Chapter 79:
We Know The Devil
The sound of metal scraping against something rang through the building. The sound itself was not loud per se but somehow it felt as if it was traveling far further than it should. It only lasted for a second, yet it managed to make me hold my breath.
I guessed that it came from above us, meaning it was something on either the -2 or -1 floor. Definitely something I wanted to avoid.
"We should continue our search and get out of here as quickly as possible," I said. "I need answers if I ever want to sleep again."
{I agree, let's get this over with.} Luna shook her head. {That thing was just so...}
"Wrong."
The Ditto monster. I had never seen a Ditto before, only read about them on some scientific website and heard about them on a few message boards.
They popped up all over Kanto somewhat before the 'Missing Island' incident. People suspected they had something to do with it but since no one knew exactly what happened anyway, it was really hard to make some working theories. A few were studied by Professor Oak according to the official Kanto League statement and they were deemed safe enough to be released into the wild.
Dittos can copy humans which had been a roadblock at first, but when people found out that a Ditto's eyes would always stay the same, everybody let out a sigh of relief.
Except the Ditto I had met had managed to copy my eyes…in exchange for losing its insides.
Not wanting to meet that thing again, I continued to follow the path that would lead me to Doctor Redburn's office.
More splits and doors met our way but nothing of significance. I noted however that the bodies appeared less frequently, a small mercy. Maybe they tried to run towards the exit when the Team Rocket assassin came.
Then I started to hear banging noises.
A loud repeated thumping noise came from ahead of us. The sound of something impatiently hitting a table or a wall with force. It repeated itself at irregular intervals.
When we found a sign saying: Labratoria 4, it became even louder and somehow sounded more aggressive. I eyed my two Pokémon but they seemed to be doing a little better than just then. That Ditto most likely prepared them for the horrors they might see.
It did for me. This little escapade was a far cry from the fun raid of the Galactic Fortress in the games. There were no monsters in those games, just cute little Pokémon. No serial murders, just a few grunts that did not even know what they were doing. No twisted experiments, okay maybe those were in the games but I didn't get to see any of that in the games.
"Pretty sure they're coming from behind this door." Fay pointed at the steel door that was bolted into the wall on our right side. It had the same basic design as the other sliding doors in this facility but the glass parts had been replaced by steel plates that blocked our view of whatever was inside. A thick cross ran across both doors like it was the door of a vault, doubly securing what was inside. A white panel was stuck on the wall next to the door, telling me with green letters on a display that it required a keycard to open it.
The loud thumping noise continued and the door shook in its hinges, though it steadily withstood it.
"Something is inside," Fay remarked.
No shit, the banging on the door was not a dead give away. As if responding to Fay's voice the banging increased, becoming louder and more frequent. Oddly there were no growls or voices coming from inside, only banging, as if the pounding on the door was the only thing it could do.
"Haha, let's not open that door," I laughed dryly.
Whatever was behind that door, I did not want to see it. Not that we could open it but still.
We silently continued walking down the corridor and the banging noises slowly started to fade into the background, becoming a rhythmic thumping that blended with the sounds of electric buzzing and machine whirring underneath the floor.
We passed a few empty storage closets that had been left open. They held nothing of value, mostly just food supplies and medical equipment.
I did find a map of this facility in one of them but it was stuck to the wall for some unknown reason. As I couldn't take it with me, I took a picture of it instead.
This facility was apparently shaped like an octagon with 4 main hallways going into each direction like veins on a leaf, each one branching off into smaller ones and those again into their own sections.
It taught me that this place was a lot bigger than I had imagined it could be. According to the map, we had been walking in a straight line. We started at the elevator that was on one side of the octagon and our destination, Doctor Redburn's office, was on the other side of the building.
The map lacked key info like escape routes, what all the separate rooms were and how big the building was in meters but at least it was something. It did make me wonder how they even made this place in the middle of a forest, that would be a logistical nightmare, right?
Although with the right combination of Pokémon abilities I guess it could be done, after all the Egyptians built the pyramids without a fucking wheel.
We continued on our way.
Deeper down the hallway the lights above our heads started flickering and a big black burn mark was etched into the white wall. Glass shards were scattered all over the floor like a window had been broken. Except there was no window. I gazed up and saw that one of the ceiling light tiles was missing. The gap in the ceiling looked ominous and the space between was just big enough for something to crawl through.
"Well, it's different from all the slashed and pierced bodies," I remarked somewhat optimistically. We had not encountered a single disturbing dead body in the last few minutes. True, we were walking at a snail's pace but after that weird-ass Ditto, I was all for being safe and careful.
Luna fiddled with her hands while Fay studied the black scorch mark.
"This is new," Fay said as she put her paw against the mark. "It's still warm."
"Seems to me like someone used a Fire-type move," I scratched my hair. The scorch marks gave me an uneasy feeling yet it fueled my desire to figure out what this place was exactly. If only because the alternative, not knowing, might give me more nightmares.
I just had to know what Galactic was doing.
The dread I had initially felt was slowly turning into irritation. I was slowly getting used to this place being one big hellhole. Not sure if getting used to seeing dead bodies is a good thing but my stomach was happy with it. I felt more or less irritated about the fact that I still had not found anything useful.
{Let's move on.} Luna said. She turned away from the scorch marks with disdain in her face. {We should not linger too much.}
Content with my own observations, I started moving towards the door at the end of the hallway.
The door was sleek and simple in design, just a regular door you might expect at your local dentist. The sign above the door read:
Doctor Redburn
A metal scanner device was attached to the wall but it seemed to be broken. The screen was smashed in and the wires were sticking out of it like someone had forcefully hit it with a brick.
Fay gave me a questioning look when I didn't open the door immediately.
I gestured at her to do her thing but it resulted in getting even more confused expressions.
"Scan?" I hissed.
She gasped when she understood what I was getting at. Her eyes flashed blue and she stared at the door. Her head slowly moved from left to right before she gave me a nod, "No one's inside."
Somehow I felt a bit disappointed by that.
I kicked the door open. Fay and Luna went in first and I trailed behind them.
The room was wide and reminded me of a meeting room. A big oval-shaped desk was in the middle of the room. Despite the table's size, there was only one chair. A rather comfortable looking chair. A computer screen was placed in front of the chair but that was about it.
Against the wall were metal shelves filled with case files, seemingly arranged in alphabetical order, starting with something named: A2-AnimatedGod and ending in XX5-ZMoves.
Most of the files started with the label A2 but some of them had different labels.
There was another metal shelf but unlike the others, it wasn't filled with files. Instead, a lone flower in a vase and a faded picture in a bronze frame decorated it.
On the other side of the room stood one of those devices that could make cold water. A large painting was on the wall above it.
The painting was wide in width like one of those panorama wallpapers you see at a museum. I walked past the large table and stared at the painting. What I was looking at was a piece of art. Not only just in the literal sense, but the painting looked like it could have been made by Michelangelo or Da Vinci. Two Pokémon were painted in Renaissance style on the canvas, one colored steel white with blue and the other Pokémon colored gray with shades of pink thrown in.
They were locked in a standoff, the blue one standing on the ground and the pink Pokémon flying in the skies.
They say that the purpose of art is to convey an emotion, if that's true then this piece certainly did its part. A blind fury was in their eyes like they were ready to tear each other to pieces. I could almost feel the rage they felt myself. Their hatred practically seeped through the canvas and threatened to burn a hole through it.
The two of them were standing in red-colored city ruins with torn down skyscrapers setting off against the blood-red sky. A shiver ran over my spine, the abstract realism was haunting.
There was this painting in my own world, a painting of Cronus devouring his son which coincidentally is also the name of the painting. It was a disturbing piece of art that a lot of people called one of the most terrifying paintings made by man.
The painting right in front of me gave off that same feeling, a state of madness was in the eyes of the two Pokémon and it seemed to eat away at the viewer.
I drew my gaze away from the painting and headed towards the computer screen. Luna jumped onto the oval desk and studied her surroundings, meanwhile Fay stared up at the metal shelves.
The computer screen cast a soft white glow on the wall behind it. I approached it and noticed that it was one of those weird computers that didn't exist in my own universe. I was sure Apple or some other company imagined this to be the future of their product. The terminal was mainly composed out of a computer monitor that was stuck to the table. The monitor looked like it was made from some kind of black glass instead of plastic.
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Why was the screen still on?
I looked around but found nothing resembling a body, or maybe even any signs of someone entering this place recently. I found none, this place looked devoid of life yet the computer was still left on for some reason.
I sat down and a few taps later the reason became clear. Although the first glance showed just the background, a simple stylistic cursive 'G' on a blue background, a second look showed one of the icons on the icons on the screen was bumping up and down, indicating that an application was still active.
Curious, I was about to click on it but there was no mouse. I tapped the screen and surprisingly it got the job done. The application opened and a window enlarged in front of my eyes.
It wasn't a special window per se, pretty mundane even but it was good enough for me because right in front of me was an archive of all the files stored on this PC.
Bingo.
{You found it?} Luna tilted her head.
"Yup," I mumbled while I dropped my backpack and searched through it. "Some idiot left it open. Guess it's up to me to take it."
From the depths of my backpack, I retrieved a shining black cube that honestly just looked like one solid cube of black plastic. I slid one of the panels on the sides open and pulled out a black cable. I plugged it into the computer screen and a message on the screen notified me a new drive was available.
With a small amount of regret, I went back to the main directory and selected every sub-archive with a few clicks. I dragged them over towards my own hard drive and it started copying the files.
I released a sigh of relief I did not know I had been holding. For some reason I felt like I could finally relax, I couldn't but my brain was convinced of that. Maybe I was just a bit emotionally tired.
I just had to copy the entire hard drive and I could call it a day. Of course, I would make a second copy for my own keepings, after all, it was my own backup drive that previously contained a backup of all the unfinished products I was working on but for obvious reasons I had to wipe it clean.
My eyes darted over the room, expecting a monster to pop up but it just stayed peaceful. Fay was studying the picture on top of the shelf and Luna was trying to get water from the dispenser but for some reason it was malfunctioning.
This place looked relatively safe. I cut myself some slack and allowed myself to relax a little.
A bit bored, I decided to take a sneak peek and see what secrets Redburn's PC held. I plopped down on the chair and casually put the knife on the table, still keeping it within my reach if I needed to slash something.
I experimentally opened a few directories to see what would catch my eye.
An error message popped up when I tried to access a server this PC was linked to. It told me there was no wireless connection down here and I had to enter a password to use the cable.
I entered a few words that could function as a password but all of them failed as expected.
"Not working?" Fay asked from my right.
I tried to open the web browser but it led me to the same error message. "I can't access the external server which might be important. It seems like everything down here is run locally. Or well, used to at least."
Maybe if I was a hacker I could access it but my hacking skills were a bit lackluster if not completely non-existent. Though I did manage to convince everyone at school I was a hacker, fun times.
With a tired sigh, I gave up on accessing the external server and instead I tried to look through the files stored on this PC.
Most of it was a mess, Redburn had never heard of categorizing apparently because nothing except the bare minimum was organized.
I opened a random file that was a long list containing the names and personal info of the people working here which was useful but in the same directory were a few music files containing horrible jazz music. Another file later and I was reading about unknown powers in Alto Mare that reanimated the corpses of deceased Pokémon.
I returned to the main directory and used one of the built-in features to sort all the files on 'Usefulness'. Not sure what it actually meant but it sounded, well, useful.
A document was suddenly placed on top of the list. It was named: 'Introduction letter to the A2 Facility'.
One of the sub-tabs informed it that the user of his PC made this file.
"Well, isn't this useful?" I chuckled at my own joke, not that it was funny but I could use a laugh down here. Fay shot me a weird look but I waved it off.
I opened the file.
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Dear Colleagues and Partners.
Throughout our world's history, mankind has been aware of Pokémon that are not normal. Pokémon with abilities that are beyond regular Pokémon powers and possess traits that defy all known limits. Pokémon so powerful some believed them to be gods or atleast mythical in nature.
But when you start thinking about those so-called ''gods'', what do we know about them? Where do they come from and what makes them so special? What are their motives and a more important question we ask ourselves, how can we guarantee they won't turn on us? How much
longer can we have blind faith in those ''gods'' to do the right thing and who will stop them when they won't?
The International League has strictly forbidden any research regarding these questions and actively prosecutes the ones that do. Calling it a safety hazard but are we not in danger right now? Anyone that has seen the ruins of the Orre region can say without a doubt that there are real threats freely moving around in our world, unconstrained and free to do as they please.
But I personally believe that the age of darkness for mankind is over.
People in the shadows are working on ways to free us and lead humanity down a path in which we don't have to fear the unknown. A new world without gods.
To do this we must use our biggest strength, something Pokémon have always lacked: Creativity and innovation.
The main purpose of the A2 facility is to find a way to kill or capture a Legendary Pokémon, find a way to utilize its power for the fate of mankind and expose the true nature of those false gods. To do this we will pursue any lead, do anything we can and cross boundaries mankind has never before.
Because make no illusions, to kill a god we need a devil.
If you're reading this it means that you understand the nature of our problem and are one of us now.
I welcome you to our ranks.
Doctor Charles Redburn, A2 Site Director
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"Hahahaha," I muttered, "That's some bullshit."
"What does it say?" Fay shook my shoulder.
I scratched my head. "Well, it tells me that everyone down here is batshit crazy." The amount of flaws and assumptions in that introduction letter was staggering. Makes me wonder how anyone would ever think this place is not messed up.
"Also great news," I said, "They were looking for a way to kill or capture a Legendary."
"What, why would they do that!?" Fay sounded like her favorite pop star just got dragged through the mud.
"Paranoia," I replied, “although this entire letter feels like a shitty excuse from Cyrus to justify omnicide."
"OMNICIDE!?"
I sighed, "Yeah, that's basically his plan."
Shaking my head I went to the second file on the recently opened list. It was a directory named: residentiary.
I opened the archive and an enormous list of files washed over the monitor, drowning it in information.
I started at the top. The files all had weird names but they were somewhat more organized.
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-Subject001 (Terminated)
-Subject001-Appendix
-Subject002 (Terminated)
-Subject002-Appendix
-Subject003 (Terminated)
-Subject003-Appendix
...
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This kept going for a long while, every single entry ending with the word 'Terminated' whatever the hell that was. No, I had an idea what it could be but I did not want to believe it.
The subject part of the title was midway through the list replaced by the word 'project' as if that would make it less creepy.
As the list came to an end, they were given names besides their number, a little extra information that wasn't really clarifying anything. What did those names even mean?
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...
-Project106 Imperfect Imposter
-Project 107 Truthful Mimikyu (Terminated)
-Project 107 Truthful Mimikyu-Appendix
-Project 108 Inside-out Dusclops
-Project 109 Dream Chainer
-Project 110 Infinite Snorlax (Terminated)
-Project 110 Infinite Snorlax Appendix
...
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The list went on like this for a couple more entries. More terminated than not but a couple were still around.
One entry caught my eye.
Project Z
It was the final entry on the list and for some reason, I felt drawn to it. I quickly checked how the data transfer was going and quickly checked the time. 11:45 in the evening.
Deciding I had nothing better to do I opened the file that caught my interest, not entirely sure what about it made me choose it.
A large document opened up.
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Project Z
Synopsis:
Project Z, like many others of its species, is known for the ability to physically change its appearance by creating acoustic and visual illusions to imitate other Pokémon or humans but whereas the baseline (Z) is only able to create a non-physical illusion, Project Z has gained the ability to not only change its appearance to mimic other Pokémon but to physically alter its own biology and reconstruct it until Project Z perfectly resembles the copied Pokémon's physical state and appearance. The alterations are not perception-based as Project Z can perform physical actions that the baseline (Z) is unable to do (flight, aquatic respiration, enhanced endurance etc). DNA taken when transformed will also be an identical match to the copied Pokémon.
Although Project is capable of constantly reconstructing its body there doesn't seem to be a demand for extra nutrition. Substances kept in Project Z's body do not endanger Project Z when transforming and will be ejected just as the Pokémon it is copying would do. If Project Z is physically incapable of doing this feat due to missing organs or other physical limitations it will be ejected once Project Z transforms into a Pokémon that meets the requirements.
Project Z has the remarkable ability to reproduce human speech despite no known human DNA being implemented. Its ability to produce human speech remains consistent throughout its transformation even if the copied Pokémon's biology prohibits human speech.
It's unknown where this ability came from or how it functions.
(See document: ProjectZ-biology for more details.)
Creation:
Project Z has been created by infusing modified DNA from the Pokémon commonly referred to as Mew into a regular (Z) Pokémon egg. (see document: Fakebirth for further reference).
Upon birth, Z appeared to be a regular Pokémon with no special abilities and was quickly disregarded as a failure and Command attempted to terminate it by flooding the room as protocol states.
Project Z instinctively transformed into a Magikarp and managed to survive the attempt to drown it, hereby revealing its abilities.
Further testing is recommended.
PS: If Project Z can copy any Pokémon, does this mean Legendaries as well? If so, we struck gold.
Addendum: New studies revealed that Project Z is unable to use Pokémon moves other than the ones it currently possesses. This maintains consistency throughout its transformation. Project Z is still able to use its own moveset even when the transformed Pokémon has no affinity for said moves, be it by typing or physical hindrances.
This quirk was not brought to light earlier due to Project Z refusing to cooperate. The usage of TMs is advised.
Addendum 2: Project Z is unable to learn any TM moves excluding the ones its baseline form would learn. Foreign moves taught while in transformation do simply not function.
PS: Personally I don't get why this one got our hopes up, just a failure like the others.
Addendum 3: Project Z has been brought into close contact with the Legendary Pokémon commonly referred to as Lugia (see document: SeaDragon for further reference)
During a mission in Seawave City Project Z was able to maintain direct visual contact with the target for a period of 12 seconds. Previous theories regarding its ability suggest that seeing a Legendary class Pokémon would trigger a transformation but Project Z failed to transform into a Lugia.
The chance that Project Z can copy a Legendary class Pokémon is slim.
Addendum 4: Project Z attempted to escape the facility with the help of Doctor Lyndis Flash. Both were quickly recovered by armed guards, the personnel helping Project Z got terminated in the process. Project Z has been equipped with an electrical collar to prevent it from transforming outside tests and has been properly chipped.
A muzzle was later added after staff complained about verbal assault but was removed when Project Z's abilities rendered it useless.
Addendum 5: Further testing with Project Z has been put on hold due to excessive hostility.
Addendum 6: Project Z has been brought into contact with 'The Second.' (see document: PerfectPokémonProject) and was forced into copying it. Project Z successfully managed to copy The Second's body structure and appearance but further study revealed that Project Z failed to copy any of the special abilities that made the Second different from the baseline Larvitar.
Addendum 7: After repeated failures, the Council deemed Project Z a failure and further study as a 'waste of resources'. Any research regarding Z has been put on hold.
Project Z is to be terminated at the earliest convenience.
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The file ended there. I double-checked the date next to the final Addendum. That date was today.
Just as I read that final line the computer screen suddenly went black.
"What?" I asked out loud. I jumped up from the chair and stared at the black screen, expecting it to be some kind of prank.
A whooshing sound moved through the room and I could almost physically feel something moving. A presence that pressed upon reality and crashed into it like a wave.
My heart stalled.
The lights went out a second later.