Chương 14: The Easier Choice

Rine's first mission as a Grunt candidate arrived two days later. No cameras. No debt collection. No defective Pokémon waiting in ruined buildings. One person. > TARGET: ELIAS KERN > Former Rocket logistics clerk > Offense: Theft of financial records; attempted sale to Iron Talon Recovery Guild > Objective: Recover data and terminate target > Lethal authorization: Mandatory > Reward: 600 credits Terminate. The word remained on Rine's watch while he fed Houndour. Gideon had chosen the assignment deliberately.

Old Saffron proved Rine could recover an asset. The arena proved he could kill under direct threat. Team Rocket now wanted to know whether he could commit planned murder. Declining meant failing candidacy. Failure returned Mira's face to the screen. Rine read the target file. Elias Kern was twenty-nine, unmarried, and employed under a false identity at a municipal recycling plant.

He had served Team Rocket for six years before copying route ledgers, payoff records, and partial information about recruitment facilities. His offer to Iron Talon had not been completed. No violent offenses appeared in his Rocket history. That did not mean he was innocent. Logistics moved cages, drugs, weapons, and bodies. Rine could justify killing him. He noticed himself doing it and stopped. Houndour nudged his hand for the remaining food.

Gastly drifted upside down near the ceiling, practicing compression by passing through a metal ring without leaving vapor behind.

"We have a mission," Rine said. Houndour's ears rose. Gastly grinned. Neither understood murder as a legal category. Wild Pokémon killed for food, territory, protection, and sometimes rivalry. Humans built systems to decide which deaths counted as crimes. Team Rocket's system was simple: disobedience deserved death. Rine traveled to the recycling plant at midnight. The facility occupied an industrial block near Route Eight. Conveyor belts separated metal, glass, and electronic waste beneath harsh white lights.

Kern worked alone in the records office during the night shift. Rine entered through a roof vent with Gastly. Houndour remained outside near the emergency exit, concealed behind stacked containers. Gastly passed through the office wall. Seconds later, the lock clicked.

"Show-off," Rine whispered. Red eyes appeared in the wall and vanished. Kern's desk contained municipal records and an illegal League-band transmitter. Identify found Rocket encryption beneath ordinary work files. The stolen data was stored on a chip taped inside the battery compartment. Rine removed it. The office light turned on. Elias Kern stood in the doorway holding a revolver. He looked tired rather than dangerous. A faded burn scar crossed one cheek, and two fingers were missing from his left hand.

"Gideon sent a child." Rine kept his hands away from the knife.

"Put the gun down."

"How old?"

"Does it matter?"

"It will to you later." Kern's gun remained steady. Identify showed an elevated heart rate, exhaustion, and a healing fracture beneath his shirt. No Pokémon registered nearby.

"You stole recruitment records," Rine said.

"I stole proof."

"To sell."

"At first."

"Why?" Kern laughed once.

"Money. That's the truth you want, isn't it? I moved cages for six years. Told myself I never captured anything, never hurt anyone. Then a transport came through with children listed as vocational inventory." Rine's Dark barrier flickered.

"Which facility?"

"Don't know. Saffron, maybe. Gideon compartmentalizes."

"Who were you meeting?"

"Mara Vey." The name tightened the room.

"She offered extraction and witness protection if the files were real."

"Are they?"

"Enough to burn three councilmen and expose two orphanages." Two. Rine had assumed Gideon's facility was one of many in principle. Hearing a number made unseen arenas real. This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

"Give me the gun," Rine said.

"So you can shoot me with it?"

"If I wanted you dead, Gastly would already be inside your lungs." Cold gathered beneath the desk. Kern saw the red eyes. His grip changed.

"You captured that thing from Old Saffron."

"He chose to come."

"Then you're the boy Mara described." She had described him privately, just as Rine suspected. A red targeting dot appeared on Rine's chest. Not Kern's weapon. Someone outside had a rifle trained through the office window. Kern saw it too.

"Down!" The window shattered. Kern fired toward the rooftop. Rine dropped behind the desk. A second bullet tore through the door. Team Rocket had assigned another operative. Insurance.

"Gastly, Smog!" Violet gas filled the office, obscuring the shooter's view. Rine crawled toward Kern.

"Emergency exit. Houndour is outside."

"That sentence isn't reassuring." They reached the corridor as gunfire chewed through the wall. Workers shouted on the factory floor. Machinery alarms began sounding. Rine felt a presence ahead through aura. Cassian stepped from behind a conveyor housing. Ekans coiled beside him.

"Gideon thought you might grow a conscience." Kern raised his revolver. Ekans used Glare. Kern's body locked. The weapon fell.

"Houndour!" Rine shouted. The emergency door burst inward. Houndour crossed the floor, gold bright beneath her coat.

"Ember—belt controls!" Fire struck the conveyor panel. Machinery lurched. A belt dumped crushed metal between Rine and Cassian. Ekans slipped through it. Gastly emerged behind the snake and used Mean Look. Red eyes expanded across the smoke. Ekans froze, instinct trapped between prey and Ghost.

"Bite the Ghost!" Cassian ordered. Ekans could not decide where Gastly's body began. Rine dragged Kern toward the exit. Another shot came from the roof. The bullet entered Kern's back. He collapsed against Rine. Blood spread through his shirt. Identify appeared without invitation. > Lung perforation > Major arterial injury > Survival without immediate surgery: 9% > Time to irreversible shock: approximately four minutes Kern shoved the revolver into Rine's hand.

"Files."

"I have them."

"Not the chip. Station locker. Twenty-six. Code—" He coughed blood. Cassian climbed over the conveyor.

"Finish him, Frostfang." Rine could carry Kern toward the Capital Pokémon Center. The location restriction would expose him. Cassian would pursue. Team Rocket would move Mira before dawn. Nine percent. It was still a chance. Kern gripped Rine's sleeve.

"Don't let them take me alive." That changed the shape of the choice without making it easier.

"Code," Rine said.

"One-seven-four-nine." Rine raised the revolver. Kern looked relieved. The shot was deafening. His body went still. Rine felt the recoil travel through his wrist. No panic followed. No nausea. No desperate pressure against a wound. Kern had asked, the mission required it, and the situation allowed no rescue without sacrificing Mira. The killing made sense. That was why it was easier. Rine stood and fired twice toward Cassian. He did not know whether he intended to hit him. Cassian retreated behind the conveyor.

"Houndour, back! Gastly, cover!" They escaped through the emergency door. Rain struck Rine's face outside. Houndour ran beside him. Gastly filled the alley behind them with images of pursuing monsters. Only after they reached the service tunnels did Rine stop. He looked at the revolver. Tomas had taken part of him with effort, terror, and grief. Elias Kern took something else with a single requested bullet. Rine waited to feel it leave. Nothing came. Houndour pressed her nose against his blood-covered sleeve.

"I'm fine," he said. The lie frightened him because it might have been true. Back inside his cell, Rine opened Kern's recovered chip once more. He searched the logistics clerk's personal directory and found an unsent recording. Kern appeared seated in the recycling office, scarred face lit by the monitor.

"If you're watching this, I failed," he said.

"That doesn't make me brave. I moved shipments because the pay was good. I knew some cages held stolen partners. I stopped asking about the rest." He described the child transport that changed him: six sedated candidates transferred from a facility outside Celadon. One woke during unloading and asked whether he had passed his Trainer exam. Kern did nothing. The boy disappeared into Sub-Level Three.

"People will say I redeemed myself by taking the files. That's generous. I got scared that someone would eventually put my name beside the bodies." The recording ended. Rine watched it twice. Kern had not been innocent. He had not been beyond change either. Rine's bullet ended both possibilities. Necessity remained. So did consequence.

He added Kern's recording to the protected archive and wrote the man's name beside Tomas's—not as equal losses, but as deaths he refused to let Team Rocket reduce to completed objectives. Feeling did not arrive on command. Responsibility could remain when feeling failed. They did not return directly to the base. Rine led Houndour and Gastly through the utility network until factory sirens became distant. In a dry junction chamber, he removed Kern's blood from his hands using water from an emergency pipe.

It collected pink around the drain. Gastly watched without jokes. Houndour smelled the revolver and growled. Rine unloaded it. Four rounds remained. The weapon's serial number had been filed away, but Identify recovered enough microscopic impressions to link it to Kern. Carrying it into the base would create evidence Cassian could use. Rine hid the revolver behind a loose brick with the stolen radio and ammunition. The data chip remained in his pocket. He opened it on an isolated terminal.

Files listed payments to municipal inspectors, false transport manifests, and three missing-person cases associated with Rocket vans. The orphanage information was incomplete but contained Gideon's name beside monthly nutritional orders and suppression drugs. Suppression drugs. Rine searched the ingredient list. One compound inhibited psychic sensitivity in developing humans. Another reduced aura awareness and emotional volatility. Both had been added to orphanage food for at least nine years.

That explained why his abilities remained weak through childhood. It also explained the fog he remembered after meals, the headaches, and the strange clarity of his mind since entering recruitment. Mira was still eating it. Rine copied the files into Gastly's ball registration memory under corrupted medical data. Then he deleted access traces and destroyed the terminal's storage with Houndour's smallest Ember.

"We need the locker," he said. Kern's code might unlock complete records. Reaching it that night would be reckless. Cassian knew Kern spoke before dying. Gideon would monitor the station. Rine chose patience. Again, the decision arrived cold and easy. At the base, Cassian waited beside the decontamination room.

"Did he beg?" Rine walked past.

"Mine did," Cassian continued. Rine stopped.

"Your arena partner." Cassian's expression contained pleasure—not in the memory itself but in possessing information capable of cutting someone.

"What was their name?" Rine asked. The question surprised him.

"Doesn't matter."

"Then you've already lost more than I did." Cassian struck him. Rine accepted the first blow. It split his lip. When Cassian swung again, Rine caught the wrist and turned until the joint approached breaking. Ekans rose. Houndour placed herself between them. Gastly's eyes opened in the ceiling. Neither Pokémon attacked. They waited for Rine. That restrained power changed the corridor. Cassian saw it too. Ekans obeyed because the collar promised pain.

Rine's partners obeyed because they expected his judgment to include them. Rine released Cassian.

"Not here," he said. The words implied there might be a place. Cassian stepped back, cradling his wrist.

"You're learning." Rine touched the blood on his lip. That was precisely the problem. Rine went to the infirmary rather than allowing Cassian's blow to become another untreated injury. While a medic sealed his lip, two Grunts purchased stimulant refills from a wall dispenser. One shook so badly that he dropped a tablet and crawled after it. Team Rocket created impossible performance demands, sold the chemicals required to meet them, and owned the debt when bodies failed.

Rine paid for antiseptic and left before disgust became something Gideon could read. In the corridor, Houndour touched her nose to his repaired lip. Gastly created an illusion of Cassian with an enormously swollen wrist. Rine nearly smiled. The capacity remained. He counted that as evidence. Rine returned to the cell carrying another lesson he had not wanted: restraint required practice just as violence did. He wrote Cassian's name beneath Kern's in a private file, then added no planned action.

For tonight, choosing not to escalate was enough. The file remained open. Still.