Chapter Four
Seven awoke, smothered by bed sheets, groggy and confused. Each heartbeat forced her skull inward like a lemon press, squeezing the juice from her brain. She tugged at the side of the sheet and, as the blanket slipped enough for light to creep in, she remembered where she was and yanked the blanket down. She paused, breathing, feeling her chest puff out the sheets above her. Then she reached for her power. She gasped as white-hot liquid filled her veins. The pressure inside her head evaporated. Drawing up a thick trickle, she assumed the face she remembered from yesterday and assembled the illusory wardrobe. Then she lifted the blanket's edge, letting in a blade of light by which she examined her handiwork. She narrowed a few straps and widened both pockets before slipping out of bed and opening the door.
A narrow, brightly lit white-walled hallway closed in around her. LED lights in the ceiling illuminated every surface from hidden nooks between ceiling tiles. Footsteps clamped against the gray concrete floor, but sharp turns hid their source. In one corner, she noticed a camera peering at her. She leaned against the door and stared at it, waiting.
After a minute, a set of footsteps grew louder. She turned to her left and saw a tall, lanky man striding towards her. He wore a pair of black-rimmed glasses, and his wavy black hair stuck out at odd angles. He had a scruffy black goatee around thin, pale lips. His white lab coat, faded and worn in patches, was emblazoned with a bright red R on the front. He wore sturdy black jeans and rubber boots with rugged soles, along with forearm-length black rubber gloves.
He walked up to her, removed a glove, and held out the naked hand. Seven hesitantly shook it.
"Doctor Seamus Colson, Ph. D. in Neuroscience from Yale," he said, giving the last word a triumphant vocal fanfare.
Seven thought for a moment. "Steven Sun, Biology."
"Just a bachelor's?" he asked. Then he shrugged. "Oh well. You're lucky Giovanni needs someone with hands-on experience. Come on, you'll be with me today."
The doctor walked past her. She hurried after him, and after a short walk, they stopped in front of a locker room.
"Get in," he said with a gesture at the door. "New clothes are hanging on the racks. Pick something that fits, and throw everything you have, clothes, personal items, everything, down the chute." He gave her a stern shake of his head. "You don't want to know what would happen if they found a cell phone on you."
Seven stepped into the locker room. The tiny, cramped room housed a rack full of uniforms on one side, and a garbage chute on the other. As Seven peered at row after row of shirts, pants, socks, belts, coats, boxers, briefs, boots, and shoes, all in black or white and emblazoned with the Rocket R, she realized she had two serious problems.
First, she didn't have a clue how to put on most of the clothing. The coat was straightforward enough, and she felt reasonably certain she could wriggle into the pants and shirt with a few tries, but her clawed, canine feet would make socks and shoes tricky, and she didn't have the slightest clue what to make of the underwear. After racking her brain for a moment while peering at the underwear, pretending to examine the labels marked with varying sizes, she figured that the briefs went over the pelvic region, followed by the boxers.
As each illusory article of clothing she wore went into a pile in the corner, to be buried beneath other clothes, she fleshed out her human mask, adding hair to the arms and chest, the bulge of biceps and abs, toenails and buttocks, all the human bells and whistles Ghetsis had her practice. Clothed in human nudity, Seven turned towards the clothing racks and gathered up a bundle of clothes.
After shoving the largest pair of briefs halfway up her legs, she realized that the elastic straps around the smaller holes would be painful around her legs. After some internal debate, she put on an illusory pair of briefs, hid the real pair in her hair, and slid into a pair of boxers. She paced around the room, ensuring that the fabric didn't snag on her hair, before trying the jeans. After trying a few pairs, she decided on the largest. Her knees bent a little higher up than a human's and the waist was loose around her, but an illusion fixed the first and a black leather belt, the second.
After that came the shirt, and the laborious process by which she threaded her hair through the hole for her head. She went through two pairs until finding one large enough to accommodate her long muzzle. Halfway through, she felt an object lodged in her hair snag on the hole. She got her hand around it and felt the trigger of a gun against her finger. She froze. Pinning her finger behind the trigger, she guided it through and left it in her hair.
The lab coat went over the rest. She felt queer satisfaction bubbling up in her as she draped the white coat around her shoulders. The R over the right pocket had the deep, rich glow of blood. The discarded clothing went over the illusion in the corner, and she made the false clothing vanish.
Last came the footwear. Though the claws on her feet were trimmed short, they jutted out far enough to add an inch onto her foot length, making the socks flop around at the ends. Worse still, her feet widened out, scrunching her toes together in boots that matched her foot length. In the end, she took the largest pair of boots they had and padded the heel with the briefs she had kept.
Fully dressed after thirty minutes, she confronted her second problem, not having any clothes to throw down the chute. Her eyes fell on the heap of clothes she had tried on, tossed into the corner over the illusions. She pretended to rummage through the pile, covered some clothing with the proper illusions, and threw them down the chute.
Having thus disposed of all other problems, she turned her attention to the pistol, still braided in her hair. Throw it away, and resign herself to this new life, or keep it, and with it, both the hope of escape and the danger of discovery.
Her first instinct was to keep it. Knowing nothing of the situation she was in, having the option to fight her way out felt reassuring. However, she had little idea how to use the device in her hair, and she knew that, once fired, it would draw the Rockets' wrath down upon her.
Throwing the gun away seemed far safer, but she wondered how to get it into the chute without a camera noticing. Then she realized, why not have them notice? If she made a show of submission out of disposing her only presumed means of fighting back, they would be more inclined to trust her. With that thought in mind, she pulled the gun out of her hair, covering the act with an illusion of taking it from her armpit, held the firearm up above her head, and dropped it down the chute with a thunderous clatter.
When she walked out of the room, Seamus was leaning against the opposing his wall, tapping his foot and glancing at the camera.
He stretched his arms and pushed off the wall. "That took a while," he said.
"Couldn't find a size I liked."
He raised an eyebrow. "Had something important to say goodbye to?"
Seven flinched, thinking that he knew about the gun. "Uh, yeah."
"Turn out your pockets." The order sounded like a cold draft roaring down the hall. One by one, Seven turned out every pocket on her uniform, revealing only tiny balls of gray lint.
"Good. I'd do a full body check, but we're already late. Come on, time to work."
Seven's stomach grumbled. Seamus gruffly said, "You eat after the important stuff's done, got it?"
Seven nodded and hurried after him.
As they walked down the halls, the rows of doors spread out further, and the bare metal doors sprouted windows when they turned a corner. Seven peered into a few rooms. Some were unoccupied, with sleek metal tables and counters crammed with drawers. Others housed Pokémon of many varieties, tended by humans with shears, syringes, combs, scalpels, and treats. Surgical operations and grooming happened side by side in a random, disturbing jumble, and after seeing one Arcanine getting its throat sliced open, she reflexively grabbed at her own throat, feeling the scars around her trachea. She breathed in thin gasps, and her hold on the illusion slipped for a second, revealing a tiny wisp of hair sticking out from under her shirt, before she snapped it back in place.
"I was also abducted, like you, about three years ago," Seamus said. "It's rough at first, but do what they tell you, and you'll be fine. Really, it's the others you should pity."
"Others?"
"The ones that choose to work here." Seamus slowed his pace so that he walked in stride with Seven. "There's quite a few people, more than I ever realized, that leave college with degrees and have nowhere to go. The Rockets employ the most desperate of them, put them to work and leave threats looming over their head." He stroked the hairs on his chin. "I can't imagine what they tell their families." Seamus chuckled and said, "When you really think about it, it's a blessing being unable to leave. It makes them trust you more."
Seven took a few deep breaths, shoving the thoughts of throat surgery out of her mind. "What will happen to me?"
"Depends on how useful you are." He grabbed Seven's arm and pulled her down a side corridor, leading up to a wide set of double doors at the end of the hallway. "One thing I respect the Rockets for, they reward success far better than the real world."
Seamus braced his hands against the door and shoved them wide open. Beyond, Seven saw row after row of spacious Pokémon cages, stretching to gray metal horizons on either side of her. Each cubicle housed a Pokémon in an environment suited for it, from a Glaceon in an icebox to a Blastoise lounging in a deep pond. Dozens of scientists scurried from cage to cage, walking in with platters of food and grooming tools, and walking out with bulging white bags. In between every tenth row ran a miniature trolley system that sped silently through the facility, carrying overburdened carts and exhausted scientists to destinations across the facility.
"Welcome to your new job," Seamus said, gesturing across the facility.
Seven stared in awe and fear at the labyrinthine complex before her. But before she could finish taking in the bewildering spectacle, Seamus dragged her over to a horizontal trolley two rows in. They hopped on and sped off far to the right side of the room.
"We'll start you off easy," he said. "That Dratini they brought in yesterday isn't eating. It's too skittish."
"So you want me to get it eating," Seven added.
"Exactly. It's too valuable to drug up or force-feed, so it's a perfect opportunity to prove your worth."
The trolley lurched to a halt, flinging Seven forward against the guard railing. Seamus stepped off and gestured for her to follow. A few rows further down, bordering an expanse of empty cells, were all the subjects from Ghetsis' Harmonia Labs. Of those she recognized, Fourteen was on the very end, motionless in the center of a small, bare room. Twelve was in an adjacent cell with a rocky pool of water and lush grass, squeezed against a corner, shaking and staring out the window. Its pupils dilated wildly, and it hissed at them.
Further down, she saw One and Three, the former in a grassy cell with a tiny sapling, and the latter chained in a thick metal prison, with intravenous injections coiling around it like leeches. Though she had never seen the rest, she figured that the myriad Pokémon wedged between them were the other subjects. There was one empty cell in the middle. Inside was a desk and a bed. Her breath caught in her throat as they passed it.
Next to Twelve's cell was a cart with a jar of oil, a cloth towel, and a plate of oran berries. Seamus placed his hand on the cart and shoved it towards her. Then he opened a metal door built into the side of the cell.
"Show time," he said, gesturing for her to enter.
As she took the plate and walked past Seamus, she glanced around the cells for cameras. She found two, perched in opposite corners, one right above the Dratini.
The Dratini flattened itself against the wall as she walked over. Once she was directly under the camera, she leaned forward and removed the illusion around her face. The Dratini squeaked in surprise at the sudden transformation, and then it hummed happily when it recognized her. She offered the plate of berries, and it hesitantly reached for one, snatching it up and crunching it into pulp. The Dratini wolfed down the rest, curled up, and closed its eyes.
Seven walked out of the room, and Seamus locked the door. "Good," he said. "Get the rest taken care of and we'll go to breakfast."
The other subjects proved a greater challenge, considering that none of them knew her face. Imitating members of the lab, she doled out food and cleaned pens for all the other subjects, drawing on the conversations she had overheard and the carts that had passed by her cell. She waxed the shiny metal armor of a Metang, groomed a Ninetales, taking care not to touch its tails, and rubbed sand over a Flygon's molting skin.
Scuffling feet outside the cell caught her attention. Seven set down the brush she used for grooming a Delphox and stepped outside, closing the door behind her. Staring at the Harmonia subjects was a tall, slender woman with blonde hair tied into a bob, striking blue eyes, angular cheekbones, a sleek silver jacket with an R on the front, high-heels, and thin black gloves. Seamus stood at attention next to Twelve's cage, feet pressed together and hand in salute on his brow. He motioned for Seven to copy the salute, and after a moment's hesitation, she mimicked him.
"At ease," the woman said. Seamus lowered his hand, and Seven followed his lead. The woman walked over to Seven and stared into her eyes. Seven averted her gaze towards Seamus.
"So you're Steven Sun?" she asked.
"Y – yes."
Seamus rapped on a metal door and hissed "Madam." Seven hastily added "Yes Madam."
"Good. I am Admin Celeste. I run all of Team Rocket's profit centers and oversee its finances. Now, I want to touch the Dratini."
Seven nodded and jogged over to Twelve's cage. Seamus opened the door for her, and she stepped inside, followed by Celeste. Twelve stared warily at the admin, but it made no sound as Seven walked closer. She held out her arms, scooping Twelve up to her chest, whispered soothingly into Twelve's slender ears, and carried her over to Celeste.
The Admin was tender with her touch, massaging the top of Twelve's forehead and stroking its ears. The Dratini closed its eyes and hummed softly, leaning into the caresses.
"Excellent work," Celeste said tonelessly. "It'll be sold in a week. Make sure it's tame by then."
With that, Celeste left the cell and rode off on a trolley. Seven set the Dratini down and walked over to Seamus. He wiped a drop of sweat off of his forehead and smiled at Seven.
"Ready for breakfast?" he asked.
The rumbling of Seven's stomach was all the answer he needed. He laughed as they got on the trolley and left the labyrinth of Pokémon cells.
Changelog
5/27/18 - some cleanup, trimmed the fat off of the narration, got rid of some superfluous words, that sort of stuff.