A Yearning for the Mud
Chapter Forty-Nine – Missing Links
The sound of glass shattering and wood cracking filled the vacant hall as the door to Wallace's room blew off its hinges. A grey cloud of smoke billowed into the hallway that Reed ran out of, his dusclops stumbling on his heels as they sprinted down the dim hallway.
Wallace threw himself through the doorway, hacking on the haze as he struggled to find Reed. Glaring through the smoke he found dusclops's glowing eye and stretched his arm out toward it. "Psybeam!" he yelled.
A distorted warble filled his ears and bathed the hallway in purple light as an unstable burst of light exploded from above his head. Elgyem cried out as he fired the beam down the hall, clearing the smoke and illuminating Reed's smug face as his dusclops took the hit. The one-eyed pokémon's chest exploded in a burst of dark mist that slowly retracted into its original shape.
"No need for violence, Wallace," Reed yelled from down the hall. "I haven't hurt anyone. We don't need to start now."
Wallace grit his teeth and curled his fingers in until his fists were shaking. "Liar," he spat, the night of the blackout running through his mind, the blood in the basement.
"Cross my heart," Reed said, never dropping his smile. "I know you must have a lot of questions. Allow me to answer one. Dusclops, open up."
Wallace tensed as the dusclops tipped its head and opened its mouth. As he watched the darkened space around it warp and swirl, he backed away, fearing he was next. "No," he muttered as he caught glimpses of body parts emerging from the distorted airspace. First a hand, then a leg, then another, and finally as a head emerged from the black hole, he froze.
Dusclops closed its mouth, the rippling air around it returning to normal, as Mieko stood in front of it, brushing down some of her hair with her fingers. "That didn't take long," she said. "Wallace, hi."
"Don't hi me!" Wallace said, his palms throbbing as he clenched his fists again. "What – What are you doing?"
Reed placed a hand on Mieko's shoulder as he stepped up to her side. "Mieko and I have been working together. She's been a big help to my mission after I gave her the right incentive," he said. "I couldn't have gotten as far without her help."
Wallace felt his knee spasm and then give out under him. He collapsed and elgyem dropped to his side, his red alert lights flashing and turning the hall into something from a horror movie. "Why?" he muttered. "Why? Mieko, you work for the school! Why would you help him? Do you know what he's doing?"
"I do," Mieko said, crossing her arms.
Wallace waited for her to say something else, to show some sort of remorse or emotion for her involvement, but her face remained flat and hard to read. "Why?" he asked again, desperate for an answer.
"Everyone has a price, Wallace," Reed said. "And -"
"I'm not talking to you!"
Reed chuckled and cocked his head to the side as Wallace cut him off. "And as compensation for her time and efforts, I've promised her all of the pokémon from the students I've taken."
"I've started a bit of a collection with Reed's help. Once I have buyers set up I'll sell them and free myself from Sonai," Mieko said, toying with her necklace.
"Sonai?" Wallace said under his breath as he looked from Reed to Mieko and back. "It's you! You're the two remaining Orphans."
"Sonai helped my brother and I out after we lost our parents, but my brother, he's clueless about the type of help Sonai provided, or what it cost me. I want him to stay that way. So I decided to make my own living and free us from Sonai's influence," Mieko said. "I'm not the bad guy, they are. You should know that by now. Sonai is the reason the Orphans ever targeted you."
Wallace grimaced as his shifted his attention to Reed. "What's your excuse?"
"I want to say I'm not your enemy," Reed said, shrugging. "You and I, we've got some things in common, and you'll find that out soon enough. But I guess we're all the bad guy in someone else's story. Open," Reed said and dusclops opened its mouth again, its swirling portal opening behind them that absorbed Mieko."Be thankful you didn't come to the hypnosis show at the beginning of the semester, Wallace." Reed dug under his shirt and pulled a small poké ball out attached to a line around his neck and opened it.
Elgyem positioned himself in front of Wallace as he shielded his eyes from the glare of the ball releasing, and found himself blinded by red, green, and yellow lights.
"Yem?"
The deep almost digitalized cry of a pokémon transported Wallace back to his father's cabin where he discovered Andrew. Slowly, Wallace's eyes tracked from the floor to the pokémon Reed released. He found a familiar pokémon with a sickly brown colored body with a head the shape of fungus. Wallace glared at a beheeyem who lights flashed up and down the hallway walls.
"Gy!" Elgyem hummed as his red lights flared up before he flew away from Wallace, head down, and charged forward.
"Elgyem, stop!"
"B, use zen headbutt," Reed ordered.
Wallace flinched under a flare of pink-purple light that filled the hall as elgyem forged ahead as Reed's beheeyem mimicked him and shot forward. Their heads connected in a collision that sent elgyem spinning back into the wall before he slumped to the ground.
"Elgyem!" Wallace cried as he forced himself to stand. He got two steps in before Reed waved his hand and beheeyem's eyes lit up. Wallace felt his body freeze seconds after his vision flooded with violet light.
"They're wonderful, aren't they? Our pokémon." Reed placed a hand on his beheeyem's head and gestured to his dusclops. "The power to alter someone's mind. The power to transport matter through portals. It's the power of gods," Reed said with slow steps toward Wallace. "I was able to place everyone in attendance of that demonstration under a hypnosis. With Mieko's help I was able to get the names of the ones not in attendance and with her access around campus, tracking them down was easy. Did you know she's able to get into any building she wants? She told me she used to leave you and Eleanor little notes last year. Cute."
Wallace stained to move anything, his hand, his head, a toe, anything that would mean he hadn't lost control of his own body. His hope dwindled with each step that brought Reed closer.
"Do you want to know where I learned this trick with beheeyem?" Reed asked in a whisper as he came to Wallace's side. "From your father."
Wallace felt his once pumping and raging blood simmer then cool to slush from three words whispered in his ear. The light vanished, and Wallace collapsed onto the floor without resistance. Reed copied his father's memory altering trick. Reed knew his father. "You knew who I was, when we met?" Wallace asked, struggling to muster the strength to prop himself up. "You lied to me the moment you met me?"
"I've known about you for a while," Reed said. "Open up, dusclops," he said, returning to his pokémon as dusclop's portal opened and beheeyem floated inside. "I'll see you soon, Wallace. Oh, and you should be careful not to leave the ghosts of your past regrets lying around. I couldn't see her, but my dusclops swallowed her up like it was nothing and sent her back to the Other Side."
Wallace choked on his own spit as he watched Reed step into the portal and vanish. The broken lights only contributed to the darkness of the hallway as Wallace's eyes started to feel heavy, the idea of sleep calling to him.
"Wallace!"
An echo from the end of the hall brought him back, huffing and choking he tried to gather himself, but before he could peel his chest off the ground he was joined by two bodies. The first, Neo, rushed past and scooped elgyem up in his arms like an infant while the other's hands touched, poked, and pulled on him.
"Are you okay? We heard an explosion outside, what happened?" Cole asked as he helped Wallace up and propped against the wall. "What's the emergency?"
Wallace squeezed his eyes shut, his head swimming, his stomach doing flips as Cole moved him too fast. Although he hadn't eaten all day he thought he might vomit. "He took Don," he said, forcing himself to open his eyes. "It's Reed, it's him."
"Don?" Cole asked, glancing to Neo for assistance.
Wallace squeezed his eyes shut again and cursed under his breath, slamming his fists into the ground. Trying to steady himself he clenched his jaw until his head started to vibrate uncontrollably and Cole attached his hands to the side of his face.
"Stop it, just talk to us," Cole said.
"Reed. He's an Orphan. He and Mieko are stealing the pokémon of the people they take. He said he learned it from my father. He wiped their minds. He's got a dusclops that literally s-swallowed Don."
"Swallowed?" Cole asked, looking to Neo again. "Does that mean, I mean, is he?"
"I-I don't think so, M-Mieko, she came out of dusclops, it was like the opposite of how he took Don, he brought her here the opposite way," Wallace said, moving his hands in a circular pattern over each other, trying to visualize what Dusclops had done.
"We're done. We're done messing around, we need to go to the police," Neo said as he squatted beside Wallace and transferred elgyem into his arms. "We're in over our heads, seriously. This is a job for the police, people with pokémon trained for this kind of stuff, who are able to track him and take him down. You said he's using a dusclops to basically reverse teleport? That's dangerous shit."
"Reverse teleport?" Cole asked quietly.
"And tell the police what?" Wallace asked. "Ar – I already thought of that and besides we have Rosanna." Wallace paled as he fumbled to find his phone, careful not to jostle elgyem too much, he'd missed several texts and a call, Neo and Cole had messaged him sometime during the fight, as had Rosanna. Wallace grunted as he pressed himself against the wall and forced himself to stand, clutching elgyem for dear life. "Cole, I need you to go meet someone for me, they're near the library. It's a group of girls, they're here to help. Take them to your room. Neo and I will meet you there." Wallace cradled elgyem's still figure in his arms and started to rock him, hoping to rouse him to make sure he was okay, but he likely needed to take him to the clinic.
Cole nodded and left wordlessly as Neo started to pace and twist different strands of his hair into points. "I have to get Ellie away from here, I need to go," Neo muttered. "We're not safe anymore."
"You can't go, I need you here, I need you to help me figure this out," Wallace said. "He used his dusclops like a portal between this place and wherever else – I'm out of my league here. You said he reverse teleported, what does that mean?"
"It doesn't matter, we're all out of our league!" Neo snapped, throwing his arms up before he turned and punched the wall, only to recoil back and hold his fist. "Dammit," he hissed. "I'm sorry, I have to go, I can't stay here." Neo shrugged and started off down the hall, holding his wounded hand.
"I'll pay you," Wallace said after clearing his throat. The act felt desperate and low. As Reed said, everyone has a price.
Neo stopped and slowly turned his head until he'd locked eyes with Wallace over his shoulder. "What did you just say?"
"Stay and help me," Wallace said. "I'll give you whatever you want in return. Money. A new tablet. Anything. Julian broke your tablet, I can get you the newest one. Neo, I can't do this alone. I have Cole, but you're the smartest person in school. You're the only one who can figure this out, what he did, how he's taking people. If you leave, there's no hope for the rest of us."
"Do you think you can buy my safety, Eleanor's safety with a tablet?" Neo asked, turning to face him fully, his heavy footsteps bringing him back down the hall. "Do you think I really care about a tablet when the only person I love is in danger?"
"If you could remember some of the people he took, you'd know how much this meant to me," he replied, unable to match Neo's chagrin. "If you remembered Don you know I'm not asking you lightly."
"Well I'm sorry that I don't," Neo said, shrugging a few times as he backed away. "But I know I don't want to lose or forget Ellie. If you were smart you'd leave too. Whoever you invited to campus, tell them to leave, tell Cole to leave, let's set this entire fucking island on fire and make everyone leave! Because nothing good happens here! Let's all leave this hellhole, murder trap, twisted funfair of a school, and never look back. Let's make sure no one ever has to step foot here ever again."
"And what about the people that have been taken?" Wallace asked. "They never get to leave. Never get the chance to have a normal life because they're gone, and we don't even know where. Reed was able to do all of this because he had Meiko's help, she gave him information and he was able to stalk and take students without anyone noticing and I'm sure he only took Don in front of me to make a point. He allowed Mieko back through that portal, which means there has to be hope for the others."
Neo curled his lips over his teeth and shook his head he started to sway side to side. "No," he said.
"I know you're scared, Neo," Wallace said.
"I'm not scared!" Neo snapped. "A scared person hides or fights, and I know that neither of those options is going to stop him, so I'm doing what a rational person would do and is getting as far from here as possible." Neo threw his hand up and stormed off again.
"I know you're scared because the Neo I know would have realized why we can't run away," Wallace called out, raising his voice to be heard across the distance. "What's to stop him from taking everyone, whether they're here or safe at home with their parents? If he's got information from the school he knows everyone's home address. If he wants you what's to stop him from tracking you to the ends of the earth? What's to stop him from taking your family and leaving you with nothing?"
"My parents are dead," Neo said. "I've been an orphan since I was little. Eleanor is the only one I care about. You should understand why I have to go, it's to protect her above all else."
"There are some problems you can't outrun," Wallace said with a big shrug, a lesson he wished he could have taught himself a year ago. "What if he took Eleanor, would you still run away?"
"She doesn't need to be around all of this!" Neo spat, rushing back down the hall, into Wallace's face. "Did you ever think that you're the reason behind all of this, why he never affected your memories? Like the other Orphans, he's messing with all of us because of you! You're the root of everyone's problems! Nothing's changed!"
"You're right, I think this is happening because of me. And you're right that if there's one person too good for all this, it's her," Wallace said, averting his eyes to the mess of debris around them. "But when I was in trouble she didn't run, she fought for me. She put her life on the line for someone she barely knew. We need to do the same for our friends and even the students we don't know."
Neo backed away from Wallace until he bumped the wall on the opposite side and sagged his shoulders. He tipped his head back as his shoes started to slide until his butt hit the ground. "What now?"
"Can you look into dusclops?" Wallace asked. "They abilities, their powers, anything. What Reed's doing, has it been done before? Anything you can find will help. And research Reed Whitfield. I mean it, what time he was born, how he likes his eggs, his favorite color, I don't care what it is. He lied when we first met, he knew my father and I. There's more to him. I'm going to take care of elgyem and then meet up with Cole and the others."
Neo nodded and took his time getting to his feet. He looked to the ceiling and took a few deep breaths before he started walking down the hall. "Stay safe, Wallace."
"Neo," Wallace said, staring at the spot on the floor Neo had been sitting in as a thought struck him.
Neo stopped and spun on the balls of his feet. "What is it?"
"Keep me updated on what you're doing and where you are," Wallace said.
"I'm going to do research, like you asked. What are you talking about?"
Wallace wet his lips and fought the urge to look at Neo, instead he focused on the bricks at the base of the wall. "I understand wanting to save Eleanor, but if you run, you don't deserve her." Tears burned at his eyes as he grit his teeth and focused on Neo's body rather than his face. "If you run, pray Reed finds you before I do."
"There he is," Neo said, backing away. "That manipulative asshole we all hated last year."
Without fear that Reed would show his face again that night, Wallace rushed to the basement of the freshman dorm, finding a handful of girls in pajamas there baking treats for their pokémon as he raided one of the vending machines. He swiped his student ID and punched in the codes for a revival supplement, a bottle of water, and a potion. Forcing elgyem to swallow the first with some help from the water, most of which he ended up spilling down his shirt before he was sure the supplement was gone. He sprayed the contents of the potion over the makings of a bruise on elgyem's headawas throwing up when I got to them, so I brought them here."
Rosanna stood and smoothed out the edges of a faded band t-shirt as she approached, first with a handshake and then a hug before she caught herself and cleared her throat. "Sorry, I don't know why I'm so nervous. Your friend, Cole, said something bad was happening and – well that was kind of it. Wallace, is everything okay?"
"Maybe you should sit," he offered, moving to take a seat across the three girls and laid a swaddled elgyem on his lap. A revive supplement had brought some color back to elgyem's face and left the psychic-type snoring as Wallace prepped him in a blanket "The reason I asked you to come is because some of our students have been abducted. But not just taken, or else solving this would be too easy, but everything about them is being taken away too. Everything they own, any physical object they might have a connection to, and even other people's memories of them. So, the reason I wanted you to come here was because I think that it's only happening to our campus and I hoped that you would still remember the people being taken."
"I don't understand, why would I remember them?" Rosanna sat back in her chair and started to fidget with a tear at the bottom of her shirt.
"Because at least one of your cousins has been taken," the blonde girl said, her tone flat and matter of fact. "Isn't that right?"
"And who are you?" Cole asked, his eyebrow cocked up. "I don't know why all of you had to come when we only needed her help," he said, singling Rosanna out.
"My name is Madeleina Grant, junior, and student body president," Madeleina said, flipping a straight lock of her blonde hair over her shoulder. "And I have my own reasons for coming."
"Have my cousins really –"
Wallace nodded as he started to wring his hands together. "Nat was one of the first people I noticed to be taken. The person behind this is named Reed, he was –"
"Don's boyfriend," Rosanna said softly. "He told me about him."
Wallace nodded again, feeling stupid for not expecting Don to have told his family about Reed. "And now Reed's taken Don," he said. "Cosmo is fine, as far as I know," he said, flicking a glance to Cole.
"As far as you know?" Aleigha asked, shooting out of her seat and into the gap between the two rows of chairs. "Her family is being taken and, as far as you know, one of her last remaining cousins is okay? Why isn't he here right now? Rosey, this is why I didn't want you coming alone, I've heard things about this place." Aleigha hugged herself and started to study the ceiling of the clinic.
"Have a seat," Cole said, stepping into the fray and gesturing Aleigha to sit down.
"Don't tell me what to do, you don't know who you're messing with!" Aleigha said, standing her ground.
"Neither do you," he said, lowly, their bodies colliding as the space between them became nonexistent.
"Aleigha, why don't you go check on Alita," Madeleina said. "Emotions aren't going to help us right now."
As Aleigha grumbled to herself, shuffling off toward the check-up doors, Wallace held elgyem up to Cole.
"Cole, can you check elgyem in please? He's sleeping, but he took a hit during the battle."
They traded off the psychic-type and once Cole was gone, Wallace scooted to the edge of his seat. "Rosanna, the fact that you remember Nat and Don is a good sign. It means we were right," he said, his mind blanking on the idea of Arlette. She'd completely vanished when Reed arrived, and his last words about the ghosts of his past hung around in his mind like fog. Dusclops saw Arlette and took her like the others. "It means the campus is the only place affected, and from my interaction with Reed, I'm positive there's a way we can bring them back. So there's still hope."
"Do you know where they've been taken?" Madeleina asked.
"Not exactly," he said. "Reed mentioned something about the Other Side, but that's it."
"And without the precise where, how to get them back becomes tricky," Madeleina added, bobbing her head slowly. "Wallace and Rosanna, I have something to admit to you both, before the others come back."
Rosanna's head snapped to the side, jostling her tangles of blonde hair that revealed the hiding place of her sewaddle on her shoulder. "Maddy?"
"I did want to come as your guardian," Madeleina said, reaching out to place her slender manicured hand over Rosanna's. "But I've had a bad feeling lately about my brother."
"I didn't know you had a brother," Rosanna said, shifting in her seat until she was twisted and facing her friend head-on.
Madeleina nodded and took a few moments to stare at the floor before she continued. "He's older by a few years, but it's almost like we're twins. We were inseparable since I was a baby as my parents tell me. When one of us was hurt, the other would cry because it was like we could feel it too. Even when we weren't together, it was like we were linked, and I could tell if he was having a bad day because it would affect me too."
"Maddy is intuitive," Rosanna said to Wallace, her eyes never leaving Madeleina. "She can tell a lot about a pokémon or a person just by touching them," she said, her eyes dropping to their hands connected.
"A few weeks ago, I had a really bad feeling," Madeleina said. "It hit me in waves while I was in class. I felt fear, and then it was like I'd be transported to a freezer, I couldn't stop shaking I was so cold, and then it all vanished, and I felt nothing. I haven't been able to feel anything since, either."
Rosanna flipped her hand and laced her fingers with Madeleina's and squeezed. "Why didn't you say something?" she asked. "We're here to help you, Maddy. You could have told us."
"I don't know," Madeleina said. "I've tried to talk to my brother, but he doesn't pick up the phone, or answer my emails. I haven't heard from him since the day I got that feeling. My brother goes to this university and when you called and said you needed Rosanna, and that it was urgent, I knew I needed to come and find answers."
"Is it possible her brother was taken?" Rosanna asked, the question Madeleina had danced around so far.
Wallace pulled his phone from his pocket and swiped through until he found a list of every student they were able to verify had been taken using class rosters and the dorm assignment sheet from Eleanor. While the odds didn't look to be in her favor, he could at least double check. "What's his name?"
"Madden, Madden Grant."
Using the find feature, Wallace instantly locked onto the name in the note file on his phone. The name didn't sound too familiar to him, though he knew he'd seen it written down somewhere. "Yes," he said, locking his phone and laying it on his lap. "I'm so sorry."
Madeleina closed her eyes and bobbed her head before she sighed. Wallace waited for her to speak, but the waiting room fell into silence after that. The girls stayed connected at the hands, their eyes focused on the floor until Aleigha emerged from a set of double doors with Alita under her arm.
"All better," Aleigha said, guiding her to a seat beside Madeleina before she plopped back into her chair next to Rosanna. "The nurse said it was just a little bit of sickness from teleporting so far, and maybe a bit of nerves?"
Alita nodded and Wallace watched as Madeleina and Rosanna each extended a hand that Alita and Aleigha took and squeezed, uniting them. Looking across the lobby, Wallace saw Cole moving back and forth behind a panel of glass at the nurse's station, a digital scan of elgyem moving across a dark screen while a vital signs and graphs shifted underneath.
"What do we do now?" Madeleina asked.
"My friend is looking into Reed, I want to know everything about him and also about his dusclops, that's how he took Don and everyone else," Wallace said. "Are any of you experts in ghost-types?"
The quartet shook their heads and Wallace resigned himself to the fact that they were locked in a waiting game. Without a trace of how to find Reed or a clue of who he would take next, their hopes were on Neo finding something useful.
"Once Elgy is better we're going to leave," Wallace said, standing. "You all are going to stay on campus, we have a room big enough for all of you. I'll let Cosmo know you're here, maybe you can work on jogging his memory about his brothers. I need to make a few calls, excuse me," he said, waving his phone at them before he secluded himself to the far side of the room and faced the dark windows.
After one of three nurses Wallace counted in the clinic handed a groggy elgyem back to him, he led Rosanna's friends from the clinic to Cole's room with Cole monitoring the group from the back. His phone buzzed a few times with messages from Eleanor, Serena, and Cosmo, along with a picture from Neo of his middle finger against the backdrop of the school library.
In their building, the group stopped at Cosmo's room and let Rosanna hug and cry into her cousin's arms for a few minutes before they dragged him along to Cole's room. Once there, he, Cole, and Cosmo went to work on rearranging the space and stealing two extra bed frames and mattresses from the adjacent room to space a total of six beds out around the room.
Rosanna eased down on to the bare mattress of the bed near the window with Cosmo and pulled her sewaddle from her shoulder, cuddling the bug-type close. "Why do we need six beds? There's only four of us."
Aleigha groaned and made a fake gagging noise that sounded a little too convincing as she plopped down onto a bed across from Rosanna. "Don't tell me you're staying in here with us," she said. "This is turning into a sketchy situation. I need an adult."
Wallace narrowed his eyes on the girl as he started to wish Rosanna and Madeleina had left her behind. A knock on the door shook that thought away as he pulled the last bed into place against the wall, giving each of the bed a good amount of space away from the next. "No, but we are having some friends of ours stay here with you, for safety. Strength in numbers." He instantly hated himself for using Reed's words that morning. His head throbbed at the idea that in the span of twelve hours Reed had gone from a thorn in his side to the monster under his bed. The implications behind Reed being able to take most of the student body were too much for him to consider as a familiar voice pierced the quiet of the room.
"Bonjour ladies!" Serena sang as she burst into the room, bumping Cole out of the way. She was dressed in a pair of clear slippers and a silk nightgown with pink fuzz along the edges of he breasts, her arms weighed down by several plastic bags. "And Cosmo."
"Are you our chaperone?" Alita asked, hanging around Rosanna's bed.
"Don't think of me as a chaperone, think of me as a girlfriend," Serena said as she spilled her bags out onto the desk. Chips, cans of pop, candy, and bright packages with pictures of smiling girls with black gunk all over their faces fell out and covered the desk in seconds. "We are about to have the best slumber party ever!"
"We're not nine years old," Aleigha said as she wandered over the desk and started flicking through the selection provided. "We don't have slumber parties anymore."
"Fine, let's call it a soiree, or a pajama fête," Serena said. "You'll have the boys back home eating out of your hands once we're done," she said waving small black bag around in the air. "Makeovers!"
A less enthusiastic Eleanor scooted into the room with a pillow under one arm and her growlithe under the other. She dropped the fire-type to the floor who went to work sniffing the shoes and legs of everyone in attendance before he started barking at Rosanna who pulled he sewaddle out of range.
"I brought everything we need," Serena said, brandishing a laptop and a small handheld device that looked like a camera. "We're going to have a movie night, eat junk food, you know, girl stuff."
"My brother, our friend's cousins, and many of your classmates are missing," Madeleina said, sternly. "This isn't the time for makeovers and junk food."
"What she said," Aleigha mumbled as she popped open a bag of chips.
"Oh honey, I'm very aware of what's happening," Serena said, dropping the laptop and handheld onto the nearest bed. "Someone important to me was taken as well, my beloved Natty. I'm doing my part by keeping you girls safe. But who said we can't enjoy ourselves while our very existences are in the hands of a madman?"
"You're Serena Saint-Mars," Rosanna said, rising to her feet. "Nat told me about you. Hi, I'm Rosanna."
"The cousin," Serena said, smiling as she glided toward Rosanna and took her hands. "I'm still going through the process of trying to remember Nat, all I've got so far is what other people tell me and some photos. Maybe you can help me jog my memory about what he was like."
"Sure," Rosanna said, smiling. "That's what I'm doing for Cosmo too."
"I find it hard to believe I would forget my own brother, but I know you wouldn't lie to me, Rose," Cosmo said, making room for Serena.
While Rosanna and Serena settled on the bed, Wallace watched the other girls start to pick through what Serena had brought, but Eleanor remained to the side of the madness. "Thank you for coming," he said. "I'm sorry about earlier, with the knife."
"It's fine," Eleanor said as she scratched at a different scar, one above her eyebrow. "I don't know what it was, but that definitely did something to me. I couldn't stop thinking about that day in the safari, I remember someone, with a knife. We battled, and I won?"
"Oh, you won alright," he said.
"It's all I've been thinking about, and then Neo came to my room acting out of it," Eleanor said before she paused and seemed to consider her words. "He said someone named Don has been taken. We were friends?"
Wallace nodded slowly, Eleanor's effort to believe her own words evident on her face. "You were," he said. "We're going to figure this out, somehow, and then everything is going to make sense."
"I believe you, Wallace," Eleanor said, nudging him with her shoulder. "No one's more determined than you. It's just hard to grasp how serious this is without, I guess, really experiencing it. Well, let me go join in the girl's night fun before all the good snacks are gone. I'll text you if we need something."
Eleanor gripped and squeezed his shoulder before she made her way to the desk pulled what looked like movie disc cases out held them up for the others to see.
Cole led his luxray over to Wallace, scratching his electric-type between the ears. "I think they're alright for the night," he said, holding up his hand and four keys. "Aside from the copy Eleanor has, these are the only keys to this room."
Wallace tried to appreciate Cole's display of security, but he had no doubt that if Reed wanted to take any of them and knew where to find them, a locked door wouldn't stand a chance. But Cole must have sensed his reluctance because after he led him out into the hall, closed and locked the door, he he swung an arm over his shoulder.
"Relax," he said. "Reed doesn't know they're on campus, and if he ends up going to my room that means he was looking for me, not them. Neo texted me, he's got an update and wanted to meet up. Told him we were heading to your room."
Wallace walked in silence as he ran over their current situation numerous times from the third floor to the second. He had no clue what Reed knew or his methods aside from using Mieko to gain access to any building he wanted. Had he taken students while they were entering their rooms, or leaving? Or had his natural charm allowed him to worm his way inside without his victims giving it a second thought? He briefly wondered if the rest of the NRR had been a part of his plan as well, but thought about all the times he'd seen Reed torment or threaten Julian with his mere presence. Every cult needs a leader.
When they arrived at his room, Wallace found Neo bouncing from foot to foot outside his door. They spared each other a look as Wallace unlocked the door and flicked the lights on. With a low growl, Cole's luxray leaped onto the spare bed and walked in circles before she plopped down and Cole sat beside her.
Elgyem drifted from Wallace's shoulder to his pillow where his body fit perfectly. Wallace was fine to let him sleep the rest of the night if needed, he'd been through so much and would gladly curl up beside him if he could. Releasing Mila onto his bed, the fire-type claimed a spot beside the pillow, her eyes darting toward Cole's luxray every time the larger pokémon made any noise in her presence.
Wallace released Wink and sat on the floor with him, scratching down the water-type's spine as Neo took a seat at his desk, his leg bouncing the entire time.
"I had a bit of coffee," Neo said, resting a hand on his leg. "No one works in the café downstairs anymore so I was able to make myself whatever I wanted. I made up a new drink. Anyway, I looked into dusclops. I consider myself an expert on ghost-types, but there was a bit I was surprised to learn."
Wallace watched as Neo spoke almost entirely to Cole, his eyes rarely crossing the room to him. While he felt bad for the way he'd spoken earlier, he meant every word.
"It's a well-known fact that they are able to absorb objects, even people, into their bodies like black holes. What is not so well known is where those objects go, obviously inside the pokémon, but then where? So, then I started looking into dusknoir. Very similar to its pre-evolution, but dusknoir is said to snatch souls and guide them to a place called the spirit world. But I found other names for it as well, the World of Spirits, the Ghost World, the Other Side."
"The Other Side," Wallace said, the same words Arlette used to describe where she found herself after dying and the place Reed mentioned.
Cole stroked his luxray's back and played with her tail as he furrowed his brows. "Mean anything to you?" he asked.
"Maybe," he said, following invisible puzzle pieces with his eyes that he desperately needed to connect.
"There weren't many records or stories about people using dusclops's ability to create black holes and suction people away for beneficial purposes," Neo said. "We can chalk that up to Reed's talent as a trainer. Most things that a dusclops absorbs don't get to come back out. I found some old stories and videos on PokéView about people who used dusclops in waste removal oddly enough. One magician from about eighty years ago used a dusclops as part of a circus act. Mostly, their reputation involves crimes or dark stuff like rituals."
"Reed commanded dusclops to open a portal and Mieko came out of it. Then he commanded it again to take them away," Wallace said. "He must have been perfecting that for a while."
"They would need an incredibly strong bond to be able to pull it off like that," Neo said. "But speaking about black holes, and portals to the other side, I was reading in the library about other ways portals and doors to the other side can be opened. Most ghost pokémon have been recorded accessing that place at their own will, some do it on purpose, some on accident. There have been a few instances of humans opening those pathways as well, typically in places where death has occurred or where the connection to a deceased is strongest."
"I heard of a place in Kanto where the spirits of dead pokémon used to gather," Cole said. "Would that be the type of place you're talking about?"
"Yes," Neo said, snapping. "That would be the perfect place, something called those spirits there, likely the grieving trainers."
"You said it's possible for humans to open those types of portals to the Other Side. Are you saying it's possible to cross to the other side if you have a connection to a spirit over there?" Cole asked.
"No," Neo said. "I said humans have opened pathways, not portals. Portal implies some kind of transportation back and forth. Think of it like a one way path," he said. "Humans can't naturally access the Other Side, it's not made for us. But it's happened before where a human, hoping to reconnect with a lost loved one, or mourning the death of a pokémon has opened a path from the Other Side that allowed that spirit to cross over. The same goes for the Other Side, spirits can open paths to our world if the connection is strong enough."
"Connection," Wallace muttered, his mind attaching two random puzzle pieces and finding a match. "Do you guys believe in ghosts?" he asked. "Not like – I mean yes, we know ghost pokémon exist, but do you believe that the ghosts of humans can interact with us and be seen?"
"What do you believe?" Cole asked, scooting to the edge of the bed as he leaned into the conversation.
"Arlette," Wallace said, focusing his eyes on Neo who refused to look back. "For a while now, I had been seeing her spirit around campus. I was able to talk to her and she was actually the one helping me figure out more students had been taken. She was able to go into rooms that were locked and check for me. I haven't seen her since Reed came, I think he took her somehow. She was a spirit though, so he couldn't see her, but his dusclops could. Because its connected to the Other Side, where Arlette said she came from. She said she had a connection with me that allowed her to cross over." The room fell silent, as it seemed no one had answer for him, not that he'd expected one. "My point in bringing her up, is that she said she felt drawn to me, connected to me. And only by following that feeling was she able to cross over and contact me. What if that's the key to this?"
"A connection with someone on the other side," Cole said slowly.
"Yes," Wallace said. "What if we can, I don't know, make a connection or explore one and talk to someone over there or even bring them back that way? Open a one-way path, like Neo side."
"Is it even possible for humans to exist on the other side?" Cole asked. "What if going over there is like instant death or something?"
Neo sucked in a sharp breath. "Well, there were reports of people visiting the Distortion World, what they claimed to be an alternate dimension from ours. But to my knowledge, no one has tried to venture to the other side, or what being there does to a person's mind. Wallace, you said Arlette came to you from over there. How was she?"
"Fine?" Wallace said, taking his acknowledgment as progress. "She seemed like herself, for the most part, a little different, but I guess that's just because she was dead. I don't know. She was helpful, she remembered everything we went through, she remembered Garret."
"If her mind or spirit was in tact that could be a good thing," Neo said. "Assuming that when using his dusclops Reed is actually visiting the Other Side and using it as a hideaway, and then returning to our world without an issue, bringing the others back seems possible, in theory."
"So, this could be it," Cole said. "We figure out the best connection, or bond, and try and open a doorway from the other side like that?"
"Out of who's still here and who's there, maybe Serena and Nat are the best options?" Neo asked.
"Serena still doesn't remember everything about Nat, it's all what other people are telling her. I think Rosanna would be the best to get either Don or Nat back, she remembers them and they're family," Wallace offered.
"Sounds like a plan," Cole said, clapping his hands. "Let's get started."
"Whoa, whoa, wait," Neo said, waving Cole to sit back down. "I'm not done, you asked me to look into Reed too."
"Right." Wallace settled back against his bed frame, he'd nearly forgotten about his other request. He let Wink nibble on his finger as he prepared for whatever Neo had to share.
"I looked through the school's information database, public records on the library computers that show class schedules and stuff. I emailed a few students from the NRR and some of Reed's classmates that weren't on our taken list. Only a few got back to me, so I guess we can count them as taken too, or maybe just didn't want to talk about Reed. No one seemed to say the same thing," he said as he started to list things off and track them on his fingers. "One girl said he was a transfer student from Unova, another said he was from Lumiose. One of the NRR boys said Reed was an only child, but another told me he had brothers. Someone said he'd met his dad on the first day of classes, but another one said Reed told him he didn't have a dad. I noticed people describe him differently depending on how they knew him, everyone outside of the NRR that knew him said he was cool and nice and funny, ir sexy, but the people closest to him in the NRR said he was like a dictator, that came from Julian himself."
"Julian talked to you? He say anything else?" Wallace asked, surely Reed's righthand man would know the truth.
"He was in the library too, and when I reminded him of my tablet he had no room to refuse to talk to me. He wouldn't tell me anything else though, he acted like he'd said too much by even saying Reed was harsh on him sometimes," Neo said. "It's starting to seem like Reed didn't want anyone knowing much about him. But too bad for him, the internet is a wonderful trove of information and I found a trainer record for one Reed Whitfield that was registered in a place called Po Town. It's in the Alola region. I think if we want to learn the truth, we're going to have to take a trip."
"Alola," Wallace said, he'd seen articles online about tourists visiting the region and conversations between their regional professor and Professor Sycamore online, but hadn't looked into it more than that.
"How are we supposed to get there?" Cole asked. "Anyone ever been?"
Wallace shook his head and noticed Neo's grin. "What is it?"
"While looking into Po Town, I found an article about a nearby meadow that was visited by one Sebastian Saint-Mars and his family this summer," Neo said, glancing to his wrist where his tablet would normally be, the article in question already pulled up.
"Is that Serena's family? She's been there?" Wallace asked.
"Bingo," Neo said. "I figure we can get Elgy to teleport us there with Serena's help by showing him the location in her mind."
Wallace looked back to Elgyem sleeping sounding on his pillow, Mila snoring at his side. "Then we're in agreement," he said. "Tomorrow? We leave for Alola."
"Sounds good, but who all is coming?" Neo asked, his eyes flicking between Cole and Wallace.
"Serena," Wallace said. "We need her to even get there, I'm going, Neo I want you there incase we have to do any more research," he said, catching Neo's eyes on him for a split second. "Rosanna and the others have to stay to try and contact the other side. Cole, I think you should stay with them."
"No way am I letting you go to that psychopath's hometown with just Neo and Serena," Cole said, shooting up from the bed, startling his luxray.
"Why don't I invite Garret?" Neo asked. "His team has come a long way."
Wallace stammered on a reply, his mind replaying the way Garret looked at him that morning when he grabbed his wrist. "Garret, I don't know."
"Trust me," Neo said, sighing. "We talked; he believes you. As far as he's concerned, the two of you are good."
"And what about you and I?" Wallace asked. "Are we good?"
"I don't appreciate the threat," Neo said, turning to face him fully. "But I understand where it came from. So yeah, we're good. I think that was what I needed to remember who I was, that and my research session that has me hungry to learn more about Reed and how he pulled this dusclops trick off. I'm sorry forbehat I said too. So, we'll grab Garret in the morning. It'll be the three of us, together again. And your bodyguard here can calm down since apparently I'm not enough to accompany you."
"It's not that, but what if Po Town is crazier than Reed?" Cole asked. "We don't know anything about the place."
"I mean, I do," Neo said, raising his hand. "Mostly an urban area, lots of precipitation, a population of –"
"That's not what I mean, I'm saying we don't know what kind of people are there." Cole laid his hands out in the air, palms up as he spoke. "Could be a weird cult town or something. Maybe Reed has friends there who are expecting you. Maybe he's there."
"That's a possibility," Neo said. "Reed could have used his own hometown to hide between taking students."
"Just be careful," Cole said, his eyes locked onto Wallace.
"Promise."
End of Chapter Forty-Nine
