Chapter Eight - The Raid
The candlelight wavered across Maliki's face. "What we're doing. You know it's not exactly within the thin bright line of the law."
"I understand."
"Do you?" Her gaze weighed him. "Do your pokemon? If you're caught, you'll get a defense lawyer. They won't."
"Lawyer" conjured up a TV image of wooden podiums and judgemental eyes. She'd chosen the word on purpose, he decided, to see if he'd back down.
"I don't have any pokemon," he said instead.
Her eyebrow rose. "Didn't you—"
Explaining about Atalanta would mean explaining everything. "I don't have any pokemon," he repeated.
"All right. We leave in fifteen minutes. Stick to Power Axel on the way over." She nodded towards a scowling teenager in the corner. His dark brown hair covered most of his face in a ragged sweep, and a magneton buzzed by his head. Haru recognized him as the instant noodle chef who had fled the kitchen a few days ago. Thursday. That day already seemed like a distant island—like a full sea had closed in behind him.
"Power Axel?"
"We go by code names," Maliki explained. "Safer that way. You should pick one for yourself."
Nothing came to mind. When he opened his mouth, an old nickname fell out. "Caterpie."
Maliki was surprised into a smile. "Caterpie? You sure you don't want to go with something a little grander?"
Haru shook his head. He felt only tenuously attached to the earth—light from hunger, strangely airy. His hands were shaking.
"Caterpie it is then." Maliki waved at the scowling boy. "Hey, Axel! Caterpie here is your responsibility until we reach the plant."
The boy gave a quick dismissive nod. When Haru walked over to him, he didn't say hello. The shrine room buzzed with anticipatory chatter, but the hushed conversations were too low for Haru to catch. He pulled out his nav instead.
"You can't bring that."
Startled, Haru looked up. The boy was watching him with a deepened scowl.
"DevCo crams in all sorts of shit. And I don't have time to wipe it for you."
"I'll put it in my room," Haru said quickly. When he returned, the boy was waiting with a black bandana held in his left hand and a power bar in his right.
"Hungry?" he asked in a slightly less hostile voice, and shoved both items at Haru before he could answer.
Just then, the chatter guttered out like a candle exposed to wind. Maliki had taken the stage. Everyone gathered around her, and the silence thickened with expectation.
"We call ourselves the Sacred Flame," Maliki said in a low, resonant voice. "We have no creed. We know that we are grateful and we are free. People have forgot their freedom and their gratitude. We're gonna bring it back. Back to the people, back to the pokemon. It starts with the feeling right in here"—she clasped her fist over her heart—"that they can never take from you, because what is in here is so true and so right. It's the flame that Arcanine brought us. I know some here tell it another way. But all the same, it's that very flame Arcanine gave to humanity from a place of mercy, and each generation bears that debt and that duty, tending to this land we've been given. Mauville Power Plant's forgotten that duty. Tonight, we're gonna remind them."
Nobody clapped, but the fervent nods and flashing of prayer signs struck Haru as a more potent reaction than applause would have been.
The departures were staggered. Haru hung back next to Axel, until the boy suddenly started forward, his steps darting and impatient. The night was wet with mist, and the pavement was dark like a river. In the alleyway, a wild magnemite was attempting to feed off the nearest street-light, but the pokemon-proofed casing defeated it. Axel paused.
"Tri attack, fire only," he murmured to his magneton. One steel-rimmed eye blinked open. It floated lazily upwards and struck at the street-light with a red-hot magnet, knocking off the casing. A surprised sound, almost a chirp, came from the wild magnemite. It extended its magnets to the exposed wiring and began to feed. The street-light flickered out, leaving the alley a murky gray.
"Least this godforsaken city can do for them," Axel muttered. "Come on, let's go."
As they crossed into the more upscale parts of the city, the street-lights multiplied. Tall apartment buildings shed yellow light, and neon arrays flashed on every unused surface. When Haru had first experienced Mauville City at night, he'd been seized with a sense of undirected awe for human achievement.
Now the profusion of light struck him as strange and sinister.
The sprawling complexes of the power plant lay on the far outskirts of the city, where the houses dropped off and the pavement subsided into brown scrub. They came to a stop twenty meters in front of a gently-pulsing yellow barrier. A light screen. Probably intended to keep out the wild electric types attracted by the power generated inside the plant. Haru glanced to his side and saw that Axel had tied his bandana. He followed suit; the fabric fit snugly over his nose. When he breathed, warm air pooled over his lips and lingered, as if in anticipation.
They stood without speaking, Axel gazing determinedly into the field. Haru tried to match him, but the shifting light of the barrier made his head ache. He shut his eyes. The silence was thick out here; the noises of the city had receded into a distant growl. But he soon became aware of another sound, a low scrabbling, close at hand. It sounded familiar.
For several minutes, Haru couldn't work out why. Then it came to him—the terrarium. It was the sound of trapinch digging.
They weren't going to break through the barrier. They were going to go under it.
In the distance, a light flashed twice.
"Come on," Axel said.
To enter the trapinch tunnel, Haru had to get to his hands and knees. The soil was still wet from yesterday's rain and clung to his pants and palms like clay. At the midpoint, the light was blocked out completely. Haru stilled, drawing in a full breath. The air in here was moist, alive. He could hear his heartbeat, mystifyingly steady.
When he emerged, a wet breeze lapped at his face. Three trapinch were clustered by the mouth of the tunnel, snouts encrusted with black soil. Their eyes gleamed like stars set in tar.
"Five minutes," said Axel, shoving a can of spray paint into Haru's hands. "Be quick."
"What should I—" Haru flinched at how loudly his whisper cut the silence.
"There's a reason you're here, right?" Axel said in a muffled voice. "Don't you know it?"
With that, he turned away, a spray can clasped in either hand. The wrathful face of Zapdos took form in a hiss of furious yellow and black. THESE ARE MY BROTHERS AND SISTERS, read Axel's messy capitals. MY RETRIBUTION IS SWIFT.
Haru shook the cylinder in his own hand and heard the liquid slosh. It took him a few tries to determine the correct amount of pressure and distance. Slowly, words took shape.
Verse 8:14. But Suicune ran along the white caps of the waves and, like unbidden wind, she was free.
The tap on his shoulder made Haru flinch. He hadn't felt the time slip away.
"Stay or go, Caterpie?" Maliki whispered. A butterfree watched him from her shoulder, its eyes an eerie red. Haru followed her gaze to where half the crew had regrouped by the tunnel. The barrier glimmered behind them like an untimely sunrise.
Go? He felt unmoored, incomplete. The night was utterly calm; in the distance, he spotted the tell-tale flares of volbeat, circling over the sea. Not yet.
"Stay," he whispered back. If her expression changed, he couldn't tell from under her bandana.
Haru joined the group by the entrance, just as the doors slid open with a metallic snick. He threw an arm over his eyes as light erupted from the opening. It cut out abruptly, leaving eddies of black and white swirling behind his lids. Someone must have found the off-switch.
They stepped inside. The only light now came from the butterfree. A soft, purple-green glow spilled from its wings, just bright enough to lift the corridor ahead from pitch blackness into uncertain gray shadow. When the corridor forked, the group split. Haru followed Maliki.
Their footsteps made a muffled melody. Time seemed to stretch out and distort. Twice his hand dipped to his left pocket, only to find it empty of his nav. Haru's eyes strained to force the darkness into some kind of order, but each corridor was the same unending gray.
Eventually he gave up, and let distance join time as concepts that lost their meaning here.
When Maliki drew to a sudden halt ahead, he almost ran into her. She turned, a finger over her lips in the universal gesture for hush. Haru listened, but he heard nothing except the low hum of machinery somewhere in the indecipherable distance. The seconds lengthened. Then a high wail split the silence, as terrible as a scream.
Maliki traced a signal in the air, purple light burning behind her hands. She turned the bend and vanished along with her butterfree—and the light.
Blood pumped in Haru's ears. The darkness assembled before his eyes into an ensemble of tiny, whirling dancers. Simultaneously, he heard a shout, a thud, and a long, low growl. Before the growl ended, Haru was moving. He waded into the black, found the sharp edge of a corner and felt his way around it to see yellow light spilling from a doorway.
It was a breakroom: small, sparsely furnished. The unimportant details filtered in first—the blue couch, bleeding foam; the flimsy fold-up chairs; the kettle sobbing on the counter-top.
A man in the blue uniform of the power plant lay slumped on the floor. Over him stood a manectric, Maliki's butterfree gripped in its mouth. Sparks prickled across its upraised fur.
"We're here to help," Maliki was saying, her hands raised and her voice steady. "We're here to release your brothers and sisters."
The manectric hadn't noticed Haru yet. He inched forward, his eyes fixed on the kettle only feet away. Maliki was still speaking, but the manectric wasn't listening. Haru reached the countertop just as the break room lit up blue.
His arm completed the arc of the throw before he even registered his hand on the kettle. The manectric howled as the boiling water hit its back, and the butterfree dropped from its mouth like a discarded toy. A bolt of electricity skittered towards Haru, but hit the countertop instead, searing a line into the black surface. The butterfree fluttered raggedly into the air. Purple powder shook from her wings and settled on the manectric's fur. Its body tensed as if to leap, but something gave way at the last moment. Its front legs collapsed, and the rest of it followed. A few stray sparks leaped up from its fur and flickered out.
Silence fell, broken by the jittery hum of the break-room fridge. The air smelled of burnt plastic.
Maliki pushed herself up from the floor into a crouch. Her hair was singed, but nothing else. She extended a hand towards the sleeping manectric, as if to smooth its fur.
"This one would come back even if we did release it," she said at last, voice pensive. Her eyes met his. "Thanks, Caterpie."
"You're welcome," Haru tried, but his mouth was too dry for words. He thought he should help Maliki up, but by the time he stumbled over to her, she was already on her feet.
"It's not much further. Come on."
Haru's blood thrummed under his skin as they re-joined the others and continued down the corridor. His head darted from side to side, expecting a band of snarling manectric to materialize from the shadows at any moment.
But they met no more guards. Their destination lay behind metal doors, the surface sleek like seal-skin in the jittery green light. Maliki tapped a card, and warned, "Lights."
Haru pressed his eyes shut. He heard the door slide open and Maliki's disgusted hiss.
"Workers. What kind of workers are imprisoned in their place of work?"
The lights burned. Blinking hard, Haru made out shelves filled floor to ceiling with pokeballs. He tried to estimate the number, but half-way up they blurred into a long red line, and he lost count. Each one holds a life, he thought numbly. The sight was somehow obscene.
So Ho-oh left the earth unto the dominion of Man. Father liked to quote those words whenever protestors flashed their signs on the evening news. In his mouth, it became a justification. The earth is ours to shape to our will.
Grandmother had seen it differently. Dominion, she spat, was the mistranslation of greedy priests. Bailment was the proper word.
"We hold the earth in trust, until the Life-Bringer returns. We own it no more than I own the parcel left in my care."
It had been the slow period in the temple, that time when even the most chatty congregants had dispersed from the morning services and before even the most devout returned for evening prayers. Mother and Erika had been at loggerheads that day. Their shouts had chased him from the house to the stuffy quiet of the prayer-house. Their topic was the move. Erika didn't want to go. Her friends were here, she yelled, slamming her palm against the table in emphasis, not across the sea. Haru didn't want to leave either, but he didn't see the use in arguing. When Mother and Father agreed, they became like mortar and brick, forming a wall that stood fast against any assault. You could scream, but you'd only lose your voice. You could beat your fists, but you'd only bruise them. Hold your tongue. Conserve your strength. He'd learned those lessons early.
The murky afternoon light had underscored every wrinkle and crevice on Grandmother's face with charcoal shadow. "We are wardens, Haru. It is a burden. A burden. It is not light."
And she'd taken his hand and squeezed it, so tightly he almost cried out.
The others were unzipping backpacks and duffle bags. Someone tossed Haru a spare. Maliki stood with her foot tapping, eyes fixed on the ticking hand of her old-fashioned watch.
"Time," she said and walked up to the wall of pokeballs. She hesitated, then reached out firmly and plucked one from the shelf. Everyone looked to the ceiling, cringing in anticipation of an alarm blare that didn't come.
"Nice one, Axel," someone murmured, and there was a general easing.
Maliki's butterfree took to the air with a dry rustle, a glow rising on her wings and expanding outward. Pinkish light wrapped itself around each pokeball; one by one, like cheri berries shaken from a tree, the pokeballs dropped into their open bags.
How many pokeballs—fifty? One hundred? They'd barely emptied the front-most shelves. Haru hefted up the duffel, shocked at the lack of weight. Grandmother's words rang through his mind. It is not light.
They were leaving. The same shapeless corridors, the same muffled steps, but they moved now like sleepwalkers who had awakened onto a race-track.
The first alarm struck like a blow to the back.
Haru buckled: for a moment, all strength left his legs. Then Maliki screamed, "Run," and the darkness cascaded into itself. Maybe the distance really had been an illusion, because when they reached the exit, only minutes seemed to have passed, except that his lungs and chest were on fire. He staggered out into the open air, the blue velvet sweep of the sky.
Someone shoved him forward, towards the mouth of the tunnel. He crawled blindly through the dirt. The plain was still empty. Behind him the barrier rippled with majestic calm. No, not empty. A colony of oddish whirled in the moonlight, their fronds swaying to some private melody. A bellossom spun in their midst. Petals, vividly pink against night, fluttered through the air. The beauty was disconcerting. Haru stood spell-bound; his nose and throat clogged with musk and jasmine.
Suddenly, the oddish scattered. Jeeps cut across the field, headlights streaking out like wild paint strokes. Their passage tore up the grass and soured the air. Haru relapsed into motion.
I can't run anymore, I'll burst, he thought, My legs will turn to ribbons, my throat will combust. I can't.
But his mind and his body had parted ways. His legs pumped, heedless. Behind him came the sounds of pokeballs releasing, but he didn't turn. Scrub turned to pavement. Buildings rose on either side, and the pitch of trains and traffic filled the air. At last, heaving, he came to a halt in an alleyway. He sank into a crouch, aware that standing would circulate his breath better, but unable to muster the strength.
The bellosom's aroma clung to his clothing. Will they have tracker growlithe? he wondered with a fresh jolt of panic. Each bellosom's scent was unique. They could trace him, even if hours passed. He couldn't return to the shrine like this. Unless . . .
Fives minutes slipped by before he could force himself to move. There was a small pokemart at the end of the block, its blue awning tinted gray from the constant smog. The bell jingled as he stepped inside, making him flinch. Haru thought he must look a sight—hair mussed, clothing soiled, stinking jasmine, but the woman at the counter barely blinked. He bought the cheapest brand of repel he could find, the kind he normally avoided due its the overpowering stench. Back in the alleyway, he sprayed himself and the duffel until he was choking on rotten egg and rank berry.
The walk back passed in a daze. He drew dirty looks, probably from the repel stench, but nobody spoke to him, and Haru's exhaustion was such that putting one foot in front of the other demanded his complete focus. When he saw the familiar lavender hanging to the shrine-room, he almost doubled over in relief.
All the candles had snuffed out. Haru fumbled through the darkness. Twice he stumbled on the overlapping rugs, before his eyes adjusted, and he made out a pile of duffel bags in the corner. He hadn't been the only one to escape, then. Had Maliki made it out? He found her room and knocked, but there was no answer.
His body screamed at him to collapse, but his mind buzzed with a brightness that resisted sleep. He showered, scrubbing himself with citrus-scented soap until he could bear to breathe in his own air. He changed into pajamas, flicked off the lights, and stared into the wavering darkness of the ceiling. That was unnerving, like he was still back in those corridors. He got to his feet, flicked the lights back on, and retrieved his nav from where had left it. Out of habit, he pulled up the newsfeed, and with it a host of notifications from the alert he'd set on Route 119. The first notification was a weather forecast, the second a photo essay depicting camouflaged kecleon.
When Haru reached the third, his heart stopped.
The knock was gentle, but insistent. Maliki's voice floated under the door. "Haru? Are you up?"
She hadn't been caught, then. The relief was like a buoy in a hurricane. Haru caught onto it and clung, despite the futility.
"Can I come in?"
"Yes," he managed, his voice like crumbling leaves.
She hadn't changed yet. Sweat gleamed on her forehead, and her braids were askew.
"I owe you a debt of gratitude, Haru. You saved my life tonight."
Had he? The memory fragmented when he tried to call it up. A wailing kettle, a flash of light. It had been instinct, from one moment to the next. There hadn't been any thought.
"Not just for that. Doctor Qian's agreed to rehome the pokemon liberated from the plant. She has the resources to remove their worker chips. Once those are disabled, the plant has no claim on them."
"That's great," Haru said hollowly.
Maliki gave him a long look. She sat down gingerly on the bed and spoke in a careful voice, like she was circling a wounded gyarados. "Are you regretting this?"
"No!" The word erupted from him. He swung his head from side to side. "No, it's not that. It's something else. I made a bad mistake. I—"
The tears surprised him. They came with no warning, no catching of the breath. One moment he was stiff-faced, the next he had collapsed into wetness.
"Hey now, Catepie, breathe, come on and breathe with me." Maliki's words rushed over him like a relentless stream. "You're here and you're safe and you got out. Breathe." Her hand touched his shoulder. "I'm here. Breathe."
Then it was words, not tears, spilling out. He spoke out-of-order, haphazardly. It was the day he met Heconilia—an impossible day, with not a single cloud in the sky. She had sniffed curiously at the berry he offered her. It was a species native to Viridian, nothing she could have tasted before. She'd loped after him through the undergrowth; the vines had swished and swacked.
He was telling her how he got the name Caterpie. It had been an insult, but he'd never minded: the name suited him. In biology class they'd learned how caterpie fed, safe in the curl of a leaf, how towards the end of their larval stage, their movements slowed. There was a short span of time before evolution when caterpie went completely prone. All their energy was held inside, conserved for evolution. This is the most dangerous time for them, their biology teacher declared with gusto. Without the option of flight, without the defense of a hard metapod shell, they were vulnerable to every hazard. Haru had closed his eyes, imagining how that would feel. Knowing that if the change didn't come, you would die. In that moment, all you had was your faith.
He was back on Route 119, and the rain was thick enough to drown. The narrative clarified. He told her the rest in a thin but unfaltering voice, as if it had happened to somebody else. Finally, he thrust out his nav and let her read the words inscribed there like an epitaph.
Throughout, Maliki didn't say a word. Her eyes were half-lidded. For a moment, Haru thought she'd fallen asleep. But then her eyes opened, and her gaze speared him, sharp and bright.
"So you made a bad mistake," she said. "And now both of you are going to pay for it."
He nodded but couldn't speak. The telling had emptied him out.
"A mistake. Like mixing up sugar and salt. If you could go back, you'd do it differently. Is that right?"
Like sugar and salt. It wasn't that simple.
"If you made a mistake, it's not too late for you. You're young, you're bright, your folks have some money. The system knows mercy for people like you."
"If I made a mistake?" Haru said hoarsely.
"If. Because I don't hear a mistake in this tale. I hear a choice. A brave one." She held out her hand; the suicune figurine rested on her open palm. Its serene red eyes bore into Haru: penetrating, judging. Maliki paused. A whole lifetime passed within it. Haru thought of the immobile caterpie, praying that it had the strength to be made new. "And now you've got to make another one."