Chương 12: The Ghost That Chose

The first hunter through the doorway wore plated field armor and carried a compact launcher marked with the Indigo League seal.

"Recovery Guild!" she shouted through a respirator.

"Recall your Pokémon and get on the ground!" Two more hunters followed. One released a Golbat to disperse the gas. The second threw a capsule that unfolded into a portable air scrubber. The violet cloud churned. Gastly perceived rescue as another attack. Cursed Smog poured from its core. The Golbat beat its wings, but the vapor clung against the gust as though filled with hooks. The lead hunter fired a spectral restraint net. Blue light spread across Gastly's body, tightening whenever it tried to become intangible.

Rine recognized the woman from the station bounty notice. Mara Vey. Senior Iron Talon retrieval agent. Threat level hidden. Partner information unavailable.

"The Ghost is registered stolen property," Rine said.

"I know who registered it." Her launcher shifted toward him. Rine's watch had already transmitted an emergency alert to Team Rocket. If the hunters detained him, Gideon would relocate the orphanage levels before the League obtained a warrant. Mira would disappear. Houndour's registration would expose him as a Rocket asset. He needed to leave. The scavengers complicated everything. One lay unconscious near the stairs. The armored man continued firing at hallucinations.

Raticate convulsed beneath the table, poisoned but alive. Gastly weakened inside the net. Rine could abandon it. The mission had described Gastly as stolen Rocket property. Returning without the asset meant failure but not necessarily death. Attempting to take it from three licensed hunters was madness. Houndour pushed the filter away and growled toward the net. She had been placed in a ball shortly after hatching, transported, starved, and classified according to usefulness.

She recognized the shape of another creature trapped. Rine did too.

"Ember—scrubber." Houndour fired. Flame struck the machine's intake. The filter ignited, filling the basement with black smoke and forcing the hunters' masks to compensate.

"Kid!" Mara shouted. Rine threw his Black-Out capsule. Dark powder exploded through the room, absorbing visible light and disrupting optical equipment. The hunters' targeting lasers vanished. Rine moved by aura. Living shapes glowed dimly through the artificial night. Houndour burned hot beside him. The hunters were guarded clusters. Gastly was a cold wound caught in blue restraint energy. Rine reached for the net. Psychic force struck him from nowhere. His knees hit the floor.

Someone outside the basement—a hunter's hidden partner—pressed against his mind, searching for intention. Rine gathered Dark energy. The barrier formed more quickly under threat. Cold sealed his surface thoughts. The probe slid away. Surprise flickered through the distant presence. Rine seized the restraint cable and cut it with his knife. The energy net failed. Gastly expanded instantly. Rine felt poison touch the skin around his mask. His vision swam. The empty Poké Ball remained where he had placed it.

"There," he told Gastly. It could flee into Old Saffron. It could enter the ball. It could kill everyone in the room. Red eyes turned toward Houndour. She stood between Gastly and Rine, trembling but refusing to retreat. Gastly compressed. Violet gas spiraled toward the ball. The capture light took it. The ball rocked once. Twice. Then settled. Not conquered. Chosen. Rine grabbed it. Emergency lights returned as the Black-Out powder thinned. Mara Vey stood four meters away, launcher raised.

"Drop the ball."

"The cylinder was killing it."

"And Rocket will do worse."

"Not if it's registered to me." Mara's eyes hardened above her mask.

"You think paperwork protects anything from them?" Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings. No. Rine knew better than most. Houndour placed herself in front of him. Her body was exhausted, poison exposure accumulating, yet gold current climbed her spine. Mara could have fired. She did not.

"What's your name?" she asked. Rine considered lying. Her psychic support might detect it.

"Rine."

"Rine what?" The Rocket Watch vibrated. Retrieval forces were ninety seconds away.

"Ask Team Rocket." Rine kicked the release lever on the clinic's emergency gas system. Ancient sprinklers erupted overhead. Water struck loose chemical containers and sent warning alarms through the building. Houndour discharged into the flooded floor. This time, it was not uncontrolled. Rine had taught her to seek conductive paths. Electricity spread through the water in a shallow yellow sheet. The hunters' insulated armor protected them, but instruments overloaded and lights died again.

The discharge hurt Houndour. Her aura stuttered. Rine recalled her before she fell. He ran. The route through the clinic existed in his memory from the search: laundry passage, broken window, collapsed courtyard, alley. A projectile struck the wall beside him and unfolded into a restraint web. He cut left. Another passed overhead. Mara did not shoot to kill. Someone else did. A conventional bullet shattered the window frame. The armored scavenger had escaped the basement hallucination and followed.

Blood covered one side of his face. He aimed a pistol at Rine.

"That thing was mine!" Rine dove through the broken window. The second shot tore through his jacket and grazed his ribs. Pain arrived hot and shocking. He landed in the courtyard, rolled, and released Houndour. She materialized unsteady but alert. The scavenger climbed through the window. Rine drew his knife. For an instant, the arena returned: Tomas above him, the clock descending, one blade between them. The scavenger aimed.

"Ember." Houndour's flame struck his gun hand. He screamed and fired into the ground. Rine crossed the distance. He drove the knife beneath the edge of the man's body armor—not deeply enough to kill, but into the muscle of his thigh. The scavenger collapsed. Rine kicked the pistol away. He could finish it. The thought came without hesitation. The man had attempted to kill him. Leaving a witness risked exposure. Team Rocket authorized lethal force. Rine looked at the knife.

Tomas's blood had once covered the same blade. He stepped back.

"If you follow," Rine said, "she burns your throat." The scavenger clutched his leg and spat a curse. Rine took his ammunition, identification, and communication device. Then he and Houndour disappeared into the alley as Iron Talon agents reached the courtyard. They crossed three blocks before Houndour stumbled. Rine carried her into an abandoned tailor's shop and sealed the door. He administered Pecha concentrate, cleaned the bullet graze at his ribs, and placed the Gastly ball on a counter.

"I'm releasing you." The ball opened. Gastly emerged as a small cloud rather than the basement horror. Its core wavered, still unstable. Red eyes watched Rine with guarded intelligence. Identify unfolded.

> Gastly — Level 10 > Sex: Male > Type: Ghost / Poison > Ability: Levitate > Innate Potential: Purple — Exceptional > Current Potential: Blue — Rare > Maximum Attainable Potential: Red — Champion > Condition: Malnourished; spectral fragmentation; chemical contamination > Mutation Talent: Cursed Smog > Known Moves: Lick, Hypnosis, Mean Look, Smog > Emotional state: Suspicious; curious; hungry Gastly drifted toward Rine. Cold gas brushed his face.

Images flickered at the edge of sight—his mother beneath mud, Tomas in the arena, Mira wearing a Rocket uniform. Rine did not retreat.

"None of those belong to you." Gastly's grin widened. Houndour growled from the blanket. The Ghost floated backward, amused rather than frightened. Rine placed an empty ball beside the Rocket-registered one.

"You can leave. You can keep that ball. Or you can come with us." Gastly examined both. Then he sank into Rine's shadow. Cold wrapped around Rine's ankles. The unused ball remained on the counter. Gastly had made a different choice. Rine looked toward the dark shape beneath his feet.

"Fine," he said.

"But no dead relatives before breakfast." Two red eyes opened in the shadow. For the first time since the arena, Rine heard something that might have been laughter. The laughter ended when Team Rocket's retrieval alert changed color. > Desertion threshold: 31 minutes. > Associated dependent review initiated. Mira's file opened automatically. School performance, medical history, disciplinary notes. A red border surrounded her photograph. Rine's hands went cold. Team Rocket did not need chains around his wrists.

It placed them around every person he refused to abandon. He closed the alert and looked at Gastly.

"If you come back with us, they may try to take you." The Ghost projected the cracked cylinder, then Mara's restraint net, then Rine's open ball. Three cages, none identical.

"Yes." Gastly sank deeper into his shadow. Houndour stood despite her weakness and moved toward the door. Rine understood their answer. Choice did not guarantee safety. Sometimes it only determined who faced the danger beside you. He gathered the supplies, erased blood from the floor where possible, and burned the cloth carrying his scent. Before leaving, he placed the scavenger's identification where Iron Talon would find it. The man had tried to kill him. He still deserved to be found before bleeding out.

The humor did not last. Gastly's unstable vapor began shedding again. Each lost wisp carried cold through the tailor's shop and left frost along the walls. Rine used the scavenger's abandoned medical kit to build a temporary containment hood from clear plastic and charcoal filters. Gastly refused to enter.

"It isn't a cylinder." The Ghost projected an image of one anyway. Rine cut the plastic open along one side.

"No seal. You can leave whenever you want." Gastly examined the opening. Then he floated inside and compressed himself enough for the filters to catch contaminated vapor. Identify tracked the change. > Spectral cohesion improving > Chemical contamination falling > Fear response: Elevated but controlled Houndour settled beside the hood. The two Pokémon stared at each other through plastic. Gastly extended a tongue. Houndour snapped at it. The tongue passed through her muzzle and left frost across her nose.

Houndour sneezed sparks. Gastly laughed hard enough to lose cohesion again.

"Excellent," Rine said.

"One day together and we've invented medical slapstick." He separated them until both calmed. The bullet graze along his ribs required attention next. Identify found no fragments and only superficial muscle damage. Rine cleaned the wound while watching the stolen radio. Iron Talon teams tightened their perimeter. Team Rocket's retrieval squad entered from the south. The route home narrowed. Rine found an old city map beneath the shop counter.

Maintenance tunnels connected the district's boiler network to eastern utilities. Most were collapsed, but Gastly could scout through debris.

"Can you find an open path?" The Ghost looked toward the wall. Rine showed him the Rocket base marker and service entrance. Gastly studied the map, then vanished into the floor. Five minutes passed. Ten. Houndour paced. At fourteen minutes, red eyes appeared inside a dressmaker's mirror. Gastly emerged and projected three images: a flooded tunnel, a nest of angry Grimer, and a rusted ladder.

"The ladder route." Gastly nodded. It was their first deliberate exchange of information. Rine recorded it privately as communication rather than obedience. On the way out, they heard Mara Vey's team enter the street. Rine watched through a crack in the boarded window. The senior hunter knelt beside blood Houndour left on the pavement, touched it with a test strip, and looked directly toward the tailor's shop. Their eyes nearly met through the boards. Mara turned away.

"Search north," she ordered her team. She had found him. She was allowing him to leave. Rine did not understand why, which made the favor more dangerous than hostility. Debts with unknown terms were how criminal organizations recruited people. He recalled Houndour, invited Gastly into his shadow, and entered the boiler tunnel before either Rocket or Iron Talon changed its mind. The passage was scarcely wide enough for his shoulders. Rust tore his borrowed coat, and contaminated water reached his ankles.

Gastly guided him by opening red eyes at every junction. Behind them, boots entered the tailor's shop and stopped. No pursuit followed. Rine carried Mara's decision with him through the dark. She had been positioned to capture him and chose otherwise. He did not mistake restraint for friendship, but neither could he dismiss it as weakness. Team Rocket treated every spared enemy as unfinished work. Mara had treated him as a person capable of making another decision later.

The difference unsettled him almost as much as the debt.