My pokégear vibrated against my chest, and I sighed. I couldn't run away from my problems forever, obviously, but I had at least hoped to not deal with it today. Sitting up from my sleeping pad, I checked who was calling me. Alex. That made things...easier and more difficult, at the same time. Easier, in that at least it wasn't Erica's new vendetta, which I had been stressing out about for the last couple of hours. More difficult, in that I hadn't decided how to handle the now-obvious attraction there. Which was nerve wracking, because at least if I hadn't been on board, then I could politely disengage and wash my hands of the whole incident. As it was, I had no idea what I was supposed to do next, and trying to think it through was only giving me increasingly embarrassing mental images.



Well, I didn't have to decide right this moment, right? I could get back to him later, once I'd hemmed and hawed my way into figuring out where I stood.



The gear rang twice more, then clicked off. A moment later, it started ringing again, Alex's name reappearing on the screen.



"Guess he's not letting me off that easy," I said to Mika, rubbing the back of my neck.



She slapped her tail on the ground, then flipped onto her belly. I ran my hand over her head fin, then answered the call.



"Alex!" I shot for a casual tone, which of course meant my voice cracked midway through his name. "Uh, what's up?"



Silence stretched, a delay before he spoke. "Rien. Where are you?"



My hands clenched on the gear, eyes widening. He sounded awful. A monotone, hollow sound took the place of his usual cheerful tone.



"I'm at my tent. Is everything all right?"



He sighed. "No. Can you come to the Center?"



I heaved myself up to a standing position, a touch of aura to move faster, and recalled Mika to her pokéball. "On it. Is there a fight happening? Do I need to run?"



"It's already over. Sam's concussed, but she'll be all right. Courtney's in intensive care, along with a couple others. Two trainers dead, and several pokémon besides. Not anybody you know."



He sounded, more than anything, like he was tired. Like someone who'd walked ten miles, and knew they had another ten to go before they could rest.



"I'll be there as soon as I can," I promised. "Don't go anywhere. Is there anything you need me to do once I get there?"



Another delayed response. "You don't need to do anything. I just want you to be here."



Too worried to think through the implications of that.



"Sure thing, man. See you in a few minutes, okay?"



"Yeah. See you, Rien."



I didn't quite take the path at a sprint, but it was certainly more than a jog, darting around walking pedestrians, cutting through lawns, and at one point hopping a fence to take the shortest path directly to the Center. If Tobias had managed to survive his injuries, then Courtney would be fine, too. A concussion wouldn't be enough to put Sam down and out. And if Alex said whatever had happened was already over, then surely nobody would attack them again before I got there. Just in case, though...there was no sense in me wasting time.



The route I was taking brought me past City Hall, and there I slowed down for a moment, taking in the scene that lay before me. Every window in the building was shattered. One in particular had exploded outward, shattered glass glittering on the lawn. Chunks of the wall surrounding that window had been blown out, too, chunks of wood scattered across the ground, and I could see that the roof inside the room had collapsed, a shamble of beams blocking out what lay behind it. A trail of blood lead away from the wall, leading to a massive spray of red and brown, nearly touching the sidewalk. Footprints ran through the mess, presumably where paramedics had taken the injured away. Yellow cordons surrounded the site, with police both guarding the perimeter and looking around the site.



I shook my head. Turned my back on the scene. Alex could fill me in once I got there, and the worry was starting to make my skin crawl. When I started to run again, I sent a trickle of aura to my legs, enough to reach the Center five minutes later.



The Center was cordoned off, too, though, and a stern-looking woman in uniform stopped me before I could reach the entrance.



"I'm going to have to ask you to stay back, sir," the woman said. Jenny, her nametag read. "Until we get things sorted, nobody goes in or out."



"Nobody? But my friends are in there," I said.



"Even so."



"I can't even see them? Just to know they're all right?" My fists clenched at my sides, and my voice came out far more petulant than I'd intended. "That's not fair. My friends are in there, I told them I would come."



She shook her head, looking sympathetic but not swayed. "Right now, it's possible that they're still in danger. Only specific personnel and trainers can be allowed on site."



"Specific trainers. Okay." I took a slow breath. "Do you know who is allowed in?"



"There's a list. Mainly government officials. If you have to ask, you're not on it. I'm sorry."



"Yes, he is." It was Alex who spoke, standing just outside the Center's doors. He looked as tired as he sounded, practically slumped over where he stood. His face and arms were slightly red, like they'd been scrubbed raw, and his usual clothes had been replaced with a white hospital gown. "His name's Rien Therretop. Double check."



She hesitated, looking back and forth between us. "One moment, please." She flipped open her pokégear, tapped at the screen, and scrolled. After a moment, she paled.



"A-ah, of course. Mister Therretop, my apologies. Go right ahead, sir."



She didn't walk away so much as she fled, hiding her face from view.



"Courtney's got leverage," Alex said. It sounded like the words were supposed to be smug, but they just came out flat. It was a lot like how he'd sounded after the Burnish incident. "She padded out your credentials at some point in the last few days, I think. Thanks for coming by."



I sized him up, stepped forward, and pulled him into a hug.



"Oh," he breathed. "Hah. I must not be holding it together as well as I thought. Sorry."



"I'm glad you're all right," I said quietly.



He looked away, his arms dangling at his sides. "Yeah, well. You know me. Alex the unstoppable trainer. May he reign forever."



I frowned at that and pulled him closer, one hand coming up to rest between his shoulderblades. "Hey. Are you all right?"



His head slumped, knocking into my own. "I don't know. If I explain what's going on, though--you wouldn't be out here if you knew."



My grip tightened. "I don't buy that. Why don't you tell me about it?"



I felt him hesitate. "Eye in the wasteland," he said.



I frowned, confused. "What does that mean?"



He shook his head, hair shifting along my neck. "No idea. Just wanted to check if you'd heard the term before. It was something Courtney said."



"I haven't. Does it have to do with what happened tonight?"



"Maybe. She was talking about exposure, which made me think maybe some kind of psychic virus--sorry, I'm going all out of order."



He fell silent. Background noise trickled back in: movement inside the Center, Officer Jenny in the distance speaking to someone on her pokégear. It didn't feel like enough noise. Nothing did, really. No rustling of trees in the wind, no traffic, barely even the hum of electronics. The isolation of the void had made Oldale Town a somber place for quite some time now, and only rarely was there enough activity and movement for things to feel normal.



Before the silence could stretch long enough to feel awkward, he started to speak again. "They were starting up the teleport. Courtney accidentally lost track of what she was doing, and started over. Except it wasn't an accident, it was the memory thief. So we spread out and formed a perimeter. The memory thief wasn't outside, though, it was in the room with us. A meditite, I guess. Still don't really get that part, but Courtney figured it out somehow. When they tried to teleport again, the meditite revealed itself, tried to kill its trainer. And we stopped the meditite, but...the other psychics started to turn against their trainers, too. One after another. One of them--one of the first ones, a baltoy--nobody knew what to do with it, really, and by the time Courtney told us what had to be done...it had started sprouting extra heads, like some kind of fucked up exeggutor, was tearing the room apart to attack us."



He took a breath, and I felt rather than heard it catch in his throat.



"Anyway. Whatever was done to them, it couldn't be fixed. Courtney was trying to prevent it, but she told me to kill any of them that she didn't save, and I did it. They were these people's darlings, you know, some of them. And a couple times, I wasn't able to get my pokémon where they needed to be in time, and the other pokémon killed their trainers before I could stop them. Can't decide which of those things was worse.



"So now you know what I did. You can move along, if you want. I won't stop you. Sam's in there, I'm sure she could use some support."



It shouldn't have been possible to say something so painful so easily. Not with such confidence, not with the certainty that I'd nod, and agree, and leave him out here to suffer. But with his description of the events of tonight, it was just the tip of the iceberg.



"That's enough," I managed. I stepped backwards slightly, moved out of the hug. Put my hands on his shoulders, and looked him in the eyes.



"I seem to remember, a few days ago, that both you and I were under the impression I'd killed an unarmed old man. But because he'd been trying to kill us, because there was a chance of him trying to do so again, you were adamant that I had done the right thing."



"Rien--"



"And now, because you had to fight for your life, for everyone's life, I shouldn't give you the time of day? Are you kidding me?"



He turned away from my gaze, shadows falling over his eyes. "Rien. You don't get it. I enjoyed it."



I froze. "What?"



"Yeah! Yeah, I always do! Whenever the opportunity to get in a fight comes up, I take it. It didn't matter what the fallout was going to be. All I cared about was having a decent battle for once!"



There was a lot to unpack there, and I'd need to think about it more later. For the moment, though... "Bullshit," was my response. It took me a moment to catch up to why I thought it was bullshit, but I got there. "If that was all you cared about, you should have taken out Courtney first."



His head snapped around, too shocked for the moment to avert his eyes. "I should have what?"



"If she was down for the count, then none of them could be saved. If none of them could be saved, you would have gotten to fight more."



"That's horrifying!"



"Yes!" I hissed. "Yes, that is horrifying! Which is why you didn't do it! Listen, Alex. I get that it's an awful situation, and maybe in the moment you...I don't know, got a rush out of it, or whatever. But it clearly didn't last, because right now, you seem miserable. Either way, that's not what I care about. What matters to me is that you did the right thing, and I'm not going to sit back and watch you beat yourself up over it, okay?"



He didn't look convinced. Whether what he was thinking had changed at all since I'd gotten here was a toss up. Belatedly, I was starting to remember bits and pieces of the training I'd gotten for situations like this. There was a psychological effect on people, when they made it through something that others didn't. Survivor bias? No, that was something else. There'd been a class that touched on it, but that had been months ago, well before I'd ended up in Oldale Town, and at the time I'd been more focused on the existence of the supernatural than on the mundane stuff.



"Listen," I said, trying to ease back. "I'll go inside, check on Sam and Courtney. Maybe even see how Tobias is doing, if he's up for it. But you're coming with me, all right? I told you once, and I'll tell you again. You're not getting rid of me that easily."



Alex huffed, in what could almost have been a chuckle. "You did say that, huh. All right, lead the way. But if any of them don't want me to be there, I'm leaving."



I accepted his terms with a tilt of my head (it didn't strike me as likely that anyone would actually kick him out) and started walking. "That's fine. C'mon, let's stop giving Officer Jenny something to gawk at."



That won me an actual chuckle from him, a brief smile slipping over his face.



~~~



As it turned out, Sam and Tobias were in the same room of the Center. Bandages wound around Sam's head, and her eyes were a little too wide, too unfocused. Sometimes I forgot how young Sam was, but looking at her now, it was impossible to miss. She seemed small, diminished. By contrast, Tobias sat in a bed on the opposite side of the room, cool as could be. From his expression, you'd think he was just relaxing on his day off. Looking at the shape of him under the white sheet, though, you could tell he was still missing an arm and a chunk of torso.



"You're out of intensive care?" I asked him.



"Aye," he replied. "Everything's healed over, and with all the potions, my bits are starting to grow back, so they moved me down this way." He wiggled a set of fingers under the sheet. With how they were positioned, they might have been sprouting directly from his shoulder. I was kinda glad they were hidden. It seemed gross. Not that I would say that out loud, of course, and if that's what it took to heal, so be it.



"Glad to hear it," I said. "Sam, are you doing all right?"



She nodded vacantly, staring a few inches to my right. "Yeah. They've got me on a potion and a painkiller, so actually I'm feeling great. This must be what noctowls feel like all the time."



"Glad to hear it. Uh, noctowls?"



She blinked. Blinked again. "Oh, yes. All eyes open, and..." she gestured broadly at nothing in particular. "Looking at things."



"The poor lass has been on like this for a bit," Tobias informed me, looking amused. "Hasn't been making all that much sense."



Her pokégear vibrated on the bedside stand next to her. She ignored it, her attention snapping over to Alex instead. "Alex! Allllllex. Alex. You smooshed em." She tried to thump her hand with a fist, but missed and hit the bed instead. "Thank you."



Alex visibly cringed. "I...Sam, that was your baltoy. I'm so sorry."



She waved one hand as if to dismiss the idea, then got distracted, started watching herself wave her hand over and over. After a moment, she snapped out of it. "Wait, what? No, it wasn't. I mean, it was. But then he tried to smoosh me, and it's a, uh, smoosh eat smoosh world. So you--where's your crown?"



"I don't think I have a crown," he said faintly, now looking more baffled than anything.



"Oh. Wait. You're right, you don't have a crown. I'm going to evolve you. Get a King's Rock."



"...Okay."



Her gear vibrated again. She reached over and shoved it off the stand onto the floor.



"I don't think there was a memory thief at all," she added, as though that was a natural conclusion to her prior statement.



"Wait, what?" I asked, eyes narrowing. "What do you mean?"



"That's the pattern," she said. "One, two, three. Voltorb flip."



Once it became clear no further elaboration was forthcoming, I prompted her. "What's the pattern, exactly?"



"That meditite, of course," she replied with a frown. "First it got hit with whatever Courtney was saving us from, and then it started erasing memories. And then one of the baltoys got hit with it, and then it looked at that guy with a beldum and he went vwoop vwoop vwoop, so his memories got erased too. And then there was that dusknoir. Big spooky radio man. That must be the one we saw in the tunnels, because we never saw that one come out of the entrance, and dusknoirs can go through walls. They don't break the wall, though. They can break the wall. They can--break it down. Because of, it's the radio man. But it didn't though." She giggled.



I shot Alex a look. "Does that make sense?" I asked him.



He frowned in concentration. "It actually...yeah, kind of. If the memory-erasing was part of the psychic virus, it would explain why a meditite could do it. It fits. No comment as to the rest."



Her gear vibrated for a third time, and she let out a melodramatic wail, wiggling around in place.



"...Do you want me to get that for you?" I asked her, stepping forward.



She shook her head, face set in mulish determination. "Mm-mm. No. My parents already told me I embarrassed them and junk, I don't need to hear it again."



I gritted my teeth. "They told you what? You could have been killed!"



She nodded, looking at me like this was self-evident. "That's the embarrassing part, yes. Too big for my britches. Erica says big mood. Not for that, but she said that one time. These are really good lightbulbs in here."



I shook off the extraneous details, stepping over to sit on the bed next to her. "I'm sure they're great lightbulbs, yes. Listen, with all due respect to your parents, which is none, there's nothing for you to be ashamed of. You were brave, and you stepped up when they just--did they do anything to help? No. You don't deserve to be treated like that, not ever."



She peered at me, looking intently at my face. "I can see you," she announced, holding herself up like this was a grand revelation.



"I'm sure you can," I said agreeably.



"Because of the lightbulbs. They're on."



"They certainly are."



Without warning, she launched her face into the crook between my arm and my ribs. "I wish you were my brother," she mumbled.



The words came out of left field, like a lot of what she'd been saying, but this was the first thing she'd said that left me with a lump in my throat. Before I could think of something to say, she shook her head.



"Wait, no," she continued. "I decided I wasn't supposed to want that, because I only knew you for a couple weeks. So I shouldn't. Take backsies."



Despite saying so, she didn't move, remaining curled up against me.



"Well," I managed, "I'm honored, take backsies aside. Listen, I don't know what it's going to take, but we'll make things better, all right? Whatever I've got to do, I'll do it."



She hummed something toneless, then slumped over back onto the bed. "Why's it so bright in here?"



"Because of the lightbulbs," I said. "Remember?"



A solemn nod from her, staring directly upward, and then she yawned. "Oh yeah. They're too bright, though."



"Here," I said, "we'll turn them off, and you can get some rest, all right?"



Her eyes widened, and she bolted back up. "Don't leave!" Before I could respond, she bit her lip, and then shook her head. "Wait, you can leave. That's fine. That's how it's supposed to work."



I gave her a quick hug, patting her on the back, then let her go. "Tell you what," I said. "I'm gonna go check on Courtney, and then I'll come back, and if you're still awake, I'll stay here, all right?"



Reluctantly, she tilted her head in a nod. "Okay."



"That's the spirit."



"I'm not a spirit," she informed me. "I'm a girl."



I snorted. "You sure are. See you in a minute, all right?"



She nodded, leaning back and closing her eyes. "All right. See you then." Then she opened her eyes again. "Oh, bye Alex. Watch out, it's bright in the hallway."



"Bye," he said, bemused. "I will."



"Need anything when we come back?" I asked Tobias.



He shook his head. "Na' unless ye can get me a new arm. This un's a wee bit short still. I'll be fine though, dinnae worry about me."



I nodded, patted him on his good shoulder. "All right, be back in a bit."



Alex and I stepped out into the hallway, flicking the light switch on the way.



"That was certainly interesting," he said, elbowing me.



"Aw, you can't hold that against her, she was clearly out of it," I replied. He had a bit of a smirk, which was leaps and bounds over how he'd looked earlier, so I certainly wasn't going to object to the teasing.



"Yeah, but she wasn't trying to adopt me. Barely noticed I was there, actually. I'm almost offended." He shrugged. "Courtney's at the end of the hall, I think."



We strode down the hall to her door. I pulled it open and stepped forward.



My foot made a splash, and liquid soaked almost immediately into my shoe. I looked down in confusion. There was some kind of slime on the floor, thick and pale. In fact, the floor had transitioned from sparkling tile to dirty bricks--



My eyes snapped back up, heart clenching in sudden realization. The hallway was gone. So was Courtney's room. So was Alex. There was only brick walls, shattered bits of furniture, and a pile of paper in the center of the room.



I was out of time.