Chapter Five
"So, are we ever allowed to leave?" Seven asked as she heaped an unfamiliar, pungent-smelling yellow goop onto her plate. After scanning the long buffet tables, she found no sustenance she recognized, so she figured she might as well try a bit of everything and learn what's edible.
The buffet encircled a spacious cafeteria with neat, orderly columns of benches and tables. Two distinct groups shared this room. On the left, researchers in lab coats ate in silence. To the right, black-clad Grunts chattered amongst themselves as they crammed food in their mouths. Neither color mingled with the other.
"Not pawns like us," Seamus answered, gesturing at the white half of the room. He formed a heaping bed of bacon on his plate and laid a row of sausages on top. "We're stuck here. Grunts get sent out on missions, and higher-ranking officials can go where they please."
Seven slapped half of a floppy brown disc next to the yellow goop." Have you ever tried to be a Grunt?"
"Hell no! Are you kidding me? Not a day goes by without at least one Grunt getting shot or thrown in the slammer. Nah, six months ago I might've thought about it, but now's the worst time."
"What happened six months ago?"
"All hell broke loose." Seamus grabbed a slice of bacon with his teeth and worked it into his mouth with his tongue. "Admin Tyron and two-hundred professionals got raided at another facility. Every single one got thrown in Stonebough. Worse yet, it gave politicians and cops the guts to stand up to the Rockets. No, just keep your head down and do the work you're good at. It won't be so bad, I promise."
They shuffled down to the end of the buffet table. Crate after crate of carton beverages rested in baths of ice water. A little sign saying "Take One" sat in the center of the beverage buffet. Seven chose at random, taking a container labeled "Milk." Seamus, however, took two different juices.
"Special privileges," Seamus said. "Work hard enough and the Rockets reward."
They found an isolated table on the white half of the room. A few men gave respectful nods as Seamus passed, and one gave Seven a quick, subdued welcome. They sat out of arms reach of the other researchers around them.
"So, here's what you'll be doing for the rest of the day."
As Seamus rattled off a to-do list, Seven scooped a small heap of scrambled eggs onto her fork and placed it in her mouth. An indescribably foul taste overwhelmed her tongue like a deluge of sulfurous muck. Her powers quivered, and he had to hold tight to the illusion to keep it from rippling. She forced herself to swallow and gagged as she felt the noisome lump plummet down her throat.
Seamus hadn't noticed her lapse in attention. "And then you'll tag along with Murphy and learn to care for the Dodrio. Those birds are always a handful, better watch your eyes."
Seven hastily nodded and scraped the eggs off to one side of the plate. She picked up a lump of pancake not defiled by egg crumbs and pushed it past her teeth. She mulled over its dull taste, praying that this wouldn't be the best option from the buffet tables. It wriggled down her throat like a limp caterpillar.
"After that, you'll tend to that Tyranitar. No one's been able to get close to that thing, so I hope you're prepared."
Seven grimaced at the thought of walking up to the hulking green monster with a tray of food. One time, she saw a researcher limping away with long gashes on his leg, dragging behind him a crumpled metal cart with teeth marks gouged through it. She pushed the thought away and placed a thin strip of bacon on her tongue. Salty grease dribbled down her throat as she chewed, and while it wasn't quite as rich and meaty as the raw steaks she usually received, she ate it all.
"I can't promise anything," she said between bites. "Even Ghetsis had a hard time with that one."
"Well, you better try if you want to last here," Seamus warned. "For all the world knows, you're dead, so killing you is a lot easier."
Seven tore open the milk carton and took a hesitant sip. It tasted sour and unpleasant to her tongue, as though it had already spoiled, even though the box claimed an expiration date two months in the future. "How often do they kill people?"
Seamus wolfed down the piles of bacon, drained both cartons of juice at the same time, dabbed his face clean with a napkin, and stood. "Come on, the Dodrio will get groomed soon."
They stacked the plates by a garbage can and returned to the labyrinth. Taking a trolley a few minutes to the left and another minute further in, they arrived at a cell far larger than usual, about the size of the mess hall. Inside, a couple dozen Dodrio raced over flat grasslands and drank from a shallow pool in one corner.
A short, portly man was riding one of the Dodrio, giving orders with flicks of his fingers on the three spindly necks. He wore a heavy pair of goggles, a slick brown helmet imitating the appearance of a Dodrio head, and a brown leather jacket bulging with protective pads. When he saw Seamus approaching the pen, he flicked the middle neck, and the Dodrio he rode skidded to a stop.
"So that's the fresh meat?" the man asked, sauntering over to greet them. He gave Seamus a hearty handshake and held out his hand for Seven. She took it and winced as her hand was nearly smashed by his thick, callused fingers.
"Name's Murphy," he said. "Biology major from U of C."
"Steven Sun, Biology," she answered back, massaging her hand behind her back.
"Another Biology major! I always regretted not doing Biochemistry, but I was awful at Calculus."
"Me too," Seven replied with a nervous chuckle.
"Yeah, well, I'd still probably be here anyways. I got picked up when the Rockets did a raid where I interned. I'd been tending to the Dodrio ever since. They get a lot of money from gambling on the races."
Seamus turned around and walked out the door. "Don't be too rough on him, alright Murph?"
He patted his stomach and chuckled. "No promises! I still haven't trained some of these buggers to leave eyes alone, you know!"
Seamus had a rueful scowl on his face. "Or balls," he said, so low that normal human hearing wouldn't have picked it out. Seven heard.
Murphy laughed even harder and knocked the region at the fork of his legs. It gave a hollow thunking sound. "Why do you think I wear this thing all day?"
Seamus grunted and slammed the door shut. Murphy shoved his goggles up, keeping an eye on the birds behind him, and wiped tears out of his eyes.
"I wasn't kidding about the eye thing, you know," Murphy said. He gestured towards a storage rack next to the door. "There should be some spares in there. Put them on, and get the brushes out."
They started with grooming every single Dodrio in the facility, which was quite a challenge, since the birds hated standing still and the ungroomed ones blended in with their companions. After an hour of getting pecked and scratched, they moved on to feeding and faced an opposite problem. Six dozen heads rushed towards the door the moment they heard the cart wheels bump over the entryway, and they swarmed over the troughs of grain. Within moments, only dust remained.
"Ready to ride?" Murphy asked. He tossed Seven a helmet, and she clumsily slapped it over her head. It jostled around her slim, long head, but the straps held it in place.
"Pick whichever one you want." Wallace gave her a big toothy grin and tapped his goggles. "But be careful, some are feistier than others."
While Murphy put away the brushes, Seven scanned the room and picked out one a little shorter than the rest. It hadn't fidgeted quite as much during the grooming, and it was one of the last to the food trough. Its right beak was chipped off on the bottom. When she stepped towards it, the bird's three heads regarded her with a vague sense of interest.
As she lifted her leg to mount, Murphy had turned around and saw the Dodrio she had picked out. "No, wait! I didn't tell you-"
Seven didn't hear the rest, because the moment her weight shifted onto the back of the Dodrio, it bolted forward, so fast that Seven was shoved through the Dodrio's tail feathers. By the time she got herself upright, the Dodrio was fast approaching a solid wall. In a panic, she flicked the center neck, sending the signal to slow down. However, this Dodrio didn't slow down so much as abruptly come to a complete stop. Carried forward by her own inertia, she flew over the Dodrio's heads, which were nearly touching the ground, and tumbled forward in the air. On instinct, she flipped and shifted her feet under her, landing upright and bracing her arms against the wall.
Murphy rushed over and shooed away the Dodrio, which was angrily clicking its beaks. Then he put a hand on Seven's shoulder and said, "You just had to pick Goliath, didn't you?"
"Goliath?"
He tapped his goggles. "The main reason I wear these." He dusted off Seven's lab coat and adjusted her helmet. "Well, I'd say your landing was about a nine. Nice footwork. But your riding skills need a lot of work."
Murphy explained how to turn by tapping the neck at the desired direction, and how to shift on the Dodrio's back to keep balanced. When she asked how to slow down, Murphy laughed and said, "Dodrio have only two speeds – fast and dead stop. Want to try it again?"
Against the man's recommendations, Seven went straight for Goliath. This time, she was ready for the sudden lurch forward, but the moment she flicked its right neck, it banked so hard she flew off the side and rolled to a stop at the edge of the pond. She got up before the Dodrio could trample her. Again, she tried, and each time she got back on, she was thrown the moment she gave a command. She even did a face-plant into the wall, and her muzzle throbbed as she got back on.
An hour later, Seamus returned, knocking on the door first before entering. He stayed within the doorway, giving the flocks of Dodrio wary stares.
"Let's go, Steven."
Seven put the helmet and goggles down and walked out of the cage. Murphy called "Good luck!" as the door slammed shut.
When Seven and Seamus hopped on a monorail, he said, "If you have anything you'd like to do with your limbs, now may be your last time."
Seven couldn't tell if he was joking or not.
As they raced through the labyrinth, Seven frantically searched her memory for any scraps of information she could recall from the Ghetsis' audio logs. She knew it preferred meat, lots of it, and didn't particularly care if it was chopped up on a platter or walking around in chainmail.
The monorail lurched to a stop in front of Subject Three. In front of the reinforced steel cage was a trough full of cubed meat and hunks of bone. Four researchers flanked the door, glancing nervously at the Tyranitar thrashing around and yanking the thick metal chains on its arms.
"We tried sedating it," a nearby researcher told Seamus, "But the needles kept breaking. We put a double dose in the food."
"It'll have to do," Seamus answered. Then he turned to Seven and said, "Work your magic."
When the door opened, everyone backed away from it. Seven gripped the cart, squeezing hard to keep her hands from shaking, and walked inside. The door slammed shut behind her, and everyone watched from a safe distance through the energized green barrier.
Seven stood just outside of the reach of the Tyranitar's thick, stony arms. Its razor-sharp claws were inches from her eyes as it strained at the end of its chains. She held up a piece of meat, but the Tyranitar ignored it, staring at her with enough anger in its eyes to ignite wood.
"What would Ghetsis do?" she asked herself. She envisioned his gaunt, fierce visage, heard his voice, and though she wanted nothing more to forget the last twenty years of her life, she needed those memories.
"I'll need a Magneton," She called. After a moment, Seamus cracked open the door and rolled a pokéball to her feet. The door was bolted shut as she pressed the button, and with a flash of red light, a Magneton emerged, floating above her. It took one look at the Tyranitar and backed all the way to the wall, its three eyes locked on its long, metal-crushing claws.
"Now, undo the chains on its legs."
There was a moment's pause as the pawns glanced at each other nervously before one hit a few buttons on a remote. The metal clamps binding its legs snapped open. The Tyranitar flexed its knees and scraped the floor with the talons on its feet, eyeing Seven with intensified bloodlust.
Seven walked just a bit closer to Three, just close enough that it could graze her if it wanted to. Every nerve on her body felt charged, and her muscles twitched uncontrollably. "So, Subject Three, are you going to behave today?"
She stroked the side of her face. When she realized she was mimicking Ghetsis' habit of touching the computer over his right eye, she frowned and lowered her hand. The Tyranitar stared at her and kept its arms perfectly still.
Seven could feel her heart pounding in her chest. Her throat was dry, and the first time she tried to speak, her voice cracked. "Undo the right arm."
"I hope you know what you're doing," Seamus called through the barrier. After a second, the clamp on the right arm opened and fell to the floor.
The moment its arm was free, the Tyranitar lunged forward, slashing at Seven's face. She threw her arms up. The Tyranitar's thick, stony limbs slammed her arms aside, and the claws smacked her head. Seven twisted, keeping the points from slashing her face. Control over her illusion faded for a second, but the lab coat hid the exposed areas.
Once she had repaired the illusion, she stood and told the Magneton to administer a three-thousand volt shock. Whatever the Magneton shot Subject Three with it, it seemed far stronger than the prescribed dose. The Tyranitar screamed with the sound of grinding boulders as arcs of current raced across its stony skin. When the shock stopped, the Tyranitar slumped forward, panting hard. Tears streamed down its face.
"Now will you behave?" Seven asked.
Subject Three looked up at her through tear-filled eyes. Then it backed away, so the ridges on its spine pressed against the back wall. Seven pushed the cart of meat forward, and offered one bloody chunk. The Tyranitar picked it up with the tips of its claws and swallowed it whole. Then it lowered its head to the cart, burying its head in the meat, and ate it clean, leaving long scratches in the metal.
Seven knocked on the door. It opened, and she walked out holding the left side of her face. Her arms wobbled, and she had to lean against the door to keep herself from falling.
"I think I should go to bed now," she said. Seamus helped her onto the trolley and guided her to a wing she didn't recognize, but her vision spun too much to tell if she was somewhere new, or if they had returned to where she awoke that morning. She just barely made it under the covers of the first bed she saw before her illusion vanished.
Changelog
5/27/18 - made some minor changes. Also decided to make pokemon species proper nouns. In other words, Dodrio instead of dodrio. You get the picture.