FOUR: I'M DOING THIS FOR THE ONES WHO FELL OFF THE MAP
You are beginning to look a little uncomfortable over there. Wondering, perhaps, what the point of all this is. No – you know, or you think you know, what I'm getting at. The thing you don't understand is why I've chosen this story, of all things, as my response. You're thinking, is this really it? I came prepared for a fight, but the old duffer seems very relaxed about my having broken in here.
I am not relaxed. But I don't kill people any more. So sit tight, grant me a little more of your time, and perhaps by the time we're through here I'll have figured out what to do with you.
It was not shock that held Cynthia so firmly, but delight. For several long seconds, she did nothing but stare and smile; Silent's cigarette shed ash over her tabletop, but she scarcely seemed to notice.
"What are you?" she asked. "Really?"
Clair sighed.
"They were made by―"
Don't speak of that, said Silent curtly. And quite rightly too, in my estimation; it was a foul sort of introduction. This was a chance to be as they were to Cynthia, not as they once had been. I am … a hostage of the Indigo League. Red was my human and dear friend. I have come here to kill those responsible for his death.
Cynthia nodded as if this was something she heard every day. Silent thought that if she'd been Champion, perhaps it was; in truth, she was simply concentrating hard on making this normal.
"I see." She held out a hand. "Cynthia Mandeville, Champion Regent, Sinnoh League. It's a pleasure to meet you, Silent. And I'm truly sorry for your loss. Red was a fine man, and I imagine he was the best of friends."
No one had ever said that to Silent before. No one ever would again. They watched her hand for a moment as if it might sneak up and murder them, then gave in to the feeling trying to make itself heard in their chest and shook it.
Thank you, they said, surprised at how much it meant. He was.
"But you're not actually gonna kill anyone," said Clair in a bluff voice that disguised her shame that Silent had had those words from Cynthia and not from her.
"I hope not," said Cynthia. "But … I do hope you find what you're looking for here." She withdrew her hand. "You're welcome to stay here, of course. Or leave, if you prefer. But for tonight, let me get you an ashtray and something to eat. And we can talk about why it is you came here. Does that sound fair?"
It did. So fair, in fact, that Silent could not bring themself to trust it. But if Cynthia cared about Red, and their instincts said that she did, they were willing to give her the benefit of the doubt for one night at least.
All right, Mandeville, they said. Sounds fair.
Cynthia was not a born performer, but had become a highly skilled one, over the years she'd spent in front of cameras, crowds and cabinet members; even by her standards, however, this was the performance of a lifetime. Silent could see part of it, but not all, like someone watching a magician and catching just the very edge of how the trick was done: here she was at the head of the table, plumbing the depths of their musical knowledge; there she was leaning over to top up Clair's wine and luring her out of her discomfort with a well-placed question about Johtonian rugby. And there she was again, catching Silent's eye as Clair waded deep into the minutiae of the Blackthorn Drakes' prospects this season. Smiling faintly, as if in this moment they shared something.
Perhaps they did. But if so, Silent had no idea what it was.
"Is she really your human?"
They turned to face the fourth person at the table: Solomon, their grimy purple disc swirling and spiking around a dull green gesture of a face. So far, Silent had largely kept their distance from them, with a wary predator's respect; the two of them shared a distance from humanity, but Silent had the strong impression that Solomon stood far more distantly than they did, and in a different direction.
No, they replied, which made Solomon scowl and the shadows at their end of the room deepen perceptibly.
"It's hard to hear you through my dark. That little psychic voice, like a candle flame to the night." They twisted away from their keystone a little, in a gesture that only three people currently living knew enough about spiritomb to interpret. "Can you speak aloud?"
Yes, they could, in a slurred, cracked snarl of a voice that disintegrated on palatal consonants. But they had learned from Red that one did not have to use words, if one didn't want to.
I do not.
"Ah." Solomon's eyes glowed brightly for a moment. "I like that. But why do you travel with someone else's human?"
Mine is dead, Silent said bluntly.I'm here for his killer.
"Dead! Ach, it happens. Short lives, these humans. Like a shadow, born at sunrise to die at dusk." They shook their disc. "Cyn is not my first. There was another, a long time ago, back when I was us. Hard to remember. I'm made of many people. Had to grind them all up to make myself. But before that, there was a man who gave us our name. We killed for him. We were good at it."
They spoke like an animal, without guilt or conscience. Silent was glad to recognise it; most of what Solomon said seemed as alien to them as Will's so-called briefing, just in a different direction.
I used to kill too, they said, when it seemed obvious that they had to say something. But my human asked me to stop.
At the other end of the table, someone laughed. The jagged slash of Solomon's mouth broadened, either in a grin or because they were feeding on the emotions just unleashed.
"Cyn too," they said. "Strange what we'll do for them. We try to kill them and find we can't, and suddenly we're theirs."
Yes, agreed Silent, an unfamiliar feeling uncoiling slowly through their chest like an arbok waking from hibernation. Even after they're gone.
"The sun always rises. But so too do the shadows return."
It sounded like an agreement, if not one that Silent understood. They were about to reply when they realised the room seemed quiet, and looked around to see Clair and Cynthia watching the two of them with interest.
What? they said, a little more defensively than they would have liked.
"Oh, nothing," said Cynthia. "We're very glad to have you here, Silent."
But what that might have meant, they could not possibly have told you.
That night, unaccountably tired, Silent surveyed the room they had been given. Solomon's, apparently. What a severed head needed with a room of their own Silent was not sure, but the fact that they had it, and that Cynthia had asked their permission before offering it to Silent, made them deeply uneasy in a way they did not understand.
As did the room itself. There was no trace of music here – not even a pair of speakers. Silent had never met anyone who didn't listen to music before. It seemed impossible that such a person could exist. But Solomon was always a reader, and the room was so thoroughly walled in with bookshelves that the window itself had been blocked up behind a bookcase. Other than that, it contained nothing but a desktop with its legs sawn off, a well-worn ramp connecting it to the floor, and a sofa that Cynthia had offered to convert into a bed until Silent declined. The evidence, to the discerning eye, of a love that had slowly dragged Solomon out of their violence into life.
"Silent?"
There was a knock and a mindprint at the door: Clair. Silent opened the door with a brief flick of their mind, their body still standing and staring.
"Hey." Clair shut the door behind her, then folded her arms and leaned against it. "I, uh … I guess we're doing this, then."
Silent had nothing to say to that.
"I s'pose I oughta tell you," she went on. "Cynthia came to Johto last year. For work. I sorta helped her out a bit, she was there a couple weeks, we, uh …" She scratched her cheekbone. "Well, you know. For a bit. And then she went home. I guess she's more, uh, casual about these things. Which is fine, you know, it's the twenty-first century and all that." She took a deep breath in a way that suggested to Silent that it might not, in fact, be fine. "Anyway, that's part of why Will picked me for this. He's just screwing with me. The League people don't like me much. But I get results. I guess." Another pause. "Are you gonna say anything?"
Silent thought about asking what it was she was hiding from them – because of course there was more to the story, as you may have guessed and as they certainly had. But it was not in their nature to prise up another's words and winkle out the secrets underneath.
Have you made your report to Keller? they asked.
Clair looked annoyed.
"What? Get fucked, Silent, I'm trying to be honest with you here―"
Are you going to tell her that Mandeville found out?
"No!" she snapped. "I don't wanna go to jail any more than you want to go to the containment facility. So no, I'm not gonna admit that I gave away national secrets to someone high up in the Sinnoh League. Were you even listening to anything I said?"
All of it. Silent turned to her. It's your business, Serris, not mine. I don't consider it my place to pry.
The annoyance deepened, thickening across her face like ice riming a statue.
"Well, 'scuse me for trying to act decently," she said. "Whatever. I'm out. We start early tomorrow."
She stalked out in a swirl of cloak, leaving Silent alone with their confusion. They weren't sure what they'd said to make her angry. She seemed like the kind of person who kept her fury close at hand, to be picked up at a moment's notice; that much they could tell. But they could not know just how much of her pride Clair had to set aside to speak to them of such things, and how deeply it cut her when they dismissed it.
It would be a problem later. But tonight Silent slept, deeply, and thought no more of it at all.
Morning stole in by dim degrees, under cover of heavy cloud and diffident snow. Silent did their best to imitate human sleeping patterns, but had to give up at a quarter to seven. They reached for their cigarettes, considered the animal politics of leaving their scent too prominently in another creature's lair, and decided they had better take them outside.
But they were not the first up. Cynthia was out there herself, wrapped in a black robe and vigorously scratching the throat of a huge, blue-black dinosaur.
"Good morning!" she called, as Silent slid the door shut behind them. "It's Silent, Morgan. Say hello."
Morgan did not do any such thing. She'd spent a whole week away from home, being extraordinarily grown-up and showing off the shiny things her human gave her to other garchomp who were far too puny and treasureless to sire her young; she felt perfectly entitled to stand here all morning and bask in the adoration a dragon of her achievements was owed.
This is your partner, said Silent, a little uncertainly. Solomon aside – they felt that they were a special case – it had been a long time since they'd met a pokémon who wasn't afraid of them. But Morgan barely seemed aware that they existed. Judging by the crackle of draconic energy they detected coursing through her, she might even be justified in it.
"For my sins." Cynthia lowered her arms, shaking her hair loose from its pins as she did so. It all seemed perfectly natural, unless you were watching the way that Silent was. "She's almost full-grown now. Getting ready to lay her own eggs, which is why she keeps leaving. But her win record has given her a rather high opinion of herself, so she keeps rejecting all her suitors."
Morgan clacked her jaws and lowered her head to bump Cynthia with her left crest, evidently dissatisfied with the lack of affection currently being shown her. Cynthia rolled her eyes and started petting her again, scratching around the heavy gold-and-pearl chain around her neck.
And you chain her? asked Silent, eyeing it with distaste.
"Hideous, isn't it? But it stops people panicking when she flies into town if they can see she's my partner. And, like many dragons, garchomp are absolutely obsessed with shiny things. When she was little, I could satisfy her with costume jewellery, but these days she won't accept anything under eighteen karats. Getting it off her before we battle is usually harder than the actual fight."
I see, said Silent politely, though they weren't sure they did. This despite the fact that they themself had spent their own life accepting expensive gifts from their partner in exchange for companionship and pacifism.
Cynthia laughed.
"If you do, you'd be the first."
They lit a cigarette. Morgan angled her head toward them for the first time, scenting the smoke with her long, black tongue, then licked her teeth in distaste and lowered herself to the frozen concrete, wings folding back along her forearms. Sitting, her head was the perfect height for Cynthia to scratch; the whole thing had the feel of a well-worn ritual. Silent thought of Red sitting in his chair, eyes half-closed, all his attention on the song Silent was coaxing from the cello, and had to focus hard on not lashing their tail.
"She never liked smoking," said Cynthia, running her fingers along Morgan's jaw. "I used to smoke cloves myself, until kids started copying me and I got worried I was killing off the next generation. Now I just have a clove vape, which is possibly the only thing more embarrassing than smoking cloves." She smiled. "Do continue, though. I miss the smell."
Silent wanted to know what a clove was, but they didn't like to ask. They nodded as if they understood and blew their smoke away from Morgan, into the waning darkness beyond the lamplight.
A few moments passed. Cynthia yawned; Morgan scratched around her chain with one wing-claw. Silent could see how you could use it as a weapon, if not how a human could remove it from an unwilling garchomp. The image from the night they arrived accelerated unstoppably through their mind, the killer, Red, a gloved hand, black leather wrapped around a foot and a half of slick, sanguine ivory―
"So what are you hoping to find here in Sinnoh?" asked Cynthia.
Justice, replied Silent, without hesitation. I know prisons. They achieve nothing. Killing this person – that will fix the problem.
"Well, it will fix a problem," Cynthia said. "I don't think it will necessarily do very much for Red."
It will. He wouldn't agree, but he always did think too little of himself.
"I can see I won't change your mind." She reached into her pocket for a vape that wasn't there. "What are you planning to do once you get your justice?"
Silent had not thought that far ahead; their plans ended on the point of the killer's sword. But the answer settled into their hand as soon as they reached for it.
If I survive and kill them,Serris will most likely recall me to my ball, which I am unable to escape. I will be returned to the Indigo League's containment facility, where I assume they will take away my records and guitars and hold me indefinitely.
"And you're happy with that?"
It's the price I must pay.
And besides, they could afford to wait out the reprisals. Silent was still mostly mew, in terms of their DNA; not even the cigarettes could halt their body's endless regeneration. They had never been sick, could regrow lost limbs in weeks, and were expected to live for at least two hundred years.
Cynthia sighed.
"Well, you know your mind," she said. "I find that admirable."
It was a novel thought. In Silent's experience, humans found Silent's obduracy outright infuriating. But then, Silent's experience was largely restricted to containment squad members and KanGen scientists; Clair and Cynthia were probably the first rebels they'd ever met.
"Hrrm," they grunted. You'll excuse me for not believing that you admire my capacity to make your life harder.
"Consider yourself excused," said Cynthia cheerfully, straightening up and giving Morgan one last pat on the snout. "Now it's your turn to excuse me, Silent. I'd better find Morgan something to eat. Help yourself to whatever you like from the kitchen or meat locker, but be ready to leave at eight. League offices first, to check on the samples Sheridan sent over, then off to check in with him."
Very well.
"Oh, and take your stub in with you when you're done, please. I can't bear the thought of some poor bird eating it."
She slipped past them and back into the warmth behind the glass. Morgan followed her with acid-yellow eyes, then transferred her attention to Silent, as if to ask what they thought of her human. But more persuasive people than her had tried and failed to get them to offer opinions, and they simply stood and smoked in the silence that had given them their name.
The Sinnoh League did maintain an office in the capital, though unlike the Indigo League's branches in Goldenrod and Saffron it lacked something for grandeur: three streaky storeys of stained concrete, grey windows staring despondently down on the snowdrifts in New Street Square. I've always had a soft spot for it – it seems rather more human than Saffron's grimly palatial Skelton House – but Clair stared up at it with obvious dismay.
"This is a League office?" she asked, as Morgan glided down to land by Cynthia's car.
"Alas, not every League can be the biggest single landlord on the Tohjo peninsula," said Cynthia dryly. "This is Sinnoh, Clair. Mining and fishing, not genetics and finance."
Clair grunted and resisted the urge to check if Silent was judging her. They hadn't spoken to one another since last night, and she was too proud to start now.
"Right," she said. "Go in?"
"Of course. Morgan? Please don't stand there, the man is trying to park his car."
The laboratory was down in the second sub-basement, a dingy space that wore its postwar heritage like acne scars. Silent hated it on sight: the chemical smell, the pipework, the heavy air filtration units, all reached deep down into the bog of their memory and hauled long-mummified memories, reeking, to the surface. For many years now they had been able to pretend their life began on that beach in southern Kanto, where they woke to the keening of gulls after their long flight from Cinnabar. But one breath of this stale air and their throat closed up with the fearful knowledge that they too had once been a child, had once been weak and lost and at the mercy of unkind gods.
They took a long breath. It would be worth it. For Red, they reminded themself. All of this was for Red.
Fortunately, they did not have long to dwell on it: at this point, they were accosted by a middle-aged person with one eye slightly higher than the other and a permanent air of mild suffering.
"Cynthia," ze said, before anyone had had a chance to introduce anyone else. "What the hell is this you've sent me?"
Cynthia smiled.
"Rye, this is Clair Serris from the Indigo League, and her partners Lune and Silent. Clair, this is Rye Sidhu, our lead technician and in-house expert."
"Some expert," ze said gloomily, beckoning them into hir little fiefdom of ceramic tile and stainless steel. "I opened up the cops' report, laughed it off as amateur hour, then got to work myself and realised I didn't have a bloody clue either." Ze cleared hir throat. "Anyway. Rye, like Cyn said. Ze/hir. You don't need to do the pronoun dance, I know who you are. Nice show against Cheren Boyadzhiev in the PWT this year, by the way. I've never seen his serperior go down to a water-type."
"Oh." Again, Clair resisted the urge to look at Silent; again, they let their judgement smoulder privately inside them like a piece of tobacco in the bowl of a pipe. It felt good. Better than fear, anyway. "Cheers. Lotta people underestimate Lune. Most of 'em haven't gone up against a kingdra before."
A cluster of self-satisfied bubbles foamed from the tip of Lune's snout. She'd known since she first learned to move out of water that her partner only gave praise rarely and obliquely, and how to accept it in the same subtle way.
"Mm." Rye scowled, hir eye lighting suddenly on Silent. "This one new? I don't recognise 'em."
"Psiger. Not, uh, ready for the tournaments yet. Still adjusting."
"Psiger, huh?" Silent held Rye's gaze for a moment, then dropped it the way an animal would when backing down. Next to them, Lune cocked her head in confusion, unable to see why the great predator that had been shadowing her partner was so afraid of this stringy little human. "Yeah. Looks pretty wild still."
"You could say that." Clair coughed. "Uh, so you got something for us?"
"Ah. Well, that's what I was saying. I talked a big game about showing the Watch analysts how it's done and this slime has utterly humiliated me."
So much talk and so little result. Silent wanted to be out of here, now; they wanted to pick Rye up and drag hir out into the street, where they could breathe honest winter air and question hir at their leisure. Let Red's memory drown out all others, until Silent had become once again an adult without a childhood.
Rye, oblivious to the feline judgements whirling around hir, stopped at an overloaded desk.
"'Scuse the mess," ze said, fishing a few sheets of paper from the sea of disarray. "I never get to sit here and sort it out 'cause Jaya's always sleeping in my chair."
Ze cast a dirty look at the chair behind the desk, across which was sprawled an ancient toxicroak, snuffling and licking her eyes in her sleep. Lune drifted in close to inspect her, hungry-eyed, and Clair hauled her back with an unmerciful hand on her fin. She had had to take Lune to the emergency ward after eating an entire side of rotten tuna before; she didn't want to repeat the trick with a mouthful of poison dart frog.
"Anyway." Rye brandished the papers like a fistful of knives. "See for yourselves. I can tell you that your slime has structural similarities to various psionically-conductive fluids – think of an alakazam's psionic lymph, a musharna's dream mist, a reuniclus's hypnotic amnion – but it's not psychic. Type testing was inconclusive" ―ze stabbed a finger at several lines on the report― "but as you can see, we're leaning towards dark, from the skin bleaching and the fact that it nudged the needle slightly further on the goth test than the others."
"Goth test?" asked Clair.
"For ghost- and dark-type essence. The P740, if you want to get technical. I spend all day in a windowless basement, pal, I gotta take my fun where I can." Rye pulled off the top sheet and gestured expansively at the second. "As for your soot, it's literally just soot. Wood char and miscellaneous cokes. Can't explain the weird snow stuff."
Ze thrust the papers at Cynthia, who flipped through them at her own unhurried pace. Silent tried to look over her shoulder, but the text was far too small to read at this distance; neither nature nor those who had abused it in their creation had seen fit to give them the human eye's easy command of fine print.
Well? they asked, carefully excluding Rye from the message. Is there anything of use?
"Sheridan's going to love this," she said, handing the papers to Clair. "Let's hope Solomon can give us more information."
"Be my guest," said Rye, folding hir arms. "If you can help us save some face, that'd really turn my day around."
"You always this dramatic?" asked Clair.
"I consider it a point of personal pride," said Rye, with such perfectly deadpan seriousness that even hir mindprint didn't betray hir. "I mean, the bloody spacetime continuum's coming apart. I think I'm entitled, you know?"
"Okay," said Cynthia firmly, taking Solomon's keystone from her bag. No poké ball, Silent noted. They'd never seen a partnered pokémon without one before. "Solomon? I hope I'm not disturbing you, but we could use your help."
A thin finger of purple fog slithered free from the crack in the keystone and snapped out into their disc like a spectral umbrella.
"There already, are we?" grumbled Solomon, the words starting a second or two before their face took shape to speak it. "I was doing sudoku."
"Nice to see you too, Solomon," said Rye. "Got something for you to look at, if you're up for it."
"Then show me."
"All business today, eh? Well, fair enough." Ze retrieved two vials from a locked cabinet and held them out, first one and then the other. "Which d'you want first?"
"The liquid," said Solomon, their eyes glowing a brighter shade of green. "It feels … ah. That's familiar."
Silent almost leaned in, but caught themself. They could hear just as well from here, without giving themself away.
"Like the inside of my keystone," said Solomon, stretching out from their disc and sending little pseudopods of mist questing towards the vial. Silent had to take a step back; the air seemed thick and heavy with ghostly energy, lying heavily on their own psychic essence. "The residue of a night that is its own place. Not a keystone, though. A different place, I can't say where or what." They turned to Cynthia. "Those pokémon were taken somewhere, or somewhere was brought to them, and it left its mark. You're looking for a night too long and dark even for the dead. And for the one capable of summoning it."
Rye raised the eyebrow over hir higher eye, which gave the impression of that whole side of hir face being hoisted suddenly out of alignment with the other.
"That gum you like is going to come back in style," ze said, which made Cynthia chuckle for reasons Silent could not divine. "Nice, pal. I feel like I actually know less than I did before."
"You asked," they said, unrepentant. "Cyn, we should ask Dr Spearing."
"Already done," said Rye. "She said she'd take a look at my results. Thanks for the introduction, by the way. We have a great text thread about the Johto pro circuit."
"Wait," said Clair, confused. "Spearing? The pokémon doctor? With the ghost-type clinic in Goldenrod?"
"An old friend of ours," said Cynthia. "I know she mostly deals with ghosts, but she also knows a great deal about how pokémon manipulate darkness. She might have seen something like this before."
"If anyone has, it's her," said Solomon. "Do you want to know about the soot next?"
"Yes, we do. Go on, Sol."
Solomon bent their disc toward it, eyes burning. This time Silent was ready; they gritted their teeth and massaged their second neck as the cold weight of ghost-type energy flooded the room. Still hard, especially in a place like this, where memory wore close to the bone. But they were the kind of person who decided in advance that they would be equal to a challenge and then followed through, no matter the pain.
"Warlock's work," said Solomon, as the oppressive aura faded. "You're looking for someone like the man who made me."
"Any elemental type?"
"No. Just the fingerprints of power. You've seen magic in action, Cyn. No process is perfectly efficient. Some energy escapes, usually as heat and light. This is what it left behind. I can't say what happened, only that something did."
"Could you control a spacetime thing with something like that?" asked Clair.
"I wouldn't know." Solomon paused. "But we have seen a man try to command time and space. Cyrus tried to chain them."
You and I know that name. Perhaps we both have cause to curse it. I don't believe his plan would ever have succeeded; he only ever saw a few squares of the chessboard, could not possibly have grasped the full breadth of the stratagem he was trying to play. But it breaks my heart to know that the only way he could think of to make the pain stop was to make the world stop with it.
Silent knew none of that, of course. All they heard was a name – and a potential target.
Who's Cyrus? they asked.
"That was the leader of the cult that broke spacetime here, right?" asked Clair.
"Yes," said Cynthia. "He didn't succeed, though. And he certainly isn't in a position to try again." Her eyes flicked momentarily to Silent's, as if to say I'll tell you more later. "Still. If someone else could build on what he did …"
They could command the spacetime distortion. Bring Red where they wanted.
"Well, it's only circumstantial evidence," said Cynthia. "But I think you may be right about the connection between Red and spacetime distortions, Clair."
"Figured as much." She didn't look happy to be proven right. "Got anything else for us, Rye?"
"Wish I did. I know I'm about to send you back to the station to get yelled at for not figuring it out."
"I'm sure we've both been yelled at before," said Cynthia. "We'll manage well enough." She shifted Solomon into the crook of her arm and held out a hand. "Thank you, Rye."
"Good luck," ze said, shaking her hand. "I hope you find this guy. I never met Red, but I know he deserved better than what he got."
Even hir. Silent wondered how many lives Red had touched. They knew he'd had a big life, despite his small aspirations; they knew he'd travelled the world and starred in the dreams of more children than Silent could even conceive of. How many people thought of him as theirs, in some way? How many people were, right now, grieving as they stared at their phones and saw his face next to the word 'Obituary' in sombre black type?
The answer was more than they ever knew. I read all the articles. I saw the news coverage and the tweets and the Tumblr posts. I saw young trans people who'd seen a future in him break under the knowledge that even Red could not escape the death that they felt forever circling above them. I saw you pinch the bridge of your nose and breathe out slowly through your mouth.
Another one, you thought. Another stone laid in the wall of the numberless dead whose bones make up the substance of this world. You told yourself that this would be the last. But I don't think either of us believed you.
Silent was glad to leave. There was no leaving Red's shadow – and they didn't want to, anyway – but outside the League office, under the waxing winter sun, they could at least leave the shadow of their childhood behind with the antiseptic smell of the laboratory.
Tell me about Cyrus, they said, chewing their thumb-tip in the back seat in lieu of a cigarette.
Cynthia sighed.
"I don't know how much you know about humans," she said, turning left and coming to a halt at the traffic lights, "but there's a certain kind of man who fails to get something he wants and then decides it's someone else's fault. Sometimes he attacks women. Sometimes he starts stabbing people at random in shopping centres. Sometimes he decides to destroy the world and rebuild it in his own image."
I assume he was the third type.
"He started a cult, right?" said Clair. "Tried to bind the dragon gods – what d'you call 'em in Sinnoh? The Creators?"
"Yes. But he didn't quite succeed. At the Spear Pillar, he chained Dialga and Palkia and opened a hole in the world – but there was something waiting on the other side. We still don't know what; we only saw glowing eyes in the dark. Whatever it was, it had a profoundly destructive effect on our reality. All rather unsettling."
This was a classic Cynthia Mandeville understatement. When the living world joined with its distorted shadow, Sinnoh began to fall apart; those of us who were on the mountaintop that day watched in horror as the Spear Pillar began to melt, the stones fizzed up into streams of vapour, the sky split open and bled gouts of itself down into the spiralling rift. I was sure it would be contained, but if it hadn't – well, neither dimension would have survived sustained contact with the other. All of creation would have gone up in smoke.
The light changed to green; the cars moved on; a small flock of starly rocketed into the sky from the awning of a nearby shopfront.
"Dawn and I were able to repulse it before it could fully emerge into our world," Cynthia went on. "And free Dialga and Palkia too, who sealed the breach. Most of the damage was confined to the Pillar, but unfortunately we're still dealing with the after-effects. You encountered some yourself, when your plane went through a stutter on the way here."
This place really is cursed, said Silent, flaring their nostrils in distaste. What sort of a land is this, where one man can shatter the universe itself?
"Well, it's my home, for one. And it has a wonderful live music scene."
They grunted and turned their face toward the window. Outside, a tiny tabby glameow ran delicately across the top of a snowbank, tail bouncing like a spring above its back.
What happened to this Cyrus, then? Is he linked to this or not?
"He's gone. The shadowy thing took him, and judging by the effect it had on the Pillar, I'm not sure he could have survived wherever it came from."
"But his cult, Galactic, it had a lot of people in it," said Clair. "Left a lot of paperwork behind, too. Not impossible that someone could have learned from what they did. Refined it till they got a better handle on how to control spacetime distortions."
So why is Red involved?
"That's the million-crown question," said Cynthia thoughtfully. "But he was involved. Why else would he come here? It's 2022. Even my grandparents understand Zoom now, after the past two years. If he wanted to speak to pro trainers here in Sinnoh, he could have just called us."
And he would have done. Silent remembered Red explaining the climate crisis to them, back when they were young and Kanto was reeling from its (then) worst ever storm season. It was then that Silent had understood that he was a man who saw the world's structural failings as his own personal sins, despite being the only human worth anything at all.
He would have called, they said. Didn't like planes. He was afraid of the … what do you call it? The end of the world.
"Climate crisis. Yes. He struck me as the anxious type." She tapped a finger against the wheel in thought. "He was in Alola before, wasn't he?"
Yes, said Silent, seeing her point. So he didn't come here and get involved. Something happened there and he felt he had to come here to investigate.
"Something he might've wanted to share," said Clair. "They got him just before his meeting with you."
Cynthia was uncharacteristically silent for a few moments.
"Maybe," she said. "Which only makes it more important that we find out what really happened."
It was a better answer than Silent had expected. Too good, if anything. Cynthia had so consistently said the right things that they half suspected she was just trying to ingratiate herself with them. And I must admit, there may have been some truth in that. It always was hard to tell where the performance ended and the woman began, with her.
Still, Red would have told Silent to believe in kindness. And they'd learn whether she really meant it soon enough.
Their arrival in Sheridan's office was not auspicious. His purugly had been under the impression that he'd escaped Lune and Silent for good, and when they returned he immediately yowled and dived beneath the desk. Things did not improve from there: Sheridan sat and listened to Clair and Cynthia explain in an ironclad silence, stroking his purugly with the patience of a river that knows it will one day cut a course straight through the hill.
"So let me get this straight," he said, when they were done. "You don't know what pokémon was used, your partner got nothing from the psychometry, and the best evidence you have is some tat from a tourist shop?"
Clair's mindprint flared dangerously, in perfect unison with the threatening finger she jabbed in Sheridan's direction.
"What I said was―"
"Detective, we've identified several promising avenues of investigation and suggested a candidate for the murder weapon that should narrow down your suspects considerably," said Cynthia, before things could get too out of hand. "A few more days, and we'll no doubt have more to share."
"Really," said Sheridan, in a tone of voice that made Silent's hackles rise before they realised it was the same one Keller used. "Because it seems to me like what you've done is everything except what you said you'd do, which is figure out what supernatural weirdness our man pulled in the course of the murder."
Cynthia smiled faintly. It was a much subtler response than Silent had expected, but they could not deny that it set Sheridan's mindprint writhing furiously in a way that Clair's straightforward anger hadn't.
"Right now," she said, "all signs point to something very rare and dangerous, possibly even new to pokézoology. You can appreciate that we need all the information we can if we're to help you work out what this creature is and how we might stop it being used to kill again."
Sheridan leaned back in his chair with a creak of stressed plastic, his eyes creasing at the corners under the pressure of some heavy thought. I've always thought he harboured at least some admiration for Cynthia, even if he couldn't stand Clair: he had a sincere affection for his beleaguered little nation, and knew that the intransigence that made her so frustrating to deal with now was also the means by which she'd taught the rest of the world where Sinnoh was on the map.
"I assume you've got a suggestion."
"Yeah," said Clair. "You already know what it is. We need to know what Red was doing here in the first place."
Sheridan's head sank a little to one side, his fatigue showing through the movement like bones through a starving man's skin.
"Don't we all," he said. "What, are you asking me to do your job for you?"
"Nothing like that," said Cynthia. "Rather, we'd like your help looking into Red's movements leading up to the murder. We believe that―"
"No. What? No." Sheridan shook his head. "Look, I get it. You're proud, you've got the Kantan government breathing down your neck, there's a lot of egos involved – but this isn't what you're here to do. You've got your samples, you've got your databases. Do your job and ID the pokémon. Last I checked, a man getting stabbed is Watch business."
It was not his business, though. It was Silent's. They could feel the bones of their hands singing their eagerness to be buried in Sheridan's face, but they had a feeling Clair and Cynthia would not welcome their efforts to speed this tiresome conversation along.
"Noted," said Clair, in a tone that suggested she had sealed his little speech under glass in the back of her head, that she might look at it and be reminded of her purpose in the days to come. "But you found traces of dragon energy in Red's blood when you re-examined it, right?"
Sheridan made a grudging sideways movement of his jaw.
"Right," he said. "We did. So yes. I've got a man looking into this garchomp claw thing."
"Shouldn't be hard," said Cynthia. "There are only about twenty left. They always were rare."
"Twenty-three. Like I said, I've got a man on it." Sheridan folded his arms. "It was a good idea. Is that what you want from me?"
"No. What I want is to get to the bottom of this, and I don't think your dismissing our leads is going to help."
"What, this?" Sheridan picked up the plastic bag containing the carved shard and waved it at her like a folding knife. "This isn't a lead. This is an upmarket paperweight."
"And here I thought we'd just established that I know a thing or two about Sinnish historical artefacts," said Cynthia. "Detective, this is not a souvenir piece. If you believe me about the garblade, why not about this?"
"Because that theory makes sense. You can stab a man with a dragon's claw. But someone controlling spacetime distortions? With bits of old pottery?" He tossed the shard back at her; she missed the catch, but Clair reached out and scooped it from the air before it could fall and break. "Look, we're partners in this investigation. I can't tell you what to do. Especially since, if this is less insane than it sounds, only the League would be equipped to deal with it. But I can tell you that the most useful thing, the one that would most help us get justice for Red, would be you knuckling down and working out what this pokémon is."
Justice, snorted Silent, for Clair and Cynthia alone. As if he knows the meaning of the word. Even Keller knows that caging things only postpones the problem.
"Thanks for the advice," said Clair, her chin rising to its usual aggressive position. "Don't worry. We'll keep you up to date on everything we find."
The corner of Sheridan's mouth moved. It was not a smile or a sneer; it was simply a movement. But it was enough for Lune to root herself firmly to the lampstand, on the off chance that she was called to Hydro Pump Sheridan out of his own window.
"Likewise," said Sheridan. "When the Minister for the Interior calls you up asking why you've run off looking for potsherds, don't say I didn't try."
"Oh, no," said Cynthia, as she shrugged on her coat. "I don't think anyone could ever accuse you of that."
On the front steps of the Watch station, Cynthia tilted her head all the way back and blew a great white plume of clove vapour skyward, like a breaching whale. Silent knew the gesture, would have given a finger to be able to join her in making it now.
"Sinnoh's finest, everybody," she said, as Morgan stalked across the car park towards them. "Overall, I think I do more good than harm as Champion, but sometimes I really have to consider my life choices."
Clair sighed.
"Yeah."
They stood there for a few moments in the wan light, a few stray snowflakes spiralling down around them to catch in the fluffy collar of Cynthia's coat. Lune rumbled and pushed her way underneath Clair's cloak, glaring out at the world like a sullen child hiding under a table.
"Do you like working for the League?" asked Clair suddenly.
Cynthia had been watching Morgan, who had paused in her approach to sniff around the wheels of a parked Watch car; she now looked up, a few threads of surprise marking her forehead.
"Hmm?"
"I dunno." Clair looked away, but her eye fell on Silent, and she had to look away again, out into the middle distance. "I just … wondered."
Silent glanced at Cynthia, who caught their eye for just a fraction of a second before carefully unravelling her scowl.
"You can imagine what a small town like Celestic was like for me, growing up," she said. "I swore I'd escape and become a girl and get strong enough that I never had to take anything from anyone ever again. That's why I went pro after my trainer journey, and that's exactly what this job has given me. Besides, I always wanted to make a difference. You couldn't ask for a better platform than this."
Silent wondered what kind of difference she made, or thought she made. There was whatever had happened with Galactic, they supposed, but they'd never heard of her before coming to Sinnoh; they did not know that she was now, following Red's demise, the top-ranked trainer in the world, or one who had spent her twenty years as head of the Sinnoh League crushing it pitilessly into a new and kinder shape.
"Right." Clair tugged her cloak tighter around herself, nestling Lune close to her side. "That makes sense. For you. I dunno. I just – I liked being a gym leader, I guess. That's what I signed up for. Not … this."
This: being sent to interfere in situations that didn't want her for people who didn't like her. This: playing the bicep to a Kantan brain, flexing on command. This: leaving her city and community for months on end, a stray thread ripped forlornly from her tapestry. This: being chosen for this mission because it amused Will to send the dyke crawling back to the woman over whom she'd scuttled her career.
Silent saw it then. Not what had happened, but the shape of it, like the shadow of the killer in the doorway. How could they not? They had lived with these chains too long to not recognise their scars on someone else.
Cynthia pressed her lips together, white vapour fountaining from her nostrils. From her mindprint, and the look in her eye, Silent thought she had seen it too. The idea buried shards of cold glass in their chest; they had never realised that there were any humans who knew about these things. Nor that those humans might be the ones the League had decided to foist on them.
"I'm sorry," she said. "It seems I made an awful hash of things last year."
"Not you." Clair sighed. Lune rose up a little inside her cloak, slotting her narrow head close under Clair's arm. Kingdra don't normally show their affection physically, but she'd lived almost her whole life with humans; she knew what her partner needed. "I think I'd do the same thing again."
Cynthia hesitated, then put a hand on the small of her back.
"We should leave," she said. "This is the wrong place for this. And I'm afraid Morgan might be about to sharpen her claws on that Watch car."
Clair let out a little half chuckle of surprise.
"Looks like it," she said. "Go stop her, I gotta recall Lune."
But she just stood there, watching Cynthia stride out over the salted tarmac, hands and voice stretched out toward Morgan as she lowered her claw to the paintwork. Silent watched too, the intricate clockwork of their thoughts clicking along inside their head, then came to a decision and stood alongside her.
Serris, they said.
"Yeah?" she said, without taking her eyes off Cynthia.
I did not mean to offend you.
"Ah." She shrugged, careful not to squeeze Lune's head with her arm. "Whatever, killer. We don't have to like each other."
But we can understand each other.
"Maybe." Ahead of them, Cynthia was remonstrating with Morgan, tugging uselessly on her chain. "Maybe not. Guess we're gonna find out."
Silent could respect that answer, even if they couldn't quite understand it.
Fair enough, they said. Are you ready?
"Mm. Lune?"
Bubbles rose up out of her cloak and burst instantly in the dry air.
"Cool."
A flash of blue light, and they were walking back to the car, Lune safely returned to her ball.
What now? asked Silent.
"Oh, so now you want my opinions?"
You told me to use you and Cynthia. Is this not what you had in mind?
Clair pulled a face.
"Right," she said, as they drew level with Cynthia and Morgan. "Well, the cops can trace Red's movements better than we can. But we can investigate the spacetime stuff better than they can. We should focus on that, if we can trust Sheridan to keep us in the loop."
"Excellent assessment," said Cynthia, pulling Morgan's head firmly away from the Watch car. "You're very good at this, you know. Even if you don't like it."
She meant well, but I'm not sure Clair took it that way. At any rate, her smile seemed rather pained.
"So they tell me," she said. "But the spacetime stuff is your investigation, right? You should be telling me where to start."
Cynthia smiled faintly.
"Take a guess," she said.
Anyone could have told you what was coming. I could have closed my eyes on Clair's pale face and still known it by the sound of her breath alone.
"Gibbous Isle?" she asked.
"Spot on," said Cynthia, her delight dancing through her like a swirl of wind-blown petals. "I think it might be time for a little reunion. And for Silent here to finally meet our friend from Sinjoh."
I don't do the fieldwork any more. That's a young man's game, and these days there are any number of agents and intermediaries I can rely on to keep the operation ticking over. But one needs something to do, even in retirement, so here I am, still in the bunker, still monitoring the wider world. And, as I've told you, I find myself drawn to certain stories, over and over. Edge cases, you could call them – extremities where the usual order collapses. A woman in the desert who hacked the flesh from her life's bones in order to survive it; a young person on Cinnabar Island who discovered that certain people are not allowed to ask for freedom; an old gestalt consciousness who saw the new world and so panicked at the sight that they nearly killed the one person who could guide them through it.
These are things that happen to people. They become stories when we give them our attention – when we plot the data on the graph and watch each event rise toward its conclusion like the tide towards the moon. This is what I did for Solomon. What I did for you. What I am doing, right now, for Silent.
No, I agree. It's not enough. But that's what makes people like Cynthia and Red so precious. Those who see the lion raging and think not of shooting him but of pulling the thorn from his paw. You've met one or two of those yourself, yes? And yet you still ended up here in my home.
You're starting to understand now. That's good. But we aren't anywhere near done yet.
This week in Silent's headphones: Red Lorry Yellow Lorry's 'Talk About the Weather'; Mdou Moctar's 'Afrique Victime'; Sprints' 'Modern Job'.
Next time: echoes in time, wild young things, a chance to bloody your knuckles.