After three taxis, I finally found the correct café. Why Courtney was drawn to this particular café in the worst spot in the city; I have no clue. At least it isn’t in a shady alleyway; it’s just on the corner of three blocks.

 

The inside is…red. Very red.

 

I’d say this fits Courtney’s theme, but there’s a glaring issue with that. With the exception of the staff, Courtney, and me, all other patrons are wearing the exact same outfit even for the different genders. They’re wearing orange suits with a white shirt and black tie, black loafers, black gloves, orange sunglasses, and a belt buckle that takes up their entire lower abdominal region that has an orange flame on it. Their hair, hopefully dyed, is the same shade of orange as the rest of their outfits. The only difference in their uniforms is that the men have a single curl of their hair while the women have two curls.

 

Everyone stares at me as I walk towards Courtney, only looking away in unison once I sit down but remaining in near silence. Even the staff look away. Courtney and I lean in together. “So, you know I was one of two teams for my region?” She whispers.

 

“Yeah,” I whisper back. “Is this one of mine?” The glaring uniformity of everything kind of creeps me out.

 

She shakes her head slightly. “Not exactly. In Hoenn, there are three major legendary pokémon for us: Groudon, Kyogre, and Rayquaza. Team Magma wanted to control Groudon. Team Aqua wanted to control Kyogre. Rayquaza got involved when the two legends started fighting.”

 

She looks back to the crowd, affirming that nobody is listening in. “You only have one team for your region. Therefore, they might be trying to take advantage of all of the legendaries.”

 

My mind runs a blank on the names of our region’s legendary pokémon. Honestly, it never intrigued me because I never thought I would get involved in anything related to this.

 

“Okay,” I reply…because how do you respond to that? “Do you have an explanation for why nearly everybody in here looks identical?”

 

She shrugs her shoulders. “Difficult recruitment drive and a bootcamp is what we used to enforce uniformity. Only the admins and executives were allowed our own outfits.” She puts her hood on and taps the horns. “Tabitha, the other admin, didn’t have these.”

 

I lean back in my chair, causing it to creak slightly. Everyone’s attention snaps to me, then immediately relaxes. Slowly, I lean forward, unnerved by the sudden attention. Courtney taps my arm, grabbing my attention, and points towards the exit.

 

As we leave, once again everyone stares at us. Courtney and I keep facing forward, refusing to let our expressions show. I don’t know how she’s feeling, but she switches between confident and shy, so it’s really just a crapshoot.

 

The second the door closes, conversational noise begins to emit from the café. Without turning to me, Courtney commands, “Meet me here at midnight. I want to show you something.” Then she turns and walks in the direction of my house.

 

I narrow my eyes in curiosity. Courtney has lived a life on the other side of the law. Nowadays, she can barely buy anything without being questioned by law enforcement, even more so for her former leader, Maxie.

 

———————————————————————————————————————

 

Eight minutes after midnight, Courtney finally arrives at the café, holding a small key in her hands. I raise an eyebrow at her. “I picked it off of one of the employees,” she replies, unapologetic.

 

Walking inside, we aim straight for the cabinet at the back where we had sat earlier that day. “Let me guess.” I point at the cabinet. “Their secret base of operations is behind that cabinet.”

 

“Yep,” she cheerily says.

 

“Their secret base is on top of where they obviously meet,” I mutter. “How can our police be this incompetent?”

 

She shrugs. “That’s what happens when the highest level of law enforcement in your country is too busy being a movie star.” Pausing, she points a finger at me. “Technically, you’re a part of that law enforcement as well, and you didn’t know about this.”

 

I purse my lips. “Fair.”

 

With a winning grin, she turns to the cabinet. “Open sesame.” With that headache-inducing password, the cabinet slides over, revealing a steel door. I resist the urge to rip the door off its hinges and follow Courtney through it.

 

After no more than maybe eight feet, we met with another door with a keypad next to it. “I needed you for this part,” she says, whipping out a screwdriver.

 

As she starts disassembling with the keypad, I make a guess. “You need the computational power of my arms to crack the password?”

 

She nods as she reveals the inner circuitry. “Don’t think I haven’t noticed you fervently upgrading your equipment after the accident. I’m happy that you’re taking the precautions necessary to keep yourself safe, but I’m worried that those arms might be influencing you.”

 

I tilt my head and release my arms. “What do you mean?”

 

She steps to the side to give me access to the panel, and unwaveringly answers, “I look at the blueprints for your design. You’ve connected several rudimentary AI into your head with only a circuit board keeping you in control.”

 

As I activate the brute-forcing protocol, I turn to her. “I put backups upon backups in that thing.”

 

She crosses her arms. “You also were exposed to several more gigajoules of energy than it was ever designed to withstand. The thing is merged into your spine!” She’s shouting now, frustrated with…me.

 

I remain silent, letting her calm down. I don’t…know what to say. Socializing was never my strong suit. Somedays I wish it was.

 

She takes a deep breath. “It may not control you…completely, but it definitely has influence over your actions.”

 

I unplug from the wall as the door swings open. “Or you have other psychological issues that need to be addressed,” she finishes. Immediately, she starts walking down the stairs behind the second door.

 

In the lower level of this…laboratory, though we truly don’t know how many levels there are, we find many doors that use keycards instead of keycodes that cannot simply be removed without me ripping them out. So, we walk onwards, hopeful of finding something to interface with.

 

Eventually, after about 20 minutes of searching, we found an unlocked door. By this point, we’ve gotten extremely paranoid with the absence of…people around, so Courtney is clinging to my back, with her bust pressing against me, while I crawl around on the ceiling like an Ariados.

 

In this unlocked room, there is a single computer with a screen the size of 75% of the wall. After making sure the room was clear, even checking for any security cameras, I let us down, plugging an arm into the terminal.

 

“I’ve had a thought,” I say as I brute-force the password again.

 

“What is it?” Courtney says as she pulls up a rolling chair, making herself comfortable.

 

“Lysandre Labs…the public side, I mean, operates in a near monopoly with being responsible for 87% of all technology sales in Kalos. If they’re doing something like this, could it be possible that everything they produce would have a backdoor in it?”

 

She shrugs. “Probably. It’s what I would’ve done.”

 

I turned to stare at the screen, finally getting the password and saving it to my arm’s memory. “Same.”

 

Courtney hops up, using the provided mouse and keyboard to scroll through the files, and I scroll with my mind.

 

Minutes pass with little achievement. “Everything’s password locked!” Courtney shouts in a rare moment of frustration.

 

“And if not, it’s encrypted beyond my processing ability,” I comment idly. We had agreed after the first few dead ends to mark down files that appeared interesting. Of course, we’re going to return to dig through files like Project Z, genetic notes, member information, base locations. What some might call, ‘The incriminating stuff’.

 

It’s all for naught right now since there’s nothing that isn’t encrypted.

 

Courtney slumps over in defeat. “Well, let’s get back—” The door handle behind us jiggles. Immediately, I log out, pull Courtney back onto me, and climb up to the ceiling.

 

A person who could be described as a fat, balding scientist walks in the room, shaking a plastic container. He’s clearly a different level of authority here since he’s not an identical grunt, and his uniform is different. It has the typical flame-orange motif, but he has white gloves with an extra pair of blue surgical gloves hanging out of his pocket. Instead of glasses, he has something more akin to welder’s goggles.

 

He sits down at the computer, putting his container to the side. He opens up a topographical map of Kalos, showing two glowing dots on it. One is to the north near Laverre City, and the second is east towards Anistar City. “Hmph. No new messages,” he grumbles. “No new progress.” After huffing again, he reaches under the desk, pressing on a switch of some kind, probably a button, that opens a secret panel on the front of the computer.

 

Leaning down, just a little to see, I find him pulling an energy drink from the mini fridge that was apparently built into the computer terminal. I think that brand was banned in all of Kalos a few months ago for the lethal amounts of caffeine in it.

 

“All for the good of Team Flare,” he lazily mock-cheers as he cracks open the drink. Turning to the plastic container, he opens it to reveal a salad.

 

Okay, yeah… He’s important, but not the very top if he got assigned to work the midnight shift.

 

With his attention on his salad and screen, I quietly inch towards the still-open door, immediately diving through once I’m confident.

 

Courtney doesn’t say a word until we’re back outside. The entire time that executive was in the room with us, she was holding onto me tighter than normal, hands feeling clammy.

 

“I-uh…” She stutters, finding words difficult to cultivate through her adrenaline. “Can we pick this up tomorrow?"

 

I nod in quiet agreement, already planning the rest of my sleepless night as I prepare to take advantage of this treasure trove of knowledge beneath my feet.