Chương 26: Gideon’s Lesson

The control room overlooked every level of the base. Half the screens were dark. Others showed smoke, fighting, and children emerging from the bathhouse into Iron Talon blankets. Green flashed on Rine's private signal. Forty-seven. All accounted for. Mira stood beside Mara Vey, arguing with a medic. Rine nearly collapsed from relief. Gideon waited before the central console with Hypno.

"You exceeded expectations," he said. Lyra's Kadabra moved beside her.

"Step away from the controls," she ordered. Gideon ignored her.

"The orphanage was designed to produce survivors capable of exactly this kind of operation. Initiative, compartmentalization, sacrifice."

"No children died."

"Not for lack of your enemies trying."

"They aren't assets."

"Everything is an asset to someone." Hypno's pendulum swung. Psychic pressure struck the room. Rine's Dark veil rose around himself, but Gideon did not target him. He targeted Lyra. Hypno seized her mind while hidden dampeners activated on reserve power. Lyra fell. Kadabra teleported toward Gideon and struck an invisible barrier. Rine entered the psychic connection through aura. It was like stepping into deep water filled with other people's memories. Lyra stood inside a child's training room.

Sabrina watched from a doorway while younger Lyra failed to block a crowd of screaming thoughts. Gideon twisted the memory into accusation. Power without control harms everyone. Rine placed Dark energy between Lyra and the false Sabrina. The illusion shattered. Hypno turned on him. The arena appeared. Tomas held the knife. This time, Rine did not walk through him. He approached.

"I'm sorry." The false Tomas attacked. Rine let the blade strike his Dark veil. The image dissolved because guilt acknowledged was harder to weaponize than guilt denied. Lyra rose inside the psychic space. Together, they pushed. Hypno screamed. The control room returned. Gideon staggered, blood running from one ear. Hypno remained standing but disoriented. Rine's nose bled. His vision doubled. Gideon drew a sidearm. Kadabra used Disable. The trigger refused to move. Houndour's ball opened by itself.

She emerged between Rine and the weapon, golden light crawling over her coat.

"You could have been extraordinary," Gideon said. Rine laughed once.

"That is what every handler says when an animal bites." Gideon fired after Disable ended. Houndour used Thunder Fang. She crossed the room and caught his wrist. Electricity traveled through her jaw in a controlled burst. The gun fell. Gideon struck her with his free hand. Rine drove him against the console. He wanted to kill him more than he wanted Cassian dead. Gideon had built the arena. Drugged the children. Turned Tomas into a wound and Mira into leverage. Rine pressed the knife against his throat.

Gideon smiled.

"There you are." The control room doors exploded inward. Mara Vey entered with Iron Talon agents.

"Drop it, Rine." He could finish the movement before they stopped him. Houndour released Gideon and looked at Rine. Not commanding. Waiting. Rine lowered the knife. Mara arrested Gideon. The executive's smile remained as restraints closed around his wrists.

"You think choosing once changes what you are?"

"No," Rine said.

"That's why I'll have to keep choosing." The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there. Gideon was taken away alive. The victory felt unfinished. Perhaps real victories always did. Gideon's arrest did not end the psychic battle. Hypno collapsed after the executive was restrained. Without Gideon's commands, confusion and pain flooded his aura. A control implant pulsed beneath the fur at the base of his skull. Lyra knelt.

"It's fused to the nervous system."

"Can Kadabra remove it?"

"Not safely here." Hypno opened his eyes. The pendulum moved weakly. Rine felt an image: Gideon placing the implant, years of forced screenings, children crying inside borrowed memories. Hypno had been another prisoner wearing the shape of an accomplice. Mara's agents raised restraint launchers.

"Give him a choice," Rine said.

"He can alter minds," one hunter replied.

"So can Lyra." No one enjoyed the comparison. Lyra extended a psychic invitation. Hypno could enter a shielded ball for medical transport or remain under physical restraint. He chose the ball. Gideon watched.

"You collect damaged things." Rine looked at Houndour, Gastly's shaking ball, Ekans's medical capture, and Hypno.

"You make too many." Mara removed Gideon. Rine accessed the control console before the servers destroyed themselves. Identify traced orphanage transfers, drug orders, and communication paths. Most data encrypted beyond his ability, but he copied everything available into League storage. One file bore his own name. Executive restriction. Origin unknown. Aura and psychic markers predicted at infancy. Recommendation: retain until maturity. Gideon had known Rine was unusual before Rine could speak.

The same-name mystery widened. Lyra saw his expression.

"What?"

"Later." Rine closed the file. Escape first. Identity later. An alarm announced acid destruction in the lower laboratories. Iron Talon teams needed immediate evacuation. Rine opened the base-wide intercom.

"All remaining personnel: Gideon is in custody. Generator disabled. Children removed. Sub-Levels Three and Four are failing." He paused.

"Rocket has already abandoned you. Leave." Some Grunts obeyed. Others attacked the speakers. The organization had trained loyalty through fear, debt, and the belief that no outside life remained. Rine could offer a door. He could not make everyone use it. They moved toward the western tunnel. At Sub-Level One, Matron Halden's loyal caretakers emerged from hiding with medical records. One carried Tomas's personal effects in a sealed bag. Rine took it.

Inside were two shirts, a broken watch, and the ridiculous four-shirt travel bag. He held the strap with his good hand. No time for grief. This time, the phrase did not mean never. They reached the tunnel as the base began dying behind them. Mara did not permit Rine to remain for Gideon's interrogation.

"You are injured and compromised."

"He knows the other facilities."

"So do the records."

"Records burn."

"Then let us do our job before they do." Rine hated surrendering control. He also recognized that staying offered Gideon more opportunities to manipulate him. Before leaving, Rine looked at the executive.

"Why my name?" Gideon's smile changed.

"Which life?" The answer stopped Rine. Mara pulled him through the door as acid alarms began.

"What did he mean?" Lyra asked.

"He knows."

"About reincarnation?" Rine had never said the word to her. She read it from his reaction, not his mind.

"Later," he said. This later carried more weight than the others. They crossed the failing base while Iron Talon marked cleared rooms. Rine helped identify false walls and storage bays from memory. One contained personal items taken from recruits: photographs, letters, League applications, and tokens from assigned partners. Tomas's bag waited there. Rine took it along with Mira's original birth intake file. Other belongings filled shelves.

"We cannot carry all of it," a hunter said. Gastly spread into the storage system and opened every drawer. Lyra telekinetically loaded the contents into evidence carts.

"Now we can," she replied. They lost another four minutes. Those belongings mattered because Team Rocket's first act had been erasing the children's pasts. Rescue without their names, memories, and proof would leave the organization controlling the story. At the western tunnel, Rine looked back once. Training Cell Nineteen remained somewhere beneath smoke. The grounding mat, scratched bowl, and walls where trust began would be destroyed. He felt no nostalgia for the cage.

Only for what they had built inside despite it. Then the alarms changed pitch and the lower levels began collapsing. Rine entered the tunnel. Gideon's final weapon was not the gun. It was the base archive. As hunters secured him, he entered a code on his cuff. Screens across the control room displayed live feeds of the rescued children, each labeled with projected value and psychological weaknesses.

Mira's entry showed: > Attachment leverage: Rine Frostfang > Predicted response to partner-loss trial: High aggression > Recruitment potential: Purple Rine's knife rose before thought. Houndour barked. He stopped. Gideon wanted the display to prove that rescue changed nothing. He wanted Rine reacting, killing, and confirming every prediction. Rine closed Mira's file.

"Gastly, copy everything." The Ghost entered the servers. Red eyes appeared across every screen while data transferred to Iron Talon. Gideon's expression finally changed. Not fear. Loss. His power depended upon private knowledge. Rine turned it into evidence. The archive contained candidate predictions for hundreds of children, including Milo Kreel. It listed planned selection dates and assigned partners. Mara transmitted the files to League emergency command before Rocket could erase them.

Facilities near Vermilion and Celadon became immediate raid targets. Rine looked at Gideon.

"That is the difference."

"Between us?"

"You use what you know to build cages." Rine watched the upload finish.

"I use it to show people the doors." Only then did he leave. Rine's victory over Gideon's mental attack depended upon Lyra. That fact bothered him until they reached the corridor.

"I could not have broken Hypno's projection alone," he said.

"Probably not."

"You don't soften anything."

"You dislike being handled." True. Lyra had entered his defenses with permission this time. She followed boundaries, withdrew when asked, and trusted his Dark energy not to turn upon her. Cooperation created strength neither possessed separately. Team Rocket taught that dependence was vulnerability. The arena made that lesson literal by converting partnership into a weapon. Rine had spent weeks trying to become self-sufficient enough to escape.

He had actually escaped through an alliance of a psychic, a hunter, a caretaker, a technician, a shopkeeper, two recruits, forty-seven children, and Pokémon who repeatedly chose risk. The realization rearranged something inside him. Needing people did not make him weak. It made betrayal possible. It also made rescue possible. Rine looked at Lyra.

"Thank you." She blinked.

"For which part?"

"The part where we are still alive."

"You are welcome." They continued toward the tunnel with the awkwardness of people more comfortable surviving together than speaking about it. Behind them, the control room began erasing itself. Rine smelled melting insulation and turned. Thin lines of fire raced through Gideon's archive stacks, triggered by a dead-man protocol hidden beneath the surrender alarm.

"The copied records," Lyra said.

"I have the children's index."

"Not the financial network." The main archive contained payment routes, regional cells, breeders, buyers, and the names of officials who had kept the orphanage invisible. Saving it could expose hundreds. Returning would also place them inside a sealed room filling with chemical smoke. Rine took one step back. Houndour blocked him. Not with force. She simply stood in his path and looked up. He remembered lying about his injuries in the final training log. He remembered calling martyrdom preparation.

Lyra raised her drive.

"I copied the routing headers. Mara can reconstruct part of it."

"Part."

"Yes." Rine watched the flames consume answers. Then he turned away. He hated the decision all the way to the tunnel. That did not make it wrong. A complete victory purchased with their bodies would have satisfied Gideon's lesson better than escaping with imperfect evidence. At the final blast door, Lyra stumbled. Psychic backlash had split a vessel in her left eye. Blood traced a fine line from one nostril, and her hand missed the wall when she reached for balance. Rine caught her.

"I can walk," she said.

"You are walking."

"You're carrying half my weight."

"Then contribute more." She made an offended sound but did not pull away. Gastly drifted behind them, clouded and thin from holding the anti-teleport field. Houndour limped at Rine's other side. There were no uninjured heroes leaving Gideon's control room. Only people distributing one another's weight until the exit came close enough to believe in. At the tunnel mouth, Lyra finally stood on her own.

"If you tell Sabrina I needed help, I'll deny it."

"Your blood is on my jacket."

"Fabric lacks credibility."

"Psychic law is strange."

"You have no idea." The banter was absurd and therefore precious. It belonged to two teenagers beneath the titles other people had given them. Rine had been an orphan, recruit, traitor, asset, and reincarnated stranger wearing a dead world's memories. Lyra had been a disciple, operative, and living instrument of Saffron's Gym. For twelve steps, neither of them had to perform those identities. Then the tunnel alarm sounded, and they ran.