Re: Show-Off - Chapter 6 posted!
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- The Mimic Arc -
II
Beneath the glamour and verve of Goldenrod City lay a much murkier undertone; high levels of crime, dangerous gang cultures and areas that were incredibly unsafe once the sun began to set.
Pokemon thefts were still highly reported in the papers. The media printed hysterical reports of thefts on public transport, in nightclubs or even people being attacked walking down the street. The route gate north of the city was even victim to a raid late one night, causing many city folk to find alternate routes to Ecruteak City.
Whitney, the gym leader, had finally been coaxed from her solitude following the theft of her Pokemon several months ago. The girl had rarely been seen, but at the urging of the Johto council, which was contending with several fires in need of extinguishing, persuaded Whitney to relieve her position again, and the Goldenrod Speed Gym reopened.
Whitney's new team, provided by the league, were Manectric, Ninjask and a Whimsicott, an unusual sheep-like creature that Whitney grew incredibly fond of. It could run so fast that its big, fluffy mane blurred and it performed actions before its foe could anticipate them.
South-West of the city lay Goldenrod's long dock, curving across the water's edge. Trade to Goldenrod via cargo ships had been reduced dramatically since the expansion of the Magnet train, which now had trains delivering goods to a number of far-away regions. But tonight a large ship was docked.
As a crane slowly twisted across the dock, loading large pallets onto the ship, two figures were crouched beneath a huge storage tank by the water's edge. Lorelei swept her red hair from her face, re-adjusted her glasses, and turned to watch the cargo being loaded.
“Falkner?” she said, in the softest voice.
“It's Devon Corp,” he confirmed. Falkner was sitting on the ground facing his Xatu, who was using a combination of her excellent vision coupled with her psychic abilities to let her trainer identify the cargo, like a periscope. “But there are others. Silph Co. Mauville Electromotive. Kogane & Kogane.”
“All subsidiaries of Stone's Devon Corporation,” Lorelei said. Falkner nodded. “Any sign of Morty?”
“No,” said Falkner, who found it easiest sharing Xatu's vision when he let his eyes roll into the back of his head.
“He'll be here,” Lorelei said.
“I don't know why Michael let him back in the fold,” Falkner said.
“Mr Mitchelson trusts him, and he was doing this job before you,” Lorelei said sternly. “He seems destroyed by what happened to Jasmine. But he's on our side, and his powers -”
“- his Pokemon's powers -”
“Are very useful,” Lorelei said, ignoring the interruption. “He's created an army of ghost Pokemon, he can teleport, phase through surfaces... he's useful for espionage.”
At that point, she could see a van driving past a security gate, towards the loading bay area. Instantly her eyes flickered to the crane, where a man was dutifully sitting in the control box. Across to the ship, she saw a cluster of five men arranged around the drop-off point. Another ten or twelve men were patrolling the area, armed, she noticed, with rifles.
“It's time,” she said softly.
The van turned swiftly and screeched to a stop across the courtyard of the dock. The driver turned the engine off as an armed man walked around the side to open up the back.
Falkner got back up, standing in front of Xatu and watching with Lorelei. They could hear voices, but were not close enough to decipher what was being said.
“Can you see him?” Lorelei asked.
“No.”
As the man lifted the back of the van up, the shutters rattled noisily across the quiet, still dock. He peered into the gloomy interior, withdrawing a flashlight and shining it into the gloom.
A pair of big, red eyes suddenly stared back, and as soon as they burst into life, a jet of light hit the man square in the chest soundlessly. He stumbled back and appeared to fall, but a thin, messy-haired boy materialised out of thin air and caught him before he made a noise.
“Morty,” Lorelei whispered.
Gengar slowly floated out of the back of the van to join his trainer; he held his hand over the guard's face for a second, before Morty looked over to where Lorelei and Falkner were hiding.
Sensing a disquiet, the driver of the van got out the vehicle and started shouting to the man on the ground, so Morty and Gengar turned and fired a jet of light into the driver's chest. He fell in slow-motion, silently.
“Let's go,” Lorelei said to Falkner.
She leapt out from her hiding spot, her Slowbro at her side, while Falkner's Xatu teleported into the sky. None of the men around the dock seemed to have noticed them yet; the van shielded the men who had fallen but it wouldn't be long before they were spotted.
“Everything OK?” Lorelei asked, as she ran to Morty's side.
“They're shipping the Pokemon out the country by hiding the Pokeballs among empty ones that are part of Silph Co orders,” Morty explained. With only the milky light of the moon shining down on the dark dock, Morty's face looked particularly sunken and gaunt.
“How do they identify which ones contain Pokemon?” Falkner asked.
“They have a UV torch; Pokeballs containing a stolen Pokemon are affixed with a sticker that lights up under the UV light,” he explained.
“You did an amazing job,” Lorelei said. “We're under instructions to let the transportation go ahead, we don't have the man power to intervene an operation this size, so -”
“No, no, we need to recover these,” Morty said.
“We can't!” Lorelei said. “These man have guns. We're in the middle of the dock. Morty, log the destinations of the shipments and we can get out of here.”
Morty shook his head.
“You're under orders,” she reminded him.
Above, the crane let off a long, low groan as it swung another pallet into the ship. Lorelei felt flustered, though she had anticipated Morty acting out.
“We need to get out of here,” Falkner said. “That's the last pallet, they're going to want to unload these in a moment.”
Lorelei ran up to the van and hoisted herself up into the back, lighting up the inside with the man's torch. There were thick, steel barrels stamped with labels and barcodes, and without time to write them down, she simply got her phone out and began taking photos of each one.
There was a muffled yell and a bang; she froze, hunched over a barrel, turning to see what was happening outside.
Suddenly she heard gunfire; Falkner and Morty split and ran from her view as bullets rained down on them from above. The man in the crane.
Falkner pressed his back against the van and scanned the skies. He saw a ma standing on a large rig high in the sky, taking aim with a gun, and pressed his finger to his temple.
On cue, Xatu, who was cloaked in the sky, teleported right behind the man and slammed her right wing into his back. The man lost his footing and fell, screaming as fell hundreds of feet to the concrete.
Falkner saw the man's skull rupture and blood flood the courtyard.
“Lorelei we need to get out of here,” he called.
He turned to see a man on the ramp leading up to the cargo ship. He took aim at Morty, but Falkner couldn't even find the time to scream a warning at his friend as the man fired one, two, three bullets.
As they hit Morty's chest, however, the boy burst into a puff of smoke. The shooter watched, confused. Then, with a shriek, Gengar materialised behind the man, raking his long claws into his back. The bloodied man fell from the edge of the ship into the dark, murky water of the bay.
“Morty!” Falkner said, running from his position behind the van. The men on board the ship had seen the commotion and were running towards the ramp leading down to the courtyard, ready to strike the three of them.
The ghost trainer was now running along the deck of the ship; they were under strict orders not to interfere but at least two men were now dead. Falkner looked back to Lorelei, who was hiding in the back of the van, and Morty, running towards a storm of bullets, and let out a heavy sigh.
He saw a guard run towards the van, only to be knocked out by an ice beam from Lorelei's Slowbro. With the coast cleared, he ran back to his co-worker.
“Morty's attacking the guards,” he said, as she leapt out the back and examined the area.
“Just cover for me,” Lorelei snapped. “We need to get out of here soon, and the more commotion we cause, the more people Stone will send to kill us.”
“I knew he'd do this,” Falkner muttered.
“Don't be smug,” Lorelei said. “Get Xatu to scan the courtyard.”
“The ship is full of men,” Falkner said, rolling his eyes into the back of his head and seeing what his psychic bird could. “Maybe twenty. Everyone else is unconscious.”
“We need to restrain Morty,” Lorelei said. “This delivery is supposed to go ahead, if we kill everyone on board then this ship is going to stay in the dock and that's not good news.”
She let off a heavy sigh.
“The courtyard is full of unconscious men,” she said. “I'm going to use Jynx's powder snow on the area, lower their body temperature and keep them lulled for the next few hours. You need to go ahead and stop Morty from fucking this up.”
“How?” Falkner asked.
“You have Xatu, you can teleport,” she said. “Go up to the crane and use that vantage point to see where he's going, then intercept. It's a huge ship, and I don't know what he's planning on doing.”
Falkner left Lorelei, summoning his Xatu. The bird wrapped her wings around Falkner's torso and teloprted him with a pop; he re-appeared on a long steel walkway leading up to the crane's cabin, where Xatu had just killed someone by plucking him out and dropping him.
He could see Jynx casting thick handfuls of ice on the men scattered around, and ordered Xatu to use his abilities to try and find Morty on the ship below.
“He was running along the east side of the deck,” Falkner murmured, as his Pokemon let him into its exceptional field of vision. He zoomed in, sweeping around the deck. There were five or six bodies seeping blood from excessive, gruesome wounds. Why was Morty slaughtering these people? It made Falkner feel ill.
“Wait,” Falkner said suddenly. “There!”
There was a huge multi-storey cabin at the back of the ship, with tiny porthole windows for each room. The captain's cabin must be there, and the people tasked with delivering the cargo. Morty was creeping along on the deck below,, weaving among aisles of stacked shipment containers. He would disappear for a moment, before re-emerging, inching around the side. Was that his goal? To kill the captain?
Lorelei, Falkner said, as Xatu transferred his thoughts. I think he's going to kill the captain.
Moments later, he felt Lorelei's thoughts.
Stop him.
With a jolt, Xatu brought him out of his shared vision. Falkner felt a chill whisk around his body; he looked around the still crane and realised for the first time just how high up he was. Suddenly, there was a sound of metal on metal; a spark as a bullet ricocheted off the crane frame, and Falkner saw it; a man making the long descent up the ladder to where he was standing.
Quickly, Falkner looked down below, where Lorelei was working. This man had eluded her, or her him, and as he clambered up the ladder he held his rifle out, firing off another barrage of shots.
“Xatu, get out of here,” Falkner said. “I need you later. Teleport away, NOW!”
Xatu disappeared with a pop. Falkner pulled a Pokeball from his belt and threw it forward. In a burst of brilliant silver light, his Skarmory emerged on the long steel walkway, letting off a screech. Falkner crouched behind his Pokemon's huge metal wings as the foe continued his gunfire, climbing higher and higher.
As another gust swirled around them, Falkner felt uneasy on his feet. Skarmory let off a sharp scream, like two blades screaming against each other, and the man on the ladder seemed distracted momentarily. He paused his ascent, swaying, screwing his eyes shut.
“Air slash!”
Nodding, Skarmory charged energy up in his left wing and threw it down at the enemy; the thick shimmering blade missed the target by several feet, but as it struck the steel structure it let off a loud, shrill clang.
The man was nearing the top of the structure, and as Falkner tried fending him off, the man threw a Pokeball high into the air. It burst open and a large, flying reptile began to form in the night, brilliantly orange with cold, piercing eyes. Charizard flapped its wings and let off a draconian roar, fire burning on the end of its long tail.
“FLAMETHROWER!”
Falkner and Skarmory were sitting ducks. Charizard, flying high above his trainer as he climbed higher and higher, let off a thick jet of fire that shot through the air with a whoosh. Skarmory stayed rooted on the spot, for flying out the way meant Falkner would be torched. As Skarmory was engulfed in fire he let off a scream and Falkner, terrified, backed away down the walkway towards the crane cabin.
Skarmory flapped his wings, trying to bat off the fire, but Charizard's heat was too much. Falkner could even see the huge beams of steal start to warp under the intensity of the creature's natural fire. Was that the man's strategy? Melt the entire structure and hurl Falkner to his doom?
He needed to get off here.
“Swift!”
A stream of sharp stars flew through the air, tearing at Charizard like a persistent swarm of insects. Each slash and cut did very little, but the onslaught was distracting enough, letting Falkner recall his weary Skarmory, whose skin was beginning to blister and burst.
Before he could select another Pokemon, however, Stone's agent finished his ascent, and began reloading his rifle with a fresh round. Panicked, Falkner ran to the crane cabin, where a pistol lay on the cushion. He didn't have long. Charizard's leathery wings were beating as the fire Pokemon waited for an instruction, his long, flaming tail dangling below him. The long, steel beam connecting the ladder to the cabin was sizzling and bubbling under the heat from the flamethrower. Falkner worried it might give way.
He grabbed the gun and cocked it, reminding himself this was a necessary thing to do. He span around and took aim, squeezing the trigger and firing three shots as quickly as he could. There were three clangs; he missed.
Suddenly there was a loud rupture as the agent let off a barrage of shots. Bullets flew across the walkway as Falkner ducked in the cabin. Bullets rattled against the metal beams, shattered panes of glass and even tore into the seat cushion set into the crane.
Falkner was crouching behind the seat. He needed to shoot to kill, both the man and his ferocious Pokemon. He needed to get down and stop Morty.
Once the man's assault ran out, Falkner swept up from behind the chair, aiming higher than before and firing shots at Charizard.
There was a shred and a yell; he'd hit Charizard's wing. The creature flapped, lopsidedly, and flew back down to the walkway as blood poured out and began raining down on the courtyard below. This had distracted the agent; he lowered his rifle as Charizard landed in front of him.
“FLAMETHROWER!”
Falkner ducked again as a huge jet of fire rushed past him. The chair he was using for cover caught fire; the control panel on the crane sparked and smoked as the electrics burnt out. Peering up, Falkner saw Charizard clutch his wing, folding it in slightly.
This was his chance.
He got up again and, with the Pokemon more stationary than it was in the air, he fired off three more shots into Charizard's belly. The Pokemon screamed; he threw his neck up and belched a huge jet of fire into the sky, spinning his neck, shooting jets of flame all over.
Falkner aimed one more shot and hit the man in the leg, causing him to twist on the spot, scream, and fall from the beam. There was an ache in his chest; Falkner had killed the man. But it was self-defence, he told himself, as fire burned around him. Life or death.
Charizard used his remaining strength to flap back into the air and belch more fire down at Falkner; his accuracy was impaired, and he seemed drowsy, but the intensity of his fire was causing damage to the thick steel structure. It was warping, melting and starting to distort.
“XATU!” Falkner screamed, climbing out the crane's cabin. He stood on the edge, looking out across the courtyard. Lorelei was nowhere to be seen, and without his Pokemon's help, he couldn't see what was going on inside the ship. But he needed his Pokemon.
“I'M GOING TO JUMP!” he yelled, hoping his Pokemon could hear. “ON THREE...”
He felt heat crackle behind him as Charizard continued his rampage. He counted one, thinking as forcefully as he could so his Pokemon could pick up his thoughts. He counted two, looking at the sheer drop beneath him. He counted three and took a deep breath.
He jumped.
“XATU!” he screamed, as he fell through the sky. It was happening too fast, his Pokemon wasn't there. He wasn't listening.
But then he felt it. A warm, airy gust; those familiar wings, tucked under his arms; Falkner was hoisted through the air as Xatu re-appeared, gently lowering his trainer to the ground. As Falkner's feet felt solid ground, he saw Charizard collapse into the crane, the flames so violent they were turning a brilliant gold.
“Lorelei!” Falkner shouted. She wasn't here.
Xatu pointed to the ship, and took to the sky as Falkner ran up the big gangplank. Lorelei must have gone after Morty.
The dockyard was quiet; Falkner got onto the main deck and looked both left and right. There were dead bodies littered along the left, and he knew that's where Morty had gone previously. He'd head to the captain's cabin, that's where he'd find him.
Falkner cast his gaze across the docks from his position on the boat. It was quicker to get to the cabin by running along the perimeter of the boat, but he was also open to fire from any agents that might be lingering on the dock.
No, the wiser choice was to weave through the huge storage crates housing all sorts of cargo. There were eight to ten high, casting the maze-like deck of the ship into shadow. Falkner cocked his gun and nipped down a gap between two crates.
This mission had been nothing short of a massacre, he thought; the men in the courtyard may have been spared by Lorelei's freezing technique, but Morty was bloodthirsty. It was obvious now that he wasn't planning on playing by the rules; that the death of Jasmine had driven him to commit atrocities in the name of revenge.
How could it have happened? Why hadn't they anticipated this? Falkner hated to be right, but as he paced along the deck, occasionally nipping left or turning right and continuing on, he felt stupid for trusting Morty.
Suddenly he heard a voice.
“Any sign of the guy from the crane?”
“None.”
“Send someone to destroy the van. It's the only place he can hide between here and there.”
Guards. Falkner didn't want to hurt anyone, but it sounded like there were at least two of them. Xatu placed a wing on his shoulder.
Take me to the cabin.
With a pop, he was whisked away, and re-appeared at the back of the ship. He could see the large, tiered cabin that formed the captain's office and some of the sleeping quarters, and approached a thick steel door just ahead.
It was wrenched open; Falkner saw flecks of frozen steel and figured Lorelei must have frozen the door to break through. He slipped inside and looked around. This stairwell climbed up several floors, with doors going off left and right.
The captain's cabin, where the ship was controlled, was at the very top, so Falkner ascended as quietly as he could. All the doors were shut, and firmly, too, but tellingly there was no blood on these steps. It seemed like there had been no struggle.
“F-F-Falkn!”
Falkner heard his name; a terrified voice. He looked left, where there was a door slightly ajar, and walked slowly towards it.
“Who's there?” he snapped.
He pushed the door open, shedding a sliver of light into the dark room. Someone was sitting in the corner. A woman.
“Lorelei?”
Falkner felt for a light but she let off a shrill gasp.
“No! They can sense light.”
“Who?”
He walked towards Lorelei, who was shaking.
“Lorelei, what happened?”
“I-I came here to pursue Morty,” she said, her voice cracking. “But his Gengar. They're patrolling the area. They're like guard dogs.”
Falkner knelt down and tried to get a good luck at Lorelei, but it was so dark that it was hard to see her.
“They can sense you. They attacked me.”
Falkner held her arm and held it to the light spilling in from the corridor. There were deep, blue gashes across her forearms from Gengar's claws, while Lorelei's neck and face was mottled with periwinkle-blue burns.
“But we're on his side,” Falkner said to her gently. “Aren't we?”
“I don't know what he's doing,” Lorelei replied. “But his Gengar are in the hundreds. They travel through shadow, they multiply, they can merge, they're like a huge sentient cloud. And they're powerful.”
“Can we trust him?”
“He's not our enemy,” Lorelei said. “But he isn't on our side, either, I don't think.”
“What is he doing?” Falkner asked.
“One of Steven Stone's senior men is up there,” Lorelei said. “I think Morty is torturing him.”
“Fucking hell,” Falkner said. “I'm going after him.”
“Take this,” she said, withdrawing a Pokeball.
“What is it?” he asked.
“A Pokemon I took from Michael's armoury,” Lorelei said. “I didn't trust this Gengar thing, so I brought something that's designed to combat them. It's a ghost-killer.”
Falkner took it from her and nodded.
“Good luck.”
Falkner left Lorelei, closing the door behind him and looking at the staircase leading to the captain's cabin. He went up the steps, wondering what to expect. Would Gengar just pop up and attack him? What attacks hurt Lorelei so much? He'd never seen her look so defeated before.
He reached the top of the stairs, and approached the steel door. If his rough schematic was right, this would lead into the cabin, but as he wrenched it open and burst through, Falkner found another corridor with an identical door at the end.
Strange. Falkner wondered if a side effect of Xatu's abilities were that his own perception of the ship was becoming damaged, but he persevered to the end of the room, certain he'd find Morty. His feet echoed off the steel floor and he clutched the Pokeball in his hand, wondering what this ghost killer actually was.
Arriving at the door, he wrenched it open and burst through, only to find himself facing the stairs leading back down to where Lorelei was hiding. He turned around. This wasn't right. How had he taken a wrong turn?
Darkness flooded through the long corridor and Falkner felt a cold chill rush up his spine. The shadows at his feet grew and started crawling up the walls. Like a window to a different dimension, they birthed long claws, thick, purple bodies and pairs of red eyes.
Falkner looked as three Gengar formed around him, but he'd never seen Gengar like these. They were distorted, almost scaly, their spiky fringes and long claws exaggerated. The red in their eyes was bright and vivid like the neon signs on Goldenrod's streets.
With a long scream, one Gengar fired off a bolt of jagged black energy. Falkner leapt out the way, pressing himself against the wall, but a pair of claws crept out from the wall, materialising just in time to grab him and hold him in place.
“GO!” Falkner said, dropping the Pokeball. He kicked it with his foot, sending it exploding into the middle of the room. Falkner was dismayed to find the creature was relatively small; jagged and purple, it had thick jewels for eyes, mismatched in colour, and crawled into the corner of the room, cackling.
It was a Sableye, and then Falkner understood. It resisted ghost attacks and most other types. He knew what they were capable of, and thanked himself for the hours he had spend studying the Pokemon in Michael's armoury.
“Sableye, feint attack!” Falkner shouted. The little imp launched himself through the air, melting into the atmosphere and striking one of the Gengars. Falkner wrenched himself free from the grip of another, ordering a shadow ball.
The attack fizzed and flew through the air, but the Gengar all phased through the walls and disappeared. Even if he could have escaped them, Falkner knew these creatures were causing the distortion in the room, and he couldn't get to Morty without defeating them.
“Sableye, use mean look,” Falkner said. Sableye's jewel-like eyes sparkled and projected a beam of light across the room. Suddenly, each wall flickered with a crackling dark energy; a forcefield forcing the Gengar to remain in the room.
“Now, foresight!” he said. Nodding, Sableye grunted and the light from his eyes grew strong, sharp and bright as colour flooded the room. Falkner could see the Gengar shrivelling their faces up as they lost the ability to phase within and around the room.
Sableye pounced to the side and threw a crackling ball of shadow at the Gengar. One took the hit; he screamed out loud and, with a long finger, fired a jagged bolt of electricity towards them both. Falkner knew he had to even things out, so grabbed a Pokeball from his belt and threw it forward.
Taking shape was one of his newer Pokemon, a jet black crow with a long yellow beak. Honchkrow was initially a Murkrow under Michael's care, and Mr Mitchelson had suggested Falkner work to develop its strength. Now, it was a broad-chested muscular bird with an array of dark moves at its disposal.
“Honchkrow, wing attack!”
Falkner knew that Gengar had no muscles, and when rendered solid they were quite easy to take down. He hoped to use his bird Pokemon's natural physical strength to get the edge. Honchkrow flapped up and swept along the narrow corridor, smacking two Gengar with his large wings.
He then pulled back, flapping up a powerful gust that caused the light Gengar to blow towards the door. Sableye unleashed another shadow ball and struck one Gengar, knocking it out. Another, fighting against the strong wind pinning him to the wall, ignited his fist into fire, but it was dissipated by the power behind Honchkrow's flaps.
The wind stopped, and both the remaining Gengar held their hands out, forming thick, crackling shadow balls. Honchkrow flapped in front of Falkner and held his wings out, shielding his trainer. The crow had a surprising amount of loyalty.
The Gengar unleashed their attacks, but as they sped through the air, Falkner remained calm.
“Mirror move.”
A twinkle in Honchkrow's eye; then, a shimmering filled the space between the Pokemon. The shadow balls dissapeared before being re-launched through the air at the Gengar, smashing into them and letting off a big, loud bang. Dark smoke curled around the defeated ghosts as Falkner held out an arm; Sableye scuttled up and sat on his shoulder, and he ran towards the door.
He wrenched it open and knew instantly he was in the right place; he could see windows in this cabin looking out over the winding alleys of cargo crates. Falkner stepped in to the room and gasped as he saw Morty, sitting in a chair calmly, and a boy with red hair levitating in front of him.
“Morty!” he said, and as he examined the boy, he realised who it was. This was Silver, one of the men who attacked Falkner and Chuck in their hotel room, back when they were trying to find out who EysNeRS was.
“Falkner!” Morty said, smiling. “You made it.”
“What are you doing!” Falkner said. “Lorelei said -”
“I heard she got caught up in my Gengar,” Morty said. “It's okay.”
“She's really hurt,”
“It's okay, Falkner, I'll deal with it,” Morty said, sterner. “This is -”
“I know who he is,” Falkner said. “Silver.”
Silver was staring at them, arms hanging limp at his side. He, like Morty, looked drawn, gaunt and tired.
“Well my intel was wrong,” Morty said airily. “I thought Volkner was going to be running this operation, and since he was responsible for killing Jasmine, I wanted to meet him and get a few things off my chest.
“Silver tells me, though, that he was assigned to this job after botching an assignment in East Johto. Apparently they were part of a team tasked with capturing the legendary creature Raikou, but thanks to Silver's trigger happy habits, the rare, exotic animal is dead. Silver, let's show Falkner what Stone did to you.”
He clicked, and a telekinetic force raised Silver's hand. Falkner looked around, quickly, assuming a Gengar was doing this. It wasn't visible, choosing to reside in the shadows.
Silver's left hand had the end joints missing off each finger; his hand looked stubby, raw, unsettling with no fingernails. Falkner remembered that Jack Surge had been beaten badly for ruining a mission; he had lost the tips of his fingers, but he hadn't had this much taken off.
“Poor Silver,” Morty said. “You really fucked up, didn't you?”
Silver said nothing. He just stared at Morty in shock, his jaw slack.
“I've been asking Silver a few questions,” Morty explained, “And he's been answering them, haven't you? I wondered why he was called Silver. It's a nickname, obviously. He's an orphan who grew up on the streets. His real name is Sam.
“He told me all about how he was recruited into working for the Lucky Karp Casino after a botched robbery attempt and slowly became groomed into the company Stone runs. How he rose up the ranks thanks to a mixture of betrayal, ambitiousness and greed. How he assimilated his contacts and recruited other young boys to carry out the stickier parts of the job, leaving Stone's inner circle innocent.
“He also told me what they're doing next,” Morty said, turning and looking at Falkner. “They're going for the Grand Festival.”
“That's next week,” Falkner said.
“Yup. Stone's on his way there now with Volkner and a few good men. They have Porygon-Z with them, they're going to be organising the biggest heist yet, stealing hundreds of Pokemon to sell on the black market.”
“We need to stop them, then,” Falkner said. “Morty, we've done enough damage, let's go.”
“Not yet,” he snapped. “Silver also told me where I can find Jack Surge, another man involved in Jasmine's death. He's staying at their HQ to coordinate the assault. He's in Goldenod right now.
“Silver, tell me again where I can find Jack.”
“They're based underneath the Department Store,” Silver said quietly, his voice a fragile crack. “There's a utility elevator you can talk from the back entrance to the store on Cavendish St. It only goes down. There's also a passage leading to the casino, but it will be too well protected.”
As he finished his sentence, his head lolled down, strength sapped from him. Morty nodded.
“You've been very helpful,” Morty said, standing up. Falkner made a move to intervene, but, looking down, he realised his gun was no longer in his grasp. It had been taken without him even noticing.
He looked up and saw Silver's limp hand holding his gun. Morty stared at him. Silver didn't even seem to know he was holding something.
“Are you going to kill me now?” Silver said.
“No,” Morty replied, clicking his finger. Silver's arm began to slowly rise up, turning, angling the gun towards himself. Silver's jaw loosened and the barrel slid up, pressing to the roof of his mouth.
A force lowered Silver until his feet touched the ground; he swayed momentarily, as if a string was coming from his head, rooting him to the ceiling.
“You're going to do it yourself.”
BANG.
Silver slumped to the ground, blood and fragments of skull smashed into the wall and Morty flinched for a fraction of a second. Falkner felt himself scream as blood from Silver's head trickled across the cabin.
“You – you!”
“He,” Morty corrected him. “He did that to himself.”
And then he let off a wink.
“We need to go, now.”
“You've fucked this up, we weren't supposed to be detected!” Falkner cried, as Morty paced out the room towards the stairs.
“The police will come here,” Morty said. “I summoned them earlier. I've left clues that will help them identity the Pokeballs with stolen Pokemon inside. They'll be returned to their owners soon.”
“That's not –”
“That IS the point of all this,” Morty snapped, turning and staring Falkner down. “We're fighting a war, here, and I won't be happy until we've killed every last one of the people responsible for ruining my life.”
“Silver wasn't even involved in Jasmine's death!” Falkner cried.
“He wasn't there,” Morty said coldly. “But he was involved.”
A thick, dark shadow curled at his fingers, and another Gengar emerged.
“Get Lorelei and make sure she's safe,” Morty said. “We'll take the van back to Michael's. I'll see you outside.”
With a pop, he was gone. Heart hammering, hands shaking, Falkner tried to process exactly what had happened. Morty was right; there was a war coming. All Falkner knew was there were now more than two sides.
