Chapter Four

Melissa

We lost count of the days after a while. You might think that's impossible, but it's easy once there's no work to go to, appointments to keep or favourite TV programmes to watch. Every day seemed to merge with the last. It was hard being confined the way we were, but it had to be done to protect us from the Plague. I felt kind of sorry for my Pidgeotto, who could only be let out of her Poke Ball under supervision in case she flew off and brought the Plague back with her.

One afternoon, I was sitting in the cabin with Sunflora on the floor next to me. I was troubled and she seemed to sense this because she kept quiet as I remembered the home I'd left behind and the people I'd never see again. My eyes fell on one of the magazines Monica had been reading a few days earlier. Hoping she wouldn't mind if I just sneaked a look, I opened it and began to read, looking at a remnant of a lost world. Then, I saw a quiz, a fun test of the reader's general knowledge. Monica hadn't ticked any of the answers and I wondered if she and I would be able to challenge the others.

The answer came when the door opened and Leon walked in. "Leon, what are you doing here?" I asked. "You know you're not allowed in female quarters."

"Just thought you needed some company, that's all."

"OK," I said, gesturing him to sit down on the bed. Then, I had an idea. Looking through the questions, I picked one of them at random. "Hey, Leon, bet you don't know who the Ecruteak Gym Leader is," I challenged. "Is it . . . A: Whitney, B: Morty, or C: Falkner?"

Leon glared at me. "Why do you ask?!" he demanded angrily. "There are no Gym Leaders now! The world as we knew it is gone forever! And all our families . . ."

He never finished his sentence. Before I could stop myself, I slapped him hard across the face. "Thanks for reminding me."

Right now, I hated Leon more than anything. Why did he have to go and remind me like that? The second he turned and left the cabin, I picked up the photo of me with my mum and my Pidgey (now a Pidgeotto and sat looking at it. "Mum," I said, sighing under my breath, "if only you'd known what was coming . . ." But I knew that, however much I wished for things to be different, nothing would change. I was stuck out here in the sticks with a bunch of people who'd been taken away from everything they'd known before, just because they had talents that needed to be preserved.


Marle

"Espeon, dodge! Umbreon, you'll have to be faster than that!"

Espeon quickly jumped away from Umbreon's Bite Attack and kicked him with her hind paw as she escaped. Not exactly an official Pokemon move, but hey, whatever works . . .

I was out training my Pokemon. There was nothing else to do and you never knew when you might need strong Pokemon.


Melissa

Looking back now, I can hardly remember my life before Project Alpha. I guess I repressed everything so I wouldn't dwell on the past too much and could get on with my life.

There are a few things I still recall vividly; the day I found the Pidgey that would become my Pidgeotto is one of them. I was nine years old when I came across a Pidgey hobbling around the garden back home in Celadon City. On close inspection, I realised she had broken her wing, probably in a battle with some other bird Pokemon, and I resolved to catch her and take her to the Pokemon Centre so Nurse Joy could make her well. I managed to tempt Pidgey with a packet of bird seed and she allowed me to pick her up and take her to the Pokemon Centre. We only lived round the corner from it, so it didn't take me long to get there. Then, when Nurse Joy had taken Pidgey to the treatment room, I began the longest wait of my life.

Finally, after what felt like hours, Nurse Joy came out and smiled at me. "Your Pidgey's going to be just fine," she said. She thought the Pidgey was mine, but I was happy to play along and so was Pidgey. She and I became firm friends and fought many battles together. Then, about two years after I found her, she evolved into Pidgeotto and I got Sunflora not long after.

I reflected on this as I worked with the others in the fields where we were planting crops. We would have to be self-sufficient if we were to stand any chance of surviving the isolation the Plague had imposed on us, but it was hard work. And to think I'd recently been an ordinary teenaged girl whose main priorities were clothes and boyfriends.

Suddenly, Marle, who was working beside me, fell to her knees, holding her head in her hands. "Marle!" I yelled, concerned by my friend's sudden collapse and aware that, in a Timeseer, it could only mean one thing. I decided I'd better take her back to the cabin so she could rest up. I helped her to her feet - she was still feeling rather dizzy - and we set off in the direction of our private quarters. Along the way, we came across a girl from Delta Division; I didn't know her name, but she had a Vulpix, so I called her Vulpix Girl. "What's going on?" she asked, wondering why Marle and I had left the fields early.

"Nothing," I said. I couldn't be bothered to go into details right now. "She wasn't feeling well, so I thought I'd better get her inside."

Inside our cabin, I sat Marle down and looked her straight in the eye. "I think you'd better tell me what that was about."

She paused for a moment. "Well . . ." she began.


Marle

"I can't do this . . . I can't do this . . . I cannot do this!" I thought over and over, rocking back and forth on the mattress and clutching my knees to my chest.

Melissa sat silently, watching me expectantly. I knew she was dying of curiosity but she would give me as long as I needed to collect myself.

"Melissa, you know when I kinda freaked out on you when you asked me about my parents?" I said at last.

She nodded.

"I didn't tell you because I'm kind of . . . embarrassed about my parentage, my father anyway. Well, you'll soon know who my father is."

Melissa looked shocked for a moment. "You mean you know he's still alive?" she asked me. "How could he have survived the Plague? Have we seen him before?"

"Stop!" I interrupted her, tears streaming down my face. "No, we haven't seen him and I don't want to!"

Melissa realised that she had pushed too hard and seemed about to drop the matter. She placed her arm around my shoulder. "Can you at least tell me his name so I'll know him when I do see him?"

I nodded but was silent for a few more minutes as I faed my internal struggle. I wanted to tell her, but I wondered how the others would think of me after. Then, being a Timeseer I realised I already knew how they would feel. They would act like it didn't matter, but eventually they would all drift away, afraid to be seen near me. It didn't matter, though; they'd find out one way or another. My lips struggled to form his name, a name so despicable that it left a bad taste in my mouth.

"Giovanni."


Kohaku

I sat outside the cabin, listening to the conversation those girls were having. Vulpix nudged against me as I looked down and smiled a fake smile to reassure him.

I heard what that girl, Marle, said, but I didn't quite believe it. Had my ears deceived me or was this girl's father the leader of the most notorious criminal gang in the world? But I couldn't blame her; I could tell by her sorrow that she wasn't at fault. Does a child choose their parents? For that matter, do the parents ever choose the children they have?

I wanted to comfort this girl like a friend would and tell her everything was all right. But I felt it would be out of place, so I just closed my eyes and stayed where I was.


Melissa

I looked at Marle in disbelief. "You mean the Giovanni?! The head of Team Rocket?!"

She nodded reluctantly. "He walked out on my mum when I was two," she told me. "Then she got married again to a John Smith, so I guess they changed my last name as well. But I never thought of myself as Marle Smith, even though I hated what I knew of Giovanni . . ." She trailed off at this point and I chose not to press. Instead, I sat by her, waiting until she got up the courage to continue.

"Guess, if they want to call me Marle Smith, I'd better go along with it," she said at last with a wry grin on her face. "After all, if I keep acting so secretive about my last name, people might start to talk and I don't want that. It's hard enough being a Timeseer."

Marle and I made a solemn oath not to let anyone else know what she had just told me. I felt she had enough worries already without anyone adding to them.

Two, or it might have been three, days later, we were assigned the most challenging task yet, building a Great Hall for the people at the Location to hold gatherings even when it was pouring with rain outside. It was a prefab, so all we had to do was slide the sections into place while Pidgeotto, Monica's Charizard and all the other Flying Pokemon in the place took care of the roofing. As I was plastering one of the walls, I heard a faint cough behind me.

I turned to see Vulpix Girl standing behind me, looking as if she wanted to say something. "Hi," I said, hoping to break the ice. "You're that girl with the Vulpix, aren't you?"

She nodded. "Yeah," she said. "I'm Kohaku, by the way."

We talked for a while and I agreed she could join the little gang my friends and I had formed. They had a few misgivings at first ("She's from Delta Division!" Stan said in a tone which clearly said I should stick with my own Division.) but I managed to talk them round.

"Listen," I said. "It doesn't matter which Division someone's in. What matters is that we're supposed to be preserving the human race and we can only do that if we co-operate."

And so Kohaku became the newest member of our little clique and the first from outside Gamma Division.


Drake

I continued to stare up at the ceiling for the fifth hour running. I was bored, but even sitting up seemed unappealing for some reason.

Grey was humming under his breath. He was one of my cabin-mates and he was sporty and humorous. He was also unbelievably annoying. "Say, do you think you could get up?" he asked me. "Some exercise might do you good."

"I've had all the exercise I need thanks," I grumbled. For the last few days, we had been trying to fix the unreliable lavatory in our cabin, but it broke down so often that we eventually decided to strip it down and rebuild it from scratch. Right now, we were having our first respite for days and not even Grey's incessant humming could interrupt my rest. He had a point, though. "Well, I guess I do feel like a stroll through the compound. You coming?"

"Nope. I was recommending that you get some exercise," Grey told me. "I'm just gonna flip through your sketchbook."

"Hey!" My sketches weren't terrible, but they definitely weren't something I liked to boast about either. It began to rain, but that had never been a deterrent before. "See ya in an hour, Grey!" I called as I set out to check up on the other Divisions.

An hour was forty-five minutes too long. I was somewhere around the cabins assigned to Theta and Gamma Divisions when the sky really opened up. "Aw, hell!"I muttered as the ground became increasingly slippery and muddy.


Ben

"I'm not cut out for manual labour," I moaned as I helped Leon with heaving a plank of wood out to the construction site.

"Are you still here?" he demanded. "I could've sworn you'd left because you don't seem to be actually helping in any way."

"Where's Stan these days?" I asked, trying a change of tactic.

"He's probably doing what you're not, the W word. How the hell should I know?! I'm not his keeper or anything."

"It's just that he's not been around much lately and I thought you might know why, seeing that you're his friend and all."

Leon threw the wood down. "Will you shut up?! You don't get it, do you? We are not here to make friends, we are here to rebuild the fucking planet! And somehow, I don't think we need guys like you along for the ride. So just quit while you're ahead, OK? It's obvious you're the weak element. Can't fight, can't do a day's labour, can't go ten minutes without pissing someone off! Now," he went on, "unless you want to prove me wrong in another match with Scizor, just go and lie down somewhere and die already!"

With that, Leon picked the wood up again - he was quite capable of carrying it without my help - and carried on walking. However, my brain always seemed to have a death wish and that's probably why I challenged him to a rematch. He kept on walking.

"Did you hear me, Leon?!" I demanded.

"Yes, of course I did, but I don't want to waste my time on an idiot like you. Now, go and do something you're good at, like sitting down and being useless!"


Melissa

We were slowly settling into a routine, a sure sign that our new way of life was becoming second nature. Every morning, a bell would ring and we would get dressed and file out of our cabins for morning roll call. Then, once everyone had been accounted for, we would go to the mess hall for breakfast.

On one occasion, I was just taking my tray to Gamma Table (each Division had a table reserved for its members) when a boy from one of the other Divisions hailed me. "Hey! You're one of those kids who hacked the computers, aren't you?"

I stopped in my tracks. I knew his name was Drake Andrews, but I didn't know much else about him, aside from the fact he had a Pikachu and an Arcanine. "Yeah," I admitted. "But who told you?"

He shrugged nonchalantly. "Word gets around," he said. "Anyway, it was awfully brave of you guys to try something like that."

"Maybe, but we didn't find out all the things we would have liked to know. The computer crashed on us and someone found out what we'd been up to. Alpha Division were going to make us battle them, until Dole's lot stepped in at the last minute."

"Sounds like you could've done with someone like me," Drake told me. "I'm a natural survivor and . . ."

At that moment, I felt someone ram a tray into my back. "Oi!" said Monica's irritated voice. "Some of us want to get to our tables!"

I muttered a hasty apology and went to join the rest of Gamma Division. Passing Delta Table, I gave Kohaku a quick wink and she waved back. "So, who was that?" Monica asked as we sat down opposite each other.

"Drake Andrews," I replied. "But I didn't get his Division."

There were now eight people in our little gang: the six of us from Gamma Division, plus Kohaku from Delta Division and Drake. I eventually found out that he had been assigned to Beta Division.

I still wondered about the world I'd left behind and I knew the others did too. One day, I was walking with Kohaku when I heard her heave a big sigh and she reached up to brush at her eyes with her hand. "What's the matter?" I asked.

"Oh, nothing," she said. "I was just thinking, that's all."

"Thinking? About what?"

She sighed. I'd only known her for a few weeks, but I could tell she must be thinking about home. I knew the feeling; that crushing sense of homesickness came back to haunt all of us from time to time. The slightest thing could set us thinking about a world that was now gone and would never be seen again within our lifetimes. "About my parents and my boyfriend," Kohaku said at last. "We'd been going out together for just over a year when I got called up. I think saying goodbye to him was the hardest thing I've ever had to do . . ."

She broke down at this point and I patted her reassuringly. "I know," I said. "Everyone here had to say goodbye to someone they loved."

Just then, Marle came running up to us. "Melissa! Kohaku!" she called. "Meeting in half-an-hour! Didn't you hear the tannoy?!"

We hurried to where everyone was assembled. Dole was in his usual position in front of us. "Since some of you have already found out about your talents," he said, casting his eyes round the members of Gamma Division, "I thought it was only fair that the rest of you should know why you're here . . ." He started reading from a list of names like the one he'd used when we got off the plane. "Kohaku, you were chosen because of your ability to speak any Pokemon's language. Drake Andrews, you have exceptional survival skills . . ." Then, he went through everyone's special talent in turn.

I thought about what he'd said about Kohaku. It was true; one time, she'd been battling her Vulpix against Katie's Pikachu and, instead of giving commands in English, she kept saying: "Vulpix vulpix!" and her Vulpix understood.

As we dispersed after the meeting, I gazed at the sunset and thought about how peaceful it looked. I could hardly believe that, outside the safety of the Location, people were dying of the Plague.