Chương 64

Sabrina did not answer the call. She arrived. Space folded inside Vermilion Gym's secure briefing room without light or warning. One moment the far end of the table stood empty. The next, Sabrina occupied the chair facing Rine, hands resting on the polished wood as though she had been waiting there before the building existed. An Alakazam stood behind her. His spoons remained crossed against his chest. Age silvered the fur around his shoulders, and one ear bore a thin scar.

The psychic pressure in the room did not increase because almost none escaped him. Identify failed. Sabrina Information unavailable Alakazam Information unavailable Rine closed the ability. Lyra sat on his right. Kadabra stood behind her. Veyra rested on his left, awake despite the hour. Morrow had been asked to remain outside until Sabrina said otherwise. He responded by putting one eye through the wall, which the Alakazam noticed and ignored.

Surge had surrendered the room after placing a pot of coffee near the door.

"Nothing in here is recorded," Sabrina said.

"Alakazam is maintaining a barrier against psychic observation. I have not entered your mind."

"I know."

"You feel no pressure because he is succeeding, not because the protection is absent." Rine glanced at the Alakazam. One spoon tilted. The room became quieter than silence. Sabrina looked at Lyra.

"You requested disclosure and stated that consent had been obtained."

"Yes."

"Do you still consent?" Sabrina asked Rine. Team Rocket had often asked a question after making refusal dangerous. Sabrina had teleported across Kanto in the middle of the night because the subject might affect an operation departing before dawn. That created pressure whether she intended it or not. Rine examined the choice.

"Yes," he said.

"I can stop?"

"At any point. I may then act on the fact that undisclosed intelligence exists, but not its contents." Not freedom from consequence. A boundary around what each person controlled. Rine began with his death. He kept the account plain. A different world. Thirty-six years lived there. A family lost beneath a landslide during a holiday he had reached one day late. Years afterward. Sleep. Death without warning.

Then infancy beneath the cracked ceiling of a Saffron orphanage, memory intact and identity divided between a grown man's past and a child's developing mind. Sabrina did not interrupt. He explained what Pokémon had been on Earth. Games. Animation. Printed stories. Creatures and people simplified into entertainment for children. Battles without the full pain of torn muscle. Criminals defeated through rules kind enough to protect the audience. Regions compressed into routes that could be crossed in minutes.

"Did I exist?" Sabrina asked.

"Versions of you did." Lyra's hands tightened beneath the table. Rine continued.

"They contradicted one another. In one, you were a young Gym Leader whose psychic power isolated her. In another, you were older, controlled, and primarily a battler. Some versions made you cruel. Some made you a victim of your own power. None were you."

"You state that with certainty."

"The person sitting here has lived things those versions did not. Even if a story resembled part of you, it would not contain you." Sabrina watched him. Rine could not tell whether the answer pleased her.

"Lyra did not exist in any version he knew," Lyra said.

"That does not establish your nonexistence," Sabrina replied.

"It establishes the limits of his source." The sentence released something in Lyra's shoulders. Not all of it. Sabrina turned back to Rine.

"Categorize your knowledge."

"I'm not sure what you mean."

"Facts that have proved structurally accurate. Facts that vary. Facts already contradicted. Predictions." He considered.

"Species biology is usually the strongest. Types, most evolution methods, broad move pools, abilities, breeding compatibility. But this world permits more than four retained moves, potential colors affect growth, and mutation can alter type, moves, or evolution."

"Galar?"

"Mostly unknown to me. Boltund was unfamiliar until my license examination. Anything originating late in that region is a gap."

"Historical events?"

"Unreliable. Kanto geography resembles the maps, but Saffron was not the regional capital in the games. The people exist in different ages and roles. Events have pieces in common without following the same order." The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

"Predictions?"

"Useful only as leads."

"Yet you withheld them." Rine did not defend the choice immediately.

"At first, I was a child inside a Rocket institution. Telling anyone would have made me an experiment or a liar. Later, the information kept Veyra and me alive. After the raid, I was afraid that giving the League a list of remembered names would make innocent people targets because of stories from another world."

"A legitimate concern," Sabrina said. Lyra looked at her. Sabrina's expression remained unchanged.

"It does not justify keeping every lead private once a lawful review process became available."

"No," Rine said.

"Why did you?" The answer lay deeper than caution.

"Because knowing made me valuable," he said.

"And being valuable was the closest thing to safety I understood." Veyra raised her head. Rine rested his hand near her paw without touching.

"If I gave everything away, then I was only a damaged recruit with a provisional license and people deciding whether I deserved to keep my partners."

"So secrecy preserved leverage."

"Yes." Sabrina accepted the confession as data rather than absolution.

"We will establish a protected intelligence protocol," she said.

"You will not provide an unrestricted catalogue. I will ask questions relevant to active threats. Your answers will be marked as unverified cross-world intelligence, corroborated independently, and withheld from ordinary case files."

"Who receives them?"

"Myself. Mara Venn where Rocket operations are involved. One League internal-security magistrate whose identity I will not give you tonight."

"Surge?"

"Only information relevant to his city or Gym." Rine looked at Lyra.

"You?"

"If Sabrina determines I need it," she said. She did not ask to own the secret merely because she had carried it first. Sabrina placed a blank sheet of paper on the table.

"Team Rocket," she said.

"Who leads it in the most consistent version you remember?" Rine had known the answer before he knew the multiplication table in his first life.

"Giovanni." No one reacted. That frightened him more than surprise. Sabrina folded her hands.

"Continue."

"He was the boss in the games and most adaptations. Persian was closely associated with him. Team Rocket operated from beneath the Celadon Game Corner. They invaded Silph Company in Saffron. The player defeated Giovanni there and later found him serving as Viridian City's Gym Leader." Lyra stared.

"A sitting Gym Leader led Team Rocket?" she asked.

"Yes."

"Publicly?"

"His criminal role was secret. His Gym authority was legitimate until it was exposed—or abandoned, depending on the version." Sabrina wrote nothing. The blank page remained blank.

"In this world," she said, "Giovanni has never held Viridian's Gym title." Rine waited.

"He chaired the Viridian Gym Restoration Trust for nine years," she continued.

"The trust rebuilt the facility after an earthquake and selected three temporary Leaders during its accreditation disputes. Giovanni resigned from the board six years ago when financial irregularities became public."

"Was he charged?"

"No. Records disappeared. Two investigators recanted. One died in a ferry accident." Lyra's psychic presence cooled the room by a degree.

"The League cleared him," she said.

"The League failed to prove the case," Sabrina corrected. Rine thought of Gideon's chain of command. Former executives demoted into orphanage administration. Recruitment facilities treated as disposable. Funds passing through charities, energy projects, freight cooperatives, and apparently lawful institutions. Team Rocket did not require Giovanni to stand behind a desk labeled crime boss. It required him to shape who received desks.

"Does he own land beneath the Gym?" Rine asked. Sabrina's eyes sharpened.

"Why?"

"In the old games, the Viridian Gym was his base in practice. Rocket also built underground. If he funded reconstruction here, the building plans could hide rooms installed before the League took control."

"The current Gym passed three structural inspections."

"By inspectors approved through the restoration trust?" Sabrina looked at Alakazam. One spoon moved. Somewhere beyond the psychic barrier, a message left without touching any electronic system.

"That question will be answered before sunrise," she said. Rine felt no triumph. If the lead proved true, he had delayed it for months. If it proved false, people in Viridian would be investigated because another world taught children to expect a villain beneath a Gym.

"What else connects Team Rocket to Cinnabar?" Sabrina asked.

"That is less certain."

"Explain."

"Cinnabar contained a Pokémon laboratory and a mansion where journals described research on Mew. The experiments produced Mewtwo, or contributed to its creation. Team Rocket's direct role changed between versions. In some stories Giovanni funded or controlled the project. In the original games, the journals established the research but did not clearly say Team Rocket ran it." Sabrina's control slipped. Only slightly. The blank paper lifted at one corner.

"Mewtwo," Lyra repeated.

"A genetically engineered Psychic-type," Rine said.

"Extremely powerful. Intelligent. In several versions, abused from birth." Alakazam uncrossed his spoons. The motion was quiet and more threatening than any display of force.

"Does it exist here?" Sabrina asked.

"I do not know."

"Do you know where?"

"No."

"Would you recognize evidence of the project?"

"Possibly. The name Mew. Genetic cloning equipment. A researcher named Fuji appears around parts of the history, but his role also varies. A mansion. A laboratory accident or fire." Sabrina's gaze did not leave him.

"Cinnabar's old genetics wing burned seventeen years ago." One year before Rine's birth.

"Cause?" he asked.

"Officially, a Rapidash oxygen-line accident."

"And unofficially?"

"The dead did not provide one." The thermal annex waited above volcanic tunnels. Cassian had moved six children toward it under Ghost-type concealment. A trafficking route did not automatically become a legendary experiment. Team Rocket used whatever facilities remained useful. But old knowledge had opened another door. Rine hated the room behind it before he knew whether it existed.

"The children come first," he said.

"Yes," Sabrina replied.

"And if the annex contains evidence unrelated to them, you do not pursue it alone."

"I wasn't planning to." Lyra and Sabrina looked at him.

"I understand why that was unconvincing." For the first time, Sabrina's mouth moved into something almost resembling approval. The formal questioning ended forty minutes before departure. Sabrina asked about Celadon, Lavender, Silph, the Elite Four, and the broad order in which the old stories placed events. Rine answered what he could and marked uncertainty when adaptations contradicted one another. He did not turn memory into prophecy. Sabrina did not allow him to hide uncertainty beneath confidence.

The resulting document contained seven possible leads and nineteen cautions. It remained blank to ordinary sight. Alakazam had written the record psychically into a sealed memory crystal. Morrow finally pushed his entire face through the wall. Sabrina looked at him.

"You may enter." The Gastly drifted inside, inspected Alakazam, and wisely chose not to imitate him. Sabrina rose.

"Lyra will accompany the Cinnabar operation under my authority. Her first obligation is civilian protection. Her second is evidence containment. You are not her commanding officer."

"I know," Rine said.

"He occasionally forgets," Lyra replied.

"I have noticed." Sabrina turned to her student.

"You were correct to insist." Lyra bowed her head.

"You also waited too long after determining the information could affect active cases."

"Yes."

"We will discuss the difference between protecting confidence and enabling concealment when you return." Lyra's expression suggested that remedial discipline had arrived exactly as predicted. Sabrina and Alakazam vanished. The pressure barrier left with them. The Gym's ordinary sounds returned: cables humming behind the walls, a cart rolling in the corridor, Raichu shouting at someone who had denied him food. Rine and Lyra remained at the table.

"Do you regret telling her?" Lyra asked.

"Ask me after Viridian is inspected."

"That is avoidance."

"Then yes. Part of me regrets it." She nodded.

"Part of me is relieved," he added.

"Both can be true." Rine looked at her hand resting between them.

"You asked whether you were real enough to me," he said. Her fingers tightened.

"I remember."

"I thought I answered."

"You answered badly."

"Yes." He did not reach across the final distance.

"Earth gave me categories for this world," he said.

"You keep breaking them." Lyra looked at him for a long moment. Then she turned her hand palm-up. An invitation. Rine placed his hand in hers. No aura reading. No psychic contact. Only skin, warmth, and the pressure of fingers choosing to remain.

"Better," she said. The harbor departure alarm sounded. They released each other and stood. Cinnabar waited beyond the storm. Six children waited somewhere ahead of them. Giovanni waited behind a name Rine had carried from another life. For once, the knowledge no longer belonged to him alone. It made him feel less powerful. It also made the weight easier to carry.