Part 1: The Victims

Chapter 1: Vince Maire

Disclaimer: I don't own Pokémon, but I do own the characters here!


Ugh, idiot...

I was waiting. It was my fault. Dad told us to stay inside, but I couldn't stop him. I was slow. I shouldn't have been slow.

The thing crashed into our ranch, luckily with no explosion in tow. I'm sure Drew would have discovered it the next morning and done something stupid still. Maybe. Big 'maybe'. No, I was here. I was in the now. Right now, all I had to distract myself from the thoughts were the on-and-off sounds of the old man across from me coughing up something of a storm.

The buzzing lights cast heavy shadows in the spaces they couldn't reach. It infected me. It infected my mom, paranoid. She was sitting beside me, a look of sheer disbelief in her hazel eyes. She was frozen, until the large doors to the back rooms swung open. An older man dressed in a white coat, decorated with prestige and without a single wrinkle (along with some other devices I couldn't name) entered the room, one hand against the door, the other as occupied as the eyes behind his glasses, reading over the papers. My mother stood up, now facing this man. He was tall, white-haired, and wore an inscrutable expression.

"Anne," said the coated old man. "I think you need to come and see this for yourself. I am not sure what else to say. Please, come this way."

With that, the elderly doctor faced away from the lobby, my mother following soon after him. One hand was secured over her mouth. The other had tapped me on the shoulder. I assumed that meant I was to stay close behind. I was about to see my little brother again.

Had he just slipped into a coma on contact with the thing? I mean, that was what it looked like. It made no sense, but I guess we were lucky the rock didn't hit him on the head. It would've been worse if the thing had engulfed our town in an eruption. While that was an impossibility of the past, I couldn't help but have grim thoughts racing through my head like a swarm of jets. The sooner we got through these lifeless, white corridors, the sooner I could take a seat again, rest myself, and find some reason within the madness.

The doctor held a door open for the two of us. I gave him a silent smile of thanks, whilst my mom's hand was still over her mouth. Her focus froze upon the classic hospital arrangement of gurneys and machines, cabinets and biohazard waste bins. A fancy heart rate monitor was beeping. There were about half a dozen mechanisms in the room that I didn't care about, three beds, curtains showing them in plain sight. I stopped at one side of my brother's hospital bed, my mother the opposite side. The doctor loomed over me from behind. All three of us were speechless, examining my unconscious, little brother. His face was pale like chalk, naked without his glasses, and he looked cold. His golden hair was crisp, like ice had formed on it, its sheen dying. The doctor spoke before too long.

"Above the counter here is a screen showing his brainwave activity," the man briefed, pointing us in the desired direction.

I had no idea what that device was. It wasn't a CT scanner. Those were outdated. I didn't even know that kind of thing existed in these rooms, but I assumed technology was still advancing. I was a suburban kid. A lot of that eluded me.

"We don't normally use this machine for medical pursuits in this facility, but I've warranted it for this case," he paused, mouth open as if to continue.

I glanced up to Mom, her face flushed with concern, albeit directed at the machine in question, as if equally worried about it. I heard a sigh escape the doctor's nose. "It can wire up to multiple... 'patients', and it is operating optimally. As you can see, there are two lines, yet only one patient in this room," he paused, pointing out the two distinct lines making their way haphazardly across the screen. "And that is impossible. The existence of a second line suggests he has a second brain."

A quick moment of incredulous looks separated us from truth and fiction. I was glancing back and forth between the brainwaves, my brother, and the other empty beds. A second brain, I thought. How? Where?

"Based on the activity of his second brain, if it is there," the doctor paused once more, pointing at the lower, more disarrayed green line on the screen. "Electrochemical waves are attempting to alter his cognition. He is surviving, but his vitals are at risk of, well, a number of things you would rather not hear, I assume. I have never quite seen this in my career or life."

I could tell my mother was skeptical, while I myself was more unnerved by the doctor's intrigue. Mom was not an easy woman easy to fool. And the idea of a second brain was ludicrous. She shook her head, giving the doctor a sort of 'are you insane?' look.

"C'mon now, Sam," she huffed. "You're honestly suggesting he is growing another brain?"

"I am. As you can see, the upper wave is stable, while the lower is fluctuating. Either way, the amount of electrical waves inside your son's body have locked him into a state of uncertain comatose. If this continues, we are going to require your decision: Do you want us to put Drew on life support, or would you like us to give him some more time?"

"I just... Anything. Anything to keep my boy alive." Mom answered, frustrated, giving it no thought. She wanted – no, needed him to live. I needed it, too, but was this torture for him? What if he was stuck in some sort of nightmare? What if he was begging to just escape? Was that naive of me to think? I...

I yawned. It was almost midnight. I hadn't slept, and, as a busy teenaged farm boy, I wasn't the most responsible sleeper in any case. Though, I felt bad. I didn't want to look like I was bored. I wasn't. I was terrified.

It was a hard night. I had zero hours, zero minutes, and maybe five seconds of sleep. I stayed at the hospital. I watched my little brother, holding his hand as he was hooked up to all sorts of machines. I watched over him without budging, some fantasy running through my head, mocking me with the falsehood of his awakening. I went to the bathroom three or four times. Couldn't remember. I had to splash my face with the freezing water just to keep my eyes open. More than halfway, at that. Each time I returned to that room, I was so expecting Drew to be sitting up, a dumb look plastered on his face. He'd've seen me walk in and holler my name before asking me where he was and what was going on. Maybe it was silly to someone else, but the thought of it was beautiful. And that made it worse.

I stop paying attention to the time after I made out a bit of blue in the sky. I knew it was about five in the morning or something. I wasn't sure when the sun started rising, but I had a vague feeling it was around that time. It didn't matter. The only thing I wanted to see rise was my brother, all up and worried about why he wasn't in his bed at home.

Fingers pressing into heavy eyes, I sighed. What made this worse was that, as soon as I got home, I would have had to help Dad with the farm. Us farm kids were supposed to wake up early and all, but I was a bit of a rebel. I slept in late on weekends, which made up for my huge loss of sleep on the weekdays. It was a busy schedule. I was under pressure every moment, save the weekends. No, strike that. I had projects for school. I had one coming up. It was due this Monday, and it was already Friday. Well, it was the worst Friday of my life. I was nowhere on that English project, and my brother was probably going to be killed. Sometimes I wonder how I hadn't been driven insane a while ago. I imagined cross-country took care of that. Running always calmed me down. I enjoyed jogging around the acres of our farmland with our welsh corgi Zig-Zag. Drew always tried to keep up with me. He'd run out of stamina pretty fast. It's only because he wasn't trained like I was. I had practiced to maintain myself while running. But that didn't apply for everything in life. And it really was all breaking down here.

Jeez, listen to me... It's like I have all the problems in the world. What a dumb kid you are, Vince. Dumb kid.

I'm so sorry, Drew. Little Edge.

I'm hoping you're having a sweet dream. You know, of us laying in the hammocks near one another and watching the stars roll on in the black, velvet sky.

Or the clouds, in the blue beyond.

Or maybe you're too distracted with that silly little game you play on that hand-held console thing of yours—that one with the creatures you have to train, fight with them against other trainers and reach the championship or whatever-the-hell. I don't get it, but I guess that game's simple enough. He needs to play those games. I don't care how childish those games are. I would play it with him if I could. I just... I don't have time, bud. I don't got the time. I need... time... If I could go back and play with you, little Edge, I would do it.

...

So, lemme rethink that: I hope you're having a sweet dream where you can catch all of those little monsters and fight your way to the top.

...

Sure enough, having been driven home by Mom, I was asked to do one little task around the farm, which evolved into two tasks, and then so on. I honestly didn't care that I was tired. I was too distracted. I could only get so tired and so hurt thinking about...

...well, Drew.

The tasks involved the usual Friday routine: cleaning up the horse crap and making sure all of the animals had food and water. I cleaned stuff. I refilled stuff. They had their stuff. I didn't. I wanted to collapse in bed and cry. I was already crying. Through the brunt of the word, I had tears welling up like they had a mind of their own, and that made me think of the whole 'two brains' thing again, and just...

No, man... Ugh, no. That's not supposed to happen to my little bud.

Lackadaisical and flicking my tears away on my forefinger and thumb, I ignored my father, walking briskly into our fairly large two-story house and heading for the second floor. I averted my attention from my brother's room, raised a leg and pushed the door closed behind me, then fell to my knees in front of my bed, my face planted firmly into the messy, unmade covers with a loud puff. Those were my plans for the weekend.

And little did I expect anyone to come in and comfort me. My mother didn't to speak to me. Dad barely looked me in the eyes. Oh yeah, and the rock. I saw that stupid rock. No one touched it. The animals stayed clear. Still, it was there. It just sat there.

It ruined my little brother, and it got to stay.

To think that, one week ago, I was laughing. Yesterday, I was laughing. Earlier today, I was laughing. Now it was all gone. In one day, gone.