A day later, Magnolia found herself and several others assembled in the Dimensional Research Lab in Heahea City. She had eschewed her usual brown fedora for a helmet like Dulse's and Zossie's, and Colress wore similar headgear.
"Good luck, you four," Professor Burnet said. "Don't worry—we'll be monitoring your progress from here." She motioned to the bank of displays and controls behind them. "If you run into any trouble, pull out, okay?"
"I'm not coming back without Mohn," Magnolia said. "Lusamine's waited long enough." She smiled at the blonde woman beside Burnet.
Lusamine did not return her smile. "Just… be careful," she said. "We cannot afford to lose anyone else."
Magnolia gave her a thumbs-up, and then climbed onto the back of a Solgaleo that stood patiently in the laboratory, next to a Lunala. The two large Pokemon barely fit into the facility, but they needed to open an Ultra Wormhole here so that the researchers who stayed behind could track them. Zossie, also astride the gleaming white creature, smiled over her shoulder at the professor.
Meanwhile, Colress and Dulse clung to the back of the Lunala. Gripping one of its shoulder spikes, Colress looked down at the device on his arm. "Don't worry," he said to Lusamine. "If anything happens, I should be able to bring us back quickly with my dimensional shunter. It's designed to return things to their own dimension." He smiled. "It's worked once before, and I've been tinkering with it since then." He tapped the screen. "The coordinates are set."
"May your journey go smoothly," Lusamine said.
"All right, let's get this show on the road!" Zossie said. "Solgaleo, Lunala, if you please!"
Professor Burnet leaned close to a nearby console as the two Pokemon steadied themselves. Solgaleo let out a deafening roar, and Lunala emitted a piercing screech, and Magnolia cringed, putting her hands over her ears.
In front of them, space warped and twisted, and in a burst of light, a tunnel formed out of nothing. It swirled and glowed hypnotically, and if Magnolia looked hard enough, she thought she could see the very threads of time and space that wove into a passageway through reality—a wormhole. She sucked in a breath.
"Here we go!" Zossie said, and Solgaleo charged forward. Lunala flapped its wings and followed.
They plunged into the Ultra Wormhole and Magnolia wrapped her arms around Zossie to keep from falling off. As they soared through the dimensional slipstream, it was as though Magnolia was seeing the universe from the inside-out, or perhaps seeing the strange netherspace between universes.
And all around them, light streamed from what seemed like punctures in space. Those were white holes, Magnolia realized, that must have led to an infinity of other universes. The thought was staggering. And it made her smile with giddy glee to know that there would always be so much more to explore.
Suddenly everything around them lurched, so violently that it made Magnolia nauseous. The colors swirled and became murky, and Magnolia felt like invisible forces were pulling on her from all directions. Solgaleo let out a pained roar, and Lunala, close behind, sounded similarly distressed.
A surge of fear filled Magnolia and her grip on Zossie tightened. "What's going on?!" the professor shouted, although her words seemed to slip away and become garbled in the chaos.
"Something's interfering—with—" Zossie began to say, but then it felt like everything shattered around them and they fell into a brief flash of light, followed by utter darkness.
Slowly, Professor Magnolia realized she was awake. She lay on something hard and cold, and her whole body hurt. With great effort, she opened her eyes—and then sat up in shock. She, Colress, Dulse, and Zossie were in a prison cell. They were hemmed in on all sides by dark stone, and light filtered weakly through the barred window in the door.
"What the…" Magnolia breathed as she pushed herself to her feet. Instinctively she reached for her trusty satchel—gone. Her heart sank. They'd confiscated her Pokemon.
"Good, you're all right," Colress said. He had been sitting against the wall, but now he stood up and looked over at the Recon Squad members, who were still out. "For a moment back there I thought we were done for."
"Do you know where we are?" Magnolia asked.
Colress shook his head. "We were pulled from the Ultra Wormhole prematurely, that's all I know," he said. His hand moved to his wrist—the device was gone. "And someone took my dimensional shunter." He frowned. "I'm beginning to suspect this was not an accident."
Magnolia stared at him. His thoughts unfortunately made sense. "But who would do this?" she asked. "Who would think to do this? And… who would have the ability to do this?"
He opened his mouth to say something, but then the sound of footsteps on stone outside made him pause. A shadowed figure appeared in front of the door. Although he was hard to see in the dim light, Magnolia thought his profile looked familiar.
"Excellent, you're awake," he said in an unmistakable voice. "Now you can answer my questions."
"Only if you answer ours," Colress said in an identical voice. "You're the one who brought us here, aren't you… Colress?"