Chapter 8 – Catching Up

A/N: So sorry for the long wait, guys! This is the first officially "new" chapter, as the others have all simply been revised from the ones I wrote last year. Also, I have been busy with band camp and other music/band nerd related things. Another apology, also, because my sophomore year starts in two days and from what I see of my schedule, it's going to be a long, hard, grueling year. Yay for choosing the "nerd" path and signing up for all honors classes. I complain about it every year, and yet every year I do the same thing. What is wrong with me, I wonder? Wait...don't answer that. Just...read. And review. Yes, definitely review. : )

- Silvorfithrade

Keiran slipped into the lab foyer as quietly as he could. It was late afternoon, and the receptionist had slumped down in her seat for a quick nap, something he would have reported as a complaint under normal circumstances. He knew the exterior door to the living quarters, a sort of side add-on to the lab, would be locked, and that he would have to let one of the workers see him to let him in. Knowing this fact, he slipped into a side elevator and hoped there was no one on the second floor, where the two buildings were connected by a short breezeway.

When the elevator door opened again, his heart sank. There stood his mother, Professor Krane, and two lab technicians, all apparently waiting to use the elevator. Keiran gave a futile attempt to slip away to the side and escape, but his mother's quick eyes drank in the details of his mangled appearance before he even had a chance to leave the elevator.

"Keiran! Oh my God, my baby!" Lily howled, shock etching itself into her lined face. "What happened to you? Who did this? Oh, baby..."

Keiran's high spirits at returning to the lab in one piece plummeted at the expression on his mother's face. "Mom, I'm fine. It's okay, I promise...no, Mom, please. Don't start crying," he said in a last-ditch attempt to keep his return quiet. But by this point, her wails had drawn quite a crowd of lab workers, all who seemed to share her sentiment, if not her outspoken opinion of it.

"Don't cry?" she sniffed, glaring at her son. "Don't cry? I see my only son come in from a simple trip to Gateon Port for mechanical parts looking like a war victim, and you tell me not to cry?"

"Lily, at least he's in one piece," Krane pointed out, looking over the boy appraisingly. "He's alive, and he's home safe." The professor gave Keiran a nod and pointed at the breezeway door with his elbow as the distraught woman buried her face in his sleeve. Keiran took the opportunity for escape immediately and left, nodding his thanks. Krane, meanwhile, turned to Lily, who was in the process of blowing her nose into a large, pink handkerchief.

"I'm going to let him get cleaned up now, and later we can discuss matters over some of that key lime pie you made earlier." He ruffled the woman's hair affectionately, and she nodded in response.

"Allan," she said, her voice quavering, "those two kids are the only tie to Jesse I have left. I know I'm a scientist, and I shouldn't be acting like this, and...oh, maybe a few years ago, I would have let it slide with more dignity, but I don't know if I can bear to see either of my children in pain."

Krane watched her for a moment. "Lily, I know you love Keiran and you worry about him, but I think he'll be fine, no matter what kind of trouble he runs into." He gave her shoulder a reassuring squeeze. "That kid's got too much of his father in him, make no mistake. I'm almost beginning to think of him as my own son."

Lily laughed as she wiped her eyes with a clean corner of her handkerchief. "Well, you were Jesse's best friend. I suppose I'll have to take your word for it, won't I?"

"No," Krane corrected, a smile dancing on his face. "Observe, and you'll see for yourself. Isn't that what science is about?"

"You and Jesse are one and the same," she said, shaking her head in an odd mix of sadness and amusement. "No wonder Keiran looks up to you so much."

oOo

Keiran Valdoa glanced at himself warily in the floor-length bathroom mirror, hardly recognizing the person reflected in it. His unruly red hair was tangled and matted, his face bruised and scratched. A purplish cut above his right eye was swollen and scabbed, and the grime on his face almost altered his skin color.

His clothes were in similar condition. Despite his brief stay at the Vigilance Network headquarters, his outward appearance was decidedly terrible, with his shirt tattered and stained with blood in various places where the cloth had stuck to his wounds. The same description, he noted, could be used for his jeans, which were also ruined beyond recognition. His arms groaned in protest as he ripped off the ruined shirt and quickly stripped off the rest of his torn outfit in favor of a hot shower.

Hot water and soap, of course, don't go well with open wounds, as he quickly learned. Hissing in pain, he yanked the dial to the cold setting, scraping off what dirt he could in record time, and practically leaping back out as soon as his hair was clean. By no means was Keiran a primadonna, but neither did he have the trained hardiness of a soldier. He was only a boy, and the pain he felt was beyond any he had ever experienced growing up at the lab.

"Keiran, I think you may need this more than I thought." Professor Krane opened the door, a syringe in hand and a worried expression on his face. "Maybe we should have sent you straight to the med center."

"I'm fine, Professor," Keiran managed to choke out, but the sickening pain crept throughout his body as he spoke, leaving him with an overwhelming urge to throw up.

He passed out instead.

oOo

"Captain Kiyalrin! Report!"

All trace of Kalas's amiable personality was gone, replaced by his brusque, commanding presence he used when discussing military intelligence. Torian was used to this sudden shift by now, though she could easily recall, with some amusement, a time when he could easily catch her off guard and completely throw her perceptions of everyone in Vigilance Network wildly off-balance.

She quickly filled him in on the details of her "mission," tactfully leaving out the part where Eldes had saved her and sent her home, formulating instead a story of how she had simply commandeered one of CIPHER's unguarded vessels upon leaving the bodies of her attackers for other investigators to find. Some details, she had learned, were best left out of the records.

It took Kalas longer than his usual split-second response to digest her information, leaving her time to allow her eyes to wander the haphazard state of her boss's makeshift "office." Rumor had it the tiny room was once simply a large janitorial storage room that had been cleared out and renovated when Vigilance purchased the building. True or not, she could definitely see the similarities. Tiny cracks spiderwebbed across the wall corners, mostly covered by maps dotted with multicolored pushpins, long lists with phone numbers and addresses scrawled in a messy script, and sticky notes with reminders jotted hastily on them strewn forgotten across the fragile walls that looked as though they were ready to collapse.

The desk was in no better condition. Newspapers piled up on the floor in a messy stack; faxes, printed off e-mails, letters on important-looking letterhead, and other, indiscernible sheets of something lay scattered across the surface; and paperclips, binder rings, pens, pads of Post It notes, and other office amenities peeked out from desk drawers that had long since refused to close. A single photograph of his wife, Lia, was visible under the many layers of stuff that seemed to just be thrown across the pockmarked wood.

She was a lovely woman, Torian thought absently to herself. She had to admit, Kalas had picked a beautiful girl to marry, though – almost as a tribute to his steadfast character – his reasons for marrying lay far beyond superficial attraction. Waist-length blonde hair fell in delicate, wispy clouds around a distinctly elfin face, with high cheekbones and deep, liquid-brown eyes. Intelligent eyes. Lia was thin in the picture, almost too thin. Torian frowned; this wasn't the Lia she remembered from three years past. The rosy blush had faded from her cheeks, and the smile even seemed faked.

"Torian." The voice of Vigilance's leader broke through her curious thoughts as Kalas returned her slightly guilty look at being caught snooping with a bemused smile. Of the picture, however, he said nothing, and resumed his businesslike attitude immediately. "Did this Verich fellow mention anything else that may have tipped him off as working for CIPHER besides your hunch?"

"My hunch was based on his all-too-keen interest in Shadow Pokemon," Torian returned simply. And that his red-robed crony all but admitted his ties with CIPHER in that cryptic speech of his, she thought to herself. Still...something kept her from telling the full story. Every time she even thought of reporting Eldes, something would make her pause. A thought tinged with incredulity struck her; was she protecting the red-robed man from her own people? She shrugged the treasonous thought away immediately. Of course she wasn't protecting him; it wasn't like Vigilance would send in all their men, guns blazing, to wipe out this added "threat" immediately anyway. Vigilance spent too much time thinking, she reflected regretfully. Maybe she would change that attitude one day...

"You seem to be quite the daydreamer today, Torian," Kalas said to her reproachfully. "You're usually pretty straightforward...is something bothering you?"

Torian quickly shook her head and cleared her mind of any image of Eldes. "No way; I think I'm just tired. Just thinking about the Pyrite tournament tonight makes me want to curl up and go to sleep," she said with a laugh. "Azer's lucky; he's away in his Pokeball, getting all rested and here I am running around getting shot at. I'm fine; a little more coffee and I'll be good as new."

"Then go get some rest. You know where the coffee is. Good luck on the tournament, by the way. I know that's your only source of income right now." His usually icy grey eyes reflected a rare degree of warmth in the way he regarded her. "Stay strong, vigilante," he added with a note of farewell that suggested their conversation at this point was over, and hunched back over his notes. The worn-down old computer hummed and whirred in the background as Torian left the tiny office with more questions than she cared to find the answers to.