Chapter 3

Today you are Jade Winstead, and you are no one. You have no family or friends, and your fingerprints are the fingerprints of a dead child. Your face is modeled on one of your favorite television stars, and people are always stopping you on the street, mistaking you for her. It's more attention than you'd like, but the face you built from scratch was worse.

This morning you're in one of your favorite paper-reading spots, by the window of the Fuchsia pokémon center with a cup of center coffee close to hand. It's terrible coffee, gritty and bitter as anything, but it's an essential part of the scene.

The scene is very important. It also includes Togetic, who sits on the table just beyond reach, humming stickily to herself as she devours a melty lemon slush-on-a-stick from one of the street vendors outside, and Titan, fidgeting with the gooey remnants of his cone and watching you from the corner of his eye. And there's the most important part of all, the newspaper spread open in front of you.

You're about halfway done reading it, and your mind is starting to wander. You already checked all the good bits--the funnies, the training section, and, of course, the obituaries. You even choked down most of the boring stuff, the news-news about people who do things other than train pokémon, like you have any reason to care about them.

Absol is very insistent that you read the whole paper, yes, the whole thing, regularly. It's important, she says, to understand what's going on in the world around you. You never know what you'll find out if you keep your eyes open.

You pointed out that she doesn't read the paper. "Pokémon and humans have different ways of learning things," she said without batting an eye. "I know what I need to know." You pointed out that you're just as much pokémon as you are human. "Yes. So you need to do both." What exactly she meant by that, she wouldn't explain.

Whatever her way of learning things is, you bet it's a whole lot more fun than newspapers. But newspapers have ads, at least, so it's not all bad.

So this is your scene: you have your coffee and your pokémon, your newspaper and your name, and you have the sunlight, too, pouring in through the window. You imagine it like you're a character in a movie, a real adult human living her life. And if you turn your head just a little and look outside, you can watch a parade of other normal humans going past out on the street.

You'd be safer if you took your paper at home, made like a pokémon and holed up in some secluded place, but there's some kind of herd instinct buried down deep in your body, and you like to be out here, where you can see and be seen by humans. You aren't one of them anymore, and you can't really belong to their circle of being, but you can sit at its edge and watch, and to some extent, pretend.

You watch the adults, striding along on unknown errands, ferrying children through the crowd: is that what you should be like now, settling into a life under your own power, caring about all those names in the newspaper, talking about money and jobs and sex the way they do on television? You watch the children: is that really how you used to be, wide-eyed at the sight of balloons and ice cream stalls, chasing after trainers and begging to see their pokémon?

You wonder. This is what you come to Fuchsia to do: read the paper, enjoy the tropical weather, and consider what might have been. That's enough for you. Sometimes the city gives you something more, though. Sometimes it offers you a surprise.

The center's doors slide open and two humans you recognize walk through. One is short, dumpy, tanned, the other tall but stooped, pale and sunken-eyed and uncomfortable in his rumpled suit. A porygon-Z drifts along behind, limbs and head in constant, subtle motion, never all pointing in the same direction at once. The humans are Officer Feldhorn, chief of the Fuchsia City police, and Leonard Kerrigan, systems administrator of the Kanto Pokémon League network.

They approach the desk, Leonard Kerrigan setting a slender laptop on the counter and discussing something with the nurse. Officer Feldhorn's gaze wanders the room while he sips from the thermos that accompanies him everywhere.

You rap on the table in front of you, and Duskull rises up out of the wood, just enough that his eye glows out at you. You nod towards the desk, and the red light swivels to look. Duskull gurgles quietly in acknowledgment, then sinks back out of view, off to spy on Leonard Kerrigan.

You don't expect much. Duskull finds human conversations hard to follow and dull besides. His reporting often leaves something to be desired, but you'll take what you can get.

Even with your less-than-reliable spy, you've come to understand Leonard Kerrigan quite well. He's a special case, someone you care about even though he was never a part of the lab. He's the human you know best, though you've never exactly been introduced. Above all, you know one thing.

Leonard Kerrigan has a mission, just like you. He never expected it, in the same way he hadn't expected his job, either. Back when he was an arrogant teenager they'd given him a choice: prison until he was old enough to be worry about his prostate, or a second chance defending the computer systems he'd spent most of his adolescence attacking. "Take it, kid," they'd said. "It's the best offer you're going to get, and who knows? Maybe you'll even make something of yourself."

He was fine with the job. It was frustrating sometimes, but interesting enough. He's still got it, but only because he needs it to pursue his mission. What joy there was in it has been forgotten. Once, he had a family: a wife and a son. Now both of them are gone, one given up and one taken away. Once, he had friends. Now he only has people who look on him with pity and whose phone calls he ignores. Soon, he will not have these either. But even then, he will still have his mission.

Leonard Kerrigan sits at the nerve center of the League's great digital brain, watching data flow in from all its sensory organs, the pokédexes every trainer must carry to be considered legal. The pokédex observes everything, records everything, surely knows more than the trainer herself about everything that has happened on her journey: every pokémon captured, every item purchased, every visit to a pokémon center. It's Leonard's job to guard the ever-widening river of information, to see that it flows freely in the wires, to make sure the system is never undermined.

That means he's caretaker, too, of all the League's lost souls, all the humans perished in pursuit of their dreams. Their records are marked deceased but not deleted, slumbering in perpetuity in some faceless storage array. Once, Leonard Kerrigan didn't think much of them. But then, one day, something happened. His son became one of the ghosts. And then, his son refused to stay dead. And then Leonard Kerrigan found he had a mission.

It was your mistake. You were young, careless; you had no idea what you were doing. Certainly you had no idea who Leonard Kerrigan was, or why he should matter to you at all. You screwed up, and now he's on to you, in his hopeless, blundering way. You don't know what he thinks is really going on, since he never speaks about it in public and there's not much you can glean from infrequent sightings. All you know is he can't possibly be right or, well, you'd have been found out already.

Because Leonard Kerrigan has a mission, and that mission is to find you. He will discover what happened to his son and, you have no doubt, he will make those responsible pay. He is no small man in Kanto, Leonard Kerrigan, and he is your enemy.

You watch him now, taking in the slump of his shoulders, the shuffle in his walk as he leaves the desk and selects one of the center PC's, one you used earlier when you were Nicholas Garret. You see gray in his hair and lines on his face. He's growing old, decaying, the way humans do, and you'll savor every moment of his demise. What would he do if he knew the one he chased was sitting not fifty feet away, watching his every move?

"Hello there, Jade! Returning to the scene of the crime, are we?"

You start at the sound of the voice, tearing your eyes away from Leonard Kerrigan and only just remembering not to bare your teeth. "No, Officer Feldhorn. I did not know there was a crime."

"Just a figure of speech," he says cheerfully, and you glower inwardly at the misunderstanding. "Seems like we're always running into each other when I'm checking something out at the Center."

You know from TV that there are only two kinds of cops: hard-bitten, driven servants of justice who will stop at nothing to put criminals behind bars and the ones whose greatest exertions are in pursuit of donuts. There's no doubt in your mind which camp Officer Feldhorn falls into. Under the sharp bitterness of the coffee in his thermos, you can smell custard and powdered sugar about his person. "It is a small world," you hazard.

"That it is," he says, and you relax. Maybe this conversation won't be a total loss after all. "How's life with you, then? I see your togetic's doing well."

Togetic chirps assent, then goes back to grooming herself. The popsicle stick lies abandoned on the table in front of her. "It is going well. I got my charizard back a couple of weeks ago. Another trainer had him for a while."

"Oh, so this one's yours, is he?" Officer Feldhorn looks up at Titan. "He's a big fella."

"Yes. He is very strong." You beam up at Titan, who flashes you a nervous smile before turning his attention back to the human.

That's enough small talk. What you really want to know is: "Is anything new in the city?"

"Oh, Fuchsia's Fuchsia, you know? It's pretty quiet. Last week some kids tried to break into the Safari Zone and bag a few dratini, but that's about it."

"Well. That is good. What brings you here today, then? You have that man with you, whatever his name was." You realize you're actually smiling over your own cunning and hastily rearrange your expression to something neutral. Subtlety.

Officer Feldhorn looks over at Leonard Kerrigan, who's going through his ritual at the computer station: a few mysterious incantations on the keyboard, then plug a cable from his laptop into the terminal. Keys, keys, keys, then out with the cable, pack everything away. You know he has underlings who could be doing this for him; you know he can probably retrieve everything he wants remotely. But, alas, he has a mission. He has to be sure. He has to be here, to do it himself.

"Oh, yes." Officer Feldhorn frowns, which makes him look like a morose granbull; it's all you can do not to laugh. "It's the same old story. Glitches in the computer system, Leo over there getting all worked up about them and insisting we go chasing off after the undead--you haven't seen the dead walking recently, have you?"

"I have seen a couple of ghost pokémon."

"Is that so? Well, you'd better keep an eye on them for me, then." Leonard Kerrigan's left the computer and is standing in the middle of the lobby, staring pointedly at the two of you. Officer Feldhorn half turns and catches sight of him, grimaces. "Ah, but it looks like I'm about to be called away. Good to see you, Jade."

"Later," you say, unable to resist showing off a little of your hip slang. You watch him go over and meet Leonard Kerrigan. They converse a bit, one man relaxed and jocular, the other tight as piano-wire, all indignation at not being taken seriously. Then they leave, and you can't help grinning to yourself as the center doors slide shut behind them.

You like Officer Feldhorn. It's nice to have someone human to chat with. It's good practice, talking with someone like him, someone harmless. It doesn't really matter if you slip up. You don't make so many mistakes anymore, though. These days, you're a downright sterling conversationalist.

Duskull returns and whispers what he heard. Leonard Kerrigan was talking about a computer upgrade, replacing the old PC stations. No real news, then. Still no progress learning his login information, either, and you can tell by Duskull's tone that he wasn't really trying. You let it go. You're feeling too cheerful to let a little thing like that spoil your mood.

Things are coming to a head now. Only two of your pokémon are left, and you know Leonard Kerrigan has one. Once you find the other, Absol can't object to you confronting him directly. She even said it: wait, and if it has not come back to you by the time you find the others, then do what you must do. You look forward to it. There's nothing and no one that can stand between you and your mission, and Leonard Kerrigan's been a thorn in your side for too long. You'll take pleasure in finally removing him.

You take a sip of your coffee, and your smug grin turns to a grimace. If it it's bad hot, it's unspeakable cold. Across the table from you, Togetic giggles at your expression, and Titan joins in once he sees you aren't mad. They're both done with their snacks, and Togetic's all cleaned up, too. You glance out the window, past the rows of houses and down the slope of the hill to the beach. The waves sparkle invitingly in the sunlight. You look down at your unfinished paper, then back out at the surf and sand.

Why not? Today is a good day. Everything is going right. What better time to celebrate?

Togetic takes to the air, trilling excitement as you start folding your paper and gathering your things. You still have plenty of Nicholas Garret's money left. You can go enjoy the beach a while, then head up to Celadon and do some shopping on Nicholas Garret's dime. Maybe you can find some proper hardwood for Rats to chew, pick up some treats for the rest while you're out. Ooh, and you could look for some of the limited-edition Transformozord sneakers you saw an ad for the other day...

You catch Titan staring as you shuffle the newspaper away. "What is it, Titan?"

His wings flare in surprise, then settle back in a defensive huddle around his body. The charizard picks at his claws and says, "Ummm, I thought you said you had to read the whole paper. Or Absol would get mad."

You grin. "Of course she would. But she does not have to know, does she? It can be our little secret."

The charizard looks scandalized, and you stifle a laugh. You lean across the table and say, in a hushed voice, "If you do not say anything, I will buy you another ice cream cone."

"Oh," he says, wings tipping up a little. "Oh, umm, okay." His smile is so uncertain that you have to laugh, and after a moment's surprise the charizard's laughing with you, joined by Togetic's chiming giggles. She wasn't paying attention to your conversation, probably has no idea what's so funny, but she never misses the opportunity to laugh. You sling your bag over your shoulder and lead your friends out into the hot summer sun, visions of spectacular purchases dancing in your head.

Absol hates it when you buy things. But no one ever has to tell her about today, not ever.