Landing on the roof meant avoiding many of the threats outside, but that was not the same as simply walking inside.
Shiloh had been to this arena before, more than once. He had never seen it so full. Or at least, it had been full.
There was ample evidence of the presence of soldiers here, the ill-fated Orre self-defense army. Unfortunately for them, it didn't seem like this attempt at self-defense had done them any good. There were half a dozen chokepoints and reinforced fallbacks, and each one showed signs of battle.
There was a little fighting to be done on the upper levels, where Pokémon had probably got in the same way they did. But that almost ended this expedition in disaster.
The Pokémon up there were particularly aggressive, and the sound of any conflict attracted them from all over the stadium. They didn't just attack him, but also each other, turning the scene into a bloody melee.
In the end, Briar's zoroark had to get them past that fight, flooding the level with a powerful illusion and distracting their attackers.
Past the first level, the attacks stopped, but Pokémon remained. They clustered about in little groups, sometimes trying to interact with Shiloh, other times just scampering behind overturned furniture or hiding in the discarded military uniforms.
A single max repel took care of things after that, and they had no further trouble with Pokémon.
Even so, that didn't make finding Shiloh's particular target any easier, not until they found a set of elevator doors forced open, with a Pokémon-sized gap in the middle. Something had flown through here, and known where it was going.
"Looks like we have to get down there," he said, gesturing to the opening. "Fly the drone through, see if you can tell where they went."
Briar took the handheld controls from his pocket, the one he used whenever a shot required a human operator instead of the drone's simple "keep in frame" routine. The drone zipped off, its little plastic fans humming.
He hadn't returned Zoroark to its pokeball, so the towering, black-furred creature circled around him, grinning down at the empty checkpoint. What it could find so funny about empty uniforms and spent bullets, Shiloh couldn't tell.
"Hope we can do this quick," his friend said, both hands on the controls. "There's something wrong with this place, can't you feel it? Like the Old Chateau. Things are watching us."
"Of course they are." Shiloh pointed down the hall, to where a furret crouched just around the bend, staring at them. Its eyes were surprisingly discerning for a Pokémon, and it seemed to be focused more on Briar's controls than the powerful Pokémon beside him. "We're being watched all the time. Guess there was an event going on in here when everything fell apart. People's Pokémon got loose, then went homicidal. They ran away, or got killed on the upper floor. Absolute tragedy."
"Maybe," Briar said, in that noncommittal tone he always used when he didn't believe something, but didn't want to argue either. "Why are only some of them affected? These seem okay. Mirage is doing fine, aren't you?"
The Pokémon answered, her voice cheerful but as meaningless as usual. Why even bother, the camera can't see you. It's not a person.
"I'm sure that legendary will solve everything." Shiloh removed a slim metal rod from his pocket, then unrolled the flexible screen curled around it. There was no longer internet service here, but that didn't matter. For someone who battled all across the world, his basic pokédex suite contained maps of every gym and arena.
"Looks like they're on sub-level three," Briar called, energetic. "Thank Arceus. It will be great and all when you're training a mythical Pokémon, but the sooner the better."
The drone zipped out a second later, flying back into place on Shiloh's jacket and storing itself. Right as he found what he was looking for. "There are stairs just around the corner. Come on."
They found them, and one claw attack later they were in, descending through a concrete fire-escape. They reached sub-level three, and found it locked again, this time with a solid steel door and a complex mechanism.
"Little strange." Briar flicked at the lock with two fingers. A touch screen came on, demanding authentication. "Didn't we have an event here last season? Did you ever see anything that needed security like this?"
Shiloh shook his head absently, before reaching down to his belt to remove another poké ball. There was probably a better way to get through the door, but not a simpler one. He had sacrificed an entire spot on this team exactly for such an occasion.
The ultra ball flashed once, leaving a bright orange figure hovering in the air before him. It was semitransparent, with flickering blue energy around it.
"Rotom!" he said, pointing at the door. "I found a challenge for you! Please open the door."
The Pokémon giggled and bounced through the air, lighting the fire-escape with its energetic spin. The lights hummed brighter briefly with its gesture, before settling back to normal illumination a second later.
Then it zipped into the control panel, its animal sounds continuing.
"Getting desperate, I see." Briar eyed the controls, keeping his voice low. "Don't know if you'll ever get it out of there. That's a lot of circuits for it to play with."
"Authorized user access," said a voice. Several locks clicked, disengaging with a hiss. The door began to open, but stopped abruptly after just an inch. It giggled, and Shiloh saw a face briefly appear on the steel.
Well, he had known what he was getting into when he asked a ghost to possess electronic equipment. "Please let us in, Rotom," he said, tossing the poké ball up and down with agitation. "We have something very important to do here."
For a trainer as experienced as he was, discipline was almost never an issue. But there were exceptions—ghost types were mysterious things, arguably not even alive by most definitions. There was no reinforcement mechanism he could use on a creature that fed on the electricity of anything it touched, and knew he needed it whenever it was called.
"I think we can get it open ourselves." Briar took the door in both arms, then pulled. He wasn't wrong, though it did take a little effort. Despite the fire code, this door would serve no useful purpose in an actual emergency.
They stepped inside, into a room that was totally different from the stadium behind them. Even white lights glowed steadily overhead, illuminating a sterile-looking metal floor. It was a waiting room of sorts, with a single checkpoint on the far end.
The ghost-type was smart enough to know exactly where he would go, and needed more prompting to get those doors to open.
"For user access, please commit to allow Rotom to film your next gym encounter using drone with MAC address 0x 3e-17-9—"
"Yes!" Shiloh squeezed his hands into fists, glowering at the screen. "You can be the camera for my next gym battle! Fine!"
The door began to cycle, then hissed open a few seconds later. "Authorized user access granted. User access will be revoked if conditions are not upheld."
How do you even know what that means? Pokémon weren't people, not even the most powerful and intelligent. Rotom could only speak because it inhabited a system with speech software.
Professor Kukui would probably have some incredibly intelligent answer for him about how the creature could reflect his desires back at him and read what mattered most to its trainer. But Shiloh couldn't be bothered. Ghosts just weren't worth the trouble.
They stepped inside the little room, then waited impatiently for the outer door to close. "Decontamination in progress." Soon the room started spraying white foam at them from all directions, along with flashes of bright blue light. Shiloh stood still through it all, pretending not to notice as the ghost drew silly faces with the sprayers all over the floor.
"How much longer do you think Mew needs to fix all the evil Pokémon?" Briar asked. He just held both arms over his face, speaking loudly over the hum of the machines. "This place does seem spooky enough to be responsible. Maybe they were working on an evil Pokémon ray."
Shiloh tried to answer, but he was too slow. The synthesized voice spoke from the wall, instead of him. "Several fragments of an unknown vessel are being researched in this facility. Many have anomalous properties, and incredibly advanced systems. I am searching for them now."
Arceus help us if it gets out of ordinary computers and into something more dangerous.
The door clicked open, finally dumping them into a crowded server-room. Well, crowded with machines. There was no sign of human occupation here. If anything, the entire facility had been cleaned, with no evidence left of what its occupants had been doing before.
"Might not be completely deserted." Briar pointed back at the row of uniform hooks with one hand. "Two of those are empty."
"If we have to dispatch the evil scientists responsible for this disaster..." He trailed off, eyes widening. He released the drone into follow mode, then turned to the nearest computer. "Hey, Rotom! I'm filming a movie about capturing a legendary Pokémon and saving Orre. Do you want to help me film it right now?"
The Pokémon could claim all it wanted about seeking out powerful relics to inhabit. But when a flash of blue light emerged from the nearest screen, leaping directly into the drone, Shiloh was entirely unsurprised. Like all Pokémon, Rotom's grasp of reality went no further than a small child. It wanted to play, and he'd given it exactly the opportunity.
The drone zipped through the air, its recording light on, but filming very little of interest. Sometimes it pointed at him, but mostly it just recorded lots of walls.
"Now where would I hide an evil machine?" Shiloh asked. There were several exits, all cut directly from the stone. What a strange place to put a secret lab, particularly when it was surrounded by desert. It would be so much easier to hide something where there were no people around.
Zoroark made a groaning sound, resting its paw up against its head. Thanks to its bipedal nature, the gesture seemed disturbingly human. The moan of pain that came with it was even more so.
"What's wrong, Mirage?" Briar asked.
Shiloh didn't even hesitate to listen. He reached into his pack, tossing an expensive glass bottle to his companion: a full heal. "We might need its help in this fight," he said. "Keep it on its feet."
Briar sprayed, and the Pokémon did relax, calling out energetically. "I think this place is getting to her. Can't you feel it too? There's this... voice. I think I'll feel sick too if we stay too long."
"More importantly, it might compromise the performance of my Pokémon," he said. "I need them at their best if we're about to fight a legendary. The source must be down here, we have to destroy it. Unless Mew does it for us, that is."
"If you say so. Let's just... hurry. Where do you think the evil machine is hiding?"
The drone beeped, a variation of the sound it used when it was low on battery. Only this one was changed into a high-pitched trilling sound. It zipped off through the air, vanishing down the hall. It left them no choice but to follow.