Chapter Thirty-Four
When Bruno woke, the world felt silent. Not a glimmer of aura sparkled around him except his own. He watched its flickering blue light. Every so often, a violet spark darted up and popped like a firework, dissolving into tiny black motes.
He opened his eyes. Overhead and all around him, translucent blue light fenced him in a cube twenty feet wide. Clean white covers were pulled over him. The mattress felt cool and soft beneath him, so pliant that lying on his back didn't hurt his tailbone.
A rasping cough set his throat on fire. He lurched to one side, but the sheets had him pinned to the bed. Whipping his head around, he saw a table next to him.
A glass of water had ice cubes floating in it, and perspiration beaded down the sides. Bruno lunged for it, and his shaking hands knocked the glass over. He fumbled for it, picked it up, and tipped it over his muzzle. A few icy drops splashed onto his tongue, but none made it to his throat.
He wriggled towards the table, thinking to lick up the water, and saw a plate of oran berries swimming in ice water. With great care, he drank from the plate. Most of it spilled onto the sheets, but enough ran down his throat to dull the pain. He tried eating a berry, but as he swallowed the crushed pulp, he nearly choked from a coughing fit.
When Bruno went to massage his throat, his fingers brushed against an unfamiliar, flexible lump. He traced the outline of the object. Dread drained the blood from his face. He tugged and tugged, pried at every inch, and even attacked it with his aura, but after five minutes of struggling, the collar remained firmly around his throat.
Breathing hard, Bruno looked around for any means of escape. Beyond the walls was a hazy blue blur, made all the more indistinct by Bruno's aching head, but he could make out a set of indistinct metal walls around and above him. He shivered at its resemblance to Stonebough prison. The sinking feeling that he was captured made a thin red tendril lash out of his aura, crack at the air above him, and disappear.
Feeling for the edge of the bed, Bruno swung his feet around, shoved the covers away, and stood on his feet. Sudden vertigo forced him down. Bitter bile crept at the back of his throat, and his stomach felt as if a pack of Carvanha were gnawing at it from the inside. With a deep breath, Bruno heaved himself to his feet, held back a trickle of vomit, and blinked at the lights flashing in his eyes.
He leaned against the bedpost. After a minute of slow, deep breaths, Bruno felt steady enough to try walking. He took one step towards a translucent wall, and then another. The blue wall shimmered as he approached it. He reached out with a hand, gently inching his hand towards the light. When the tips of his fingers brushed against the barrier, searing hot pain shot through his arm, and with a yelp, he stumbled backwards all the way to the bed.
"Don't try running through it," said a masculine voice behind him. "You'd be nothing but atoms before you came out on the other side. Here, watch."
Bruno turned around. Behind the translucent barrier stood a man of middling height, with short-cut brown hair, tired brown eyes, and thin eyebrows. He held a handful of oran berries in a gloved hand. His uniform was white from head to toe, with red trim and a gold-embroidered red R on the right shoulder.
Bruno bristled, and a snarl rumbled the back of his throat. The snarl turned into a cough, and Bruno fell to his knees. His paws slipped on the spilled water, and his muzzle slammed into the floor.
"I appreciate the gesture, but you don't have to grovel at my feet."
Blinking back tears, Bruno pulled himself up the bed and sat down. With the aura, he reached for the man, grabbing for his throat, but the blue barrier blocked him.
The Admin threw a berry with a slow, underhand toss. It flew high into the air and dropped at eye-level into the wall. In a flash, nothing remained, not even a burnt smell.
"That's high-energy plasma," the Admin told him. "Anything organic will get ripped to atoms, but most metals can pass through unscathed. It puts out a lot of electromagnetic radiation, making most means of tracking you ineffective. Also, if I don't miss my guess, your powers can't reach me."
Bruno stiffened. He growled at him, and the Admin smiled.
"If you have something to say to me, you better write it down." He held up a pencil and a pile of small slips of paper, set them both on a metal tray, and covered them with a steel lid. The whole bundle was shoved on the floor through the wall. The metal sparked and crackled as it passed through the plasma.
"Careful now, the metal's a bit hot."
Bruno gingerly removed the lid. Scratching at the pencil lead revealed it was softer than the average pencil, too soft to hold a point. And with no metal binding to unwind, the papers had as little use as a weapon.
He wrote down three questions, set the paper on the tray, and kicked it through. The Admin read them and tucked the note in a pocket.
"For your first question, I am known as Admin Sun. For your second, you are in a Rocket safe-house deep below ground. This cell was designed to contain the most dangerous of specimens. As for the third…" the Admin sneered at him, and his eyes were blocks of ice. "You're a fool. You think she was forced into doing anything?"
In a fit of fury, Bruno crumpled the papers and pencil together in his hand, strode over to the wall, and flung the ball at the Admin. A sprinkle of carbon ash dusted the Admin's coat, which he brushed off with a gloved hand.
Admin Sun grinned at him. "I'm going to lower the walls around you." Bruno's eyes widened in surprise, and he shifted into a fighting stance without thinking. "Of course, I'm not going to give you the chance to escape or to injure me."
He held up a small remote in his hand. "Here's how this will happen. You are going to sit on the bed, and stay seated. First, another set of walls will spring up behind me. And then the walls in front of me will vanish." The Admin gestured upward. "That way, signals won't get through."
"If at any point you take a step in any direction, the walls come back up. Also, this remote activates the collar around your neck. It can either give you a powerful electric shock, or I can inject you with a powerful anesthetic." His grin widened. "I could have rigged it with explosives, but I decided that was unnecessary."
Bruno ground his teeth. He glared at the Admin for a minute, who simply smiled at him.
"I haven't had the chance to test this collar yet. I wonder how strong a shock it can give."
Bruno tugged at the collar. Sweat trickled his forehead, but he ignored the urge to obey.
"Still nothing?" Admin Sun asked. "Fair warning, I think those collars were calibrated for a Tyranitar, so there's no telling if you'll be conscious after I give this little guy a push."
Bruno would not let himself give in. He planted his feet and leaned back, ready to convulse onto the back.
"Alright then," the Admin said, holding a finger over the remote. His finger crept downward, and when it touched, he said "Boink!"
Bruno tensed up, but nothing happened. He looked up in confusion, but the Admin's smile never wavered.
"EM radiation, remember? The remote doesn't work through the barrier, unfortunately." He shrugged. "How about this, then? Be a good boy, and I'll let you see Steven."
Defy Team Rocket, or see Steven? He wavered at the crossroads of that choice, but he reasoned that she still might be able to help him escape. Standing here would get him nothing. He kept telling himself that as he sat down on the bed and waited.
"Good." Admin Sun turned around and nodded at the far wall. When he turned back, another barrier rose behind him. Then, with a muffled clap of air, the inner walls fell. The sudden rush of Aura stabbed at his eyes, flooding his head with a roiling violet tide. When he opened them again, Steven was standing before him, wearing the Admin's uniform.
"What the? Where did that Admin go?" Then his brain caught up with his eyes. A cold lump choked him in the back of his throat. "How? Why?" he asked, but to Steven's ears, they were only barks.
"I'm not giving you another pencil. Not yet, anyways. Instead, I'll talk, and you can nod your answers. Do you understand?"
Bruno numbly nodded. He started to ask if this was all some elaborate act, and closed his mouth. Another presence, this one black with flecks of silver, tickled the back of his mind, a far quieter presence overshadowed by Steven's more powerful aura. After a moment, he found the source, a dark patch within Serena's shadow. A ghost.
"Team Rocket isn't forcing me to do anything. I am here because I want to be, and I am wearing this uniform because I earned it. I have men who follow my orders, because I earned it. I have my own room, my own bed, my own computer and books and night-light, because I earned them. My meals are whatever I ask for, because I earned it. Why the hell would I ever want to give that up?"
Every word hit Bruno like a stone. "But Team Rocket uses Pokémon!" he shouted at her. "They torture them and use them as tools, just like they are using you!"
Steven grinned at him and held up at the remote. "Be quiet, or I'll give that collar a test run."
Bruno clamped his mouth shut and stared at the floor. After a long pause, Steven said, "We're going to play a little game. It's a game I used to play. The rules are, I'm going to ask you a question. Tell me the truth, and I will give you a new pencil and more paper. Lie to me or refuse to answer, and I will take something away. We'll start with the table. Nod if you understand."
Bruno nodded. Steven smiled at him and rubbed her thumb over the buttons. "Good. Now tell me, are there more Pokémon like you in the city?"
She waited, but Bruno didn't respond. As he stared in her cold blue eyes and the flickering, chaotic aura behind them, his first impulse was to tell her the truth. She already knew the answer, so what harm could come of confirming it?
It had to be a trick. If he answered one, he might answer more, and more, until he told them everything out of habit. He tensed up, grabbed his shoulders, and hunched over.
"So, you refuse to answer?" When Bruno didn't move, she stamped her foot on the floor. Out of her shadow rose a Haunter, its huge, slimy tongue hanging out of its wide, gaping mouth. It cackled and waved at him.
"Set, take the table and leave the plate." The Haunter floated forward. Bruno gathered Aura in his fists, ready to strike, but Steven's finger hovered over the button. Once the table stood next to Steven, she nodded, and the first set of walls returned, shutting out the aura. Steven's black fur and vulpine visage melted into human skin and features.
She held up the table. "You can earn this back by answering questions. Until then, I'll give you some time to think."
Once he was all alone, Bruno sat cross-legged on his bed, closed his eyes, and thought of home, replacing translucent walls of plasma with plaster and paint, the bare room with furnishings and carpet, and the isolation with Peter's warm, kind smile. Tears spilled onto the damp covers.
Changelog
11/3/18 – minor edits, and some rewrites of the descriptions at the chapter's start