FLOOD [Pokémon]

Chapter 45

???

He blinked, suddenly conscious, and realized that he'd been awake for quite some time: he sat atop a high shelf, staring out into a vast ocean that dropped down into a chilly abyss. Had he been resting with his eyes open?

No. There had been something strange about it... Both his eyes and head hurt, and he was shaking. In fact, his entire body wracked, as though he'd just experienced some sort of painful trauma. And he had. But what was it?

His loved ones. Yes, he'd seen them... Seen them in a way he couldn't quite understand. It hadn't been a dream... It had felt like some kind of violating vision, once forced inside his skull by a malicious force. His loved ones had been in it...and so had the man with the ice. The man had looked directly at him and given a sinister smile, and his mother, chained and beaten, lying heavily in the background of that terrible room, had screamed something at him.

Close your eyes! Close your eyes!

Then it had wound down, leaving him awake, trembling, confused...terrified.

Enough. It was just a dream... Then why was he so scared? Because you left them behind. Because the man with the ice hurt you, and you're afraid he's going to find you. Yes and yes... But no. This was not a dream. Something told him that it wasn't, something his mother had told him long ago... What he'd seen had happened. The man with the ice had seen him. He was looking for him.

His stomach, which had been gently rumbling, fell completely silent as his insides woundsthemselves into knots. He looked over his shoulder, almost expecting to see something on the far horizon, something coming for him... But no. The sea was still and empty. But the dread did not disappear.

Find something to eat. And then surface. He can't find you that way.

Trying to put his misgivings out of his mind, he got up and went. He stopped to graze on a patch of seaweed, and then finally surfaced and took to the air. Flying hurt — he only had the energy to stay aloft for thirty minutes before he had to land again. Luckily, he came across an island, a spit of sand sporting a giant column of sandstone with a single tree growing on top. He landed here and curled up beneath the tree.

He didn't expect to sleep, but he went quickly, and slept like the dead.

***

NERO

Sunday, April 8, 2018

When I woke up, I could barely breathe — the water passing over my gills was hot and tasted like blood.

Groggily, I blinked, trying to clear my vision, but things remained dark. There was light somewhere far above... But I was still in deep waters, still hiding. Pain and delirium had not made me forget — the soldiers, I was hiding from the soldiers, the ones who'd set themselves down out by Litter's Seamount. Hiding, rather than risking leading them back to Jude and Magdalene. A pang went through me, bringing me further back into consciousness. Jude and Magdalene... What had become of them?

No, I couldn't answer that question yet, not without knowing what had become of the soldiers. Where were they? Were they still after me? I couldn't tell — it was too dark, and pain was already beginning to crowd my senses, making it hard to use my eyes and ears. For certain, that hadn't changed — the arrow was still in my shoulder, and my lifeblood was still steadily draining out around it, slithering silently up and away from my body, up to the surface.

But my location had changed — that's right, since I'd descended into this canyon, I'll fallen unconscious twice more, each time after the solders had crept closer to my position. They'd been a lot braver than I'd expected — maybe I was the only one of us who associated trenches and black canyons with past traumas, but these soldiers had had no problem diving down into the deep after they realized that I'd slunk into the dark, pawing around, long-calling to one another as they'd searched for me. I'd been forced to abandon the narrow crevice I'd made my hiding place when they'd gotten too close, and what had followed with a long, two-hour game of hide-and-seek, where my only plan had been to lose them in the dark.