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Newton brings him a calendar full of colourful nature photos of Hoenn. June’s photo is of the tide pools outside Lilycove City – tiny Corphish scuttling across the lichen-covered rocks, Staryu resting in the shallow waters, vibrant seashells strewn across the scene like chips of paint.
“Looks nice, right?” Newton says with a smile. “I’ve been thinking of a vacation, actually. Would you want to go? To Hoenn, I mean. Once you’re, uh… You know.” He makes a vague, fluttery gesture and clears his throat awkwardly.
Zero blinks.
“You… want me to come with you?” he asks, not quite believing.
“…Well yeah. Of course I do. Infi is also more than welcome.” He turns to the tiny hologram and raises an eyebrow. “How about it, my dear?”
Infi’s image flickers slightly as she seems to consider, then drops into a delicate curtsy. “As long as Master does not order otherwise, it would be my pleasure to accompany you, Professor Graceland.”
Zero stares at her. Is she… smiling? And the tone in her voice sounds almost amused. He programmed her AI to evolve over time, but only in the sense of information gathering and retrieval. He never imagined that she could ever sound so… human. Did Newton change something in her code when he recovered her?
Or is it merely his influence?
Back in his cell he hangs up the calendar, grateful for the splash of colour against the blank grey wall. He rummages around for a pen and marks the next important date with a red X.
“Counting down to something?” his cellmate – Bernard – asks. (Bernard has been here for a very long time. He was a young man when he got locked away, he claims, but that is all he will ever say. He is quiet and unobtrusive, speaking just often enough to be friendly, and for that Zero likes him.)
“My – my friend is coming again next week,” Zero says. He feels foolish as soon as the words leave his mouth. It’s silly, to await Newton’s next visit so eagerly, as if he were a child crossing off the days until his birthday. But Bernard is merely nodding.
“That’s lucky,” he says. “That you’ve got someone who cares enough to come by.”
“…Yeah,” Zero says, and swallows against the sudden tightness in his throat. “Lucky.”
.
.
He spends much of his free time in the library.
It’s startlingly well-stocked for a detention center library, but most of the books are novels, and he’s never been much for reading fiction. Instead, he retreats to the farthest table with the sketchpad Newton brought him and draws for hours on end. Blueprints, mostly, for inventions that don’t yet exist and probably never will. A collar for Pokemon that can convert their words into fragmented human speech. An earpiece that can detect and cancel nightmares. A floating machine high above the clouds that emits electromagnetic energy at differing frequencies in order to change the weather.
One day, after not getting enough sleep the night before, he finds himself drawing a newer, sleeker model of the Megarig. Realization hits him halfway through and he stares down at the diagram, pencil clutched tight in his hand, breath coming a little quicker. He drew it so many times back then. It’s not so strange that its patterns would be ingrained in his mind.
But all the same he rips the page in half, and tears it up again for good measure, and during Newton’s next visit Zero has trouble looking him in the eye.
“I’m working on an appeal for you,” Newton says brightly. “If I succeed you’ll get two months, maybe even three off your sentence.”
“…Thank you, Professor,” Zero murmurs, all the while wondering what it is he’s done to deserve this kindness.
.
.
There’s a rumor, Bernard says, that one of the men in Cell Block C used to be part of Team Galactic.
Zero sits up a little straighter when he hears this.
“Can you ask around?” he says. “Can you find out who?”
Bernard looks at him strangely but nods his agreement nonetheless.
His name is Victor, apparently, and Zero approaches him in the courtyard one day, during the short time they are allowed outside. He is in the middle of writing a letter, it seems, and glances up when Zero slides into the seat opposite him. He appraises Zero thoughtfully for a moment before setting down his pen.
“Were you really a member of Team Galactic?” Zero asks.
“…Yes,” he says. His eyes are rather tired and sad, Zero thinks. In this way they seem familiar. “Though I wasn’t very high up in the ranks, so if you want to know all the ‘secret inner workings’ then I’m afraid I don’t have much to tell you.”
“No, I actually… just wanted to ask what it was like. For you personally, I mean. Why did you join?”
“Why did I join?” Victor echoes. He laughs, and it’s a hollow, weary sound. “I don’t know, really. I just kept hearing people talking about them. Saying that there was this group called Team Galactic who wanted to make a new world and get rid of this shitty old one. And that appealed to me, I guess. A fresh start and a new world to live in. Someplace better than this. You know what I mean?”
Zero looks at him for a long moment.
“…Yeah,” he says finally, a heaviness in his heart. “I do.”
.
.
“Professor,” he says. “Why are you doing this?”
Across the table, Newton tilts his head to side and frowns. “What do you mean?”
“These visits and the appeal and all the things you bring me – ” Zero breaks off, words caught in his throat. His fingers curl into the hem of his shirt, twisting the fabric. “I don’t understand. Why are you doing all of this for a person like me? It’s not necessary. I’m not… I’m not worth the time…”
“You’re important,” Newton says fervently, leaning across the table, and seems to remember himself just as quick, a faint redness colouring his cheeks. He pulls back and coughs awkwardly into his hand. “And by that I mean you’re a genius, you’ve got so much potential and you’re so young, there’s still so much for you to – ”
“I believe, Master,” Infi interrupts, “what Professor Graceland meant to say is ‘you are important to me.’”
Newton slowly turns to stare at Infi with betrayal in his eyes. She does not look even slightly apologetic. Far from it, in fact.
“Hey now,” he mutters, trying to hide behind his hands in his embarrassment. “Cut an old man some slack, will you, Infi? It's hard to say stuff like that out loud.”
Zero’s chest aches.
“You’re very important to me as well, Professor,” he says, and to his credit his voice only trembles a little.
.
.
He speaks to Victor often, after their first encounter.
The fifth time they talk, he says:
“God, I just hated this world so much. I still do, I guess. There’s no order here, y’know? It’s all just chaos and it’s destroying us from the inside out. Cyrus saw it when other people couldn’t. He saw that this world was irredeemable.”
And for the very first time Zero finds himself disagreeing vehemently with Victor.
It’s not irredeemable, he thinks, and in his mind he can see Infi’s un-programmed smile and feel Newton’s hand gripping his as he’s pulled from the wreckage of the Megarig.
It’s not irredeemable at all.
.
.
“Well I’m back to giving lectures at Eterna University,” Newton says. “Not a full-time gig, of course, but maybe in a couple years I’ll try that again.” He grimaces. “Or maybe not. Teaching just takes so much out of me.”
“Really?” Zero says, with a faint, amused smile. “Out of everything, it’s teaching that takes up all your energy?”
“Hah, well… You know me. Sitting at a desk grading papers just isn’t my idea of a good time.” His eyes brighten with a sudden thought. “Oh! There’s a very clever student in one of my lectures, and you know what she asked me? She asked if I was working on any new projects. And I didn’t know what to tell her, which was a bit embarrassing in retrospect. I honestly hadn’t even thought about it til she brought it up. So… what do you think, Zero? Should we start something new?”
Zero stares at him.
“Start… something new?”
“Yeah. We’re going to need something to work on once you’re out of here. I know you get tend to get stir crazy if you don’t have a project to tinker with. You have any ideas? Lots of time for thinking in here; I’m sure you’ve come up with plenty already.”
Zero takes a shaky breath. The way Newton keeps saying ‘we’ is doing something strange to him. He reaches his hand into his pocket and pulls out a folded blueprint – he’s been carrying it with him in case inspiration struck at an inopportune moment.
“I had this idea,” he says softly. He unfolds the paper and lays it out in front of Newton. “A purifier for large bodies of fresh water. Only it’s shaped like a Pokemon – a calm, non-aggressive species, in this diagram I chose a Magikarp – in order to cause as little conflict with the native fauna as possible. It’s even programmed with AI so that it acts just like the species in question.”
Newton begins to pore over the blueprint, stroking his chin thoughtfully. After several minutes he’s nodding, and a grin spreads across his face.
“This is absolutely brilliant,” he exclaims. “I don’t even know what to say, Zero. I just… I love everything about it.” He shakes his head. “The way your mind works never ceases to amaze.”
“It might end up being pricey,” Zero says quickly. He doesn’t deserve all this praise. “And it’ll probably take years to build and program accurately – ”
“Hey, don’t worry about it,” Newton says. He reaches across the table to touch Zero’s hand, just a casual gesture that lingers a moment longer than it should. (The warmth of his palm lingers on Zero’s skin for many moments after that.) “We’ve got all the time in the world.”
.
.
He still dreams about the Reverse World, sometimes. It’s usually the same dream. He’s in one of those twisting, spiraling tunnels, gravity shifted so that his feet are planted firmly on the ceiling. When he looks out through the mouth of the tunnel he can see the Reverse World, its floating platforms and inverted trees shrouded by blue-ish mist, and every so often he can glimpse Giratina darting between them. He wants to walk towards the exit, wants more than anything to be there, but his legs refuse to move. This is how the dream always goes. He stands there and watches and wants, and eventually it all just fades away.
Tonight, though, the dream changes.
“Hey, Zero,” a voice is calling, from the other end of the tunnel, the end that is dark and indistinct. “Zero!”
Zero peers into the darkness. Something is slowly becoming visible at the other end of the tunnel. A pinprick of light. And then another, and another. Soon enough there is sunlight streaming in, and he can hear the sound of ocean waves, and when he narrows his eyes he can make out a rocky shoreline coloured pale with lichen and dotted with shallow tide pools.
He can move, he realizes. His feet are no longer weighted to the ceiling, and he looks back at the mouth of the tunnel, where Giratina has settled on a rocky outcrop and is watching him. It would be so easy, to walk towards the Reverse World. It would be so simple. He could stay there forever and shut himself away and never again have to deal with the selfishness of humans –
“Zero,” that voice calls again. He knows that voice. He turns his head and stares out at the oceanscape for a time, noticing the multitude of brightly coloured shells scattered around the tide pools. He can almost smell the salt in the sea air.
“Are you coming?” the voice asks.
“Yes,” he says, and smiles, and begins to walk towards the beach.