CHAPTER 30

Salvatore idly bounced a tennis ball against the cell door, angling it so that it bounced over to Viktor on the lower bunk on the opposite side of the cell. The steady thud-thump, thud-thump had a hypnotic effect, and he could pass hours this way, lulled into a trance by the repetitive motions. Gian sat on the top bunk above Viktor, idly paging through a cheap murder mystery paperback from the prison library.

Even if Sal wasn't necessarily happy to be locked up in Redstone, he was at least not unhappy about the arrangement. Sin operatives enjoyed certain privileges and protections within the compound, both from other prisoners and the guards on the Sins' payroll. After word came from the mainland that Dominion had subsumed the Kuromori into her organization, some of the inter-faction tensions within the prison had abated, and the Baron's incarcerated men, finding themselves suddenly outnumbered, were content to do what they could to keep their noses down.

That news had come on the heels of the Purge, and just days later, they had heard about the heroes' assault on the Ridgewood compound, and Sal was forced to admit being in Redstone was probably a blessing in disguise. While he probably had nothing to worry about in the Purge, the higher-ups might have banked on his loyalty to do some of the unpleasant work he had heard about, and while he probably would have followed his orders, Sal never liked the idea of turning on his own. And even if he'd weathered the Purge, he had no doubt that he and Gian would have found themselves on the front lines when the heroes attacked, and even though Gian could have made it out of that all right, Sal would probably be dead.

With the city looking more like a warzone, being locked up was a price he was willing to pay to keep his head on his shoulders. It was no luxury hotel, but Sal had to admit that Redstone prison might have been the best thing to happen to him in years.

Sal wasn't sure who had pulled the strings to get him a cell with Gian, but he appreciated the gesture. How Viktor ended up with them, Sal wasn't sure, but he figured whoever filed the paperwork figured that since they were in the same crew when they were arrested, he and Gian knew the guy. The bruiser wasn't much of a conversationalist, but when a fracas started in the prison yard when news of the Purge reached Redstone, Viktor had immediately moved to back up Sal and Gian, and Sal could appreciate that in a man, even if he was a cheat at cards.

The thud-thump of his game of catch was interrupted by the steady thunk of a guard's nightstick on the cell doors as he made his rounds. As far as Sal could tell, this guy wasn't on the dole of any of the major factions, and did what he could to introduce just a little bit of discomfort into the prisoners' daily lives. The tapping the doors was just one of his games.

Sal felt a prickling on the back of his scalp as the thunk came closer to his door, and Viktor fumbled his throw, making the ball come in at an odd angle. The guard's Hypno shuffled along in front of him, generating a weak psychic pulse from the hallway along the cellblock. It was just enough to be a mild irritant, and any prisoner dozing off in his cell would be abruptly woken up by it. Gian's brow furrowed as he focused on the page in front of him, the psychic interference ruining his concentration. "One of these days," Viktor grumbled in his heavily accented voice, popping the knuckles on his right hand. "One of these days, I will punch that man in his mouth."

"Easy big guy," Sal said as he swung off his bunk and retrieved the ball. "He just wants to get a rise out of you. We aren't giving him the satisfaction."

"Four more years of this," Viktor muttered.

"Three maybe, if we behave ourselves," Gian replied.

"Going to be a long three years."

"Yeah, but at least by the end of it, the three of us will probably still be breathing," Sal said. "At the rate things are going on the outside, I don't know how many of our guys can say the same."

Viktor sighed and lay back on his bunk, staring at the underside of Gian's mattress. "I am not liking this," he finally said. "I don't know which of my friends died and who was hurt. I am not liking that Dominion sends them to their deaths. Mostly I am wondering what would have happened if Tolya and I had been there. I am missing him more than usual today."

At the mention of Viktor's Electabuzz, Sal's thoughts turned to Vito. The Skarmory was in PPS custody now, but Sal knew his partner was savvy enough not to make a fuss. Pokemon like that, sometimes the PPS rehomed them, or sent them to a ranch outside the city. Vito was getting up there in age, and Sal knew he would have had to retire him soon anyway. He heard of plenty of guys who tracked down their pokemon once they got out of Redstone, using bribes or underworld contacts to get their partners back from the PPS if they had to. Sal knew he would go looking for Vito once he got out, but if the Skarmory had a better deal now than he had with Sal, he wasn't sure he'd try to get his pokemon back.

He liked to think that Vito was out of the city, somewhere with a nice big field to fly over and plenty of warm air currents to cruise on. It was the kind of retirement Vito deserved after putting up with Sal for so long, and if Sal were to try and take him away from that, then what kind of friend was he?

If he was honest with himself, he was thinking about retiring himself. He'd been a criminal for most of his life, and seen bosses rise and fall. It wasn't an old man's game, and he wasn't young anymore. With the espers and heroes vying for control of the city and duking it out in the streets, a guy who's been around long enough should know when the game had changed, and when to call it quits. After his stint in Redstone, he was thinking it might be nice to quietly slip away and start over somewhere far from Clarus City. It wasn't easy to make a life as an ex-con, but it was possible.

The light coming in from the small window in the cell door abruptly dimmed, signaling that lights out was soon. Gian marked his place with a scrap of paper and tossed his book down to Sal, who set it on the cell's tiny, immovable table. The three men reclined on their bunks, waiting in silence for the lights to turn off. Sal's body had already recalibrated to the prison routine, and despite the hard, shapeless mattress, he usually fell asleep fairly quickly after lights out.

But tonight, not long after the florescent tube over his head dimmed and went out, a crash from outside the prison made Sal snap up, suddenly completely alert. Sirens rang outside the prison walls, and harsh red lights flicked on in the hallway outside as Sal heard backup locks engage on the cell door, plunging Redstone into lockdown. In the hall outside, he heard guards shouting and pokemon yapping and howling. Gian swung off his bunk and peered out the tiny window in the door, but after a moment, he shook his head.

"I can't see anything. Whatever's going on, it's not in here." He sat down next to Sal, and Viktor sat up on his bunk. The three of them sat in silence as they strained to hear sounds from outside, but the concrete walls of the prison were thick, and dampened even the wailing alarms. Sal faintly heard crashes and what sounded like a deep basso roar, accompanied by the sharp cracks of gunfire.

Prisoners in other cells shouted and pounded on their doors, and Sal wanted to yell at them all to shut up so he could try to figure out what was going on, but he knew he'd never be heard over the ruckus. He couldn't be sure, but the sounds of gunfire seemed closer now, the sharp cries of pokemon echoed from somewhere outside the cellblock.

Then, as abruptly as it began, the commotion stopped. The prisoners quieted as they all tried to figure out what was going on. Viktor moved to stand up, but Sal held up his hand. If the guards came back, he wanted the three of them to be sitting calmly in their cell, and give them no reason to think they had stepped out of line. Down the cellblock, he heard a crash, like something heavy impacting one of the doors, and a pokemon's growl. Another door slammed open, and an indistinct conversation could be heard.

Gian's fingers twitched, curling around an invisible sword hilt. Sal's cousin hadn't yet lost the muscle memory of reaching for Dantès, and Gian did so every time his finely-honed street brawling instincts set him on edge.

Something banged against the metal of their cell door, impacting it hard enough to leave a crater. Three more bangs followed, and then there was a shriek of rending metal as the door was torn from its hinges and hurled away by a psychic force.

A man with an eye patch stood beside a slowly rotating Claydol, holding a clipboard in one hand. "Genovese?"

So much for retirement.

"That's me," Sal said.

"What?" The man glanced up and scowled. His one-eyed gaze flicked from Sal to Gian, and then back. "Oh, the cousin. Yeah, you might as well come too. And you, big guy. Up and at 'em, I don't have all night."

Gian stood in front of Sal and Viktor, stretching out his arm to hold Viktor back. "What's going on here?"

The one-eyed man heaved an exasperated sigh. "What's it look like? The boss is calling you three back in."

"This is a prison break?"

"Oh, you catch on quick," the man in the eye patch said sarcastically. "Look, I got other appointments tonight. You coming or what?"

The three prisoners shared a glance and stepped out of their cell. All throughout the cell block, Sin operatives were breaking down doors with the help of their pokemon. Sal watched as a Machamp yanked a cell door off the wall with a roar, hurling it down to the ground level with an echoing crash, liberating four of Pride's enforcers. Three operatives with machine guns took up position in front of the cell next door, and one of the women gestured to her Kadabra. The psychic type opened the door with telekinesis, and the operatives opened fire on three of the Baron's thugs within.

The one-eyed man cleared his throat. "We took care of the guards, but we don't have all night. I'm going to take care of the other guys on my list, and then I'll walk you out."

Before Sal or the others could reply, he and his Claydol moved down the line of cells and liberated two Kuromori assassins, and then three members of Wrath's crew. When he stopped for a third time, he muttered something to his Claydol, and the psychic type began to glow and spin faster. A splash of blood appeared on the tiny cell window, and the one-eyed man nodded and moved on to the next cell.

Once he had opened another door and let out the last of the prisoners on his list, he gestured to the liberated Sin personnel and motioned for them to follow him out of the cell block. The other operatives were shepherding their own charges, and Sal fell in line behind the one-eyed man. "I know you, don't I? You're one of Pride's guys too." he said as they exited the cellblock. "Kowalski? Krakowski"

"Otto Kozlowski," the one-eyed man said. "You broke my nose back when we were kids in Ridgewood, Genovese."

"You expect me to remember every guy I ever punched in the face? What's going on here?"

"I already told you, prison break. Boss's orders, or I would've paid you back for my nose."

If Sal had tangled with Otto back when they were young bucks in Ridgewood, it must have been over two decades ago. "When you say 'boss', are we talking Richelieu? Or…" Sal trailed off as he saw the limp forms of prison guards and their pokemon sprawled on either side of the hallway up ahead. A Hypno with a bullet hole through its head was slumped against the wall.

"You think Pride would be letting out a bunch of Kuromori? This comes from the top."

"Why?"

"You ask a lot of questions, Genovese. Once you get back to the mainland, that could be bad for your health." Otto sighed. "Our numbers got thinned in the Purge, but as far as Dominion was concerned they were acceptable losses, what with the new blood we brought in with the Kuromori. But then the heroes showed up and put a lot of our guys out of commission. The fact is, we're running with a skeleton crew right now, and we're thin on the ground. The boss realized we had a lot of talent on ice over here across the harbor, and she decided it was time we brought you all back into play."

Sal tried to keep his face impassive as they passed by another cluster of dead guards and pokemon. "How long do we have before the mainland sends backup?"

"Who knows? They probably heard something, but we took out their comms."

They paused in the entrance of the prison. The reinforced gates had been blasted apart by what looked like a powerful explosion, and bodies were strewn across the room. A few were black-clothed Sin operatives, but the vast majority were prison guards. Sal swallowed the bile that rose in his throat as they stepped over the bodies and out into the misting rain outside.

Although the walls inside Redstone were featureless concrete, the exterior was made of sandstone quarried from the mainland. It stood as an imposing bulwark on an otherwise barren and rocky island. A tall fence of barbed wire encircled the island's perimeter, but it was hardly necessary. The island dropped off to steep cliffs along the entire island's perimeter, and it was hemmed in by rocky shoals except for a small passage where the Clarus Corrections Department had built a small, heavily guarded pier for docking the prisoner transports that left the city twice daily.

The transport that had delivered the evening's shipment of prisoners had been demolished, and part of the bow could be seen sticking up from the churning waters of the harbor. Three black boats waited in its place, with spotlights turned on the pier. A pair of Gyarados loomed up beside the Sin boats, their fangs glinting in the moonlight. Otto smirked and glanced at Sal. "The orders came from the top, but Pride gave us her favorite toys for the job." Otto laughed at Sal's shocked countenance. "What, you never met Scylla and Charybdis before? Richelieu only lets the ladies out to play on the big jobs."

The two Gyarados lowered their spiked heads and leered at the assembled prisoners. Their nostrils flared, and the three-pronged fins at the sides of their fanged maws flared out. Sal took an unconscious step back as one of the great serpents turned her face towards him and bared fangs as long as Sal's forearm that glittered in the spotlights. Viktor muttered something that sounded like a prayer under his breath.

Another group of prisoners tramped out of the compound, this time from the smaller women's wing. "Reina!" Sal called when he saw the woman's matted and multi-colored hair. The anarchist looked up and didn't exactly smile, but she raised her eyebrows in a pleasantly surprised way.

"They busted you out too, huh?" she said. "I'm not one to look into a Delibird's sack, but this is…" She trailed off as she looked up at the Gyarados looming over them. "It's a lot."

"That's the last of them!" one of the enforcers called to the men at the dock. "We got everyone on the lists."

There was a shouted command that Sal couldn't make out, and one of the Gyarados rose up in the water, shifting her coils in the craggy shallows to stretch up as high as she could. A stark orange-white light appeared in her gaping maw, throwing stark shadows around the pier. The Gyarados unleashed the hyper beam at the ruined front gate of Redstone, and the heavy masonry shattered under the blast. She tracked the beam along the wall of the prison, bringing it down on itself as the blast vaporized the stones. The rumbling of the prison walls as they collapsed was almost loud enough to drown out the screams of the prisoners still trapped inside.

Otto's single eye sparkled as he watched Redstone collapse in on itself. The Gyarados sank back into the churning waters of the harbor with a sound that was eerily close to a human sigh. The one-eyed enforcer turned to Sal and the other freed prisoners. "We're playing for keeps now. As far as the boss is concerned, anything is fair game now. You come back with us, and you're going to be fighting for the cause, same as the rest of us. Any of you have qualms with that, you're welcome to sit around here and wait for the folks on the mainland to come for you, or take your chances swimming somewhere else." He smirked. "Now personally, I don't like your odds either way. But even if you do manage to get yourself clear, Dominion is going to know who abandoned her after she went through all the trouble of setting you free. And she really doesn't like it when people betray her.

"So what's it going to be? Are you in, or are you dead men walking?"

With those options, Sal decided he was in, and so was everyone else.

As the freed prisoners filed onto the boats that would take them back to the mainland, Otto stopped Sal and his crew. "Genovese." When Sal looked up, Otto shook his head. "Not you. Him."

Gian stepped forward and folded his arms. "What?"

Otto reached into the pocket of his coat and drew out what looked like a metallic pokeball. Instead of the usual vibrant red and white, this one had one steel half and one brass half, with an iron band around the midsection. The PPS pokeball shell was designed to keep pokemon secure in their balls for transport, and could be used to contain pokemon indefinitely if they proved to be dangerous or unable to be rehabilitated. The balls were nearly impossible to open without a special key, and the stock was kept under close guard by the PPS and the city's police forces.

Otto shook the ball and proffered it towards Gian. "You got lucky. We raided the PPS depot before coming here to get back some of the pokemon the PPS nabbed from us after the heroes' attack. Turns out with all the stuff going on lately, the PPS isn't processing new arrivals all that quick, so not all of your crews' had been transported out of the city. Richelieu wants the legendary Gian Genovese back on the front lines ASAP, so she pulled this one for you." When Gian hesitated, Otto pressed the ball into his hands. "We already took care of the lock. Come on, pop it open."

Gian hurled the ball at the ground, where it split open and an old, battered pokeball fell out. The ball burst open with a flash of light. A glowing shape whirled around Gian's head, emitting a low spectral hum. Sal's cousin flexed his fingers, and Dantès shot into his hands. A shiver went up Gian's spine as the Doublade's tassels wrapped around his wrists and forearms, binding their nervous systems together. "Thank you," Gian managed to gasp.

"Thank the boss," Otto replied. "She wants to see you when we get back."

"If you found Dantès," Viktor said, "does that mean you have my Tolya?"

"What about Hugo?" Reina asked. "He's my Carnivine, about this tall, his right leaf has a notch it and—"

"Did you find Vito?"

Otto rolled his eye and shrugged. "Look, all I know is that Pride wanted your cousin to have his Doublade back. We'll sort through the rest of you when we get back to the mainland. If we have your old partners, great! If we don't, we'll find you new ones."

"I don't want a new partner," Viktor growled. "I want Tolya back." Otto's Claydol burbled something and moved to place itself between the two men.

"All right, take it easy," Otto said, waving his pokemon down. "One step at a time, big guy. Let's get you all back to the mainland first, huh? The sooner you get on a boat, the sooner we work this out. Like I've been telling you, we don't have all night here."

Viktor nodded and brushed past the one-eyed man and up the gangplank into one of the waiting transports. Reina, Sal, and Gian followed just after him. Once the freed prisoners had all boarded, the boats turned away from the dock and shot out over the harbor, Scylla and Charybdis gliding in their wake.

Sal and Gian stood in the prow of their boat, along with several other escapees who huddled in clumps. Gian slowly moved his arms through the air, exulting in the feeling of being reunited with his pokemon partner. The Doublade buzzed with what Sal could only assume was equal happiness as its tassels snaked up and down his cousin's arms.

Sal took a deep breath, filling his nose with the scent of the sea wind. It smelled sharper here in the middle of the harbor than it had in the yard at Redstone, like he had thought it would. He had often thought, as he wiled away the hours in his cell, what his first taste of freedom would be like when he first got out. He hadn't expected it to have such a bitter aftertaste.

But then, Sal reflected, he wasn't really free at all. As the lights of Clarus loomed up over the water before him, he realized he had just traded one set of chains for another.