Chapter Forty-Nine

Over the course of a week, Seven studied the security around Admin Colson. Knights searched every meal brought to him for contraband, and every guard was screened by security, requiring passcodes, thumb prints, and retinal scans before passing the food through a second check at his cell. Seven's first instinct was to imitate the Commander and walk up to the cell. Considering that the Knights knew she was here, she had Thoth search all their records for anything about Admin Colson, which had turned up a recording of a phone call, in which the Commander told his Chief of Security to apprehend himself if he came near the cell.

That led to a search for 'Mr. H', but all the search inquiries and roster lists found no leads. Even examining the guards from a safe distance, Seven couldn't tell who would be Mr. H.

Two days passed until Mr. H's name came up again in another phone call. The Commander summoned him to his office. Unable to pass this opportunity by, Seven left the room, changed her disguise, and lurked by the Commander's office until a Knight went inside.

Seven glanced at her watch. The Knight had arrived ten minutes early, and five minutes later, he left. A pang of terror shot through her veins. Follow this visitor, or wait for another? As the Knight rounded a corner, Seven stalked after him.

"Track anyone else that goes into that office."

"I'll try," Thoth said. "Security's gotten tighter in the last few days, I'll have to work around their firewalls."

The Knight went straight towards Admin Colson's cell. He took one of the guards into a break room. Seven memorized the sound of Mr. H's soft, deep voice. She didn't dare go inside after him, with nowhere to hide in the room, but after a moment, Thoth hacked into a camera, and Seven studied the footage from a shadowed corner.

The two Knights were seated across from each other at the table. From out of a pocket, Mr. H drew out a stone ring, hanging from one finger by a leather cord. The camera couldn't pick up any of the words he said, but after a moment, the other Knight drooped forward, and Mr. H held him up. The Knight had a glass of water, which he drank through a hole in the mask, and went back outside, while Mr. H called the next one in. The process repeated itself three more times before Mr. H left the room.

"I've done an analysis," Thoth said through Seven's tablet. "That stone ring matches that of a Hypno. It doesn't make any sense. Only a Hypno can use it, so why and how is a human doing it?"

"I think we found our first psychic," Seven typed back. "Hidden in plain sight, just like I am."

"Then he must be hypnotizing the guards to carry out the Commander's instructions without knowing it.

"Can we remove the hypnotism?" Seven asked.

"There's a few options. Killing it should remove the residual psychic energy in their brains."

"I've got the poison right here," Seven said as she fingered the bottle in her hair, "But that would warn the Commander."

"A dark-type could break the Hypnosis, but the feedback would alert the psychic." After a moment, Thoth added, "I don't think a Tyranitar would be right for the job anyway."

Seven refrained from telling him that she could probably break it herself and waited for the third option.

"Last, though I advise finding an alternative method, is to have a ghost consume the psychic energy. If you can get those guards alone, Set can hypnotize them, but there's no telling what else he would do."

Mr. H, finished with the last of the guards, left the break room and went straight to the elevator. Seven fingered the vial in her hair as she watched the doors close.

They waited until the next day before breaking the guards' Hypnosis. Disguised as Mr. H, Seven approached the guards and told them they needed another quick performance evaluation, as part of the new security protocols for the Admin. When the first guard sat down in front of her, Set popped out of Seven's shadow and entranced the guard with flickering lights. Seven caught their head as they toppled forward.

She removed the Knight's mask as she lowered the head. Long blonde hair, bunched up under the hood, spilled onto the table. She pulled the sweaty mass back, exposing her ears.

Set rubbed his hands and leaned over the guard. A shudder passed through the sleeping Knight as wispy purple orbs, laced with a gleaming pink coating, floated out of her ears. Set scooped them up in one hand, popped one into his mouth, and grimaced. With his free hand, Set scraped at his tongue. The ghost complained in an ethereal wail, and Seven's tablet thrummed with a reply. Thoth told the ghost, "I don't care how happy those thoughts taste, and neither does our master. The sooner you eat them all, the sooner you'll be done."

Set scowled at the screen, pried his mouth open, and tossed all the glowing orbs inside. His face puckered so much that half his face got sucked into his mouth. He swallowed, belched a glittering pink cloud, and snapped his fingers. As the Knight groggily woke, Seven shoved the mask over her face.

The next two guards must have had tastier dreams, since Set ate them without complaint. The last, a portly, balding man beneath the mask, made Set chuckle. After a handful of flickering black orbs, Set's eyes widened, and he reached for more. A torrent of dreams poured out of the man's ears, and Set wolfed them down like a basket of Halloween candy. The man shivered and paled as pieces of his mind slipped away.

"Stop him!" Thoth said through the tablet. "He'll die if more is taken!"

Seven yanked Set's ball out of her hair and called him back. A cloud of orbs, absent of the psychic purple sheen around them, writhed and seeped back into the man's head. His color returned, and his eyes snapped open. Seven jammed the mask on, but the man didn't seem to notice.

"Ugh, my head's pounding," he said.

"Are you feeling alright?" Seven asked using the voice of Mr. H. "Perhaps you should visit the infirmary."

The man stood and shook himself. "Nah, just a bit of a cold, I think. This post's too important to leave over something as silly as that."

With the guards neutralized, Seven walked up to them the next day, disguised as the Commander, and asked to speak alone with the Admin. Without searching her, the guards led Seven through a series of locked doors and left her with Colson. In place of his Admin's uniform, Colson wore only a cloth around his waist, exposing his pasty, scarred skin to the light. Every inch of him bore an endless patchwork of slender, pale scars, from rings around his eyeballs, which still bore smudges of make-up, to gashes that crept past the cloth at his loins.

After checking that Thoth had disabled the cameras, Seven rolled the cylinder through the plasma shield. Colson cracked it open. Inside were four batteries, thick, gray, and each heavy enough to bludgeon someone with.

"I'm not a pretty sight, am I?" he asked.

"The cameras are down, and the guards have left us alone," Seven said.

"You were supposed to have done this sooner. I only had a few days left before I would lose power."

Before she could ask what he meant, he pried at a section of skin on his arm. With a snap, a lid popped off, exposing a hollow chamber in his arm. He wrapped cloth around the ends of each battery and stuck them in there.

"With these, we have two weeks before I run out of power and die, so I'd appreciate it if you can be a bit more timely with the rest of your mission."

Questions flooded her head, but Seven swallowed and asked, "What next?"

Colson tapped the cylinder on his hand, and another piece of metal came out, a hollow square. Colson gingerly eased it into the plasma barrier behind him.

"Type the following phrase into your tablet: '49YXB'."

Seven obeyed, and Colson typed into the air. Moments later, her notepad opened up, and words appeared on the screen.

"I will maintain contact through this," Colson said through the tablet. "Have Thoth disable the cameras on my cell every day at two o' clock for one hour so I can relay information in and out of here."

"Yes, but there may be a few problems." Colson listened as she told everything she had seen and learned over the few weeks she had been there. He frowned at the psychics hidden under robes, a frown that deepened when she told him about the lab in the basement until she said that they had Bruno.

"So, they're going behind the backs of the police?" He rubbed at his chin with one hand and typed with the other. "That might work to our advantage. For now, focus on tracking Mr. H and finding all other psychics in this facility. Save the poison until we figure out what our next move will be."

Seven nodded and turned to leave, but the scars made her look back. She swallowed, wiped sweat from her face, and asked, "Did it hurt?"

Colson regarded her with a blank expression. "All things worth having come at a price." His expression hardened, and he tapped the spot on his arm. Seven expected a metallic clink, but it shifted like flesh. "Speak of this to no one. Secrets are easier to keep when no one knows about them."

Bruno regarded the transparent cell walls. Those walls had been there his whole life, but only now he could see them and the deadly consequences of trying to cross them. Pokémon were pets and tools until they tried to resist. Then they were monsters.

A robed Raichu approached him with a lunch tray. He could feel the same anger and frustration that boiled in him drifting from the raichu's spirit like salty sea spray each time a wave battered against the rocks. The rocks were crumbling, and the sea would wash them all away. He grinned at that thought.

His voice was a soft caress as he asked the Raichu, "Aren't you sick of hiding beneath that mask?"

The Raichu spoke through the Chatot on top of his head, but the words from the bird had the same edge of frustration. "We shouldn't have to hide what we are."

"Your leader is holding you back. You need someone with the strength to bring Pokémon out of the chains humans shackled them with."

The Raichu wordlessly set the tray on the table and stood at the edge of the cell until a second barrier separated them. Another rock tumbled into the waves. Soon, very soon, this ocean within him would know no walls.

Bruno plucked a cheri berry from his plate, crushed it between his teeth, and chuckled as spicy red juice dripped down his muzzle.

Changelog

12/26/18 – minor edits