Chapter Forty-Five
Under the cover of her illusion, Seven released Thoth in her bedroom. Though she couldn't see it, the Porygon spun in the air in front of her, searching for any optical signals. The crackle of plasma traced its invisible movements.
"No light detected," the program said. "Where am I?"
"We're on the mission, in my quarters within the White Knight compound," Seven said. "You can't see anything because you're invisible right now."
It spun to face the sound of her voice. "By creating a field of photon transmitters, I presume. I never knew Team Rocket had that kind of tech."
"There is a computer in front of me," she said. "Can you get in without a trace and find the cameras in this room?"
Thoth moved up to the computer and touched it. "Yes sir, I will begin immediately."
When the Porygon phased into the computer, Seven released the illusion and put one over the screen. After a moment, Thoth said, "All done. I have reprogrammed the camera in your room to play simulated footage."
"Good. It will only need to be for a moment." Seven took two more pokéballs out of her hair. Set and Number Fourteen looked around at the room and settled their gaze on her. The Haunter circled around her, examining her new appearance, while the ditto bunched itself up into a ball and stared with its beady eyes.
Seven removed the false mask and made Allison's face appear. "Fourteen, mirror."
The ditto writhed and bubbled until it matched her height. Swirling around her, the pink mass etched the features of Allison Caldwell, wearing the hooded white robes. As Seven strapped the mask onto Fourteen's face, Seven reflected that the identical, concealing uniforms made hiding in the crowd trivial.
"Your mission," she told them, "Is to stay here and make it appear as though I am doing my programming work while I am searching the building. Fourteen is incapable of speaking and cannot be touched. If anyone finds out I'm gone, make sure word of it doesn't leave this room. Got it?"
Set nodded eagerly, while Thoth typed affirmative on the computer. Fourteen stared without a twitch. Seven went to the computer and held the tablet strapped to her arm by the monitor.
"Can you provide mobile support?"
"Within a half a mile radius," came the response on her tablet. "Any further, and you'll have to find a terminal connected to this system."
"It'll do. Your top priority is making sure everything on this end goes perfectly. I'll be back in four hours. Three quick knocks followed by a long one, that's my signal. Have the cameras distracted within five seconds." Seven examined herself in the mirror and tweaked the illusion, adding two inches to her height and a touch of bulk to the robes. "Are there any cameras in the hall?"
"Two," Thoth answered using the computer's speaker. "Do you want them both disabled?"
"Yes, but only when the hallway is clear."
"It's clear now."
Seven slipped into the hallway and went into the nearest bathroom. After five minutes, Thoth edited the recordings so it would appear as though she came from a different room, went to the bathroom, and went off into the compound. In the meantime, Seven checked the inventory clipped to her hair. The bottle of poison hung behind her ear, with the cap tightly screwed shut. The tiny black EMP sat against her neck, where it wouldn't get jostled around, her emergency rations stayed near the end of her hair, pressed against her back by her robes, and the Tyranitar's pokéball was clipped over her right shoulder. On her belt, she had a knife and the black rod for Colson, when he arrived.
On her tablet, Thoth pulled up a map of the compound, taken from the network archives. A single floor sprawled out over a mile of abandoned suburban tunnels and construction projects, with exits and storage space poking out above the surface in old warehouses and boarded-up businesses. Thin tendrils of tunnels snaked into the city proper, connecting little dots of territory. Seven wondered if one of those had been the warehouse she had raided under Admin Fisher, but the map had no street labels, only a compass and generic Warehouse C titles over each room.
With nothing more informative than "Barracks B" and "Storage Site A" to guide her, Seven peered into every open room she came across. The White Knights had shooting ranges, padded combat rooms, cafeterias, computer rooms bustling with monitors and cables, and countless storage rooms crammed with wooden crates. Whenever she could, Seven popped a crate open and found dried rations, stockpiles of bullets and guns, spare robes, construction supplies, posters and other propaganda, and the odd cluster of Pokémon Healing Units, but never any caches of pokéballs.
At a cursory estimate, Seven guessed the White Knights had somewhere around eight thousand members, a troubling figure that doubled the size of the Rockets' ranks. However, even in the combat rooms, she didn't see a single Pokémon anywhere. Trainees battled with weapons or hand-to-hand without the assistance of Pokémon, and the shooting galleries only had bullets flying at human mannequins. Despite the healing units, there wasn't a single Pokémon in sight, let alone the Alakazam.
As she passed a rank of Knights striding down a hall, a thought struck her. Anything could hide beneath those masks and robes. For all she knew, she could've passed the Alakazam by a dozen times. With a deep breath, she collected her thoughts and realized that a Pokémon as large as an Alakazam, even concealed beneath bulky robes, couldn't hide its size.
"Any way to track psychic types?" she typed into the tablet while she walked.
"No," Thoth replied. "I've tried searching all camera footage, but I haven't seen a single Pokémon at any point in the last three months."
Seven frowned. Nothing added up, not the fact they took her Pokémon after the second day, not the healing machines in storage, nor the complete absence of Pokémon in combat training. Where were all the Pokémon?
In her distraction, she almost missed the narrow hallway hidden in shadow. Seven stiffened and walked past without turning her head. Once she was out of sight of the four guards stationed at the elevator, she stopped and typed into her tablet.
"That elevator wasn't on the map."
"There's a sophisticated lock on that door, with a strong firewall keeping me out," Thoth said. "You'll need to find a keycard for that lock if you want to get down there."
Seven studied the map. A few turns away, at the map's center, was a room labeled "Center Office." From the general orientation she got on her day one tour, she remembered that the room belonged to the commander of the White Knights.
A few turns later, she found the office. Thoth found a camera and brought up footage on her tablet. On his desk, tantalizingly out of reach, was the keycard.
When the man glanced down to open up his desk drawers, Seven concentrated, grimacing with the effort to duplicate an object seen through a camera in its real world location. After a few seconds, a copy shimmered into view, and the real card vanished. Sweat beaded down her face when she realized that all he had to do was turn it over to see it as a fake. Even looking at it through her screen, she could tell it was a fuzzy sham at best, appearing real only at a glance.
Her breath caught in her throat as she waited for the man to look at his keycard. Agonizing minutes passed as he typed on his laptop, made a phone call, and stood to leave. Without looking down, the man fumbled for the card, fingers brushing past the invisible card, and finding the sham. He tucked it in his pocket. She let out a breath and held it again when he went towards the door. In a heartbeat, she was wrapped in darkness, heart pounding in her chest and skin teased by the points of scalpels as he walked past her.
Still invisible, Seven told Thoth to rig the cameras, threw an illusion over the doorway, and rushed inside. Taking deep breaths, Seven staggered up to the desk and grabbed the real keycard. She put it in her pocket, but Thoth made the tablet vibrate.
"I can imitate the keycard's signal," it said. "You can make an image of a keycard, right?"
"Yes," Seven typed back. "We should leave this one here, in case he notices he's missing his keycard."
"Interesting," Thoth typed back. "You're not using any tech I can sense. The manipulation of that many photons would require pure black-body interference, equipment to process incoming and outgoing electrons, and light sources to perfectly imitate in real time the desired optical output. In addition, you're did this remotely, without any access to the targeted area. The only logical conclusion I can think of is that you're using a Pokémon, a psychic of some kind. But that leaves the problem of another psychic detecting it. None of this makes sense."
"Focus on the mission," Seven told Thoth, "And leave that to me."
"But I can't properly project mission outcomes if I don't know all the variables-"
"Then do the best you can. That information is classified."
After a moment, Thoth said, "Understood."
Wrapping herself in the image of the commander, Seven approached the four guards at the end of the hallway. As the thought of a password crossed her mind, they stepped aside, granting her access to the terminal. She conjured an illusory keycard and pressed it into the slot while Thoth sent it a false signal. The terminal's green light lit up, and the elevator doors opened.
During the descent, Thoth said, "The signal's getting too weak. I won't be able to reach you."
"Then I'll find a computer down there."
"That won't work. The system is completely isolated, otherwise I would've found it while I was in the commander's office. Whatever's down there, even his private computer can't touch it."
Cold realization washed over her like a bucket of ice water. "Then how the hell am I getting back up there?"
The tablet flickered, and the words "Holy shit" appeared on the screen before the connection with Thoth died out.
A minute later, the elevator stopped. Seven held her breath as the doors slid open. Clad in her illusion, she calmly walked out into the hallway and glanced back at the elevator. She heaved a sigh of relief when she saw it didn't demand a keycard to head back up.
Throngs of robed figures rushed through the hallways and gave her quick nods as they passed. One Knight walked up to her and bowed in greeting. "Good to see you again, sir. There's nothing new to report, and the conditions of the test subjects, though poor, have remained stable since you were last here."
Seven froze up, but after a moment, she remembered watching recordings of their commander speaking. Clearing her throat, she made an illusion to imitate the man's deep, soft voice.
"Thank you. Are there any changes you think need to be made?"
The figure paused, and worry slithered over Seven like a boa, ready to squeeze her ribs to powder. He said, "The bedsheets are getting a bit dusty. Perhaps they should be washed."
"See to it," she said.
The Knight started to leave, but he turned back and asked, "Is there anything else I can help you with?"
Seven shook her head. "No, I just wish to observe."
"Yes sir. Let me know if you need anything." With that, he ran off. Seven watched, and the shifting of his robes with each stride nagged at her mind. It seemed incongruous, as if the man's shins were too long and the knees came up to where his hips should be. Looking around, she saw more peculiarities, hulking figures that nearly reached the ceiling and midgets with oversized heads.
As she walked down the hall, sweating beneath an illusion of command, Seven felt a familiar sensation brush her mind, a heaviness and bitterness to the air. She followed it to another door flanked by four guards. Without her keycard, she wouldn't get past them, but even this close, she knew what she would find beyond the door.
Leaving Bruno's door for later, Seven turned away to explore more of the White Knight's secret operations.
Changelog
12/25/18 – minor edits