Chapter Forty-Three
Seven, clad in the disguise assigned to her, sat in front of a White Knight recruiter in a dank, dusty coffee shop tucked in a run-down corner of the city. Enough people filled the seats that a jumble of conversations drowned out their own. Blond hair fell past her shoulders. She wore a lily white jacket, a white t-shirt, and blue jeans.
"So, Allison, why do you want to be a member of the White Knights?"
Seven sipped at her coffee. Though the bitter flavor made her nose wrinkle, she smiled and drank more.
"I want to make a difference," she said. "The Rockets have been hurting people for years, and the police hasn't stopped it. Now there's someone who can, and I want to help."
The recruiter, a tall, bald man with thin white eyebrows, a huge nose, and droopy green eyes, studied her and the papers in his hand. His brown leather jacket bulged outward, and the zipper stretched to its bursting point.
"It says you took six years of martial arts?"
"Yes sir, my dad wanted to make sure I could defend myself. I can provide training certificates."
The man shook his head. "Pieces of paper don't mean squat. You'll be tested by a combat instructor later in the interview process." The recruiter's finger slid across the text as he read. "You have a Mareep and a Pidgeotto?"
"Yes sir. They aren't that well trained."
"Could be worse. The Knights have more Pokémon than people, so it won't be an issue." The recruiter scratched at his eyebrows. "Computer programming? That'd be useful."
Seven lowered her eyes and said, "I wasn't that good at it. I know some C++ and HTML, but that's about it."
The recruiter shrugged. "You'd be surprised what counts as useful. What matters most to us is a willingness to learn, simply because it's hard to find anyone with the skills we need."
Seven beamed at him. "I'll do whatever it takes."
The recruiter returned her smile. "Good!" He folded up her resume and put it in his pocket. After chugging his cup of coffee, he crushed it in his hand and tossed it at the garbage. The crumpled cup bounced off the front and landed on the floor. Seven rushed over with her own empty cup, picked up the cup on the floor, and put them both in the can.
"Alright, next on the agenda is a tour of one of our facilities. We want you to see what you're getting into before you commit to anything, since this is a very dangerous job, and a moment of indecision can cost you and other Knights their lives. Are you ready?"
"Yes sir!"
"Good. I have a car parked outside. Take the passenger seat."
The recruiter opened the door for her and opened the car with his key fob. Two beeps directed Seven to a brown mini van. She got in, buckled up, and glanced in the back. Piles of fliers, posters, and shirts crowded the other seats, and underneath the piles of clothing, a corner of a metal box poked out.
The driver door swung open, and the recruiter clambered into his seat. The engine rumbled, and the van drove at a leisurely pace deeper into the outskirts of town. Tall townhouses with tiny squares of shaggy grass lined the streets, punctuated by a crowd of small specialty shops, barbers, and dentists. Empty streets, the occasional broken window and padlocked door suggested that the area had been abandoned.
Silence filled the car, and Seven felt herself itching to fill it. She resisted at first, and then decided that silence would be more suspicious.
"It sucks, what the Rockets did," Seven said while she looked at the buildings. "All these people left because they thought Rockets would come knocking on their door."
"I feel more pity for those that had to stay behind," said the recruiter.
Seven nodded and kept staring out the window. The van stopped in front of an old meat market with boarded-up windows. The recruiter stepped out, and Seven followed him inside.
"So, it's through here?"
The recruiter walked past the counter towards the back entrance of the shop. A rusty cleaver sat on the wooden counter, and shards of fiberglass from the display cases littered the floor. Two hallways branched off from the main room of the meat market, one with signs for a restroom, and the other ending in a staircase up to the second floor.
"If we were too easy to find, the Rockets would attack," he said. "Thus, it's necessary to make sure they don't find us."
A flicker of shadows was the only warning she had. Out of the hallways sprang six figures wearing Rocket uniforms. They rushed towards her, brandishing knives, batons, and fists. Seven grabbed the first fist that flew at her. She pulled and pelted the man in the throat with the heel of her palm. He choked and fell to the floor.
Two more grabbed her wrists. She twisted her arms, broke their grip, and pulled them into each other. They toppled in a tangle of limbs. Seven aimed a fast kick at their ribs.
Fiberglass crunched behind her. She ducked before a baton slammed into the back of her head. She heard rushing air as it flew past her ears. She raised her arms to parry, but one of the men on the floor grabbed her ankle. She fell sideways as a baton slammed into her temple. The blow stung. Blinking spots out of her eyes, she rolled over a Grunt on the floor and sprang to her feet.
Seven had two pokéballs on her belt, and four more tucked in her hair. She almost reached for Set, but instead, she grabbed the Mareep. She called it out on the counter. As she was about to give a command, a knife pressed against her throat. She flinched as cold steel brushed her skin.
Then, just as quickly, the knife was gone. When she turned around, the six attackers had taken off their Rocket uniforms. Underneath were the padded white robes of the Knights.
The recruiter patted her on the shoulder. "That was the physical exam," he told her. "Sorry for making it so sudden, but we need to know how you handle a crisis." He helped up the man on the floor that was still gasping for air. "You did better than I thought you would."
Seven swore at herself. She had planned to understate her abilities, but her brain scrambled to work around it. "I'd still be dead."
"True, but that's to be expected when you're that outnumbered. Come on, let's get you some robes."
Seven rubbed at her throat. Looking closer at their knives, she saw they were practice blades, dulled on both edges. The batons were made of hard rubber, the fiberglass on the floor had the edges smoothed out, and the rusty cleaver had a shiny sliver where the edge was smoothed out.
"Wait, so, I have the job?"
"Yeah kid, you pass with flying colors. Didn't even piss yourself." He shrugged. "You'll need more combat experience, but training will fix that."
He walked down the hall to the bathrooms. Seven almost followed him inside, but she stopped and stared at the men's sign on the door.
The recruiter poked his head around the doorway. "It's in here. Come on."
Seven went inside. The recruiter walked up to one of the urinals and pulled on the pipe at the top. It popped loose, and the whole urinal fell to the side, revealing a hole just large enough to crawl through. The recruiter went in first. His jacket caught on the edges of the wall, but with some wriggling, he got his girth inside. Though Seven appeared much skinnier, her hair, bulging with all the contraband clipped inside of it, snagged on the wall. With a quick jerk of her head, she pulled it free and tumbled into a brightly lit room. One guard stood next to a metal detector, and another sat behind a conveyor belt with an x-ray scanner. Both wore the plain white masks of the White Knights. The room was cramped, with no way to walk around the detector, and only two feet of ceiling space over the eight-foot tall contraption.
"Make sure you don't have any metal on you. Take your shoes off and put them on that belt, along with any bags, wallets, et cetera."
Seven's stomach sank. They had expected a metal detector, but she had counted on a way to walk invisibly around it. Now, her options were to crawl over the conveyor belt, which wouldn't support her weight, or jump blind over the detector. Worse still, she had to make sure her hair, weighed down with all its contraband, didn't hit the ceiling or the detector during the jump.
"Alright, gimme a moment." She took off her shoes, and set them on the conveyor belt with her pokéballs. Her feet thanked her. The shoes, designed for human feet so they could pass through an x-ray, chafed at her toes and wobbled around the heel. With bare feet, she'd land silently on the metal floor on the other side. All she had to do was make the jump.
In an instant, Seven shrouded herself in invisibility while she made the illusion walk forward. Though darkness closed around her, she held the image of the metal detector and the ceiling, envisioned herself twirling through the air, arcing through the slender gap, twisting her back, flipping forward, landing on her feet, and standing straight. Like thread through a needle, she fit through the gap. Letting out a breath, she melded the illusion onto her and grabbed her belongings.
The recruiter threw his jacket onto the conveyor belt. Underneath, he had one of the WK t-shirts from the van. He had a far slimmer frame than the jacket suggested, lean with a touch of muscle. After donning the jacket, he slid a flat white mask over his face waved for Seven to follow.
"Allison, you'll start out in training. It'll mostly be combat, with programming exercises to see what you can do. You have a room assigned to you. They aren't labeled, but you'll know it by a picture of your face on the door. Once you get there, you'll find a bottle of white-out on your desk and robes on your bed. Paint over the picture, hang it back on the door, and always keep your mask on while you're here. There are no individuals here. Individuals act for selfish reasons, commit crimes, and game the systems society creates. Only by abandoning self-identity can we unite for the greater good. Is this understood?"
"Yes sir," Seven said.
"Good. Your room is just down that hall," he said pointing down a corridor lined with doors. "I have a file to report, but I'll meet up with you once I'm done."
With that, he strode to the left and vanished around a corner. Seven walked past the doorways, each the same as the last, until she found one with Allison's face hanging from a thumb tack.
White robes, padded at the shoulders, elbows, and wrists, sat on a freshly made bed. She threw off the jacket, shirt, pants, and underwear, all part of her disguise, and set them folded next to the door. The robes, despite their baggy appearance, clung tightly to her fur. The white mask refused to fit over her face. Either it had to tilt at a ludicrous angle to fit her vulpine contours, or, if balanced precariously on its nose to mimic a human flatness, narrowed her field of view to two tiny holes. Instead, she tucked the mask into her hair and made an illusion of it over her face.
Thus disguised, Seven turned her attention to the photo she had set on the desk. She took the bottle of white-out, unscrewed the cap, and poured it over the photo. With the brush, she spread it around until every speck of color disappeared. The white-out, still soggy, smudged her fur when she picked it up.
A few minutes later, a knock came at the door. The recruiter, recognizable only by the bulge his jacket made beneath his robes, nodded at her.
"Good. I'll take that photograph. It's the contract you make to have no identity, nothing that marks you as any different from any other Knight. You are no longer Allison, but a Knight among many. Live by that code, and you'll never stray from the path of good."
Seven nodded and handed him the photograph, which was still slightly damp. He dropped it in a Ziploc bag, sealed it up, and tucked it in a pocket beneath his robe.
"Your training begins now," he said. "Welcome to the White Knights."
Changelog
12/25/18 – minor edits