Chapter Fifteen – Human

"Damn. Look at that." Officer Mallory stopped the team and pointed his flashlight at the walls. Along the sides and on the ceiling, there were little metal prongs sticking out of the cement, as if someone had ripped a gate out of its spot. Before now, Cheren had never noticed it, probably because he wasn't exactly looking for it, and he spent most of the time getting in and out of the sewers either unconscious or in total darkness.

"Sir?"

The officer ran his fingers over the metal sticking out of the wall. "This was the gate to the inner radius of the sewers. Beyond this area is the condemned region… more so than the rest, anyway. Who knows what kinds of toxic particles we'll be inhaling. You sure you were in there, kid?"

Cheren nodded. Why else, he wanted to ask, would he have brought them here in the first place? Why else would the gate be ripped down if the Shadow Triad wasn't beyond here? But he held his tongue, knowing that he was already treading on some thin enough ice as it was by even coming with the police. He was better off playing it safe this round, which his body would appreciate, too.

"Well, let's go. When we get to a fork, we'll split into our teams there." Officer Mallory turned the flashlight on the rest of the group. "Sound good?"

The other officers all saluted. "Yes, sir."

It wasn't far to the fork in the tunnels. Cheren remembered this part, at least. He had been staring out into this area while the Shadow babysat him. Rosa and N had walked this very path, too, and it was where he heard them calling his name. If only he could remember everything—where that maintenance room was, how he and Rosa had made it back there…

Arcanine, as Cheren expected, wasn't too much help. Rosa's scent wasn't able to be tracked in the sewers, which had been true in every other case, too. The reasons why the Shadow Triad chose this location as the base just kept adding up. It was nearly perfect.

Nearly. But it was a navigable finite enclosure.

"Arcanine can't smell anything, and I'm not sure exactly which direction the maintenance room is," Cheren explained at the fork.

Officer Mallory rubbed his chin, the stubble scratching against his gloved hand, and hummed. "Well," he began slowly, "your group will take the left tunnel. If my sense of direction has served me well, then the left tunnel should bring you further to the center of the sewers, while this right tunnel will bring us around the outside of the inner radius."

It was as good a place to start as any, so Cheren nodded. The team split off into two, three going with Cheren and the other three going with Officer Mallory. Now that the group had been diminished by half, he couldn't help but wonder if this wasn't enough people. He wasn't exactly in a position to barter for more back at the station…

"We should properly introduce ourselves, Leader Cheren," the homicide investigator offered as the small group walked down the left tunnel. "My name is Avani. This is Rico, and the short one over there is Corby." She gestured to the taller of the two men and then the second, the latter of whom looked a little offended at his introduction.

"And I'm just Cheren. No need to be formal," he corrected.

The homicide investigator, Avani, was the youngest on the team aside from Cheren. She couldn't have been more than thirty, while the two men were both at least fifty. Of course, she was the only one out of the three who was not a senior officer, though she walked with such confidence that Cheren didn't doubt her abilities.

They all walked in silence after that, their flashlights flicking back and forth in a desperate search for any sign. Parts of the tunnels looked vaguely familiar to Cheren, but he hadn't been in a position earlier to memorize the place.

"You don't have a map or anything? If anyone should have a map, it's the police," he accused.

Corby laughed, and the sound was a tad bitter. "Please. That makes it sound like we would know what we're doing," he joked, but Cheren bit his tongue before he could make that something serious. "There are supposed to be maps placed along the walls here, but it looks like they were all stripped down."

The tunnel ended once again, leading the small group into a relatively empty room. There was a staircase on the right and a tunnel on the other end, but that was it. In the summer, it looked like this part of the sewers would fill up with water, but now that it was drained, it left the room barren with a remaining stench.

And it was a stench Cheren remembered well, the one that guided him back here with Rosa.

Arcanine bounded forward, bouncing at the foot of the stairs for attention. Cheren rubbed its head and looked up the stairs where, sure enough, there was a door—the same door that separated a world of pain from a world of ignorance. But he knew now, so there was nothing stopping him anymore… nothing to make him hesitate.

"That's it," he told the others.

He climbed the stairs with more ease than the last time, though exhaustion had started to catch up with him again. Halfway up the stairs as he lifted his foot, dizziness clouded his mind, but everything came back with a hand on his back. He grabbed the railing and glanced back, and Avani slowly pulled her hand away from him.

"You okay?" she wondered. "I know this must be tough for you."

"I'm fine."

Cheren continued up the stairs, and once at the door, his hand lingered above the doorknob. There was no reason why he couldn't enter—no reason why he couldn't just grasp that knob. His heart had already broken, after all. What damage was left to be done to a heart that barely even functioned anymore?

Rico wasn't patient enough, or maybe he just didn't want to let the burden of opening that door again fall on Cheren. He nudged the boy out of the way and took the burden upon himself, opening the door to reveal the makeshift prison—a prison that a young champion would never be able to leave.

When they all entered the room, they turned their flashlights on the cell holding Hilda, only to find that someone had joined her there, and she wasn't conscious either.

"Rosa!" Cheren cried, grabbing the bars of their cell.

"All right," Corby said quickly, "I'm calling for back up."

"Back up?" Cheren repeated with some desperation and some confusion. Why didn't they just bring more people to begin with?

"We agreed on only sending the senior officers because yours was a difficult story to believe. But now…" The officer glanced at Hilda, or what was left of her, and swallowed. "Well, on behalf of the force, I apologize for not believing you. If these people—this 'Shadow Triad' is capable of kidnapping and murdering a champion… well, frankly, I'd like some more help."

Cheren glanced around; Rico was working with the door on the bars now, trying to get it open to get to the two champions, and Avani was pulling on gloves and tugging plastic bags and tiny pieces of cloth from her bag. "What about Rosa?" he asked.

"I'll get her an ambulance."

Corby exited the room, but Cheren could hear him talking to someone just outside of the room. He doubted the officer would be able to get a signal on his phone down here, so he had to be sending messages with a walkie-talkie.

Rico broke through the door to the cell and opened it, and Avani hurried in and began picking at what was left of Hilda. Cheren couldn't bear to watch it, and he felt something vile rising in his throat. He barely had enough time to move before he lost the lunch he never even ate again, and Rico and Avani flinched at the sound.

"He needs to get out of here," Avani ordered.

"I'm fine," Cheren croaked, but Rico grabbed his arm and dragged him out of the room. Once outside, Rico helped Cheren sit down, and he ruffled Cheren's hair.

"Sorry about your friends."

Cheren's stomach churned. "Friends?"

Rico disappeared back into the maintenance room, leaving Cheren with a distracted and busy Corby. What did Rico mean by friends? Wasn't Rosa okay? She had practically taken on the Shadow Triad single-hand back at the mountain. There was absolutely no way that she hadn't succeeded here. She should have made it to N.

A few minutes later, Rico emerged from the room again, this time carrying Rosa in his arms. Cheren eyed her carefully; her clothes were stained red, likely from a severe wound on her arm. Compared to Rico, she was surprisingly pale, but Cheren didn't know if the difference was amplified further or not. He guessed so.

"What are you doing?" Corby demanded, lowering the walkie-talkie. He had been talking on that thing for minutes now, but Cheren couldn't remember what he said. "This is against protocol. You shouldn't be picking her up."

"There's no time. I'd like to save at least one of the Champions," Rico retorted, and Cheren raised his head—so, she was still alive? "This girl has lost a lot of blood. There isn't enough time to wait for an ambulance to come and for EMTs to find their ways here. I'm taking her outside and meeting the EMTs there."

Corby sighed, but he didn't give Rico any orders. "Did you prepare a tourniquet?"

Rico showed off Rosa's arm, fit with a piece of red plastic just above the damaged skin. "It's not going to help much. She's already on the brink."

There was no more conversation; Rico ran—for someone his age, he ran pretty damn fast—down the stairs and out the tunnel on the left, vanishing from sight. Cheren watched and, once they were gone, looked back at the spot where Rico just stood moments ago. There were spots of blood splattered on the floor.

"There's nothing more we can do at this point. Rico's got it covered. There's no use beating yourself up about it," Corby told Cheren. Then, into the walkie-talkie, he said, "Uh, you're going to have to make it fast. There's going to be a girl needing a blood transfusion—Officer Rico will meet you outside in about five."

She's on the brink, Rico had said. Cheren put his face in his hands. Why wasn't he strong enough to save them?

Strength had been his driving point years ago, back when he was traveling Unova at the same time as Bianca and Hilda. One might even call it his obsession; there was nothing more important to him than becoming strong.

Yet he lost to Hilda over and over and over again.

After that first incident with Team Plasma and Ghetsis, Cheren gave up on his desire for strength, mostly because he realized that there were many different forms of it. There was strength of heart, strength of ideals, strength of mind and soul. It didn't always translate into power. To seek just one without knowing the others didn't work.

But now…

He came to terms with his own strengths. He knew them. But right now, Cheren didn't have the strength that mattered. Having strong ideals or having a strong heart didn't give Cheren enough power to have helped Hilda or Rosa. What he needed then was power. What he needed there was enough strength to stop the Shadow Triad.

And he didn't have it.

What good was a gym leader who didn't even have enough strength to protect his friends—no, not just his friends… he couldn't even protect the one person he loved more than anyone else in the world. He had never been strong enough to help her. So, what good was he?

There was a hand on his shoulder after several minutes, maybe more, passed. He pulled himself out from under it when he saw its feminine form, but once he got a better look, he noticed the woman had taken off those rubber gloves.

"Sorry. I didn't mean to startle you," Avani apologized.

"You didn't," Cheren muttered.

Corby had disappeared, and Cheren wondered where he went—though not enough to actually go looking for him; Arcanine was sniffing around at the foot of the stairs. But Avani took a seat on the wall next to Cheren, her knees pulled in close to her chest and her arms folded over them. None of her stuff was with her—that bag that held all of her tools, any of the plastic bags that she took out…

"So… tell me about them."

Cheren shot her a look, and Avani smiled encouragingly. "Why?"

She shrugged. "I've done a lot of research over the years. I've been a homicide investigator for… six years now. I'm not an expert by any stretch of the imagination, but I am good at what I do. And, you know, it's not something you ever get used to, and when I'm upset, I like to make the person human."

Human… what made humanity, anyway? Cheren wasn't sure he knew right now.

"I knew Hilda before she was the Champion. Rosa, too. They're both so similar that it's almost scary, but Rosa has always been a little more intense than Hilda." That was probably an understatement, but Cheren couldn't put it any other way. "Hilda liked to lean back and enjoy the ride—Rosa is the type of person who would wait the extra fifteen minutes for the front row seat and then keep her hands in the air the whole time."

Avani laughed, and the sound echoed through the empty room, down the tunnels. "You know them both pretty well."

Cheren nodded. "I know Hilda a lot better, though. We both grew up in the same town, and our moms put us in the same preschool with our other friend Bianca. We were all pretty much inseparable until we left for our journeys, and even then, we didn't stay separated for that long. We'd always find each other."

"Sounds nice to have friends like that."

"She was more than a friend to me…" Cheren admitted, slowly and carefully, like he was about to tread on thin ice. "But I was like a brother to her. She fell in love with someone else, and… that was okay with me. As long as she was happy, I was okay." He sighed, leaning his arms against his knees like Avani. "You know, I thought about how I should be angry at N. Hilda left to find him and never came back. Because he left her, because he hurt her, she's now dead."

Avani's eyebrows rose. "You thought about it?"

"I'm not angry. He's been trying to find her, too. And Hilda loved him, so… I don't want him to get hurt, either." He breathed in and out, trying to calm down—he could feel the start of tears in his nose. "Besides, he's not a bad person. I used to hate the guy, and now I only pretend that I do."

Sudden footsteps distracted the two of them, and they lifted their heads a little and pointed their flashlights down the stairs. Corby appeared with a larger group of men and women, and waved at Avani and Cheren to come down.

"You done, Avani?" Corby shouted up the stairs.

"Yeah, I'm going to bring the samples and the body back to the lab. Did you bring Kal?" she asked, and someone—had to be Kal—raised his hand in the group with Corby. "Hey, Kal! You want to come help me?" Avani turned, hesitating a moment and looking back at Cheren. "I wish the circumstances were better, but… it was nice meeting you, Leader Cheren. I'm sure I'll see you around in the coming days."

She didn't wait for a response before retreating into the maintenance room, and Kal joined her moments later. Cheren rose to his feet, stiff from sitting so long, and Corby raised a hand at him. Once Cheren made it down the stairs, Corby ruffled his hair again.

Part of Cheren thought he was much too old for that, but the other part of him liked it. It was nice to be a kid every now and again.

"Hey. Rico just sent a message. The ambulance made it, and Rosa's en route to the hospital." Corby sighed. "We should have sent you, too, kid. You look awful."

Cheren stood taller, trying to mask the exhaustion he felt. "I'm fine. We still need to find N. I'm not going back until we do." If he had to push his body to the limits, then so be it. He wasn't going to let N meet Hilda's fate.

Author's Note: All right, so they're not as useless as those background characters like I mentioned in the previous chapter. At least this group. I can't say anything about the group that split off looking for N.

We're getting down to the end, my friends. Not too many more chapters left. I'd like to make it to 50,000 words, but we'll see if that happens, haha.