Chapter Fifty-Nine
"I still don't think this is a good idea," Elder Bayron said as he and N waited in a thick, colossal line to enter Merlon Stadium. "It's too risky."
N looked back at him. The white robes and blue fur were masked with the face of a balding man. Shaggy gray eyebrows stooped over dull brown eyes. N focused, and the wrinkles were etched deeper into his forehead.
"Giovanni is planning to claim Ghetsis is dead," N said, "And use that to justify his taking over." The words moved past his illusory lips without moving them. The air around him and the Elder ate up sound. "If I expose him as a liar, we can turn the crowd against him and force him back underground."
"But we gain nothing by it," the Elder said. "In fact, he might pull his support from killing Bruno. That comes before all else."
N shook his head. "He won't leave. His own life's also on the line. And if he stays in power after all this is over, he'll turn on us next. If we survive, the people will thank him for it. We have to deal with him while his control over everyone is weakest."
Bayron grimaced behind the mask. "We don't know that for certain."
"If you want to leave, I'll make sure you get out unseen. I mean to stay."
The Elder stayed in line.
Uneasy muttering rumbled around them. Beneath the mask, Bayron twitched as the turbulent emotions battered him like frothing waves. In a low whisper, N added, "If you have to leave, let me know. I'll go with you."
"No need," Bayron said through gritted teeth, "I can handle this."
As they walked, the computer over his right eye analyzed faces in the crowd, caught stray wisps of conversations, picked them apart and compiled them into statistical reports, summing up the mood of the writhing, hissing snake burrowing into the stadium with a series of pie charts, bar graphs, and linear trendlines. It noticed a few quiet outliers, Rocket agents mingling with the crowd, and frisked them for guns and knives. Security cameras and sniper posts were outlined in a dull orange glow.
It had warned him not to go. It had told him it was a trap. N half believed it. Even now, it was feeding him data about the accuracy of the sniper rifles and all the ground they covered. Sniper lines were fanned out into overlapping green triangles that covered his field of view in static grass. But the thing was too alive. It predicted his thoughts and acted on them with uncanny autonomy. He thought that, having Ghetsis' face, it would tell him everything, and yet, it felt as though the computer held back, ran its own internal calculations with variables N couldn't guess.
If it didn't want him here for a reason, he had to know why.
As they approached the wide stadium doors, they saw five dozen thumbprint scanners set up in front, with two guards posted to each. People pressed their thumbs and waited for the beep before passing through. N reached out, tried to tamper with the data, but the lead casing on the unit thwarted him. He and Ghetsis' eyepiece scanned the stadium for other ways in, for openings between the packed crowd, and both saw no way to slip through unseen. The AI urged him to turn back, but instead, N pinched off a piece of himself, shaped it between his fingers, and passed it to the Elder.
"Put this on," he said. "I can't fool the scanners with my power, and there isn't room to get through invisible, but this should work."
"And if it doesn't?"
N looked up at the snipers and cameras. "We'll have to run for it."
Despite the mask, N could tell that Bayron grimaced. "Are you sure about this?"
"I memorized the thumbprints of a few people. To the scanners, that's who we'll be."
"No, I mean, are you sure about going in? They might lock the doors behind us."
They were fast approaching the scanners. N molded his finger into shape, stepped up to one of the scanners, and pressed his finger to its cold, glassy surface. The thing shuddered, gave a beep, and the turnstile permitted him forward. Right behind him, Elder Bayron pressed the thin sheath of pink goop to the scanner and passed through. He nursed his paw as he walked alongside N.
"Something pricked me," he said. "It was hard to tell with the vibrations, but I think it was a needle."
The computer thought a moment, and then it told him it was a blood test, showed him the cameras perched over each turnstile, and plotted an exit route.
As they walked down the stadium aisle, towards a column of empty seats, N whispered to the Elder, "They took a blood sample. We have a few minutes before they can get a test done."
Bayron stiffened. "Are we leaving?"
"Not yet. We can throw them off the trail." He thought for a moment. As they sat down, he looked around for more available seating and saw seats being filled on the opposite end of the stadium.
"I'll leave images of us here," N said. "We'll make our way to the other side while invisible. I won't be able to see, so you'll have to guide me." He looked over at the bustling crowd behind them. "Make sure we don't bump into anything."
The Elder nodded. "Should we leave now?"
"Give it a minute." He scanned the area for a restroom and found one up and ahead of them, in an alcove next to an abandoned concessions stall. A column of half-filled seats was below it, with a thin trickle of people filling it. N flicked his power across the stadium. The door appeared to swing wide, and a portly couple in shorts and t-shirt waddled out. They took the nearest available seats, on the edge of a row.
"There's a fat man with a straw hat and red t-shirt, top row, across the stadium, and a fat woman in a pink shirt next to him. See them?"
Bayron squinted. "I don't see anything."
N swore to himself. "Right, you can't see the illusion. Top row, Section G, the two seats on the right from our perspective. Get us over there."
"Now?"
N closed his eyes. When he opened them again, darkness swallowed him whole. "Now."
The Elder pulled him from his seat. His grip was tight enough to squeeze his wrist into pink mush gushing between his paw. N stumbled after him, half afraid his hand would break off and he'd be stranded in the dark. With his other hand, he found the Elder's shoulder and clung as tight as his amorphous flesh allowed.
As they ducked and bobbed through the crowd, N felt a prickle in the back of his mind. With three illusions sustained at once, over great distances, he felt the power draining out of him. Bubbles burst in his mind, filling the darkness with explosions of gray and purple. Nettles brushed his skull, and his stomach churned and frothed with boiling bile.
"I can't hold on much longer," N gasped.
"Just a minute more. Hold on."
N counted the steps, one, two, three, each slower than the last as the Elder wove through the crowd. His heart skipped a beat when his arm brushed against a chair. Noises swarmed all around him, whispers sharp and delicate as paring knives, clothing rustling on chairs like buzzing hornets, swigs taken from water bottles that crashed down on him like waterfalls. Stabs of pain raced down his limbs. Each step became heavier than the last.
Just as he felt ready to black out, Bayron said, "We're here."
He let go of the invisibility. Power gushed back into him, enough to splash his feet in, and light stabbed his eyes. Breathing heavily, he made the other illusion across from them stand up, walk over to the nearest restroom, and vanish. He slumped back in his chair, drooping until he was a puddle with a muzzled face.
Elder Bayron looked down at him with concern that didn't touch his fleshy face. "You don't look well."
"It's fine," N said in a hoarse whisper. "That took more out of me than I thought. I'll be fine now."
As eight o clock approached, N sat back up, his features restored. He glanced over at the Elder, but the Lucario had eyes only for the empty stage below.
At the appointed hour, twelve Grunts walked onto the stage. The Six Sages followed, behind them came two Admins, and at last, Giovanni. He stood behind a podium, with a microphone and a camera in front of him. The screens all around the stadium lit up, and Giovanni's cold, blue eyes gazed down at the crowd.
"Well?" N asked.
"I can see him on the screens, but not on the stage."
"An illusion. Seven's there?"
"Yes, on the left."
Giovanni spoke. Each word coming over the speakers was as smooth and as sharp as rubbing alcohol, at once harsh and comforting. He told the onlookers about the present war between man and Pokémon and revealed Team Rocket's investment into their safety. N's head swam, and he slumped forward, gasping for air.
Then he told everyone that Ghetsis had been, all this time, a Pokémon, working from within their government to undermine them. Snow clutched his chest and icicles dug into his brain as Giovanni laid out his false evidence, the failed assassination attempts, how he seemed to never age, and his uncanny control over the city's political affairs.
"But I don't intend for you to take my word for it," Giovanni said. "Ghetsis, or should I say this Pokémon, had dragged my name through the mud and forced me to commit crimes to oppose its wickedness, all so no one would ever believe the truth I had learned. Instead, I will show you."
Power spilled out of him. His fevered mind beat Ghetsis' AI to the reason by a few seconds. The pill. Power suppression. The thumbprint reader. The hidden needle.
"It is here, in this stadium, using an illusion to hide among you. What more, it brought one of the same Pokémon that caused the madness in all the others. No doubt, it was planning to turn you all against me with some trick of the mind."
He tried to speak, but his lips were too numb to form anything other than a gurgle. Detail after detail melted off of his illusions. Elder Bayron, missing an eyebrow and the hat, stared at the misshapen lump in the chair with horror. The eyepiece sent warning signals at him, but his tears turned them into a blood-red smear.
"That is why," Giovanni said, "As you placed your thumb on the scanner, you were pricked with a tiny needle. It injected a chemical compound known as dimethyl tetraethyl butylcholine esterase, or DTBE. It is a neural inhibitor that, in small doses, is harmless to humans, but for certain Pokémon, it disables their abilities. As for the Lucario, we have learned that large crowds interfere with their ability to think. In short, we have made the perfect trap to capture our foe."
Ghetsis' AI sent him one last message, in big, blocky red letters. Use the stone. With a fumbling, disfigured hand, N reached into the pocket of his coat, pulled out the bundled sphere, and set it in the Elder's lap. With the last of his strength, he whispered, "Get us out of here."
Changelog
12/28/18 – minor edits