Dr. Dillinger ran until her thighs burned and every breath set fire to her lungs. She blundered through the dark twists and turns of the tunnel, heart pounding, sweating through her clothes despite the chill of the cave, knocking against the walls, tripping over the uneven floor. She ran like her life depended on it. She ran because her life depended on it.

The toe of her shoe wedged into an unseen crack in the ground and Dillinger was thrown forward. The heels of her palms scraped on the rough rock, but she barely felt the sting of it. Dazed, she remained sprawled on the stone for several seconds. Her own breathing deafened her. Was it her breathing? Or was it the monster's? She tried to hold her breath and listen.

Silence. Blessed, beautiful silence.

Dillinger thought she might cry. She'd done it. She'd outrun that… that thing. A hybrid, like she'd seen in the artwork her team had uncovered and analyzed. Feral and vicious and blood-freezing. Not to mention impossible. Nothing should have been able to survive in a place like this. Certainly nothing of that size and strength. If she didn't know better, Dillinger would say the creature wasn't just surviving, but thriving.

Something brushed her arm, and before she could scream, a hand closed over her mouth. She flailed her limbs wildly to escape, but whatever had hold of her pinned her arms behind her back and immobilized her.

"Shh! Calm down. It's just me."

Captain Pollard's voice grated on Dr. Dillinger's nerves, but she'd take him over a bloodthirsty monster any day. She stopped fighting and he released her. As soon as she could, she scrambled to sit up, folding her arms defiantly across her chest.

Even in the dim light, she could see his obnoxious smirk as he spoke. "Didn't hear me at all, did you? Don't beat yourself up over it. I've had years of stealth training. I can move more quietly than a shadow."

The bloodthirsty monster was starting to seem more appealing by comparison.

"Congratulations," Dr. Dillinger said. "Did you use that stealth training to sneak away from your troops while they were running for their lives?"

"Of course not, Joannie. I mean, Doctor," said Pollard. "My team is as highly trained as I am. They're laying low until I give the order to rendezvous."

"Highly trained?" Dillinger scoffed. "They didn't look highly trained when the hybrids ambushed our camp. They looked petrified."

"As opposed to your scientists? The ones who panicked and scattered the second the attack began?" Pollard reminded her.

"You said yourself that this part of the mission is your domain," Dillinger said. "You and your people were supposed to keep us safe. After a few skirmishes between your pokémon and the creatures, you all gave up and scattered too."

Pollard drew back his shoulders and Dillinger was pleased to see his smile falter. "We know better than to fight battles we can't win. Our pokémon were being slaughtered, Doctor. Not knocked out, mind you. Killed. Dead pokémon don't do us any good, and it was necessary to retreat before our assailants could slaughter us as well."

Dillinger had seen plenty of dead pokémon in her time, all in the name of science. But what she'd witnessed during the attack was something else entirely. The monsters had swarmed out of the very walls of the tunnel Team Rocket had been camped in. Sandshrew and sandslash hybrids led the charge, cutting through the stone as easily as butter, followed by a rush of other horrifying amalgams. Eyeless zubat hybrids, their wings structured like hands, tiny vestigial legs tucked close to their torsos. Geodude creatures that walked on their hands and opened their mouths to reveal human teeth. Images that would haunt Joan Dillinger's dreams for the rest of her life.

The Rockets had deployed their pokémon quickly, but the pokémon were just as terrified as their masters. Some ignored their commands and fled. Others landed a few hits, but the hybrids hardly looked fazed. When the hybrids struck the pokémon back, it wasn't like any battle Dillinger was familiar with. The blows were devastating and often lethal. The monsters' claws left wounds too brutal for mere potions to heal. Pokémon didn't fight each other like this, not in civilized battles. Despite the evils Dillinger had subjected her experiments to, the sight of such a massacre turned her stomach.

Pollard fiddled with his communicator, checking messages from the rest of the Rockets. Dillinger reached in her pocket for hers before remembering its absence. She hated how naked she felt without it.

"Any news?" she asked Pollard.

"Everyone's still sitting tight, but the creatures are starting to recede," he said.

Dillinger nodded, and then another thought occurred. "How did you find me?"

"I saw you fleeing from a large sandslash creature and figured you could use a hand," Pollard replied, his condescending smile returning, though not as brightly as before.

Dillinger adjusted her glasses and squinted in the direction she'd come from. "Right. Thanks for turning up now that I've escaped it. Very helpful."

"You had the situation under control. The thing turned back pretty quickly, actually. I just wanted to see how far you'd run."

Her face flushed. "What the hell, Pollard?!"

"Relax! I figured the further we ran, the better," Pollard said with an innocent shrug. "And we're running in the right direction. "

"How do you figure that?"

"For one, any direction that's away from the monsters is the right one," Pollard said, and Dillinger had to grant him that. "Secondly, your research reflects that the society that fled down here intended to live toward the center of the mountain, and we're headed that way. Maybe there will be some clues there about getting out of this place."

Dillinger uncrossed her arms. "You actually read my research?"

"It was mission critical. Don't act so surprised," said Pollard. "Now, we just need to get cozy for a little while, and then we can instruct everyone to track my communicator and meet us in a safe place."

Dillinger watched him type for a few seconds. "Do you think we could track my communicator?"

Pollard looked at her as if she were spouting nonsense. "I suppose we could, but it would need to be turned on and have its beacon feature enabled. Not that it matters, because we're not turning our whole outfit around to find your lost gadget."

Dillinger's eyebrow twitched. "I didn't lose it. It was stolen from me by the team leaders. If you read my research, then you know that finding the three of them is critical to us getting home. If we can track my communicator, we can track them."

"I suppose you have a point there," Pollard acknowledged. "I'll give it a shot, but I wouldn't hold my breath if I were you."

Captain Pollard clicked through his communicator. Dillinger waited anxiously, drumming her fingernails on the ground. The captain frowned at his screen and grunted.

"No luck?" Dillinger asked.

"Sadly, no," he said.

"Damn."

Pollard tucked his communicator away and leaned back against the wall. Dillinger rotated to sit next to him, close enough that the darkness wasn't as scary, but far enough away to indicate that she was not enjoying the experience of being in his proximity.

"We need the birds too, you know," Pollard noted.

"I know," Dillinger said. "And I know that if Blanche, Candela, and Spark run into trouble, the birds will be close behind to help them out. So, I'll have to bring them some trouble."

"And I'll make it double," Pollard said, quoting the goofy motto some of the grunts liked to use. "Do you have a containment plan?"

"The birds should still be connected to the trio. If not, I'm sure I can rekindle that bond," Dillinger said, tightening her hands into fists. "Even with our pokémon depleted, we still outnumber them. We simply overpower the leaders and use them as bargaining chips with the legendary birds."

"I'm sure the leaders are eager to escape this place as well. Maybe we won't have to overpower them. Since that went so well the first time," Pollard quipped.

Dillinger snorted. "They'd rather die down here than let us escape with them. At the very least, Candela will require some… persuasion."

They sat silently for a few minutes as Dillinger fantasized about what kind of "persuasion" she'd use on her targets.

"Do you think they might have already gotten out?" Pollard asked.

Dr. Dillinger smiled. "Impossible. They're missing a key piece of knowledge. Come on, now. You read my research, right?"

She relished the look of confusion on Pollard's face as he mentally reviewed her dozens of reports.

"Alright, I'll throw you a bone," she said. "One of the tablets we uncovered suggests that a safeguard exists in the case that the door is activated from within the mountain. I didn't pay this tablet much attention, I'll admit. Not only was it confusing and contradictory in a way, it seemed irrelevant, since I believed the door could only open from the outside, and would stay open permanently. I thought it was meant as a way to discourage members of the society from attempting to open the door once they were trapped here. But now I see that it was a measure to prevent history from repeating itself."

"Get on with it," Pollard said when Dillinger paused for dramatic effect.

"The royals and the birds seemed to be the source of all their woes. If the people wanted to go back out into the world, wouldn't it make sense to remove one of the factors that led to their self-imposed imprisonment in the first place? And what's easier to remove: three almighty legendary pokémon? Or three defenseless humans?"

Captain Pollard's eyes lit up with realization and for once, Dillinger didn't want to slap the smile off his face.

She laughed lightly. "Now you see it. To open the door, the royals must die."

§

AN: Well, I said the next chapter would be more cheerful, but I lost what I'd started for that chapter because I thought I could repair my laptop's keyboard myself and (completely predictably) botched the whole thing. In my heartbroken state, I couldn't bring myself to rewrite the chapter just yet, in case I can retrieve the data from the hard drive (I think I just static-fried the motherboard, not the actual "brain" of the thing) and pick up where I left off. I'm using a tablet to write for now, but it's a frustrating process (hence the short "I'm still alive and producing fiction" chapter). Back your stuff up, kiddos, and don't dissemble laptops in your living room, even if you're trying to prove to your employer that you're not an absolute disaster, even if you kind of are.

But that's not my big news! I GOT HITCHED! I've been married for over a week! WHAAAAT. I just celebrated my first birthday as a married person yesterday (it's been a helluva week, my dudes). To everyone who wished me well, my wife(HOLY WOW) and I thank you! Speaking of thank yous, I have a ridiculous number of those to write and send in the next couple weeks. So my production might be a little slow again, between that and the dead laptop. And Pokémon Sun. Finally evolved that beautiful Alolan Persian. Her name is Lord Honey, and she's a total queen. ANYWAY. Not to worry, I'm still here, and I have big plans for this story, and I hope you stick with me on this adventure! Thank you for reading!