Fabricated Chapter 24

 With Alice in his pocket and Espeon on his shoulder, he creeps back across the campus to press flat against the side of one of the long buildings, heeding the senses of the Pokémon as she explains that she can perceive a collection of Psionic beings nearby. 

This leads him into a small almost lobby, bare concrete with large windows and a bench running beneath them, a water fountain on the opposite wall, before the room splits at the sides into the long buildings— he thinks perhaps they’re dormitories, but doesn’t get a chance to confirm as he ducks into a closet when he hears voices coming toward him. He barely slides into the small space and pulls the door shut before they enter. Through the crack of the door he can see they’re young, female, wearing long skirts of purple. Their hair is all white. 

They’re talking low to each other, one of them laughs. PC strains to hear, but doesn’t pick up much more then the name ‘Sam’, which he recognizes as belonging to the girl who rescued him, and ‘punishment’. The girls walk past into their dorm, and after a few heartbeats of quiet explanation to Alice and Espeon of what he’s seen, what he knows, he slips back out of the closest, and darts across the lobby to the opposite dorm as the one the girls went into. 

It’s empty when he enters; there are bunk beds set along each long wall, the floor and ceilings bare, the sheets and pillows standard grey and tucked into hospital corners. There is no toys, no closets, no bags, no posters, no string lights. 

“What a shitty place to be a girl,” says Espeon.

“Sssh,” says Alice. 

Nothing to be found here. PC exits out of the door at the end of the dormitory wing, put into the cold grey air. Espeon shifts on his shoulder. “If you were a little Psionic girl who did something bad,” she says, “where might they take you?”

“Back to the welcome center? There’s a lot there,” he says, hesitant.

“Maybe Alex did get put into a treatment room,” offers Alice as he begins to make his way toward the back porch, slinking against the white brick walls of the dormitories’s outside. 

“Maybe,” he says, ascending the stairs, fiddling with the handle. Locked. He takes a few steps back. 

“Espeon, can you throw a Psybeam on my mark at the door?” he asks.

“Sure can,” says the Pokémon. 

He spools up a ball of Psionic energy between his palms, making grow bigger bigger bigger, and then as he releases it, says “mark!” The purple of Espeon’s psionics mingles with the green of his as they both fly at the door, and there is a crashing, a splintering, as the door comes falling off its hinges. 

“Ok,” PC says, “now jump off my shoulder and start running while yelling.” 

“Distraction duty, got it,” she says, and does as she’s told. He ducks just in time against the side of the welcome center as three men come running out, one catching sight of a fleeing Espeon and giving chase. PC breathes, begs Awakening to protect her, and heads inside. 

As he steps through the threshold, he feels Eylion gently take grasp of his conscious mind and pull it up, and he can see a sort of layout now— rooms shrouded in darkness, for they don’t know what is inside, but it can perceive them none the less. He’s in a hall of white tiles and colored lines along the wall with painted words marking ‘intensive care’ and ‘holding’ and other phrases he doesn’t quite understand. Alice hums.

“This doesn’t seem right,” she says.

“I think it’s an act,” he says, vision flickering between the battle focus map and normal. As he walks, narrowly avoiding being spotted by some nurses (well, they’re dressed as ones) by ducking into a alcove, he explains what happened to him in better detail. Alice listens silently, and he feels her nod when he is done. 

The hall is empty again, the nurses rounding the corner, and PC takes a chance to push open a door at random. A empty bed, hospital style, but lacking IVs. He shakes his head, moves to another room. 

A ping inside his head. Eylion has updated the ‘map’. There’s a basement, he realizes, and thanks the Ethereal for notifying him. In response the being light up the door marked stairs, and PC slips through it, trying to make his footsteps quiet as he goes down. 

The door to what he assumes is the basement is locked, which he finds off. Instead of the big display back at the porch, he experimentally creates and then fires a tiny Psionic ball into the lock— there’s a terrible sound of expansion, a cracking sound, and with the lock somewhat disabled he’s able to push the now semi unlocked door open just far enough to squeeze through. 

He’s hit with the feeling of heat and humidity. The basement is dark, damp, and sweltering. He blinks a few times, and hears Alice gasp. As his vision adjusts, he sees why.

Cages. Large, dog-like kennels really, but cages none the less. He approaches one, and a man he does not know, dressed in a hospital gown, stares up at him with frightened eyes. The man’s nose is sideways slightly, like it’s broken, and there’s a black bruise about his eye. 

“Oh, shit,” says PC. The man makes a motion for him to shut up, but not before a answer of ‘Bradford? Bradford!” rings across the lowlight room. A cage is lit up in his vision, and he hurries over, and there is Tulip, fingers pressed against the cage links, eyes wide. 

“Dude,” she says, “dude, you have to get us out of here.”

The man in the other cage hisses at them to be quiet. Tulip ignores him. “They handcuffed us, and blindfolded me, and dragged me kicking and screaming down here; they took Alex And Davey somewhere else, I don’t know—“

“You’re gonna get us fucking beat,” snaps the man in the other cage. Murmurs arise from the other cages. 

“They beat you?” asks PC.

“That is not proper care,” Alice whispers before Tulip can speak, “that is against the Hippocratic Oath.” 

“I don’t think any of this is within code,” he says to her. He looks to Tulip; the girl has been stripped of her clothes, given a hospital gown. “What are they doing to you? Why are they—“

“I should be asking you,” says Tulip, eyes narrowing. “I thought we were good, that we had this under control! What the hell is going on?” She pauses, and a wild look comes into her eyes. “Bradford, I think this might be a organ harvesting place. I think the treatment thing is just a front. I think- I think they’re gonna kill us.” 

“They will,” the man in the other whispers at them, furious. “They will. Now be quiet!”

“Doesn’t take talking to break someone out,” PC mumbles as he takes the thick lock on Tulip’s cage into his hands. He shifts the weight from palm to palm for a few moments, considering. 

Suddenly he feels Alice perk in the pocket. “Someone is coming,” she says. “I can hear them on the stairs.”

“Shit,” he says, letting the lock fall from his hands. “I’ll get you out,” he promises. “We’ll find the others.” 

“You better make sure they don’t catch you if you wanna make good on that,” Tulip says, backing away from the cage door. 

“I know, I know,” he says, scanning the room for somewhere, anywhere to hide. A ping again, and a small space behind a heater is light up in his vision. PC scrambles over and drops to his knees, squirms into the space, ignores Awakening howling this is a fire hazard, ignores Alice’s twisting against his stomach, focuses on the door. 

It opens slowly. The hooded figure in the doorway studies the room. A soft drawl emits from the hood: “You are among us, Ethereal. Such a power cannot hide. Come out. Come out. We have much to do. We needs you.”

PC remains stock still. The hooded figure idly raises their hands, inspects their nails, and then, all at once, fires a Null Lance at the heater. 

The Psionic energy rips clean through his jacket, through his chest area; he hears Alice scream, hears Tulip scream, hears himself scream. He’s pressed against wood and there’s pressure pressure pressure against him, as the heater explodes, as flames blossom around him. He feels fire catch on the ends of his self, and he panics, slaps at it with his hands, writhes against the ground. His hat falls off. He does not notice. Everything is about the fire, is about the fire, he has to put out the—

There is a whoosh. The flames die under the Psionic wind. The hooded figure walks up to him, looms over him. In the darkness of the hood, the entire eyes of the figure shine purple. He stares back numbly. Slender fingers pick him up, absently takes in his true form where it burns at the hole through his upper mid. PC thinks, for a moment, he sees tendrils falling away from the figure, but that can’t be right. 

“What a noble attempt,” says the hooded figure, “but unneeded. Come now, the Great Revered Emissary awaits.”