Spark felt his way along what felt like miles of damp, cold, cave wall. He wasn't sure how long he'd been walking. His communicator was gone, as were his pokémon. Though his eyes were as wide open as they could be, he saw absolutely nothing. He hoped it was just the impenetrable darkness of the cave, and not that he'd been blinded.
Every echoing drip of water or clatter of falling pebbles made him jump. He'd given up calling for his friends long ago, unable to tolerate the sound of his own voice bouncing through the nothingness around him. The walls were far too close, the air too still. Every so often, he had to pause to calm his racing heart and fend off the growing anxiety that electrified his entire body. The loneliness threatened to devour him.
When he heard a woman's voice ahead, he assumed he was imagining things. The voice couldn't belong to Candela, it was too mellow and sweet. Even though he didn't know the speaker and feared he was inventing the whole thing, Spark tried to follow the sound.
"Give up, Spark," said the sweet voice. "No one's coming for you."
"Who's there? Who are you?" Spark called in a weak, cracking voice. How long had it been since he'd last spoken?
"I'm someone who knows these things," said the voice. "You're making it worse for yourself by wandering around like this. It's best that you sit down and accept your fate."
Spark's hands balled into fists. "I think I'll pass on that, thanks."
"I'm sparing you from a far more gruesome end. These tunnels are dangerous. You could slip and die in agony at the bottom of a pit. If you're going to starve to death anyway, may as well do it without a shattered femur."
"Thanks for the advice," Spark said. He couldn't let this phantom voice shake him. Blanche had once told him the secret to escaping a maze: keep your hand on the wall to your left, and if you continue long enough, you'll find the exit. He pushed forward, trailing his left hand along the wall.
"I wouldn't go that way if I were you," the unseen woman said in a sing-songy tone.
Spark's foot met with air when there should have been stone. His stomach leaped to his throat as he barely caught himself on the craggy wall before he could tilt forward into the abyss. He pressed himself, panting, against the wall. Once he'd caught his breath, he cautiously got to his knees so he could reach over the ledge and feel for a step down. When none could be found, he swiped at the floor until he knocked a stone loose and sent it tumbling down into the pit. He heard it crack against the bottom several long seconds after it fell from the ledge.
"Yes, that's the sort of femur-shattering pit I was talking about," said the voice. "I'd tell you to sit tight and wait to be rescued, since you're so experienced at being the damsel in distress, but as I said earlier, nobody is coming for you."
Spark stood back up, cognizant of the edge of the pit. "You sound like a super-charming lady, and I'd just love to meet you face-to-face. Why don't you show yourself?"
"Leave the sarcasm to Candela. It suits her better," said the voice.
She knew Candela? Maybe this was a figment after all, something conjured by his lonely, terrified brain. Spark reached across to the opposite wall to start following it along, treating the pit as a dead end.
"You sure are mean for a hallucination," Spark muttered as he shuffled his feet along, feeling for changes in the terrain.
"Oh, I'm not a hallucination."
A bright light flashed into existence a few feet ahead of Spark. At first, the shock of being able to see something other than blackness forced Spark to close his sensitive eyes. He squinted through his eyelashes to see the floating face of a round-cheeked woman wearing large glasses. The light shone from a flashlight held under her chin, as if she were preparing to tell a scary story at a sleepover. Even with the ominous lighting, she looked too friendly to be starving someone to death in a claustrophobic cave system.
"Hello," she chimed, and the light went out.
"Wait!" Spark stumbled forward a few steps before remembering that he needed to be mindful of the fickle ground.
"Keep up with me, Spark," she said, her voice growing further away.
Spark could barely hear over the pounding of his own heart and his winded breathing. No, he couldn't panic again. Somehow, he'd managed to keep himself more or less together so far. His friends could be in danger. They could be counting on him! He had no choice but to keep going, despite the queasiness of his stomach and doubt in his heart.
"By the way, I'm sorry about what happened with Blanche and Candela," said the voice, a little closer now, and to his right.
Spark hesitated, but decided that she was egging him on. She couldn't be trusted, figment or not. He continued following the wall on his left.
"As if you aren't dying to ask what I mean," laughed the voice. "Don't you want to know what happened while you slept?"
Her face appeared no more than two feet to the right of Spark, and the glow of her flashlight illuminated a split in the tunnel. Spark lunged for the flashlight, but it extinguished, and the woman dodged beyond his grasp.
"So you do have a little fight left in you! I'll tell you, I did not expect your dreams to be as dark and heavy as they were. Your subconscious is an absolute mess. You're pretty screwed up, aren't you?"
Spark bit his lip to stop himself from speaking, though he desperately wanted to know what she was talking about. He'd told no one of his terrible dreams. Not even Blanche.
"You prance around as Professor Willow's mindless jester, little more than the lab mascot, hiding all those layers and layers and layers of anxiety and self-loathing. You know you can't measure up to the rest of them. And you know they're getting tired of picking up your slack."
"You don't know what you're talking about," Spark snapped, unable to stop himself.
"Struck a nerve, huh? I have even more insights for you, if you'd like," the voice offered.
"Can't you let a guy die in peace?" Spark asked.
She giggled right next to his ear, and though he swung his arm at her as quickly as he could, he still couldn't catch her.
"You'll like this one. All that paranoia in your head about how Blanche and Candela feel about you? Your instincts were right. They're sick of you. They left you behind because you diminished their chances of getting out alive."
Spark moved as swiftly as he dared along the wall, trying to evade her voice. His windpipe felt restricted and he pulled at the collar of his shirt as he walked. He needed to block her out. No more wasting breath on her.
The woman's voice came from ahead of him again, though he couldn't fathom how. He hadn't heard footsteps, and if he couldn't see, surely she couldn't either. "I saw their dreams as well. They feel sorry for you. They only feel obligated to help you because Willow claims to see something in you. But really, you were a pity hire. Everyone knows it."
"Stop," Spark whispered. He couldn't even keep his mouth shut. Pathetic.
"How many screw-ups does Willow have to fix for you in a given week? How many times has Blanche come to your rescue when your experiments go sideways? Candela has the right idea. She just laughs at you."
The light shone in his face, forcing him to shield his eyes.
"Are you crying? Oh, this is better than I could have hoped. Spark, you're too easy," said the woman. "No wonder they hate you. You're so simple, so weak. You'll die here in the dark, and they'll barely remember you. They'll be relieved to be free of you."
The light went out and Spark stumbled forward. His foot struck a stone ledge and he tripped, scraping the heels of his palms on the stone as he caught himself. As his hands explored the ground, feeling for a wall, he touched something soft. His trembling fingers closed around the lumpy, wool-knit scarf Candela had given him. It must have fallen the rest of the way out of his pocket and onto the wet floor. He rubbed his thumb over the holes and bumps of dropped stitches and tangled yarn. It had been her first project, and she'd been determined to make something specifically for him, knowing how cold he got in the winter. He pictured her cursing and throwing her needles, then doggedly picking them back, dedicated to finishing the project. Usually, she quickly got the hang of new hobbies, but knitting came with a steep learning curve for her. She didn't always stick to the activities she didn't naturally excel at, thanks to her stubborn perfectionism. But she persevered for Spark's scarf.
Spark reached over his shoulder and touched the raised scar tissue there. Blanche… how could he doubt them either? What kind of selfish, self-pitying jerk of a friend was he?
"You're lying," Spark said.
The woman's face appeared above him. "I'm sorry?"
Spark wound one end of the scarf around his fist, leaving a few feet of tail. "I don't know how you did it, but I believe you when you say you saw into our dreams. But you're lying about what you saw."
"A bold accusation from a dying man," said the woman.
"I guess I don't have much to lose," Spark said. "Since I'm going to die down here anyway, why not tell me the truth? What did you do with my friends?"
"Like I said, I didn't do anything. They abandoned you."
Spark clicked his tongue. "Wrong answer."
He whipped the wet scarf forward, and the woman's squeal and the tension in the cloth told him it had found its mark and wrapped around her ankles. He yanked it back, pulling her feet out from under her. The flashlight spun into the air and clattered to the ground, shining as if by design on the fallen woman, who was frantically trying to untangle her legs from the clinging scarf. Spark picked up the light and stood above her.
"You haven't told me a single thing I haven't already been telling myself for years. All it took was hearing someone else say it for me to realize how delusional I've been," Spark said, shining the light into her face. She cringed and tried to protect her eyes with the lapel of her lab coat. "Yeah, maybe I'm a bit of a screw-up, but my friends would never leave me behind. And I won't abandon them, either. So you're going to tell me what you've done with them."
At first, Spark thought the woman was crying, but then he glimpsed her smiling lips from behind the lapel. Something about her expression sent a surge of wrathful energy through his body, so much it felt like he was radiating light. His nails bit into his palms, and a great power welled within his chest.
"WHERE ARE THEY?" he boomed with a voice too large for his body.
The rocks quaked around them, and an incredible, infrasonic bellow resonated through the narrow passageway. It was as though thunder had been called from the depths of the earth by Spark's command. The vibrations unsteadied Spark, and he reached to for a wall to keep his balance. An earthquake? A cave-in?
The woman's face transitioned from terror to astonishment to a manic glee that seemed entirely inappropriate for the situation. She reached into her lab coat pocket and withdrew a communicator.
"Unbelievable…" she breathed as the shaking died away. "I was worried I'd been wrong about you. I almost feel sorry that I have to do this."
Before Spark could think to move, the woman kicked with her now freed leg, catching his ankle broadside. Spark gasped at the shooting pain as he fell back, the joint no longer able to support his weight. The woman moved with lightning speed, catching Spark by the arm and hurling him into the darkness. The beam of the flashlight briefly revealed the set of stone-carved steps Spark was hurtling toward before it fell from his hand and shattered on the ground.
He hit the steps hard and rolled down them, head over heels, until something sharp struck his temple. A moment of pain, then nothing.
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AN: I feel like I'm creating unrealistic expectations by updating twice in a day. This will probably not be the norm. Y'all are spoiled. Happy Friday. Sorry I'm determined to traumatize your leaders. (Also, thank you so much for your kind words and support! They mean the world to me!)