Chapter Fifty
"Is everything ready on their end?" Seven asked.
Admin Colson shifted his seat on the cold concrete floor and typed in the air. "Fisher's team is ready for deployment. The police have been tipped off about a Rocket hideout posing as a White Knight base through the Commander's email account, and we've confirmed the presence of four Lucario at police headquarters." His fingers stopped. He brushed away a strand of hair and looked up at Seven. "What about your preparations?"
Seven held up an empty vial and the black-box EMP. "I put a few drops in a glass of water I found in Mr. H's room, and dumped the rest into their water line."
"It would've been better if you had found the other psychics," Colson said. "They'll be on guard for the poison after this."
"We didn't have time for that." Seven glanced at the door, but no one was watching through the little fiberglass window. "After the EMP goes off, I'll meet you by the elevator."
Seven went towards the door. Colson said, "Don't get yourself killed," as her hand touched the knob. She shot back, "Same to you," opened the door, and took one step out.
For half a second, the lights overhead brightened until they burned her eyes. A static charge rushed across her fur, and her heart fluttered. Then the world went dark, and the static tingle turned into a scalpel on her throat. She clawed at her hair until she found her flashlight. Setting it on its brightest setting, she went back into the prison. Colson's cell was deactivated, and the Admin had collapsed on his side, retching up his breakfast and coughing bloody spittle. His limbs twitched wildly, and his eyes bulged in their sockets.
"EMP," he managed to say between coughing fits. "Get… me… out…"
"What about the mission?" she asked.
"No… circuits shot. Can't move." He got one elbow beneath him, but a shaking spell rolled him onto his back. Seven grabbed him by the armpits, hoisted him onto his feet, and carried him by a shoulder. He felt surprisingly lightweight, even for his skinny frame, but his feet dragged behind and caught on the doorway.
"Who did…?" he asked through bloody lips.
As Seven was about to say "I don't know," a roiling wave of anger and bloodlust rolled over her. She knew it was Bruno, the sensation had the same resentful, clinging aura that he had exuded back in the Rockets' prison, but rage replaced its despair. It rattled her thoughts, grabbed her, tried to pull her under, and she clawed for the sweet air of her sanity with all her strength.
"Bruno. He's out."
"Good," Colson said through gritted teeth. "Get out… before police…"
Two guards ran around a corner and skidded short of them. "Commander?" one of them asked. "What are you doing with the prisoner?"
Before she could answer, a loping shape hurtled around the same corner and grabbed one guard by the neck. The guard sagged as bones snapped beneath the assailant's iron grip. The other guard turned, his face transfixed in an astonished expression, as gleaming white teeth sank into his skull as though it were cheese.
The beast tore into the dead man's abdomen and plunged its face into the viscera. Seven swung her flashlight onto it. Its eyes caught the light, and it turned towards her. Blood and bits of flesh clung to the matted white fur on its face, blood similar in color to the tuft of fur crowning its head. The Vigoroth's arms were longer than its legs, a fact Seven found all too clear when it sprang towards her, arms outstretched, claws like daggers pointed at her heart.
Seven drew her knife and held it out in front of her. The Vigoroth charged, heedless of the tiny blade. It pinned both her legs and a shoulder beneath its girth. With a howl, it clawed at her chest. Each swipe left rows of burning furrows in her flesh. Gritting her teeth, Seven stabbed at the Vigoroth's chest with her free arm, hunting for its heart beneath the baggy mass of white fur. Blood gushed out, forming a red circle around each puncture.
The Vigoroth's clawing slowed, then stopped. It shuddered, rolled to one side, and coughed up blood. Seven staggered to her feet. Long, shallow gashes criss-crossed her chest. One scratch grazed her jugular, millimeters away from killing her. She grimaced, pressed the rags of the White Knight uniform to the cuts, and limped to Colson.
"Your illusion's gone," he said. "You're bleeding."
Seven looked down. The power came sluggishly, but after a moment, she wore a generic White Knight uniform. She knew the design was too plain, but the stinging on her chest, coupled with the dimness in her eyes from fatigue and shock, made each thought a trial.
"Is this part of our plan?" she asked.
Colson shook his head. "I don't know what's–" A coughing fit interrupted him. He wiped a dribble of blood from his chin and said, "We have to warn them."
Seven racked her brain, but she could only remember one way out, all the way on the opposite side of the facility, past the elevator and the Commander's office. She knew there were other ways, but with the foul aura drifting in the air, maddening every Pokémon it touched, she didn't dare call out Thoth.
"I think we're trapped," she told Colson.
"Think something else and get moving. I only have a few hours."
He doubled over and retched brown slime onto the floor. Seven dragged him through the vomit, too tired and hurried for the nuanced maneuvering of Colson's legs required to avoid it.
The halls were empty, but screams and gunfire sounded up ahead, by the elevator shaft. Seven peered around the corner and saw half a dozen machine guns set down the hall from the elevator, chewing through belts of high-caliber rounds as fast as the Knights could shove them in. Thirty more stood behind with rifles raised to their shoulders, aiming towards the hallway ceiling. Between them stood a crate full of magazines and extra rifles.
"There's too many, and I can barely keep this illusion together," Seven said. "We'll have to find another way."
"There's no time. Get Thoth out, or get past them."
There was no getting past them, and that left gambling on Thoth's ability to withstand Bruno's suffocating aura. With a held breath, Seven pulled Thoth's ball out of her hair and tossed it on the ground.
The Porygon looked around at the halls and gave a start at Colson's blood-stained face.
"What do you need?" he asked Seven.
"We need the quickest way out of here that doesn't go past the elevator," Seven told it. "Hurry, we don't have much time."
Seven watched the program carefully while it reviewed the cameras and maps of the place. It gave Seven typed instructions, and she called it back. She let out the breath she had held and hauled Colson down a different corner. Compared to the cacophony by the elevator, those halls were eerily silent. Each of her steps was punctuated by the squelch of blood in her boots. Her breaths came in jagged, burning gasps, and her arms shook from holding up Colson.
They rounded a corner, the last one before the exit. In front of the metal detector, between her and freedom, stood the Commander. He held a gun pointed at Seven's chest.
"You're late," he said, "Though I don't blame you, considering your injuries."
Seven reached for her own gun, buried in her hair, but the Commander fired a shot over her head.
"Don't try anything." He gestured towards a guard station to her right. "Set him down out of sight. We're going to have a private conversation."
With the gun still trained on her, Seven leaned Colson against a wall and followed the Commander into the station. He drew down the blinds on the window and sat at a table. He gestured, and Seven took the seat opposite of him.
The Commander put the gun down and leaned back. "I've had the hardest time finding you. If you hadn't dropped your disguise in the hallway while fighting that Vigoroth, I might have never noticed you."
Seven tensed and her fingers rose towards the knife on her belt. "What do you want?"
He smiled. "I wanted to catch up with my sister. It's been ages since we were together, and we have a lot to discuss."
The Commander vanished, and in his place sat a misshapen patchwork quilt of black zoroark fur and lupine features glued together with pink slime. Seven's breath caught as memories of a slime-drenched knife rose in her mind, and her illusion slipped away.
"Nine," she said breathlessly.
Nine clapped his hands, which made a squelching sound when they came together. "You've done your homework."
"Why are you here?"
"I could ask the same of you." He poked the amorphous blob of his right shoulder, and it sagged beneath his finger. "I sold information on Ghetsis to Giovanni, information that let him deal a killing blow. In return, I got the funding I needed to start this project." Half of his face drooped down, and he shoved it back in place. "But that's not important right now. I wanted to warn you that working for the Rockets is folly. They'll use you, sure, but the second that they don't need you, they'll dispose of you."
Seven shrugged, but inside, it felt as though her intestines were strangling her heart and lungs. "It'd be no different than anyone else would treat me if that were the case," she said, "But the Rockets reward good results. I'm their most important agent, and they've made me an Admin for it."
Nine shook his head. "Even Admins are disposable, or have you forgotten what befell Mad Hax?" He leaned forward. "Trying to blend in is foolish. The moment you're caught, they'll use you and destroy you, just like they do for everything else that isn't human. I'm trying to redefine the concept. The only way we can coexist peacefully as equals is to show them we are equal. So join me and live free, or stay with the Rockets and live only as long as they can use you."
"Last I saw, you're finished." She gestured at the bloody cuts on her chest. "Bruno's tearing this place apart."
Nine grimaced. "I will deal with him and start fresh. Luckily, I can pin this whole fiasco on you." He took a deep breath, peeked through the blinds, and turned back to her. "What will it be?"
Seven stood and went to the door. As she left, Nine vanished and the Commander stood by the window. "This was your only chance," he said. "I hope you don't regret your decision."
With the last of her strength, Seven lifted Colson onto her shoulder and staggered towards the door. His eyes were dulled over, and his speech slurred.
"What… what did he say?"
"He wanted me to join him," Seven said, "And I said no." She glanced down at him and added, "He said that you would kill me once you no longer have a use for me."
"He does the same for anyone else," Colson murmured. "Like my brother, no longer useful… like I was… but he made me useful… God, it hurts…" He drifted off. The tension left his muscles like a cut cord, and his dead weight pulled her sideways. Tripping over her feet, Seven shoved him against the metal detector, put him back over her shoulder, and walked through. The metal detector's alarms screeched, but there was no one left to hear.
Seven's vision darkened as she shouldered her way through a narrow staircase. She staggered into an abandoned bookstore. Against one wall, a dusty couch sat in between two empty bookcases. Too tired to think, Seven set Colson on the floor, stumbled onto the cushions, and fell asleep with her muzzle buried in dust.
Changelog
12/26/18 – minor edits