Chapter 132: Interlude XXVII – Implicit Knowledge

The hush of the lab after midnight is Sakura’s favorite time and place.

In many ways, she was the perfect pick for the night shift. Devon’s science division is a bit more flexible in their hiring than most labs, probably in an attempt to be more competitive than rivals like Silph after The Incident… something which worked, in her case, to get her to stick around in Hoenn after Groudon’s emergence collapsed part of her street and tilted her whole apartment building sideways.

Waiting out the violent quakes and storms at her office had been harrowing, and when she finally got home only to find it half collapsed in on itself, she considered leaving along with some of her friends. But there was also something exciting about the rush of energy that coursed through the region in the aftermath of the island-wide (the worldwide) shock. Resources and people poured in to help those most affected, somewhat offsetting the emigration, and she only had to stay with a friend for a few weeks before a functional, if basic, apartment in a shelter was available for her back in Slateport.

Still, despite all the construction efforts, the price of living is still too high, and she almost took a job in Johto before she saw that Devon was advertising for their new unown lab in Rustboro city. The politics of it all is fascinating in its own right, but the idea of cracking the origin or purpose of the enigmatic pokemon was too great to resist… and when she saw the hours they needed covered…

“It just felt too serendipitous to ignore,” she says as she walks through the “green room,” one of the sample labs with plants growing throughout it. “I mean, I got lucky here, but what if the next great job offer wants me to work 9-5?”

“I hear you,” Phil says through her earpiece, and yawns. “I’d say to lay off the coffee or tea, but I rarely see you drink any.”

“Just now and then, for flavor. I’ve tried going caffeine free a couple years ago, didn’t change anything. I’ve just always been a bit of a noctowl.” Sakura makes notes in her pad as she walks, simply recording that all is as it should be after the unown cloud was transferred from here back to their holding chamber, then to the next sample rooms.

“Hmm. Asked a therapist about this, once.”

“Didn’t know you went to therapy.”

“I didn’t, it was a friend. He said it might just be biochemical in some people, feeling more creative and alive at night for reasons related to light or heat or some other thing.”

“Seems right.” She checks the “fruit aisle,” as they’ve dubbed the area where the various berry bushes were planted. A few are tasty enough for humans that she’s tempted each time to pluck one for a snack, but so far she’s resisted. “Sometimes I feel like I’m not really, fully awake until the sun’s down.”

“Well for most people, his guess was that staying up later than they planned comes from things like not getting as much free time as they wanted during their day.” She hears some typing as she finishes checking the last plants off. “All done in the green room?”

“Yep, heading to minerals.”

“Cool, cycling now.”

She hears the muffled sounds of the metal covers and flaps shifting to direct the unown cloud back into the central chamber. “So you’re saying people don’t want to go to bed because they ‘lose’ precious time, and even if they end up tired in the morning, that’s when they need to prepare for school or work, so it doesn’t feel like it costs them something they care about?”

“Right. But going to bed when you could be doing other fun things?”

“Yeah, that feeling sucks. I can see it.” She thinks back to her college days… “But I don’t think it applies to me now. My shift doesn’t start until 6PM, I’m usually up by 1PM. Unlike most people I’ve got free time before and after my ‘work day.'”

“Yeah, you’re one of the lucky ones. Okay, cloud’s back in the central room… hm, also, looks like we have a guest at the entrance.”

“Wait, really?” She checks the time to confirm that it’s nearly 2AM. “Someone leave their personal computer behind?”

“I don’t recognize him. Security’s on it, though. What was I saying?”

“That I’m one of the lucky ones, and the mineral room is clear.” She makes her way there.

“Right. Brings up my therapist friend’s third point, which was that some people just really value time to themselves, and it’s hard to get real solitude during the day because everyone’s awake. Even if you stay home alone, people might message you.”

“True. Most people like being messaged by their friends and family though, right? I’m probably just too dysfunctional to live in normal society.”

“Hey. Stamp it.”

She rolls her eyes, but, smiling, pulls the stamp from her pocket and gives herself a gold flower on the back of her hand. It joins two others there, both mostly faded from when she gave them to herself last week. “Done.”

“Okay, try again?”

She takes a breath. “I’m probably just too… misanthropic isn’t better, right?”

“You asked me to help you notice negative self-talk, not define your whole sense of self. Are you misanthropic?”

She thinks about the people in her life, and even people around the world. She doesn’t dislike others. She wants them to be happy, overall… just… mostly away from her?

“I’m not sure, honestly. But I don’t think so?”

“Well alright then. Try something else.”

“Okay, I’m probably just too weird, is that good enough?”

“Is it?”

“I think so. Weird’s not bad, in my book.”

“Alright, so long as you really feel that way I think it works.”

“Thanks.” She goes back to examining the next samples, looking for any potential changes, no matter how small. “So yeah, just too weird I think.”

“Maybe. Or, there’s just nothing exciting enough about your mornings.”

“Well, yeah, obviously.”

“Is it obvious?”

She considers. “I do remember times when I was happy to go to bed earlier, to wake up earlier, for like… holidays, when I was young? But I can’t make it an everyday thing. I mean, there isn’t anything exciting to wake up for every day.”

“Why not? For me, getting a girlfriend in a different timezone did it.”

“Aww.”

“Seriously, it worked wonders. I really wanted to wake up as early as possible to maximize how much overlap time we were both awake for, and it was suddenly easy to get to bed on time and wake up early.”

“Huh.” Sakura steps into the room where the lab’s fossils and various minerals are kept in their individual mini-habitats. “Okay, so I guess if I ever need a new job that starts early, I just have to get a girlfriend in a different timezone at the same time.”

Phil snorts. “She doesn’t have to be, just make sure she’s not a noctowl and it should have a similar effect… huh… what’s going on out there?”

“What?”

“The guy at the front is still there talking to security. Oh, hang on…”

“I’m hanging,” she says, but the line is already dead as he ends the call. She’s near the front entrance, and wonders if she should walk over and see what’s going on… but before she can, she hears the ambient noise of the open call return.

“Hey Sakura, apparently there’s someone named Mr. Langley here? That name sound familiar?”

“No?”

“Not on the list of approved visitors but says he’s with Devon. Asato says he’s asking for you.”

She blinks. “I’ll be right there.” She tucks her pad away and walks quickly toward the front entrance, trying to remember anyone named ‘Langley.’ There’s a vague recollection of a man with long hair…?

Not, as it turns out, this Mr. Langley, who is tall and thin and wearing a suit. His hair is long, but combed neatly behind his ears, and he has a beard that makes it hard to tell how old he is. Her first thought is that he’s younger than her, but when she meets his gaze there’s a wild second where she thinks His eyes are older than the rest of him…

“Good evening,” he says, voice light. He’s smiling and holding his hand out to hers, which she only realizes after she tears her gaze from his, wondering what’s gotten into her. “You’re Dr. Hayun, I believe?”

“Yes.” She reaches out automatically to shake his hand, and now that she’s not staring into his eyes, she realizes he does look vaguely familiar, but his question reassures her they hadn’t been formally introduced, at least. She glances over his expensive looking suit again and wonders if the place she’s remembering him from is Devon’s recent tech exhibition. “And you are…?

“Edward Langley, from the Slateport lab. We weren’t introduced, but I saw you at the exhibition last month.”

The memory of his face in the conference crowd clarifies a little. “Yes, I think I remember.” She looks at Asato and Hajime, the former of whom is watching the stranger while the latter keeps his gaze moving over the area around the lab entrance. “What can I do for you, Mr. Langley?”

“Oh, did you not get the message from your supervisor? It would have been about a week ago, maybe two.”

Message? She racks her brain, trying to remember… “Oh!” There it is, yes, some vague memory of skimming a message from Daishi while busy and thinking she’d ping him about it later… she must have forgotten to do so, and then forgot about it entirely. “Yes, I’m sorry, I’ve had so much on my mind—”

He smiles. “Not a problem. I’m just here to look over the lab floor, make some notes? Shouldn’t be more than ten minutes.”

“Of course.” She nods to Asato, feeling slightly embarrassed as she opens the door behind her. “Come on in.”

Edward nods to Asato as well, then walks past her, and she quickly follows, trying to mentally bookmark what she’d been doing before the interruption. Ten minutes isn’t much, but she wishes she had a bit more warning… it’s weird that Daishi didn’t remind her, he’s normally a bit of a micromanager. “Just through there. The quickest path to the central chamber from here is through our mineral lab, where I was about to catalog as you arrived…”

They make their way there, and she leads him between each divided section that stores its own samples of fossils or stones of various kinds. “Our unique division system puts the unown in a central hub by default, which is accessible through any of these sample labs, and cycles them back and forth through the hub and each lab.”

“Similar to the Mossdeep lab.”

“So I’ve heard, though I believe theirs is a bit more high tech.” She smiles. “Not that that’s necessarily a good thing. I think we have a good system, and more tech might make it more fragile without adding any real functionality.”

“I agree,” he says as he scribbles in a small notebook he’d pulled from somewhere, voice cheerful. “Even this seems a bit overengineered, if you don’t mind my saying so.”

“Not at all, I get it. None of it may turn out to matter, but someone has to try. Have you been to many unown labs?”

“Oh yes, at least a dozen.” He’s looking around, and her gaze is drawn to his suit, which isn’t quite fitted. It’s a bit of an odd choice for a lab visit, but maybe he likes to look professional, even if it’s off the rack… in fact, is that the store tag still attached to his collar?

He suddenly reaches back and tucks it out of sight, and she pretends not to notice. “Wow. I’ve only been to visit two others myself, one smaller to get a sense of how they ran things, one larger when Wally visited for a safety review.”

Sakura doesn’t have to clarify which Wally; all of Hoenn knows how he and then-Leader-now-Champion Wallace helped save the region by helping Rayquaza “mega-evolve” and directing it to defeat Groudon and return to the upper atmosphere…

(…though she’s heard skepticism about the official story, and surfed a few conspiracy sites out of morbid curiosity. It’s not hard to admit that the official story is a bit light on explanations for how exactly communicating with the unown helped them do that, but either way, it’s hard to deny that the young psychic has a way with the mysterious pokemon.)

Edward was looking over the habitat holding a bunch of leafy fossils, pen moving rapidly, but pauses in his scribbling to turn to her with a sudden, avid interest. “You met Wally?”

“Oh, not really. I just listened to the questions he asked, and the answers he gave to the psychics and scientists who were staffing the lab.” Warnings and cautions that have become standard guidance for everyone experimenting with unown in Hoenn, as well as many beyond it.

“I see.” He starts writing in his notebook again. “So you don’t know where he is.”

The statement (not a question) is a bit strange, and she feels her brow crease as she wonders why she would know where he is even if she spoke to him. “This was before he went off with Steven. As far as I know they’re still traveling together.”

“Of course. The world is getting stranger, more dangerous, and busy bidoofs build hardy homes, as they say.”

Sakura half smiles. “Do they? I’ve never heard it before.” The note of disquiet that’s been at the back of her mind is still there, and she finds herself wondering who this person is, exactly, and why he came to see the lab so late. She tries to think back to the message from Daishi, tries to remember any details…

Edward’s head tilts up, catching her attention. She’s about to ask if something’s wrong when he says, “I hear them.”

“Good ears.” It’s not until they cross through the next room and its (mostly?) soundproofed walls that she can make out the cacophony their 81 unown make with their overlapping noises. “I’m guessing you’ve seen a larger cloud, considering how many labs you’ve been to?”

“Yes. I’ve definitely seen larger.” The warehouse’s central area is set up to allow the unown cloud to be shunted via strong fans between the various other areas of the lab, where they have different equipment and samples kept. Despite what she said to Edward, at first Sakura thought it was an overly complicated setup, but she has to admit after working here for a few months that it’s surprisingly efficient compared to transferring everything in and out of the main chamber where they are depending on who’s working, even with storage balls to help. Most importantly, it lets them bring the unown back into the central chamber away from everything else on emergency notice, if needed.

As a result, the central chamber seems fairly sparse by comparison to the various specimen labs; just a round walkway with various stairs that lead down to the warehouse floor, the cloud of unown floating above. But the interesting bits are all above them, and Sakura looks over at Edward, expecting to see him paying careful attention to the sealed portholes, fans, and flaps that would adjust to help funnel the unown wherever they’re needed… but instead he’s just staring at the cloud, arms limp at his sides, eyes half-lidded.

Sakura’s unease returns. Why is he here? Why did she bring him here?

Her gaze moves to the notebook held loosely in his hand, and sees…

There’s nothing written on it. Only scribbles, black swirls looping over and over again to make a dense, dark blot that fills most of the page.

“What—”

“You should go back to work,” he says, not taking his eyes from the unown. “I interrupted you, didn’t I?”

“Yes.” That’s right, she was in the middle of…

“I won’t be long. It would be best if I see myself out, after.”

“I appreciate that.” She’s still bothered by something, but it’s hard to think clearly while listening to the warbling-hissing-popping-static cloud of unown; she thought she got used to it, over time, but the sounds are just making her more and more unnerved, and she hurries away to return to her office.

Halfway there her quick, sure steps start to falter as her phone vibrates, and she wonders what she was just doing. Going to her office, after visiting the unown… to show the guest their lab layout. That’s done, so she can get back to what she was doing beforehand, which was…

Checking off the mineral room, right. She stops and turns to head back the way she came, feeling embarrassed. She’s getting so forgetful lately… are there other messages from Daishi or others she’s forgotten?

When did he message me?

She takes her phone out, ready to call him… but no, it’s late. She shouldn’t wake him up just to ask about an old message she can’t remember.

Her free hand taps a nervous beat against her hip as walks, scrolling on her phone to search through her history with her supervisor. Some notification pops up as it vibrates again, a chime playing in her earpiece, and she quickly dismisses it to keep searching her message history. What did the man (Edward Lang? Langtree?) say? A week or two ago?

She’s three weeks back before she decides to look over everything again, a sinking feeling developing in her stomach. By the time she reaches her office, she’s searching through her deleted messages, and then her private messages in case it was there for some reason… why had she been so convinced there had been a message?

She can’t remember.

Her heart is pounding now as she considers calling Daishi again, torn between worry she’s overreacting and sick feeling of fear that she screwed up. If only her phone would stop distracting her with its random notifications and buzzes… was this corporate espionage, or some random eccentric? What was he after, and…

She looks around, real fear suddenly spiking through her body.

Why is she in her office?

Why had she left him alone, and why did she come to her office instead of continuing with her rounds?

She can’t remember that either, and wishes suddenly that there was someone else working with her during the night shifts… if only her phone would stop vibrating so she could concentrate—

She pulls the earpiece from her ear and strides across the room to toss it in the trash—

—and stops, staring at the back of her hand.

Hey. Stamp it.

Are you misanthropic?

A small cry of fear and anger tears from her throat as she feels the gulf in her mind around those words, tries to connect them to a name or face. Her hand shakes as she sticks the earpiece back into her ear, looks at her phone history… taps the most recent entry…

“Sakura, what the hell?”

“Phil.” The name comes out shaky, but it’s there, she has it, his face in her mind as she takes a deep breath, eyes closed. “Something’s wrong with me.”

“I was tr… what? Say that again?”

“Phil, something is wrong with me, and it’s not… not a stamp thought, it’s… what was I doing, just before… when we last talked?”

He sounds less frustrated now, but more worried. “You were about to start checking the mineral room.”

“And then?”

“Then… that’s it. You said you had to go check something at the front gate, but didn’t explain anything else. I gave you a few minutes, then tried messaging, then calling a few times… what’s wrong, Sakura? Should I call someone?”

Sakura’s heart is pounding, her eyes still closed as she tries to remember what brought her to her office . “I… I don’t…” Tears prickle at the back of her eyes, and she presses the palms of her hands against her eyelids, trying to force her mind to think through the white fluffy clouds that seem to fill the past half hour of her memory. ‘The cameras, Phil. Can you… check them, please, tell me what I did?”

“Tell you what you… okay. Yeah, of course. Just one second…”

He sounds like he’s about to call for an ambulance. Or possibly the police.

At this point she doesn’t think he’d be wrong to. But some part of her feels like she first has to know…

“Okay, wound back half an hour… you’re entering the green room… I’ve got you sped up so you’re zipping from place to place, let me know if you want me to slow it down—”

“That’s fine,” she says, voice small. She tries to play her memory forward from the point he’s describing. “Keep going, please.”

“Okay, you’re still going around the green room… still going, still going… you stop, stamp your hand—”

“Dysfunctional,” she whispers. “Became weird.”

“Yeah. Okay, now you’re heading to mineral… you’ve stopped… now you’re heading to the front.”

“To meet someone.”

“Maybe? Oh… huh, yeah. There’s a guy there. How did I miss him before?”

Long hair. New suit. “Is he talking to security? Do I talk to him?” There’s an edge in her voice, she can’t remember, why can’t she—

“Yeah, you’re arriving now, talking to him… you guys leave, Asato and Hajime stay there… Woah, Sakura, you’re taking him through the lab! Who is he?”

“I don’t know, Phil, I… the unown hub, is he there?”

“You guys are walking through mineral—”

“No, Phil, check now!” Her blood feels like ice, she can feel each pound of her heart in her throat. “Check if he’s still there!”

“I… okay, I’m… checking…”

She listens, breaths coming out in harsh pants, adrenaline making her feel close to a heart attack despite her feet being frozen in place. An eternity passes with ten or twenty hurried breaths, an eternity of silence. “Phil?”

“…Sakura. Hi.”

“Phil? Are you checking?”

“Checking? What am I…”

The dam bursts in her chest, and dark terror floods her veins, sending her running through the door… but not before she snatches her pokebelt from beside it. She’s not a trainer, but there are basic self defensive pokemon on it… “Phil, call the police!”

“What…? Sakura—”

“Call them, Phil, call them now!”

“…okay. Okay! I’m calling, I’m—what do I say?”

“I don’t remember!” She feels tears threatening and shuts her eyes tight. “Just tell them to come, to bring paramedics… tell them there might be a… something’s messing with our memories, just… tell them, please, Phil, are you calling them?”

“Yeah! Now, I’m doing it now, it’s… dispatcher, this is Devon’s Rustboro Hub Lab—”

“Front gate,” she says under her breath as she runs. “Front gate, intruder, front gate…”

She feels the details slipping away, Phil’s voice a background buzz. She almost ends the call, but no, she needs the connection, Phil might need… they came so close to losing each other…

Twice she finds herself looking around, muttering to herself, unsure why until she pays attention to what she’s saying, and follows that, running again. She pulls out her pad, opens a note app and writes as she goes… then realizes her scattered thoughts are still missing the obvious, and just messages Asato directly.

She reaches the entrance just as he’s stepping in from outside, frowning at her. “Doctor? Your message—”

“Intruder,” she gasps, doubling over and breathing hard. “Asato, I was… there was someone here…”

“Where?” His gaze is hard, hands on his belt. “When?”

“You don’t… remember?” He’s frowning at her. “Phil said… I was here, I was here just a few minutes ago!”

Asato’s stare shifts out of focus, and she nearly slaps him back to attention, worried she’s about to lose him, when he abruptly twists around. “Hajime! Ghost protocol!”

What?

A moment later both security are standing in front of her. “Doctor, stay here, and call emergency services. Tell them to send dark officers. We’re going to do a thorough scan, room by room. Take this key, lock the door from the outside—”

She’s nodding, already moving to do it, as they stride away, summoning pokemon as they go… then stops herself as something in her gut sinks. “Wait!”

When she opens her eyes, they’ve turned back toward her, and she runs up to them. “The hub.”

“You think the intruder is there? Can Phil see him?”

Her mic is still muted, she can still hear him giving info to the dispatcher about the situation. Hopefully reinforcements are already on their way… She unmutes herself. “Phil.”

“One second—Sakura?”

“Do you see anyone in the labs?”

“Sakura, I was just telling the dispatcher… the cameras have been shutting off, one by one. We lost the hub first, but all the interior cameras are out now.”

The fear returns, and she mutes herself again. “Cameras are gone, but he says the hub went first, and from there we can check all the sample labs in moments. If we wait for police, if we go room by room… I think it’s going to be too late!”

The security guards look at each other, then nod. “Come on.”

They move together, straight for the central hub. She can hear the unown again, and they’re more irritating than usual, the warbling, discordant mix of notes scraping at the inner walls of her skull. Her hands rise automatically to cover her ears for a moment even as she walks forward, but somehow they do nothing to muffle the sound… and a moment later she realizes she’s hearing it in her head, not her ears.

The lab itself is silent.

Before she can process this the final doors open, and her blood freezes, feet reflexively taking her half a step backward.

The unown are no longer moving in a chaotic cloud. Instead they spin around the intruder in an expanding upward cone, each row containing more and more of them until, at the top of the funnel, there’s an arrangement of unown spelling out some word that’s hard to read, each letter bndeign in her sivnio and witstnig her tuhgthos whti mteh…

“They won’t do it if there’s anyone watching.”

The intruder’s voice is low, but carries through the stillness. He stares up through the funnel, looking directly at that shifting mess of ltetser nda mbsolys… then turns back toward the three of them, expression sad. “You should have just gone back to work. I’m sorry.”

Hajime recovers first, and throws a great ball. Asato throws an ultra ball a moment later—

—but both balls stop mid air and get sent back in a blink, sailing over Sakura’s shoulders on either side.

This time it’s Asato who recovers first, pulling another ball from his belt and bracing his arm to manually release the vileplume inside. “Sleep Pow—”

The unown screech, a cacophony of pure noise that once again has Sakura clap her hands over her ears, and she watches in disbelief as a small cluster of unown separate from the swirling funnel to divebomb the vileplume.

But unown aren’t dangerous she thinks, feeling numb as spheres of fire and electricity, ice and rock materialize and pelt the vileplume. Hajime summons a houndoom, and its flamethrower drops three of the unown out of the air… but more come to replace them, and while each of their attacks don’t seem to do much damage, they keep attacking until the vileplume and houndoom lie in twitching heaps.

With something that feels like a mental snap, Sakura’s hands finally drop to her belt… then she turns and forces herself into a sudden lurch, the movement translating to a run after a few unsteady steps—

—which turns into a hobble as she screams, pain lancing through her shoulder and thigh.

She keeps moving through the feeling of being simultaneously burned and impaled, trying her best to run through the mineral lab, to get away…

There are unown around her.

She sees them in the corners of her eyes, bobbing and rotating through the air. A fleeting confusion over how they got through the containment area, but then one pops into existence to her right, causing her to stumble and fall as she jerks away from it.

Pain stabs into her palms. There’s broken glass everywhere…

Glass from the sample habitats.

She turns just in time to see the strange form approach, limbs fluttering at its side as it crosses the ground in a scuttling flash, pincers raised.

I’m sorry.

---

“Misty is hiding something,” Verres says. “But I couldn’t figure out what. A couple people in her gym are in on it, helping cover for each other during missions that aren’t talked about, but I was able to find out that it leads them somewhere to the northwest of Cerulean—”

Looker spots Tsunemori holding her hand up without raising her arm, a flash of her palm turning toward Verres to catch his attention. “Sorry, Red, but we actually know about that already. It’s fine, nothing related to Rocket.”

The young man deflates a little, then rubs some lingering sleepiness from his eyes as he looks back at the wall where his presentation is being projected. It’s not even eight in the morning yet, but Red insisted in his message last night that he had important things to share and wanted to do them early in the day so he could get feedback on some of his suspicions before he met with any of the leaders again. Tsunemori was available, so she teleported in and joined the two of them in one of the Interpol office’s smaller meeting rooms.

Looker sips his coffee as Red sighs and uses a few swiping motions to change the font to gray and collapse the whole section under the Leader Misty header. A few more swipes turn the Speculation subsection, which is much longer, grey, then adds a cross through for good measure, and Looker notes the way Tsunemori suppresses her smile; the head of the Indigo police has shown a continuous soft spot for Verres’s childlike qualities that he’s come to accept is probably genuine.

For Looker’s part, the young prodigy’s maturity has been mostly sufficient, and the lingering worries he had about giving someone so young as much power as he has were mostly alleviated by the way Verres has changed in the past month. Trusting him with more autonomy and decision capability could have backfired enormously, but coincidentally or not, the young man has been in a much better mood since he had more control and input over what he was doing… and with that improved mood has come a lot more energy and creativity.

Creativity which only occasionally results in some pain in Looker’s ass.

But it’s a lesson in management that Looker didn’t realize he needed. It was tempting to assume the change in Verres was just an effect of his age, but Looker still quietly took a second look over his entire division, just in case. A few tweaks, often subtle, to equalize people’s power and responsibility, seemed to pay itself back with more problems being solved more smoothly, overall, though it did often increase his own interteam management workload. It also led to a few terrible outcomes, but even in those cases, the causes of the problem were clear, and the feedback loop tight. Only a few people had to be demoted, and thankfully no fuckups big enough to warrant a firing so far.

They’re closer to pinning Rocket down than they were a month ago, and not just because of the discovery on Cinnabar, or Verres’s efforts with the leaders. A number of hideouts and interregional coordination routes have been exposed, two new attacks disrupted before they even got launched… but he can’t deny how much harder this would have been without Verres or his friends,

“Alright well, at least that simplifies things a little,” Verres says once he’s done reorganizing things, then flips back to the outline at the start of his presentation. “So next up is Surge… and for him there was basically nothing. He’s more ambitious than Brock, like he definitely has plans that he doesn’t talk about, but as far as I could tell they’re all about keeping Vermilion secure and preparing for war with other regions.”

Looker raises a brow. “Interesting.” He glances at Tsunemori, who doesn’t even bother trying to look unsurprised.

“Yes, it’s interesting, but not news to anyone who’s listened to enough of his speeches,” Tsunemori says, tone dry. “The man doesn’t try to be too subtle about it, and ever since the Young Oak shook his Challenge system up it’s become more clear. He’s got opinions and plans that might make some nervous, but he’s not the type to help renegades.”

“That’s my read of him too,” Verres says. “For what it’s worth.”

Looker crosses his arms. “Even if he thinks they might be a strategic advantage?”

Tsunemori shrugs a shoulder. “If it comes out that some other region is allying with Rocket or similar organizations, that’s a different story. But he would be putting at risk everything he’s built in the meantime. It’s not a good match for our profile.”

“Your profile puts too much weight on an unambitious Leader who wouldn’t want extra attention drawn to them. I get why, that fits most criminals maintaining a white collar job or public figure lifestyle, but our profiles say anyone working with Rocket isn’t doing so to get rich. It even fits circumstances like the Mt. Moon assassination.”

“Which is why I was extra suspicious of Misty,” Red says. “Her, Brock, and Giovanni had the most influence and presence in that whole situation. But as far as I could tell, she’s as confused and frustrated over that as anyone.”

Looker nods. “I don’t know how it connects to the rest, if it even does. Not every act is going to be part of some grand scheme.”

“And of course there might be more than one compromised Leader.” Tsunemori is watching Looker. “Independently so. You’ve implied as much before, but if you disagree with the motivations our main profile is drawn from, I don’t see how yours are much better. Ambition, grandiosity, those sorts of criminals tend to out themselves sooner rather than later, and neither of us believes all this is new.”

“Not new, no. But the smartest criminals, the hardest to catch, they’re not stuck in one mode forever. They adapt.” Looker turns to Verres. “Don’t write Surge off just yet.”

Verres glances at Tsunemori, but nods and tugs his cap down a little as he scribbles something in his notebook, then turns back to the projected screen. “Next is Erika, and with Misty crossed out, we’ve reached the first of my top suspects.”

“The others being?” Tsunemori asks.

“Sabrina, Koga, and Giovanni.” Red swipes his hands until they’re listed beside each other, then drags some highlights between them. “Giovanni and Koga are Dark, so without an excuse to use Miracle Eye near them they remain the biggest unknowns. Sabrina is an even better psychic than Misty, and I’ve only ever gotten things out of her when she was taken off guard.”

“An option for later, but best not to tip our hand yet.”

Red nods. “Erika by contrast has the most organized mind of any non-psychic I’ve ever met. She’s definitely hiding things, but without direct interrogation it’s impossible for me to tell how much of it is personal or private details compared to something illegal. But more than any of that, Sabrina, Erika, and Koga have had organized renegade or suspected renegade activity in their cities.”

Looker slowly nods, thinking about his conversation with Erika after the Casino incident. “Why not Blaine, by that token? Because he reads as innocent?”

“Basically, yeah. His mind is… I don’t know how to describe the difference from Erika. It’s organized, it’s disciplined, but he’s not using it to hide anything, as far as I can tell.”

Tsunemori stirs. “What about Giovanni? Viridian city hasn’t had any incidents.”

Red nods, turning back to shift the display to the last listed leader, expanding each subheading. There’s not much there. “This one’s hard to explain…”

“Is there a reason Giovanni is last?” Looker asks, mind already searching for a pattern in the list to the side. It can’t be amount of content, Misty was after Brock despite having much more written…

“Hm? Oh, no. I just… they’re all listed in the order Blue has been doing them.”

Verres sounds mildly embarrassed, and Tsunemori subtly hides another partial smile with a sip of her own coffee. Looker purses his lips, but just nods and rotates his hand in a carry-on gesture.

“Right, so if I start explaining my gut feeling on Leader Giovanni, I’d have to start with what Leaf said about her first meeting with him…”

Looker’s phone buzzes where it sits facedown on the table, and he flips it over fully intending to give it a perfunctory glance… but the words of the notification hold him fast, and he stares, everything else forgotten.

There’s been an incident. One of his sources in Hoenn.

It takes him a moment to realize he’s holding his breath, body tense, waiting to feel even the smallest vibrations… but no, there’s nothing.

The realization is only a minor relief.

He opens the message and watches the animated ellipses of her incoming message as a spring slowly coils tighter and tighter in his stomach, possible catastrophes spinning through his mind. She wouldn’t be contacting him if it was just one of the titans having turned toward one of the towns or cities…

“Looker?” Verres asks.

“Something’s up,” he says without taking his eyes from his phone. “Not sure what, yet. Tsunemori?”

He sees her take her phone out from the corner of his eyes, thumb swiping around. “Nothing.”

“I don’t see anything on the news,” Verres says, voice tight. “Should I suit up?”

“Not yet. It’s in Hoenn.”

Tsunemori lowers her phone. “Then why might I have—”

“Because someone told me directly.”

“So it must be Rocket,” Verres says, and Looker is about to say again that he doesn’t know when the next message comes through:

Wild pokemon appeared in unown lab. Multiple dead. Devon and gov keeping it hush while investigating possible lab design flaw, staff error, sabotage. Also worried about secrets if caused by breakthrough.

Another, briefer pause, then:

Thought you should know. Will keep an eye out.

“Unown lab,” Looker says as he types back an acknowledgement and thanks her. “Unlucky breakthrough or sabotage. Casualties, but so far it’s being kept quiet, so probably not a ditto level event.”

The tension in his stomach is slowly starting to relax. If it was sabotage, he understands why his source let him know—it could be a domestic rival, but if it’s a foreign one, interpol would get involved. He hopes not, or else some of his people might get siphoned off to help; he’s already drawn in most of the talent stationed at the islands, and many more besides.

He checks a few other messages, including another source giving him a less detailed alert about what he assumes is the same incident. Eventually he sets his phone back down. “I think it’ll keep, for now. Sorry for the interruption.”

When he looks up, however, Verres is staring at him with more… fear? alarm? than he’s ever seen. “I need to go.”

Tsunemori is frowning at him. “To Hoenn?”

“Yes. Maybe, if… could I get access to the lab?”

“Tricky,” Looker says, and takes a sip of coffee to buy himself time, keeping his face calm and speculative as alarm bells go off inside, all his instincts telling him the same thing:

Something’s up.

Nothing in his memory would explain Verres’ reaction… which implies he’s been hiding something from them. Something about Hoenn specifically? Doubtful. Something about unown? He claims he never got the dreams, but he was involved in some unown research before…

He’s spent enough time with Notebook and Tsunemori pushing back against his paranoia to know what they would say. That he’s jumping to the worst conclusions, ignoring the possibility that Verres may just be concerned, or scientifically curious.

He doesn’t buy it.

“Would need evidence of a crime, specifically international,” he says. “And given the political climate around unown research, they’re going to be extra critical about what qualifies and what doesn’t.”

The young man bites his lower lip and starts pacing. “But I could go as a private citizen, right?”

Tsunemori steeples her hands. “That’s… complicated. You’re interregionally known, Red, and not interregionally trusted. On top of that, I suspect Hoenn will be worried about an Indigo scientist there, if not on Interpol business… or even if you were.”

“What do you expect to learn?” Looker asks. What makes this so important?

“I… I don’t know. It’s just… I get these feelings sometimes, hard to put into words but also hard to ignore.” Verres looks frustrated, though it’s hard to tell if it’s with himself or the situation or being told no, he can’t just hop on a plane and go. “I don’t know why, but in this case something inside me says this is important!”

“Your partitioned self?” Tsunemori asks, voice light, and Looker gives her an irritated glance. He was hoping to get Verres to say more, first, get a sense of what he’d say if he got more frustrated.

Verres has stopped pacing, however, eyes closed and brow furrowed. Looker can see his chest rising and falling with his breaths, notices the way his hands twitch every so often, and wonders distantly if the tracker he’s had put on Verres’s things would reveal any locations that shed light on this in a way that Verres himself wouldn’t be able to, if he’s locked out of certain memories.

Eventually he opens his eyes and shakes his head, looking both frustrated and a little lost, maybe doubtful. “I can’t tell. He’s… Glomarizing, basically.”

Arceus wept. Glomarized by his own brain… a stark reminder of why he’s been so hesitant to give Verres too much power, totally separate from his inexperience and capabilities.

“Time for a hard lesson in coordination,” Looker says, and both of their attention shift to him. “I’m not going to address this specifically to the unpartitioned Red Verres, since I know he’s listening anyway. But right here, right now, this is the sort of situation where being explicit in what you communicate matters a hell of a lot.”

“I wish I could, but—”

“But nothing. You can’t because part of you can’t or won’t, fine. Most people who get hunches, gut feelings?” He points at his own. “They can’t because it’s hard to put them into words. And I’m the last person you’ll find telling you to ignore your gut.”

“Lot of the best detective work happens under the surface,” Tsunemori remarks. “Taking a walk or a shower, bubbling up when you least expect it.”

Looker nods. “Exactly. Our subconscious brains are powerful, but they’re not verbal. And that’s fine if it’s just about what you do, but if you want others to do something? There’s only three ways I know that goes.” He holds up his thumb first. “Hierarchy. Someone’s the boss, they don’t need to say shit about why they think someone should do something. They say jump, you say how high.” He sticks his index finger up. “Trust. You get to know someone really well, you start to be willing to say, okay, I don’t know if you’re right or not, but I’ll take on some risk trying your way. And last…”

He sticks up his third finger, points them all at Red. “Explicit arguments. Things I can understand, I can follow, I can check against what I know and what I believe and what I predict. Without that, why should I listen to anyone else? Unless I’m willing to put some risk in trusting them, or they’re my boss.”

“Or they’re paying you,” Tsunemori says, watching him. “That’s the fourth way. You trade one thing for another.”

He waves a hand dismissively. “I’m talking about people working together, an ongoing, working relationship. Yeah, you can exchange money, or favors, or whatever, but I’m not after that.”

Verres is looking between them, fists clenched and lips twisted to the side. Anger? Frustration?

Desperation?

Looker stands, drawing the young man’s gaze to his. “I hear you saying this is important, but I’m not looking to blackmail you, Verres. Either of you. Any of you,” he says, turning slightly toward Tsunemori. “I think there’s too little here to go on, but if you disagree, if you think there’s something to it… I won’t try to stop you, but I won’t help you, can’t help you, without trust or understanding. Maybe not even then; like I said, it’s not our jurisdiction.”

“But you have sources,” Verres says. “Contacts.”

Looker tilts his head in very slight acknowledgement. “So talk to me. Maybe we can figure something out. But if we do, we’d better do it quick, because if word’s getting to me, it’s getting to others, and if there’s something you know, Verres, subconsciously or behind a partition that makes this a sudden, immediate priority… someone else out there might know it too, and they might not be as limited in what they do about it.”