Chibi Pika
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This chapter contains a detailed portrayal of trauma and PTSD. The majority of the narration was directly inspired by anecdotes written by trauma survivors.
Disclaimer: I am not a trauma survivor. I appreciate any and all feedback on the accuracy of the portrayal in this chapter.
Disclaimer: I am not a trauma survivor. I appreciate any and all feedback on the accuracy of the portrayal in this chapter.
Chapter 20: Ultimatum
My eyes blinked, and a dim surrounding gradually came into focus. Where was I? I couldn’t remember, but this didn’t seem like the last place I’d been conscious. I’d been… in the forest, right? We were trying to escape, and… this would be a lot easier to process if my head didn’t hurt so damn much. My thoughts dragged like mud.
I blinked a few more times, willing my eyes to focus. I was horizontal, staring up at a ceiling. Alright, that was a start. I tried to sit up and—pain, everywhere, I should have known. A dull aching throb was the only sensation my body felt like giving me. But by this point frustration was starting to win out. I forced myself into an upright sitting position… and found myself on a bench in a dimly lit concrete room. Its only features were a tiny sink, a toilet that I wanted to stay as far from as possible, and the metal bars comprising the front wall. Wait… bars?
A cell. I was in a cell. A half dozen similar cells filled out the rest of the room. Near the entrance to the room, a Rocket officer sat reclining at a desk, reading something on a tablet.
My heart sank through the floor. I’d been captured. And now I was imprisoned and waiting for who knows what. I sank back against the wall, the weight of the situation crushing down on me. And then the memories of the mission itself came rushing back.
We’d failed.
No, we hadn’t.
Articuno and Moltres had been caught.
All of them would have been caught if it hadn’t been for us. I actually helped, damn it. I mattered.
And look where it’d gotten me.
I buried my face in my hands, my mind a swirling mess of conflicting emotions. Out of nowhere, a stabbing pain shot through my left arm. I went to grab it with my right… and then froze. My arm was crudely wrapped in medical tape. Oh crap, I’d been shot, too. I held my breath, gingerly running my fingers across the tape, feeling the shape of the wound. The tape was probably only to keep it from bleeding all over whatever vehicle I’d been transported in. Blood had caked all over the edges and formed an ugly scab. Removing the tape was gonna suck. But that was a problem for later. For now, I had to figure out more about my situation. What time was it? How long had I been here? I glanced at my watch, and… right, my watch was dead. This was the second watch that Raichu had killed. If I ever got out of here, my next one was gonna be a wind-up.
I was seriously making plans around the inevitable next time I’d be electrocuted. What the hell?
A sudden creaking rang throughout the cell block, and I glanced up to see the entrance door swinging open. And then a wave of cold dread crashed down on me. Astrid stepped through the doorway, her expression cold and disapproving, like she’d rather have been anywhere else. Astrid, who I’d escaped from twice, both times knocking her out with Chibi’s lightning. Except this time there was no way out—I’d be at her mercy.
“You’re awake. Good. That’ll make this easier.” She turned to the guard at the desk and said, “Leave us.”
At first, the Rocket didn’t notice that she’d addressed him. Several seconds later, his eyes suddenly widened, and he jerked forward in his seat, nearly dropping his tablet. “Oh! Uh, right away!” He quickly gathered up his belongings off the desk and hurried out of the cell block, looking almost as flustered as I felt.
I was alone… alone with the head combat executive. No Pokémon. No allies. Not even any Rocket bystanders would know what happened to me. With slow, deliberate steps, Astrid walked forward toward my cell. The sound of her heavy boots echoed off the walls, each footfall digging into me like a shock wave. I had to stay calm. I couldn’t let her know how terrified I was—not when she hadn’t even done anything yet.
“Why am I here?” I asked, forcing my words to sound calm and collected.
“I think you know why,” she replied, tapping her ID to the scanner on my cell door.
Of course. The Rockets wouldn’t have bothered to bring me back alive if I didn’t have something they wanted. And that something was information.
The cell door shut behind her with a metallic clang. I did my best to avoid eye contact, but she was right there. Right in front of me, staring down at me like I was nothing, no doubt thinking up the best ways to force me to talk.
Astrid raised an eyebrow. “What’s that look for? You should be happy I’m the one interrogating you. The others aren’t quite as… understanding as I am.”
I highly, highly doubted that. But was the dread on my face really that obvious? I quickly tried to rearrange my expression into something more neutral, but even my facial muscles felt distant and unresponsive.
“There are a lot of things I want to know about your little team,” Astrid continued, her tone casual, like this was a perfectly ordinary conversation between two people who weren’t mortal enemies.
“…And if I don’t feel like telling you?” It was a stupid question. I already knew the answer, and I didn’t even want to hear it.
Astrid delicately plucked a Pokéball off her belt and opened it, releasing a burst of white light that condensed into the form of her Raichu. That Raichu. The orange mouse gave a swish of its long, inky-black tail, sparks leaping off its cheeks. Just looking at it sent a jolt of nausea through my stomach.
“Use your imagination,” she said.
I clenched my teeth, trying my hardest to give her my most defiant glare possible. It didn’t feel very convincing.
“Let’s start with where that rebel base of yours is.”
Alright… I had to know she was gonna ask that. What was somewhere far away from Midnight Island, but still close enough for us to go on missions? Fuchsia? The S.S. Anne had sailed past there. It made sense.
“I’m going to assume you didn’t hear me,” she said icily. “Where is the rebel base?”
Then again… if I told her too readily, she’d immediately know I was lying. Why would I just immediately give away the rest of my team without any force? I wouldn’t. Which meant—my insides melted away just thinking about it—that I had no choice but to take the first attack.
“Time’s up.”
She snapped her fingers, and Raichu let a string of lightning fly. The sudden burst of gut-wrenching pain gripped my whole body, tearing through every nerve like wildfire. I clenched my teeth, desperately trying to keep myself from crying out in agony. Had to endure it. Couldn’t let her get to me. But the pain—! It consumed every inch of me, threatening to tear me apart.
Finally, it stopped. I gasped for breath and coughed hard, my arms and legs trembling uncontrollably while Astrid stared down at me with her usual condescending face. Breathing heavily, I glared back at her—part of me actually wanted her to know I’d taken the attack on purpose. It meant I had control over something, at least.
“Maybe that question was too hard?” she said mockingly. “Let’s try a different one. Who’s your leader?”
I let out a breath. I could actually answer this one. Except… she almost definitely wasn’t going to like the answer.
“You already know our leader’s called Stalker,” I said in a low voice.
She glared. “That’s completely useless and you know it.” Of course.
I closed my eyes. “I don’t know his real name. You think he’d have told us?”
A long pause followed. “Is he a former Rocket? Is he a former executive?”
“I don’t know,” I said, my words as slow and deliberate as possible. “I know he has contacts on Team Rocket, but that’s it.”
A sudden jolt out of nowhere left me doubled over, clutching my stomach as another wave of pain wormed through my insides. It was short, but it caught me off-guard and left a pit of nausea in its wake.
“You’re not telling me the full truth,” Astrid hissed. “Was he a part of the revolt? Is he the former commander?”
“I… what? I don’t know anything about the revolt!” I really didn’t! What was I supposed to say?! I didn’t even know enough to be able to make up random crap.
Astrid’s face lit up with rage, and she drew back a fist. I braced myself for the punch… but then she froze, staring at me wide-eyed, like she couldn’t believe she’d almost lost control. Seconds passed; neither of us moved a muscle. Then her expression hardened, and she snapped her fingers.
A blinding flash and another flood of lightning. I screamed as the pain burned through every inch of me, drowning out every other sensation. I couldn’t think. I couldn’t breathe. I was on fire, and it just kept going, with no sign of ending. Why wouldn’t it end?!
It took me several seconds to notice when it finally stopped. The pain was gone, and I was… on the floor? I blinked slowly, my thoughts struggling to flow again. I must have fallen off the bench at some point. My stomach clenched painfully, and the stinging taste of acid filled my mouth. Muscles trembling, my limbs tried to maneuver under my body so I could lift myself off the filthy concrete. But then… what was the point? She was just going to shock me again.
Astrid kneeled down next to me and brushed the hair back from my face. “You know… I don’t actually like torturing people,” she said, her voice cold and quiet.
“You’ve sure showed it,” I muttered dully, not looking up at her.
A fist locked around my shirt collar instantly, dragging my body off the floor. My limbs flailed, struggling for balance, but it didn’t even matter—she lifted me up to her level and stared me dead in the eyes.
“You listen to me very carefully,” Astrid said, her voice low and dangerous. “The only reason you are alive right now is because you’re useful to us. Which means the only way you are leaving this base alive is if you prove it wasn’t a waste of time to bring you here. So if you tell me where the rebel base is, I might just be so happy that I’d convince the boss to let you go.”
Somehow, I couldn’t imagine her being happy with anything. But at that moment, it was a really, really appealing lie. Astrid stared at me expectantly, her eyes scanning my face, searching for anything she could latch onto.
“Did you hear me? I’m giving you the chance to live if you cooperate. You should be grateful,” she spat.
The chance to live… it just meant selling out everyone else on the Rebellion. I willed myself to ignore it, but her words cut through me like a knife. I had to say something. Something that would satisfy her without killing my teammates. But my mind had gone completely blank. Come on, I had to say something!
“Answer me, damn it!” she yelled, throwing me to the ground. I barely had a chance to register the pain shooting through my left side before my senses dissolved in a wave of lightning. It tore through me, scrambling my insides, numbing my limbs, setting every nerve ablaze with agony.
A pause. The lightning stopped for a single, sweet instant. Just long enough for me to get my senses back. Then it returned, somehow worse. Alternating between pain and relief, my body twitching uncontrollably the entire time. Couldn’t brace myself. Couldn’t endure it. Not like this.
She was saying more things now. Asking—no, demanding more answers, and it took my brain far too long to piece together the words: “What Pokémon does your leader use?”
How was I supposed to know that? A small voice urgently prodded at the back of my mind. I… did know the answer to that? What was I supposed to do about it?
“Charizard,” my voice said.
“I already know that,” came a reply full of exasperation. Another blast of electricity shot through my body.
The next question: “How many members are on your team?” I knew that one. It was… a number? What number? My brain wouldn’t stop counting the seconds it had been since the last shock. Six… seven… eight…
“Eight,” my voice mumbled. What was the question? That… wasn’t the answer, was it? Another burst of gut-wrenching pain gave me my answer.
Nothing meant anything anymore. I couldn’t move or talk or do anything but lie there and listen to words I couldn’t understand and wait for the next shock because there was always another shock.
I was powerless. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t breathe. My body didn’t exist anymore, just a swirling torrent of pain, and I was drowning in it. Why? Why was this happening? I couldn’t process it anymore. Couldn’t think. Nothing existed but pain.
“Why can’t you just cooperate?!”
Anything to make it stop. Anything. Why couldn’t I do anything? There had to be something. My brain scrambled to find an answer, clawing through a sea of static, searching for any two thoughts to piece together. I felt my voice, and then somehow became aware that it was my voice. It definitely existed. I could use it. I could end this!
Screaming. I’d been screaming. The past few minutes suddenly flashed through my brain, clear as day. Lying down, taking the pain, useless, unable to do anything, hovering at the edge of consciousness because there was no way she’d give me the relief of slipping over that edge.
“I’ll tell you!”
“What?” Astrid demanded, taken aback.
“I said I’ll tell you, I just… I need more time. I need… I need to think about it first. Please…” God, I sounded pathetic.
I couldn’t see her face. I had no idea what her reaction was. I could only see the concrete floor and my arms stretched out uselessly in front of my face. Seconds passed. Glorious, pain-free seconds. The ache in my body was nothing so long as the shocks stopped.
My senses gradually started returning. I could feel the cold, rough surface of the concrete scraping against my face. The sting of the bullet wound in my arm. The warm, wet feeling spreading across my lower body.
Slowly and deliberately, Astrid’s boots stepped into my field of view. My ears caught the sound of her leaning down, right in front of me. And then finally, in a dangerous whisper, inches from my ear, she said, “You have one hour.”
I let out a long, slow breath. It had worked. I honestly couldn’t believe it had worked. How much of my pathetic display had been acting and how much of it hadn’t been? I had no idea. Astrid recalled her Raichu, then turned around and strode out the cell, stopping just long enough to shut the door.
I was alone. Frozen on the floor, body unresponsive. Each breath came slow and deliberate, like I couldn’t remember how to do it automatically. Eyelids closed and opened, like I was controlling them for the first time. The opposite end of the cell slowly came into focus, and it took my brain a few seconds to realize that I could look at things and see them. That my actions and senses were connected. Something about the idea just didn’t make sense.
Movement, in my fingertips. I was moving them. It took far too much effort, though, and I stopped. That was fine; I didn’t want to move anyway. I didn’t want to do anything. Did feeling things count as doing something? Some part of my brain remained convinced that none of these senses were mine anyway. That I was seeing through the eyes of a stranger and feeling pain that definitely had to be someone else’s because there was no way that all of that had really happened to me. It couldn’t have been real.
Time had no meaning anymore. My eyes slid to my right-hand wrist, but the watch remained dead. I had no idea how long I’d been lying there. This fact was alarming, for some reason.
My eyes snapped open. I only had an hour. One hour to figure out some way—any way—to not go through that again. Breath—my breath—seized in my chest, and fingers clutched at the concrete until skin started to scrape off.
I wasn’t really going to give in… was I? I could come up with all kinds of logical-sounding cover stories now that I had a chance to think. The problem was… there was no way she’d ever let me go until she got a chance to confirm if I was telling the truth. And when she found out I was lying—because of course she was going to find out…
I knew she wasn’t going to kill me. Some part of me just knew. She needed me here, so I could feel the punishment and know that I was powerless to stop it and that the only way she’d let it end was if I gave her what she wanted. A shiver ran through me. That was it, wasn’t it? The only way it was going to end. If I didn’t sell out the rest of the Rebellion, I was stuck in here with no end in sight. How long would I be able to take that until I gave in? I didn’t want to know. Just thinking it about it hurt.
A sound pricked at my ears suddenly. Footsteps echoing softly down the hallway outside the cell block. And it was like a bucket of cold water had been dumped on my head. It couldn’t have been an hour already. No way. No way. I wasn’t ready. I couldn’t go through that again.
The entrance to the cell block swung open and my entire body went numb. Please, no.
“Hey, kid!” a hushed voice called out. Definitely not Astrid’s voice.
My eyes snapped open. Slowly, painfully, my arms lifted my torso from the floor. My head turned toward the cell block entrance. And then I blinked, unable to process the sight. A familiar face, framed by curly blonde locks. Icy blue eyes. A devilish grin that faltered slightly once she got a good look at me.
The girl—Stracion—spoke. “Wow, you’re a mess.”
“Thanks,” I muttered dully.
“Anyway, I can’t exactly come in there, so we’ll have to talk across the room… cameras and all that,” she said, pointing to the security cameras in the corners, facing the cells. “Can’t be seen talking to a rebel who’s about to escape.”
“Then why are you here?”
“Aw, come on. I thought we were friends.” But then, for whatever reason, my brain finally managed to work through the implications of what she’d said.
“Wait, what do you mean, ‘about to escape’?”
“Slow on the uptake right now, arent’cha? That’s okay, maybe these will help.” She produced a handful of minimized Pokéballs and rolled them across the floor into the cell, where they bumped into my side. I stared at them, confused. My head was starting to hurt from trying to process all of this.
“How did you get those?” I asked.
“Your leader messaged me; said one of your teammates would be teleporting ‘em over, so I just had to be in the right place at the right time,” she said, twirling a lock of hair around her finger.
I could practically feel the context trying to piece itself together in my brain. A teammate had teleported two Pokéballs to Stracion, and she was giving them to me…
“Wait. These are my Pokémon?”
“Nah. I think your Pokémon are over there, actually,” she said, gesturing to the desk where the guard had previously been stationed. A Pokéball Containment Unit sat on a shelf behind it, along with a belt pouch.
Right… I’d had my Pokéballs with me when I was captured. But then whose were these?
“So, I’ve done my part—the rest is on you, yeah? Better get on that, ‘cause I’d bet you only got a minute or two before someone notices something on the security feed. Toodles!” She winked before disappearing out the doorway
I stared at the place where she’d left, blinking in confusion. Had that… really just happened? My eyes slid back to the Pokéballs at my side. Someone had given her two Pokémon to give to me that weren’t mine? That… that didn’t make any sense. Not that anything made any sense with how badly everything still hurt. I didn’t want to think right now, I just wanted to curl into a ball and forget everything.
But I couldn’t ignore this opportunity. Slowly, my right hand slid down until it reached the Pokéballs. It took several second of fumbling for my fingers to find the buttons that opened them. Twin bursts of light suddenly appeared alongside me. And when they took shape, all I could do was stare.
“Aros? Stygian?” I blurted out. “What are you two doing here?”
The clones’ eyes flicked back and forth, taking in the pathetic sight of me. I screwed my eyes shut, like that somehow made it better. I couldn’t even describe how I felt to see them.
“Stalker sent us. Said it was important to get you out of the enemy’s hands as soon as possible,” Aros said, his words a bit… off, like he couldn’t figure out what to make of me.
“How are we getting out?” I mumbled.
Stygian turned around and began investigating the cell bars, pawing at them for a few seconds before scoffing. “These bars aren’t meant to hold Pokémon at all.” The Absol drew herself back, then lunged, swinging her head so the blade cleaved through the bars repeatedly. After the third swing, the cell door clattered to the ground in pieces.
She looked back at me expectantly. “We need to move.”
Move. I had to move? Just breathing was hard enough right now. How the hell was I supposed to stand up, let alone make it outside the base? I could practically feel their eyes burning into me as I propped myself up on my elbows, wincing as a jolt shot through my left arm. Okay, that arm was useless; just the other one, then. I grit my teeth and forced a leg forward so I could put weight on it, willing myself to push through the pain. Everything was slow. Maddeningly slow. Why did my legs feel like dead, useless stumps. Why had I let myself get into this situation in the first place. Why.
Somehow, I managed to stand, and it was like my legs had switched from lead to jelly, wobbling unsteadily as I braced myself against the wall. Aros looked me up and down once more and grimaced before turning his back to me. “Get on. It’ll be faster.”
I felt my cheeks go red. Why did anyone have to see me like this. Why. “Are you… sure?”
He closed his eyes. “Just do it.”
I reached out an arm to grab the dragon’s side, then slowly maneuvered a leg over his back. His scales were crossed with the scabbed marks of where his wounds from the last battle had been hastily healed.
“Why are you risking yourselves for me?” I mumbled.
“You freed us from our confinement. It’s a simple matter of returning the favor,” Stygian said with a tone that made it quite clear she didn’t want to hear anything else about it.
I crossed my arms around Aros’s neck and then kind of just… collapsed onto his back as every muscle gave out at once. The Flygon shifted a bit to make sure I wouldn’t fall off the moment he started moving, then carefully stepped over the broken door pieces and ambled towards the cell block entrance.
“Wait. Are… are my Pokémon really in there?” I said, weakly pointing at the Pokéball Containment Unit on the shelf over the guard station. Aros tilted his head at it, then reached forward and undid the latches on the case, opening it. Two Pokéballs and a black hybrid ball—they had to be mine. My heart skipped a beat—the Rockets had almost gotten their hands on Chibi again. Except, wait… he hadn’t even been with me when I was captured.
“Ha, I bet they were pissed when they found out Chibi isn’t in there,” Aros said with a chuckle. “Wish I could’ve seen that.”
I slowly extended a shaking arm to grab the three minimized balls before stuffing them in my pocket with the other two. Something about having five Pokéballs felt really weird. The belt pouch was too far for me to reach, so Aros just grabbed it and slipped it around his neck before exiting the cell block.
“I don’t know where we are. I don’t know how to get out of here. I can’t…”
“It’s Celadon,” Stygian cut me off. “We know this base by heart. Just be quiet.”
Just be quiet. I could do that. Aros’s wings buzzed on either side of me, and we were airborne, shooting down a deserted corridor. I caught sight of Stygian racing ahead of us, a white blur in my fuzzy vision. Second later—or minutes, I couldn’t really tell—blaring sirens split the air, and flashing red lights dug into my eyes. I buried my face in Aros’s neck and thought about being anywhere else.
“They’ll be on us soon. I’ll stay in front and use Protect.”
Gunshots fired and Aros changed direction suddenly and all my senses dissolved into an onslaught of lights and sounds and motion and chaos. Every so often I caught shreds of what was going on: the sparkling white light of Protect. The prickling sensation of Feint Attack’s dark aura. The writhing nausea caused by our constantly changing flight path as the two clones pushed on, dodging the Rockets’ deadly force at every turn.
“On your left, watch it!”
I couldn’t help them. I couldn’t do anything but keep my head down and pour every ounce of effort into holding fast to Aros’s neck with hands that barely seemed to work while every sense was overloaded at once.
Our flight path zigged and zagged and spiraled tightly upward. I dared to open my eyes a crack and was met with a view of the same stairwell that I’d once crept up under vastly different circumstances. At some point Aros spun around, and I felt a burst of heat as the dragon launched some kind of fire breath down the stairs. Not long afterward, the metallic clang of blades on metal rang out and then cold air pierced every inch of exposed skin like needles.
“We’re outside. You need to recall me.” a voice urgently prodded at my ears.
What? Oh, right, Stygian couldn’t fly. I grabbed a Pokéball, pointed it vaguely in her direction, and pressed the button. Nothing happened. What? Why didn’t…?
“Hurry!!”
Idiot. It was the wrong Pokéball. I fumbled with a few more before finding the right one and recalling the Absol in a beam of red. And then Aros’s wings powered us rapidly upward, sending a rush of wind and tangled hair into my face.
“Which way?”
Dammit. How was I supposed to answer that now? Slowly, I peeled open my eyelids and was met with the orange glow of sunset… or was it sunrise? Midnight was… east of Celadon, so…
“Head… head away from the sun,” I said. God, I hoped it was the sunset. “Make sure you’re not followed.”
“I know.”
The twilight gave way to a dark, moonless night. The flight stopped feeling like flight after a while as everything gradually went numb. I was floating in a void, some part of my brain refusing to accept that we’d actually escaped. Somehow, I was still in the cell, but also out here at the same time. Lost in the abyss of dread, waiting for Astrid to resume the interrogation, and also numb from the autumn night sapping the heat from my body. Both somehow real and not real.
I had no idea how long it continued like that. There were times I was certain I was dreaming. That I’d fallen asleep at some point and lost my grip on Aros, slipped from the Flygon’s back and been dashed to pieces on the ground below. But my hands—numb as they were—were locked tightly around the clone’s neck. I didn’t think I could have moved them if I wanted to.
Eons later, I heard Aros’s voice telling me, “We’ve landed.”
Slowly, my eyes opened. The ground was right below us. I exhaled slowly, feeling a rush of… something. I wasn’t quite sure what. Relief that we’d made it home in one piece? I didn’t feel like one piece.
My hands trembled as they slowly unclasped from one another. Aros straightened himself so that when I slid off his back, I was standing upright as opposed to toppling over. I wasn’t totally convinced my legs were going to support my weight, but they did.
That’s when I realized we weren’t alone. A crowd of Rebellion members had gathered outside the front entrance to the stadium, glancing uncertainly amongst each other. A hot wave of embarrassment washed over me as I became all too aware of the dozens of eyes running up and down the pathetic sight of me. The hushed voices whispering and wondering. Everyone knew I’d been captured. Everyone could look at me and see that I was the first one to screw up so badly.
I could feel the fires of humiliation burning every inch of exposed skin. The sounds of the whispers and the murmurs and even the genuine questions that my brain didn’t feel like parsing because it had all blended together into a flurry of needles assaulting my ears. I couldn’t take it. I wanted to be as far from here as possible. Preferably in my room, alone, where no one could see me, and I could forget everything.
A finger tapped my shoulder, and I almost melted into a puddle right then and there. I spun around to see Stalker standing behind me, motioning for me to follow him away from the crowd. The last thing I needed was everyone staring at me in this state. Something told me he knew that. I followed him away from the stadium, where there were no longer a million things demanding my attention and assaulting my senses. It helped… kind of.
Stalker turned to face me, and he didn’t mince words. “Were you interrogated?”
His question felt like a knife plunging straight through my chest. But I nodded.
Stalker paused to consider me carefully for some time. No doubt mulling over just how badly I’d screwed up. How likely it was that I’d screwed over the rest of the team. Finally, he turned around and said, “Go get cleaned up. We’ll meet in my office to talk privately about what happened.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The water was too cold. I cranked the shower handle as far as it would go, but it still felt too cold. Even when the room filled with steam and my skin turned bright red and I knew it was burning, but I couldn’t feel it. Nothing felt like anything. I was going to wake up and realize it’d all been a dream any second now.
I didn’t bother trying to unwrap my wound and redress it properly. I’d deal with that bloody mess later. Hopefully much later. Maybe if I waited long enough, I wouldn’t have to do it at all.
The clothes I’d been wearing previously were still lying in an ugly heap on the bathroom floor. Just looking at them made me feel sick, so I avoided doing that, but at the same time it was hard to ignore them. Trying to think about what to do was too much effort, though. Maybe I’d have Firestorm burn them or something, hell if I knew.
After what felt like an eternity, I found myself sitting at the end of the bed wearing clean clothes and not really sure how I’d gotten there because everything after a certain point was all a blur. I wanted nothing more than to just fall backwards and pretend no one else existed. But Stalker was waiting for me downstairs. Somehow that fact alone was powerful enough to get me out of my room and awkwardly traversing the stairs down to the main floor. It wasn’t that I was afraid of what he’d say or do if I didn’t. It was just… I couldn’t disappoint him more than I already had.
I realized about halfway down that I should have taken the elevator.
True to his word, Stalker was waiting for me in his office. I didn’t say anything when I entered; I just set Aros and Stygian’s Pokéballs on his desk and then eased myself into the chair facing him. My eyes wandered around the room, not focusing on anything in particular, just avoiding his gaze.
“I need to know everything that was said during your interrogation. As word-for-word as possible,” he said.
I winced. Ever since I’d left that cell, my brain had been furiously working to erase all of it. Like the images and sounds and thoughts and feelings were all some diseased part of my memory that had to be eliminated as soon as possible.
But it was still there. All of it.
My words tasted like the salt of sweat and the sting of lightning as I recounted every detail I could. It felt unreal. Like something that had to have happened to someone else. My voice echoed dully in my ears, and some part of my brain remained convinced that it wasn’t my voice.
Stalker sat there and listened the entire time. Calmly. Patiently. But there was a slight edge to his expressions. And I knew the only reason he was having me relay this was because he knew how likely it was that I’d given away some piece of crucial information that’d doom the Rebellion. He didn’t comment on anything, just offered prompting questions whenever my voice died for more than a few seconds. I kept expecting him to ask if I had really meant it when I said I would tell her the base’s location. And yet… he didn’t.
“So overall, what you’re saying is… you didn’t actually give away anything.”
I blinked. My brain was such a hazy mess of shame and humiliation that it took several seconds for his words to register. I really… hadn’t given anything away… had I? Not yet, anyway—I’d been rescued before I’d gotten a chance to. But… was I going to? I didn’t know. I hated that.
“What do I do now?” I said, my voice raw.
Stalker paused, closing his eyes. He was silent for what felt like forever. Finally he said, “Take some time to recover. You’re exempt from training and missions for now.”
I let out a breath as a rush of… something hit me in the chest. Relief? I wouldn’t have to endure anything like that ever again. Shame? I’d failed so badly I wasn’t getting another chance. Anger? He was basically saying that I was no use to the team anymore.
I didn’t want to go on any missions—so then why did his words feel like a punch to the gut?
I muttered something in response and then left before I made the mistake of sharing how I felt. I was hoping I could make it back to my room without anyone seeing me. But Rudy approached me as I exited the elevator on my floor. He fidgeted uncomfortably, avoiding eye contact, like he knew I didn’t want to see anyone right now.
“Hey Jade, uh… wanna hang out and watch League tournaments? I downloaded the ‘96 Kanto top cut—I heard it was pretty awesome.”
I just wanted to fall asleep and forget the entire day.
“No thanks.”
I walked past him so I didn’t have to see the look of disappointment on his face. Something told me it would’ve hurt as much as… well, as much as everything else did. My actions were on autopilot as I scanned my room key and shuffled inside, my mind a swirling mess of conflicting emotions that I didn’t want to sort through. Instead, I walked straight to my bed and collapsed face-down onto it.
I should’ve let my Pokémon out for the night. That’s what I always did. But then I’d have to explain to them, and that… really didn’t sound appealing. Not right now. Maybe later. Or never.
At some point, I managed to kick off my shoes and worm my way under the covers, although I wasn’t entirely sure when. The blankets felt soft and warm against my skin. Nothing like the cold, hard concrete floor of the cell. But there were moments where I could have sworn I was back there. Like I’d just imagined the escape, and any second I’d feel Astrid standing over me telling me my time was up. I kept seeing flashes of light in my peripheral vision. Flinching, expecting another burst of lightning.
It was stupid. I was home, I was safe… why was it still affecting me? There was absolutely no chance I’d be attacked here. But my thoughts kept straying back to the detention cell, no matter how badly I wanted them to stop. That feeling of being useless, unable to fight back, completely at her mercy, knowing that when push came to shove, I’d betray everyone.
The feeling burned. I clenched my fists, swallowing hard. I had to ignore it. I had to forget it. It didn’t matter. I’d escaped. I was never going back there. She couldn’t hurt me anymore.
I closed my eyes slowly, digging my nails into my palms as hot tears streamed down my face.
It wasn’t real. It didn’t happen.
In my dreams, I saw nothing but lightning.
End Chapter 20