companionwolf

The next few ‘sessions’ follow a similar pattern; it’s only Jake now who visits with him, and always with a game. PC tells the man about each alien, one per session, in as much detail as he can remember. Jake records this with a small device in his shirt pocket, jotting down extra notes on a little notepad every so often during the games.

It’s been about a week now, that PC has been here. He shifts around in the box, slightly uncomfortable but still halfway between wakefulness and sleep. He is about to try to fully sleep again when the alarms go off.

He perks up slightly. No telling if this was a accident, or someone else is trying to break out, or—

He perks up more. There’s someone kicking at the door—

“Under the handle!” Tulip’s voice.

A cracking sound followed by a loud crash, and then footsteps frantic into the room, haphazardly rummaging through the boxes from what he can tell from all the noise. He hears another voice that makes his heart soar: “Something’s Awake in this one!”

Espeon.

All at once the top of his box is practically ripped off, and another voice he isn’t expecting rings through the air: “I found him!”

“Well then, grab him, Alex!” comes the answer from outside; Davey.

He doesn’t even have time to blink as the human roughly pulls him from the box and tucks him under their arm. They go barreling out of the storage room, Espeon on their heels, thundering over the door they kicked down, joining Davey and Tulip in running down the hallway. The latter are holding two big black cases, as well as Alice tucked into the front of Tulip’s jacket.

“What the hell—“ begins PC.

“No questions until we get out of here,” Alice says, as Tulip pushes open the exit door, setting off that alarm on top of the rest.

Alex bolts into the night, stumbling slightly on the sudden terrain change. PC hears Davey and Tulip running a few paces behind, and fainter still, the sound of the facility alarms cutting through the dark.

“Go, go, go!” yells Davey as he catches up to Alex. The latter is in a all out sprint now, only slowing as they come up to the car and throw open the door. The other two reach it as well moments after, staggering to a stop and throwing their cases into the back before jumping in themselves.

Davey slams his foot on the gas and the car roads across the grass, rumbling slightly. He drives around the vacant lot until he reaches where the road is and the car lurches back onto the asphalt, and soon the facility is a distant point in the rear view mirror.

PC, still tucked under Alex’s arm and in the back seat, twists so that he’s looking up at the humans. He begins to speak, but it turns into delighted laughs as Espeon comes running over, jumping up into Alex’s lap and mashes her head against his face.

“Did they hurt you?” she asks. “Davey, turn the car around, I have humans to fuck up!”

“I’m okay,” he says, and smiles gratefully as Tulip reaches back and puts Alice into Alex’s lap as well. “I’m okay.”

“I am so glad,” says Alice. “We were so worried.” She gently strokes his face, and he closes his eyes, enjoying the friendly touch. “You are very brave.”

“Did they do any weird science stuff?” asks Espeon. “Are you part mutant experiment now?”

“We played a lot of checkers, actually,” he says, opening his eyes again.

“Checkers isn’t science,” says Espeon. “These are bad scientists.”

“Enough reunions,” Alice says, and pulls her paw away from him, her professionalism returned. “I suspect PC has questions.”

“Yeah,” he says. “How did you guys find me, for one.”

“Some guy in cosplay led us here,” Davey says. “Some kind of Halo getup; he’s still back there, caused a distraction that set off the alarms so we would have time to look for you.”

“He also said he had something to pick up himself, so don’t worry about him coming back with us,” Tulip says. “I’m still worried; he’s gonna get himself KGB’d or something.”

“I dunno,” says Alex, “he seemed pretty hardcore. Hardcore dudes can go toe to toe with pretty much anything.”

PC internally murmurs a quick thanks to the Spartan, and hopes Awakening will be a little non discriminatory and somehow aid them in getting back out. He speaks out loud: “What’s in the cases?”

“We’re not sure,” says Davey.

“But,” interrupts Tulip, “we did see blueprints in another room for something similar to that brain hacking thing in your game—“

“You played 2 while I was gone?”

“Watched the videos for it,” she says. “And for EW. Espeon insisted.”

“It’s both educational and fun,” the Pokémon says with a nod.

“Together we came up with that we probably need to do something like Skulljacking to figure out where the Elders are based,” says Alice. “Although the possibility they are in a ocean base is high, it is a matter of finding both it and a way in, preferably one of those Psigates. So when Tulip found these in nearby storage, we assumed they were probably prototypes, and decided to take them.”

“So you... stole government property,” he says, somewhat mystified.

“You’re technically government property, too,” says Alex.

“Alright, fair,” he answers. “Now what?”

“We’re meeting with those engineers again to take a look at the prototypes, see if we can get them working,” says Davey. “Alex suggested that they’ll need that Elerium stuff to work, and those guys are the only ones besides the aliens who have that.”

“Do you have any idea how the Skulljack worked?” asks Tulip.

PC furrows his brow. “It was a mix of mechanical and Psionics based technology,” he says. “Definitely had some kind of Elerium crystal powering it. I think you’re on the right track.”

“Awakening will aid,” says Alice. “I am sure that it can step in if the Elerium is not enough.”

“We’re on our way to the engineers now,” says Davey. “Better to get this stuff somewhere it can be hidden as fast as possible then wander around with it, I think.”

“We’ve been doing a lot of that,” says Tulip. “Wandering, I mean.”

“Did they harass you when they came for the corpses?” PC asks.

“Tried to take the kids into custody,” Alice says. “Awakening provided.”

“Apparently it made us look entirely different to those government agents,” Davey explains. “But we’ve still been on the move, staying low...”

“There’s a new alien around now,” says Alex. “There’s been a few reports, passing it off as paranoia, but they look just a bit too unreal to actually be human, even in the fuzzy photos.”

“Thin Men,” says PC. “They mentioned that those were being fielded to me in the facility.”

“What’s their purpose, besides sneaking around?” asks Tulip.

“What’s any aliens purpose?” says Espeon. “Be cannon fodder for the Elders, abduct some humans, play space poker—“

“I think some of them are probably acting as false ambassadors for the elders,” PC says. “Going to the heads of countries, getting those places to fall in line, agree to occupation over invasion.”

“We better hurry up then,” says Alex. “If it’s not too late.”

Elyion’s resolve, its certainty, surges through PC. “It’s not,” he says, and it’s insistent. “We will prevent it. We have to.”

And yet, nagging at the back of his mind: what if we don’t?

What if we fail?