Chương 88: Chapter 71

Alyssa, Pikachu, Mr. Gima, and his Pokémon had all left, leaving just my partners and I in the now-silent apartment. There were still eleven of us, it should have felt crowded. Instead, I was possessed by a keen sense of aching loneliness. My knights had scattered throughout our home, staring suspiciously out of its various windows. All except Lance, who was taking a well-deserved nap, along with all three mauses. For her part, Mana hovered above my head, swimming back and forth in gentle circles.

Her silence itself was a statement. The little piscine traitor was glad that I was here, instead of tearing off into further danger. At least she had the forbearance to keep her relief muted and mostly to herself. There was one other person in the apartment though. A twelfth phantom haunting my mind and the device clutched in my white-knuckled fingers. The ghost of my father, staring at me accusingly through a mostly-blank screen. Four numbers stood between me, and the truth of what had happened to him.

Had kept him from being there for my mother in her hour of desperate need. The pin wouldn't let me input letters or characters, only digits. There were no hints, no notes, nothing left behind to guide me. Just a single message left behind on the glowing screen.

"It's all for her." How many hers were there in my fathers life? Mom, for one, obviously. The first thing I'd put in was her birthday. 11/23. Two months from now. Nothing. I tried their anniversary next. 5/30. I'd been the seed-bearer at their wedding, seven years ago. That wasn't it either. There were— hers that'd come before. My mother. My birth mother. Willow Tan. I– I didn't know her birthday. Or her date of death. I had to look both of them up in the calendar dad kept in the master bedroom.

Both days were marked. Neither was the pin. And after my fourth attempt to input a code, the website curtly informed me I had just three left before my device was locked out from trying any more. My fingers stilled over the PokéNav's tiny keys, and I took a shuddering breath. It could have been my dad and my birth mother's anniversary— but that just seemed like a shot in the dark. There were only two other hers I could think of. My dad's Pokémon partner, deceased before I'd even been born, and, well, me.

The former, I barely knew anything about. Just grainy photos and melancholy stories. The latter… didn't seem realistic. What exactly would have been for me? Certainly not anything to do with the BattleFieldGo, a device made to support a style of battle I was medically incapable of participating in. And yet, I couldn't help it, I tried my birthday, 0315, all the same. Two tries left. I slammed a fist into the table, and then bit back a curse, as I stared at my throbbing hand. Why was I even so angry?

What had I been expecting? Was 'her,' the company dad worked for? RealTech? Were companies female like boats? That didn't sound right. Actually, it sounded stupid. What about Nuna? Did it have something to do with my grandmother? She and dad were as close as any other parent-child pair, I thought. It wasn't too outlandish, but why would my dad keep his secrets in her name?

My leg jittered up and down, as I stared at the white screen, and the red letters informing me that I could only try two more combinations before I lost my best chance at finding my father, maybe forever. Instead of putting in another series of numbers, I stood up, and went to make my partners dinner. - We'd been intending to eat at Alyssa's tonight, but with her and Mr. Gima out on their escapade, our original dinner plans had been put on hold. Which meant I had to feed my partners.

The motions for doing so were so familiar now I could do them basically by rote. Which unfortunately meant that it did little to distract me from the intractable problem I'd been trying to avoid in the first place. Though, realistically, with the way my mind had divided itself working through possible solutions, there was never any real chance I could avoid thinking about the PokéNav lurking just a few meters away.

"Mamaus? Maushold?" I felt a gentle paw poke my cheek.

"Sorry, I'm almost done," I reassured my diminutive partner. I wasn't sure which maus was perched on my shoulder right now, but a quick glance at the other two, currently preoccupied working their tiny oven, told me it was one of the larger mauses.

'Nidoqueen' specifically.

"Holdholmaus," the Normal-type replied, as their furry paw ran up and down the side of my face.

"Thanks for worrying about me Maushold, but I'll figure this out. I've got to."

"Maushold!" the imperative squeak shocked a majority of my threads into attentiveness, pulling the bulk of my focus to the little Pokémon.

"Maus! Ausholm!" Now that they firmly had hold of my attention, the little Normal-type scampered down my arm to the counter, and then leapt to the floor. They gestured me over, before standing by the refrigerator and pointing at the space beneath it.

"What, is there something else under there?" I asked as I wandered over. The maus shook their head in a negative, and made a show of squeezing their little body beneath the appliance, and then back out again.

There was definitely something physically impossible about the Pokémon's ability to distort their form enough to fit wholly under the fridge, there was no chance their relatively large head should be able to make it all the way under, let alone their body, but that clearly wasn't the point of this impromptu demonstration. The maus repeated the action, and made a show of holding their hands out, as if presenting something to me.

"You found the note under there," I confirmed.

"Mauaush," the little Pokémon emphasized, holding up a paw and scratching their head, as if confused by something.

"But— but why was the note under the fridge?" I mused, finally catching on to my partner's implication. The Normal-type slammed a clenched paw into their other, and then pointed at me, in a classic 'exactly' pose.

"Why would my dad hide a code to access this website under our fridge? Wouldn't he know the website, or have it on his computer?" The maus made a 'keep going' gesture, clearly encouraging me to continue speculating.

"I suppose, having a physical note somewhere would make it possible to access the website even if he lost his devices," I mused.

"But why hide it under the fridge? I guess it's not somewhere most people would think to look?"

"Maushold!" the maus interjected, pointing a paw at themself.

"Most people wouldn't, but you three would," I breathed, as realization created over me in a wave.

"And, why would dad choose a Hoenn domain to host the site? Why not Unova, or Kanto, or anywhere else? The only reason to use Hoenn in particular would be because…" I trailed off, and my eyes were inexorably drawn to the PokéNav, sitting on the living room coffee table.

"It's for me. This was all left behind so only my partners and I could find it." Squeaking like a bell came from the maus, as if I'd just gotten a question correct in a game show. Some absent part of me noted to consider limiting how much screen time they were getting, but the majority of my focus was on blistering through possible four number combinations that only my dad and I would understand. My birthday seemed a bit on the nose, and would be easy for someone else to figure out. What about our address?

Still felt too easy, and not personal enough. Could it be my name? That was five letters though and O and N would take two digits to translate. What was in common between my father and I, a number related to him that I'd never forget, but that could stand up to an unfamiliar investigator's scrutiny? And then, I had it. Almost in a daze, I wandered over to the coffee table where I'd left the PokéNav, my hands lifting the device and powering it on.

The familiar screen stared back at me, taunting, but this time I had an answer for its provocation. Four days before the end of the year. The evening my father introduced me to my first partners. The pin entry screen dissolved into gray static, a long list of file names taking its place. Most of them were just strings of numbers and letters, dates or a code or something else I couldn't immediately parse. Two stood out, however, both placed right at the top of the list: 'read_me.

txt' as the first entry and 'summary. txt' right below it. I didn't even need to do any navigating, just punch the 'enter' key on the PokéNav's tiny keyboard. The first file expanded, text filling the palm-sized screen, my father's words transcribed in light and code. I couldn't help but read them in his voice, the achingly familiar tone causing an unexpected churning in my gut.

Fione, if you're reading this and I am not disappeared or worse, please stop reading and delete your history of ever having accessed this site. If I am gone, then the course of action you should take will vary by what has happened. If I am in police custody, go with Ella to her family. Share with them the information in this repository and they'll make sure the right people get it. If I'm in RealTech's hands, keep your head down, and disavow any actions attributed to me by the media.

I have failsafes for this eventuality, you just need to focus on keeping yourself and your mother safe. This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report. If I've vanished without a trace, I've likely gone into hiding. I have plans in place to disappear if necessary, but I won't say what they are, even in a place as secure as this. If I've chosen to do this, it's because RealTech has closed the noose sooner than I'd anticipated.

My intention is to fake my own death in the near future, but I may not have time to take the steps necessary to do so. They'll be stymied for a week or two by my disappearance, before they consider taking drastic action. I know this is a lot to ask, but please use this time to get out of the region. I don't think RealTech and their conspirators would take you or your mother hostage to get to me, but I can't fully discount the possibility, and that terrifies me.

And if I'm dead, hopefully it's because I faked my own death, as per above, but if it's not yet October, chances are that I have actually perished. In the case of the former, please make sure again that these files end up in the hands of the Joy family, and if the latter, stay calm, tell RealTech nothing, and stay your course so as not to arouse suspicion. I'm sorry I've put you in this position Fione.

Children should not have to bear the sins of their parents, and if all goes well, I'll clean up my own mess, but I'm not so arrogant to think that there's no chance that I fail in doing so. If I do falter before finishing this, my most sincere wish is that you do everything necessary to keep yourself and your mother safe. Everything else is secondary to that. The text ended there, cutting off abruptly after that paragraph. I read through it one more time, unsure what to think.

Myriads parts of my mind considered the problem from a dozen angles as another piece of my closed out of the document, thumbed to the next, and opened the page called 'summary. txt.' Fione, I hope you're the one reading this. Actually, I hope you never read this, because if you are, it likely means I'm either dead or in hiding. Neither option sounds particularly appealing, so if it's all the same to you, I'd rather this message never sees the light of day. But we don't always get what we want in life.

I wish you hadn't had to learn that lesson so early and so harshly. And in spite of it, you've blossomed into a remarkable young woman. I also wish I'd spent more time appreciating that fact these last six months, rather than chasing a ghost. The specter of the girl I once knew is a pale shade to the you of today, and it took almost losing you to realize it. Ever since you got back from the hospital a few days ago, I've been trying to figure out how to write this message.

I suppose the best place to start is the beginning. The BFG has been in development for nearly three years now, and I took ownership of the project in its final sprint. When the promotion to project lead was brought to me, the VP of development told me that a good showing here would give me the sway in the company I needed to push forward the project I wanted to pursue. At the time, the offer felt believable, but maybe I was blinded by my own desperation. In hindsight, my elevation was obviously a poisoned Oran.

One meant for someone expandable to the company. Me. I'd already been getting the sense that something was wrong in the weeks leading up to the BFGs release, but I ignored my good senses and pushed through with the development and release. Then, just days after we unleashed the BFG, the VP told me that my proposed project had been shelved indefinitely due to 'financial unsuitability.' He didn't even wait for me to put a full proposal on his desk.

That truly made me suspicious, and when the encryption keeping people from modifying the BFGs was cracked just a few days after their release, I knew my instincts had been right. So I started digging. And just a few days ago, I finally found enough dirt to put the pieces together. You see, the BFG was never supposed to be RealTech's flagship product. No, the true crown jewel of the company's portfolio was always going to be the PSS.

As it turns out, the Personal Synergization System's development predates the BattleFieldGo's by five whole years, a fact that powerful people in the company tried very, very hard to bury. To the world at large, the PSS is an adaptation of the BFG's technology, while in reality, the exact opposite is true. The Personal Synergization System is a powerful tool, one that grants a measure of strength to law-enforcement and private security that is wholly, and utterly unnecessary in this day-and-age.

Yes, the PSS was a tool without a use. A weapon without a cause. One that the company had staked its entire future on. So, if the problems necessary to justify the PSS's creation didn't exist, RealTech would just have to make their own. Hence, the BFG. The plan is rather simple in scope, if not in execution. Disseminate an inferior version of a powerful weapon into the public's hands, discreetly release the information necessary to wield such a weapon unrestricted, and then propose a solution to the ensuing chaos.

And all the while, I worked on the project like a good little soldier. Never realizing that I'd become a patsy for the company I'd spent my whole adult life supporting. But that's not the worst of it. Anyone who lived in our peaceful era could have told the higher-ups at RealTech that there was little need for a tool like the PSS, so how did its development get green-lit in the first place? I don't have as many hard facts on this subject, just scattered emails and fragmented PokéNotes pages, but I do have a theory.

Certain political actors close to RealTech are considering making a move to seize power in Ferrum, and RealTech's BFG gambit provides the unrest, and the weaponry necessary to make such a maneuver possible. It sounds like a conspiracy theory, even more than my previous claims, and I can't be certain about this, but what I have been able to recover and decrypt is, while not damning, certainly implicative. Unfortunately, I fear the time I have for investigating is rapidly decreasing.

Included in the documents I intercepted were the plans to implicate me and have me take the fall for the BFG's failure. I can already see the headlines in my mind's eye, 'disgruntled BFG creator releases encryption key to public in retaliation for project cancellation.' It's a compelling story, and one that the company intends to sell before the end of the fourth quarter.

That still gives me a couple of months, and I'm hoping that I'll have what I need to go to the police before then, but if I don't I may need to go into hiding. A disappearing act won't exactly look good in the court of public opinion, but better to vanish on my own terms than to let RealTech's people do it. I've uploaded what evidence I do have to a foreign server, one based on Hoenn. If you're reading this, you have access to it now.

I'll try to keep it updated, but making a connection to foreign nets on Ferrum hardware is difficult, even one as close as Hoenn's. The document below this one will be a timeline of when I've made updates to my findings. I love you Fione. Please pass the same to your mother. Your father, Pern. I set the PokéNav down and scrubbed my eyes, trying and failing to find a resolution to the conflicting feelings that warred within me.

Resentment at my father for his part in Ferrum's ongoing decay, hate for RealTech and their as-of-yet unknown co-conspirators, anger at the circumstances that put my family in this position. And concern for my dad. He was a mild-mannered programmer, not a spy, and now he was in the wind somewhere, presumably dodging corporate hit-squads and private security contractors and Golems knew what else.

My mom was battling for her life in a hospital half a world away, my father was in-hiding, fleeing people who wanted him incarcerated or worse, and my best friend was on her way to a possible confrontation with a killer and terrorist who wanted her partner dead in the ground. And here I was, sitting at home, cooking dinner. Instead of taking care of my own problems, I was stuck here, taking care of my partners. I wanted to scream. To berate.

To do anything I could to make sure everyone around me understood the fear devouring me. It felt like I was trapped in fate's gears, getting ground to dust by forces outside my control. Helpless. Hemmed in by circumstances I barely understood, with no recourse and no way out. And the worst part was, the feeling was entirely familiar. The same rage, the same sense of inability, the same compelling urge to vent my terror on the one part of my life I could control.

Just as I had the first time my world had come crashing down around my ears. Back then, I'd destroyed my room. Toys and collectibles and memories and bygone days burned on the pyre of my hate for the world. Now, there was a much darker urge in me. One that threatened to ruin something even dearer, even more precious. To see that which I cherished most sundered, so that I might feel something beyond crippling terror. My gaze lifted, tracking my partners across the room.

To the three mauses, taking their food out from their tiny oven. To my five knights, helping their sixth out of his slumber so he could join us at the dinner table. To my single fish, over by the entryway, staring down at something I couldn't see. My mouth opened, hate and vitriol on the tip of my tongue. And a hand reached up, clasping itself over my words of its own accord. Except, that wasn't quite right. Rather, the limb acted at the behest of another part of myself.

Me, refracted a dozen dozen times, a churning maelstrom whirling like a whirlpool in my own skull, fighting to process the overwhelming surge of emotions coursing through me. The hate, the fear, the resentment, the rage, all of it had its place in my psyche, just as it had nearly a year ago, but those emotions no longer stood alone. Gratitude for my partners, watching out for me and each other while I reviewed my fathers words. Love for the family who'd put themselves in danger today to help me save my best friend.

Pride in myself, and in us, for rescuing a shadow Pokémon from their impossible plight. Hope, because I knew from experience that even when things were at their most dire, they can get better. I felt my legs curl up to my chest and my head collapse to rest on my knees, as I sank into the couch beneath me. My mind was at war with itself, and my body was the battlefield. Resentment and hate fought to bubble out of my mouth like frothing curses, while my lungs struggled to find the air to even breathe.

My hands clenched and unclenched, alternating between trembling fists and nerveless fingers. One of my legs was vibrating, and I couldn't do anything to bring it under control, even as my knee knocked my skull over and over and over again. I'm unsure how long it would have taken me to come out of the fugue I found myself in on my own. And I have no way of knowing what emotion would have come out on top. But I wasn't alone.

Was never alone, and it didn't even take a minute for that to become readily apparent, as one of my partners noticed my hunched form, and I found myself surrounded by ten concerned Pokémon. I didn't have the shard of synergy stone on me, but I could swear that I felt the disquiet and concern radiating off my partners all the same. Far more than their own injuries, than the danger I'd put them in just hours earlier, their worry was for me.

The desperate ache to reassure them that all was well battled the crushing impulse to spurn their love and consideration. And the sum and total of my conflicting feelings was an inability to move, to speak, to even think. It took minutes that felt like hours, but eventually, I weathered out what I'd come to recognize as a panic attack. I came back to myself surrounded by my concerned partners, each of them trying to reassure me as best they could.

Maushold had scampered up onto my shoulders and were rubbing reassuring paws across my back, while a cooling ring of water soaked into my scalp and forehead, courtesy of Mana. My knights had captured my hands, and were licking them in a show of reassurance and solidarity that they knew from experience would often get a rise out of me. I could feel their intent clearly through the rough tongues on my skin, even my irritation or anger was better to them than the catatonia that'd overtaken me.

I sucked in a shuddering breath, filling my lungs for what felt like the first time in a year.

"I'm okay," I told my Pokémon, begging a bit of space.

"I'm–" I paused, the words catching in my throat. Ten pairs of eyes gazed at me, freezing the lie on my tongue.

"I'm– I'm scared, guys," I finally said, the admission escaping me before I could stifle it.

"Dad's in danger, and I can't do anything to help him. Or Alyssa. Or my mom. I don't– I feel like there's nothing I can do." The words drew my partners in closer, each of them reacting to my obvious distress. Maushold clung onto me. They had no answers to our situation, only the reassurance that no matter what happened, they'd be going nowhere. Mana nestled her body in my hair, and the soothing water shrouding my head bubbled and roiled with promises of violence towards whatever was threatening me.

And my knights crowded together, scampering onto the couch and burying me in their bodies.

'You're not alone.' I could feel the conviction through their actions, no words required. In spite of my weakness, they still trusted me to lead them. They'd still follow, no matter where I directed them. And therein was the difference, between myself, and the girl I'd been nine months ago. She was alone. I was many. Each of my Pokémon were a part of me, as much as my arms or my legs or my voice. If not more-so. They had full-faith in me, even now. A willingness to follow me wherever I might bring them.

And in turn, my responsibility was to them, first and foremost. I'd lost sight of that, in my concern for my mom and dad and best friend. But while I loved those people, wanted to help them, I wasn't responsible for them. Moments ago, that accountability felt stifling, but that darkness fled in the face of the love my partners put so proudly on display. They cared for me, and I cared for them, and just as I was their first priority, they had to be mine. That goal, that target was grounding.

It put into perspective the impossible choices that'd paralyzed me. Before I worried about finding my father, or helping my best friend, or being there for my mother, I had to secure my own well-being, and that of my partners. And for the moment, that meant huddling together. Bracing against the maelstrom confronting us, and fortifying one another for the challenges ahead. Soon, there'd be more to do. Dinner to finish preparing, files to review, preparations to make.

But for now, there was only one another, and a reaffirmation of what that meant to us all. Come what may, we'd be ready for it. Together.