I stood on grass. It was cold, slick with dew under my bare feet.
The air smelled like roses and smoke, just like that night. Moonlight pooled across the ground like silver paint.
Dakashi hovered several inches above the grass, his wispy white mane drifting in a breeze that wasn't there. His single visible eye flickered like a dying candle.
"Dakashi...?" My voice trembled. "Why am I back here?"
Because you needed me, he said softly, his voice brushing the edges of the dream like cold silk. And because you need to listen.
I took a step closer, the grass whispering against my legs.
"You were watching... even then?"
His head tilted. I watched over you every night of your childhood, even after Chloe passed.
"My mom..." My voice cracked. "You were there that night?" I asked while gesturing around us
Yes.
The word echoed inside me.
My hands curled into fists.
"What do you want to tell me? Why am I seeing this again?"
Dakashi drifted forward until he was inches from me, his shadow stretching long across the grass.
Atrea. Your father has been taken.
The world tilted.
"No, he was at the precinct, he said everything was fine!"
They took him.
I stared at him.
"I... I don't understand. Where did they take him?"
Dakashi opened his mouth and froze.
His head snapped upward, and as I followed his gaze, the moon above us pulsed. Then it widened, and widened, and widened, until it swallowed the stars. Its pale glow filled the world like a rising sun.
Then the moonlight blasted downward in a column of white fire.
Dakashi screamed. It was a sound I'd never heard from him, a tearing, ragged noise full of panic and something like fear. His form folded in on itself, unraveling at the edges as the light consumed him.
Atrea RUN-
He didn't finish before the light devoured him and the world shattered.
I jolted awake with a violent gasp, my breath scraping raw against my throat.
Everything was shaking.
No, I was shaking. The rumble of an engine underneath me vibrated through metal flooring and up a set of restraints that were cinched tight around my wrists and ankles. My arms were pinned behind me. A burning ache pulsed behind my right eye. A wet line ran down my cheek. Blood.
The interior of the van was dim, lit only by the flickering green of the dashboard through the metal mesh that separated me from the front seats.
One man sat across from me in the back, a rifle leveled at my chest.
He had a tan tactical vest over a black long-sleeve shirt. His right cheek and jaw were a map of burn-scar tissue, tight and ridged, that distorted the corner of his mouth into a permanent half-sneer.
"Welcome back, sweetheart," he said.
He tapped the barrel of his rifle against his knee.
"Sleep well?"
I swallowed hard, my throat dry and bruised from the scream I didn't remember making.
"Who... who are you?" My voice came out cracked, like broken glass.
He chuckled. It was a low, rasping sound that scraped along my nerves.
"Come on now," he said, tapping the rifle barrel lightly against my leg. "I guess that hit to your head must've hurt. My name is Marcus Sinclair."
The van hit a pothole, jarring my restraints. Pain pulsed behind my eyes, white and nauseating. The man leaned forward into the dim light. The motion pulled his scar tight across his cheek, warping his expression into something grotesquely amused.
My mouth was dry. My head throbbed with every heartbeat. "Why..." My voice cracked. "Why are you doing this?"
He leaned forward, resting his forearms on his knees. The motion pulled the burn scar along his jaw tight, distorting his smirk.
"No reason you'd understand," he said. "Not yet."
He tapped the barrel of his rifle lightly against my leg, like a conductor cueing the next part of a symphony.
"But you will soon."
Something in his tone tightened a knot of dread deep in my gut.
"Where is my dad?" I asked.
Marcus gave a slow, satisfied sigh. "With us."
That was all he offered, and somehow that was worse than any detail he could've given me.
The van rumbled over uneven pavement. My vision blurred, the shadows doubling and splitting. The pain behind my right eye pulsed again, sharp and hot.
Stop, I pleaded silently, trying to push the pain down, trying to reach for anything in the psychic static.
But every time I reached outward, even an inch, the aneurysm flared, white-hot, punishing.
Marcus watched the struggle like it was entertainment.
"You really shouldn't do that," he said, almost kindly. "You'll pop something important."
I glared at him, breath shaking. "How do you know what I can do?"
That damned grin widened.
"Who do you think scrambled your brain to begin with?"
The van hit another bump, rattling the metal restraints. I opened my mouth to demand more, to scream, to do something,
But the moment I tried to gather strength, another wave of pain slammed through me, tearing my thoughts open like wet paper.
Marcus just sat back and stretched.
"Colress is gonna have a field day with you."
My breath hitched.
"C-Colress?"
"Mhm. Our boss has been obsessed with your little trick since Portland." Marcus's smile went razor-sharp. "Your blood didn't tell him anything. But your mind? Now that's where the answers are hiding."
I went still.
A cold, sick fear crawled down my spine.
"What is he going to do to me?"
He shrugged lightly. "Whatever it takes."
The driver spoke up for the first time, voice flat.
"ETA: ten minutes."
Marcus leaned back, lacing his fingers behind his head.
"Good," He said. "Wouldn't want you passing out again before the fun starts."
I closed my eyes.
Please, someone, hear me. Zoey. Trilla. Swampert. Anyone...
Nothing.
Just a suffocating psychic silence, like my own skull had become a sealed room.
Bright lights hit me first, harsh and clinical, stabbing straight through my skull as they hauled me out of the van and strapped me upright into a reinforced chair.
My limbs were heavy and my thoughts sluggish as a new set of restraints locked me upright, metal biting into my arms. My head throbbed with every heartbeat. The lights were too bright, too sharp.
Then a shadow fell over me.
Colress adjusted his glasses, not looking at my face so much as studying the way my pupils reacted to the light. His expression carried no malice. No warmth either. Just calculation.
"Good," he said quietly. "You're conscious. The readings will be cleaner this way."
He didn't ask how I felt. He didn't ask if I could hear him. He simply scribbled a note and turned a dial attached to the restraint helmet around my temples.
A cold vibration hummed through my skull.
"My initial hypothesis was incorrect," he murmured, mostly to himself. "Your blood chemistry is entirely mundane. No psychic biomarkers. No aberrant gene expression. Nothing atypical. Which means," he adjusted another dial, "the anomaly is neural."
He finally looked at me.
His eyes held nothing.
"You will answer that for me."
I tried to shrink back, but the restraints held firm.
Colress tapped the corner of his clipboard twice, a small, irritated motion. "Her distress response is spiking. Marcus, please refrain from speaking to the subject. It contaminates the data."
Marcus scoffed. "She asked-"
"I'm not concerned with what she asked," Colress said. "I'm concerned with results."
He didn't raise his voice or even look at Marcus. He simply removed a pen from his coat and continued writing.
Then, without looking up:
"Bring Dusknoir."
The door opened with a hiss. Something massive floated in. Its body was carved with deep, blackened gashes. Its one eye socket was empty, a hollow pit where ghostly light should have lived.
Colress gave it a single clinical glance.
"Your guardian inflicted extensive damage," he noted. "Interesting. I hadn't expected a Darkrai to interfere so directly."
My breath hitched.
He wasn't pleased. He wasn't angry. He was simply... updating a data set.
"Proceed," he told Dusknoir.
The ghost's empty eye socket ignited with violet flame.
"No, please!"
Colress didn't react to my begging. He simply set a finger on a monitor and waited for the graph to rise.
The Hex hit.
Agony tore through every nerve. I screamed, back arching against the restraints.
Colress watched the waveform spike.
"Good. Maintain this intensity."
Dusknoir pressed its palms forward, pouring more curse-energy into me. My vision fractured. My pulse roared. Colress adjusted another dial, completely unmoved by my shrieks.
Through the blur of pain, I saw it,
A shimmering psychic barrier at the far end of the room.
Inside it, Dakashi hung suspended, electricity crawling over his body in violent bursts. His form flickered, weak, unraveling.
Colress didn't look at him.
"He is resilient," he remarked, "but not indefinitely."
And behind Dakashi,
A Cresselia.
But not a gentle one. Its wings were dimmer, edges smoldering. A thick metal collar glowed red at its throat, pulsing in rhythm with its psychic field.
Colress tapped his clipboard thoughtfully.
"A remarkable specimen," he said. "Though its resistance to conditioning was... inconvenient."
He finally turned his gaze back to me.
"Do hold still. The next phase requires precision."
The pain from Dusknoir's Hex still rippled through my nerves in hot, jagged pulses, but beneath it, under the agony, under the shaking, something else stirred. A familiar, terrifying resonance. The same thing that had ripped out of me in Drayden's gym.
The psychic explosion.
If I could trigger it again, even a fraction of it, I could break the restraints. Break the devices. Break the room. Break everything.
I focused inward, searching for the crackling heat behind my sternum, the pressure in my skull, the exact sensation that had knocked out Haxorus.
The air around me quivered.
Colress looked up from his clipboard.
Only his eyes moved. Nothing else.
"Marcus," he said calmly, "bring him in."
My stomach iced over. Marcus smirked and tapped twice on the metal door.
Two Plasma grunts entered, pushing a vertical medical stretcher upright. Its wheels squealed across the concrete floor.
My heart stopped.
"Dad?"
It didn't sound like a word. It sounded like something scraped out of my lungs.
Dad's head hung forward at first, dark hair matted with sweat and blood. Bruises swelled across his cheekbones. One eye was nearly swollen shut. His wrists were bound to the stretcher frame with metal clamps that had left deep, blistered red grooves in his skin.
He lifted his head when he heard my voice.
His eyes widened, terrified and furious as he thrashed against the restraints, muffled screams ripping through the gag tied around his mouth.
Colress didn't acknowledge the emotion in the room.
He didn't glance at Marcus or flinch at my father's muffled pleas.
"His interrogation was... messy to say the least," Colress said. "Mr. Sinclair seemed to enjoy himself."
Marcus chuckled behind him.
I felt the psychic resonance inside me coil tighter, ready to erupt, until Colress reached calmly into the tray beside him.
He picked up a scalpel and, without ceremony or satisfaction, he drove the blade directly into my father's thigh.
Dad jerked violently, his scream choking behind the cloth. Blood spilled over the metal restraints and dripped onto the concrete.
My mind cracked open.
"STOP!!" I screamed, straining so hard against the restraints that my shoulders felt like they might dislocate.
The psychic pressure inside me tore upward like a rising storm, raw and unstable.
Colress lifted a finger.
"Behave," he said quietly, "or I will dissect your father in front of you."
The psychic surge inside me buckled and collapsed. Snuffed out like a flame beneath a boot heel.
The Plasma grunts hauled the stretcher backward immediately, wheeling my father out of my line of sight. His muffled cries echoed down the corridor until a door slammed shut.
The silence that followed was surgical.
Colress turned back to me, adjusting his glasses with one perfectly steady hand.
"Good," he said. "Now we may continue."
Dusknoir floated closer.
And I felt the curse begin again as the world split.
I stood in the park again. Only this time... I remembered everything.
The swing chains creaked as my younger self laughed, little legs kicking, hair fluttering like black silk.
"Higher, Mommy!"
Chloe smiled and gently pushed me again, her green scarf swaying behind her.
Then a voice shattered the evening air.
"MORGAN!!!"
Chloe flinched mid-push and turned sharply, fear cutting across her face.
A man stepped out from between the trees with a murderous expression
"Marcus, you can't be here," my mother said, voice trembling.
"You took everything from me!" Marcus roared. "My sponsors! My friends! My career! There's no way you beat me fairly."
His eyes snapped toward little-me, who had stopped swinging by then.
The air behind Marcus began to warp as a Mega Medicham materialized. A ripple of blue flames emanated from its chakra-style helmet. Its eyes locked onto the younger version of me.
Chloe gasped and moved to put herself in front of me, but the Medicham was faster.
It's Extrasensory hit me like a freight train, and despite knowing this was a memory, I could feel it tear through my mind.
Then something fast, impossibly fast, blurred toward the Medicham. Marcus's Pokémon exploded into paste with a single, sickening crunch.
He staggered back in horror and uttered one word
"No."
"You have made your last mistake, Marcus," Dakashi said. His voice was menacingly calm.
Dakashi flicked a hand as Marcus turned to run, and a freezing beam of white and blue tore across the clearing and caught him in the face.
His scream ripped through the trees as half his face blackened and boiled. He stumbled, fell, and vanished into the treeline.
Dakashi surged forward to finish him.
"Please!" Chloe cried.
Dakashi stopped instantly and turned back. Chloe knelt over my small, writhing form, panic carved into every line of her face.
"Help her!" she begged. "Help my baby! Please"
Dakashi hovered over me and hesitated for the first time.
"I can save her, Chloe," he whispered. "But you know the risks."
Chloe sobbed, clutching me.
"I know," she whispered. "Just save her."
The dream dissolved into white light.
My eyes snapped open with a ragged gasp.
Colress leaned over me, watching the neural monitor spike off the charts. His expression remained completely blank.
"Fascinating."
It was the only word he could get out before the roof blew apart above us.
The explosion punched downward in a storm of concrete and dust. Light flooded the lab as the ceiling ripped open and debris scattered across the floor like shrapnel.
"Down!" someone shouted.
Skyla dove through the smoke, her hair wild from the flight over. Her face was carved with a fury I'd never seen from her. Swellow and the rest of her team swooped in beside her. Police officers dropped in on grapple lines as half a dozen PAP Enforcement drones descended in a metal storm.
The Plasma grunts opened fire immediately, and the Cresselia spun toward the commotion, her psychic energy still pulsing.
In that moment, her concentration slipped for a single second.
That one second was all he needed.
Dakashi hurled himself against the psychic barrier restraining him and unleashed an Ice Beam so violent that the entire lab crackled with frost. The attack shattered his psychic cage and hit Crescelia's collar with a marksman's precision.
The device shattered in a pop of crimson sparks.
Cresselia blinked once, and the red glow left her eyes like mist. Her wings flared, and she seized Dakashi in a gentle psychic catch, lowering him safely from where he was about to fall in exhaustion.
Another pulse radiated outward, bright and impossibly soothing.
Dakashi's wounds sealed, and my aneurysm vanished like it had never happened. My mind snapped back into full control, and all the agony, fear, and pressure detonated.
The psychic shockwave that erupted from me tore my restraints apart and blasted Marcus, Colress, and every plasma grunt in the immediate vicinity off their feet.
Surgical tables overturned, and the overhead light fixtures bloomed and exploded as their internals short-circuited.
I stumbled free and gasped before hastily grabbing my Pokéballs from the side tray. Just in time, too, as an enforcer, Arcanine tackled the grunt guarding them.
I threw them outward with a scream.
"Make some noise!"
Zoey tore into existence in a whirl of shadow.
Swampert slammed into the ground with a bellow.
Scizor burst out beside me, his claws snapping with metallic fury.
Trilla materialized in a halo of psychic light as Simon flew overhead.
Nick landed and immediately sent a support pillar into a moving Plasma vehicle, crushing the cab and the two grunts inside before they could run an officer over.
The battle exploded around us.
From across the chaos, I saw Colress rise to his feet with a patient and calculating posture. He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a compact pistol before leveling it at me.
"If I cannot study you," he said calmly, "then no one can."
The gunshot cracked, but the bullet never reached me.
Because something moved faster.
A flash of red and green light parted and revealed that Scizor had Mega Evolved.
Light spiraled off his body as his armor elongated and sharpened. His wings blasted outward in a flare of green energy, and his claws expanded into enormous crimson pincers that hummed with a barely retrained power.
He landed between me and the bullet and caught it square in his armored chest.
Enough!
His mind slammed into mine for the first time since I rescued him from that warehouse. His tone was sharp and furious.
Before Colress could blink, Scizor blitzed and tore the gun away from Colress, the mad scientist's hand coming with it in a spray of red.
Colress looked down at the stump with mild annoyance, as if noting a mathematical error.
"It doesn't matter," he murmured.
Those were his last words as Scizor appeared behind him in a shimmer of after-images. The rugged claw locked shut around Colress's torso, and with a sound of snapping rebar, the doctor's body came apart in two pieces.
THAT was for Sylvia.
Scizor said as Colress's remains hit the ground.
"Dad!"
I sprinted down the corridor that the grunts had dragged my father toward. He was still strapped to the stretcher, blood dripping down his thigh. His face was swollen and desperate.
"Hang on! I've got you!"
Scizor reached him next, and with a single swipe of his massive pincer, he split the metal restraints cleanly.
Dad collapsed forward into my arms with a broken sob.
"I've got you," I whispered, voice shaking. "I've got you, Dad."
His eyes shot up suddenly, and he grabbed a nearby sidearm that one of the grunts had dropped. In a split second, he shot a charging Ariados between the eyes and went limp. A medic rushed in and took him gently from me.
I turned back toward the lab just in time to see Marcus bolting for the exit.
Hatred spiked through me like lightning.
Dakashi, he's running!
Dakashi vanished from Cresselia's side like a shadow pulled into a vacuum.
He rose from Marcus's own shadow in front of the doorway, solidifying inch by inch like smoke turning to flesh.
Marcus skidded, terror jerking across his ruined face.
"Not again! No, no, no!"
Dakashi's eyes burned violet.
"Last time I tried to kill you and you lived."
He reached out, placing one long hand on each of Marcus's temples.
"You don't get that opportunity this time."
Marcus screamed as Dakashi pulled him into a nightmare so deep and so hateful that the air seemed to vibrate. A nightmare crafted by a Darkrai who had waited seventeen years to finish this.
The moment Marcus's screams were swallowed into Dakashi's darkness, my body finally realized the fight was over.
The world tilted sideways as my knees buckled and I hit the floor hard, palms slipping in a streak of blood and dust. The sounds of battle faded into a hollow, buzzing static in my skull.
My chest heaved, and every nerve in my body flickered. The psychic shockwave had taken more out of me than I'd thought.
Then someone shouted my name,
"Atrea!"
Shapes moved around me. Blurred armor plates, shining drones, and streaks of blue and red uniforms flew past my foggy vision. The lab lights pulsed like strobes above me and seemed to stab into my retinas.
I tried to push myself up, but my arms trembled uselessly.
"Atrea, stay with me! Stay with me, hey!"
Skyla's voice cut through the static like a rope tossed toward a drowning swimmer.
She slid onto her knees beside me and cradled the back of my head as medics rushed in around us. I felt gloved hands pry open my eyelids. Cold metal pressed against my neck as someone checked my pulse.
"She's tachycardic."
"Get her a Neuro-Stim."
"Her vitals are unstable. Was she hit?"
"No. Neuraltrauma."
Skyla shot them a look that could kill a Tyranitar.
"Back up and give her space! She needs to breathe!"
She dragged me against her chest and wrapped her arms around me.
I could feel her shaking.
"You're okay," she whispered fiercely. "You're okay. I'm right here."
My heart finally slowed a little.
Zoey appeared at my side. No illusions this time. She pressed her forehead to mine.
Don't you dare leave, she rasped telepathically, her voice raw. I can't handle that. I can't.
Swampert crouched protectively behind us as Trilla knelt and placed a hand on my forehead, easing the fading migraine.
Simon and Scizor were helping the officers in the distance.
I exhaled shakily and let my body go slack against Skyla's arms.
Her grip tightened like she was afraid I'd vanish from her arms.
"You scared the hell out of me," she whispered into my hair. "You didn't answer my calls when I landed, and your Pokéballs wouldn't respond. We never would have found you if you hadn't left a pool of blood in that parking lot outside Drayden's teleport room."
I reached weakly for her hand, threading my fingers through hers.
"I'm here, Sky..." I whispered. "I'm here."
She pressed her forehead to mine, breathing hard.
"I'm not leaving you again," she said. "And I know I keep saying that, but I mean it this time."
"I believe you," I said as both of us let out an exhausted laugh.
The PokéBots hovered overhead, their scanners sweeping the ruined lab.
"Sector A secured. Plasma personnel detained. Structural integrity compromised. Beginning evacuation."
More Police officers flooded the hallways to secure the rest of the building.
A PAP Sergeant stepped through the haze and gave Skyla a nod.
"Gym Leader Skyla? Your team cleared the east wing. You saved a lot of lives today."
She didn't respond.
The captain's gaze lowered to me.
"Miss Morgan? You're safe now. We just need to get you both topside."
Dakashi drifted near the ceiling like smoke coalescing. He watched everything with those unblinking violet eyes.
For now, no one dared go near him.
Later, after Scizor helped carry me past some fallen debris, I found myself alone with Dakashi for a moment.
He floated a few feet above the cracked asphalt, his eyes dim but steady.
"You saw it," I whispered. "All of it."
He nodded.
"You were there," I said. "You've always been there."
Yes.
"Then why? Why me? Why did you save me that night?"
Dakashi's gaze softened, barely perceptible, but real.
Because your injury was my fault. I begged Chloe to let me battle one of her challengers, and she reluctantly obliged. I then proceeded to sweep Sinclair's entire team on my own. He was there that night to get revenge on Chloe for something she didn't do. When you were hit, Chloe pleaded for me to intervene. To save you.
I swallowed hard.
"And the cost?" I whispered. "What did my mom give up?"
Dakashi's gaze drifted to the sky.
Absolutely nothing. You paid the price. The attack ravaged your mind and should have killed you. I believe that the only reason you survived the hit in the first place was how young you were.
I nodded slowly.
As humans develop, their minds build up a resistance to psychic manipulation. If Medicham had hit your mother, it would have simply killed her instead of overloading her senses like it did to you.
"So where do my abilities come from?"
Me. On accident. The procedure was psychic in nature and could have resulted in you becoming paralyzed, going insane, or stroking out. I have no idea how you managed to not only survive intact, but also emerge stronger than before. Your ability is a miraculous anomaly I did not intend to produce. As for the cost... I was forced to remove several of your childhood memories that overlapped with the damaged parts of your mind.
"You did what you had to do, Dakashi. Thank you."
Despite lacking anything resembling a mouth, he managed to form a relaxed smile before fading back into the shadows.