PART ONE: THIS IS (NOT) WHERE I BELONG

PROLOGUE

I don't like this. With every breath comes a sharp, sterile smell that makes me think of sickness and death. The air is thick with voices, overlapping and twisting around each other in a clamor of sounds with no recognizable pattern. Loud clangs accompany them, metal sliding into metal. It almost carries a musical quality, but not anything I would want to hear.

Something shifts on my chest- no, in my chest. Among the other noises comes something fleshy, a liquid squish that's closer to me than everything else. There's something moving inside of me, something small pressing toward my heart. Something, something, something. I try to open my eyes but can't. A great heaviness weighs down on my eyelids, as if I'm asleep and too exhausted to make them work. But I'm not sleeping, and I'm not tired.

Cold, a type of cold I've never felt before, washes over my chest. It makes the deepest part of me feel chilled, freezing slowly like I've been forced to swallow a gallon of ice water. There's a shout, completely alien to me in its words and sound. It echoes in my skull, bouncing off the other noises and ricocheting until it's stopped dead by a different sound. Stronger, more clear and determined than anything else. It's a drum, a steady beat that keeps me grounded to the uncomfortable surface I'm lying on.

Holding on to that sound, I attempt to move. My fingers are first, sitting against a cold, stiff fabric and bent just slightly. I pour every ounce of effort, every ounce of willpower in my body, into making some movement, some twitch. I want control. I want to know this is still my body, still my own bones and muscles and cells and heart.

I feel it after it happens. The third joint on my right ring finger bends toward the surface below me, pushing the tip harder into the fabric. It takes an insane amount of work just to perform something so small.

White-hot panic courses through me; I need to open my eyes to see what's inside my chest and what's in the air around me. Letting my finger relax, I re-focus all of my attention on my eyelids. I almost feel it, the smallest lift, but it's only on the right. The effort is too much and I let it go. I hate lying here, waiting and waiting for someone to tell me what the hell is going on. I know I don't have a choice, but at the same time I know this is wrong. In the depths of my mind I know I have to fight this, I have to stay awake.

There's movement in my throat and against my lips. It pushes inside of me, slipping deeper and deeper into my body. A terrible urge to vomit surges through me but I can't. I can't for the same reason my eyes won't open. The control is gone. Something is acting on me that I can't hold off. The strange squishing sound gets louder, overwhelming my ears and slipping deep into my brain. A second object reaches into my chest and presses against me. I feel a slick, sudden pull and a heavy breath bursts in my ears. But it is not my own. There is something over me, a living presence lending heat to my open chest. It stirs the air, making it shudder and shift as it slowly moves back.

I hear another shout. Louder this time, and almost clear. It reaches up to my ears from just beneath a heavy film of thick, dirty water. I try to grasp it, try to break the surface, but my fingers aren't strong enough and the sound disappears. Then the sensation in my throat grows stronger, snaking down and down further inside of me. A rush of air, of sweet, powerful oxygen, explodes in my chest. It starts to slink away, to crawl back to wherever it came from, but something forces it back inside of me.

Pressure builds on my right arm, and I feel a prick of pain in one very acute spot. The pressure doesn't leave, and whatever created it slides farther beneath my skin. Warmth holds it down, two thick weights grasping hard to my arm. They push into me and I feel a light tug, then the weights vanish as quickly as they appeared. A strange substance replaces them, elastic and thin over the tiny point of pain.

The intrusions into my chest are gone. The same cold remains, numbing me, holding me. I can still hear that heavy beat, that steady noise keeping me from losing my mind. A thin film, similar to the substance on my arm, is pressed over my chest. Careful but firm weights push down on my skin, the substance sticking tightly to its place.

I want to open my eyes so badly it burns in my brain. I have to know what this pressure is, what these bodies are around me. More than anything I have to see what's happened to my chest and where that strange sound came from. I gather my courage again, and force my effort into the muscles of my eyelids. The same heaviness weighs down hard, battling against me. It seals my eyes shut, and no matter how hard I try the most I can do is get a tiny twitch on the right. The left does not move, and for a panicked, fleeting

moment I wonder if there's anything there. I beg the eye to move, to confirm that I do, indeed, have something on the left side of my face.

But before I can learn anything from it a powerful wave of exhaustion slams into my mind, shattering any effort to control my own body. With an unbreakable, incredible grip it sinks its claws into my consciousness and pulls me down. I'm treading against it, struggling to get back to the surface of my thoughts. I have to fight it, I have to wake up and regain control of my mind. I know that if I lose this battle I'm losing something much more than a few precious seconds of consciousness. I'm losing a hold on myself, my grip on reality.

It keeps pulling me down, farther and farther into the heavy, silent depth of sleep. A terrible weariness slackens my thoughts. Weakness overwhelms me, breaking down any hope I have to set myself free. But before it pulls me under completely a new feeling reaches up through the heavy fog in my mind. Hatred races into my veins and snarls at the force pushing against me. Like a crazed beast struggling against its assailant, the hatred fights, grasps, claws, and seizes until there's nothing left. It sinks back into the depths with the rest of me, growling and hissing as it falls into darkness.

Light blazes in my mind, hitting a spot behind my eye and making my mouth wrench open in a silent, stolen scream. I take in a sharp, excruciating breath, my lungs screeching for air. The brilliance of the white light blinds me, forcing my eye shut tightly against the powerful burn. Something grasps my arm, fingers like claws as they yank my body backward. My own bones come to life, and I blink rapidly to rid my eye of the pain. I try to grab at the hands on me, but something keeps my arms held down hard. Straps bite into my skin as I pull against them. A flash, a spark of memory bursts in my mind, and I shudder. Yelling mingled with the pound of running feet as my body lifted off the ground and was laid carefully on a weak stretcher. It groaned beneath my weight, and I fought inside the fog of pain to open my eye for a brief moment. A blue gaze, strangely familiar and filled with unflinching adrenaline, stared back at me.

The memory fizzles out as suddenly and quickly as it came. Slowly, painfully, my eye adjusts to the light. It aches with the effort of staying open after being closed for so long. I realize there are voices around me, a few short bursts of sound that at first I don't understand. I suck in a shuddering breath, the world around me shivering into focus. My head pulses with pain, exhaustion gripping me down to the very deepest parts of my brain.

I gasp for breath, swallowing back the vomit that surges through my throat without any warning. My neck is bent down, my eyes locked on my lap. I can see the sickly, bare skin of my knees, everything above it covered in a thin green cloth. The images begin to dance and sway, pain rushing through my skull. I squeeze my eye shut, willing it to work.

"Hello," my eye opens wide and I jolt my head up to see where the voice came from. A man slowly comes into focus, sitting before me with one leg crossed over the other. He looks comfortable, relaxed. Beyond him I can see vague blobs of color floating, at first seeming to be very many in number. They shiver and shudder in the air before coming to a stop, allowing me to finally see there are three separate shapes.

Another memory blinks into my mind. A girl, small but strong, holds out a red object to me with an image and a page of information on its small screen. She speaks in an even, if exasperated, tone, her bright green eyes gleaming in the faint light.

My heart skips a beat and I struggle against the bands holding me down to the chair. The man in front of me doesn't move, but someone behind me does. A pair of strong, unyielding hands force weight on to my arms. A short, strangled cry escapes my lips. I know her. The girl, I remember her face and her name and everything. She is everything.

It was chasing her that brought me here. Chasing after the person who took her from me, hunting for revenge in a wretched hive. I cry out again, pushing my feet as hard as I can into the ground. I need to get out. I don't where I am, but I can't be here. The man across from me shifts slightly, and the weight on my arms grows stronger.

"I didn't expect you to have so much strength. Do you have any idea how lucky you are? You not only survived the Quarantine for over four years, but the botched surgery on the way here as well…" he shakes his head and the image blurs. I squint hard, anger boiling in my veins. "It doesn't matter now; everything is going to be okay. You're safe here, in the most skilled hands in the nation." His voice sounds filtered, as if it's blocked by a thin wall. "We can protect you here. You can start over."

I don't care about anything he has to say. An almost animalistic snarl tears through my throat and I thrash in the chair. The grip on my arms is strangling now, making my muscles burn as I fight to escape. Ready to tear whatever is holding me down to shreds with whatever I can, I turn my hate-filled gaze to my arms. Purple mist, as thin as a light fog but stronger than steel, keeping me pinned to the arm rests. The two weights almost look like hands, their shapes barely visible. Once again I am reminded of that girl, of the green-eyed girl I gave everything to avenge.

Haunter. Someone's Haunter is holding me down. I never would have thought a Ghost-type could have so much weight and power. But I know it's Haunter instinctively, as if someone told me flat-out that's what it was. "Let me go," I growl, letting my muscles relax. My throat and mouth burn as I force out the words, my chest begging for clean air.

"That's interesting… you shouldn't be able to speak." The man moves his legs so they're flat on the ground. One of the purple blobs behind him shifts to his side, and he sits up to take something from his pocket.

"Let me go." It's easier this time. The pain is leaving, finally giving me control over my own body. "Let me go."

"I can't do that. I'm sorry, but this is for your own good. We wouldn't have to restrain you so much if you'd stop fighting." He stands suddenly and holds out his hand. Something stops him and with a pang of hatred I don't understand, I realize there's a glass wall between us. "I understand you're upset and scared, but we only do this to protect you and everyone else in the city." He shakes his head, making a loud clicking noise that echoes against the glass. "We will keep you here for sixty days. You're lucky we found you now and no earlier; before this we would simply execute anyone who escaped the Quarantine. After all, at that point we couldn't possibly know who could be a carrier, or even an infected. We decided that now, after four years, anyone alive must have something worth saving about them."

"Let me go." The weight on my hands is crushing me, setting my bones on fire with pain. "Let me go!"

His thick brown eyebrows furrow. "Relax. I can do no more than promise you will be safe and happy in just a few hours." He sighs heavily and turns around, gesturing to one of his floating balls of gas. It produces for him a black PokeBall with golden lines on it, and somewhere in the back of my mind I know it's an Ultra Ball. "Alakazam," he calls simply, a bright flash of light searing into my brain. A large bipedal Pokémon stands beside him, its eyes glowing in the dark. "Do not fight it. You cannot," he says simply as he turns back to me.

I cry out for them to release me and surge forward in my seat, half-expecting the Haunter to keep me held down. But it doesn't, leaving me to fall out of the chair and to the ground, my head slamming hard against the dirty concrete. Breathing heavily, I push my palms into the floor and struggle against the pain that

explodes in my body. I manage a slight sitting position, my face pressed to the glass separating me from the man with the Ghastly.

He bends down and looks at me, his cool, dark eyes locking on to mine. I glare at him as best I can, wishing I could spit at his feet. "And I must apologize for your eye. We could fix much of the scarring, but the eye itself was damaged far beyond repair. I can only wonder about the horrors you've seen." He stands slowly, watching me with pity as if I'm some tortured creature. "Alakazam, begin." With that he vanishes into the fog of Ghastly behind him. I scream for him to come back, order him not to leave, but it doesn't matter. He's gone. Left me alone with the Alakazam.

Something tears through my thoughts, rips me from my consciousness into the blackness I climbed out of. I grasp my skull, pulling at my hair and sliding to the dirty ground as I battle against the grip on my mind. It struggles inside of me, ripping and tearing. Suddenly it sinks its claws into something powerful and wrenches upward, my eye widening as I feel it pull my thoughts away from me. I don't understand what's happening; I don't understand who is fighting me or where they came from. I don't know where I am or how I got here. And with a slow, sickening grasp at consciousness I realize I don't know who I am.

But before I let the darkness completely overtake me something reaches through it. It doesn't pull me out, but it keeps me hanging there as the claws surge around me. The force anchors me to it, even as whatever is taking over engulfs me.