Chapter Seventeen
The halls echoed back Seven's ragged breathing, as if she were walking through the lungs of a wounded animal. The blood she left in her wake, once a sopping trail of foot-shaped puddles, dwindled down to an occasional drop as the wound in her arm closed up again. Pain lanced up her shoulder with each step. Every time she heard a noise, she sprinted for the nearest shadow, sending a fresh spurt of blood down her fur.
However, no one came for her.
Her vision blurred, and she teetered side to side, leaning against the walls and falling to her knees. Each time she fell, she dug her claws into the floor and heaved herself up, leaving gouges in the steel plates beneath her.
Through the fuzziness of the hallway, one image crisply resolved itself before her: a bathroom sign, a black square with a white human shape. Her eyes widened, and she sped towards it, spattering a fresh stream of blood through the gauze. She shoved the door, wrenched open the nearest stall, and slammed the bolt shut.
Then she sat on the toilet seat, nearly falling in because the seat was lifted up. She left it up, perching herself on the front of the toilet and taking thin, shallow, rapid breaths. Blood dripped into the bowl, coloring the water with dancing red plumes.
Half an hour later, when she finally caught her breath, she took the sodden red gauze off her arm. The clotted bandages stuck to her arm, tearing open the wound as they were pulled away, but only the tiniest trickle of blood seeped from the wound.
Seven looked around for a replacement and saw the roll of toilet paper. It was thin, flimsy, cheap paper, so delicate she could see her nails through it, but with the whole roll wrapped around her arm, it held without tearing.
She twisted the paper into a tight knot and rose, leaning against the toilet with her good arm, but her hand fell on the flush lever. Her hand slipped as the toilet flushed, and she stumbled towards the swirling water. With her left hand, she dug into the plastic wall and held herself up, howling in pain as the strain on the bullet wound sent daggers up her shoulder.
She stared down at the bloody water as it vanished down the drain. Feeling her cracked, parched lips, and licking the roof of her mouth with her sticky tongue, she nearly let herself fall into the fresh, clean water gurgling below her, filling the bowl, but instead, she struggled to her feet and kicked open the stall. The bolt popped free and clattered to the floor.
Seven's feet shook as she took slow, careful steps over to the sink. Leaning over the plastic counter, she wrenched the nearest faucet as far as it would go and buried her mouth in the rush of water. Cold at first, it quickly warmed to scalding temperature. Seven yanked her head back and switched the faucets. This time, she checked before drinking.
When she was done, she pulled her head back, and her eyes met her reflection in the giant, grimy mirror. Her yellow eyes, dulled to gray in the reflection, gave her a dead stare. Blood soaked into the fur around her mouth gave her a grotesque grin. The man's blood. Lou's blood.
With a howl, she jabbed at the reflection with her knife. The blade cracked the glass and slid off the hard metal wall underneath, twisting her hand aside. Her hand flew into the mirror, shattering it. Splinters of glass dug into her fingers. Then her fist slammed into the wall, ramming the glass deeper. The knife fell from her senseless fingers, and Seven stumbled back, falling to the floor.
She tore a toilet paper holder off of a wall with both her hands, ignoring the pain shooting up both arms, and stuck the flimsy plastic in her teeth. Then she wrenched the glass, piece by jagged piece, out of her right hand. Each shard came out with a spurt of blood and a stifled scream. When she could flex her right hand, she jammed the knife between her fingers and wound another roll of toilet paper around it. The paper turned red, but the makeshift bandage held her knife in place.
Once that was done, Seven stood and turned towards the shattered remains of the mirror. Her reflected face was fractured, the morbid blood smile gone.
"I'm going to be better than that," she whispered at the mirror. "Never again. I'll be human. I swear it."
She walked out of the bathroom, but her left hand froze on the cold, shiny metal on the door. She returned to the stall, flinging the door closed behind her, but the door bounced back open. The shattered remnants of her reflection stared at her as she sat down and stared at the floor.
"What am I going to do?" she asked herself. "Before, I didn't have any choices. But now, now I'm free."
She thought back to the attempted escape with Seamus. She saw his brains spattered across the plastic tarp on Giovanni's floor.
"He can't reach me here," she told herself. "What's stopping me from switching sides? I'm sure they would welcome me."
She thought back to the Mightyena, sniffing around the body, and the Knights' disgust for the devoured corpse. There would be no welcome for someone like her, not with them, she told herself.
She stared down at the knife. Her reflection rippled and blurred in the folded steel. Could she keep doing this? Keep killing, keep taking wounds, keep hiding herself? Fight for her humanity, or give up and run?
Her fingers tightened around the hilt of the knife. She stood, this time leaning against the wall, and walked to the door. She nudged it open, peered around the empty hallway, and walked out.
For a moment, she couldn't remember which way she came from, but the sticky red footprints and a long, thin scratch on one wall sent her in the other direction. She abandoned the guise of a Knight in favor of Steven's bland face, and left her blood-stained black uniform exposed.
An hour passed as Seven meandered through narrow, sprawling hallways, peeked into empty, hollow rooms, and searched for any sign of her fellow Rockets. She thought she heard a distant explosion, but when she walked towards it, she got turned around and lost track of its direction.
She despaired of ever finding her way out until, by chance, her hand brushed against the pokéball in her pocket. She wasn't sure what good a Magneton would do, but she called it out anyways. Somehow, she recognized the floating magnetic Pokémon, the same one that zapped the Tyranitar and Goliath, the same one that once belonged to Seamus.
The Magneton's eyes darted around the hallways and locked on her. Its blank stare bored holes into her chest as it waited for an order.
"Help me get out of here," she told it.
The Magneton blinked at her, then it turned away and floated down the hall. Seven followed after it, but it moved too quickly for her to keep up. When it vanished down a corner, she called after it. The Magneton came back, glanced at the wound on her arm, and floated over to her right, at shoulder height. She threw her arm over it and hobbled along, guided by the Magneton's gentle nudges.
Eventually, she heard the sound of voices, echoing from a room up ahead. Footsteps rang against the floor. She stopped short and thought about what to do. She couldn't risk walking out with any disguise, but she had to know who was back there. The adjacent room, though empty, didn't have any vents or windows. She turned invisible, snuck past the doorway, poked an ear into the room and listened to the people beyond. Dozens of footsteps, both human and not, thudded across the vast room beyond.
"All the research equipment is loaded, sir!" one Knight said.
"Good," a smooth, deep voice answered. "Have the other captains evacuate and rendezvous at the main base, and get the other supplies out if you can" The man gave a slow, steady sigh and said, "I can't believe they pushed through the gun and blew up the ambush point."
Seven locked onto that melodious voice. It was the voice of a commander, giving orders to captains and making the plans. His death meant prestige and protection within the ranks of Rockets.
Seven walked blind into that room, guided only by the sounds of footsteps and voices around her. She had to scamper out of the way of sprinting soldiers, and she brushed against solid, hollow shapes. The scalpels glittered in the corners of her eyes, glinting in unseen light each time she turned her head. She clasped her left hand over her mouth and held the knife close to her chest as she followed the sonorous voice to the center of the tumult.
For a minute, the voice fell silent. She hunted for the commander's footsteps, but they were drowned out by the soldiers around him. The air hung heavy with the scent of sweat. Her hands trembled, and her skin turned to ice as the scalpels descended. One glittering blade darted in, gouging a long, clean slice at the center of her chest. A pair of tweezers slithered inside the wound and plucked at her liver, holding one corner out while a scalpel sliced it away. Seven wrenched her hand away from her mouth to cover the wound, but her skin remained unbroken.
Her head spun, and her knees shook. She fell to one knee, blinking her blind eyes and breathing in shallow gasps. Syringes dug into her back and pumped tingling liquids into her veins. Vomit crept up her throat, tasting of blood.
Seven almost ran, but then the commander said something. She was too delirious to make out the word, but the voice was there, just a few feet in front of her. The voice lifted her to her knees. Bracing her knife, she made one tottering step forward, then another. The commander asked, "Do you hear something?" Guided by that voice, Seven held the knife against her heart and plunged it forward.
The knife sank in cleanly, without the jarring impact of steel on bone or the firmness of flesh. Seven made herself visible. The knife stuck out of the commander's left shoulder, and when the man backed away, a thin trail of pink mass clung to the knife tip. Blood gushed out of the wound, bright and thin like food coloring.
He was unusually short man with a matted tangle of gray hair, a long, slender nose, and fiery brown eyes. When he shouted, every man in the room turned towards Seven, guns raised.
"Flash!" Seven shouted.
She vanished as the Magneton flew through the door and filled the room with searing white light. Leaning against the metal Pokémon, Seven staggered out of the room. She made herself and her Magneton invisible.
A dozen soldiers rushed out, fanning across the hallway. Their elbows missed Seven's chest by an inch. She stepped out to ambush them, but the commander's voice boomed out the room.
"Halt!" he shouted. "We better leave before the main group gets here."
"But sir," one soldier protested, "What about the cargo?"
"The Rockets are welcome to it. You're more important than that junk. Now let's go!"
The soldiers ran back as quickly as they came. Within a minute, the sounds of their footsteps died away, but Seven waited ten minutes longer before she dared step inside.
The room was a loading dock for the warehouse. Five train cars were lined up in rows to one side, and smaller metal cubes were scattered across the concrete floor like children's toys. In a clearing near the center of the room, she found the spot where she stabbed the commander. Droplets of blood led away to a garage door on the far side of the room.
A ring of metal chairs sat in one corner of the room, right below a rickety metal stairway to a second floor room. She checked the room above. It was a break room, much like the one by Lou's corpse. She helped herself to a few gnarled, chewy strips of beef jerky and a glass of water. Then she stumbled downstairs took a seat on a metal chair.
She leaned back and stared up at the rusty ceiling. The Magneton floated over her head, staring down at her with its three blank eyes.
"Find the other Rockets," she told it, "and bring them here."
The Magneton flew off, leaving Seven alone to figure out how she would return to base with a bullet wound through her arm. Maybe she should run for it. If they found her like this, who knows what they would do. They'd put her in a cage, just like a Pokémon, and it would be Harmonia Labs all over again. She strained, trying to stand, reaching for the distant door, but she couldn't move. Tears welled in her eyes as she waited to be found.
Changelog
10/9/17 - Details were changed to enhance continuity in later chapters, mainly what happens when Seven stabs the commander.
9/3/18 - Wow, has it been that long already? Uh, I mean - minor edits. Also, a few more continuity tweaks, such as changing the name 'Atheros' to 'Harmonia' in honor of Ghetsis.