Chương 68

The tapping stopped when the freight lift began descending. Rine stood beside Mara behind a transparent League barrier while Kadabra lowered the platform through the volcanic shaft. Blaine and Magmar occupied the front. Two Cinnabar Rangers waited behind them with a Sandslash and a Weezing trained for hazardous recovery work. Veyra remained at Rine's left. Morrow stayed inside his shadow, conserving cohesion until they reached the residue below.

The lift controls had been removed from the annex floor, but not merely to prevent pursuit. Someone had cut every physical switch, melted the housing, and flooded the electronic interface with magnetic noise. Kadabra moved the platform by holding the emergency brake open while the Rangers paid out a manual cable from above. Slow. Awkward. Difficult to sabotage remotely. Rine approved. The shaft passed through layers of construction. New ceramic reinforcement covered the first ten meters.

Beneath it lay older steel blackened by heat, followed by hand-cut basalt bearing tool marks from before modern Cinnabar existed. Geothermal pipes entered and left the stone at irregular angles.

"The public survey ends at twenty-two meters," Blaine said. The platform continued.

"Current depth?" Mara asked.

"Thirty-one."

"You knew this was here."

"I knew older service tunnels survived beneath the annex. I did not know they had received a freight lift." Mara looked toward him.

"That distinction will appear in my report."

"Good reports contain distinctions." Neither raised their voices. The disagreement felt more dangerous for being disciplined. At thirty-seven meters, Magmar lifted one arm. The platform stopped. A yellow haze drifted across the landing below. Weezing inhaled through both mouths, sampled the air, and released a short grunt to his Ranger.

"Hydrogen sulfide, solvent vapor, and Poison-type biological output," she translated.

"Oxygen at seventeen percent and falling." Rine fitted his respirator. Veyra's mask sealed around her muzzle without resembling the restraint she once wore; Doctor Vale had designed it with an open breakaway latch she could release herself. Morrow needed no air. Poison did not frighten a Poison-type. The synthetic substrate waiting below frightened him anyway. The landing door stood open. Beyond it, emergency lamps illuminated a corridor half-filled with dark sludge. Pipes had ruptured along the ceiling.

Purple-black liquid moved around scattered tools and overturned transport cases. Something large shifted within it. Muk rose until her body nearly touched the pipes. She had absorbed machine oil, solvent, volcanic minerals, and enough industrial waste to give her surface an iridescent sheen. One arm rested across a sealed maintenance door. Each impact from behind the door traveled through her body as the tapping heard above. The nearer Ranger raised a capture launcher.

"Wait," Rine said. Muk's attention fixed on the weapon. Muk — Female — Level 34 Ability: Sticky Hold Current Potential: Green — Uncommon Condition: chemical saturation / surface burns / exhaustion Intent: guarding enclosed organism Aggression trigger: approach to maintenance door"She is protecting whatever is tapping."

"Or feeding on it," the Ranger replied.

"Identify says guarding." Mara kept her weapon lowered.

"Confidence?" Rine focused until pain gathered behind his eyes. Intent confidence: 82%"Eighty-two."

"Then we treat it as a strong assessment, not certainty." Blaine stepped off the lift. Muk spread wider. Magmar did not threaten her with flame. He lowered both hands into the contaminated sludge and began drawing heat from it. Steam rose in controlled ribbons as the liquid thickened around his wrists. Weezing floated to the opposite side and inhaled the poisonous vapor escaping from the pipes. His body swelled. The smaller head coughed once, offended, but the yellow haze began to clear.

The Rangers were not preparing to defeat Muk. They were making the room less painful. Her raised arm lowered by several centimeters. Rine crouched at the edge of the landing.

"We are opening the door." Muk's mouth widened.

"Not taking what is behind it without examination. Not attacking you unless you attack first." Words alone meant little across species. Aura carried the rest: door, living presence, pain reduced, choice after. This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version. Muk tasted the intent. Veyra moved beside Rine and released one low breath through her mask. No Ember. No Electric charge.

Merely another abused predator recognizing the posture of a guard who expected help to become theft. Muk slid away from the door. Not far. Far enough. The maintenance lock had fused. Sandslash approached after Muk allowed him within reach. Steel-hard claws cut four precise lines through the housing, avoiding the conduit beneath it. Kadabra pulled the severed plate free. The tapping did not resume. Mara opened the door behind her shield. A refrigerated transport cylinder lay on its side inside the room.

Its outer shell had collapsed beneath falling equipment, trapping the manual release. Frost coated the inspection window. Something purple pressed against the glass. Then slipped downward. Ditto. The Pokémon's body had flattened to fit the remaining air pocket. Each earlier tap had come from a small pseudopod striking the cylinder wall. Rine used Identify through the frost.

Ditto — Level 21 Type: Normal Ability: Limber Innate Potential: Blue — Rare Current Potential: Grey — Degraded Known Move: Transform Condition: severe dehydration / caloric depletion / cellular instability Immediate need: controlled fluids / glucose / stable temperature Blue potential forced down to Grey. Rine's anger arrived cleanly. He did not mistake cleanliness for usefulness.

"Medical cylinder," Mara ordered.

"No Poké Ball unless transport becomes life-critical." The Cinnabar Ranger unpacked a flexible recovery basin and warmed electrolyte gel. Chansey waited above, but the lift could not carry another team safely until the air cleared. Sandslash cut through the damaged shell. Ditto poured into the basin rather than climbing. Its body lacked the strength to hold its usual rounded shape. Muk pushed forward with a sound like mud moving through a drain. The Rangers tensed. Ditto extended one trembling pseudopod.

Muk touched it. Their contact lasted two seconds. Then Muk withdrew to the corridor and settled beneath the ruptured pipes, trusting nothing beyond the proof that the cylinder had opened. Rine administered fluid one measured portion at a time. A starving Pokémon could be killed by abundance as easily as neglect. The fact belonged to Houndour's first week and returned through his hands. Ditto absorbed the gel through its surface. Color deepened from bruised lavender toward purple. Its eyes remained fixed on Veyra.

"Do not Transform," Rine said. Ditto's body rippled.

"That sounded like a command," Lyra said quietly. Rine breathed once.

"Your body is unstable. Copying her may use energy you do not have." Ditto stopped rippling. Whether it understood the explanation or lacked strength to continue, he could not know. The corridor became passable after twelve minutes of ventilation. Muk refused evacuation. Her body had inhabited the waste network long enough that forced removal might cause more damage than the chemicals already absorbed.

Blaine assigned two Poison specialists to establish a clean feeding route and neutralize the ruptured line around her. Care would come to the habitat before anyone decided whether the habitat remained safe. One specialist found the remains of Muk's feeding station beneath the sludge. Empty nutrient packets had been folded into squares and stacked on an overhead bracket beyond her reach. Someone had once visited often enough to create a routine. The newest packet was six months old.

Muk watched while the specialist photographed them.

"Was Ditto here that long?" Mara asked. Rine examined the cylinder's refrigeration log. Most of its storage had failed, but a mechanical date wheel remained visible beneath the crushed shell.

"Nine days in the container. Longer in the laboratory." He focused on Muk. Images did not arrive cleanly through aura. Her awareness moved like deep water, rich with chemical taste and vibration. He offered a question without words: purple one, food, people gone. Muk's surface shifted. She reached into a side pipe and removed a flattened metal cup. A violet stain marked its rim. Then she touched the oldest scar across her own body and pointed toward the abandoned laboratory. The meaning remained incomplete.

Someone had fed Muk. Someone had hurt her. Ditto had shared the cup—or been fed through it. When the facility emptied, Muk had entered through the waste system and placed herself between the trapped Pokémon and everything else.

"Record uncertainty," Rine said before Mara could remind him.

"Probable established contact. Unknown whether it began under staff supervision." Mara's gaze moved from him to the folded packets.

"Recorded." Rine had once considered Identify a way to make the world surrender answers. The longer he used it, the more its most important function became marking where certainty ended. The lower laboratory waited beyond the sludge. Its first rooms had been emptied with professional thoroughness. Benches stood without equipment. Cabinets contained dust outlines where containers had rested. Computer housings had been removed rather than destroyed, leaving neat rectangles in the wall.

Even the floor drains had been flushed with solvents intended to break biological material into useless fragments. Dr. Pell had not panicked. She had cleaned. The fire beneath the old mansion had left a second history underneath that cleanliness. A modern wall panel had warped away from the basalt, revealing tiles blackened seventeen years earlier. The older room had been circular.

Bolt holes surrounded an empty platform, and observation windows looked inward from three angles, their glass replaced but their frames still distorted from heat. Blaine stopped beneath one of them. Magmar placed a hand against the old sill.

"This was below your clearance?" Mara asked.

"There was no room at this elevation on any plan I saw."

"You were standing above it during the fire." Blaine measured the distance to the ceiling, mapping old floors inside his memory.

"Yes." Rine imagined a young scientist running through smoke while something impossible struck outward from glass below him. The games had reduced the mansion to scattered journal pages. Here, every missing page had belonged to a person deciding what another life was allowed to become. Along the observation ledge, Morrow found a row of scratches too shallow for tools. Ditto-sized prints overlapped one another in dried sealant, as if small bodies had repeatedly flattened themselves against the window to see inside.

The evidence officer counted at least five distinct patterns. Only one Ditto waited in the basin behind them. No one said what might have happened to the others. Morrow emerged near a sampling hood. Synthetic violet residue clung beneath its rim. His vapor recoiled before he touched it. The formula was related to the substrate used to stabilize his Cursed Smog, but refined for a larger volume.

"Production?" Rine asked. Morrow shaped three cylinders, then multiplied them until they covered the wall. Not one experiment. Manufacturing. Mara marked the room for specialists. The freight route ended in a chamber built partly from modern ceramic and partly from the blackened foundation of the old mansion. Someone had reused the buried structure rather than excavating around it. A circular cradle occupied the center. Its clamps matched the dimensions of CR-17. Coolant still condensed on the lower ring.

Rine approached only after the evidence officer placed markers. Identify found saline coolant, trace proteins, preservative, and two distinct genetic signatures too damaged for immediate classification. Two. The manifest had listed archival tissue cultures as though the container held one collection.

"CR-17 carried divided material," he said. Lyra examined the psychic impressions around the cradle without touching them.

"One presence left through the freight corridor. The other went deeper." The rear wall contained no visible door. Magmar placed one palm against it. Heat traveled through hidden metal and outlined a rectangular seam beneath the ceramic. Blaine's face changed.

"That passage leads toward the mansion foundation."

"Officially?" Mara asked.

"Officially, it was sealed seventeen years ago." Rine heard the tapping again. Not from behind the wall. From the recovery basin. Ditto had formed a small arm and struck the side three times. Its eyes remained on the hidden door. Morrow drifted toward it. An impression passed between the two Pokémon—imperfect, emotional, and sharp enough to reach Rine through his bond with Morrow. A white room. Dr. Pell's voice. A container wheeled through the wall.

Then fear directed not at the scientists, but at something waiting on the other side. Ditto's body rippled violently. Purple became charcoal. Limbs formed. A narrow muzzle opened beneath burning golden eyes. Horn-like ridges curved around a canine head while yellow light spread along copied ribs. In the recovery basin stood an unsteady image of Veyra. The transformation was nearly perfect. Nearly. The copied Houndour looked toward the sealed passage and began to growl.