to campus he knew Don's aversion to being near him had to do with the death of James at Don's hands and Wallace's involvement in the center of it all. But following Don's explanation that his relationship with Reed was basically an act, he wasn't sure how being around made Don feel. He only knew he felt, which was uncomfortable, the hated, but cared for… ex? Friend? Crush? Catalyst for murder? "Everything okay?" he asked, forcing himself to cast aside his wandering thoughts of what he was to Don.
"No," Don said, his eyes sizing Wallace up as Cosmo had done earlier before they flicked back to the door. "Cosmo won't let me in, he thinks he's being funny."
"I don't know you, go away!" Cosmo barked from inside, hitting the door from the other side.
"Hilarious," Don sighed as he rubbed his eyes. "Cosmo, I'm tired, I just want to go to bed, please let me in, I don't have my keys."
"You don't live here! I'm calling the police, that's it," Cosmo said, his voice fading away.
"Wallace, wait," Arlette said as she floated into the wall and vanished, only to remerge from Cosmo's door a few seconds later, her eyes wide. "Wallace, half of the room is empty."
Fear trickled down his spine and raised his flesh to bumps. "What?"
"Cosmo is in here, on the phone, but the other side, its completely bare," Arlette said, whipping around to face Don who was on his phone. "It's just like the others, just like Brent before he was taken. Is Don next?"
Your belongings, your memories in other people, and finally you. Wallace repeated the pattern in his head but knew it didn't have to follow that example. Serena forgot Brent before his room was emptied, maybe it was more convenient that way? "Don, you have to go, we have to go," he said, rushing forward, his hands moving spastically in the air. "This is bad, this is – Don, this morning what I said. People vanishing and their memories in other people being wiped as well? This is how it starts."
Don's eyes widened as he jerked his neck back, but the urgency didn't seem to reach the rest of his body. "What are you talking about?"
"What I talked to Serena about this morning, she went to her boyfriend's room and found his roommate there but didn't know who he was. Less than five minutes later, that roommate was gone, not a trace of him was left. This is the first step, your memories in other people vanish, then it's like everything you ever owned is taken, or maybe that happens last, but either way. The goal is to make it so it's like you never existed once they take you."
When Don's gaze turned from shock to skeptic, Wallace pounded on the door a few times. "Hey Cosmo, it's Wallace. I'm here with Don, can you let him in?"
"Wallace!" Cosmo said before the doorknob turned and the door cracked open, Cosmo's face filling part of the gap. "Wallace, do you know him?" he asked.
"I'm your brother, this isn't funny!" Don said, lunging forward, but Cosmo shut the door on him and left him to run into the wood.
"I don't have any brothers, leave me alone! This is harassment," Cosmo said.
Wallace listened to the knob lock with a click. He placed his hand flat on the door and let it slide down before he looked back to Don who rubbed his nose. "Inside – I didn't see any of my stuff," Don muttered to his shoes. "Wallace, this can't be real. This can't be happening. How is this happening?"
"I don't know, I – I haven't figured that out yet, I just know what's coming next," Wallace said as he took a leap and grabbed Don's hand, shocked when Don adjusted their grip so that their fingers laced. "We need to get you out of here. Someplace safe."
"Is there any place safe? Someone got into my room and took all my stuff, they messed with my brother's memory. He was acting fine just this morning," Don said as Wallace started off back down the hall toward the stairwell. "Wallace, if people are forgetting me, why do you still know who I am?"
Wallace held his silence until they reached the first floor and were near the lobby doors when he stopped to catch his breath. "I thought – I think – that whoever is behind this did it to target me. That by leaving me as the only person with any memories of the people taken would get to me eventually, and it has."
"Is it the rest of the Orphans?"
Wallace panted and waited for a breath, studying Don's expression. He hadn't mentioned the Orphans since Wallace forced him to admit what he'd done to James. "Don't know. Apparently, whoever it is, took Chara, he was one of the leaders for the Orphans, so it's possible one of the remaining Orphans is behind this," Wallace said as he shouldered his way through the door and into the lobby hallway and into the sound of someone sobbing nearby. "Willow told me about a boy and girl she never got to meet that were placed on campus."
Stepping into the main lobby, Wallace found a lush head of brown curls bobbing behind an armchair. Squeezing Don's hand, he moved around the lobby to get a better look until the person sat up straight and met him with teary eyes. "Wallace," Shannon moaned. "Oh Wallace, I'm having the worse day."
Scanning the lobby, Wallace felt his anxiety spike. With two sets of doors on his side, one set behind him and two doors that led to the dorm halls he felt too open for a surprise. "What's wrong?"
Shannon sniffed and rubbed at her nose with the end of her oversized sweatshirt. "This boy I've been talking to, I sent him a selfie, totally cute, and he completely dissed me. Told me to stop texting him, to leave him alone, and lose his number. Then my roommate came back and exploded on me, told me to get out and started throwing my stuff out of the hall and said she was going to beat me up if I ever broke into her room again. Not to mention all my professors were acting like they'd never seen me before, every class I went to I got asked to leave because I wasn't supposed to be there," she said, throwing air quotes into her explanation whenever she felt necessary. "This is like, not okay."
"Wallace," Arlette said, her hand falling uselessly through the air as she tried to grab his shoulder. "It's happening again."
"I know," he said. "Shannon, why don't you come with us, and we can figure this all out together? Get off the floor."
Shannon sucked in a few deep breaths before she stood up. "Let me go to the bathroom first. I'm a mess, I need to blot," she said, gesturing at her face.
Wallace pulled Don closer as Shannon dipped around the corner of the lobby into a small space that held a bathroom and some vending machines. "We'll take Shannon with us, maybe the three of us can figure something out," he said, digging in his pocket with his free hand for his phone to find Cole had replied. anything, friend.
Wallace released Don for a minute to send a text to Neo asking to meet him in the freshman dorm before he got back to Cole. I'll ask you later, right now I need you to meet me in the freshman dorm lobby, it's an emergency.
"Wallace, I don't think we should bring her with us," Don said, grimacing. "We don't even know her."
"Wallace, I'm getting a bad feeling," Arlette said, hovering between him and Don.
"What? Don, it's Shannon, she helped me during the safari assignment last year," Wallace said, watching Arlette move closer to the space around the corner.
Don shook his head and started to back away. "I've never seen her around before, what if she's the one behind this?"
"Wallace," Arlette muttered, hugging herself.
"I know! I know," he snapped, waving Arlette off.
"No, Wallace, I feel it again. When Brent was taken, that feeling I got when that person passed us, it's happening again."
"Elgyem, stay with Don," Wallace said before he tore off from his spot and rushed past Arlette. He whipped around the corner to find two vending machines casting blue-green light onto the dim corridor, the door to the unisex bathroom, the only door in the space hanging open. With reluctant footfalls, Wallace inched toward the door and kicked it open, empty. "Shannon!" he yelled, but only his echoing voice responded to him.
"Wallace?" Arlette asked as she peered around the corner.
"She's gone!" Wallace screamed as he ran back to the lobby and grabbed Don's hand and pulled him. "We've got to go!" he yelled back to Arlette and elgyem, unknowingly floating side by side as they left the building.
"Wait, please!" Don said, struggling to keep up as Wallace dragged him across the lot and toward the front of the ICO.
Wallace flashed his badge and kicked the door open, shoving Don inside and waited for elgyem to clear the threshold before he yanked the door close.
"Wallace, this feeling, it's what death is like," Arlette said, hugging herself. "It's what it feels like on the other side."
He stayed in the mudroom for a moment, his erratic breathing the only sound around him as he stared at the entrance to Rose-Absolute Hall. No one followed them or appeared in the glass doorway, but he knew they were there.
Grabbing Don's wrist again, Wallace pulled him through the double doors on the first floor and maneuvered colored hallways and half staircases until they reached the third floor. To his surprise, he found some of the overhead lights off with papers up detailing the closure of some of the halls for remodeling. Wallace followed his memory left and right before he reached his room from last year, unlocked, to his luck. He ushered Don and elgyem inside while Arlette lingered around in the hall.
"Wait, Wallace," Arlette said. "Listen to me, I think that's a clue."
"What?" he asked, out of breath, leaning on the door for support.
"When that person is around, it feels like I'm back on the other side," Arlette said. "It's cold and empty, what if that's where the others are being sent? Or something from the other side is taking them?"
A light flickered overhead and Wallace gripped the doorknob tighter, his mind running too fast to stop and take on Arlette's explanation. "Okay," he said, promising to file that theory away until he had time to properly process it.
Arlette nodded and regarded him with a short-lived smile. "I'll keep watch?" she offered. "I'll let you know if I see someone coming."
Wallace nodded his appreciation before he closed himself into the room and locked the door. The inside was even more empty than the first time he'd seen it. The metal bed frame and desks were gone, but the basic white walls and tile had stayed the same. Broken blinds hung crookedly over the windows and the room's only light, bulbs from the dresser mirror stretched their shadows across the room.
Elgyem floated to Don's side and greeted him with a series of green light flashes before he aimed those lights at Wallace. "Gy?"
"Hi," Don said, waving back. "Not sure what you're saying."
"Ignore him," Wallace said. "Elgyem, can you do me a favor and look out the window, let us know if you see someone? Neo and Cole should be here soon."
Elgyem bobbed his head and floated to the large windowsills and slid one of the blinds aside to plop down and gaze outside.
"Other people are coming?" Don asked as he surveyed the room before he eased down into sitting on the floor.
"Neo and Cole, they're the only ones who believed me about this, and I figured if nothing else having more people around might make you safer," Wallace said as he joined him in the middle of the floor. "Strength in numbers, that's what Reed said, right? Until we can figure out what's happening, I don't want to leave you alone," Another text came through his phone, one from Rosanna. We're packing some supplies, leaving soon.
Wallace slid the phone away, deciding it wasn't the time to tell Don that his cousin was visiting and honestly, the more he ran it through his mind, he wondered if it was even a smart move considering the incoming threat.
As they waited, for Arlette to bring news of someone's arrival or elgyem's alert, Don and Wallace exchanged painfully dry small talk. Wallace skipped past topics considering Reed and the NRR and he could tell by the length of silences and Don's stain to find questions to fire back there were a few topics he decided not to venture into as well. Every now and then one of them checked their phone, Don would text a few fast messages while Wallace waited for someone to text back with an update or for an alert from Rosanna. While the anxiety of waiting gnawed at him, he decided whoever got to the building first, Neo or Cole, he'd send to meet Rosanna whenever she appeared and take her and her friends somewhere safe.
A series of short knocks on the door rattled Wallace and made him sit straight up. Ghosts don't knock, he thought, Arlette would have just poked her head in to let him know someone was there. Did she leave? While checking his phone to see if he'd overlooked a message from Neo or Cole, Don stood up to head to the door. "Hold on!" Wallace said, shooting up and rushing to the window.
His old room overlooked the back courtyard for the dorm hall, but he saw nothing except for trees and lawn chairs. Elgyem flashed his green and regarded him with a shrug and a shake of his head. Nothing. No one had come up the back way and Neo and Cole would have messaged him when coming from the front.
"Don, wait, don't open the door."
"Relax," Don said as he unlocked and pulled the door open slowly. "It's just Reed."
Wallace didn't feel any relief with Reed's appearance, only more annoyed as he watched him lumber into the doorway and embrace Don in a hug, a worn-down looking dusclops trotting in behind him.
"Thank Arceus. Are you okay? I've been looking everywhere for you," Reed said, sighing as he patted Don's back and pulled him back and looked him up and down.
"I'm fine," Don said, glancing back to Wallace. "Just had a scare, Wallace wanted to get away from the building. I told him what happened, Wallace."
Wallace forced a smile and nodded, part of him wanting to tell Reed to get out of his room, but it didn't technically belong to him anymore.
"Wallace, after what you said this morning, I've just been thinking about the fact we could be in danger and then when Don wasn't at the NRR gathering I – I just got so worried. I thought what you said had come true, but I still remembered Don, so I held onto that hope and went looking for him. Arceus led me to you."
"I'm sorry," Don muttered. "I didn't mean to worry you. Cosmo was being weird and then everything just – yeah…"
Reed smiled and cupped Don's cheek. "Don't be sorry, I'm the one who should be apologizing."
Before his eyes, Wallace watched the space around Don waver and ripple like the air around a campfire. Only it wavered for a few seconds and then started to swirl clockwise with Don at the center, then the swirl overtook him as well. Like shapes and colors in a kaleidoscope, Don's body lost and regained shape as It fell into line with the swirling air around him until he grew smaller and smaller, his form vanishing inside a black spot, no larger than a plate.
While trying to register what he'd seen as the last of Don's body vanished, Wallace glimpsed a glowing red dusclops's eye, and the white of Reed's smile as the boy turned to him. "I've been looking everywhere for you too."
End of Chapter Forty-Eight
