10: ROCKETS RISING
The thing about hanging around at home, waiting for things to happen, is that it gives Emilia far too much time to think. For instance – about the pot plant in the corner of the room.
It hasn't escaped her that touches of colour are starting to appear in the sides of Effie's fruit. The uncanny energy that made her able to conjure storms of razor-edged leaves and clouds of poison in her prime is now bent to different ends, speeding up the development of the fruit that would in the wild carry her seeds far in the guts of birds and monkeys to a degree impossible in any non-pokémon species. Pokémon are competitive like that. Always one step ahead of their animal and vegetable counterparts.
One of the books Emilia got out of the library was – and she knows this was a bad idea – a guide to cultivating oddish. She sits cross-legged in front of Effie and looks at diagrams of optimal potting solutions that make her want to cry. It doesn't matter, in the end, how many children Effie has. None of them will be her, and she feels childish thinking it but it's the truth. Effie is already gone, really. At this point, she is nothing but a life support device for the unborn oddish incubating above her.
You are meant to pick the fruit, she reads. It decays fast, just as it grows. When it starts to ripen, you need to pick it, as animals would do in the rainforest, and you should cut it up, remove the seeds and push them just beneath the surface of the potting compost, lightly watered.
It is starting to ripen. Emilia does not pick it.
She imagines doing it, imagines feeling the fruit tear away from the stem beneath, imagines a gush of sap like blood that she knows is completely impossible but which she nevertheless is deeply afraid of. She imagines Effie suddenly withering, her life's work complete.
Emilia should end this properly. She never has done before – not with Matt, or Niamh, or Sam. She did get the chance to say goodbye to Niamh, but she was young then, still too afraid of death to speak or do anything but clutch her hand and stare into her eyes. That's three deaths that Emilia has failed to mark with the proper respect. Effie should not be the fourth.
She still does not pick the fruit.
There will be about twenty seeds, of which between seven and ten will turn out to be viable. Emilia imagines between fourteen and twenty tiny feet, hairy with roots, pattering around the apartment, tracking dirt across the carpets.
She wonders suddenly what would happen if she did get arrested, who would end up raising the oddish in her stead. There are provisions for this kind of thing, of course; she has seen many arrests, knows the protocol for dealing with the partners of convicts. They get sent to family (which in her case Emilia would sooner die than see happen) or are fostered by state breeders or charities (better, but not by much) or, if the person in question is never going to leave prison again, they get released.
How long do you get for treason? Because that's what they'll call it, if she goes through with this: they'll want to see her get the maximum sentence possible, and the way to ensure that will be to spin this as treason, to say that in blowing open a League secret of this magnitude Emilia has in a material sense conspired against her nation. Maybe that would fly and maybe it wouldn't; Emilia is a little rusty in court, but she'd like to think she could fight that charge fairly effectively. They'd still get her, of course, with one thing or another, but she might be able to wriggle out of that one at least.
However long it is, and ignoring the complicated, terrifying mess that being trans in prison will be, it will be too long. The oddish won't know her, and the last link will be broken. Effie will really and truly be dead. And by the time Emilia gets out, so too will Nadia.
Emilia holds this thought for a while, the way she might heft a rock before skimming it, feeling the shape and weight of it. Then she throws it away over an imaginary ocean and stands up to go to her room and get ready to meet Mark.
Some prices have to be paid. It's not like Emilia has anything planned for the next twenty years, anyway.
King Nolan's Square: downtown Saffron at its most determinedly old-fashioned. No chrome or glass or skyscrapers here, just old yellowstones, faded from years of sun and rain but still very definitely yellow. The quarries where Saffron's unique stone was mined have long since gone bust – banana-coloured buildings do not suit modern tastes – but the city does its best to keep the historic buildings looking bright.
At the plaza's centre is the bronze statue of Nolan II, a jolly-looking man smiling benevolently at the artisanal bakery across the street. He is possibly Kanto's most famous monarch; he was, unusually for a king, a staunch socialist – the product of a fling with a student activist at university – and on the back of popular support deposed his father in the thirties when it became clear he was about to commit Kanto to supporting Nazi Germany in the Second World War. He abdicated a week later, signing the modern republic into being, and spent the rest of his life helping to set up the first of Kanto's workers' unions. Emilia vaguely remembers doing a project on him in school and learning that he died after being stabbed by a far-right ultranationalist.
She asked Mark to meet her here mostly because it was the first place that came to mind, but it occurs to her now that Nolan is an auspicious kind of man in whose presence to meet. Admittedly, he did get knifed, but in all other respects he did a good job of attacking a corrupt Kantan institution. Emilia could use a little of that luck about now. It's not something she's ever done before, afraid of waste as she is, but she takes a coin from her purse and flips it into the fountain with the others.
"Making wishes?" asks a voice from behind her. "That seems unlike you, Santangelo."
She turns to see Mark standing there, his hair still ruffled from a flight. He is wearing the thick pads on his shoulders that people wear to stop their pokémon's talons cutting into them while they are carried, and a little way behind him, shuffling its claws on the paving-stones, is a gigantic owl, almost as tall as he is. So he does have flight clearance after all. Strange. Emilia has never seen his partner before.
"It's Emilia," she says. "Who's your friend?"
Mark turns, runs a hand across the noctowl's fluffy neck. Nadia tenses on Emilia's shoulder, uncomfortable at the presence of such a big predator, and Emilia sends her a calming thought.
"This is Alison," Mark replies, as she hoots and leans into the contact. "Who you have, by the way, tired out by making her carry me back to Saffron so fast, so I hope whatever this is, is on the level."
Emilia smiles, although the humour is slightly forced. This is awkward for both of them, meeting like this. It's going to get worse before it gets better.
"Nothing is on the level," she says. "What's the line? Something about ossified crypto-fascist institutions."
Mark smiles back. Again, slightly forced.
"Yeah," he says. "Okay. So what now?"
"Have you eaten?" He shakes his head. "So let's eat," she says. "I know a good place down the King's Road. Let's go there, and I'll tell you everything."
They walk together, Alison flying up and away to follow in the air, swooping from rooftop to rooftop. Nadia is a little happier with her up there, and Emilia is able to turn her thoughts towards making some idle conversation instead of keeping her calm.
"You've been investigating the skeletons?" she asks.
"Yeah," replies Mark, a little warily, unused to discussing this with her. "I suppose you're going to say they're ghost-types possessing fossils, right?"
"I could," says Emilia. "Or I could tell you that they were manifestations of a sentient breach in the fabric of reality."
He gives her a look.
"Right," he says. And then, a second later: "Wait, right?"
Emilia sighs.
"More things in heaven and earth, Horatio. Here," she continues, pushing open the door. "Hi. Table for two?"
They sit down near the window. Across the street, Alison takes up a position on a rooftop, spreading her wings briefly and sending pigeons wheeling madly across the street.
"What kind of place is this?" asks Mark. Casually, as if he isn't thinking about what she just said. He doesn't fool her, but he probably doesn't expect to, either. Honestly, Emilia is a little startled herself. All those years of secrecy and she just blurts it out like that.
"Italian," she says. "You can tell it's good because all the Italians eat here."
She indicates herself. It's a tiresome, white people kind of joke, but after all Mark is white, and it does a little bit to ease the tension. Enough to be worth her discomfort, anyway.
The waiter brings them menus, asks about drinks; Emilia orders lemonade for herself and a dish of water for Nadia. Mark goes for cider.
"Not drinking?" he asks.
"I don't," she says.
"Probably a good idea. Wouldn't want to give away any state secrets."
Emilia smiles as if this is all she's worried about.
"Oh, we'll get to the state secrets," she says. "No need to worry about that."
A few moments of silence, while they figure out what to order. Emilia has tagliatelle; Mark, ravioli. The waiter brings the drinks and takes away the menus, and then Mark gives her a quizzical look.
"Okay," he says. "I'm here. What was so important you had to drag me all the way from Cinnabar?"
Emilia takes a breath. She's really going to do this. She really, really is.
ONWARDS, says Nadia, which is what she says when she's trying to encourage people, and Emilia nods.
"All right," she says. "Here's the thing, Mark. I've spent a lot of time hiding things that maybe shouldn't be hidden. About ten years now, actually. I had a mantra about it: eight out of ten. As long as eighty per cent of the time I could say I was doing the right thing, more or less, I'd stay."
Mark says nothing. He watches her as if she's a stranger with a knife, something alien and dangerous.
"And maybe you can say that that wasn't the right thing to do," she continues. Now she's begun she isn't sure if she can stop; the words are coming from somewhere deep within her, rushing up like a spring tide. "I wondered about that, too. All the time, Mark. I mean Christ, I called myself an anarchist when I was younger. And I still believe that, I still think hierarchies are a bad idea. I just somehow ended up doing this too."
She's starting to say more than she means. Stop, she tells herself, and somehow against all the odds she does, and then after a second she continues.
"I'm going to start with the fact that I've been suspended for investigating this," she says. Mark's eyes widen, but he still stays silent. "And I'm not going to stop, either, which is probably going to get me arrested. What I'm saying is, however this turns out – I think I'm done with the League."
There, she said it. And maybe she's doing this because she's mad at Lorelei, maybe she's doing this because she's feeling protective about Artemis, but whatever her real motives, it's the right thing to do; she just can't go on hiding things any more. She takes a sip of her lemonade, and chooses her words.
"So now you know how things stand," she says, "let me tell you what's going on. Let me tell you about Giovanni Dioli."
Once Artemis has woken up properly, the fear hits her, hard as a freight train in the small of the back. She stands there at the window, shaking and trying to breathe, and then a little while after the breach entity has slithered off down the street she manages to make herself move and go into the bathroom to wash the blood off her face. There is a ghost person crouched in the shower, glaring above its respirator, vibrating with some powerful suppressed emotion, and Artemis plants her bloody fingers on the sink, grounding herself in the feeling of cold ceramic and the sound of the light buzzing.
"Brauron," she whispers. "Brauron, where …?"
She can't finish, choking on the words and on her panic, and of course Brauron doesn't come because she can't hear her, and she makes an ugly whimpering noise and then, finally, as she concentrates as hard as she can on the fact that the ghost person is not real, she manages to turn away from it and look into the mirror instead. She sees the red streaks on her cheeks, with clear lines washed in them now by her tears, and then looks past herself into the reflection of the shower.
Hum of electricity. Smooth cool of ceramic. Night bird sounds.
No ghost person. Artemis breathes out, then dips her head and washes her face. They'll be back, she knows; on a night like this, where the world feels unreal and she feels even less so, she'd be surprised if they didn't. But at least she's okay for right now.
In the mirror, her gross unshaven face looks back at her, greyish and scared. She has a sudden powerful urge to smash her forehead into the glass, to fill her head with shards; for a moment she is afraid she'll give in to it, and then she steps back from the thought as she has learned to and lets it drift out of the other side of her mind.
"Okay," she whispers. "Okay, okay, okay."
She washes her face again, scraping the clotting blood from the corners of her eyes, and then creeps back into the bedroom to find her phone. There is a shape in the shadow by the wardrobe that she is fairly convinced was not there before, but it isn't as scary as a proper ghost person, so she does her best to believe it it isn't real and sits down on her bed to call Emilia.
"Please pick up," she whispers, listening to it ringing. "Please. Please pick up."
Signal here in Lavender isn't great: the call cuts out before it goes through. Artemis tries twice more, and finally she hears a sleepy-sounding voice.
"Hello?"
"Emilia," she says. She can tell she's about to start babbling wildly but somehow can't do anything to stop herself. "Emilia, I – it happened again, there's – I don't know what it is or where, but―"
"Hold on a second." More alert now. "Artemis?"
"Yeah. Yeah, it's me. I – I don't know where it went, it just―"
"Okay, Artemis. Okay. Can you take a deep breath for me?"
Breathe. The thing in the corner is definitely a ghost person, or maybe it's her backpack. Breathe. There's something skulking around Lavender at night. Breathe. She remembers now what the dream was about. Breathe.
"Okay?" asks Emilia.
"Okay," repeats Artemis. "Okay."
Pause.
"Tell me what happened," says Emilia.
"I … I had a dream, I think, except I'm not sure it was a dream. The spire again, it spoke to me. Then I woke up and there was … something outside. Like static but alive."
"A breach entity?"
"Yeah," says Artemis, relieved beyond measure that Emilia seems to believe her. "Yeah, a breach entity."
"Where are you?"
"The Pokémon Centre. In Lavender. Sorry, I should have – I mean, we came to speak to Fuji."
"It's okay," Emilia reassures her. "It's okay, I'm just asking so I know where to go."
"You're coming?"
"As soon as I can. I probably won't be able to get there for a few hours, but I'll talk to people. Some of them might get there sooner." Emilia's moving now; Artemis hears her voice crackling in and out, the scrape of things being moved in the background. "Can you still see the entity now?"
Artemis shakes her head, then remembers that she's on the phone.
"No," she says. "Hang on, I'll – I'll go to the window."
"Be careful," says Emilia, as she gets up. "If you don't think it's safe―"
"It's fine," replies Artemis, looking through the curtains down at the empty street. "It's not there any m―"
A scream. Deep, slightly hoarse. Artemis can't tell if the person making it is scared or in real physical pain or both.
"What was that?" asks Emilia.
"Someone screamed," she replies. "Oh god, I think it found someone―"
"Artemis? Artemis, stay with me here. I want you to call the police, report seeing a ghost and hearing a scream. I'll contact the League and get on my way over there. All right?"
"All right," says Artemis. "All right, I – I think I can do that."
She hates that she said I think, hates that uncertainty, but when Emilia replies she sounds nothing but understanding.
"Good. Will you be all right if I hang up? Is your friend Cassandra there?"
"No. I mean, yes, I will, but she's – she's in a different room."
"All right. If you're okay, then."
"Yeah. Yeah, I'm okay."
"All right. I'll see you soon."
The idea of calling the police is terrifying, but the scream and the breach entity are more so, and so Artemis manages, more or less. She does at the very least sound convincingly scared – the switchboard operator is very calm and professional, but she senses that he recognises her panic – and she is told to stay where she is, that the police are on their way. After she hangs up she hears something roaring, someone else shouting, and then lights start coming on up and down the street and Artemis is able to tell herself that things are going to turn out okay.
She sits on her bed, trying not to rock or chew her fingernails, and looks at the shape in the corner. Maybe it is her backpack after all. She could turn on the light and make sure but she can't bring herself to do it, because what if it isn't, what if the light reveals not rumpled fabric but oily plastic and grey eyes, and so she sits there and wishes Cass would come in and see if she's okay.
On the bedside table, Brauron opens her eyes and uncurls herself.
"Hey," whispers Artemis, holding out her hand. "Hey, Brauron. Can you come here, please?"
A purple blink, a flutter of her fins. Brauron takes hold of her outstretched fingers with her tiny hands and tugs gently before climbing up onto her wrist. Artemis holds her close and strokes her, feeling the warmth pulse through her arm in waves, and listens as the sirens begin to blare.
It's delicate work, and it has to be done fast. Emilia throws on her clothes and sprints out to tip off the League via the payphone two blocks away; she uses her old voice, the one no one she works with (used to work with) has heard, and calls the crisis hotline spouting as many classified terms as possible. There's been a breach, she says. In Lavender. BE-17-01, 'Spire', was sighted again, along with something new. The person on the other end of the line says wait, who is this, how do you know that, and then Emilia tells them she's a concerned citizen and hangs up.
Okay. That's the cavalry en route; the police will definitely call the League when they realise what they're up against, but Emilia would rather they get there sooner, to reduce the chances of anyone getting killed. Hopefully Artemis will be okay. Emilia was relieved to hear from her, despite not being able to get through earlier, but she would be lying if she said she wasn't worried by how she sounded. How many breach entities has the poor girl seen now? She just doesn't need this stuff in her life, not now of all times. It makes Emilia angry to think about it, but of course she just has to swallow it. You want to help Artemis, Emilia, you have to stop Giovanni – and if you want to stop Giovanni, you have to make sure this incident plays out the way you want it to. And the next step there is making sure that Mark arrives at least as quickly as the League.
He took what she had to say surprisingly seriously, given that it was more or less unbelievable. Maybe her impassioned speech about how this was the end of her association with the League helped; maybe it was just that it was her saying it – her, the League's terrier, now a rogue element. Emilia has a feeling that, more than anything else, it was the fact that it made sense. The Cinnabar House incident, the way Oak was hustled off air the other week while the gyarados attack was taking place, the skeletons – it all fits, if you know that breach exists, and now Mark does.
So why are you telling me this, he asked warily, not committing to any position on this information, and Emilia sighed. She explained about the suspension, about being out of ways to fight this. She said it was time that people knew. He'll need evidence, he told her. And Emilia said that she was working on it.
Well, now she has it. Or she will in a moment, anyway. If they're lucky, Alison will get Mark to Lavender before the League has a chance to throw together its response. As she hurries back through the electric twilight of Saffron towards her apartment, she calls him over and over until he picks up.
"Mark," she says, without waiting for his response. "There's been a development. You wanted evidence? It's waiting for you in Lavender."
"What? Emilia, it's three am―"
"And breach has just occurred in Lavender. I have a contact there who's just reported something like a cloud of TV static running down the street, followed by screams."
"What?" He does not sound prepared for this conversation in the slightest. "What?"
"Mark. Get to Lavender, now. The League is inbound, but I think you can beat them there if you hurry. Get pictures, recordings, whatever you can. I'm going to try and bluff my way in with the cops, see what I can get from them." A pause. Someone staggers out of a doorway up the street; Emilia tenses reflexively, but they move away in a different direction. "Did you get that?" she asks.
"Yes. Yeah, I got that." Mark sounds much more awake now. "I'll prep Alison. See you there."
"See you there," she confirms. "Hurry."
She hangs up and calls the taxi company. The woman on the other end of the line is initially reluctant to send her a cab to Lavender, but there are no trains at this time of night and Emilia persists, makes it clear that she is both rich and desperate and that she will pay literally anything to be taken. After a while – and after Emilia has offered several wildly extravagant rewards – she finally agrees, and shortly after that Emilia and Nadia are installed in the back of a cab whose driver is slightly in awe of the amount of money he stands to make tonight. While Nadia makes herself comfortable on the seat next to her (she struggles to stay awake in the dark, and she is right now very sleepy), Emilia tells the driver she'll pay him even more if he gets her to Lavender before dawn, and the city becomes a series of passing lights that fly past and then fade into the dark either side of the motorway.
The road is quiet. To the south, Emilia sees a cluster of streetlights marking East Saffron's Galkirk Village, silent and humped in the night; other than that, she sees nothing. She does keep one eye on the sky, half expecting to see a noctowl soaring silently overhead, but if Alison is up there she doesn't see.
She thinks about Artemis, waiting in the Pokémon Centre in Lavender for the League lady to come and fix things, and wonders how to tell her that she's failed her.
The thing is, depending on how far Giovanni's research has advanced, a journalistic exposé might not even do too much to stop him. Abigail Grahame wrote in her email that if they found a way to reliably trigger breach, they'd be a matter of months away from achieving their goals – which Emilia takes to mean learning to control it. And, well, they definitely seem to have figured out how to trigger it. It's probably just a matter of time before ROCKETS has access to a power great enough to exempt it from even the laws of physics, let alone of Kanto.
But then, if he gets to that stage, Emilia wouldn't be able to do anything about it even if she still had League support. She just has to keep fighting, no matter how ridiculous the martial metaphor seems or how unassailable Giovanni appears, and hope that between her alliance with Mark and Artemis' interview with Fuji some kind of viable strategy emerges.
She forces herself to lean back in her seat. The cabbie asks if she minds if he has the radio on.
"Go ahead," says Emilia, trying not to bite her fingernails, and they drive on into the night, towards the forested hills of Route 8 and the thing lurking in the alleys of Lavender.
Long before dawn, Artemis has abandoned her room to make tea in the lounge and watch the twenty-four-hour KNBC news channel. She learns about the Sinnish general election (it looks like the centre-left Social Democrats are going to retain their majority) and a hostage situation where eco-terrorists have kidnapped a pokémon in Hoenn (resolved by someone the cops refer to as 'an alert civilian contractor' and the newscaster refers to as 'a young pro trainer'); she learns that a small gyarados has been overtaken by the fury and is rampaging near Fuchsia, where it is being monitored by Koga's people and will be relocated if it comes close to the city.
Nothing about the breach entity in Lavender, yet. Artemis supposes it's probably Emilia's job to make sure that she doesn't end up seeing anything about a magic static monster on the news, but still, its absence unnerves her. It's not knowing again, that brutal uncertainty that haunts her like an unredressed sin, and she keeps watching until long after the sun has come up and Brauron has fallen asleep in her lap, when Cass comes in to find her.
"Oh hey, there you are," she says. "I knocked on your door but you weren't there."
"I got up early," says Artemis. She hasn't spoken in hours. Her voice sounds strange in her ears, as if it is seeping up through the floorboards halfway across the room. She wonders idly if she might be dissociating; decides that if she is it's only very slightly.
"That sounds like you," replies Cass, because of course it does, because Artemis has been very careful always to get up before Cass, so that she is ready to be seen by the time Cass' eyes land on her. "Have you eaten, or …?"
"No." A pause. Slowly, Artemis realises that she needs to say something else. "Let's have breakfast," she says.
She doesn't move. Cass hesitates, hovering in the corner of her vision.
"Are you okay?" she asks, and Artemis is on the verge of saying yes when she remembers that she doesn't have to lie about it any more.
"Not really," she says, settling down back into her body. "I … something happened last night." She clicks the TV off and stands up, scooping Brauron gently into her arms so as not to wake her. "Let's get breakfast and I'll tell you."
Cass has already proven herself a good listener, so Artemis shouldn't be surprised, but she is still grateful. She is quiet and attentive, and then at the end she says well shit in that particular understated way she does that somehow makes things feel a little more manageable.
"Yeah," says Artemis. "Shit."
"Have you called Emilia again?" asks Cass.
"No, I think she's probably busy. The League will have sent her to like … deal with things, I guess."
"Right." Cass pushes Ringo's beak away from her ear and pours some mealworms into a dish, which he attacks with such gusto that he knocks it over, before glaring at her as if this is her fault. "Quit it, birdbrain, you got nobody to blame but yourself." Cass sighs. "So … what do we do now?"
"I don't know," replies Artemis. "Wait, I guess? I mean, she'll probably have something to say when she gets a chance. I just – I don't know, it doesn't feel right. I saw it, and I heard someone screaming, and … and I really hope everything is okay and sitting here feels wrong."
It's about as honest as she has been since she left home, and it comes out all at once, without a breath. She is used to helplessness, honestly; even if she can lift heavy objects all by herself, she's never been strong, not in any of the ways that really matter. But still, it gnaws at her. Like a rattata nestled among the coils of her intestines, chewing at the walls.
"Yeah," says Cass. "Yeah, I feel that." She sighs again. "Do you wanna maybe go out and have a look?"
Artemis shrugs.
"I dunno," she says. "I kind of get the feeling that that's just a way to get killed."
"Oh. Yeah, actually, that makes total sense."
Pause. Ringo hops around, frantically pecking at his spilled mealworms; Brauron wakes up, snatches a mouthful of them, and goes back to sleep again, next to Artemis' empty mug.
"At the risk of like killing the mood," says Cass, "I saw the cutest fucking picture of a meowth on Twitter earlier. Wanna see?"
This was absolutely not what Artemis was expecting, but it's very welcome, after the night she's had. She smiles, surprised, and Cass smiles back.
"Yeah," she says, as Cass reaches for her phone. "Okay."
Emilia is very aware, as she walks through the swing doors of the tiny building that passes for the Lavender Police Station, that whatever the legality of her actions so far, this one in particular is definitely enough to get her arrested. Impersonating League personnel is bad enough – but impersonating League personnel with the aim of infiltrating a classified investigation? If she's caught, the fight against Giovanni is over already. Mark might have got the material he needs (she has not yet heard back from him, which she hopes means he's busy and not in the back of a police car), but as she was thinking earlier, that's probably not going to be enough. The more people that are around to get in ROCKETS' way, the better.
Still. She's here now. And she's going to make it work.
CRIMES, says Nadia.
"Yes," mutters Emilia under her breath. "Crimes."
She approaches the front desk and shows her card to the receptionist, who has the sleepy, startled look of someone whose shift ended a while ago but who has been forced to stay by an unexpected crisis. It's a pretty specific look, but Emilia has seen a lot of it. Lavender has never been very well equipped to deal with things like this. She has in the past pushed for a proper League office to be set up here, with at least a couple of Gym-standard trainer, but Lance's personnel and logistics people have always told her that it's too expensive.
Right now, though, all the look means to her is that the receptionist is nice and open to suggestion. Emilia smiles and hits her with the full force of her job title.
"Good morning," she says. "Emilia Santangelo, legal advisor to the Indigo League with special investigatory powers."
The receptionist blinks.
"Uh," she says. "Is this about that … thing?"
"Yes. Can you tell me who's in charge here, please? I came as quickly as I could, but communication has been terrible tonight. I keep telling Lance's people that we need an office here, but you know what the League's like." A reassuring smile: you and me, we're both cogs in the bureaucratic machine. We know what it's like. The receptionist smiles back.
"Yeah," she says. "I hear you. The force is the same." She picks up the phone on her desk. "I'll just let the super know you're here."
"Thank you," says Emilia.
GOOD, remarks Nadia admiringly.
Thanks, thinks Emilia, and starts running over the plan again, recalculating how far she can take this. The station superintendent has probably had contact with the League already tonight; she won't be the person they're expecting. A League card and a plausible manner will go some way to fixing that, but honestly, she needs to be in and out as fast as she can, before the real League agent turns up. After that … well, after that Lorelei will know for sure what she's done, but Emilia is hoping her pride is sufficient that she won't want to admit to the cops that she's being outmanoeuvred by a rogue lawyer. And that's the important thing: a League reprisal will be much easier to deal with than an actual police one. She can deal with an angry Lorelei. She can't deal with a couple of cops showing up on her doorstep to arrest her.
Not that the cops won't show up, after the story goes out and it becomes apparent that Emilia has leaked state secrets. But until that time, Emilia has to keep this within the League.
"Okay," says the receptionist, putting down the phone. "Go through there? He's waiting in the conference room."
"Thank you," replies Emilia, and follows her hand to the corridor leading deeper into the building. She has no idea which of the doors leads onto the conference room, but as she approaches one of them opens and disgorges a thickset man in his late thirties. Not the superintendent she's dealt with in the past. Clearly there have been some staff changes.
"You're with the League?" he asks, holding out a hand.
"Yes," she says, shaking it. "Emilia Santangelo. This is my partner, Nadia."
"Leon Manley," he replies. His grip is weaker than she expected. "I'm glad you're here. We're honestly a little out of our depth at the moment."
"I'm here to help," Emilia says, following him into the conference room. "Tell me what's going on."
What's going on, apparently, is a ghost hunt. They got several calls in the small hours reporting seeing ghost-types and hearing screams; they went to the location and found no pokémon, but an unconscious man with both second-degree burns and hypothermia. Since then, police have been combing the area, but so far the creature hasn't been found. Emilia asks about the man – identity, diagnosis – but the answers here are no more enlightening. He is, under the burns and the frost riming his face, somehow extraordinarily healthy; his medical records say he has arthritis and diabetes, but both appear to have been cured, and he also seems to be missing his pacemaker – though his heart is working fine without it.
"That's certainly strange," says Emilia, and she's good enough that she is able to make it sound sincere and not like an ironic understatement. "Is he awake? Has he been interviewed?"
"I think he is now, but we haven't spoken to him yet," replies Manley.
"Can you give me the details?"
He can. Emilia writes it down; that's someone else to speak to.
"Anything more on the entity itself?" she asks.
Manley shakes his head.
"Not a whole lot, I'm afraid. We got one report about it being sort of transparent and flickery; we're going to send someone down to talk to them to see if they can get a better description."
Oh, Artemis is just going to love that. Silently, Emilia asks Nadia to remind her to forewarn her.
"That seems very sensible," she says. "Anything more you can tell me?"
Manley shrugs. The gesture looks strangely helpless on such a big man.
"That's about it," he says. "I don't know. Is this – is it a ghost, really?"
"No," replies Emilia gravely. "No, I don't think it is. But we're equipped to deal with this kind of thing. The crisis response team should arrive soon, and once they're here it's just a matter of time." Small smile. Calm. Reassuring. "There aren't going to be any more victims," she says, hoping that it's true. "I can promise you that, sir. If it's still out there, we'll find it."
He looks like he needed that. He thanks her, asks if there's anything else he can do.
"I think you're responding to the situation as well as we could expect," says Emilia, which is the truth but which at the same time feels somehow dishonest. "Talk to your caller, get all the data you can, and sit tight. I've got to send this information back to the League, and then I need to manage the press and inspect the scene with my partner here. Have you run a trace, by the way?"
"Yes, but we didn't get much. Just interference."
Emilia nods.
"I see," she says. "Yes, that does sometimes happen. Nadia and I have experience with these events, so we'll see what we can get. I'll provide you with a full report once I'm done."
"I'm actually not sure what I'd do with it," says Manley. "But thanks. It's good to know the League has our backs."
"Of course," says Emilia. Time is running out. It can't be too much longer until the real agent arrives. Need to make sure Manley will be okay until the crisis team gets here. "Can you hold the line until the cavalry arrives?"
"I think so." He smiles, if weakly. Damn it, Lavender needs that League office. He's clearly even more out of his depth than Colbert in Viridian. "Thanks, Ms Santangelo. If there's anything else we can do …"
"You're already doing all you need to," she replies. "We'll solve this. You can depend on it."
A handshake, eye contact, a calm, grave smile. Emilia can do this on autopilot, and though she is a little ashamed of it she does, her mind racing ahead through the next few hours, trying to outpace the League team even before they're here. Thank you, sit tight, we'll be in touch, meaningless platitudes that add up to reassuring white noise; and she's on her way out again – without evidence, sure, but with a witness to speak to and a crime scene to visit.
Stepping out into the dawn light, she checks the time on her phone. 5.49. She tipped the League off at about three ten. Give it some time for the report to work its way through the system, a bit more for the team to get ready at the secure facility, a couple hours longer for them to fly out here. She has time, but not much. Where's Mark? No, worry about that later; for now, just get on the rest of the to-do list.
CALM, says Nadia, following it up with a cool wave of emotion that rolls over her and smooths the cracks in her mind like the tide washing over sand. SCENE.
Yes. She's right. Crime scene first, do the trace; if Nadia memorises the impression, that's admissible in a court of law. Good evidence, right there. Then – the witness at the hospital. And after that, find Mark and regroup, get the hell out of here before the League arrives.
ARTEMIS, adds Nadia, and Emilia nods, pulling out her phone.
"Okay," she says, heading down the street towards the crime scene. "Let's get this done."
Artemis doesn't sound very happy to be warned that the cops are coming to speak to her, but honestly that's completely justified, her being her in a town like this. Emilia tries to reassure her that it will be okay, and asks if she's learned anything from Fuji.
"Um … maybe," she replies. "I don't really know. I found out about what they were making at Cinnabar House. This Mew-2 thing?"
"Mew-2?" The name is unfamiliar. Emilia assumes it must be the official name of the M entity, but it's best to make sure.
"Some sort of legendary breach pokémon," explains Artemis. "I think you were right. They wanted to control breach, so they … mutated this pokémon called mew with breach radiation to try and turn it into a breach entity."
"So that they could capture and train it, right," says Emilia, seeing the line of reasoning. It's terrible logic, bafflingly cruel, but okay, she sees how it happened. Like sending those people into the zapdos nest. Lorelei's anomalous resources have a lot to answer for. "Did you learn anything else?"
Artemis hesitates.
"Not really," she says. "I mean, that's all Fuji knows about breach. He only really worked on that one project."
"You hesitated," says Emilia, hoping this isn't pushing her too far. "Why?"
She can see the police cordon up ahead, around the corner, so she stops here, leans against a wall for a moment.
"Artemis?" she asks, when she doesn't respond. "What is it?"
Another long pause, so long that Emilia has to take the phone away from her ear for a moment to look at it and check she's still connected.
"We … we might have found out where Mew-2 is," says Artemis.
It's the kind of news that feels like mechanical trauma, like a blunt object to the gut. Ten years. Ten years since the monster vanished into the wilderness, beyond the ability of the best League tracers to locate – and now a nineteen-year-old kid has found it. Did Fuji know all this time? Could they just have got the information from him? Impossible to say, Emilia supposes, at least until she learns more about how this happened. But for now: stay calm. A conversation has to be had here, and right now Emilia doesn't quite have the time to have it.
"Okay," she says slowly, trying to hide her shock. "Okay, Artemis, I … I have to confess, that's not what I was expecting."
"Yeah, me – me either."
"I can imagine." Calm. Make an appointment. "I'm in the middle of this right now," she says. "But this is something we definitely need to talk about. Can I come to the Pokémon Centre afterwards?"
"Yes!" says Artemis, all her desperate need for help massing and breaking through into her voice. "Yes, I – oh god, yeah, I'd … really like that."
It hurts to hear her like this. Why do these things always happen to the most vulnerable people? Because they're vulnerable, she answers herself, but it's not a very satisfying answer.
"Okay," she says. "Can you hang on for a little while longer?"
"Yeah. Yeah, I think so. We're okay."
We. Cassandra is sticking with her, then. Emilia hopes Artemis' trust in her is founded.
"All right," she says. "I just have a few things to take care of. Will you be okay with the police?"
"Yeah, I guess."
Not the most confident response Emilia has ever heard, but it'll have to do.
"Good. I'll be there soon, okay?"
"Yeah," says Artemis. "Okay."
She hangs up and Emilia lowers her phone, glances at Nadia.
M MONSTER, she says, nervously.
"Yeah." Emilia taps the edge of her phone anxiously against her teeth. "This is … going to be complicated. But – one thing at a time. All right? Crime scene first."
SCENE, agrees Nadia. SCENE.
They make their way around the corner and past the line of police tape, where several officers are standing around doing their best to hide their confusion from the interested civilians watching from windows and front doors. When she flashes the League card, their eyes light up in a way that makes her heart sink. They really think she might be able to do something. And okay, maybe she can, but not like they think, and for some reason this deception, unlike all the others, really seems to bother her.
"It's Detective Whiting, right?" she asks, of the woman with the severe ponytail who meets her. "I think we met before."
"That's right," says Whiting, looking surprised. "When the Ashbury lodge got disintegrated. I didn't think you'd remember."
Emilia smiles. She always remembers. Sometimes, admittedly, Nadia helps dredge up the relevant memory from the depths of her unconscious (and in fact that is what happened this time), but still. It counts as remembering.
"I try not to forget faces," she says, which is mostly not a lie. "Talk me through what we've got here."
Whiting gestures towards a spot up against someone's garden wall that looks no different to any other.
"That's where we found Mr Anderson," she says. "No sign of any kind of an attack, whatever happened. We don't have our own forensics team out here, but the Saffron force is sending over the Eastside team to help out. They should be here soon."
Emilia scans the spot: cracked tarmac, mossy brick. Just like everywhere else. No blood, no scorching, no anything at all. The attack was sharply focused, then: it hit the target and nothing else, and in such a way that no blood was drawn or clothing burned. What the hell was it, then? Anderson was covered in both burns and frost, and neither fire- nor ice-type moves are renowned for their accuracy; they tend to move in clouds, leaving a distinct residue of soot or hoarfrost. It's a warm morning, so ice might have already melted – but in which case, where's the water?
Something isn't right – which is honestly normal, given that this is breach, but though some of the breach entities Emilia has encountered so far have used some things that might be recognised as pokémon moves, they have at least stuck to moves that actually exist. She wonders if there are breach moves, multityped or typeless bursts of deadly radiation, and suddenly feels uneasy. Better check with the doctors about Anderson's rad count.
None of this is helpful right this moment, however. Time is wasting, and Emilia has to get her trace done now.
"You have a psy officer?" she asks.
"Yes. Chambers over there." Whiting indicates a man standing some way off, a slowbro at his feet. "We didn't get anything, just static."
"That does often happen with these."
"So you know what it is?" asks Whiting.
"I suspect," replies Emilia. "I'll have to wait for the League team to arrive to be sure. Do you mind if I run my own trace? Nadia has experience of this pattern of interference. Sometimes she can pick something up."
"Sure," says Whiting. "Go ahead. We're really just waiting, anyway."
Nadia moves to Emilia's hand, and beneath her closed eyelids the past draws itself in lines of silver and purple. Whiting and Manley weren't kidding; there is, as usual, a lot of static. But Nadia is probably the single most experienced breach tracer in the world at this point, and Emilia herself is probably the world champion of interpreting those traces, and after a little tuning Emilia finds some of the static resolving itself into something that looks roughly humanoid. It's recoiling, clearly caught in the moment of falling, arms flailing and head back; there's no face – that would be too much detail to hope for – but it's probably Anderson.
Now she knows where he was, she turns to look in the direction he was facing. There's another something here, another bleached outcropping of ruptured psychic energies, and it … looks surprisingly human. Again, no details, but those are definitely arms and legs, and in all the right places. One hand raised, pointing lazily at the falling man. The other pressed to its head, in a gesture that Emilia knows very, very well. She's made it herself, many times, when listening to someone on her phone or through an earpiece – or, in the early days, when trying to hear what Nadia has to say to her.
It might not be, of course. It might be that this is just part of whatever attack the thing was using; it might even be that this is all an artefact of the trace, a displacement of Anderson's past presence onto the other entity. As soon as Emilia thinks this, Nadia protests, radiating a powerful negativity – and she's right, honestly. Nadia wouldn't make a mistake like that. If there's something wrong with the trace, she would have flagged it.
Emilia opens her eyes to see Whiting looking at her hopefully.
"You were tracing for a while there," she says. "Does that mean you found something?"
"Yes," replies Emilia, asking herself what it would mean if a breach entity were receiving orders and not liking the answer she comes up with. "Unfortunately, I think I have."
Next, the hospital, although Emilia's efforts here don't yield much in the way of results. Anderson is lucid, and all things considered is doing rather well, but he doesn't remember much about his attacker. A flickering in the air, a bright light, an impact on his chest that left him feeling breathless and pained and somehow powerful, even as he fell over and blacked out; that's about it. Ordinarily, this would be good news, making as it does her usual obfuscatory work easier, but today it's the opposite of what she wants. Anderson's bizarre injuries – and cures – will have to stand alone as proof, without his supporting testimony about the breach entity that caused them. She gets what she can, including a statement from one of the doctors overseeing his care, and then gets out.
It's a well-timed exit. As she crosses the car park of Lavender's little medical centre, she sees a League togekiss descending towards the town, huge wings flared against the lightening sky. Too far away to tell who it's carrying, either by sight or Nadia's psionics, but clearly someone here to do Emilia's job. If she had to make a guess, she'd say Eleanor – Emilia's pretty sure she has the necessary security clearance – but honestly it doesn't make much difference. Emilia's not planning on sticking around to say hi.
The togekiss lands somewhere near the police station. Emilia watches it with an emotion she cannot readily name. Some envy in there, perhaps. But relief too. After ten years as a League spook, it's nice to be doing something uncomplicatedly right, for once.
She shakes the thought away and keeps walking, away from the hospital to she doesn't know where, phone to her ear.
"Mark?" she asks, when he picks up. "Where are you?"
"Moon's. It's on the high street."
Leave it to a journalist to find the one chain coffee shop in a small town full of independents. Probably it's the only one open. It's still not even eight o'clock.
"Did you get anything?" she asks.
"I think so. You?"
"Maybe. Hang on, I'll be with you in a few minutes."
"All right."
She hangs up and keeps walking. Five minutes later – literally five; this place is even smaller than Cinnabar – she is pushing open the glass door of the Moon's next to the pharmacy, where Mark has the room all to himself, with the exception of a sleepy barista who looks visibly shaken to have not just one but two customers at such an early hour. Where Alison is, Emilia doesn't know. Sleeping outside somewhere, probably. Or resting in her ball.
"Hi," she says, dumping her bag on a seat at Mark's table.
"Hi," he says, sounding subdued. His phone and camera lie on the table, either side of the remains of a strong black coffee.
"Are you all right?" she asks.
Mark stares at her. Dark circles under his eyes, reddish stubble around his jaw. He doesn't actually say what do you think? but his face does the talking for him.
"I think I just saw the universe break," he says.
"Okay, so that's a no," says Emilia, switching automatically to professional mode. "Let me get a coffee, and you can tell me all about it."
She places her order (latte for her, a water dish for Nadia) and sits down, arranging her face into something soothing and expectant. Mark takes a breath, and begins.
"I … well, obviously I got here first," he says. "Found the place pretty quick. It's not big, after all. The cops were already there, they'd cordoned off the area, but I just … there was this smell. Like burning. And this sound."
SPIRE, says Nadia, conjuring the memory, but it isn't necessary. Emilia knows well enough what he's talking about.
"Like a big knife being sharpened," she suggests, and Mark nods, unsurprised.
"Yeah, I thought you'd know, San― Emilia." He sips his coffee. "No one else seemed to notice it. I guess they were too busy, and anyway these are Lavender cops. You know?" Emilia nods; she knows. "So I tried following it, because I think you said something about burning, right, and it's the strangest thing. It was so easy to follow. I'm not a bloodhound or an arbok, I don't have a particularly great nose or anything, but there it is. I steered clear of the cops, went out of town past those houses up by the station, and there …"
He stops. It's very unlike him, this halting, quipless speech. No subversive jokes now. No wit or life at all, just naked fear. It's unsettling to see him like this, after all their years of trading barbs in the face of supernatural disasters. Emilia is forcibly reminded that she is perhaps too good at her job, that Mark has never seen one of these things before, no matter how strongly he suspected.
"Take your time," she says. "It's not easy, that first encounter. They feel wrong." She is thinking of the M entity. She saw it once, the way the world bent around it like the model of a gravity well in the National Science Museum. Reality refracting in a broken haze around it, warped by the strength of its psionics. She only saw it for a second before she got pulled back inside the armoured car and League security took over, but it was more than enough to burn the image into her mind forever.
Nadia looks up from her water and chirrups uneasily. She remembers too, although she didn't see it except through Emilia's eyes. Even secondhand, the memory has power.
"You're telling me." Mark sighs. "I saw it on the edge of the woods, just sort of hovering there. Big blotchy static thing, like you said. I went for my camera, but the fucking flash was on, wasn't it? So it saw, and it … objected."
Emilia wants to ask if he got pictures, but she waits. He either has them or he doesn't; rushing things won't achieve anything except upsetting him.
"Go on," she says. "What next?"
Mark shakes his head.
"I don't know exactly. It paused, sort of shuffled itself around. Did you ever see one of those toy trucks that turn into robots? Like that. Wouldn't say it looked human, but it was human-shaped."
Like with the attack on Anderson. Emilia almost doesn't want to ask about what it did next, but she really has no choice.
"Did it put a hand to its ear?" she asked. "Or its temple? Like―"
"―someone receiving a message," finishes Mark. "Yeah. Yeah, it did."
A pause. The barista brings Emilia her latte; she thanks her, does not touch it.
"Obviously, that was when Alison and I got the hell out of there," Mark says. "Couldn't fly, whatever it was. And then … then I came here and waited for this place to open."
Emilia nods thoughtfully.
"Do you have pictures?" she asks, as gently as she can.
Mark laughs, slightly too loud for it to seem like he finds anything funny.
"I'm a reporter," he says. "Of course I have pictures."
"Then let's do this, Mark," says Emilia. "I have pictures of the victim's injuries, a report from the doctor, testimony from Pewter and Nadia's trace. I think we have what we need." She's uncomfortably aware that she's saying this for her own benefit at least as much as his. "Let's do this," she says again "Let's hit Giovanni, before he ever summons another of those things again."
He looks a little pale, but Mark nods every bit as firmly as she speaks.
"All right," he says, eyes bright. "You're right. That – thing, whatever it is, that has to stop. And hey, I'm not going to turn down the story of the century." That sounds a bit more like him, Emilia is pleased to note.
"That's what I was hoping for," she says. In the back of her head, Nadia's approval registers like the memory of a sunrise. "We need to get back to Saffron, and get this out there. My apartment at two? 77 Upper Holme Street. I need time to make copies of my material, and if you want to send me questions I can write up interview responses for you."
"Sounds good. Only – let's make it Northcote Street."
Northcote Street: in the heart of Whitford, where the newspapers live. If Emilia remembers correctly, The Cataphract is based out of an office on that same road.
"You want me with you on this?" she asks, and Mark nods.
"Yeah," he says. "I walk in with a bunch of crazy theories – they might run with it, they might not. You walk in …"
"And they start listening, right." Emilia nods.
"Yeah. Long enough for me to show them the proof, anyway." Mark knocks back the last cold dregs of his coffee. "Okay," he says. He sounds better now, back from the Twilight Zone into his usual world of government intrigue and breaking news. "Okay, I'm going to go on ahead and start drafting this. See you at two?"
"See you at two," confirms Emilia. "And Mark?"
"Yeah?"
"Thanks."
He hesitates half out of his chair, looking at her like he's trying to work out if she really means it or not. For what it's worth, she does; she isn't sure if any of this will even matter, in the end, but she has to try, and so she is grateful.
"Sure," he says, eventually. "Thank you. I know I give you all that shit about working for the Man and all – but I also know that this can't be easy for you."
Emilia smiles thinly.
"It's the weirdest thing," she says. "It's just been getting easier and easier."
The cops turn up at the Centre pretty soon after Artemis gets the call from Emilia, and take her into a side room where they ask questions and try not to openly stare at her. (She is, she has noticed, possibly the only person in Lavender other than Mr Fuji who isn't white, to say nothing of the other reasons why they might be staring.) They seem kind, inefficient, hopelessly embarrassed by her existence in a way that makes her want to cry, and they busy themselves taking notes on her hesitant description of the thing as a big flat square of moving static. It's less terrifying than her last encounter with the police, but it's quite depressing. She's glad when they're gone, although the feeling does not survive what Cass has to say next.
"So I just called my aunt," she says, looking up as Artemis comes back into the lobby. "You know, to tell her about the latest weird event, like we discussed? And, uh … she said something kinda ominous."
Artemis could be scared right now, and if she hadn't been up since three am being scared she probably would be, but she's tired, and instead she just feels like she might cry.
"Yeah?" she asks, sitting down next to Cass and settling Brauron in her lap. "What?"
"She said, um … she kind of asked how I was getting on with you, you know? Because, um … you know." (Yes, Artemis knows. Because Artemis is a fucking schizo boy who thinks he's a girl and why would anyone want to hang out with her.) "And I said it was okay, you know, kind of trying to avoid the question, and then she said thanks for doing this and it'll be okay, because it's not going to be for much longer."
Artemis holds herself very, very still. She is afraid that if she moves she might grab Brauron hard enough to hurt her. And yes, Brauron has shrugged off slash wounds and bites without effect, and probably even Artemis isn't actually strong enough to properly hurt a healthy pokémon, but whatever.
She hears herself making a response from somewhere on the other side of the room.
"Did she expand on that at all?"
"Well, I asked, obviously, but like I didn't get much out of her," Cass replies, looking nervous. "But she said, like … remember that her cover story was that she was on some national security project, and she needed proof or data or something? Well, she said she almost had all the data she needed. That she and her team were working on a solution, and soon they were going to be able to put a stop to all the weird events for good."
An end to the outbreak of breach events. What does that mean? It means that Giovanni and his team are nearly there. It means that they've finally managed to do what they set out to over ten years ago, when they made Mew-2 in the lab hidden in Cinnabar House. It means that they've figured out how to control breach.
What do you do, once you've got that kind of power? Once you can sculpt genes like clay, turn day to night, animate skeletons with the power to smash through walls? Fuji said the goal was to fight breach with breach, but when has anyone ever obtained massive power and not abused it? Artemis doesn't know a whole lot, the world remains consistently nonsensical and terrifying to her; but she does know this: the road to hell is paved with good intentions, and in many cases, when you poke at them a little, those intentions turn out not to have been so pure after all.
She thinks of Chelle, for the first time in several days. It feels like they last spoke a lifetime ago, on that day when she left Pewter – when she really thought she was escaping, instead of fleeing into something just as bad. She'd almost prefer the cold tomb of home to this. (Almost.) But she thinks of Chelle, of her preaching the hermeneutics of suspicion and saying always ask who benefits, and wishes she was here with her. Not like Chelle's self-taught socialism would hold any answers. But it's nice to have someone around to say the right words, especially if she's your oldest friend.
Right now, though? Right now it's just Artemis and Cass. (And can she trust her? Can she?) And Brauron and Ringo too, of course, and they're definitely helpful for keeping spirits up, but honestly there's not much either of them can do against either Dioli's team or breach – let alone Dioli's team with breach.
She breathes in, and out. Cass looks at her, and says something, and a moment later the words reach Artemis' ears:
"Are you okay?"
"Nope," she says. "No, I'm really not, Cass. But" (another breath, a wish that her Xanax was not up in her room but here, in her hand) "I guess it doesn't change anything." She sighs. "Emilia will be here soon, I think. Then I guess we can talk about it."
"All right." Cass fiddles with her bracelets. "I, um … just so you know, Artemis, I'm like, here and stuff. Even if we end up having to chase down a legendary pokemon. You know?"
Artemis doesn't think Cass knows how hard it is for her to believe that, and so she doesn't think Cass is trying to help her remember it. She's just being nice, without realising how nice she's really being. Or is she? No: stop second-guessing her, she orders herself. Cass is nice, period. That's why she ended up helping Giovanni's people, and it's why she's being nice now.
"Thanks, Cass," she says. "I … yeah. Thanks."
"I'm gonna make some coffee in the lounge," says Cass. "Do you want anything?"
"Tea," replies Artemis. "Please. If that's okay."
"Okay. Never made that, but how hard can it be?"
"You just put the thing in the water. And then milk. A tiny little bit."
"Okay," repeats Cass. "Thing, water, milk. Gotcha."
The lounge is empty except for them; Lavender isn't a popular stop on the trainer journey. The historic graveyard here attracts ghosts, but once you've come here and convinced one to partner with you (or failed to) there's not a lot of reason to stay, unless you're big on long walks in the hills. Which some people are, but generally not children, and that's what most trainers are.
So they sit, and drink their drinks, and after a little while Artemis hears a familiar voice through the door to the lobby. She sits up and looks over the back of the sofa, and a moment later sees Emilia coming in, smoothing her hair and talking to her natu.
"… me to prep that later," she says. And then: "Artemis! I'm sorry to have taken so long."
"Hey," says Artemis, standing up so fast she almost knocks Brauron from her perch on her breast. "Hey, I – thank you for coming."
Emilia smiles, although she looks very far from happy.
"It's the least I could do," she says. "I was here anyway, because of the breach entity, and there's plenty for us to discuss." She looks at Cass. "And you're Cassandra Grahame, is that right?"
"Um, I guess technically," she replies. "It's Cass."
"Cass, right." Emilia shakes her hand. "It's a pleasure to finally meet you. Can we speak in here, or …?"
"I think so," says Artemis. "I haven't seen any other trainers all day."
"All right." They sit. Brauron climbs up onto her partner's shoulder and gives Nadia a suspicious look, evidently still harbouring some resentment from their last meeting; Ringo perches on the table and eyes her up, gauging whether he can take her in a fight. Faced with this combined assault, Nadia twitters nervously and relocates to the other side of Emilia's head.
"Ring-o." Cass beckons him over, points him over to the arm of the sofa. "Stay," she says. "Uh, can I get you some coffee or something?"
"No, thank you." Emilia pauses. Something seems off about her, although Artemis can't figure out what. Something she's figured out how to hide, anyway. "So," she says. "I understand you met Dr Fuji."
"I think he's just Mr Fuji these days," says Cass. "But yeah. We did. And, um, well. Artemis told you, right?"
"Yes. You found Mew-2." Another pause. "I have a confession to make," says Emilia, and the words crash into Artemis' chest like a sledgehammer. What is it? What now, after Cass, after everything? "I worked on that case," Emilia tells her, carefully maintaining eye contact. "You know what my job is, don't you? I make sure people don't know things. And that was the very first thing I made sure nobody knew about, way back when. Mew-2, and Cinnabar House."
Artemis stares. She wants to protest, to say that that can't be right, to ask why Emilia would say something like that, but her throat is sealed, blocked up by the way her heart has thumped its way out of place and into her oesophagus.
"I should have told you immediately," says Emilia. She does not look pleased with herself. "I needed you to trust me so that you'd let me help you, and I thought that that, after what you went through that night … well, I didn't think that would help."
Artemis can feel Cass' eyes on her, trying to gauge what sort of response she should be making. She has to say something, she knows, has to take the lead here; she's the one who's been betrayed. (Again.) And she's got to respond, except … except Emilia lied. And she doesn't even know how to begin to answer that.
"But," she says. "But you …"
Emilia nods.
"Yes. Yes, I know. I made a mistake―"
"Did you?" That's the worst of it. Emilia lied, yes – but honestly, what else could she have done? The awful truth is, there's no way in hell Artemis would have trusted her if she'd known this. Artemis knows this, the way she knows that gravity pulls down. The way her brain works, the way she sees ghost people in shadows and pursuers in passers-by, there's just no chance that she would have taken this news as anything but proof that Emilia was like the rest of them, part of the conspiracy. Emilia looked at her like a problem and found a solution, and sure, it sucks to be looked at as a problem but sometimes that's what people are, especially people like Artemis. Problems. "Did you really?" asks Artemis. "I mean … you're right. I wouldn't have believed you."
Emilia looks taken aback.
"I'm sorry, that's not the response I was expect―"
"I know." Artemis sighs and looks away. Brauron curls around the back of her neck, a comforting question mark of warmth. "I … I don't know what to say. I wouldn't have trusted you. And I did need to. But …"
"But I still lied."
"Yeah."
A long silence. Cass fidgets with her bracelets. Out in the lobby, the receptionist's computer goes bing.
"I'm sorry, Artemis," says Emilia. "You deserved better from me. And – and it gets worse, actually."
"What? What else have you …?"
Emilia closes her eyes, shakes her head.
"I'm sorry," she says, and now for the first time Artemis can hear the emotion in her voice, straining against her professional calm. "I … the League …" She sighs. "Lorelei has suspended me," she says. "The investigation is over."