Chapter Eight
The next morning, Seven woke up to see blood stains all over her legs. She backed away, tangling herself in the blanket, before last night's memories caught up with her. Slowly untangling herself, she fastened an illusion onto her face and looked around her new room. Her night light, though it had been transferred, was now on the opposite wall. The room had another foot of space on each wall, a closet in the back, and an air conditioner.
A black uniform waited at the foot of her bed. Seven stripped off her clothes, rubbed the dried blood out of her fur, and put on the new suit. It fit her about as well as human clothes could be expected to, the pants coming short of her ankles and a touch loose at the waist despite her new belt, the shoes needing treatment before they would accommodate her feet, and the shirt matting her fur down around her neck.
She tried shoving her mane down the shirt, but doing so left her unable to turn her neck. A hat, which rested atop the pile, fit snugly on her head, but her attempts to bunch up all her hair underneath it made a wobbly, unstable tower that collapsed the moment she took a step. In the end, all she could do was take one of her claws, which had grown longer and sharper during her time as a pawn, and saw off as many of the obtrusive locks as she could and stuff them in her mattress. Her head felt extremely light, and she felt a pang of regret when she reached back and felt nothing but air.
After breakfast with the Grunts, Murphy walked up to her. He kept a respectful distance away and did not meet her eye.
"He's dead, isn't he?"
Seven paused for a moment, wondering what she should say. Then she nodded. It was the only response she had to give.
That, however, was enough. With a regretful wave, Murphy walked off into the throngs of pawns migrating to the labyrinth. The Grunts wandered off, dispersing through the whole building, save for one that beckoned to her. With a start, she realized it was Dekkard.
"Well, look at you!" he said, eyeing the uniform. "I didn't take you for the type to be a Grunt, that's for sure. Well, follow me, and I'll get you set up."
If the labyrinth resembled purgatory, then the place Dekkard took her more closely resembled hell. They passed deep into the labyrinth, close by the service shaft Seamus led her down, and passed through the door she smelled earlier. As intolerable as that stench was with the door closed, the noxious gust of air that assailed her nostrils proved so potent that vomit surged up her mouth and out her nose.
Dekkard handed her a rag and a respirator with a canister of gas. After wiping her lips and nose clean, she forced the mask over her lupine face. Though the edges didn't close around her head, the stream of gas pouring out of it kept the foul odors at bay.
"I remember my first time here. I actually puked all over the floor. Anyways, welcome to the chop shop!"
Dekkard gestured grandly at the towering rows of cramped cages. Tens of thousands of Ratatta screeched and squeaked behind iron bars, reaching for the dim incandescent light that flickered from the ceiling lights. Each cage was supplied with moldy bread and murky brown water. Sickness spread like wildfire, and hundreds of corpses were thrown out of cages and replaced with new victims.
Further down the hall, Seven saw the fate that befell the corpses. Limp bodies vanished in huge metal grinders that pounded flesh, gristle, and bone into a fine paste. Inside a huge mixing tank, workers dumped vast vats of chemicals into the soupy mixture of meat, then countless round pellets were squeezed out of the tank and baked until brown. This time, the vomit she held back before spilled out of her mouth, seeping out of the edges of her mask and dripping on the floor.
"On the books, this whole building is a Pokémon food processing plant," Dekkard explained, stepping over the sticky brown droplets Seven sprayed onto the floor. "It's a bit more literal than most Pokémon owners would be comfortable with, but auditors only see the ground floor facility."
They walked on, past a whole mile of concentrated Pokémon suffering. The smell of her own bile seemed heavenly compared to the stench creeping in through the edges. After a while, she felt the oxygen in her tank falter and searched around for a replacement mask.
"Running out already?" Dekkard asked. "Wow, you sucked up that tank fast." He detached the tank from his own back and handed it to her. "Use that sparingly, it only has a quarter."
Dekkard loosened his mask and grimaced at the smell. "So, like I was saying, at the end is the nursery. Take whichever of the bigger ones you like."
The columns of cages were replaced with one bigger, multi-layered structure of inter-connected tubes and large, spacious dens. On the lower levels, maturing Rattata tussled and gnawed at each other, while mother Rattata nursed their newborns on the higher levels, guarded by the fathers.
Dekkard opened a hatch, handed Seven a pokeball, and gestured through the opening. "Choose wisely, not that it really matters."
Seven, unable to tell the scurrying rats apart, threw at random and caught a scrawny specimen in a corner. The pokéball floated back up to her hand, and she tucked it in the new belt at her side.
Dekkard smiled at her. "I know I said it didn't matter, but what made you pick the runt of the litter? Expecting people to give you their Pokémon out of pity?"
Seven shrugged at him. Dekkard chuckled and coughed at the stench. "Ugh, let's get out of here before I get sick."
Seven, whose air had once again started to run out, couldn't agree more. They ran past white-suited pawns, flecked with filth and blood, and back into the relative clean air on the other side of the door. Then they worked their way back through the labyrinth and towards the stairway Seven remembered from the day she was dragged down here.
"Alright, before you go up, you have to get a set of civilian clothes." Dekkard opened a door, revealing a huge walk-in closet. Shirts, pants, shoes, hats, scarves, gloves, purses, backpacks, socks, underwear, swimsuits, and accessories of every shape and size imaginable lined its walls and stood in leaning stacks. Dekkard rummaged through the pile, took out a flannel jacket, a plain white tee, and khakis, flung off his uniform down to his underwear, and threw on the civilian clothes.
"Alright, now for your stuff." In one corner rested a vacuum-packaged set of clothes. Dekkard tore the plastic off and handed the clothes to her. "You had your clothes picked for you," he said. "Anytime you go out, you are to wear these. Understood?"
Seven unruffled the clothes and inspected them. In her hands, she held a long, light black leather coat, a pair of black jeans with an elastic waistband, and a wide-brimmed black hat. She threw off her uniform, tucked it next to Dekkard's, and tried on the new clothes. Thanks to the elastic band, the pants fit with some effort, and the loose, light leather jacket let her fur breathe.
"Seems like they have it out for you," Dekkard said. "It'll be hard to slip through a crowd in those clothes." He shrugged. "Part of your test, I guess. Anyways, let's get moving. A keycard for getting into the building is in the right pocket, and a map in the left. Whatever you do, make sure the police don't get that map. Eat it if you have to, got it?"
Seven nodded quickly. Dekkard grinned. "Good. Time for a demonstration."
Dekkard led the way through the PokéPals Food Processing offices on the top floor and onto the main streets. Seven's gaze was drawn skyward, at the brilliant blue sky cleaved in thin slices by monolithic buildings towering around her and glittering in the rising sun. She forced herself to look down and navigate the rushing crowds of people. Through the human river, Dekkard slipped through people like an eel, scanning waists and faces with deceptively disinterested eyes. Seven tailed him twenty feet behind, barreling into people and shoving them aside in a desperate attempt to match his speed.
Despite the crowded atmosphere around her, Seven felt strangely happy being surrounded by all these people. A few pedestrians gave her angry second glances as she bumped into them, but none examined her, or pointed, or paid her any mind at all. She may have been a boulder tumbling through that stream, but she still felt like part of the river.
After ten minutes of walking, the crowd thinned out. Dekkard ambled past small street shops, idly window shopping while making sidelong glances down the sidewalks. Then he lagged back towards Seven.
"See any white masks?" he asked hoarsely.
"Uh, no?"
"Good. They're bad news. Now, I've got a mark. Someone with a few pokemon, preferably, young and cheerful, the type to take random matches. You can either challenge them yourself or wait for someone else to come along, whatever you want. Aha! It's starting."
A teenage girl in a yellow skirt took out a pokéball and called out a Golduck. A young man wearing a black tank-top answered with a Raichu.
"Perfect, now watch a master at work." Dekkard called out a Weezing and a Golbat. He ordered the first to spew a billowing cloud of smoke and had the Golbat dart into it. Seconds later, the Golbat flew out with two pokéballs in its mouth. Dekkard took them, called back the Pokémon, and vanished into an alley. Seven ran after him.
"It won't be nearly that simple for you," he said as they took a few random turns, putting the growing noise in the street far behind them. "With just that Rattata, you'll have to plan carefully. Now, get that map out and I'll show you where to go next."
Seven unfolded the white piece of paper in her pocket. It showed a few side-streets, and a huge X at the end of an alleyway. After hitting one of the streets on the miniature map, they walked down the alley and knocked on the brick wall at the end. A grate slid aside, and a set of frantic brown eyes scanned the alley. Then, with a muffled thud, the brick swung back, and a black-clad man waved them inside. The room was small, cramped, and poorly lit, and it had only one table. A machine with a circular divot in the middle rested on the table, plugged into a cracked outlet on the far wall.
Dekkard handed him the two pokéballs. The man set one on the machine. It whirred to life, then a loud snak! echoed through the room. He took the ball, set it in a box, and repeated the procedure with Dekkard's other catch.
"He removes the GPS units so cops don't find them," Dekkard said. "So don't even think about trying to keep one."
"Why don't you just snatch them off of belts while you walk by?" Seven asked.
Dekkard stared at her in amazement, clearly visible even in the dim light of the cramped room, and burst out laughing. "Wow, I had no idea you were this clueless! What on earth are the higher-ups thinking?" Then he wiped tears out of his eyes. "The pokéballs read thumbprints. They won't detach from a belt or open unless it recognizes the thumbprint of the person who owns it, but once they're active, anyone can use them. They tried making them thumbprint-activated all the time, but the balls don't read thumbprints properly when they're big. So, the only time you can steal them is when the Pokémon are out. Got it?"
"Seven nodded."
"Great. Then get to it. Your week starts now."
Changelog: 8/19/18 - tweaked the prose a bit