Chapter 13: Freedom's First Step
John was in the grassy field once more. The men in the base were just as jumpy as before, if not more so. A new building, big as a warehouse, had been erected over the charred remains where Typhlosion had covered their last escape. Ever since Monozu helped to enhance John's senses, he had had no trouble seeing even in complete darkness. It was a new moon, and the only light came from a central post in the middle of the camp. The warehouse building was guarded by two drowsy looking men beside a large door, like at a loading dock. John slipped silently through the grass around to the side of the building, and found a small window ajar, which he struggled to get through for several seconds before managing the feat.
John looked around and found himself in a small, dark office. He glanced around the deserted room and spotted a box of surgical gloves. He carefully plucked a pair from the box, donned them, and was free to search the office without leaving fingerprints. He moved to the desk and found two unlabeled drawers. He opened the top one and found a fair number of folders within it. Taking a folder from the front and opening it, he found that the drawer contained files on all the children and teens captured, including a photo of their respective parallels, marked with the name of the creature in quotes. Several of the folders had tiny, blue, transparent tags attached. John replaced the folder and opened the other drawer.
This drawer contained many more, thin folders, many containing little more than a photo and a single page of text. The folders in this drawer had numerous tags attached of various colors. John was unsure of their meaning until he found a small card in the pen drawer of the desk explaining the color coding.
Red – Potentially dangerous; must be kept sedated
Yellow – Threat level unknown; exercise caution
Green – Spotted at some point in time; not captured
Blue – Keep restrained
Black – Classified; kept in special containment room
John took a second glance through the bottom drawer and felt a jolt as he found a folder with yellow and green tags containing a picture of a young Monozu in a pet crate. There were no notes in the folder to suggest that the soldiers knew where he was, and John slowly relaxed. He moved silently to the door, and found it locked from his side. He quietly moved through the door and gaped at the facility. There were dozens of cages ranging from cat crates to elephant cages, each containing one of the alien creatures. All were either naturally asleep or had an IV bag attached to them dripping sedative into their blood.
John tiptoed around the border of the room and found a corridor lit with a dull red glow coming from small lights bordering the edges of the hall. John moved slowly down the hallway. He passed a metal door on either side, each with a steel covering over a slit in the door, like an interrogation room. John proceeded. On his left, he found a darkened lab filled with a wide assortment of instruments, most of which John did not recognize. A small apparatus with four vials attached was spinning quite quickly near a window on the opposite wall. One of the vials seemed to glow dimly in the darkness. John kept going and saw that the majority of the rooms beyond were offices, but three rooms at the end of the hall were lit.
John stealthily moved toward each. All three had opaque blinds drawn over the windows, but one was let down improperly and was slanted slightly at the bottom, allowing a slit of light to pour forth from the room. John peered inside. The room was empty apart from a desk in the corner and a surgical table in the center of the room. John looked closer and saw that the table was occupied by a silver and white creature with rigid wings flared backward from its back. It had a long neck and a rather dragonish face, a pair of strangely structured arms ending in hand-like claws, and a pair of fanlike structures near where John expected to see legs which appeared to have no function. An IV bag attached to a pole kept the creature in its slumber. John wanted a closer look, but found the door to be locked. A keypad and thumbprint scanner were located near the door.
Disappointed, John turned and found himself inches from a smiling, tall man in a uniform. "Well, what do we have here?"
Panic jolted in John's chest and he made to run, but the man blocked his path no matter which way he darted. He was trapped. The man reached forward, and John cringed backward, but instead of grabbing him as John expected, he reached forward, and crouched down to peer in through the gap in the blinds. "Well, what d'you know?"
He pressed a number of buttons on the keypad, and pressed his thumb to the scanner. The door unlocked with a click and the man stepped inside, and held the door. "Well, are you coming?"
Every instinct John possessed drove him to run, but his curiosity got the better of him and he cautiously stepped inside. The tall man didn't waste any time. He stepped forward and started pulling tubes away from the creature, detaching wires, and powering down a computer hidden below the surgical table. John's heart was still pounding as he looked around the room. His eyes fell on a folder on the desk in the corner, which had red and black tags attached. John opened it.
At first glance, John thought it was someone's entire medical history. There was a packet of brain scans, a few of which had a substantial portion highlighted, with a large "?" beside it. There were x-rays, and blood test results with several highlightings and a small "wow!" in the corner of one page, along with a blank page labeled "Behavior," and another blank page labeled "Potential Military Applications."
John frowned at this last page. What in the world are they planning to do with this thing? Remembering the soldier behind him, John hurriedly glanced behind him and found the soldier still busying himself with wires. John hastily replaced the folder and quietly made for the door.
"Leaving so soon?"
John felt cold and stopped abruptly. He hadn't made a sound, nor had the soldier looked up, but somehow he had been detected. The man finished unhooking the creature and stepped back, looking now at John. A minute passed and nothing happened. Then, the animal on the table gave a soft grunt and stirred. John could barely breathe, but the soldier didn't even flinch. The creature's bleary eyes slowly opened and it rose into the air, unsupported.
"How are you feeling?" the man asked it. John was completely confused. Why would the army go through the trouble of keeping the thing subdued if they were just going to let it go?
The creature responded with a strange growl, "Like I got in a head butting competition with an Aggron, but who's asking?" It shook its head and looked in the soldier's direction. John jumped as he saw the fox monster he had seen recently standing precisely where the man just was. The floating creature's eyes widened and it zipped forward to hold the fox in a tight embrace. "Zoroark, it's been too long." The fox looked uncomfortable and slowly prized the other creature's arms off of it. It then looked toward John. "And who's this, now?" John's fast pulse sped further and he felt a little faint.
A voice echoed in John's head. "Well calm down now, I just want to know your name,"
John's voice shook. "I-It's John." The silver animal looked appraisingly at John before looking back to the fox. "So how long have I been out?" The fox walked over to the desk, flipped open the folder with the point of one claw, turned, and growled, "Looks like about a week and a half."
"Almost beat my old record… so tell me, what's the deal with this place? Arceus wasn't too specific."
"Before a few months ago, pokemon didn't exist in this dimension. Looks like when a pokemon comes through a rift, they feel a need to bite people, especially kids for some reason, and that makes a pokemon appear with them that corresponds to that person."
"The trans-dimensional parallel effect, go on"
"Naturally, humans are humans; they're all in a panic over it, they don't know what to make of it and they think it's some kind of disease. I haven't been here more than a few weeks myself, but I know that they've been rounding up all the pokemon they can, along with all the humans that have been bitten."
"That's awful, but nobody ever said that humans were entirely rational creatures."
"Anyway… how is it that you ended up in here?"
"Well, Arceus realized that Celebi could probably use some backup at this point… that, and I got picked for the same reason I went on my last assignment. I remember going through a rift that opened up near the Faldera Volcano in Oblivia, then there were a lot of bright lights and I couldn't see, then it felt like I got stung in the neck by something, then nothing until I woke up just now."
"Yeah, the humans here have gotten so jumpy that they've gone for a 'shoot first, ask questions later' approach. They just tranquilize anything that comes through a rift. I got lucky coming through and the only reason I've been able to keep an eye on things as long as I have is that they don't know about what I can do."
"Hmm." The floating creature turned and John saw a small, gold, triangular marking on its chest, along with a jagged scar over its eye, as if from a dull knife. The folder on the desk caught its eye and it moved closer to it. It picked it up and flipped through the folder, never pausing on a page for more than a few seconds.
"So what is it?"
The flying animal didn't answer right away. Then, "I don't like this page here." It held up the page marked "Potential Military Applications." "Do you remember what happened when the humans back home tried using pokemon as soldiers to fight one another?"
"I know it turned into a very messy situation."
"You could say that." It paused. "Well, like Arceus said, it sounds like most of the problems are stemming from these people just not understanding what's happening. Arceus told me to avoid force if at all possible. We definitely don't want to start a war."
John tensed at this and inched slowly toward the door.
"So how far along are the connections among the Touched?"
"Not sure, but I know that at least one of them," John froze as a bright red claw pointed at him, "has gotten to the point where his senses are improved thanks to his parallel. He's been able to hear everything we've said."
The dragonish creature looked surprised and turned to John, who ran. He didn't hear them following him but he didn't look back until he had rounded the corner of the hallway. He peered around the corner and waited for several minutes. The door at the end of the hall opened and two figured emerged. The fox monster, again in the disguise of a soldier, and a boy in his teens wearing a long traveling coat. The soldier opened each on the other blinded doors. They looked into the first and looked disappointed, then hurried into the other. The teen in the coat emerged a while later with what looked like a hedgehog with a lush, flowering shrub in place of spines, which was shaking a little. The three of them suddenly vanished with a small flash of light.
John stayed where he was for several more minutes, then hurried back into the office and escaped. He hurried home, sticking to the woods where the strange creatures were believed to be hiding, so as to avoid the soldiers on the streets. He thought he saw movement ahead, but it was just a fallen tree limb swaying in the breeze. He made his way home, slipped inside, and disposed of the gloves he had borrowed. Monozu greeted him gruffly, just before his mother strode into the room, visibly shaking, and grabbed John by the back of the neck.
"Are you out of your mind! I told you to stay here, and what do you do? Go running off again! I've had it with you John! I don't care if you are the way you are, you are not to go out again!"
John was half thrown into his room and his mother stomped away. John turned to Monozu. "So, any snide comments this time?"
"Not this time. You've been through enough as is."
John was surprised, but grateful. He checked to make sure that the door was shut and that his mother had gone back to her room before opening his desk and started to update his drawings of the creatures he had seen.