09: COVERT OPERATIONS
After her trip to the Plateau, Emilia finds herself at an impasse. She puts out some feelers, asks a few acquaintances if they know anything about an organisation or agency called ROCKETS, but every avenue of investigation turns up a blank. It figures, really. Emilia has always known that the League makes sure that certain people don't come into contact with her. She's very good at what she does, and she has a conscience: a combination that makes her both extremely valuable and also something of a liability. This is fine. Emilia is perfectly capable of finding out most of the League's secrets anyway, if she really wants to. It's only the very deeply buried stuff that gives her trouble, and ROCKETS, whatever it is, seems to be that kind of thing.
So. She continues on with her usual business for a day or two: catches up on what she missed, liaises with Parliament, comes home and sits cross-legged in front of Effie, charting the development of the swelling at the tip of her stem. She Googles pictures of vileplume fruit and sees a bewildering variety, from every subspecies known to humankind; she narrows it down to Effie's species, the greater corpseflower, and sees fruits about the size and shape of a mango, virulently red and mottled with brown.
Effie's fruit is just beginning to take shape. Still green, and still for now smaller than Emilia's thumb. Emilia watches, measures, begins to consider buying a sack of potting compost and some little flowerpots.
The practicality of her thinking nauseates her. Some things are supposed to hit you hard, to be beyond your ability to reason with and prepare for. But apparently Emilia is that kind of pragmatic monster who can plan out how to plant Effie's brood while she dies right in front of her eyes.
Nadia watches all of it with her unblinking eyes, attempting to understand. Emilia can feel her mind on the edge of her own, working hard to parse the emotions she's picking up. She doesn't attempt to explain it to her. Every time she thinks she might, she realises that one day maybe eight years from now she'll be burying Nadia too.
It occurs to her then that it's been eight years since Sam, as well. Maybe there's a pattern there, she thinks, before carefully and deliberately burying the thought as deep as she possibly can.
During the day she smiles and shakes hands and helps the civil service understand the weirdness going on up on the Plateau. It's all so normal, so efficient, so stifling, and frankly when Lorelei next calls her for advice it's something of a relief.
The call comes at an inconvenient time. Emilia is on her way to a meeting with a senior secretary in the Home Office, who has been tasked with making sure that League regulations on eligibility for trainer grants are modified to be fully in line with the latest immigration laws. Emilia has seen the legislation, and knows full well that it boils down to giving less money out to kids who probably need it more than most; nevertheless, she will go and sit in front of a man whose life this law will never touch and agree to see that it happens, because that is her job and the alternative is unthinkable. She walks to the offices rather than taking a cab, to clear her head and get into the right frame of mind, and halfway down the Old Palace Road she hears her phone go off in her bag.
“Hello?”
“Hey, Em. Lori.” She sounds tired, and worried. Could just be asking for advice – but on the other hand, it could be something more. Something, maybe, that would get her out of this godawful meeting. Emilia feels petty and selfish for thinking it, but what the hell. Her partner's dying and she can't go a week without being called on to cover up outbreaks of cosmic horror. She's owed a break. “I have a question.”
“Okay, Lori. Ask me, then.”
“Someone tripped the sensors at the Oak Foundation earlier today. Talking about breach radiation. A scientist whose name I'm not even going to try to pronounce called it in. Didn't know what breach was, but it's in all their contracts to report it if it comes up.”
“Okay,” says Emilia, hitting the button at a crossing and waiting for the lights to change. “So have someone come down and investigate.”
“Yeah, I know the protocol. But it's the kid from before. That Apanchomene girl. And honestly, after seeing two, possibly three breach events, I'm not sure she isn't justified in asking a question or two.”
“Wait,” says Emilia, scowling. “Three? Three events?”
Lorelei pauses.
“You didn't hear this,” she says, “but the kid ran into a mutant scyther on the way down to Pallet. Nobody at the Foundation knows what to do with it; might be breach mutation, might not.”
“A scyther? Is she all right?”
“Huh? Yeah, fine. It was very weak, she caught it and took it to the lab.” (A weird little burst of second-hand pride.) “We didn't send anyone to contain it because the scientists basically explained it away by themselves. Evolutionary mishap, is the official verdict. The point is, I was going to send someone down to talk to her, but … I'm honestly not sure how to approach this.” Lorelei sighs. “It's bad enough that this keeps happening, but it's even worse that it keeps happening to the
same person. No one I've spoken to can tell me why. I'm starting to wonder if we shouldn't take her in for her own safety, but I don't want to ruin her trainer journey before it's even started.”
Red light, green man. Emilia crosses through a haze of petrol fumes.
“That's definitely a delicate situation,” she says, thinking fast. “Okay, Lori, here's what you do. You send me and Nadia to Pallet to have a chat with her. We get the measure of the situation, gently advise her not to do whatever digging she's doing, then regroup with you and decide where to go from there. How does that sound?”
“Like a solution.” Lorelei chuckles. It's a little rueful, a little self-deprecating. The Elite Four job is hard, and having Emilia around to solve problems is a good thing, but Lorelei has never liked being reminded of her own limitations. Emilia has done her best to make her a little more open to asking for help over the years, and she's mostly succeeded, but that stubbornness lingers. “Thanks, Em. I don't know what we'd do without you.”
“Hire another lawyer,” replies Emilia, changing direction, heading for a taxi instead of the office. “Do you have a location for me?”
“She's checked in at the Pallet Pokémon Centre. How soon can you be there?”
“Soon as you like,” she says. “Sooner if this cab will stop for me.”
“You're a lifesaver. Let me know when you've spoken to her?”
“I will,” says Emilia. “Talk to you later, Lori.”
She hangs up and looks at Nadia, listening in on her shoulder.
“Make a note to reschedule that meeting with the secretary and assign it to Alex,” she says, with a certain guilty satisfaction. “I think I'm going to be busy.”
*
It's kind of strange, being out here on the open ocean. There's a thin sliver of land just visible to the north, but apart from that Artemis can see nothing but water, rolling on towards the horizon in every direction. It's pretty, especially now as the sun sets, but it's frightening too. All that space. That decisive lack of land, of enclosure, of buildings. Of anything that might stand for security and safety.
At times like this, she's acutely aware of how small her life has been. When she was little, her parents didn't often have the time or money for holidays, and her teenage years were disrupted by her two illnesses. She hasn't left Pewter for years, and the Kantan mainland ever. Now here she is on a boat out in the middle of the ocean, a tiny nothing against the vast totality of the world.
The thought occurs to her that she could jump off the ferry now and disappear forever. She lets it come, and then lets it go again as she has been taught, without trying to fight or worry about it. These things happen. It's okay.
“Weird, huh,” she says to Brauron, clinging to her shoulder. “You seen the ocean before? Where were you even born, anyway?”
She's got Brauron's documentation somewhere in her bag, but that's back in the cabin and so she doesn't check it. Probably it doesn't matter. Alola or Kanto, she's here now, with Artemis. Something to hold onto in the middle of this huge, quiet emptiness.
The ferry is not quite as small as it looked from shore; Artemis isn't alone on the deck, even now as the sun starts to go down, but there's enough space that it almost feels that way. Cass is inside somewhere, and right now Artemis is sharing the deck with just a few others, all of whom she recognises from earlier. There aren't so many other passengers – fifteen, twenty at most. None of them are the man who came to the Pokémon Centre and who she is trying not to believe was following her.
It's interesting, really. At the same time that she feels alone in the emptiness, she is acutely aware that she is stuck on this tiny moving platform with just a few other people. This is a perfect setting for a murder mystery, right? A bunch of people, close proximity, no possible outside interference. Artemis half expects to wake up tomorrow to find out someone's been stabbed with an antique Chinese dagger or poisoned with the saliva of a rare South American toad.
Or, alternatively, to find a League agent watching her from the other end of the breakfast table.
She sighs and turns away from the view, Brauron crawling across her chest to stay out of the wind as she moves. It's time to go back indoors. Maybe if she talks to Cass instead of hanging around worrying she'll feel a little better.
Inside, the ferry is mostly corridor, with ten or twelve little cabins, and a common area with seating and a small bar. This last room is where Artemis finds Cass, throwing peanuts into the air and trying to catch them in her mouth. So far, she seems to have missed every time, although to be fair to her part of the problem is that Ringo keeps snatching them away out of the air.
“Damn it, Ringo, what did I
just say?” she says, as he steals another one. “Gimme a break here. Oh, hey Artemis. It's pretty nice out there, huh?”
“Yeah.” Artemis sits down with her and deposits Brauron on the table, which she promptly claims as her territory by hissing at Ringo and chasing him back to Cass' shoulder. “Kind of weird. I've never been on a boat before.”
“What, never?”
“Nope. First time.”
“Well, it's kind of halfway between a hotel and a bus.” Cass shrugs. “Not all that interesting, really.”
That isn't really what Artemis meant, but okay.
“Yeah,” she says. “Kinda. Want anything to eat? I'm gonna get something.”
She's already eaten, so Artemis gets herself a sandwich at the bar and returns to find her still attempting the trick with the peanuts. The two of them eat, one of them less efficiently than the other, and talk about Cinnabar. What's it like, training at a Gym? Well, Cass didn't spend long training in Pewter but it's pretty cool, the Gym trainers all know a whole bunch of interesting battle tricks that you can use even if you don't train rock-types or whatever it is they specialise in.
“Besides, they don't just have their specialist pokémon, you know?” says Cass. “Like in Pewter this guy Edwin had a golem that's like his work pokémon, but he also had a togetic from his trainer journey, so he had some tips on how to train flying-types too. Tips that, uh, I kinda didn't really put into practice, but y'know, at least I
listened to them.”
They keep chatting, discuss the pokémon that live on the slopes of Mt Catalayne – is it true that there are obsidian geodude and lava grimer up there on the volcano? Yes, as far as Artemis knows it is – and little by little, Artemis talks her fears back down into the hole deep inside her where they usually live. It's enough for now, and they do not come back until later that night, when she lies awake in the tiny cabin she shares with Cass, wondering if she's going to get off at Cinnabar and find League agents waiting for her at the docks.
There are ghost people tonight, horribly large inside the small space, bleeding and breathing and crowding around her bed like mourners around a grave, but it's all right; Artemis survives. She always does. She is a little worried at how much she has seen them recently, after six months in which she barely saw anything wrong at all, but still, they are an old problem and she knows how to deal with them. It's all right. It
is.
She wakes early, limbs cramped from being forced into a bed a little too small to contain them, and slips into the equally tiny bathroom to fix her face before Cass wakes up. Brauron stirs sleepily at the sound of the tap, and Artemis takes her up on deck to watch the sun rising over the waves.
The two of them are utterly alone. Artemis knows, intellectually, that there must be someone driving the boat, but in the depth of the silence and the space, she cannot find it in herself to believe that this is true. She watches the dawn light spread in bloody fingers across the sky and water, and maybe her head's just in a better place than yesterday but she has to admit, it really is kinda beautiful.
Later, the other passengers begin to wake, and Cass emerges from the cabin with sleepy eyes and crumpled clothes, and the magic fades as the ferry fills up again with noise and motion, shifting from a dream back into real life. Artemis feeds Brauron ash pellets and bits of meat and waits for the ocean to give way to land.
Cinnabar is visible a long way off, the dun rise of the volcano looming on the horizon. It's bigger than Artemis was expecting, although she doesn't know why she thought it would be smaller; it is a
volcano, after all. The buildings of the town are clustered around its base on the east side, and then on the lower slopes are swathes of green that Artemis guesses must be the vineyards. Cinnabar isn't exactly Champagne or Bordeaux, but if you want home-grown Kantan wine that doesn't taste like feet, this is the place to get it. Above that, the vegetation thins out, and Mt Catalayne rises in dark, dull cliffs towards the sky.
She considers the effects of being caught in a volcanic eruption for a moment, and imagines a future archaeologist pouring plaster into the ash like they did at Pompeii, finding the hollow left in the earth by her corpse. Adult male, they would say, pulling the cast from the earth, examining its size and proportions. And then put it on display in the ruins of the Pokémon Centre for future tourists to see.
The thought makes her skin crawl. When she dies, Artemis is determined, she will be cremated. No bones left to betray her.
It takes a deceptively long time to actually arrive at Cinnabar: it's bigger than it looks, and further away. When at last they do, Cass and Artemis are among the first off, ready to get moving again after the day of inactivity. And the town is a pleasant place to walk around; it's small and pretty, full of brightly-coloured little houses and interesting old architecture. Fountains, a clock tower carved with legends, a thousand-year-old synagogue with a battered plaque proclaiming in Old Kantan that the King of Cinnabar has permitted the Jewish community to live by their own law in their quarter of the town. There's a lot to see here for such a small place, and Artemis and Cass only really glance at it in passing on the way to the Pokémon Centre. Artemis is actually kind of excited, despite her fears. This? This is what she was expecting from her trainer journey, not spires and blurred men, and okay so she has to do some investigating here but still, she can stay a few weeks and explore this place properly. See the sights that she read about online: the old buildings, the natural caves, the vineyards, the historic marketplace.
And, of course, train. Blaine's Gym is up on the slope of the volcano, brooding like a dragon in its mountain lair. Cinnabar's buildings are not tall, and from pretty much anywhere in town you can see it: a big columned knuckle of dark stone, looming over you. It's one of the old Gyms from way back when Kanto was first unified by what would become the League, and it was, up until Cinnabar was annexed, the last redoubt of the island's monarchs. Looking up at it, Artemis feels that it's very impressive, although probably also kind of a pain to get to every day if you work there. The road up there must be steep as hell.
But all of that is for another time: right now, Artemis just needs to get to the Centre and unpack a little. It's more popular than the one in Pallet – Cinnabar has a Gym, of course, and it's summer – and she and Cass are once again put together in a twin room, much to her relief. All of these places are built on the same plan, and that means the same bathroom layout as before. It was okay in Pallet, where nobody was using the bathrooms anyway and so Artemis could just sneak in by herself, but here she doesn't know what she'd do if they didn't have the en suite.
But they do, and that's good, so she just dumps her backpack and listens to Cass trying to decide what to do first.
“Like I don't think we can go train yet,” she says. “By the time we get there it's gonna be past five and they'll be closed, so―”
Six thirty, thinks Artemis. They close at six thirty. But okay.
“―like I guess we could go do something else. Lotta old stuff in Cinnabar. And that lab where they do that Jurassic Park sh*t with fossils. Don't suppose you got a spare thirty thousand florins, huh?” Artemis shakes her head. “Oh, well. Woulda been cool to have a fossil 'mon. You know that meme of the omanyte holding a knife like a sword?” Artemis nods. “I love that thing. Mostly for the pun. Omaknight.” Cass smiles as she says it. “Where was I? Oh yeah. So like what do
you wanna do?”
Artemis shrugs.
“I'm okay with whatever,” she says. “It might be cool to have a walk up the volcano now the sun's gone down a bit. Not so hot out now, you know?”
“That is … a really good idea,” says Cass, nodding. “I
knew there was a reason I was hanging out with you.”
Artemis smiles, embarrassed.
“Um, okay. You ready to go, then? Maybe we'll find one of those obsidian geodude.”
“That'd be cool,” agrees Cass. “Okay, Ringo, ready to take your anger out on some poor defenceless wildlife?”
He absolutely is, and off they go. It's a very short walk from the Centre out of town, and within ten minutes the neat little houses have given way to steep, stony fields rising up on either side of a winding footpath. Ahead, Mt Catalayne rises in a series of bumps and lumps; off to the north, Artemis can just see a line of green over the edge of the hill that must be one of the vineyards. It's strange, really. This is all so … rural. Pallet was a small town, but that was just a suburb of Viridian, really, and Artemis knows suburbs. Cinnabar, though, is something else. Tiny buildings. Green spaces everywhere. Artemis has only seen Greece in photographs stumbled across online while searching for information about classical mythology, but she feels like this is what it must look like. Sun, wine, gnarled old olive trees. Kanto's own little slice of the Mediterranean.
Crickets whirring. The thin song of a black Kantan finch. The industrious sounds of the town below. It's peaceful, Artemis will give it that. She climbs the hill, watching Ringo fly on ahead from branch to rock to branch again, and despite herself she feels her shoulders untense. Maybe Giovanni and his team
were doing something bad out here, but even so, this place is lovely.
Brauron seems to agree. She stretches herself out across Artemis' shoulders in the sunlight, tail markings glowing with contentment. Her presence gives Artemis a slightly giddy feeling of pleasure: her partner's happy, and she's responsible, and how amazing is it that she is actually capable of looking after another living thing like that? All this time Artemis thought she could barely look after herself, and now this. Of course, part of the point of a trainer journey is learning about that kind of thing, taking on responsibilities and expanding your capabilities, but somehow Artemis has always thought that that wouldn't apply to her. She supposes that was probably just the depression talking.
A couple of rabbits jump up at their approach and bolt across the path; powder-blue butterflies alight on the flowering clover. Cass breathes in deeply next to her and sighs.
“Man,” she says. “Good call on taking a walk, Artemis. This is great.”
Artemis is not very good at taking compliments, but she mutters something that might be thanks and Cass seems to get the picture. For a few minutes, they walk on in an awkward silence, and then Cass points at something over the hill to the south.
“Look at that,” she says. “Some kinda mansion.”
Artemis follows her finger and sees the husk of a huge old house, windows broken or boarded up, surrounded by a tall wire fence.
“Yeah,” she says. “Guess so.” She frowns. “Is that razor wire?”
“Huh?”
“There. On the fence.”
Cass squints.
“Looks like it,” she says. “That's weird. Maybe people break in a lot?”
Artemis looks at the house, thinking.
I haven't forgotten about Cinnabar, Giovanni said.
“Yeah,” she says, as the first fearful stirrings of belief rise inside her. “Maybe.”
*
It's not a bad walk, even after that. They find a few wild pokémon, some grey-furred rock nidoran that hide among the stones and a spectacular royal pidgeot whose crest is a riot of glittering colour in the afternoon light; Cass makes a half-hearted attempt to catch that one, but it's too strong for her and it knows it, refusing even to let her try to fight it.
“Oh well,” she says, as it flies off up the mountainside. “Probably for the best.”
When the light starts to fade, they turn at the top of a ridge and make their way back, down towards the town below. The view is spectacular, even now: you can see the whole of the west half of the island, and the sea beyond it on all sides. Cass and Artemis walk down into the midst of it all and carry the view with them as they go, a charged memory that lingers in the mind like the midday heat in the sun-baked earth.
Then they're back at the Centre, and Artemis sits down at the computer to Google
abandoned mansion cinnabar island. And she reads without much surprise that Cinnabar House, as it's known, has been abandoned for over fifty years and that no one has yet done anything about it because there's some legal complications with the land it's on and nobody has worked out yet who's owned it.
Abandoned for over fifty years. And yet – a twelve-foot fence with razor wire.
If you were investigating breach, where would you do it? Somewhere out of the way, right? Somewhere out in the middle of nowhere, on a tiny island with one tiny town, in a crumbling old house that nobody ever visits. Somewhere you could contain a situation.
Because there
was a situation, wasn't there? Giovanni pretty much confirmed it in that phone call she overheard. Something happened, right here on Cinnabar. Artemis moves Brauron off the keyboard, which she has decided to sit on now that Artemis is no longer poking it, and clicks through any mentions of Cinnabar House in the news. There aren't many, but she gets one, an old
Cataphract article from ten years ago, that mentions gunshots and crashes heard from the house at night and a subsequent investigation that showed a second-floor window had been broken from the inside. Nothing else was ever found.
Artemis knows all about terrible things that wreak havoc and then disappear into thin air. So does the author of the article, apparently, one Mark Trelawney; he goes on to present evidence gathered from speaking to Cinnabar residents, reports of a strange light seen flying away over the town and unusual nightmares consistent with tremendous upheaval on the psychic plane somewhere nearby. He doesn't say the word breach, and perhaps doesn't even know that that's the word he needs, but he was damn sure that something more happened that night in Cinnabar House than the official investigation let on.
Brauron puts one forefoot on her arm, head tilted at a questioning angle.
“Is it that obvious, huh?” asks Artemis, picking her up. “Yeah, I'm …” She doesn't finish. She can't. She can barely even
think it, let alone say it. “I think we might have to do something scary,” she says instead. Slowly. Carefully. “Worse than the last scary thing we did.” She pauses. Brauron looks at her with earnest purple eyes. “Maybe we don't think about that just yet,” says Artemis, her nerve failing her. “Maybe it's just time we found Cass and Ringo and got something to eat.”
She closes the browser and is about to log out of the computer when she hesitates and goes back to clear her history, just in case. You never know, after all. And not knowing is the root of all suspicion. Not knowing is what drives her again and again to libraries and the internet, seeking relief in facts, in Latin names and photographs and cartography. Not knowing is what makes the ghost people as frightening as they are, and the spire, and Giovanni.
And it is not knowing that makes Artemis slip quietly out of bed that night, a little after one o'clock when she's sure that Cass is asleep. She dresses – in jeans, for the first time since leaving home, for practicality – and collects Brauron, with a finger to her lips to forestall any hissing or croaking. She glances quickly back at Cass, still and quiet in her bed, and then she slips out of the door and down the hall.
It isn't the last of the not knowing that night. There is more, and it will come back to bite her. But for now, Artemis continues in her ignorance, down the hall to the (mercifully empty) bathroom, where she can put the light on and make a few quick adjustments to her face. It's for her own benefit really – if anyone sees her face tonight, she's going to have more than dysphoria to worry about – but still, she doesn't want to go out unready. She considers recalling Brauron to her ball, the better to go unnoticed in the lobby, but if she's honest she stands out enough that even without such a distinctive pokémon there isn't much chance that the receptionist on duty won't notice her. She walks out as casually as she can, into the warm air and cool breeze of a summer night in Cinnabar, and heads out of town up the side of the volcano.
It's a beautiful night. Dark, clear, moonlit; perfumed with wild flowers and soundtracked by the whirrs and chirps of bugs and birds. Below her and behind, the town is a shadowscape in black and indigo. Above and ahead, the volcano is huge and silent, like a sleeping giant silhouetted against the stars.
“Nice night,” Artemis remarks to Brauron, whispering partly out of misplaced fear and partly because it's that kind of night, where everything is too calm and quiet to ruin with a raised voice. She's only ever experienced a couple of these before. Pewter is a city, loud and sleepless, and Greyside isn't a particularly peaceful part of town. This is very different: kind of eerie, kind of wonderful.
She checks the route again on her phone: right at the signpost, down the trail across the hill. It's not far, really – nowhere is, here – and in fact she'd like it to be a little further, so she can put off the moment of arriving. At least the approach is mostly over open ground. Someone
could be hiding in the shadows of that olive grove, she supposes, and as soon as she thinks that she becomes convinced that every single shadow must be hiding someone watching and almost turns back right then. But Brauron's there, a warm and comforting weight on her arm, and anyway this is the only plan she's got, so after stopping and breathing a little she carries on down the slope towards Cinnabar House.
And then, all too soon, she's there. There are no lights, and the moon picks out nothing more than general details: the edge of a roof, the pediment above a door. The bladed edge of the razor wire.
“Okay,” whispers Artemis. “Okay.”
It isn't okay, at all actually, but she's out of options. She makes her final preparations, raising her hood and tugging her scarf up over her face, then follows the last few feet of trail down to the coastal road that leads back round to town. She could follow this up to the driveway, but she's absolutely sure that the main gates will be overlooked by CCTV, so she instead crosses the road and follows the fence around to the back of the house. It's an ugly thing really, that fence. Nobody has tried to mask it with trees or shrubs, probably in case someone uses them to try and climb over. It looks out of place. Like a ghost person.
Artemis wishes she hadn't thought of that.
At the back of the house, she stops and takes stock of the situation. No cameras that she can see, although of course she can't see anything at all, so that's not necessarily all that helpful. No other gates or gaps in the fence. But – more shadows, and hidden from the road by the bulk of the old house itself. That's going to have to do.
“Okay, kiddo,” she whispers. “Time to find out how well you really understand me, huh?” She points up at the fence. “See that wire? I need it out of the way.”
Brauron follows her finger with her eyes.
“Yeah?” asks Artemis. “You got it?”
No response. She holds Brauron up to the fence until she gets that she's supposed to grab onto it, and then lets go.
Nothing. Brauron hangs there like a gecko on a wall and watches her with her usual equanimity.
“Come on,” whispers Artemis. “Please, Brauron. I need you to deal with the razor wire.
That stuff, up there. Melt it, cut it, whatever. Can you do that? Please?” Still nothing. Artemis curls her fingers into claws and mimes slashing, and this seems to have at least some kind of an effect: Brauron climbs up the fence and scratches experimentally at a coil of wire. “Yes!” hisses Artemis. “Break it!”
Brauron tries to cut it again, but her claws are not that sharp, and she doesn't know any moves that might do the trick. She hisses and bites it instead, and Artemis hears a faint sizzle as her corrosive saliva goes to work on the metal. A moment later, the coil snaps and falls away past her in ragged loops, burnt right the way through. Brauron spits out a lump of tarnished metal and looks back at Artemis, eyes questioning.
“Yeah! That's it, that's
exactly it. Okay, now if you just wait, I gotta get up there with you …”
Artemis is not much of a climber. She doesn't really have the build for it, in any case: there's too much of her to pull up, too much muscle and fat and bone dragging her back down towards the ground. And her big, clumsy hands and feet don't fit well into the gaps between each link in the fence. Still, she's strong and she's persistent, and though she doesn't get up there quickly or easily she does make it, after a couple of minutes of grunting and sweating. Long enough to regret wearing a hoodie and scarf in summer, certainly. At the top, there's now a gap in the wire just large enough for her to squeeze through, although she tears her sleeve on the blades getting through, and then she drops awkwardly down to the other side.
“Ow,” she mutters, landing badly and falling over. “Oof.”
Brauron crawls headfirst down the fence and peers at her with interest. Artemis picks herself up and sighs.
“Yeah, okay, no need to rub it in,” she says. “C'mere, you. Well done.”
Brauron leans into her hand eagerly to get her head rubbed, and Artemis is happy to oblige, although she has to be careful not to touch the splashes of acid around her mouth.
“Okay,” she whispers. “More of that later, all right? Now … now we gotta do the scary bit.”
Brauron doesn't quite see why she can't just continue getting petted all night, but after a while she does settle back down on Artemis' chest, and Artemis can turn her attention towards the house itself. Not that she wants to, particularly – here in its shadow, her heart is pounding against her breastbone like a blacksmith on an anvil – but, well, she's already past the fence now, hasn't she? By anyone's standards, she's pretty bloody committed.
Breathe, Artie. Breathe, and walk slowly, and get round to the side.
Most of the pictures of Cinnabar House are from the same angle: the front and to the right, to get in both the striking old façade and the dramatic rise of Mt Catalayne behind it. In every single one, Artemis noticed, the first ground-floor side window isn't properly blocked up: just a couple of old wooden boards nailed across the gap. Probably there used to be more, but if there were then they rotted or fell off years ago.
Which means, and Artemis is trying very hard not to think too much about the fact that this is something she actually plans to do, that this is probably the easiest place to break in.
She creeps quietly along, sticking close to the wall. Her boots seem to crunch the dirt like gravel, impossibly loud. Seconds pass. The night-birds call.
Her outstretched hand touches old, dry wood, and Artemis sighs in relief.
Okay. This is it. She tugs on a plank, and feels it give. Interesting: she was planning on having Brauron burn her way in, but if she could do it herself, that might leave fewer clues. Salandit fire's distinctive, right? All that poison. And if she pulls her sleeve over her hand, she won't leave prints. All right, it'll make a noise, but honestly it won't be any more noticeable than a sudden burst of bright green fire, so …
Artemis shuts her eyes for a moment. She's doing this, isn't she? She's breaking into what might be a front for a secret League operation, based on nothing except a hunch and without knowing a single goddamn thing about it. If you asked her to make a list of the worst decisions of her life, there aren't many that could top this one. What if the place is full of League people? And what is she planning to do if she
does find anything? What is even the point of all this?
But it's not knowing, as it always is; it's not knowing, it's doubting, that vicious biting suspicion that drives you to do regrettable things, and Artemis has no choice. She tugs her torn sleeve down over her fingers, grabs the board, and pulls.
The wood is old and weather-worn, and it splinters almost at a touch. It is loud, yes, but not nearly as loud as Artemis was afraid it would be, and, emboldened, she moves on to the next right away. This one is tougher, but after a good kicking it gives way easily enough. Behind them, the window is a glassless void, and before she has a chance to think twice Artemis forces herself up and through into the house itself.
Her boots hit the floorboards and crunch on broken glass. She stands there, still and silent, listening for anything at all – but there's nothing.
She's in.
*
No alarms, no rushing footsteps. No lasers or gunshots or lurking pokémon. Nothing at all except Artemis and the relentless thudding of her heart.
Eventually, she has to start breathing again or pass out from lack of oxygen, and then she forces herself to untense her shoulders and look down at Brauron.
Okay?
Okay.
“All right,” she says, so quietly she isn't even sure she can hear herself. “All right, kiddo, that's phase one.”
She takes her torch from her pocket and grips it firmly, though she doesn't dare turn it on just yet, not with the open window right there. There's just enough moonlight for her to see that she's in a wide, empty room, where there is a closed door and not much else. No furniture, no signs of habitation at all. Figures. Artemis suspects that none of the rooms you can see into from outside will look anything other than deserted.
The door is not locked. She opens it (covering her hand with her sleeve again) and steps into a long, dark corridor. No moonlight here, which means no one outside can see, so after closing the door again she clicks the torch on. She flicks the beam back and forth, and sees nothing but dry boards and mouldering carpet from whose threadbare pile dozens of little black beetles run when the light touches them. The movement makes Artemis tense up, but only for a moment. Bugs don't really bother her, except for the fear of accidentally crushing them.
“All right,” she murmurs, and begins poking around.
Trusting her hunch that the outer rooms will all be empty, on the ground floor at least, Artemis creeps left into the main hall. The torchlight picks out two figures and for a second she flinches – but they're just statues, worn stone kangaskhan flanking the staircase up to the first floor. She keeps breathing and moves the torch across the room, over a once-red rug and fluted pillars supporting the upper level. The rug is worth a second look: no footprints, no place where the dust has been trodden away to reveal the red fabric beneath. No one's come here for a while. The only motes swirling in the beam of her torch are those she kicked up herself.
Maybe they shut this place down after whatever it was that happened ten years ago. Or maybe they don't come in through the front door. That's an option too, of course. A place like this, Artemis wouldn't be surprised if it was riddled with secret passages, although maybe that's only in movies. Either way, the thing about secret passages is that they're secret, so if there are any Artemis is probably not going to find them. She puts the thought out of her mind and tests the stairs with one foot. They creak, but they don't collapse. It will have to do.
Up, then, sticking close to the bannister where the boards will creak less. Her sleeve brushes the rail and carves shiny mahogany trails in the dust.
Brauron sneezes and Artemis almost falls off the stairs at the sudden noise.
“Oh god,” she says, almost forgetting to whisper. “Oh god, you scared the sh*t out of me.”
Brauron looks at her inquisitively, and Artemis sighs.
“Okay, I can't be mad at you. Just don't … well, I'll try not to raise any more dust.”
Several steps and many heart-stopping creaks later, she reaches the landing, and another corridor. The dust here is still thick, but something seems off. Artemis stares, trying to figure it out, and then she gets it: the doors all have modern handles, instead of the antique knobs from downstairs. Someone fitted these with locks this century.
A little chill runs down her spine. Gunshots and crashes, and a mysterious flying creature. And new locks on all the doors. Does she even
want to know what happened here? Really, honestly – no. But. No choice. So. Artemis makes herself breathe, and starts trying doors.
These rooms have furniture: beds, desks, dressers. Heavy curtains that are very thick with dust but not rotting – new, then, or at least not as old as the carpets. Artemis wonders how you might hide that you had staff here in a supposedly abandoned house, how you'd conceal movement behind the boards on the windows, and has to admit that curtains would be a pretty simple solution. She holds her torch up and opens a few drawers and cupboards; most are empty, but some have moth-eaten clothes or yellowed documents. Artemis does skim a couple, but doesn't understand them – someone's accounts, someone else's notes about nucleotides, whatever those are. Nothing as helpful as a signed confession to researching breach, although Artemis supposes that would be a bit much to hope for.
What she can tell is that whoever was staying here left in a hurry, if the clothes are anything to go by. Other than that, the bedrooms don't betray much about their owners. After the fifth room turns up nothing but an empty desk, Artemis is ready to give up and search elsewhere when Brauron suddenly hisses and clambers down her arm.
“Huh? What's up?”
Brauron moves her head back and forth, sniffing or staring or whatever it is that salandit do, and then slithers through her hand onto the desk, feet and belly leaving trails in the dust. She puts her eye to the gap between the desk and the wall, and then looks back over her shoulder at Artemis, croaking triumphantly.
“Something down the back?” she asks. “Let me see …”
Artemis shines the torch down the back and sees – something, she's not sure what, but something thin wedged between desk and wall. There's no way she'll fit her hand down there to get it, though, so after thirty seconds or so of agonised indecision she makes up her mind to move the desk. It's going to be noisy, yes, and there's a good chance that whatever's down the back of it is going to be garbage like everything else – but if she doesn't get it she won't know, and she can't leave without some kind of clue. Not after all this, not after actually
breaking and entering and everything else she's had to do to get here. No, Artemis has to try, because if she doesn't even try then what's the point of her, right, and so she crouches down and grips the desk and with a creak and grinding scrape loud enough to wake the dead she hauls it a few inches out of position.
Pause. Jump away from it, sick and shivery with fear, light-headed, tight-chested. Listen, straining against the silence―
Nothing. No footsteps, no voices, no alarms or sirens.
Artemis clenches her fists very tightly, doubles over a little with the effort of suppressing it all. She wants to cry, and it's more than the dust in her eyes. What is she even doing here? She isn't meant for this, isn't meant for anything at all other than a tiny little life in a tiny little corner of Pewter, four walls around her, expectations on her back and her old name like an albatross around her neck.
Brauron touches her hand and Artemis jumps halfway across the room, an ugly ragged gasping noise tearing loose from her throat. The little salandit stares at her from the desk, alarmed, and Artemis blinks back tears.
“Sorry,” she says, wiping her eyes. “I'm sorry, I just … I'm not good at this.” She sniffs, feeling the ugliness of her emotion, and reaches out to Brauron on the desk. “Here,” she says. “You can hop on whenever you like.”
Brauron watches her for a moment longer, violet eyes clouded with some amphibian thought that Artemis cannot name, and then, moving very slowly, she climbs back up her arm onto her shoulder.
“Trying not to scare me?” Artemis tries for a smile and just about succeeds. “'S okay, Brauron, I'm … I dunno, but I'm not gonna do that again.” She rubs Brauron's head gently, feels the warmth beneath her fingers. “Okay. Okay, let's see what we got then, huh?”
She straightens up and goes to check behind the desk. On the floor, splayed half-open against the wall, is a book.
Artemis has a bad feeling about this. But she has a bad feeling about most things, so she swallows it and picks the book up instead.
Property of M. Fuji, reads a note on the inside front cover. And then, on the first page:
5th August 2006. I've decided to accept the League post. I know, it's a long way from Lavender, but it'll be nice to revisit my old stomping grounds, and honestly in the end I really can't turn down the chance to be a part of such a fascinating project. I just hope that my journalling doesn't suffer too much. Much of what I'll be working on is so highly classified that …
A diary. A diary belonging to someone who worked here on whatever project was―
In the stillness of the night, the engine of the car pulling up outside is as loud and threatening as the roar of an aggron.
*
Emilia feels a little guilty about thinking it, but Cinnabar is so damn provincial. Yes, it's pretty, yes it has history, but do you know what it doesn't have? An airport. Not even a little airstrip where you can land a light plane. When she hears from the staff at the Pallet Pokémon Centre that Artemis and the girl she's travelling with have already moved on to Cinnabar, Emilia is not best pleased. Inactivity doesn't suit her; she likes to be in motion at all times, to be
doing. A twenty-hour ferry ride isn't her idea of a good time.
Still, there's no other way out there – Nadia
can teleport, technically, but she's not that strong and there's only one of her and these things together mean her effective range is limited to a few dozen metres – so she bites back her irritation and buys the ticket instead. While she's hanging around the ferry terminal, sending emails from her phone in a bid to make this null time productive, Lorelei calls. They don't talk long – Emilia reports that Artemis has gone on to Cinnabar, and Lorelei gets slightly wistful for her childhood in the Sevii Islands before asking for an update when she's done – and afterwards it's time to board, an activity Emilia undertakes with the grim determination of a woman who knows she will be horribly seasick before the hour is out.
The best thing that Emilia can say about the ferry ride is that, eventually, it ends. She spends most of it in her cabin, staring at the wall and swallowing, out of phone signal and so without any possible way to distract herself from the nausea that rises afresh in her throat with every slight shift of the ship on the water, and then practically sprints out onto the dock the second the passengers are allowed out. For a few minutes she stands there, breathing heavily and luxuriating in the way the concrete doesn't roll beneath her feet, and then she hurries on through the night towards the Pokémon Centre. It's late – three in the morning kind of late – but there's always someone on duty, and Emilia wants to make sure she doesn't lose track of Artemis again before she finds a hotel and gets some sleep.
Cinnabar is very pretty even at this hour. Emilia notices the scale of things, how small they all are and how neat, and has to admit that the place has its charms. They aren't charms worth the pain of the ferry trip, but they
are charms.
It still smells of the ocean, though, and Emilia is thankful for the air-conditioned interior of the Pokémon Centre, which smells of antiseptic instead of brine and is much more to her taste.
“Hello,” she says, to the bored-looking man at the desk. “I'm looking for Artemis Apanchomene. I think she should be staying here?”
“Okay,” he replies. “Uh, who are you, exactly?”
“Emilia Santangelo, Indigo League,” she replies. “This is Nadia, my partner.”
Nadia chirps, and out comes the card. His eyes lock onto it with that familiar mixture of fascination and alarm.
“League business, huh,” he says.
“League business,” confirms Emilia.
Pause. Emilia sighs.
“Look,” she says. “I don't want to wake her or anything, I'd just like to know if she's here. If she is, perhaps you could let her know in the morning that I wanted to speak to her?”
“Okay,” says the man. “Okay, I guess I can do that. Let me pull up her record and see … is this who you're looking for?” He twists his computer screen around for her to see Artemis' League file, the digital companion piece to her trainer card. Emilia nods. “In that case, I think she's actually up and about,” he continues. “I saw her go out a couple of hours ago.”
HOUSE, says Nadia, at the exact same moment as Emilia's heart skips a beat. Artemis, sneaking out in the middle of the night on Cinnabar Island? All right, so she might want to find some nocturnal pokémon – but she might not. She might want something else. If she's been asking questions – and if she somehow stumbled on the M entity – and if she saw Cinnabar House earlier today …
“You're sure about that?” asks Emilia, keeping her face carefully blank. The receptionist nods.
“Sure,” he says. “She's the only person I've seen go in or out tonight. I remember thinking she was dressed kinda heavily for this heat.”
“Really,” says Emilia. “How do you mean?”
“Well.” The man looks a little wary. “Uh, you know, it's not really hoodie weather, and―”
HIDING, suggests Nadia, and Emilia has to agree.
“―you know, it seemed sorta odd.”
“Indeed,” agrees Emilia. “How strange. Well, thank you for your time. If she comes back, could you let her know I was asking after her?”
“Sure,” says the man. “Sure, I can do that.”
“Thanks. Goodnight.”
Out in the street, Emilia starts dialling frantically.
“Hello? Hello, this is Emilia Santangelo, with the League. I'd― yes. Yes, actually, I
am calling about that. Where? Okay. Okay, thank you. I'll be with you shortly. Yes, I'm in Cinnabar now. No, that's fine, thank you. I'll be there soon. Goodbye.”
She hangs up and shoves her phone roughly into her bag. Somewhere very deep inside her, underneath the politeness and the reserve, under the calculated fabric of her persona, a fire begins to burn. She was right. She'd hoped she wasn't, that somehow that Artemis would have got away with it, but she was right.
“Okay, Nadia,” she says, in a low voice a hair's breadth away from a growl. “I guess we're going to the police station.”