Here's another chapter before the month ends! My thanks to Cornova again for permitting me to write, as I don't own this universe.

The inside of the cab was devoid of conversation as the battered ranger truck sped down the ocean side highway. Connor had been silent since they had loaded James into the backseat and it was starting to bother Alexander. The scientist was the type that liked to hear his own voice.

Winds that Alexander couldn't feel buffeted the interior of the truck and Connor in turn. If he was trying to make a point by not complaining then he was succeeding. His skin color was also starting to look unhealthy. It was a regular occurrence for the science team to have little coloration in their skin; they spent weeks on end without ever stepping foot outside, but Connor's skin was something else entirely. A couple shades lighter and he could be considered porcelain.

It was most likely from the fighting. Alexander himself couldn't keep the tremble out of his hands; even with whatever Kara kept injecting him with. Despite the simple explanation, it still didn't stop him from checking on his pissed-off charge every couple minutes to make sure he wasn't going to keel over on him.

That fight- it had been real. He had been shot with Bullet Seed before, not once had it hit as hard as it did then. At most, it had left some welts in the past, but now there were actual dents in his armor from the impacts, and the damage to Connor's helmet looked like live rounds had struck it. High caliber rounds, too. The training regiments he had been through couldn't be compared to the fight. The power behind the attacks was at a level that not even the company's best pokemon had been able to achieve.

They were wild pokemon for God's sake! Wild pokemon don't train like domesticated ones, they just work to survive another day.

James started coughing again, loud enough to be heard over the winds. Connor twisted in his seat and leaned back to help the dying kid clear his airways. If they didn't get him to the hospital soon he wouldn't make it. Alexander recognized the sounds of failing lungs. It was why he was speeding well over the posted limit.

It wasn't like there was anybody around to report it. The road was desolate of any forms of life. There had not been another car since they had turned onto the highway, and that alone was sending off warning signs in Alexander's head. This was Melemele, the greatest tourist destination on this side of the world. There was possibly hundreds of thousands- if not millions- of tourists that made their way here each year, so where the hell were they?

Alexander slipped the truck into the opposite lane to avoid a fallen tree and saw Connor flinch once his attention was focused back on the road. They graced a curb and their tense silence was broke when they started around a cove.

There were large icebergs floating aimlessly around the bay. Pillars of ice stuck out of the shore, the water, and Alexander had to swerve to avoid a head-on collision with the ones that had nearly obliterated the road. The asphalt buckled and Alexander cursed as the truck bounced over the fractures. He tapped the brakes to slow down and in the process noticed a harbor patrol boat slowly making its way through the ice.

"Mother of Mew..." Connor muttered as he marveled at the destruction passing them by. Alexander deftly avoided another beam of ice and soon they had slipped around another curb and were out of site.

Alexander swallowed and re-adjusted the cool little hula dancer he had found in the backseat. He liked it, but Connor didn't for some reason. It made the dancer's value all the more important. Finally deciding that he had enough of the silence Alexander spoke up. "About the shit that happened back there..."

Connor slowly looked over at him. "I'm sorry that I'm not a heartless bastard like you."

His reaction was immediate and volatile. His mouth curled into a snarl and the fire in his eyes nearly burnt Alexander to a crisp. Instead of the satisfaction that he had been expecting from the reaction, Alexander felt a little hole burning in the pit of his stomach. It startled him and he felt his armor for a possible breach, coming up empty.

Shifting his attention to the road once more Alexander continued, "I don't kill when I don't have too," Quietly, so that only Connor would hear, "I'm not a mindless thug."

Connor looked back at James and sank deeper into his seat. A file opened up on the right side of Alexander's visor and he found himself reading it quickly. It was about James. "This was his first day on the job."

Connor glanced over and scoffed. His expression changed and he quickly looked out the windshield. "Pay attention to the road!"

The file blinked out of existence as Alexander's chest tightened as he narrowly avoided another fallen tree. What in the hell was Kara doing?

He couldn't understand what was going on with her. The Plasma Pokemon had gone quiet since they had left the crash site-turned crater behind and Alexander could still feel the energy radiating off of her. The transceiver was connected to the mesh somehow and his skin was tingling as she worked through whatever was going on in there. It had to have been important, she rarely got this distracted.

Silence followed for a couple seconds before Alexander broke it once again. "How much time do you think he's got?"

It didn't seem like Connor would answer but he managed to surprise Alexander after a couple seconds, "If he doesn't get medical intervention in the next thirty minutes he'll die."

Alexander nodded and the truck sped up more. Connor shrank in his seat as more curves came up and they sped through a winding part of the highway. "How are you holding up?"

"With your driving, I'm afraid I'll have a heart attack."

"We're heading to the hospital anyway." Connor gripped the seat a little harder as he scowled. He was afraid, but he was also irritated and that was easier to express. At least he had started talking. "Those pokemon back there, have you ever seen anything like it?"

The ice broke and Connor sat up. There was a dangerous sparkle in the man's eyes that Alexander recognized. "No. I've never seen anything like it. The power they displayed, the speed! The company would love to have them, the genetics we could obtain would be off the charts! If we could capture one or two specimens it would be more than enough to-"

"We've got prying ears," Alexander warned. Connor's eyes bulged out and he sputtered. He couldn't be the one to break protocol, Alexander mused. It had to be his fault if something was leaked, no self-respecting scientist could ever cause such a huge mistake. "And no, we are not going to try and capture any of them because, by we, you mean me. I'm in no mindset of heading back there to test fate again."

"Bu-"

"Connor shut it. Those pokemon back there were more dangerous than any other pokemon I've encountered yet," Alexander raised his arm with the transceiver for emphasis, which didn't get a rise out of its inhabitant, "and Kara cooked half the poor bastards! What the hell is happening?"

An unknown event of global proportions unfolded...

Alexander wanted to be wrong. The global event that transpired couldn't be related, but the more he thought about it the more they seemed to run parallel with each other.

If you have surviving pokemon do not release them. Widespread reports of lethal attacks are spreading and losses of personnel have been rising as time progresses...

Pokemon. Lethal attacks. Connor connected the dots seemingly an eon later and his whole body stiffened. The sparkles in his eyes dulled and his breathing began to speed up. "This isn't isolated."

"A global phenomenon, Connor," Alexander whispered. The truck rattled as they began to round a bend. "There's something bad coming. We won't be evacuated anytime soon, so right now we need to work together if-"

When Hau'oli City's skyline came into view Alexander had been expecting the same city that he had seen in the postcards. The city they were looking at was similar, but the two would match only if the card had been set on fire first.

From their position, Alexander and Connor could see the skeletal remains of the airport blazing out of control. The fire reflected off the few intact windows from nearby buildings and cast them a dull orange as hundreds of flashing red and blue lights dotted the nearby streets as the fire department tried to keep the inferno contained. There were smaller stacks of smoke rising from other parts of the city, but the fire department wouldn't be able to attend to them as another fireball rocked the airport and shot skyward.

Connor started coughing as winds pushed the smoke in their direction. A hazard symbol flashed in the corner of Alexander's visor and he flinched when Kara's voice came from within his helmet instead of his transceiver.

"You need to get out of this smoke as quickly as possible if you want James to survive. There are multiple toxins that will cause lung damage; he will not survive any further injury to his respiratory system."

Alexander nodded and tried to not show his discomfort as he sped up. The Kara that was talking now wasn't the Kara he trusted. This Kara was detached and looked only at the mission at hand: the standard company Rotom. His Kara, the one he trusted, wasn't detached. She looked beyond the company's orders and saw the impacts they could have. She acted more human than the company knew of, and she developed her own personality that was hidden from them. It was the reason that had caused Alexander to trust her in the first place: they both had things they wanted to hide.

They started passing houses- first isolated shacks that adorned the beaches below them that slowly grew bigger, closer, and eventually turned into more modern looking homes that dotted not only the beaches but the hills above them as well.

A neighborhood they were passing could have gone on another postcard before this happened. Now a blemish grew in the landscape as neighbors tried to desperately put out a rapidly burning home with only buckets of water.

"Why are they not using their pokemon?" Connor muttered. Alexander barely caught it, but it rested in the back of his mind as they drove. He started to realize that he wasn't seeing any pokemon. Just people with a wide arrangement of injuries amidst the growing disorder.

The deeper they got into the city the worse it became. Kara highlighted a route through the city that Alexander followed until he had to turn around because of a pile-up blocked the road. In the process, they had to drive past a row of burning shops, car wrecks, and hundreds of dazed people milling around. He was driving slowly now as he worked his way around some rubble in the street and past a couple abandoned cars. Police barricades were starting to appear and cut off more and more streets and the backtracking Kara had them do was shaving precious minutes off of the clock looming over James' head.

It didn't help that people kept trying to stop them for a ride. Desperation was making them stupid and Alexander had to swerve more than once when somebody tried to stop them by throwing themselves in the way. Connor kept to himself when this happened. He didn't want to jeer his superior into mowing over an idiot on the road.

A couple blocks from the hospital Alexander rolled to a stop when the street he was turning on was in the middle of being blocked off by some officers. James had gone quiet and Connor frequently checked on him to make sure he was still breathing. He sat back in his seat and sighed. "He's close. Are you sure you still want to try?"

A couple papers floated onto the hood and Alexander looked up to see the building they were beside had a gaping hole near its top floors. The air in the city was getting to him. He didn't realize that it shouldn't have as the suit was filtering out the contaminants in the air, but something heavy was settling in his lungs and making it hard to breathe.

One shaky breath. Then another. Alexander shook off a sudden surge of nausea and gently pressed on the gas pedal. He was seeing everything: the way the crippled building seemed to teeter in the wind, how some of the remaining windows reflected the clouded skies above them, and when some of the men in blue slowed their work and placed their hands near their sidearms as they approached.

That was was to be expected, firearms only came out during dangerous incidents or when a state of emergency was called, but something was wrong with this picture. They were doing the manual labor by themselves, there wasn't even a pokemon on the scene. Looking closer he couldn't even see a lone pokeball on their belts. Their partners were gone. Alexander swallowed the bile rising in his throat and flagged one of the officers down.

The officer, a woman with a bandage sneaking out from under her cap and a wariness of a Carbink around miners, slowly approached until she was a comfortable distance away. Her body was turned slightly to block Alexander's view of her firearm, and her eyes scanned the battered ranger truck that was under the control of an armored figure that was definitely not the ranger.

Alexander rested a hand on the wheel and the other slipped over his shoulder to jut a thumb at the backseat. "We need to know the fastest route to the hospital, we've got a person in critical condition back here."

She hesitated for a second but held her ground. "Who are you?"

Connor butted in before Alexander could respond. "Interpol! We were on assignment and shit hit the fan. The ranger got caught up in it and is banged up real bad. He'll die if we can't get him to the hospital!"

The officer wilted and Connor quickly shot under his breath, "You can't have an act if only half the actors commit to the part."

"Two streets down there will be another police blockade. The road's clear and it leads right to the hospital, but they are keeping people off of it so that the ambulances can get around faster. I'll radio them so that they'll let you through."

Alexander nodded and watched the officer as they pulled away. Her body language relaxed as they put distance between them and she reached for her radio. They turned the corner and no sooner had they fallen out of site Connor broke his facade. "How many Black Sites do you know about?"

The soldier groaned but the speakers didn't voice his frustration. This scientist didn't remember what the real world was like anymore. It had changed since whenever the company crammed him into the labs. Or, maybe it hadn't and the man had never looked that deeply into the world he lived in. Whichever it may be, he was missing the big picture. The Black Sites were no longer the only threats. "You don't see what's actually happening, do you?"

For the longest second Alexander waited for a response. The silence was the loudest thing he could hear as it smothered the resonance of the panicking city around him. Blood rushed to his head and he looked over for an explanation. Something was suddenly, grossly wrong and a dull ache began to develop behind his eyes.

Connor should have been sitting next to him, either observing the developing hysteria or glowing at him because of his antics. He saw both for a brief second as he blinked. His eyelids felt like shutters that weighed hundreds of pounds and he found himself struggling to open his eyes again. The darkness behind them beckoned for him to rest as lethargy suddenly wormed its way up his spine. Exhaustion that wasn't present moments ago slammed into his body and stilled him further as Alexander began to panic.

This didn't- am I being attacked? Some psychic types could do this, but in the middle of the city? Full of police?

A curse slipped out in Common, then Unovan. There was enough willpower to do that, at least. He could work from there. It felt like he been abruptly hit by a truck as Alexander somehow found enough strength to wedge his eyes open a fraction of an inch.

Alexander's breath caught in his throat as he realized that he wasn't sitting in a vehicle anymore. He was propped up against a tree, and as his consciousness expanded beyond his immediate surroundings he was dumbstruck to find that he wasn't even in the concrete jungles of Hau'oli City anymore. The actual jungle greeted him silently as he tried to comprehend where he was. Aches that he didn't have earlier groaned as they protested his attempt to stand. His head hurt like hell and then there were the distracting questions that arose when he realized that his P90 was empty and the metal plates of his armor were pocketed with more dents and small holes. He swallowed dryly and muttered: "Status report."

A pulse of energy worked up his arm and Kara responded automatically as if she had been waiting for him to speak. "Five confirmed kills with a hundred and forty rounds spent. Your armor is holding, but you know thi- wait a minute. You know this already, why are you asking for a status report?"

Kara's face was suddenly present the corner of the screen's interface. Grunting, Alexander managed to force himself to a knee and using the tree he rested against he managed to push himself to his feet. Blinking spots out of his vision he followed a trail of spent cartridges up a small incline until his feet hit a paved road.

"Alexander?" Kara hesitated softly as he blankly examined the scene before him: parts of a car scattered across the blacktop and multiple dead Ariados. He kicked a couple purple needles that were buried into the road as he quietly made his way over. It hadn't suffered a better fate and was also riddled with Poison Sting. Muscle memory had Alexander reloading before he was even conscious of it.

"Where's the roof?"

Temporary silence followed as Alexander kicked a path through the needles . Chunks of the road started coming up with them and he stepped on part of a Spinarak. He shook it off his boot and glanced back at the forest around them. He could see a couple stands of loose silk swaying among the trees, but other than that the area was still.

"It's half a mile down the road... where the ambush started. Alexander, what's wrong?"

The suit warmed slightly and Alexander abandoned looking for anything salvageable as he waded away from the wreck. The spines dispersed the further he walked and soon he could move without having to step around anything but the shadows that were crawling across the path. It dawned on him that the sun was much closer to the horizon than it should have been in that moment and he slowed to watch the orb sink closer to the tree line.

This felt so familiar to Alexander- not the scene, but the feeling of being lost. There had been something he had been doing, something important enough to push him down the road, but he had simply forgotten what it was.

Images of sterile hallways and bright lights flashed through his mind and he faltered. He forced them into the corners of his mind and started walking faster. This was another simulation, wasn't it? They never took anything but the full story, so why would he expect them to not pry this hard unless they were not after his memories but his loyalty instead?

It had happened again. Kara realized it before Alexander did, and she felt a chill run through her core. Alexander wasn't a stable human by any means- he had issues that she couldn't fix. Health conditions that were not easily cured. It was one of the factors that had convinced the company to assign him a Rotom in the first place, asides from his disciplinary issues.

One of Alexander's conditions was transient global amnesia- sudden, temporary episodes of memory loss. It wasn't noticeable at first, his long term memory seemed to be as good as any other human and he didn't repeat questions often enough to be noticed. But then, in the middle of an Op or something of equal importance, he would just freeze. It didn't happen often, but it was enough to be a liability. Kara's use in this situation was explaining what was going on and show him recordings to help bring him up to date and push him along.

The company had shown her how it felt so that she could properly handle him if it happened in an Op. Kara still remembered the feeling of suddenly losing hours of data, but that didn't explain why Alexander was such a liability when it happened. She had dug deeper and uncovered why he reacted so poorly to the episodes: It felt like the beginning of a SABER stimulation.

The thought of the program infuriated Kara to no end. She had read the files and incident reports on Alexander. He had already been through hell before they had grabbed him off the streets. They could've fixed him, but instead, they had decided to put him through the program. Kara had managed to prove to the company that Alexander's condition was related to the machine they had hooked him up to. It wasn't difficult, there were plenty of mental disorders that could be traced back to the SABER program. Not that it did much good anymore, the program had been shuttered permanently and the company was comfortable with ignoring their mistakes.

"Do you remember the plane crash?"

Kara had never actually been capable of studying Alexander's face before now, she noticed. She was always stuck on his arm, and with the suit, she had been busy examining her own magnified capabilities. She had been focused on monitoring and recording the entire island's call centers for information to have bothered examining Alexander's face, but for a moment she was transfixed.

There was a long, light scar on his cheek that Kara noticed wasn't mentioned in any of his incident reports. She scanned through the hundreds of them within a second and confirmed that he had gotten it before he was apart of the company. She silently noted that he had been barely eight years old when they brought him in.

Alexander frowned and Kara felt him touch the back of his helmet. His eyes were interesting to watch as well. "Mostly... What happened once we got to Hau'oli? Where's Connor?"

"James made it to the hospital, if he survives we'll find out once we get back. Connor's-" Kara felt her irritation at the man rising, "-for all of that man's intelligence, it took him trying to get out of the truck to realize that there was a seed lodged in his shoulder, so he stayed behind to have it pulled out."

Alexander winced and Kara almost gave him another dose of the pain reliever that the suit had installed. She had been feeding them to him like candy and she didn't want to risk overdosing him.

Maybe if he hurt enough he'll stay at the hospital this time.

He stopped walking and Kara turned her attention away from Alexander's face. Her sensors hadn't picked up anything so she was startled to see that they were at Alexander's forgotten destination.

Alexander recognized the compound from the briefing as the Melemele Laboratory. This place held the ARK that the company had wanted. The DNA of every living organism in Alola was on it- from the pokemon to the vegetation. It was worth millions before, but with how rapidly the world was going to change, it might just be priceless.

Hm. Alexander thought. That's why he was here, to try and grab the one thing that would get the company to look in their direction. If this was real, which it very well could be.

But, it seemed that whatever plan he might have had wasn't going to work as he watched the smoke rising from part of the building. The laboratory was a government building that should have had light security. The sudden crisis must have been hitting harder and faster than expected because instead of the light military presence expected the grounds swarmed with soldiers.

"Alexander, turn around. The Op was canceled, you're putting yourself in danger for something that is irrelevant for your survival."

There was a reason why he was here, it had to be the ARK. A quiet thought wondered if it mattered if this was real or not; he was here so he might as well finish what he started. Or what they started. "The ARK is relevant, Kara. The company will be looking our way much sooner if we can obtain it. We can get an extraction out of here, even if Connor bites the dust before they arrive."

"Why do you think that the company will be around long enough to extract us?"

Alexander stumbled. Not once had he even dared think about that, much less say it out loud. "Kara! You can't say things like that, they'll decommission you f-"

"They're not listening, Alex. The company's lost too much to survive the war that's coming."

Kara realised too late that she said too much. Alexander and Connor had been close to the truth. The Black Sites- the places were pokemon were extremely hostile- would only be a small part of what was coming. They had guessed that violence was going to rapidly increase as pokemon resisted the oppression of large industries that had been abusing their trust and fight back against the abuse. They had guessed that criminal organizations were going to be targeted, and if they survived then they would also use the boosted pokemon for their own deeds. Civil unrest would grow and pokemon would be weaponized even more than they already were to fight in humanities' wars. An endless theory about how humanity was going to abuse this newfound power, and how they were going to suffer because of it.

They didn't guess that none of that would happen the way they thought it would. Kara hadn't told them about the voice's message: the call to arms. They were oblivious and hadn't delved deeply into the thoughts of global war.

And Alexander didn't remember any of it. Wait, he was recalling parts of it now, but he was angry with Kara. The company didn't die. They always came back at the last moment and destroyed anything that had thought they were gone. He wasn't going to believe it, he couldn't if they were being monitored. If this was SABER, she wasn't actually here and this was just a plant to try and test his allegiance. If this wasn't SABER, then they were going to hurt her if she continued. "Kara, I'm doing this. Tell me what you want, it isn't changing my mind."

Alexander didn't know how to feel when Kara didn't respond but he took it as a victory. As he approached the checkpoint he realized that he could hear the fence surrounding the perimeter humming. There wasn't anybody he could see in the guard shack so he managed to slip in with ease. It wasn't until he was nearly past it did he see a camera set up on a tripod within the shack.

Curiosity got the better of him. The door being slightly ajar didn't help as he pushed it open with his gun. The interior of the shack was a mess of broken glass and scattered papers, but what stuck out was the purple spines buried in the wall and floor. Stepping over them Alexander leaned in to look closer at the camera. It was angled towards the desk, but more specifically, the monitors on the desk displaying surveillance of the perimeter.

The blood in Alexander's veins suddenly dropped a couple degrees as a cold sweat broke out across his brow. Kara noticed a sudden increase in cortisol from her suit's readings and quickly began to scan Alexander for any new wounds.

"What's wrong?"

Alexander took a couple steps back and shakily began to feel his chest plate for any severe punctures. He came up with nothing and swallowed back rising bile. "I don't know."

A burst of static crackled from under the desk and threatened to give Alexander a heart attack. He stopped short of obliterating it with a burst of gunfire and he quickly plucked a fallen walkie talkie from the floor.

"Channel forty-one is open," Kara ordered. Alexander nodded and fumbled with the dials and yelped when a jolt shot through him. Kara buzzed in irritation and continued, "I've already synched it to the transceiver, just start talking."

"You don't need to be a dick about it."

"I don't care if I'm bein' a dick, get your ass outta there now!"

Alexander startled and spoke before he could catch himself. "Who the hell are you?"

Gunfire cracked through the helmet and Alexander flinched as the security gate shuddered from an impact. "-ckin' move it now!"

The desperation in the voice sank into Alexander's mind and he would dwell on it late in the following nights to come. If that voice hadn't reached him at that moment there wouldn't have been any doubt that he wouldn't have walked away from that laboratory.

Alexander listened and was moving when the glass window of the guard's shack exploded into microscopic shards. Something big and very pissed off slammed into him with enough force to launch his hapless form through the door frame. Everything blurred as he slid across the pavement and hit the curb, but the hiss that filled the air reverberated around him as another impact knocked him down again. Alexander swung blindly and a loud crunch resounded as he clubbed his assailant with his firearm.

Red carapace was crushed as the Ariados hissed again. It lunged and Alexander's hand lashed out and stuck it at the base of the neck, keeping it at bay. There was a report in Alexander's ear and the side of its head splattered across the pavement. He shoved it off as a sibilant orchestra cut through the air. Anger blossomed in Alexander's chest and pushed aside the fear as he fired blindly at the gate. He forced a hand underneath him and shifted his weight until his knees hit the pavement, and with a push, he was sprinting for the building.

Muzzle flashes came from the roof of the main building and Alexander could hear the bullets whizz by. He didn't need to guess if they were effective as screeches threatened to deafen him and Alexander staggered as something struck him. He flailed, thinking it was another Ariados until another impact nearly threw him to the ground.

A large convoy truck was parked haphazardly on the clean-cut lawn and provided a much-desired barrier between Alexander and the sudden rain of Poison Sting that tried to overcome him. The last-ditch effort to claim his life failed as he threw himself under the truck and cowered. Metal pinged with each impact and Alexander jostled himself further under the truck as the needles began to pile up.

After a couple minutes of this, the attacks faded and left Alexander to quietly try and keep himself from melting down. A small waft of smoke curled around his helmet and Alexander sharply turned his head to face a soldier laying beside him. His crooked smile was tinted pink and he weakly chuckled as he offered him a crushed cigarette. Alexander looked further down and felt his stomach churn when he spotted the couple needles sticking out of the man's waist.

"Wanna smoke? You're gonna need it."

My confidence with this chapter isn't as high as with the previous chapters, so please tell me what you think! Am I doing alright so far?