Chapter 6

There's only one light burning in the Kerrigan household tonight, up in the study at the rear of the second floor. You can't actually see into the room from here, but you can picture the scene well enough: Leonard hunched before a keyboard in the semidark, fingers flying, casting his incantations over the computer.

What you can see from here is your old room. You sat in this very spot almost two years ago now, on the neighbors' roof, with legs dangling over the edge and eyes trained on the bedroom window just below your perch. Only that time, you were the one in the room dying while another waited outside with Absol, nervous and fidgety and unsure what to do. It had waited, because Absol told it to wait, and not interfere; there wasn't much to see, but somehow Absol knew when you had stopped breathing and prodded that one forward.

She'll be doing no prodding now. She watched you as you prepared, staring into the mirror trying to get the color of your eyes just right, testing your voice, fussing with your hair. She didn't say anything, though, and she didn't follow you when you left. Now it is her turn to wait and practice the art of noninterference.

But you haven't acted yet, and why? Your old room is dark and cold and empty, though you've sharpened your eyesight and can see through the gloom that it's exactly as it was that day, not even a bit dusty. From this angle you can't see, but you wonder—is the empty bottle of pills still sitting on the nightstand where it was left?

Leonard isn't the only one in the house. Gruff, the family's aged growlithe, is sleeping somewhere on the first floor; if you concentrate, you can just taste the edges of his dreams as they run in their confused little circles. He's no threat, surely—you'll be surprised if he even wakes up to come greet you. You run your fingers through your hair, on edge and not wanting to think about why, then grimace and tease it back into place. Honestly—after all the time you took getting it right in the first place.

This is stupid, you tell yourself. You've established everything you need to about the situation: Leonard is home. No one else is. It's not as though you're going to get a better opportunity. Irritated with yourself, you draw your legs up onto the roof and push yourself to your feet, then forcefully think yourself to the stoop.

Then, before you can hesitate, before you can talk yourself out of it, you ring the doorbell. Only now do you allow mild panic to set in. There's nothing you can do but stand and wait there, doubting, not fidgeting, definitely not fidgeting, as the seconds drag past. If only you didn't have to do this as a human. It would be easy to still the racing of your heart, to banish anxiety and anticipation entirely, but changing enough to do that would make it very hard for you to act like Matt Kerrigan.

Finally, you can hear movement inside the house. A light comes on in the foyer. The bolt turns, and the door opens a fraction. You find yourself looking into the face of Leonard Kerrigan, more haggard than usual, more disheveled. If he was planning to open the door further, he's forgotten. Instead, he's frozen staring out at you, the whites of his eyes huge and round in the semidarkness.

You'd been afraid that, in the heat of the moment, you'd forget all of your preparations. Your rehearsed lines would fly out of your head, and you'd be left a stammering idiot. But you find this is not the case. You channel all your nervous energy into a kind of poised focus and are able to summon up the casual smile you practiced in the mirror, nail the voice as you begin, “Dad...”

The door is open in an instant. Leonard Kerrigan throws himself at you, and that is when it all goes to hell.

You only barely resist the instinct to swat the man aside, as you would any other creature that jumped at you, and that moment of hesitation as you rein in your battle instincts leaves you no time to get out of his way. So it is that Leonard manages to catch hold of you, wrapping his arms inappropriately tightly around your torso. At least you manage to get your arms up and out of the way so they aren't pinned to your sides, but you're nevertheless stuck there, leaning out of Leonard Kerrigan's embrace, trying to make the minimum amount of contact, while he clings to you like a limpet for some reason.

Ah, wait. This is a “hug,” isn't it? You've seen these before. You know how this works. Yes, definitely you do. You lean forward a bit and awkwardly drape your arms over Leonard Kerrigan's shoulders and wait, hopefully, for further indication of what you should do.

Unfortunately, Leonard isn't giving you any cues. He's got his face buried in your chest, and he's making the most horrific wailing noises. The longer you wait there, the more nervous you get—he's making a scene. Leonard's making a scene! What if someone comes to investigate the noise? What if someone sees you?

“Dad,” you say. “We should go inside.”

If he hears you, he doesn't give any sign. You try extricating yourself from the hug, starting to panic and not really caring if you're being rude. But Leonard won't let you go, and you're afraid if you push him away too hard, you'll hurt him. Not an unwelcome outcome, but one that might be bad for your cover.

“Dad,” you say again. “Inside. We should go inside. Listen.”

He's still not listening. You try walking forward, pushing him ahead of you, but that only threatens to get you even more tangled up with him. For a moment, exasperation replaces panic. You could pick him up and carry him into the house if you needed to. He's lighter than you expected, actually, thinner than he looks under his sweater. But your head is going round and round with confusion, and you can't remember if you ought to be that strong or not.

You're standing there wrestling with a crying man and for one instant you feel the insane urge to burst out laughing. You look down at the back of Leonard's head, draggled and unwashed and graying, and listen for a moment to his pathetic whimpering. “I always knew you weren't dead... nobody believed me that I saw you, but I knew it, I knew what I saw, I knew you would never k-ki...” And then he descends into incoherence again, sobbing and coughing on his own tears, and you are almost—honestly. Why does being human have to be so confusing?

You take a reflexive glance around to make sure no one's watching—not that you could really do anything if they were—then half shove, half carry the man back into the house in what you hope would be called a firm, not rough, manner, and shut the door behind you. You set Leonard firmly aside, taking a moment to be sure he's not just going to lunge at you again the moment you let go. He appears to be trying to get ahold of himself, though, not babbling anymore and wiping the tears from his eyes, so you take the moment of peace to have a look around.

Here in the foyer it's dim, only one light still working in the chandelier. There's only one of everything here: one coat hanging on the hooks by the door, one umbrella in the holder. To your sensitive nose the smells of unwashed human and dishware are overwhelming; you can see the kitchen down the hall, with leaning stacks of plates piled in the sink and garbage overflowing from the can.

You surprise yourself in having to take a deep breath before you say the line, but say it you do. There's no going back now. “Dad. I am sorry, but I do not have much time. I am taking a great risk to be here in the first place. I need your help, Dad.”

“Help? You need my help?” His voice is shaking, his hands are shaking as he cleans his tear-soaked glasses on the front of his sweater. He almost laughs, makes a horrible noise of inhaling mucus. “Of course, Matt. Anything. Anything you need. What do you want?”

“I need you to get my pokémon back for me.”

“Your pokémon?” The glasses are back on his face and he squints through them, trying to make out your face in the dimness. “But why...”

“They are in League holding. I cannot access them. But I need them back, and I know that you can get them released.”

“Yes, yes, of course,” he says, brushing aside the thing you've been agonizing about for years. He reaches out and puts a hand on your arm, and you barely manage not to flinch away. “That's not what I meant. What is this all about, Matt? Where have you been?"

“I cannot tell you. The work I am doing is very dangerous, and if I told you, you would become a target.” You find yourself warming to your lies now that you've really started in on them. Secret agents are cool, after all.

To your surprise, Leonard Kerrigan flips from morose to angry in the space of a couple of sentences. “Come on, Matt!” he says. “A target of what? What's going on? You can tell me! Why are you only coming back now? I mean, after all this time the least you could have done would have been to let us know somehow—I mean, everyone thought you were dead, and I—” He slides a hand under his glasses so he can rub at his eyes and the bridge of his nose. “At the very least, your mother—”

He really isn't taking this as well as you'd hoped. Why can't he just be glad you're alive? You cut him off before he can work himself up even further. “I am sorry, Dad. No one was supposed to know I was alive. It would have been safer that way. I cannot tell you what I am doing, or where I have been. And no one else can know about it. You would not have to be involved, either, but you locked me out of my account. I need my pokémon back, Dad.”

He pauses with his hand still over one eye, and laughs. “What, getting mad at me for doing my job? If you weren't faking your own death, you wouldn't have to worry about your storage account.”

You honestly don't know how to deal with this. A glance around at the miserable little room doesn't lend you any ideas. You decide to be direct. “I am sorry, Dad, but I cannot stay long. If you want to talk, we can do it while you get my pokémon out of storage.”

He looks at you with an unreadable expression on his face, then sighs and removes his hand from your arm. “Up you go, then,” he says, pointing towards the stairs. You remember the way to his study from the last time you were here and are only too happy to lead. You're less happy with what you find when you step inside.

The area around the computer is cleaner than the rest of the house, but only barely. The machine itself is slick, of course, and obviously much loved. But the rest of the room is awash in old newspapers, from respectable publications to the most seedy, the kind that announce Pikablu sightings and report on people who've seen the face of Arceus in their breakfast cereal. These in particular have been going wild with the stories of the dead walking Kanto, but even the Saffron Times was only marginally more restrained in its reporting.

Leonard Kerrigan had found those stories, every one of them, and cut them out. There are others, too, reports of curious disappearances, unexplained thefts, that sort of thing, some actually related to you and some not, stretching back over the past two years. They're stacked in haphazard piles, some tacked to the walls alongside computer printouts, and overflow onto the floor in a slurry of words.

The sight is like a hot knife twisting in your gut. Ah, of course. For a few minutes, you'd actually forgotten who it was you were dealing with. Thinking back on your earlier feelings, you're disgusted with yourself. You do your best to keep the tightness out of your voice as you ask, “Dad. What is all this?”

“This?” he asks, stepping into the room behind you and gesturing languidly at all his incriminating papers. “I don't know, Matt. I was wondering whether you might be able to tell me.”

“What? Why?”

“Well, you see, Matt, it seems you aren't the only trainer out there to fake their death recently.” He sits down at the computer, which displays his bobbing porygon-Z as a screen saver. “I was just wondering if whatever this thing is you've gotten involved with has something to do with them, too.”

“I do not know anything about it,” you say immediately, then inwardly curse yourself for panicking. “I mean, I do not think so. I have not been keeping up with the news. What is it about?” Leonard isn't typing anything, just sitting at the computer and watching you. You remind yourself to stay cool and alert and that after all you won't solve anything by eliminating Leonard Kerrigan here and now, however easy it would be.

“Just what I said, Matt. Trainers who are supposed to be dead not staying dead. Showing up on the network even after they've been put in the ground.” He's looking at you very closely, and you force yourself to focus on his face and not on the computer screen behind him, where War lies close, so close.

This isn't working. It's clear you need a change of plan. You take a deep breath and prepare to go off the rails. “I am sorry, Dad. You are right. I am not the only one this happened to. I cannot say more than that, but I promise you that if you help me get my pokémon back, I will return soon. I am almost done, and then I can be with you and Mom again. I did not want to leave. I did not want to be a part of this. But now I am. I need your help, Dad. That is all I am asking for.”

Leonard Kerrigan sighs and rubs at his face again. “Of course, Matt. I don't understand, and I wish things could be different, but I'm glad you're alive. If you need your pokémon back, then I'll get them back for you. I just wish, though”—he stops rubbing and looks you in the face—“there's really no way you can let anyone else know that you're alive? Not even your mother? If you came to see me—”

“Not even you should know,” you say curtly. And how awfully true that is. If you hadn't been so careless back then, if he hadn't seen you, then perhaps this mortifying situation never would have arisen.

You're having to work hard to stifle your impatience. All this pathetic human blubbering. Why can't the man just get on with it, already? Standing here with the reminders of his scheming all around you is putting you on edge, fraying the ends of your temper.

He's still staring at you, and for a moment you are terribly close to doing something rash out of fear that he sees something wrong in your expression. But then he only shakes his head and says, “I see.” And then, mercifully, he turns to the computer and nudges the mouse to dismiss the bouncing porygon. You watch hungrily as he starts typing, torn between wanting to edge closer in order to see what he's doing and afraid that if you move you might somehow shatter this fragile, perfect moment when everything is going right.

A small pokéball teleporter set up on the desk spits a crackle of white light, then in one concentrated burst zaps a cluster of pokéballs into existence on the receiving platform. Leonard Kerrigan picks it up and holds it up in front of his face, picking out a pokéball you don't recognize, old and scuffed with a blue top on it. “You remember your first pokémon, don't you, Matt?” he asks, glancing at you out of the corner of his eye.

You tense. He wants to play this game, then, does he? You've made a careful study of Matt Kerrigan, and remember him as well as you think you can without ever having met him, but if Leonard begins to ask you serious questions about your past, you're going to be in trouble. This one is no problem, though. You nod and say, “Duke.” Duke the persian, family pet for several years before joining Matt Kerrigan on his brief and ill-fated journey.

“That's right,” Leonard says with a wan smile. “It's been a long time, hasn't it? Why don't we see if he still remembers you?”

Before you can protest, he tosses the pokéball to the carpet, and Duke takes shape in a flash of light. The small study is abruptly even more cramped as the appearance of a four-foot persian forces you to step back into a leaning stack of old magazines.

Duke blinks and snuffs at the air uncertainly, obviously disoriented. He's been in storage for a long time, and you wonder whether anyone even bothered to explain to him what happened to Matt before putting him away. Your heart is hammering even in the face of a pokémon so unprepared for battle. You hadn't been expecting this, not at all. You were prepared to deal with Leonard, but you aren't sure how to handle any of Matt's pokémon, aside from War—you know very little about them.

Nevertheless, you decide to hope for the best and go out on a limb. “Hello, Duke,” you start. The Persian turns deep brown eyes on you, confusion plain on his face. “Remember me? It is good to see you again.”

“What? Matt?” Duke rumbles, staring around at the cluttered study in blank incomprehension, catching sight of Leonard sitting by the computer. Well, at least he doesn't seem overtly hostile. You reach out your hand to pet him, but he shrinks away from your fingers, bumping clumsily against the desk as he goes. “What's going on here?” he asks, tense, baring his teeth just slightly.

You hurriedly draw your hand back, make placating gestures, but Leonard is happy to interpret the persian's bewildered behavior according to his own agenda. “I knew it,” he says, wearing a sickly smile. “You're not my son. And you are connected with the other dead trainers, aren't you? Who are you? And what”—the smile is gone, replaced with a grim expression that draws the skin tight over his cheekbones—“have you done with my son?”

“No, Dad—Duke—you don't understand. It really is me. I know I seem different. Some things... some things have happened. I did not mean for it to be like this. Please, you have to believe me.” Duke keeps looking back and forth between you and Leonard, fur starting to bristle in agitation.

“Is that so? Then just what it is that I should believe? Or is that something else that you 'can't tell me'?”

“I can't! I'm not lying. It really is dangerous! Come on, Dad, what is it that you want me to say?”

Leonard Kerrigan shakes his head, and you know his mind is already made up. “No. Just listen to yourself. You sound nothing like him—you sound like some kind of fucking robot. Who are you?”

You take a breath, clearing your head. You're about to make one more stab at diplomacy—but the evidence of the man's pathetic scheming is all around you, a stark reminder of the injustices you've suffered at his hands. War, trapped in the computer; you, forced into skulking furtiveness for fear of his discovery; your pokédex—you almost choke on bile at the thought. What's the point of discretion? You didn't come here to make friends, after all. You step back, skirting a stack of papers.

All you're trying to do is maneuver for extra space, but Leonard must think you mean to leave the room. He's quick to pounce. “Duke, stop him!”

That's all the excuse you need. There is a ferocious crack as Duke leaps headlong into an invisible barrier, a protect shield thrown up in a heartbeat. As the persian falls to the floor in a daze, you leap over him in one impossibly fast motion, the room blurring for a second before slamming into focus again as you land directly in front of Leonard Kerrigan.

He jerks backward, completely unprepared for how fast you managed close with him, and you grab his arm and wrestle the pokéballs out of his grasp. There's movement behind you as Duke leaps onto the desk, knocking a cascade of papers and old, coffee-encrusted mugs to the floor. You brace yourself as he jumps for you again, then catch him in the chest with your elbow and slam him into the side of the desk.

With your left hand you deliver a smashing brick break attack to keep the struggling persian down, and with the other you try to juggle the pokéballs without dropping any, rolling them around until your fingers can find the blue-topped one.

As Duke gets his legs back under him, badly bruised but now, at last, starting to realize that he really has to fight, you thumb the button on the front of the ball and call him back to captivity.

There's a moment of relative peace, and a last couple of paper shreds drift to the floor in front of the now-crooked desk. You stuff the pokéballs into your pocket and make for the door in earnest, but are jerked to a halt as Leonard grabs your arm from behind.

You turn to look back at him, surprised but not at all disappointed, because now the fool really is going to put himself in your way. If he's going to push you—well, who's to blame you if you push back? You look down into his desperate face, his teeth clenched, eyes tearing at the corners, as he tries to—what? Drag you back? Pull you down? What can he expect to do, after he saw you take care of the persian so easily? “Stop!” he's yelling. “Who are you? What have you done with my son?”

You smile, easily standing strong against his clumsy attempts to wrestle you down. You could kill him now, if you wanted. You have what you came for, and you would be eliminating a dangerous enemy. But it might not be wise. His death would bring an investigation, and for lack of any other motive, someone might begin to suspect that there was more to his ramblings about dead trainers and his living son than previously suspected. As it is, they think he's crazy, and if he tries to discuss your visitation with anyone, they'll only grow more sure. Best just to leave him something impossible to remember you by.

Your grin stretches wider and wider, splitting Matt Kerrigan's face ear to ear as jaws reconfigure to accommodate the rows of new teeth forcing their way out of your gums, gleaming sharp in the dim light. Fingers grow claws and irises bleed to red as you stare into Leonard Kerrigan's eyes.

Those eyes are widening, and the grip on your arm slackens as anger gives way to horror on his face. “What—just what the hell—” he starts.

“Your son is dead, you stupid old fool,” you say in a voice that comes out mushy from a mouth no longer meant for human speech. Leonard Kerrigan is still trying to say something, or at least he's moving his mouth, but there's nothing there for you to hear. You lean in closer and add, “And if you continue to get in my way, you will be next.”

The look of pathetic hopelessness on Leonard Kerrigan's face is exquisite, and you laugh as you press your free hand into his chest and shove him away from you, easily breaking his slack grip. You half-hope he'll come at you again, make some desperate final effort to deter you. But he just lies where he's fallen, cowering, staring at you in confusion and fear. You laugh again at his pathetic expression, flush with your victory, and leave the room unharried. Out in the hall, well out of sight, you pause for a moment and clamp down on your elation enough to concentrate and think yourself elsewhere.