Chapter Three
During the van ride to wherever the hell the Rockets were taking Seven, she spent the time thinking around the one pressing problem that became more and more apparent each time the van hit a bump in the road. Her head throbbed like a trampled toe, her vision flickered, and a dull, prickling ache made every breath an iron maiden. As the pool of power in her head dwindled, and she was forced to edit details, starting with removing the laces on her shoes, then the seams on her pants, and finally the pockets on her coat.
The illusory face must have conveyed her internal struggle, because Dekkard said, "You alright? You're looking pretty pale."
In a haze, she mumbled, "I think it's the smoke."
"Say what?"
Seven repeated herself more forcefully, punctuating it with a loud cough. Dekkard went pale and leaned across the van, relaying the information to his boss. The Admin leaned forward and jerked Seven's chin up.
"Eh, you'll sleep it off," he said. Then he told Dekkard, "Get him to a single cell once we get there. No sense having everyone listen to him coughing."
Ten torturous minutes later, the van stopped. Seven was dragged out of the back and pushed through a series of hallways. Though she had no idea where she was, the concrete walls, lack of windows, and harsh lighting suggested an underground bunker. Glancing back, she saw the carts, one laden with Ghetsis' corpse, as Pokémon unloaded them and carted them off. Without his eyepiece, he looked old and plain, just another man. Other Pokémon wheeled in a liquid-filled storage tank, and Ghetsis was dumped inside with a splash.
Seven stumbled and fell, but Dekkard held her up by the shoulder. "Watch where you're going," he said. "It's not far, so just hang in there."
Perhaps it wasn't far, but the throbbing in her head made each step a mountain and each turn a centrifuge. By the time they arrived, sweat drenched Seven's fur, and her vision had faded to a narrow, gray window.
Dekkard opened the door, pulled the sheets back, and lowered Seven onto the bed. With the last of her strength, Seven pulled the covers tight over herself, prayed no one would check on her, and passed out.
As Dekkard hauled the new recruit off to their quarters, Admin Fisher turned down a desolate hall, where the hustle and noise of the crime syndicate faded to a soft buzz in the back of his ear. He passed four sets of doors, one with his own name mounted on the front, two others for Celeste and Colson, and a fourth left blank.
At the end of the hallway, sitting at a dead end, was one last door. The wood was tastefully refined, polished, honed, intricately carved with angular, geometric patterns, implying status without stating it. Carved into the wood was the name Giovanni.
Admin Fisher wiped sweat from his brow. His hands lingered over the tiny, rough patch that marked the top of his scar, and he stopped to trace its path down his cheek and to his upper lip. Then he shook his head, gritted his teeth, and jerked the door open.
Giovanni's office, at first glance, looked like an unkempt patch of rainforest. Huge leafy ferns blotted out the lights from the ceiling, the carpet had the look and texture of earthy loam, and a waterfall trickled down the stone façade to the left. However, upon closer inspection, traces of human design transformed unkempt nature to orderly decoration. The ferns were planted in symmetry, with exactly the same number of fronds growing from each pot, and each plant, though free to grow in its own direction, reached the same height and size. The stone wall had rivulets carved into it that channeled the spray of water into a stone basin, keeping the carpet dry. Despite all the earth contained in clay pots embedded in the floor, not a single speck of dirt sullied the carpeting.
A mahogany desk stood in the center of the room, carved with patterns that mirrored his door. Its top surface was polished smooth and gleamed from amber varnish painted into the wood's grain. A small stack of paper occupied one side of the desk, and the other was reserved for a cup of coffee on a brown velvet coaster.
Behind the desk, lounging in a leather chair, was Giovanni. He kept his thin gray hair meticulously trimmed and groomed with cedar-scented hair gel. His bony, angular cheeks and sharp green eyes, combined with think arching eyebrows and a slender nose, gave the syndicate boss an efficient, predatory appearance. He wore a gray Armani suit, pressed so thoroughly that it outlined his lean, muscular frame like his own skin. His hands were scrubbed clean of dirt, sweat, and calluses, and a bottle of hand sanitizer was built into the edge of his desk for easy, discreet access.
When the Admin finally confessed to his failure, blushing so furiously that his scar looked like a streak of lightning through a twilit sky, Giovanni felt no rage. Rather, he had to work himself into a fury, divorced of emotion, to sufficiently reprimand the quivering failure kneeling before him. He lifted his right hand, and his eyes darted to a mug of hot coffee sitting in front of him, about where a right-handed blow to his polished mahogany desk would fall. Giovanni didn't like how the mug was perched near the edge of his coaster, enough that a significant disturbance could cause it to tip, staining his carefully pressed suit and neat stacks of documents. Instead, he kept his right hand stationary, stood, and hefted his left hand high into the air before slamming it, at an angle designed to soften the impact on his hand, onto a short stack of papers. Even through the insulation, his blow made the desk dully echo with the force of his induced anger. Fisher shrank away from the sound.
Giovanni engineered his voice to convey carefully strangled rage. "Tell me everything."
Fisher threw himself into a furious, babbling account of the trip there, disabling the front door alarms, killing the receptionist and everyone they saw in the hallways, breaching the door, destroying the server rooms, killing everyone. All perfectly in step with the plan. Then, no Seven. Cell was empty when they got there. Sprayed everywhere, nothing. Found a survivor in a cell-
"Wait," Giovanni said. Fisher stopped as abruptly as a truck hitting a concrete wall. The presence of this survivor bothered him somehow, but he couldn't fit it together.
"The survivor was in a cell?"
"A locked cell," the admin added. "He was clever, I'll give him that."
Giovanni pulled a tablet out of a drawer and brought up a detailed layout of the lab. Of particular interest to him was the absence of locks in the research area.
"Was there anything in the cell?"
Fisher gave him a thorough description of every item in the room, down to the contents of each desk drawer. After asking for more details about the laptop and hearing about its recent internet history, he ordered Fisher to continue the story.
Convinced the survivor to help them find Seven. Searching the cell, finding the hole under the shower-
"Stop." Giovanni took a sip of his lukewarm coffee, taking the moment to collect his thoughts. Then he asked, "How long did this take?"
"About a minute."
"When was the hole made?"
"Don't know."
"The room's contents?"
"Empty."
Giovanni let these clues settle into place, like grains of sand working their way to the bottom of a pile of pebbles, as he took a long swallow. Then he wiped his lips with a handkerchief from a drawer and signaled for his Admin to continue.
Pushed survivor into the hole. Learned where it led. Ran out of time, took all the Pokémon and the survivor. Survivor fell ill due to residual smoke in the hole, and was now in solitary.
Giovanni didn't point out the smoke was already gone before Seven's cell was opened. He also decided not to correct Fisher's incomplete information about Subject Seven, about the fact it could create realistic illusions.
"Did you happen to get this survivor's name?"
Fisher told him. With a swipe of his fingers, Giovanni brought up the employment register for Harmonia Labs. The name Steven Sun was ostentatiously absent from the list.
"Employment status?"
Fisher guessed a researcher, based on the lab coat.
"Continue."
The Admin concluded the tale with a clean getaway with all the remaining Pokémon in the facility, and added that they were being added to premium storage as he spoke. He also added Ghetsis' corpse to the list, along with Admin Colson's continued investigation of the facility grounds. Giovanni held up his hand and said, "Leave me. I'll decide your punishment later."
Fisher went pale again. He bowed and left, gently closing the door behind him. Giovanni thumbed a button underneath his desk, and the door locked itself with a soft click. Then he accessed the security camera footage with his tablet. Thumbing past the break rooms, office areas, and hallways, he stopped on solitary bedrooms and scrolled through camera after camera until he found the room occupied by "Steven Sun." The room was still registered as unoccupied. With a flick of his fingers, he changed its status to 'Do Not Disturb'.
The figure in the bed was completely obscured by a blanket. He rewound the footage to when they were brought into the room and watched them enter the bed three times, but he saw no gap in the disguise.
Wrinkles furrowed Giovanni's brow. He reviewed all the information he had on Subject Seven, from Ghetsis' audio logs to written reports of intellectual and behavioral tests. Upon first assessing this information, he assumed Seven would want nothing more than freedom, a desire he manipulated every day in countless peons within the syndicate's structure. Yet, the contradiction of behavior and supposed desire puzzled him. Had Seven wanted freedom, all it had to do was, once outside, turn invisible and slip away. From there, it could assume any identity it wished, and no one would ever find it.
He picked up the mug, and realized it felt cold against his fingers. He rummaged around his desk for a pokéball labeled "Torkoal", called it out on the carpet, and set his mug atop its rugged, hot shell. After twenty seconds, steam wafted from the heated coffee. He called back the Pokémon, dropped the ball back into the pile, and took a sip. The heat was just below the threshold of pain, if sipped carefully, and the coffee stayed smooth and earthy despite getting cooked again.
Giovanni squirted sanitizer into his hands, letting the heady scent of isopropyl alcohol tickle his nose as he rubbed it into the spaces between his fingers. Then he moved the solitary room's footage to a corner on his tablet as he went back to reviewing his documents.
Changelog
5/27/18 - some cleanup. Also just realized that Admin Fisher was spelled Fischer in the beginning, so I changed that as well. Oops.