XVIII

Snatch

Simon was running on fumes. He trembled from within from a mixture of his own exhaustion and the torrent of emotion which threatened to drown him. And while he struggled with all this, Verity trotted alongside him, chatting away about things Simon couldn't even comprehend.

They'd been walking for a while. Simon moved as if he was going somewhere with purpose. Verity had naturally fallen into step with him. He was quiet while he recovered from the battle he had witnessed, but quickly moved into his talkative self. He had made some comments about the battle, but Simon had ignored him and kept his eyes on the sidewalk ahead of them.

But the adrenaline of the morning had worn off, and Simon wished only to fall into a deep sleep from which he hoped not to awaken.

These dark thoughts were not productive. Simon knew this, at least intellectually if not emotionally. And so when he turned a corner and spotted a Unovan-style diner, he slowed his pace.

"I skipped breakfast," Simon told Verity, "so I'm going to get something to eat."

Verity looked to the diner, his brows furrowing. "That place? That's not my kind of place. There's this wonderful brunch bistro I go to. I would prefer it.

"Alright, you do that," Simon said, continuing on his way. "I'll see you later." Verity paused, and Simon could easily imagine the young man was glowering at him; but without further protest, Verity followed Simon into the diner.

They sat facing each other at a booth, and Simon could not avoid looking closely at his new companion any longer. Verity had a sweet, cherubic quality about him. He had his father's features, but they were softened, rounded, making what was stark in the father pleasing in the son. He was pale, but the colors of his blouse and the subtle makeup over his eyes and lips were chosen to give his skin a warmer tone. He had small hands which restlessly fidgeted, the silver rings on his thick fingers clinking against each other like chimes.

Verity looked displeased with the diner's options until he discovered they offered a plethora of milkshakes. He happily ordered a rawst berry-flavored one. Simon chose a full breakfast spread, something close to the breakfasts he had loved in Galar, but when it at last arrived, Simon found the flavor and texture of the food died on his tongue. Despite the fact that he knew he needed to eat, he struggled to get anything beyond the burnt and bitter coffee down.

Simon's companion was rather oblivious to his suffering. Verity quite enjoyed the milkshake, sucking it down with ferocious intent. When he was finished, he sat back against the booth, satisfaction seeping into his very bones. He relaxed, resting his hands on his soft belly, smiling to himself. His cheeks dimpled with his smile. He reminded Simon of a spoiled Alolan persian.

"Simon Harron," Verity said, as if only now bothering to remember the name of the person he had been following for the best part of the last hour. Simon hated when people said his family name. If they mentioned his family name, they usually would next speak about his family. Verity fixed his dark eyes on Simon. They weren't quite the black color of his father's, but they were close. He would have to be under bright lights to see the cool dark brown color of his irises. "Tell me, Mr. Simon Harron, what does being a catcher even mean?"

Simon swallowed another mouthful of coffee. "You don't know?"

Verity shrugged one shoulder lazily. "Dad steamrolled this whole project. He'd processed and filed an application form I never even saw before he told me it was happening. I didn't even know you'd be the guy who's supposed to train me in this stuff, or that I'd be out with you today." He sighed, shaking his head. "I'd have worn more suitable shoes, otherwise."

"It's shit work," Simon said. "You're out all day. You're either catching new pokémon to send to the R&D labs or you're tracking down something that got a bit out of control. Some of those early series really don't stand the test of time." Verity cocked his head, a quizzical look on his face. "Do you know anything about developed pokémon?" Simon asked.

"I hardly know anything about pokémon at all," Verity said.

Simon bit down on the inside of his lip. Why did Vance Kaliber think this was a good idea? He was starting to wonder if this was some sort of prank or elaborate test of his willpower.

"Pokémon are pretty mysterious creatures, right?" Simon said. "They change, and we don't really understand why. We've always had this tradition of pokémon training and whatnot, and that seems to trigger evolution. Pokémon Labs has been developing other ways to trigger these evolutions and test what makes pokémon stronger. They've gotten to the point now that they can recreate in the lab what happens in the field. Then they can adjust other factors in a pokémon, such as their nature and temperament, to make them safer. In the end, we end up with remarkable pokémon that are strong yet much easier to control."

"Wow," Verity said, a cold mirth in his voice, "you really have that script memorized, huh?"

Simon narrowed his eyes. "It's not a script."

Verity leaned forward and rested his elbows on the table. "So, Pokémon Labs takes all the hard parts out of pokémon training, hm? So that even someone like me, who can hardly tell a pikablu from a ratichu or whatever, can become a cool and accomplished trainer?"

Coloring in the cheeks and neck, Simon answered, "Well, you do need to have some measure of your own knowledge. You can hardly just barrel through a battle and expect to win."

"What, like you did?" Verity said. Simon's muscles tensed up. Verity pulled out Sylveon's poké ball and turned it over in his hands, smiling again. "Shadow Rush is an attack name, right?"

"You shouldn't use that move," Simon said quickly.

Verity cocked an eyebrow. "Why not? It gets results."

"It's not good for the pokémon."

"Then why does it know a move like that?"

"It's a sort of result of the development process."

Verity considered this for a few minutes. "Aren't all moves technically a result of the development process? Like, a bulbasaur would eventually learn ember, right?"

"Bulbasaur cannot learn ember," Simon said flatly. "It's not a fire type."

Verity dismissed this with a wave of his hand. "You know what I mean. You train pokémon and they get better. And Labs does that same thing, which you just said. So Shadow Rush is a natural part of the development process."

"Either way, it's not good for the pokémon to use that move. Most people don't know about it." If nobody knew about that move, it wouldn't be used on the pokémon they gave away. It should stay that way.

Verity went quiet for a while, gazing at the valuable poké ball which held Sylveon. Simon felt his heart rate increase again. He should never have had Sylveon use that move in front of Verity—in front of so many people. And they had recorded it. It would only be a matter of time before Marlena saw it.

"Right, so you were saying," Verity said, putting the poké ball down on the table. "Something about catching."

"Yes," Simon stammered. "Right. Many of the early series of developed pokémon weren't like they are now. Sometimes they destabilize. Usually they just run away from their trainers. But they're valuable, so it's important that we recover them. Catchers are the ones that track them down and catch them again."

Verity grimaced. "That sounds exhausting."

Simon nodded. "It is, really. You'll be up at dawn and in the fields or combing a town until sundown for three days in a row. Then once you find your pokémon, catch it, and send it back, you get your next assignment immediately and you have to ship right out. No weekends off, no holidays. It's work meant for people more physically adept than mentally." Simon forced himself to smile. "I mean that with the utmost respect, of course."

Verity burst out in laughter. "Are you calling me weak and smart, or yourself strong and stupid?"

"Both, really," Simon answered quietly, and Verity laughed again. It felt like being splashed with cold water.

"So you're catching owned pokémon," Verity said when his mirth died down. "How does that work out? You can't catch an owned pokémon."

"I thought you didn't know anything about pokémon," Simon countered.

Verity sat up straight, his brows furrowing. "Excuse you, Mr. Simon Harron. I may not know about those things, but poké balls are big business. I know very well that the higher the catch rate of a ball, the more secure it is. In fact, the newest model of ultra balls will preserve your trainer code on the pokémon itself so if the ball is damaged, you transfer it to a new ball seamlessly. Avoid that annoying release-and-recatch nonsense you get with other balls. And only Silph-made ultra balls have that technology, you know. Devon doesn't have the patents."

"Now who's memorized a script?"

"Sales is all about scripts," Verity said, although a bright pink color had come to his round cheeks. "Besides, I know the laws. It's illegal to even try to catch an owned pokémon. Poké balls have failsafes in them to stop it. Now, you haven't answered my question."

"That is correct," Simon responded. "And I'll continue to refrain from answering while we're in a public place."

Verity narrowed his eyes. "Why? You've talked about a ton of stuff already."

"Everything I've talked about is already publicly disclosed, although it seems very few people take the time to become educated on it. I shall show you, but you'll have to wait until we have more privacy."

Considering this for a moment, Verity said with authority, "Then we shall go to my apartment. We can discuss all the things I suppose I need to know about this so-called job. I don't know what my father is thinking, but I suppose we must do it correctly." He glanced down at Simon's plate. "Well, are you done yet? You're not even eating."

"Believe me, I'm trying," Simon said. He took a bite of toast and regretted it.

Verity rolled his eyes. He was fidgeting again, restless. Simon supposed he was excited by their conversation. The waiter passed by the table, pausing to check if either of them needed anything. "No, we'll be done soon," Verity responded without looking at him. He produced a black credit card and held it out with two fingers. "Run the bill, will you?" The waiter obligingly took the card as Verity said to Simon, "Dear old Dad's buying your breakfast, so you better enjoy it."

Simon felt something like bile rise in the back of his throat. He did his best to ignore it as he choked down as many mouthfuls of the cold, tasteless food as he could.

Verity's home was not far from the mall. Simon's unsettled stomach tightened when they approached Battle Street again and was relieved when they turned down an alleyway to another street parallel to it. This brought them to an enormous high-rise apartment building which stretched up almost as tall as the mall itself. Verity's apartment was at the very top of the tower.

The apartment took up the whole top floor. The walls which faced out were entirely made of glass, giving Simon a feeling of vertigo as he stood in the modern-styled living room. He stood with his back to the windows as much as he could, but the living room looked like it went on for miles, merging with a large dining area and kitchen, and floor-length windows surrounded it all. The floors were a deep, dark hardwood, the furniture mostly black and gray. There was strikingly little personality to the room—no knickknacks, no books or magazines on the all-glass coffee table, no decorative pieces on the dining table or bar. It didn't look lived in, but rather like a model to be shown to potential buyers.

Verity kicked his loafers off by the door, so Simon stooped to untie his boots and pull them off. "This is all yours, is it?"

"Oh, no, this is all Dad's," Verity said, falling onto one of the black leather couches. "He insisted I live here, and I said I only would if my mother could live here as well. He hates Mom, you know, ever since the divorce. Oh, no, he hated her long before the divorce. But anyway, she's not here now. I like to send her on little vacations. She deserves it after dealing with Dad for years. Oh, sit wherever you like," he said, glancing up at Simon as he stood awkwardly by the door. "I suppose I should be polite and offer you a drink."

"No need," Simon said, sinking down into the other couch arranged perpendicularly to the one Verity half-laid on.

"I don't often have guests, you know," Verity chattered on. "I'm not that good with company at all. And that's not good, is it? A businessman should be warm and friendly and know how to butter someone up. That's how the best deals are made. I'm not very good at buttering up at all. Well, people, that is." He snickered.

Simon bit the inside of his lip until it nearly bled while Verity chattered on. When there was finally a lull, he spoke up. "About catching, now."

Verity sat up suddenly. "Oh! Yes, of course! Now, do go on and tell me all the secrets."

Suppressing the urge to grimace, Simon said, "I'm rather glad you're familiar with how poké balls work. I can skip that bit." He pulled his catching glove out of one of his many pockets and slipped it over his hand. "This is what allows me to catch other people's pokémon."

Verity looked at the plain-looking black glove, cocking his head to the side. "Well, elaborate."

Simon wiggled his fingers a few times. "There are very fine wires within the fibers of this glove. You can feel them if you know about them and you're paying attention, but most people will assume there's nothing special about this glove. Those wires are attached to a microchip implanted in the palm, here." Simon pointed to the center of the glove. "And that thing overwrites the antitheft functions of any poké ball."

Verity's eyes were wide, like he was a child in a sweets shop. "How do you use it?"

Simon pulled an empty ultra ball from a pocket and held it in his gloved hand. After a few seconds, the button glowed with a purple light. "You touch the ball to the chip by holding it. It automatically starts the process, and overwriting is pretty quick. The process is finished when the indicator light glows like that."

"Is it permanent?" Verity asked.

"No," Simon said. He took the ball in his other hand. The violet color faded from the button, leaving it white. "It used to be, I'm told, but a few other catchers were irresponsible with that function. You use it when you need it."

"That's amazing," Verity breathed. His eyes were sparkling with excitement. "I want to try it."

"You'll have to wait until you get your own," Simon said. "These things are bonded to your genome. When you put it on, it reads your DNA through your skin cells. If you were to put mine on, it would just be a normal glove."

"Labs has that kind of technology?" Verity shook his head. "This beats Silph by a mile."

"Pokémon Labs, Inc. owns Silph, so that shouldn't be a surprise," Simon said.

"I want to see this in action. Father gave us an assignment, didn't he?"

Simon nodded and pulled his cellphone out of his pocket, bringing up the email which contained the information for this assignment. Their object was the capture of an XU series nidorina which had gotten away from its handler. This pokemon hadn't been distributed, but rather had been held in a Pokémon Labs facility in the city and had somehow gotten away.

There were times Simon allowed himself to wonder at the frequency with which this happened. One would think these facilities would be quite self-contained. This was not a new project by any means; artificial pokémon development had been happening for almost two decades. Yet, with surprising frequency, these pokémon escaped. This happened in every region Simon had been to.

He couldn't stop himself from thinking of the incident in Pewter. While Simon himself had never seen developed pokémon turn on people like that, who's to say it didn't happen in these facilities?

And if that were the case, what happened to the pokémon he returned? Shiri had asked him that question, and he had refused to even put any thought into it. But in the past few days, he had captured and returned a ditto, a magmar, a raichu, and a persian.

His mouth turned dry. He couldn't think about any of that. He had work to do, a new catcher to train.

Simon shared the information–and only the information, not his personal thoughts–with Verity. The nidorina had last been seen in the north part of the city, wandering a small residential neighborhood. It was not labeled as a potential danger, nor was it labeled as aggressive. Of course Vance Kaliber would give them an easy target for Verity's first mission.

"So, what, we go to this neighborhood and just poke around?" Verity asked, sounding less than thrilled at the idea.

"That's a start," Simon responded. "I'll have one of my team out to catch the scent. Most of them have extensive experience finding developed pokémon. I think they have some sort of unique scent."

"And what if this thing has left that area? What are we to do, just wander till we find it?"

"Essentially, yes." Simon couldn't help the smile that played at his lips as Verity groaned. "I told you this was terrible work."

"I really don't want to do this," Verity said in a low voice. Nonetheless, he pushed himself up off the couch.

"I'm sure you could persuade your father to change his mind," Simon offered.

Verity scoffed. "Oh, no, there's no changing anything about that hateful man," he spat. "You think I wanted to be his secretary in the first place? Serving him his disgusting little espressos? Taking his stupid appointments? Of course not! I'd have rather eaten leather. But Dad's word is as good as law in this city."

"Why not leave the city, then? You're a grown man."

Verity's face and neck turned pink, and he folded his arms over his chest. "I can see you are entirely unaware of how the rich and powerful operate. One word from my father and I won't be able to even walk into a Boutique Couture. And…" Verity's gaze dropped, his finely-sculpted brows furrowing. "All of my money is tied up in his accounts. If I walk away, I'll have less than nothing. It's impossible." He was quiet a moment, presumably pushing down the resentment which had allowed itself to surface back down. His brow relaxed, his arms dropped, and he let out a deep exhale. "Anyway, I'm going to dress in something more appropriate for traipsing around a strange neighborhood. Do excuse me."

Simon stared at the dark screen of his phone as Verity retreated to another part of the condo. He was caught between amusement and disgust at how similarly his own feelings mirrored that spoiled child's. His own position in the company was entirely due to his sister, after all. And he was not willing to walk away, either.

He shut his eyes, his head throbbing dully. He wondered distantly if he was dying.

Somewhere in his mind, Simon knew he couldn't keep going like this. Every second of that day since he awoke in a panic, he had been regretting not going with Ashton and Shiri to Johto. But when he considered leaving this company, this job, his chest tightened. Without a job, he'd have no money, no stability.

Money.

Was that what this was all about?

His eyes fell on the rose gold poké ball Verity had left on the table. Inside, Sylveon slumbered, recovering from the horrid battle Simon had her participate in.

His jaw tensed so hard his teeth hurt. His hands were shaking. He couldn't do this anymore.

Fifteen minutes later, Simon found himself on a train. He wasn't sure where he was going or how he had got there. He had no memory at all of leaving Verity's apartment, walking to the train station, buying a ticket.

Nor did he remember scooping up that rose gold poké ball and stuffing it into his pocket. Yet there it was.

He expected his heart to race, his chest to tighten. But they didn't. Instead, he felt a profound sense of calm. Slipping his sunglasses over his eyes, Simon settled back into the vinyl train seat and watched Kanto pass by out the window.