08: DUBIOUS BELIEFS
Brauron will be absolutely fine. The doctor is very nice, looks at Artemis and knows immediately that she's the kind of person who gets scared, and she tells her that most pokémon, so long as they're well cared for, can shrug off more or less anything. They're really not like regular animals.
“We once had a machoke come in with her arm almost all the way off from trying to put an angry gallade in a headlock,” she says, while Brauron wriggles away from her gloved hands. “All we had to do was stitch it back in place and a month later you could hardly even see the scar.”
Artemis says thank you and goes away feeling embarrassed. She
knew that. She did. But that scyther – the way it moved, the way it wasn't just trying to win but to
kill – well, a thing like that, it gets to you, or it gets to her anyway. She thought she was starting to get to grips with pokémon training, but now she's not so sure. It has a wildness around the edges that she isn't certain she can handle.
Anyway, she decides not to think about it, or at least to try not to, which is almost the same thing, and goes to find Cass stretched out on a couch in the lounge, talking on the phone.
“Yeah, okay,” she's saying. “I'll keep you posted. Okay look, I gotta go, Artemis is back. Love you too. Bye!” She lowers her phone, looking awkward. “My aunt again,” she explains. “Honestly. Can't even go just one town without her checking up on me.”
“That sounds kinda sweet,” says Artemis, thinking of her own parents, knowing she will have to call them soon. “I guess she cares.”
“Yeah, I guess. Maybe she could like care a little more intermittently, though.” Cass sits up, dislodging Ringo from her stomach with a squawk and a flurry of ruffled feathers. “Oops. You okay? All right. So, what'd the doc say?”
“Oh, she'll be okay.” Artemis raises the hand that Brauron is currently coiled around, tail flexed as easily as if the cut wasn't there. “You can hardly even see it any more.”
“Neat,” she says. “So what now? Dunno about you, but I'm thinking stay here for a bit. Kind of a rest after all that weirdness, y'know. Maybe do the whole trainer 'n' tourist thing tomorrow.”
“Yeah, I'm with you there,” says Artemis. “I think Brauron deserves a break anyway.”
“Cool.” Cass sinks back down, filling the whole sofa in a way that argues for what seems to Artemis like an incredible ease with the space she occupies. They're the only people in the room – the Pallet Pokémon Centre is rarely very busy – but still. Artemis herself could never spread out like that. “In which case, I'mma do some good old-fashioned time-wasting. Wifi password's 6n99f, by the way.”
“Right.” That makes Artemis smile a little. “Okay. I think I might call my parents.”
Now she's said it, in the presence of a witness no less, she really has to do it. She goes up to her room – they've each got their own this time – and opens up her contacts, stares at the home phone number.
She breathes in, and out. She pushes her thoughts around inside her head and forces them into the correct order. She finds her old name, and with a flicker of unease lets it settle back onto her like the robe of Nessus.
Artemis pushes the button, and raises her phone to her ear.
*
In the morning, over breakfast, she and Cass discuss what to do next.
The thing about Pallet is that there isn't much here. It's the kind of place people move to so they don't have to live where they work in Viridian; there are houses, supermarkets and malls to service them, and not much else. No Gym, no museums, no culture to speak of; the only real tourist attraction is the Oak Foundation Lab, and even then the appeal is somewhat limited. It's been a long time now since Oak himself was considered a rebel: these days, he's so establishment that the title 'Professor' is no longer a nickname but an actual official thing given to him by the University of Pewter. And honestly, Artemis can think of plenty of things she'd rather be doing than poking around some university faculty. Her place at Yellowbrick in Saffron is for engineering rather than natural sciences or pokézoology, but she'd prefer to put the whole topic of organised study out of her head for a while.
Of course, she doesn't say any of this, not in so many words, but she does float the possibility of getting the ferry out to Cinnabar sooner rather than later. It's not like hiking, after all; it won't be strenuous. Trainers get tickets for next to nothing and you can sit on the deck for a day or two, watching the waves and soaking up the sun.
Cass seems tempted, but before they come to a decision someone with a Centre name badge comes up to their table and interrupts.
“Excuse me,” he says. “Are you the, um, the trainer who brought in the scyther yesterday?”
Two fears in counterpoint:
one, what do they want with me; two, I know what that 'um' means. Artemis swallows both and nods.
“Yeah,” she says. “I am.”
“Someone from the Oak Foundation just called,” the man tells her. “We sent the scyther over there once it was stable – it really needs more specialist attention than we can provide – and they'd like to ask you a few questions about it, if that's okay.”
It isn't really, but whatever.
“Okay,” says Artemis. “When do they want us?”
“Any time today,” replies the man. “Just head over when you get a chance and ask for” – he checks a name written down on a piece of paper – “Dr Vigdísardóttir.”
The difficulty he has with the polysyllables makes Artemis feel a little better. People tend to struggle with her surname too, these days. Apparently Apanchomene is harder than Campbell.
“Okay,” she says again. “Thanks. We'll do that.” The man leaves, and she raises her eyebrows at Cass. “I guess they made the decision for us,” she says.
“Yep,” says Cass. “I guess they did. Okay, Ringo, hurry it up. We got places to be.”
So they end up at the Oak Foundation Lab after all, and Artemis has to admit, it's kinda pretty, in its own way. The original building is still there, lurking like a poor relative among the fancier new builds, but it stands at the back of a picturesque quadrangle with a fountain in the middle. Even the spiked iron railings that separate the site from the street are at least
elegantly unwelcoming.
“It's bigger than I thought,” says Cass, staring through the gates at a gang of research students crossing the courtyard. “Is it like part of a university now?”
“Pewter,” replies Artemis. “I guess he didn't want to go back to Yellowbrick.”
They go in and follow the signs for reception to a low building on the left that might have been considered tasteful forty years ago but which now looks like a slightly melted birthday cake. Someone's made an effort to hide the worst excesses with ornamental hedges, but it looks like a losing battle. Inside, there are prints of old scientific illustrations hanging on the walls, and a receptionist about Artemis' own age who listens to Cass stumble across the Icelandic surname with an expression that suggests he has heard every single mispronunciation of it known to humankind.
“Okay,” he says. “I'll let her know you're here. Just take a seat and she'll be right out.”
They do, and she is. Artemis and Cass first become aware of her long before she actually reaches the reception; there's a sound from down the hall, a plaintive
oops and the sound of papers flying everywhere. A couple drift out into the reception area, and the man behind the desk looks up from his computer.
“That'll be her now,” he says, and sure enough, after a couple of seconds of scrabbling during which Artemis tries to find the courage to get up and help for so long that she misses the opportunity, Dr Vigdísardóttir bustles into view, tall and fair and with what looks like half a sequoia's worth of paper clutched against her chest.
“And you and
you,” she mutters, picking up the last two sheets and trying to shuffle them all back into a stack against the edge of the receptionist's desk. “Ah. Okay. Hi, Alec, you said …?” The receptionist points, and Dr Vigdísardóttir turns. “Ah,” she says. “Cassandra and Artemis?”
“Cass is fine,” says Cass quickly. “But yeah. Um. Hi.”
“And Rena will be fine for me,” replies the doctor. “Sorry, I'd shake your hand but – well.” She waggles her papers, then clutches them tighter as they threaten to slide away from her again. “Good to meet you both. Could you come with me? I need to get these to my office and we might as well talk there.”
“Sure,” says Cass, and follows Rena down the hall. Artemis trails after, silent and awkward. She should have come out here earlier and helped pick up the papers.
“Your scyther is
very interesting,” says Rena, weaving in between a graduate student and a nidorino with a spectacular lack of grace. “Oh, sorry, Graham. Was that your foot? Excuse me – where was I? Oh yes, your scyther.”
“It's not really mine,” says Cass. “Artemis caught it.”
“Ringo knocked it down, though,” counters Artemis.
“Yeah, and Brauron knocked it
out.”
“Okay, well – it's not really mine either,” says Artemis. “I mean, I was just trying to not get stabbed.”
Rena listens with an air of benevolent confusion.
“I see,” she says, in the polite tone of someone who really, really doesn't. “Well, anyway, it's very interesting. I specialise in bug-type evolution and I haven't ever seen anything like it before.” She arrives at a door and attempts to open it with her shoulder; Artemis, in what feels to her like a pathetic attempt at redemption, steps forward and opens it for her. “Thanks. Yes, my office is in the Fisher Building, over there.”
Trees on one side, brick wall on the other; Artemis has completely lost track of where they are. The lab site didn't look this big from the road. It must go back further than she thought.
“There are definitely cases of evolution going wrong before,” explains Rena, as they walk. “Most famously perhaps with eevee – I'm sure you've seen pictures of what happens when they try to evolve in two directions at once. That's the problem with being so unstable. The more labile, the bigger the risk of collapse … although to be fair, they
do sometimes survive. I believe there was quite a famous trainer when I was a girl who had what he called a flaporeon. It had five legs and mostly spat steam. I think it died very young. Left here!”
They turn a corner onto a path leading up to a building slightly less ugly than the previous one and Artemis takes advantage of the sudden pause to get in a question.
“So about the scyther―”
“Ah!” cries Rena, as if she'd forgotten. “Yes, the scyther. So, as I was saying, evolution can go wrong – but it's very uncommon among bug-types. Insects shift from instar to instar quite happily, after all. The evolution of bug-types is simply that, scaled up.”
Artemis is quicker this time, and gets the door to the Fisher Building before Rena has a chance to try for it and drop her papers.
“Thanks. What I'm saying is, this is the first case I've heard of in which a scyther has suffered some sort of evolutionary mishap. Sometimes you do find a scizor that gets stuck in its old shell, but they're perfectly capable of breaking their way out once their new claws harden up. This is different. Your scyther isn't fully evolved. It doesn't have the musculature to handle that scizor claw at all. Which is actually rather a good thing, because if it did I think it would have chopped its way out of its enclosure already. It's rather determined not to be helped, I'm afraid.”
She hardly seems to draw breath; it's tiring just listening to her. While she pauses to try and figure out how to get the keys to her office door out of her pocket without dropping her papers, Cass smiles at Artemis behind her, and Artemis surprises herself by smiling back. Is that mean of her? She hopes not. Rena seems very nice, just … also very talkative.
Very talkative.
“Would you like me to hold that a minute?” she asks.
“Oh. Thank you. Yes, that simplifies things.” She unlocks the door and takes the papers back. “Right. Come in, then.”
The office looks more or less as Artemis expected: a chaotic mess of files, books and papers, some stacked up to rather precarious heights. On the walls are an eclectic mixture of photos of bug-type pokémon, images from what Artemis thinks is the
Mahabharata, and antiquated lolcats with an unexpectedly Marxist bent:
I can haz control of the means of production? Taken all together, it's quite a character portrait.
“Let me just move these,” says Rena, depositing her papers on an already overloaded desk and clearing several books from two chairs. “Right. There.” The three of them sit – Rena on the same side of the desk as them, as opposed to behind it. Artemis appreciates that. It makes this a little less intimidating. “So as you were saying,” begins Rena, and then pauses. “No. Wait.
I was saying, wasn't I? Yes. As I was saying, I want to ask you a few questions. This scyther, or scizor, is unlike anything I've ever seen before, and I'd like to build up as complete a picture of its history as possible.”
“Sure,” says Cass. “Happy to help. 'S why we came here, after all.”
“Great.” Rena clicks open a pen and opens a notebook. “Do you mind if I take notes? I'm terrible at remembering details. Thanks. Okay, can you first tell me where exactly you found the scyther?”
“About three quarters of the way down the Route 1 trail,” replies Cass. “What were we – a couple hours away from Pallet?”
Artemis nods.
“Yeah,” she says. “That part where the grass is really tall, you know?”
Rena does know – well enough to ask exactly which part of that stretch of trail they mean, and to understand the answer. They describe the direction the scyther came from, the way it used the cover, its apparent single-minded determination to kill whatever it could find. (Artemis does not have the nerve to point out that it was entirely focused on her, that it acted as if drawn to breach.) Rena nods and writes this down and asks more questions about its actions and appearance.
“A lot of its green shell has since come off after that fire attack, and I'm interested to know what sort of pressures its body was under,” she explains. “Have you seen pictures? No? Hang on, I have one here …”
Without the hanging remnants of its former exoskeleton, the creature looks even worse: most of its shell is rusty and blotched, like the colour has somehow curdled, and with the exception of its left arm none of its limbs are the right shape. That blade is long and lumpy and bent in ways that make it look broken; that staring eye is in fact the only one it has left, the other crushed beneath a carunculated mass of hypertrophied chitin. Under the flat light of the surgery in which the pictures were taken, it looks like something from another world.
Artemis cannot help but be aware that she's seen a lot of that kind of thing recently. For once, she doesn't try to squash the thought. It's clearly going to be one of those things. Doesn't matter if she knows there's probably no connection. She's going to keep believing that there is.
“It's very angry,” adds Rena, while she and Cass gawp. “Scyther aren't known for their sunny dispositions, but this one is … exceptionally aggressive. It's strange. They're more easily provoked when sick or in pain, of course, but they also tend to avoid contact with humans or pokémon, too. Yet you say this one chased you down.”
Because of breach, Artemis thinks.
“Yeah,” she says. “I don't know why.”
“Nor do I. But I'd like to find out.” Rena sits back and chews her pen thoughtfully. “There is of course always the possibility that it's just a jerk. Some animals just are, same as people. But if so, it's a very dedicated one.”
A brief pause. Outside Rena's window, the branches of decorative elms go back and forth.
“What else can you tell me about it?” she asks. “Anything else unusual?”
“There was this weird smell,” says Cass, and Artemis is all at once very, very aware of her own heartbeat. “Like burning. I thought it was just Brauron's fire, but now I think about it I'm not sure. That smells weird, y'know? Like … kinda sweet, almost.”
“Yeah,” mumbles Artemis, trying to level out her voice and not succeeding. “I always think like – like honey.”
“Yeah, that's it.” Cass glances briefly in her direction, but if she senses her discomfort she doesn't show it. “And that's not what it was? This was more like a normal fire.”
“I see,” says Rena. “I haven't noticed any such smell myself, and nobody has mentioned it …”
“It was there, though,” insists Cass. “Right, Artemis?”
Four eyes suddenly on her. Artemis flinches and knows from the concern and pity in their faces that they notice.
“I, uh,” she says. “Yeah. Yeah, I definitely noticed it too.”
“Okay,” says Rena, not quite concealing her confusion. “Okay, then. That seems … well. Not quite sure what to make of that. You're sure it was the scyther giving off this scent?”
“I'm pretty sure,” says Cass, jumping in and (consciously or not) saving Artemis from having to respond. “There wasn't anything else around to make it. No smoke or anything from a fire.”
“Hm. Interesting.” Rena writes it down, capping it off with an extravagantly curly question mark. “All right,” she says. “I'd like to ask you a bit about its blade now…”
*
A. Grahame is a hard person to find. Fortunately, Emilia has the resources to make it happen anyway.
After a slew of phone calls and emails moving tomorrow's appointments – nobody questions her; the fact that she is never ill makes everyone believe that she really must be – she logs on to the League intranet and does a little searching. A. Grahame isn't in the index of contact details for all the League members, but that's fair enough; Emilia didn't really expect that they would be. They're also not on Lorelei's books – those that are actually accessible, anyway. It figures. It's annoying, but it figures.
“I guess I knew it wouldn't be that easy,” says Emilia, leaning back in her chair and stretching out her back. “Okay. Let's see what Stella can get us.”
Ten minutes later, she has composed and sent an email calling in an exceptionally large favour. She's been saving it for a couple years now, ever since she made sure that the copy of Stella's criminal record that reached her employer's desk was one without the drugs charges on it. (Emilia does not agree with the position taken by Kantan drug law, and anyway Stella is a good person and Emilia has no right to judge anyone for any kind of substance abuse, with her history.) Really, it almost seems a shame to use it up. But there's no alternative: Emilia has to know who A. Grahame is and what project they were working on, and to do that she's going to need access to the sort of archives that her usual contacts won't be able to show her.
After she's sent the email, she closes her computer and makes a start on dinner. No sense spying on an empty stomach. And anyway, no matter how quickly she gets a reply, Emilia isn't going to fly up to the Indigo Plateau tonight. By the time she got there, Stella would be gone, and making stay late on top of helping her break into the system would definitely be asking too much of her.
She eats and tries to catch up on the TV she's missed because of her trip, but her concentration keeps wavering and in the end, sick of rewinding the last five minutes over and over, she gives up and turns the TV off. Then, when Nadia broadcasts her protest, she turns it back on.
“Okay,” she says. “I'm going to bed. Turn it off when you're done, all right?”
YES, says Nadia, and Emilia leaves her to it. She doesn't actually seem to be able to interpret the pictures on the screen as representations of real things, but she likes the colours. Emilia has not infrequently come into the living-room in the morning to find her staring avidly at the twenty-four hour news channel with the sound off, entranced by the rippling red logo of KNBC News. You'll ruin your eyes, Emilia told her – but only once. It made her feel like a parent talking to her child, and she wasn't sure how she felt about that.
On her way out, she brushes her hand along Effie's stem.
“Goodnight,” she whispers under her breath, pretending for a moment that Nadia cannot hear the words echoed in her mind, and then she goes to clean her teeth and floss and take herself efficiently apart so she can sleep.
In the morning, Emilia automatically begins to dress and then stops partway through, remembering that she doesn't have any appointments to keep. It's a strange feeling. She puts away the suit she was about to wear and instead throws on an old pair of jeans and a t-shirt she hasn't worn in months. Suppressing the feeling that she is underdressed, she makes coffee and takes it into the living-room to book a flight to the Plateau.
As she enters, Nadia stops staring into space and stares at her instead.
?, she asks. Emilia folds her arms defensively.
“I'm sick today, remember?” she says. “No work.”
Nadia keeps staring. Emilia sighs.
“Yeah, I know.”
She checks on Effie, which technically does not consist of anything more than quickly glancing at her but which nevertheless takes her several minutes, and then she opens up her laptop and reads the answering email from Stella. She doesn't seem very happy, but she's agreed. Good. Next up, Emilia finds a flight. It's not an expense she'd budgeted for, but it's okay; she doesn't actually spend all that much of what the League pays her – which, given her high position and general indispensability, is quite a lot. Some of it goes into an investment account and much of the rest to a charity that supports abused children; some just sits there, waiting for her to finally get around to going out and spending it. This does not happen often, in part because Emilia is too busy working and in part because she is even now a little afraid that if she touches the money it might all disappear and leave her right back where she started.
“Right,” she says. “Get ready, Nadia. We're leaving in fifteen minutes.”
She announces it more for her benefit than Nadia's. She's the one who needs to get changed (not without some relief) back into something more formal, as a disguise for when she arrives at the Plateau. It's a pity she didn't think of that earlier, really. Would have saved her the awkwardness.
Anyway: she changes and they go, and after a taxi and a plane the two of them emerge into the bright light of the Indigo Plateau, high up among the Tohjo Mountains in the northenmost corner of the country. It's a strange town, centred on the Indigo Palace where the Elite Four and Championship challenges take place and populated mostly by clerks and bureaucrats, with a scaffolding of service workers that keep the whole thing running. There's no farming here, no industry, no natural resources at all except the water that flows down from the mountain streams. When the Palace was built two thousand years ago, it served no purpose but to mark the power of the people who constructed it. It still does that now, in a sense. It might be mostly empty except when the challenges are on, but it's at the heart of its own small city, a township that exists solely to serve it and its masters. As much as anything can be, it
is the Indigo League.
The whole way through the town from the airport to the office, Emilia can see it. It's a deliberate architectural decision – the League have never allowed anything big enough to rival the Palace to be built here – but even knowing that, and even after all this time, some of the magic lingers. Emilia looks out of the window of her taxi, sees it loom in hundreds of feet of carved granite above the office parks and terraced League housing, and feels the same flicker of awe that she felt when she first arrived here for the interview.
She's aware that it's mostly just old childhood dreams, stirred up by the famous skyline. It doesn't matter. The League has always been about the dreams of children, and that's exactly what makes it so important. There's a reason Emilia works for it rather than in the civil service.
The office she's headed towards is parked among the upper storeys of a forgettable block in the west side of town. It doesn't look important, and in many ways it probably isn't, but it's where Lorelei's department's records are processed, and that means that short of breaking into Lorelei's office itself it's Emilia's only real chance of finding out anything about A. Grahame. The League is like any other government agency, after all. No matter how hard they try to hide it, everything gets written down
somewhere. And someone has to file it away, and that someone of course actually hires several clerks to do the filing for him, and one of those clerks got her job by leaning on what might loosely be called her friendship with Emilia in order to disappear a conviction or two.
Illegal, yes. But probably morally justified, and anyway it bought Emilia the favour she's calling in now. She texts Stella to let her know she's arrived, takes the elevator to the third floor and finds her waiting in the corridor, fiddling with her hair and shifting from foot to foot.
“Hi, Stella,” says Emilia, folding her sunglasses. “How's things?”
“Not great,” she replies. “Someone wants me to risk my a*s breaking some major laws.”
Emilia sighs.
“Okay, I deserved that.” It pays to be polite, but in truth, she isn't sure that she does, or even if she likes Stella enough to feel bad for her. The two of them went to university together, and that means that Stella is more or less the only person in Emilia's current life who knows what she is and who she used to be. And though Emilia tells herself that this doesn't matter, that she is proud of what she is and anyway if the
Champion isn't cis then what does it matter if people know she isn't either, this still means that she cannot deal with Stella without a certain amount of unease. “I'll try to make this as painless as possible,” she continues. “I'll be as quick as I can, and if I'm discovered I'm not mentioning names.”
“Yeah, okay.” Stella sighs. “This way, then, Santangelo.”
Emilia smiles and follows and does not say anything, despite the fact that Stella only started calling her that after she changed her forename. They walk down a grey-carpeted corridor, past glass doors leading onto half-empty cubicles, and turn left into a small, dim room at the back of the building. There's a window that looks out onto the car park, but somehow very little light seems to get through it. There are also three desks, all vacant, and Stella indicates the one in the corner.
“I've been logged in for a while already,” she says. “That way all they can get me for is forgetting to log back out again while I went out. Just leave it all as it is when you're done and text me once you're out of the building.”
Emilia nods.
“I'll do that. Thanks, Stella. I appreciate this.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Stella folds her arms, unfolds them again. She doesn't seem to know what to do with her limbs. “Okay, well, I'm out. I don't know anything about this.”
She leaves, and Emilia sits. Nadia, who has been silent on her shoulder the whole time, takes the opportunity to hop off onto the desk and stretch her wings.
“Keep an eye on the corridor's future for me,” says Emilia. “If anyone's coming, I want to know at least five minutes before they get here, okay?”
Nadia cheeps and flutters effortfully from desk to desk until she reaches a pot plant by the door, in whose upper reaches she nestles herself, eyes pointed out into the corridor. On the periphery of her mind, Emilia senses her sight moving forward into the future.
She takes a breath. Okay.
“Crimes,” she says, because Nadia is busy, and plunges into the database.
*
The interview goes on. After a while, Rena seems satisfied, and shuts her notebook.
“Well, I think that's all the questions I have,” she says. “Now, do you have any questions of your own? Bearing in mind that we're all as much in the dark about this scyther as you are, of course.”
“Is it gonna be okay?” asks Cass. “I mean, obviously it's sick, and it went down kinda fast …”
Rena sighs.
“I'm afraid I don't know,” she says. “There isn't really much treatment we can offer. Pokémon are good at surviving and even thriving upon mutations that would cripple any conventional animal, but this scyther is an extreme case. There's a chance it might be able to hunt and look after itself, if we amputated that claw so it could at least move, but given that it's still berserk and extremely fragile, most of us feel that there isn't much we can do but learn what we can to help in future cases, and put it down as humanely as we can.” She shakes her head slowly. “Sorry. I know it wasn't the answer you wanted.”
“No, it's okay,” says Cass, although she does not look like it is, particularly. “I mean, if there's nothing you can do …”
“We'll do what we can. But it might be the kindest thing.”
Pause. On Cass' shoulder, Ringo shuffles and chirps uncomfortably, picking up on his partner's unease. In her mind's eye, Artemis sees the scyther lurching towards her, falling, shell corroded by Brauron's venom in the blink of an eye. No. Definitely not healthy.
“Anything else?” asks Rena. She sounds hopeful. Probably she wants a more cheerful question. And – well. Artemis
does have a question, if she can find the courage to ask it, but it's not very much more positive.
Okay, Artie. Go.
“Do you think it's … I mean is it …” Stop. Breathe. Okay? Okay. “Have you heard of breach?” she asks.
Rena's eyes widen, very slightly.
“Breach,” she says, furrowing her brow. “No, I can't say that I have … why, what is it?”
Lying? Maybe lying. Her eyes – but maybe she was imagining that. Artemis collects herself, tries to remember what she can and can't say according to the contract she signed with the League. It was just what she saw out in the woods, right?
“I … it's some kind of radiation, I think,” lies Artemis. “Something I read about somewhere. I just – that scyther, that kind of mutation, it seems like―”
“Conspiracy theories, I'm sure,” says Rena, too quickly. Either lying or just uncomfortable. Artemis hates that she can't trust herself to tell. “Never heard of this breach thing.”
Artemis lowers her eyes, cheeks burning, heart pounding with a sick, aggressive beat.
“Okay,” she says, hating how obviously wounded she sounds. “Okay.”
A painful kind of silence. Brauron climbs onto Artemis' shoulder and drapes herself around the back of her neck. It's a little hot in here for that, but Artemis is grateful anyway.
“I guess that's everything, then,” says Rena. “Thank you both for coming in!”
“Oh, it's no problem,” says Cass. “I mean,
we are trainers. Lotta free time.”
“Of course.” Rena beams in that I'm-remembering-my-trainer-journey kinda way. “Best two years of my life. My raticate is sadly no longer with us, but her grandkids are still chewing through my furniture to this day.” She sits there for a moment, lost in reverie, and then puts her notebook and pen away. “All right, then.”
Cass and Artemis stand. She shakes their hands (Artemis' with almost-well-concealed reluctance: is it because of breach, or because she's trans?) and says goodbye, and they say goodbye back, and then they leave her and walk together in silence until they're back in the real world, out in the quiet Pallet street.
Cass looks at Artemis.
“Are you okay?” she asks.
Artemis nods.
“Okay,” says Cass. She seems out of her depth, but willing to try. It's very sweet of her. “Okay, let's … go, then.”
They begin to walk. After a few minutes, Artemis finds her voice.
“So,” she says. “Cassandra?”
Cass screws up her face, mock-disgusted.
“You can't tell me I have a ridiculous name, your name's
Artemis.”
Much to her own surprise, Artemis smiles.
“Yep,” she says. “Chose it myself.”
“Huh? Really?”
“Uh, yeah,” says Artemis. “My parents had other ideas about what to call me.”
“Oh.” Cass looks a little nervous. “Yeah, I guess they probably would have.”
The silence comes back, and Artemis' smile fades. She's made things awkward again, hasn't she?
“You go on ahead,” she says. “I need to buy a few things in town.”
“Hm? Oh shoot, actually, I'm glad you said that,” says Cass. “I'm almost out of … everything, actually. Ringo's gonna be mad if he doesn't have his mealworms.” Ringo seems to recognise the word: he tenses suddenly and peers sharply into his partner's face. “No, birdbrain, not
now,” sighs Cass. “Just talking about them, okay?”
Artemis hesitates. She'd kind of wanted a couple of minutes to herself, after screwing up as badly as she did in Rena's office. But okay, she can't say anything, so whatever.
“Sure,” she says. “I think the town centre's this way …”
*
Emilia amends her previous statement: A. Grahame is a
really hard person to find. This, as close to an official database of people who Lorelei employs as there is, has nothing on them. There's an A. Grantham, and an A. Rohame, but no A. Grahame. There's even an S. Nakajima, who Emilia knows for a fact is embedded in the heart of the League's time travel research division – and honestly, up till now, Emilia was pretty sure that that was as top secret as things get. If he's here, then A. Grahame should be too. But no, apparently there's another level of secrecy beyond that. For a moment, Emilia imagines layers upon layers mounting endlessly into a fog of misdirection, and then she reminds herself that this is the real world and she's dealing with real people. People aren't capable of that kind of elaborate nonsense. Usually, if something doesn't look right, it's because it is and everyone involved is kind of hoping that nobody else will notice.
Still. The breach project, if that's what it was, must have been very deeply buried indeed. There's no record that anyone called A. Grahame ever worked for the League in any capacity whatsoever.
Emilia unbends her back and tries to think. Is it really completely off the record? That seems … unlikely. People need to be paid and departments need to be financed, after all, and Emilia has seen far too much of the League to have any illusions that it can do that without leaving a paper trail. The whole thing is one big bureaucratic mess that can barely keep itself upright, let alone disappear entire operations without a trace.
So. What's a more likely scenario? One, they could have―
HOLD, says Nadia suddenly, and without missing a beat Emilia gets up, ready to slip out―
NO, says Nadia.
NEXT DOOR.
Emilia breathes out and sits back down.
“Thanks,” she says. “Keep me posted.”
YES.
Okay. Where was she? Alternatives, right. So what the League could have done is routed the payments through another department – they could probably have hidden something among Bruno's endless PR and liaison subcommittees, although the cost of research equipment would have been difficult to explain away. But it seems a little too elaborate; that's not the kind of thing that actually happens in real life. Besides, Lorelei wouldn't have wanted to risk Bruno asking questions. He's not exactly the sharpest tool in the shed, but he's tenacious, and Emilia knows all too well how much trouble someone who refuses to give up can be.
So. Another option: the documentation was destroyed when the project was cancelled. That makes a lot more sense to Emilia, considering A. Grahame seemed to think that Lorelei cancelled it out of an attack of conscience. When her anomalous resources screw up, she does like to make the mess disappear, as Emilia can well attest.
This scenario doesn't leave much for Emilia to dig through, though. If there's no record of who A. Grahame is, then how is she meant to figure out where they worked?
It's a difficult one. She sits there and thinks for a moment, then gets up and begins to pace. Nadia broadcasts a nonverbal wave of concern, something that might be translated as
you're less well hidden if you move, but she waves it aside.
“I need to think,” she tells her. “Just keep watching.”
Nadia isn't happy about it, but she obeys, and Emilia keeps pacing. Think, now. What's the way around this? Because there's always a solution,
always, it's just a matter of how creatively you think and how many resources you commit. If there is anything that life has taught her, it's that there is no problem that cannot be solved.
Can't find A. Grahame. Documentation probably destroyed. Would Lorelei have missed anything? Nothing incriminating, certainly. No employee records. No budgets, no committee minutes.
Emilia stops.
“Budgets,” she mutters, and sits back down.
There is another database: one that the League accounting departments use for managing the finances of Lorelei's research teams. One that isn't directly controlled by Lorelei or any of her people, that only ever gets edited by accounting staff. And nobody minds about that, because everything on it is coded anyway – but given the date on A. Grahame's email, if Emilia looks for anything that has been receiving funding but suddenly stopped this quarter …
A couple of minutes, and she's poring through the records. A respectable number of the projects listed here are top secret, obviously, but Emilia knows about some of them all the same. B/8 is the artificial pokémon development team, keeping tabs on Silph's porygon programme while also investigating the spontaneous generation of creatures like voltorb and grimer. OD4R is time travel, based in that bunker out in Ilex Forest. Project Glossolalia is communication with inhuman intelligences – mostly working with ghosts, some of which are definitely as smart as humans but also too alien to be understandable. There are others here too that Emilia doesn't recognise – J55, Project Danzig, ANCHOR – but that doesn't really matter. All that does is the dates.
Here: three projects, of one kind or another, that didn't get any funding this quarter. Project Danzig – okay, no idea what that is; mark it down as a maybe. Q99 – no, Emilia knows that one; it's one of the apparently endless move research teams, was working on developing some interesting new dragon-type moves before its funding was diverted into Project Glossolalia after that incident up in the mountains. And the third one: ROCKETS.
Emilia stares.
It's probably just a coincidence. Surely they wouldn't be thoughtless enough to give this thing the same name as Giovanni's flagship casino.
Surely.
No, thinks Emilia, this is the League we're talking about. They absolutely would be.
She looks again at the screen. It's very clear. ROCKETS received about half a million florins last quarter, and now nothing. So did Danzig and Q99, but their names are nowhere near as suspicious.
Emilia sighs and makes a note. This is probably what she was looking for. Ask Lorelei directly what ROCKETS was, and she'll squirm but she'll answer, if it's Emilia who's asking. She might never trust her again, but she'll do it. And after that … well,
what after that? There isn't anything here that suggests ROCKETS continued in secret. Whatever was going on, Emilia still has no evidence that it didn't stop when the funding did.
HOLD, says Nadia, and Emilia starts, rises quickly from her seat.
COMING SOON.
“Okay,” she replies, moving to the door. “That's it, Nadia, we're going.”
She hops onto Emilia's outstretched hand and makes her way up to her usual perch on her shoulder.
FOUND FURRET MAN? she asks hopefully, as they walk back down the corridor towards the lifts.
Not quite, replies Emilia in her head, nodding pleasantly at a passing clerk as if she wanders around here every day.
But we're getting there.
On her way back to the airport, she texts Stella and gets a curt
okay in response. She supposes that's all she wants. Nobody found her, nothing went wrong, Stella had no reason to do … anything that Emilia might come to regret.
It probably wouldn't have happened. Stella wouldn't gain anything from that kind of petty spite except Emilia's enmity, and Emilia is sufficiently well connected that you don't want that. Besides, Stella isn't a bad person; that's why Emilia bent the rules to get her the job, after all. It's just that when you owe someone the way Stella does Emilia, you can't help but resent them, and Emilia feels that resentment like the edge of a knife against her back.
She sighs, and feels in her bag for the plane tickets. By the time she gets back it'll be mid-afternoon. Late lunch, and then – then nothing, actually. She's sick, remember? For a moment, Emilia contemplates sitting in her apartment, watching TV and maybe even napping. Then she sighs again and begins to list off people to get in contact with about ROCKETS.
Emilia is good at a lot of things, but relaxation isn't one of them. There is after all a reason why this is the first day off she's had in years.
*
It's not so bad, going round the Pallet town centre with Cass. She buys mealworms and birdseed, and Artemis buys purple nail polish. Cass seems to sense something of why, and points out diffidently that she should buy some clear polish too, to use as a base coat beneath the colour. Artemis blushes at her own ignorance and thanks her for the tip.
Awkward, but bearable. And probably for the best. Artemis is the kind of person who researches everything before she does it in obsessive detail, but life doesn't like to be lived that way and there's always something she misses. If she's going to do Girl Things (as she capitalises them in her head with self-critical irony), then it wouldn't hurt to have an Official Girl (the irony continues) around to help her through them, and Chelle is not available right now.
And after that there are more mundane purchases to be made: snacks for the trip out to Cinnabar, some nail scissors because she forgot to pack her own, things like that. In the blandly commercial atmosphere of everyday life, the weirdness dissipates for a little while, and by the time they return, several hours later, to the Centre, she almost feels normal again.
When they go through the doors she tenses, half expecting Emilia or some other League spook to be waiting for her with an icy smile and questions about what she thinks she's doing, going around asking about breach, but there's no one, and she and Cass take their purchases up to their rooms without incident. Here, fighting Brauron's attempts to drink the nail polish – she seems to find the smell irresistible – Artemis applies it to her fingernails, and actually she doesn't do too bad a job of it. She's always been good with her hands, at making, painting, building. There was a time when she considered some kind of trade apprenticeship or even art school instead of university, to make the best use of her skills and interest, but she never had the courage to say as much to her parents. They would have disagreed, anyway, and given all the history behind that decision she can't say they would have been wrong.
Anyway. History aside, her nails are now nice and purple. She stares at them for a while, delighted and for some reason amazed, and resists the urge to try and scrape the spillage off her fingers. Wait till it's dry, Artie.
From the top of the bedside cabinet, where she has been exiled until Artemis puts the lid back on the bottle of polish, Brauron eyes her nails and hisses.
“Oh no,” says Artemis, holding her hands away and shaking her head. “No no no. You stop that, kiddo. I'm
not taking you downstairs to the Centre to have your stomach pumped because you thought nail polish looked tasty.”
Brauron gives her what Artemis suspects is her most innocent look.
“Not falling for it,” she insists. “You stay over there.”
Juts then, Cass knocks and Artemis lets her and Ringo in, fumbling to keep from touching her nails on the handle.
“Hey,” she says. “What's up?”
“Oh, nothing really. Ringo, don't,” she adds warningly, as he turns his eye on the bag of ash pellets lying on Artemis' bag. “Just thinking about what now. We got kinda sidetracked by Rena and the scyther.”
“Yep,” says Artemis. “What are you thinking, then? Cinnabar?”
“Yeah, I think so. Was just looking up the ferry times. Apparently there's one at five this evening? Goes overnight, arrives at like one o'clock tomorrow.”
“In the morning?”
“No, afternoon. Did you know it was that far to Cinnabar? It doesn't look like it on the map.”
Artemis shrugs.
“I guess it is.”
“Yeah.” Pause. “So are you okay with going straight on to Cinnabar?”
She'll have to be. There are clues there, and sooner or later Artemis is going to have to look for them.
“Sure,” says Artemis, with a confidence she doesn't feel. “Don't see why not.”
“Cool!” Cass looks pleased. “I'm thinking we can train at the Gym for a few days, you know? Wasn't much point trying to do it in Pewter with the rock-types, but I feel like Ringo's got a shot with Blaine's trainers. And
obviously that'll be helpful for you and Brauron, too. Get some tips from the fire-type maestro.”
“That's what I was thinking,” says Artemis, which isn't exactly a lie; she was thinking that, a while ago, but then Giovanni went and mentioned Cinnabar and now everything is different and difficult. “Just give me a bit and I'll start packing up.”
“Hey, no rush. Ferry doesn't leave till five.” Cass pauses. “I like your nails, by the way.”
It takes Artemis a little while to untangle her tongue enough to respond, but she puts in the effort and does it anyway. Cass has only done a little thing, sure. But little things are sometimes very important.
After some time – much longer than she expected – her nails are dry enough for her to start packing her bag again. This done, she discovers that Cass has somehow not actually got round to packing her own bag yet, despite having all afternoon, so she waits for her to finish that and then the two of them hand in their room keys and head out.
As they leave, Artemis sees out of the corner of her eye someone coming down the street towards the Centre, and knows with a sudden unverifiable certainty that he is coming to find her, that mentioning breach at the lab triggered some secret League alarms and summoned government spooks to hunt her down. She tries to think about whether she mentioned where they were going to the receptionist. Cass said something, didn't she? She's better at talking than Artemis, speaks to everyone they meet with the same unfailing enthusiasm. So the guy at the front desk knows, so when this man following her asks he'll be able to tell him that she's on the way to the port, so …
You're jumping to conclusions, Artie, she tells herself. What's more likely, that this man is tracking you down on League orders or that he just wants to get his partner seen by a Centre doctor? She can't deny the second one is logical. And yet logic just doesn't enter into it, not really. Not in the face of that rushing, screaming wave of belief.
Artemis has been told she is high-functioning, that she is fortunate. She supposes this is probably true, but it's never really made it any easier.
She keeps walking with Cass and Ringo and Brauron, and if she thinks she sees anybody following she doesn't let it show on her face.
The Pallet docks are small, provincial even; there's no industry here, and not even that many passengers. Those travelling to Cinnabar more usually depart from Vermilion, Fuchsia or even Celadon, depending on where in the country they're coming from. Here in Pallet, there's none of the activity of the bigger docks; the town just ends abruptly in a tangle of mooring posts at the water's edge, and beyond that a few fishing boats and yachts bob up and down on the waves, bright and shiny in the summer light. Along from them are two larger boats, although they are not
much larger, and a tiny prefabricated block of a building that seems to be the ferry terminal.
“Man, this place is so
small,” says Cass, looking around. The seagulls outnumber the human pedestrians by about five to one. “There's seriously nothing in Pallet at all, is there?”
“Guess not,” says Artemis. “What were you expecting?”
She herself wasn't expecting anything in particular. Pewter is a very landlocked city; this is the first time she's seen the ocean in at least six years.
“I dunno,” says Cass. “Sailors? Stevedores? People carrying barrels around?”
“… were the last docks you saw in a pirate movie, by any chance?”
“Uh … so what if they were?” asks Cass, and they both laugh.
They make their way down the promenade to the ferry terminal, stopping briefly so Cass can physically hold Ringo back from flying off to assault the seagulls; like most spearow, the concept of picking his battles is somewhat alien to him. Artemis conceals her impatience. She keeps glimpsing the man who may or may not have been following her earlier – or other people that her brain has decided are that man – and she wants to get away from here as soon as possible, to be out on the water in a boat where imaginary pursuers (hopefully) can't follow.
But they make it in the end, without any fights breaking out or hands descending on her shoulder, and they buy their tickets and sit down to wait until it's time to board. Cass asks if it's okay if they wait inside, so Ringo doesn't fly off and cause trouble. Artemis says yeah, without mentioning that the reason it's okay is because in here she can keep an eye on the door and see who enters and exits.
Half an hour till boarding. It's going to be a long wait.
There's definitely some interesting stuff to come with regard to their interactions, too. Cass is an entertaining character to write, and I've had a lot of fun with her conversations in later chapters.
