The silence will not deter me like it once did!

Here is the next - enormous, climactic and emotional - chapter. We are nearly at the end of book three.

Happy reading everyone!

Cheers!

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Chapter 81 – Lance Hudson versus Joseph Sterling.


Lisa’s silent scream haunted her forever: she mouthed Electivire’s name, roared it at the top of her lungs, screamed that she loved him as his furred body fitted violently on the laboratory floor before, abruptly, falling limp.

A sweaty hand grabbed at Lisa’s arm and a searing pain coursed through her skin: her arm had been slashed by Electivire’s claws.

“Lisa, come on, get up!” Jamie cried urgently. “No, back off!” he shouted, pointing the Uzi at Ninetales’ paws and letting off a loud round of bullets, which pinged deafeningly off the steel floor.

Ninetales recoiled instinctively, before slowly advancing again.

“Electi – elec –” Lisa spluttered, breathless and winded, as Jamie repositioned his grip on her arm and dragged her away from the pokémon; her body slid smoothly over the blood-splattered metal.

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry!” Jamie cried, firing off another round at Ninetales, Dragonite, Fiskmire and Aipom. “I had no choice … he was going to kill you …”

Sliding along the floor, Lisa looked up at his face: he was sprayed with deep crimson blood and his black eye was now so swollen it was almost shut, but through the battle scars, she saw devastation in his eyes for the first time, his lip spasming.

Lisa stared soullessly at Electivire’s body and felt a gaping nothingness within her. She knew, although her mind grappled desperately with the thudding reality before her, that she would not be able to feel it right then … or perhaps ever …

“Wait there!” Jamie ordered, releasing Lisa’s arm. He had dragged her behind a steel lab bench, protecting her from view of the pokémon. “Sarah, we need to get them back in their pokéballs …”

“Right …” Sarah’s voice was a panicky wisp of smoke.

“If I hold them back with the gun, reckon you can get their pokéballs and recall them?” Jamie cried.

“I – I’ll try –” Sarah spluttered anxiously, her face pallid.

The lab reverberated again with the jarring throb of gunfire. Still trying to catch her breath, Lisa stayed on her back, glazed eyes fixed on the ceiling as waves of pain rushed over her, her gut contracting with agony. When Jamie took a second to change from the Uzi to the AK-47 – he had run out of ammo – Lisa was able to hear, through the closed metal door, the chaos of battle still raging in the antechamber. Someone screamed, “TAKE HIM OUT!” and another voice bellowed, “FIGHT LIKE A MAN, COWARD!”

And then, her aching heart buoyed slightly, Lisa heard Gavin’s cocky yell:

“Better luck next time, fucktard!”

There was a tortured scream, followed by a new burst of gunfire – both within and without the lab.

Lisa tuned her throbbing ears back into the scuffle at the far end of the lab: after a final clatter of gunfire, Sarah’s voice emerged triumphantly, “RETURN!”

“YES!” Jamie cried; Lisa heard them high-five one another.

Their footsteps clattered on the metal before their pale faces swam into Lisa’s line of sight.

“Are you alright, Lisa?” Sarah asked breathlessly.

“I will be …” Lisa muttered.

Jamie’s eyes were wide, his expression sneer-free; he looked utterly devastated.

“Lisa … I don’t know how I can ever make up for what I did … I … I’m so sorry …”

Lisa couldn’t return his gaze, and yet she was not sure whether she hated him for killing Electivire or not.

“So much for pokémon rights, hey Jamie?” she said acidly, her emotions polarised. “You took one’s life.”

Jamie’s dark eyebrows bounced off his peroxide hairline; shame morphed into solemnity.

“It’s life wasn’t as important as yours,” he said simply.

“It was going to kill you, Lisa,” Sarah added fervently.

Lisa turned to her keenly.

“You said the Union had used the technique before,” she said slowly. “What have they done to my pokémon?”

Sarah retied her brown hair into a ponytail as she spoke.

“Lance and I have discovered that the Union are evoking three ancient techniques for using – or in this case, abusing – pokémon for means other than simply battling,” she said quickly, before abruptly muttering, “Oh!”

“What is it?” Jamie asked.

Sarah flicked her hand as though she had just burnt it on a hot plate.

“Stabbed myself with a bobby pin,” she muttered surreptitiously, removing her hands from her hair.

“So what are the techniques?” Lisa pressed, wincing as a residual wave of pain tumbled through her gut once more.

“One is Sentrying, where pokémon can be used as sleeper guards, their vision or knowledge tapped into by another force, usually without their knowledge. And what we just saw here is known as Puppeteering, where a pokémon’s entire conscience – its body, its mind – every function it has – is put into the enslaved service of the employer. The employer – in this case, the Union – has total mind and body control of the Puppet.

“The results I’ve read about in some of the Guard’s op debriefs have been … gruesome … to say the least,” Sarah shuddered. “Some of the Union’s enemies have been murdered in their sleep by their own pokémon. Torn limb from limb. Sometimes as their families watched.”

Lisa gaped; Jamie swore loudly.

Sarah fixed Lisa with a keen, level gaze.

“Electivire would have been programmed to kill you, Lisa,” she explained. “Jamie saved your life.”

Amid the pain in her stomach – which had now become a dull, nearly bearable ache – Lisa felt a spark of rage ignite.

“This was Veronica’s idea of a joke.”

“Seems like it,” Sarah sighed.

“What’s the third technique?” Lisa asked at length, when it became clear Sarah had finished.

“What?” Sarah asked, her brow wrinkling with mild bemusement.

“There’s Sentrying, Puppeteering, and … what’s the other technique? You said there were three.”

“Did I?” Sarah asked incredulously.

“You did,” said Jamie.

“Then this night has really mucked around with my head after all. There’s just the two,” she shrugged.

All three of them jumped suddenly: there was an ear-splitting explosion from beyond the silver door. Panicked shouts rang out. “THEY’VE CALLED FOR BACK UP!” Marina screeched.

Someone pounded on the silver door; Darius’ muffled voice came through.

“GUYS, HURRY UP, WE’RE ABOUT TO BE TOTALLY OUTNUMBERED!”

Jamie threw the empty AK-47 to the ground and stole the dead Union agent’s silver revolver.

“I’m thinking we get outta here the same way that blonde bitch did …”

Lisa let them haul her to her feet.

“Can you walk?” Sarah asked gingerly.

“More importantly, can you run?” Jamie asked, his hand raised to the white button beside the silver door that linked the lab to the antechamber.

“I’ll have to, let’s go,” Lisa said, taking a deep breath and wincing as her rib cage stuck her lungs like a needle.

“THERE’S AN EXIT THROUGH THE LAB!” Jamie roared through the silver door.

Darius’ hoarse voice rose over the chaos of gunfire and pokémon cries beyond.

“WE’RE GOING THROUGH THE LAB! GAV, GET BACK DOWN HERE; MARINA, C’MON; JIM, ROD, AMY … COME WITH US!”

“NO CHANCE!” roared a deep voice that Lisa thought sounded like Donovan’s. “YOU KIDS GO, WE’LL HOLD ‘EM OFF –”

The silver door hissed open: at once, the deafening noise of mixed close and ranged combat struck them; Lisa glimpsed a female Union agent clawing at a Guard member’s face; above them, Gavin rode atop his Skarmory, flitting rapidly above the agents below, avoiding gunfire with Agility as he rained electric fire down upon the Union agents with the Buzzball.

Darius rolled through the door, the Stunner in his hands accidentally discharging as he hit the ground; a yellow bolt of light smashed through a shelf of beakers, dusting the floor in shattered glass. Marina charged through next, a trickle of blood tainting her blue hair, a Stunner in her arms, followed by a string of pokémon belonging to her, Darius and Gavin. Just before the door slid shut, Skarmory gave an almighty battle cry and swooped down from the ceiling of the antechamber, sliding with needle-like precision through the door and landing on the steel with a spine-shredding metallic scrape.

“Woooooooo!” Gavin roared, guffawing, his face bright red as he pumped the air with his fist.

“Adrenaline junkie,” Marina shot at him pejoratively, recalling some of her more battle-scarred pokémon. She gasped. “Lisa – what happened?”

“I got my pokémon back … mostly …”

There was a hiss as the door slid open once more: everyone whirled around as a very tall, lean man entered. His bare arms were covered in tattoos; a black and white bandana held his short bleached hair back.

His jeans were draped with long metal chains; odd, rectangular plastic devices hung from them.

Lisa waited for one of them to shoot the Union agent down. She was completely thrown when Marina cried, “Rod, you’re meant to be holding the Union off!”

Rod seemed impervious to her contempt: he stroked his stubbled chin and reached for one of the plastic devices.

“Donovan and the others can take care of that,” he shrugged distractedly, eyeing up the complex-looking scientific equipment on the left wall of the lab; there was an almost hungry look in his eyes. “Mmm mmm … I’m gonna have a little party here …”

“Rod’s a demolitionist by trade,” Sarah said in response to Lisa and Jamie’s worried looks. “We brought him here to … wreak some havoc, basically.”

“And wreak I shall,” Rod muttered, chuckling as he gnawed on a toothpick he held in his mouth. “This place is gonna go sky high … I’ll be buggered if the whole fucking volcano doesn’t fall to bits.”

“He’s an optimist,” Sarah added.

“Okay, let’s move, guys, seriously!” Lisa urged; her heart was pounding. Several realities had returned to her as she recovered from Electivire’s attack: namely, the fact that her parents, and Tom and Miki, were also on the island somewhere, questing for the Fourth Key and battling the Union, too. Were they all still fighting, or …

“No,” Lisa said firmly to herself as she and the other five jogged to the far end of the lab, leaving Rod to his work; she refused to entertain the thought that anything should have happened to her family. “No, they’re still alive, they’re okay,” she muttered obsessively, ignoring Jamie’s obtuse glance.

Marina, Darius and Gavin cried out in shock at Electivire’s blood-drenched body still sprawled on the floor; Lisa did her best not to look at him. She closed her eyes and steeled herself, humming gently, and as she did so, she felt the terrible wound in her heart crust over.

“The pokéball – it wouldn’t take him back in,” Sarah whispered apologetically.

Lisa ground her teeth and said nothing.

Marina slammed the butt of the Stunner into the white button beside the silver door through which Veronica had disappeared. It hissed open. They filed through quickly and the door breathed to a close behind them.

The lab was another world away. They were once more in a poorly-hewn rock tunnel, lit only by flickering wooden torches, their iron sconces affixed to the shimmering wall.

“What?” Sarah said blankly, realising that every eye was on her.

“Well, where do we go?” Gavin demanded.

“That depends what the plan is!” Sarah cried defensively. “We’re getting out of here, right?”

Lisa and Gavin shook their heads in sync; there was no need to communicate.

“Mum and Dad and everyone else needs help …”

Sarah’s rust-coloured eyes seemed to bulge in disbelief.

“Lisa, come on … you got beaten up really bad in there … and most of your pokémon have fainted. Your arm’s still bleeding!”

“The Union have done worse to both of us before,” Gavin said resolutely, his chestnut-brown eyes ablaze. “You can all do what you want, but I’m not done giving ‘em what for yet.”

“Nor am I,” Lisa said firmly. “And the Guard needs us …” And my family needs me, too.

Sarah blinked.

“But we’ve all nearly been killed! So many times!” she cried.

“That’s why they call it a war,” Marina said sardonically.

“We’re not weak,” Darius said. “We’re not retreating now. We’re Guard members. We should stick with the rest of them.”

Sarah crossed her arms, her lip quivering apprehensively.

“You realise the odds of all six of us surviving this are astronomically bad, don’t you, Darius?”

“Not really,” Darius said seriously. “The Union still thinks Lisa, Marina and I are Guardians … and they probably know that Gavin’s somehow involved, too.”

“If you or Jamie want to leave now,” Marina said, abandoning her sarcastic nature, “and get back to the beach, and wait for us in one of the boats, then you can. None of us would think less of you for it.”

Sarah looked desperately for Jamie.

He tilted his head, wincing apologetically, and spun the barrel on the silver revolver.

“I’m in.”

“Then I’ve got no choice. We go left,” Sarah said flatly, marching past them all and stalking further up the tunnel, apparently in high dudgeon.

Marina frowned in dismay.

“Sarah, nobody’s forcing you –”

She wheeled around to face them, her hair slipping from its ponytail. Her pretty face was set in a mask of suppressed fear.

“I’m choosing to come with you,” she said through clenched teeth. “Trying to get back to the beach completely alone? Suicide mission. Let’s get this over with.”

She trudged onward, the torches silhouetting her slender form.

“I’ll lead the way,” she said. “The teams were due to rendezvous about now if possible in the cone at the centre of the volcano. I know a shortcut through the Union’s rec centre … come on!”

*

Sarah led them through a complex labyrinth of tunnels and chambers, each one deserted and silent. It was an oddly eerie feeling to be jogging along in silence when mere metres away, vicious battles were raging … people and pokémon were being murdered in hot blood …

“This is the mess hall,” Sarah cried, leading them through a drab green-and-grey hall crammed with graffitied pine tables. “We’re getting close now!”

Flanked by Darius, Stunner at the ready, she bounded through a set of double doors at the far end of the mess hall.

Lisa heard the commotion before she saw it: Sarah’s shriek prompted her to run, pushing past Jamie and throwing the double doors open, Buzzball in hand.

She ground to a halt: they had entered what looked like a high school gymnasium, except the walls were draped not with medals, honour boards or photographs, but with broad strips of black material emblazoned with a silver, runic symbol.

There was another set of double doors at the opposite side of the gym. Above the doors was another strip of black material: enormous silver letters proclaimed, “ONCE UNITED, NEVER BROKEN”. At the base of the doors, the gored body of Larry O’Brien was strewn, clearly dead.

Sarah was screaming hysterically, standing by the body and pulling at her hair in absolute terror. Darius cried out to her, tried to scream reason and calm in her ears, but to no avail.

“It’s too much!” she wailed, hyperventilating. “Too much! I used to talk to him on the phone! I pretended to be his daughter … we talked about casual stuff, stupid stuff …” She clutched at her chocolate-brown hair, tugging at her ponytail. “WE WERE SO CAREFUL!” she screamed. “HOW – HOW DID THEY KNOW IT WAS HIM?”

Darius pulled her into a forceful embrace, stroking the back of her head gently as she sobbed hysterically into his shoulder; over his back, he made an alarmed face at the others.

“He was a double agent for us,” Lisa elucidated dully. “He’s the reason I escaped the Union a week ago … It’s thanks to him that any of this happened tonight.”

“Guess someone was onto him,” Gavin observed blankly.

“Guys – what’s that?” Marina asked, pointing at a dark shape beside the body.

Lisa glanced to where she was pointing, taking in the grotesque sight of Larry’s corpse along the way, and finally she knew that she had reached saturation point: no sight could shock her anymore, not after tonight. Not even the deep red ‘X’ gashed across Larry’s chest, or the blind look of horror in his white, open eyes, or the slimy clear substance that mingled with the pool of blood nearest his gut.

Lisa surveyed the object Marina had pointed out: it was a long, rectangular box made of ebony, sitting about a metre from Larry’s left hand.

Its black velvet-lined lid hung open: the box was empty.

“That’s where the Union kept their keys,” Lisa said, her memory catching up with her optic nerve. She recalled Joseph Sterling brandishing the box – complete with the first two keys – in the caves of Mt Fairfax. She felt a sudden surge of pride in Larry. “He stole the Union’s only two keys.”

“And he was murdered for it,” Darius said, still patting Sarah, who had stopped making noise but was still shaking uncontrollably.

“And whoever killed him took the keys,” Gavin sighed, tracing his finger over the velvet lining.

“It must have been Sterling,” Lisa scowled, wincing as her solar plexus gave its regular two-second convulsion.

“I can’t take this anymore,” Marina said flatly. “Guys – we have to keep moving. I’m gonna be sick if we don’t …”

“Yeah, let’s go,” Jamie chipped in quickly.

Lisa nodded, all too keen to sterilize her brain. What better way to remove the stain left by Larry’s corpse than with a shot of adrenaline to the head?

After Darius had calmed Sarah down, she resumed her role as navigator, albeit with a significant deficiency of gusto. Indeed, the group’s morale was shot: the energy that had propelled them from the lab – the Union in hot pursuit – was now almost nothing more than a memory.

“We haven’t seen anyone for ages,” Gavin remarked, vocalising Lisa’s thoughts a second before she did. “Where the hell’s the war?”

“Sarah said this was a shortcut,” Jamie said, his tone only just falling short of accusatory.

“It is a shortcut,” Sarah sniffed, as she led them from the gymnasium to another antechamber, a second barracks, a string of offices and several adjoined supply caves, most of which were crammed with wooden crates marked either ‘AMMO’ or ‘FOOD’.

She halted in her tracks suddenly, leaning against an anomalous crate marked ‘DEFENCE’, wiping her tearstained eyes with the back of her left hand.

“I’m taking you guys through the quickest and safest route,” she said stiffly. “The Union’s barracks and offices are totally abandoned at the moment – the battles are all taking place in the entrance tunnels and in the cone of the volcano, which is where we’re heading.”

“I wasn’t having a go at you, dude,” Jamie said hastily.

“Then don’t say things with that tone!” Sarah cried hoarsely.

“Guys, let’s not fight,” Lisa said tiredly; it suddenly hit her that it must have been well into the wee hours of the morning and yet they were still preparing to charge into an armed mêlée.

“I’m not fighting with anyone. I’m not in the mood,” Sarah sighed.

She pointed at a low, wooden door at the end of the supply room, about five metres ahead.

“That door leads to a kind of baggage dock for the Union; right off that is the cone itself. Unless something huge has happened, we’ll be running into the middle of another battle.”

She swallowed with clear difficulty.

“Be ready.”

Her words – spoken in her soft, wounded voice – rang out as a battle cry. Everyone responded like clockwork, like trained soldiers: Gavin readied Skarmory’s pokéball and the Buzzball; Darius and Marina checked their Stunners; Jamie flicked the safety off his gun; and Sarah stretched her arms in an ethereal, Oriental style. Amid the scuffle, Lisa listened for the sound of battle, and heard it. There were dull thumps, the frequent rattle of gunfire … it sounded close.

A cartridge clicked in her brain: a vial of adrenaline was crushed into her bloodstream, a drug she loved and loathed. Her heart began to hammer anew, her face hot with raging blood. She was going into the fire, again, like a braindead bull charging at an electric fence time and time again. But this time, she was going into the fire for what would, hopefully, be the last time …

Setting her Stunner to immobilise, she faced the others.

“Let’s do this,” she said.

Her frightened face remarkably resolute, Sarah wrenched the door open; and at once, the sound of screams and explosions intensified. Lisa exchanged a determined look with Gavin before charging through the door after Jamie.

The metallic baggage dock was little more than a glorified vestibule: they jostled for space, Lisa jumping with fright as she felt someone’s Stunner poking into her ribs.

“Go, go, go!” Gavin roared, slamming his fist into a white button beside the silver roller door on the far side of the dock that divided them from the cone. It gave an almighty mechanical whirr and rose slowly into the ceiling, revealing, piece by piece, the chaos that raged within the cone.

No words were spoken – none coherently, at least – as Lisa and the others ducked under the ascending door and into the madness beyond.

For a second, there was utter blackness, and the melange of inky blindness and frightened screams sent a shiver through Lisa’s spine; and then, someone very close by screamed, “MAGMORTAR, USE FIRESTORM!” and in the radiance of the ensuing explosion of flame, Lisa garnered a true impression of the battlefield.

The silver-encrusted inner cone of the extinct volcano was infested with duelling agents. There was scarcely an inch of terrain that wasn’t occupied with Union and Guard agents firing off shots from Stunners, or launching their pokémon at each other in what looked like highly unethical battles: two metres before her, Lisa glimpsed a hulkish, leather-clad Union agent taking potshots with a black pistol at Azura Frost, while she used her Vaporeon to defend her and commanded her Feraligatr to battle the agent’s Machamp.

As the swirl of fire formed a tornado in the centre of the cone, Lisa saw her own parents, back-to-back, fighting off three Union agents each, their full pokémon teams spread out before them; one of the agents was Den, one of Sterling’s right-hand men.

Across the other side of the cone, Owen and Stephen were fistfighting a couple of skinheads, ducking knuckledusters before delivering swift uppercuts. Lisa chanced a quick glance upward and saw that the silver catwalks built into the walls of the cone also housed several intense battles: Veronica was locked in a fierce match with Lauren, while Anthony, the Union agent, held an AK-47 from one of the uppermost metal catwalks, picking off Guard agents at will.

Lisa’s blood boiled. She lunged into the fray, and at the same moment, something wet slammed into the side of her face. She reeled back, barely regaining her feet as she tasted something putrid and bitter in her mouth …

“Sludge that bitch again, Muk!” roared a Union agent with a throaty voice.

As Lisa wheeled around, Stunner levelled, to face him, the column of fire in the centre of the cone exploded outwards; a wave of furnace-like heat threw her off her feet and into the rocky ground, grazing her nose.

“Leese – you okay – AAAARRRRGGH!”

“MARINA?!”

Lisa struggled to her feet, hunting for Marina, but without Magmortar’s attack, there was nothing but the faint twinkle of the stars above to illuminate them. She scanned the mob of dark shadows running around her frantically.

“MARINA! MARINA, IS THAT –”

She shook the shoulders of a figure on the ground, hoping it was Marina; to her horror, a male voice screamed and grabbed hold of Lisa’s arm with a vice-like grip.

“YOU FUCKIN’ BITCH!”

“No you don’t!”

Darius emerged from nowhere; Lisa only knew it was him from his voice. A jet of blue light exploded from the tip of his stunner, striking the man squarely in the face; he cried out in shock before falling back, his grip on Lisa’s arm relinquished …

“Thanks!” Lisa cried.

“Got your back!” Darius called, disappearing instantly.

Lisa returned to scanning the ground.

“MARINA?”

At once, something slammed into the same side of her head with the force of a large rock; she reeled, again tasting bitter muck …

“HA!”

“WHERE THE HELL ARE YOU COMING FROM?” Lisa screamed, spitting a globule of mud from her mouth. Panicked and incensed, she spun in a rapid circle, firing off shots from her Stunner completely at random; jets of ultramarine light issued into the air, whizzing and hissing, before at least two male voices cried out in shock; she heard bodies crumple to the ground with loud thuds.

“Cop that!” Lisa cried, a rush of vengeance rising within her.

She scanned the ground and knew that finding Marina in the darkness – or, indeed, finding any of the others – would be an exercise in futility; she spun on her heel and bounded toward the centre of the cone, searching for some kind of clarity, some kind of information. Had the Fourth Key been located? Were the Guard ready to retreat, victorious, or had the mission failed?

“NO!”

Lisa whirled around in time to see Owen take a roundhouse kick to the face; he collapsed to the ground in a spray of blood. Without thinking, she pulled the trigger of the Stunner, firing a bolt of cobalt-blue at the silhouette who had delivered the kick; the man crumpled instantly.

“Thanks, Lisa!” Owen mumbled, staggering to his feet. He did a double-take. “Wait – LISA?!”

“We thought you might need help!” Lisa cried, ducking a stray Psybeam and leaping over a still-living Union agent who was writhing on the ground, his intestines leaking from his torn gut as he tried, feebly, to grab the heels of every passing Guard operative.

“No shit!” Owen muttered. “Heads up!”

He hurled something cricket ball-sized at her. She caught it as she jogged toward him, barely dodging a Union agent’s ill-timed kick (he received the full force of the Stunner’s business end directly to his groin) and avoiding a volley of bullets fired from above by pure luck.

“What is this?” Lisa quizzed Owen, reaching his side. The ball he had thrown her appeared to be made of black rubber and was about the same size as the Buzzball.

“Darkball!” he said, eyes illuminated by a nearby Jeep exploding into flames. “The Union use them – they’re Battlemagic items imbued with the essence of Dark energy! Bloody useful, you’ll need it!”

“Thanks, but how do I –”

“It projects Dark Screens, really good for protection and stealth, and also Dark Waves!” Owen roared distractedly, rushing to Stephen’s aid; the black boxer was fighting off a vicious attack from Mick, an agent whose kneecap Lisa had shot once before.

“What the hell is a –”

Lisa’s breath was stolen from her as something sharp struck her in the side; she fell to the ground for what felt like the millionth time that night. Her head struck something hard and her vision, already limited, blurred again, pain piercing her consciousness and dulling the cacophony so it was barely audible: it was as though she had fallen underwater, the membrane protecting her from the war. She lay on the rock floor, dazed, unable to even see who or what had struck her – they had already disappeared into the fray …

Lisa fixed her cloudy irises on the patchwork of stars above and realised with abject horror that she had nothing left in her. She had fought and fought and been knocked to the ground like a rag doll … her body had taken all it could …

If it had not happened at that moment, Lisa was not sure she could ever have gotten up from the dirt: the leather-clad Union agent appeared before her, his ugly face and thick neck illuminated by the hot flicker of the burning Jeep.

“Lisa Walters,” he said in a thick, Eastern European accent, holding a Stunner toward her. His beady eyes gleamed with reflected fire. “You have no idea what kind of commission I’ll get for being the one who took you down.”

“You won’t take me down!” Lisa spluttered, trying to stand, but he had landed a gargantuan foot on her solar plexus; she writhed in renewed agony. “I’M – TOO – IMPORTANT … YOU – NEED – ME – TO – GET – THE –” She coughed, gasping for air. “SIXTH KEY!”

The agent glowered.

“Fucking smart bitch,” he snarled. “You always got off way too easy with that one, didn’t ya?” She pressed his black boot a little harder into her gut; she screamed in agony: it was too much … she was going to retch … she was going to pass out from the pain …

“Not anymore,” the leather-clad agent continued. “The secret’s out, you lying little slut. We know you already got the key fragment – Suicune is dead …”

A tsunami of gaping terror crashed over Lisa, extinguishing the only flame of hope in her chest. There was no oxygen left in the world. The Union knew … and she had nothing more to protect her … no bargaining chip, no inherent value … she was naked, exposed …

“Why don’t you –” began the agent.

“DARK SCREEN!” Lisa screeched.

She had no idea what the attack would do – she didn’t even know if she had uttered the right words to activate it. In an instant of final, desperate defiance, she held the Darkball out between her and the agent, face clenched …

… and then he fired his Stunner at her, victorious. A bolt of toxic green light exploded in a shower of sparks from the tip of the Stunner; Lisa closed her eyes, anticipating the final delivery of utmost pain … a blow she did not think she could handle … but it did not come …

Lisa opened her eyes in astonishment to see the leather-clad Union agent reeling back in pain, his hulking form thrashing about as green sparks crackled across his arms and chest, piercing his skin; his boot lifted from her stomach as he roared, bear-like, at Lisa, his eyes wild as though he could not see her and his canines bared, before thudding to the ground and twitching erratically …

Lisa clambered to her feet, not quite sure how the Dark Screen had worked – she couldn’t even see it – but feeling a rush of gratitude toward Owen.

She whirled around: both Owen and Stephen had evaporated; Gavin and the others were nowhere to be seen. Pocketing the Darkball, Lisa took up the Stunner once more, firing it indiscriminately before her as a type of ferocious defence mechanism: she saw silhouettes collapse as she jogged painfully toward the burning Jeep, hoping that, perhaps, the light of the blaze would help her find an ally …

Just as she reached the wreckage, there was an almighty explosion from above. The eyes of every dueller seemed to arc skyward as a high-up section of the glittering volcanic cone was blasted to pieces in a burst of flame and white light, raining sparkling dust down on the battlers below …

Lisa closed her mouth instinctively, keen not to inhale the dust, but she could not tear her eyes from the sight before her.

Lance Hudson sat astride his rose-gold Dragonite, Draco, suspended in mid-air, his face lined, the aura of fury around him palpable as he glared into the sallow face of Joseph Sterling, who flew on his Murkron, a black welt spewing blood from the side of his face.

At once, everything on the volcano floor ground to a halt: there arose an almighty cheer and storm of applause from every agent, Union or Guard, each screaming his support for his leader. Lisa found herself screaming and clapping her hands in excitement; when she looked around, she saw a young Union agent in Army fatigues standing beside her, doing the exact same thing.

“FOR THE LAST TIME,” Lance bellowed, so loud that Lisa could hear him as clearly as if he were right beside her, and not suspended fifty feet in the air, “FIGHT. LIKE. A. MAN.”

Sterling’s face darkened.

“You are the coward, Lance Hudson,” he sneered. “Launching a sneak attack – trying to deceive me.” A malicious smile curled his thin lips. “You failed, of course. I caught your double agent trying to escape with my two keys. Larry died telling me how loyal he was to me. Hardly a courageous, straightbacked thing to do, is it?”

“LARRY WAS A GOOD MAN!” Lance yelled, red-faced; his clothes were torn badly and looked stained with crimson.

“Like you, he was a snake!” Sterling roared.

A jet of inky energy issued from Murkron’s mouth, forming an arrow-head in mid-air, aimed at Lance’s head; Draco cooed defiantly and breathed out a stream of sparkling, effervescent cerulean mist, neutralising the black beam of energy, which fizzled out with a hiss of smoke …

“FOR ONCE,” Lance cried, “LET’S FIGHT FAIR, JOE!” He lowered his tone to a deathly serious hush. “One-on-one. No weapons. No armies.”

Sterling’s lip curled further.

“Deal.”

Another ear-splitting roar came up from the ranks below; Lisa included; she was screaming Lance’s name as if he were a football player she particularly needed to score a goal.

One massive goal.

Murkron and Draco circled around each other threateningly, each growling as they descended slowly toward the floor of the cone. An excited grin stealing over his handsome features, Lance pulled at the golden collar of his black cape, unfurling it with a flourish and flinging it toward the ground; as it billowed down through the air, a hundred violet-and-indigo Master Balls tumbled from within the cloak, as though they had been magically suspended within it all along.

The crowd gasped and cried out in surprise; the Union agents jeered and hurled insults at Lance, some of them trying to aim their weapons at him; the Guard agents, Lisa included, cheered excitedly; it was like they were suddenly spectators at a high-stakes battle at Mt Silver – only this time Lance seemed to be holding nothing back.

As Lisa watched, transfixed, mirrored by the young Union agent beside her, the Master Balls began to pop open in luminous bursts of white energy. Suddenly, a hundred pokémon were cascading from the sky above, some of them flying types – Pidgeots, Charizards, a Gyarados, three Scizors and two other Dragonites – and some of them enormous, flightless creatures – Nidokings, Tyranitars, and two mammoth, crystalline Steelixes – who were no more than deadweights plummeting toward them all, threatening to crush whoever stood below them.

Screams erupted all around Lisa; she found herself wordlessly transfixed on the feet of the impending Nidoqueen above her … there was nowhere to move … anywhere she ran, she would be crushed …

“Ooooof!”

A flutter of caramel-coloured feathers obscured Lisa’s vision seconds before the Nidoqueen landed; two sharp talons dug into her bloody shoulders; she screamed in agony as her body was carried swiftly backwards through the air, the Nidoqueen thudding down to earth mere feet from her face.

The Pidgeot relinquished its razor grip on Lisa’s shoulders; as she crumpled to the ground, right beside a cluster of Union agents and a trio of Blastoise, Charizard and Venusaur, she realised that the flying pokémon all around the cone were picking people up one by one – human or pokémon, Guard or Union – and flinging them to the very edge of the rock ring that bordered the cone, clearing the centre circle as Lance and Sterling hovered ever-nearer to ground level.

Joseph Sterling’s face contorted into a mask of utter confusion and fury and, for the first time that Lisa had ever seen, utter fear. Lisa gazed around at the sight before her – an army of humans being forcibly relocated by an army of what were probably Level 100 pokémon – and, as the final pieces of the puzzle fell into place, she finally understood the depth of Lance’s genius; the reason why he, above all the green and weedy contestants he allowed to defeat him each season at the League Tournaments, had remained Champion of the Elite Four for so long: he was a Pokémon Master.

The final collection of flying pokémon removed the last of the agents from the centre of the cone’s glittering rock floor before fluttering above the motley group of mixed agents as if supervising them sternly. Lisa heard the Union agents nearest to her cry out her name and attempt to fire a shot from a Stunner at her; before she could even duck, a shimmering, gold-coloured Xatu flew down from above them, a bubble of glimmering yellow light encircling it and Lisa; the bolt of electric green light from the Union agent’s Stunner bounded back at the agent who had fired it, but even as he yelped out in shock, Lance’s Gardevoir flew down and shielded him, too, with a Light Screen: the jet of green light sizzled off harmlessly into the rock wall.

Lisa gaped: the pokémon had been assigned to protect them all … regardless of affiliation … Her brain knotted. How on earth had Lance managed to train his pokémon to such an advanced level? And what was he playing at, immobilising and disarming them all?

Pulling her middle finger defiantly at the Union agent who had attacked her, Lisa wheeled back to face the showdown. The two crystalline Steelix finally touched down, as though they had been enchanted to merely drift, defying the true nature of gravity. Their silver, glistening forms coiled around the edges of the cone, pressing everyone against the walls of the cone: Lisa was coerced backwards, squeezed between a stray Charmeleon and Lauren, the Guard agent, who looked rather the worse for wear: she sported a massive, bloody gash on her forehead, but still managed to nod stiffly to Lisa by way of salutation as their eyes met. Lisa could tell from the blank expression on her face that she, too, was completely blown away by what Lance was doing.

Lisa’s heart rose in her chest as she glimpsed Gavin and Sarah across the other side of the ring, their faced battered and bloody, but they were clearly in good shape; both of them waved frantically at Lisa, mirroring her.

At last, Lance’s rose-gold Dragonite and Sterling’s pitch-black Murkron landed firmly on the ground, well illuminated by the light of the still-burning Jeep. Cheers and shouts rang out from all sides of the cone; Lisa and Lauren screamed Lance’s name in a kind of melodic tune, while the Union agents seemed to be reciting some kind of gothic chant in latin. Lisa rested her aching arms against the Steelix’s body – she was just able to see over it and into the centre of the cone – and watched the scene unfold with bated breath.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Sterling snarled, his hand flinching toward the holstered revolver on his belt before he seemed to regain control over his limbs; he instead shoved the hand into his pocket and produced a Master Ball.

“I never could trust you, Joe,” Lance said coolly, disembarking from Draco and patting his resplendent back reassuringly. He took two neat steps toward Sterling, not in a threatening manner, but rather as though they were about to shake hands in the street, or engage in a friendly game of bocci.

His demeanour was inconceivably casual.

“You fight like a coward,” Sterling snarled, enlarging the Master Ball in his hand.

“Au contraire,” Lance said, rummaging in the folds of his cape, which had swirled onto the ground when he dropped it, and producing yet another blue-and-purple Master Ball. “I seem to remember being simultaneously attacked by three of your other agents the last time we battled, Joe. I should remind you that not a single Guard agent stepped in to defend me, nor should they.

“We are going to do something we should have done that day – what was it, more than a decade ago, now? We’re going to battle the old-school way. Six pokémon on six. May the best man win.”

And looking Sterling directly in the eye, he screamed, “GO, PYTHIR!”

Sterling grinned venomously and hurled the Master Ball toward Lance, “RHYDON, TAKE HIM DOWN!”

An enormous black-and-purple python coiled out from Lance’s Master Ball, its patterned head rearing back and rising into the air as a grey, rock-solid Rhydon emerged for Sterling’s team.

No commands were issued: Rhydon roared, “RHUUUUUUU!” and at once began charging at Pythir, whose tail suddenly leaped up into the air of its own accord … The purple snake was suspended in mid-air for a second, a perfect parabolic shape, before it hissed viciously and launched itself head-first toward the confused Rhydon, a hundred dripping fangs bared …

Lisa screamed: Pythir detached its jaw as it was just metres away from Rhydon; she watched in wonderful horror as Pythir swallowed Rhydon’s entire head before sinking its fangs deep into its neck; Rhydon roared with agony, its bulky grey body twitching as the poison seeped in. Still without any verbal instruction from Lance – and without ceasing its devastating bite – Pythir wound its long body around Rhydon’s gut three times before constricting tightly; it took scarcely ten seconds before the rock-type stopped moving and fell to the ground, defeated.

“GOOOOOOO LANCE!” Lisa and Lauren screamed in unison, hugging each other tightly.

A gunshot sounded from beside them; Lisa jumped, facing the commotion … the antagonising Union agent had been joined by the leather-clad agent who had attacked her before. Lisa glanced around for the Xatu that had no doubt stood in to protect her and saw a bundle of green feathers sprawled on the ground, bleeding. Nevertheless, a second, shiny Xatu had seemingly materialised from nowhere, hovering at her side with a collection of semi-automatic weapons telekinetically suspended in a green plasma above its head; it had disarmed the Union agents, who were now swearing more profusely than ever.

Lisa’s mind grappled with what was happening. She had thought, fleetingly, that Lance had somehow managed to link psychically with all his pokémon, commanding them to protect every agent … Perhaps while his attention was on the battle, the psychic link had become weaker, allowing Xatu to be killed? Then again, powerful though his pokémon might be, they were still mortal …

She turned to Lauren.

“I thought they were protecting us …”

Lauren shrugged her enormous shoulders.

“I have no idea what the fuck’s happening, Lisa …”

In addition to the second Xatu, a Nidoqueen stepped in protectively between Lisa and the agents; feeling a little more secure, Lisa turned back to the fight.

Sterling let off a string of expletives – “FUCKING COWARDLY COCKSUCKER!” – and recalled Rhydon’s motionless form before throwing out an Ultra Ball.

Lisa barely saw the cream-furred Persian; it streaked out from the Ultra Ball, still half-illuminated by white light, and raced at Pythir in a zig-zag pattern, using agility; it was almost invisible …

Pythir ducked several Slash attacks deftly, its snakish form bounding from one part of the field to another, before, in the blink of an eye, Persian pounced on its prey, grabbing the python by the throat and slitting it cleanly; a gruesome, bone-chilling sucking sound came from Pythir’s throat as it clutched helplessly for air, luminous green blood gushing from its neck as its golden eyes reeled back in its head, replaced by blank white eyeballs.

“No!” Lance screamed, his composure gone in a flash. His face was instantly pallid; he reached for the Master Ball and returned his bleeding Pythir, adjusting something on the side of the Master Ball as he thrust it back into the pocket of his black pants.

“TOO FAR, JOE!” he raged, face scarlet. “I DIDN’T MORTALLY WOUND YOUR RHYDON, I ONLY PARALYZED IT – YOU BLOODY –”

“LANCE HUDSON IS ON HIS KNEES!” Joseph Sterling roared, his oiled black eyebrow raised and his lips curved into a savage grin as he called out to his faithful. “SOON, VICTORY WILL BE OURS!”

The Union’s ranks rang out with deep, guttural cheers; the Union agents on the other side of Nidoqueen heckled Lance and shot a round of bullets into the air. A second later, Xatu’s telekinetic plasma enveloped their last gun; Lisa grinned with vicarious victory.

“You are vile,” Lance spat to Sterling; Lisa had never seen him look so murderous.

“Go ahead, get mad. For once in your life, say what’s on your mind, Hudson,” Sterling mocked, buoyed by the catcalls and jeers of his army.

Lance plunged his hand back into his pocket and held a Master Ball out before him.

“DRACO, HYPER BALL!”

Lisa did a double-take; her eyes – like Sterling’s and Persian’s – were still trained on the Master Ball in Lance’s hand when the rose-gold Dragonite beside Lance squealed, “Waaaaoooooh!” and opened its mouth, jettisoning a boulder-sized orb of crackling golden-white energy at Persian’s head.

The cat screeched “Rrrrreeeowww!” as the ball slammed into its head, hurling it into the air as sparks of Dragon energy pierced its skin and fur. When Persian’s body landed on the ground a second later, there was no sign of cognition or recovery: it was limp.

“CHEAT!” Sterling roared, recalling Persian in a blast of crimson light and lobbing another Master Ball into the arena.

“I’d never cheat, Joe,” Lance said, voice dripping with glorious sarcasm as he pocketed the Master Ball smoothly. “You shouldn’t have assumed I wouldn’t use Draco next.”

Sterling’s face purpled as a Houndoom materialised before him.

Lance’s eyes sought Draco’s and found them; without a word, Draco took flight, swiftly dodging the Fire Blasts that Houndoom sent at him from its mouth before suddenly, having risen almost twenty metres into the air, diving rapidly, his rose-gold head barrelling down and crashing with incalculable force into Houndoom’s side …

Before the dog could get back to its paws, Draco had delivered a Thunderpunch to its head before grabbing hold of its canine jaws and, wrenching its mouth wide open, opened its own mouth and delivered a Hydro Pump directly into Houndoom’s fire sac.

The drenched dog collapsed to the ground, motionless.

The crowd roared.

“NO!” Sterling cried, hurling another Ultra Ball out as he recalled Houndoom.

“ICE BLADE!” the dictator roared.

A Sneasel appeared, bounding onto the field with a blade of ice in its clawed hand; Draco shot a well-aimed Ember at Sneasel, who deftly evaporated into thin air, reappearing on Draco’s shoulder, wielding its ice blade and preparing to plunge it into Draco’s neck.

Undeterred, Draco cooed gently and opened his mouth wide, a veritable column of pure flame erupting from his mouth and enveloping both pokémon. Both Sterling and Lance leapt back from the heat; the column of flame towered into the starry sky, as high as the very top of the cone. Even Lisa, Lauren and the others were forced to crouch behind the Steelix’s protective body, shielding themselves from the wave of extreme heat.

When Lisa dared to peer back over Steelix’s crystalline vertebrae, her mouth fell open in amazement. The column of fire was gone in a wisp of smoke: in its place was Draco, still standing resolutely, his face alight and hard.

Sneasel’s shrivelled form was curled up on the ground, unconscious.

“NO!” Sterling roared; another volley of gunfire echoed around the cone from the agitated Union agents; people everywhere were swearing and screaming.

“Keep going, Lance!”

“You can finish him!”

“FLOG HIS FUCKEN ARSE!”

Lisa would have recognised Donovan’s voice anywhere; she guffawed with Lauren, her aching gut and bones all but swept away by the rush of adrenaline; she almost felt as though she, too, were fighting Sterling – and winning.

Sterling turned and regarded the dark form of his taloned Murkron, standing by in the wings. His sallow face wrinkled; he looked as though he were considering something very carefully; then, quite abruptly, he reached his hairy hand into his half-unbuttoned shirt and grabbed something on his chest, screaming, “DO YOUR WORST! REVELUM!”

A blast of gold light exploded from a charm around his neck. The radiance arced through the air, ringed by globules of vermilion light, forming a gigantic, canine creature.

The blood drained from Lisa’s face; her long-suffering stomach churned.

Two hundred people gasped in shock.

It was Entei.

“No …” Lisa heard herself mutter.

Entei stood ten feet tall, his legs as thick and rigid as tree trunks, his furry, red-and-yellow face fixed in a mask of utmost rage.

Draco cooed with apparent surprise, tensing himself; Lance, on the other hand, looked impossibly calm.

“Don’t pretend you knew, Hudson!” Sterling skited gleefully, his dark eyes flashing as the Union cheered once more. “You had no idea …”

“You’re right,” Lance said; he was almost smiling. “Certainly, I had deduced that Entei had betrayed the brotherhood … there was enough evidence to prove that. I even suspected he was loyal, in part, at least, to you. But I never imagined he would have lost so much of his dignity as to submit to you this fully.”

Lance looked Entei in the eyes; Lisa felt her own limbs lock in instinctive apprehension.

“Hello, old Guardian,” Lance said, quite casually. “You really have fallen from grace, haven’t you? Estranged from your brothers … killing innocent humans … and now you let this cad keep you in a poképort? A disgrace indeed – and a dangerous mistake, I might add.”

Entei barked sharply and spat a tongue of flame at Lance; Draco conjured up a glittering, rainbow-coloured Light Screen that not only held the fire back, but wrapped it up in a shimmering rainbow cocoon and crushed it; a fine mist drizzled to the ground where the flame had been.

To Lisa’s complete surprise, Entei turned his head sharply toward Sterling, his face hard.

//Fool// he snarled at Sterling, perplexing Lisa; she neither knew why Sterling was being called a fool, nor why she was able to hear Entei’s telepathic messages; but judging from Lauren’s face, everyone else could, too.

“Yes, Sterling is an idiot, to put it mildly,” Lance drawled laconically. “But Entei, mate – yes, look at me – believe it or not, Sterling’s been a bigger idiot than you’d think! Remember how you wanted to keep the Sepulchres sealed, at any cost? Sterling went and did it behind your back. He tried to send Lisa into the Sepulchre of Suicune a few days ago!”

Entei growled.

//Sterling obeys the Legend, unlike some// Entei spat, leering at Lance. //You have no proof for your treacherous claim//

“Suicune is dead, and his fragment of the Sixth Key is now in my possession,” Lance said smoothly. “I’ll be happy to show you the material proof, if you will consider abandoning the Union and returning to the true purpose of your guardianship.”

//YOU LIE!//

“I’m telling the truth,” Lance said, reaching into his black-and-orange vest and into a barely visible pouch.

Lisa gasped, comprehension breaking over her, as he withdrew the bloodied Sceptre of Suicune, its tip glowing with an icy azure hue.

Entei’s canine mask froze.

//No …//

“Yes!” Lance cried, brandishing the sceptre in front of him. “Lisa Walters killed Suicune! Your old defence is outmoded, Entei!”

//NO …//

“The Guardianship is broken forever!” Lance cried, now beginning to laugh. “And Raikou will see sense, too … Come back to the Legend, Entei … end this now …”

Entei spun around to face Joseph Sterling’s rigid form.

“He lies!” Sterling roared, beckoning reason from Entei with his black eyes. “Great beast, he is trying to divide us …”

//That is the Sceptre of Suicune// Entei said blackly. //It is illuminated … My brother is dead//

“It is deception, no more!” Sterling bellowed hoarsely. “Hudson seeks to lie to you again … he arranged Walters’ entrance to the Sepulchre himself …”

//Then when and how did he discover the location?// Entei demanded. //I thought only we knew of it …//

Sterling spluttered, unable to find the answer Entei sought; the fire dog was now advancing steadily on him, his back turned to Lance. But in the exact moment that Lance cried, “DRACO, DISABLE HIM!”, Sterling’s hand leapt back to his chest and he shrieked, “RETRAHERE, ENTEI!”

//NOOOOOOOOOOOO…//

Entei roared with rage as he was recalled back to the poképort against his will; Lance laughed heartily and placed the sceptre back in the compartment in his vest.

“If it helps, Joe,” he said, as Sterling buttoned his black silk shirt up and attempted to regain some composure by regarding his supporters, who rallied and cheered, “Entei would have been pretty useless against me. Guardians aren’t meant to do battle with each other. It would be like forcing two negative poles of a magnet together, you know?”

“You will not defeat me, maggot,” Sterling growled; the poképort was still shaking violently.

“We’ll see,” Lance said simply. “I have five pokémon left. You have one. Use it wisely.”

“ENTEI DOESN’T COUNT!”

“HE DOES TOO, YA DIRTY FUCK!” Donovan yelled from somewhere behind one of the Steelixes; at once, a renewed volley of insults came from the nearest Union agents.

“Yes, he does count!” Lance countered Sterling smoothly. “He launched an attack, and Draco countered it. That round ended with you recalling your fifth pokémon. You can either send Entei back out – for your own good health, I wouldn’t advise it; I doubt Entei will show as much restraint with you as I may – or you can choose your final battler.”

Sterling’s face blackened.

“It matters not what happens,” he smirked. “The other half of my force will return here, soon. I alerted them the moment I spotted your boats. You will be outnumbered – you will all perish!”

He cackled mirthlessly; his agents guffawed in turn.

“For about the millionth time tonight, you’re wrong,” Lance said brashly, his voice deep and resonant. “Having orchestrated every one of tonight’s events, I can say pretty securely that half your army is in either Guard or Police custody right now. You see, I had one of my covert teams stake out the decoy key location in that cave west of Azalea Town. You remember Clair, right?” He smirked, clearly savouring a moment that only he and Sterling seemed to fully comprehend. “She and a few other old friends of mine trapped your army in the cave – it’s a dangerous place, you know, only one way in or out – and they called the cops.”

Lance’s grin broadened.

“I think you’ll find you’re screwed.”

“LIAR!” Sterling screamed, his eyes bloodshot and his sallow face now a deep shade of pink. He whipped a Master Ball from his pocket and, at the same moment, Murkron’s mouth opened and released a ray of pure darkness: Lance’s eyes were trained on the Master Ball, as were Draco’s; the jet of black formed a spearhead and plunged with lightning speed directly through Draco’s chest.

“NO!” Lance shouted.

Draco’s eyes bulged in surprise; the jet of black energy seemed to have a consciousness of its own; the spearhead evolved into the shape of a human hand, which plunged once more, unstoppably, into Draco’s chest, pounding and piercing his lungs, grasping with murderous fingers for the beating heart …

At last, Draco seemed to regain his bearings, opening his mouth and firing a thin ice-white beam of light; the beam speared the air, slicing toward Murkron, who was forced to use Agility to avoid the ranged attack; and the moment Murkron shifted its winged form, its concentration broke, and the dark hand in Draco’s chest lost its power, sliding down to the ground before disappearing into thin air …

Draco stumbled, its chest open … rose-gold blood was leaking down his front …

“No – Draco –” Lance gasped, staggering. He seemed almost unable to control the urge to run at the Dragonite and hug him. “Draco – come on – stay with me …”

A shiver slid down Lisa’s spine: Lance was frightened.

“Murkron, Shadow Ball!” Sterling ordered, unfazed.

If Lisa had never seen it with her own eyes, she never would have believed it. As Murkron took to the air, a globe of dark violet energy forming in his beak, Draco – barely breathing – leapt into the air too, tunnelling at Murkron in what looked like a super-fast Headbutt attack, except Draco was oscillating, spinning on his vertical axis; and as he spun, beads of aquamarine light slid over his rose-gold skin, sliding into one another, coating his entire, scaly form in a liquid layer of aquamarine energy; Murkron’s Shadow Ball launched at point-blank range, as Draco was scarcely two metres away from the bird pokémon’s beak …

… the crackling violet orb struck Draco’s coated head … and then, as if it were made of water, it splashed over Draco’s body harmlessly … coating his aquamarine skin with another layer … a layer of black …

… and then Draco crashed fearlessly, headfirst, into Murkron’s underbelly, imbued with the power of the Shadow Ball; Murkron squawked in agony as sparks of violet tore through his soft underbelly; and at the same time, Draco’s retractable claws burst from his hands and he reached up a thick, muscular, scaly, black-coated arm, and slashed Murkron’s eyes to bleeding shreds …

“Krooooo!”

“Ryyuuuuu!”

Draco landed, feet-first, on the ground, its skin still glowing with a mixture of aquamarine and black coating; Murkron gave an earsplitting screech and crumpled to the ground in a feathery, bleeding mass.

Unconscious.

“NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!” Sterling shrieked madly.

The roar from the crowd of Guard members almost drowned him out: Lisa and Lauren screamed and embraced each other; across the other side of the cone, Gavin and Sarah high-fived with a look of sheer astonishment; curse words flooded from Donovan’s mouth like blood from an open wound; Lisa even thought she heard her father call out, amid the chaos, “Good one, Lance!”

“Enough!” Lance called to the armies trapped behind the two Steelixes.

He turned to recall Draco back into the poképort, muttering something in a gentle voice, but Draco waved a hand before him as if to say, “I’m fine.”

Apparently satisfied in his pokémon’s ability to self-diagnose, Lance faced Sterling obliquely and produced four more Master Balls from his pocket.

“I win, Joe,” he said definitively, his fingers playing casually with the Master Balls. “Fair and square. Hand me the three keys and I’ll ask the Supreme Court for leniency when they prosecute you, I promise.”

Lisa’s heart thudded. The three keys? That could only mean one thing: Sterling had got to the Fourth Key before the Guard had … or he had stolen it from them … In any case, he held the majority of the power: the first two keys, and now the fourth …

“You lose again, Hudson!” Sterling sneered, reaching for his pocket once more.

“NO!”

Lance launched a single Master Ball from his hand; the orb opened on its hinge in mid-air, a slender, glowing form emerging from the brilliance: an indigo-and-white Dragonair appeared, instantly wrapping itself around Sterling’s body and constricting him; his arms, both plunged into his pockets, were immobilised.

“COWARD!” Sterling screamed, amid shouts and screams of dismay from the Union agents trapped on the sidelines.

Lisa flinched as more bullets pinged off the walls of the cone: apparently the Union had kept at least one weapon concealed. She saw Draco suddenly lunge forward, staggering as if drunk …

“I offered you a chance, Joe,” Lance said irascibly, unaware of Draco; his eyes were rock hard, focused on Sterling. “You missed it.” He nodded his head to Dragonair. “Find the keys.”

Still constricting Sterling’s arms – though Sterling appeared to be desperately fighting to reach something on his belt – Dragonair began to wriggle over his body, using its tail to turn out the contents of Sterling’s pockets: a sheathed dagger, a few Ultra Balls, a folded square of parchment … no keys …

Its watery eyes showing nothing but determination, Dragonair flicked its beady tail over the front of Sterling’s black silk shirt, tearing the top three buttons away in one sleek movement.

“Bingo!” Lance hollered.

Lisa peered over the reflective form of the Steelix and gasped: strung along a thin band of brown leather that was tangled in the forest of thick black hair on Sterling’s broad chest, barely obscured by Entei’s poképort, were three small, shiny, glassy keys.

In a deft movement, Dragonair yanked the leather band upwards and over Sterling’s head – the dictator tried desperately to bite at the dragon’s tail with his yellowed teeth – and then, moving as swiftly as it had before, Dragonair relinquished its Constrict and lunged for the ground, slithering toward Lance; and in the same moment, Draco, still staggering, finally lost his strength, tumbling toward the ground, blood streaming from his open chest …

Freed for a split second, Sterling’s eyes flashed; his hands grabbed for the revolver in the holster on his belt.

“Nice try!” Lance grinned, grabbing the leather band from Dragonair and throwing it around his neck, still unaware of his pokémon collapsing to the ground. “Draco, block it!”

Lisa’s scream caught in her throat.

Sterling roared with triumph as he aimed the revolver and fired three times.

His body half-silhouetted against the light of the blazing Jeep, Lance Hudson staggered backwards, his strong legs crumbling as two white-hot bullets tore through his gut and one tore through his chest, blood exploding from his back in warm, beautiful geysers.

Sterling roared with maniacal laughter and fired a fourth shot at the distressed Dragonair; the bullet went straight through its petite head and indigo blood sprayed over Lance’s crumpled chest; the dragon flailed; its head slammed into the earth … dead.

“No!” Lisa screamed. Her heart had turned to black ice. Everyone was screaming. Lisa tried to scramble over the Steelix’s back – she had to help Lance … she had to save him – but the Steelix roared and shook her back, pressing them all even more firmly against the walls of the cone.

Sterling advanced on Lance’s spluttering, gasping form, the revolver held out before him – and then, gloriously, two figures burst through the gap between the two Steelixes, apparently allowed: Lisa’s father, Ryan Walters, his ruddy face alive with rage; and Marco Trippolo, Lance’s oldest friend …

“You’re fucking dead, Joe!” Lisa’s father roared. He levelled a Stunner at Sterling and pulled the trigger; Sterling dived to his left, avoiding the bolt of green light by inches. Lisa’s father shouted in blind rage and charged at Sterling, pulling the trigger again.

Marco, meanwhile, had rushed to Lance’s side.

“Ma-a-rr-!” Lance spluttered, his chest rattling. Lisa felt sick.

“I’m here, mate …” Marco cried.

“Sorry – tell – Su – Dar …” Lance gasped, unable to form full words. Shaking almost uncontrollably, he removed the leather necklace from his neck and held it out for Marco, who snatched it up swiftly and held it tightly in his left hand.

And then, Marco plunged his right hand into his pocket, whipping out a flick knife, and drew the silver blade swiftly across Lance’s throat.

The Champion’s eyes bulged wide for just a second; his mouth opened, as if in surprise, as if he were about to exclaim something; and then, without ceremony, scarlet blood gushed from his throat, flooding his lungs and mouth, drowning him before his pale, blood-splattered body arced gently backwards and fell, motionless, to the earth.

“What?!” Lisa screamed.

“What’s Marco DOING?!” Lauren shrieked, tugging at her blonde hair madly. “WHAT THE HELL IS HE DOING?!”

Marco regarded Lance’s body for just a moment before he glanced up at Joseph, who was still ducking the bolts of light from Ryan’s Stunner, while Ryan dodged the poorly-fired bullets.

“Master! I have the keys!” Marco called, running within five metres of Sterling – barely three metres before Ryan – and lobbing the jangling leather necklace across to Sterling, who, having run out of bullets, threw the revolver aside and caught the three keys with his right hand.

The Union roared with delight; Lisa couldn’t hear anything amid the cacophony and the gunfire; her eyes alone documented what happened next.

Sterling looped the keys around his neck and then, weaponless and still in the line of Ryan’s Stunner fire, he reached to his belt, producing a small, circular, metallic object, a red, digital light blinking on its surface, and hurled it in Ryan’s direction.

Lisa screamed; her father leapt back instinctively as the electronic grenade rolled toward him; Marco, however, looked temporarily confused; he glanced at the blinking bomb in apparent disbelief for just a second too long:

BOOM!

A giant flower of flame blossomed from the mine, and the man that was Marco Trippolo was silhouetted against the light for a fraction of a second before his body disintegrated, ripped into a million pieces by the blast.

Consumed by the inferno.

Sterling looked over his shoulder with mild surprise at the thick, putrid black smoke billowing from Marco’s burning corpse. He shrugged indifferently and turned away.

Bile rose in Lisa’s stomach: this was a nightmare – it couldn’t be happening …

Sterling hurled a Master Ball to the ground, revealing a jet-black Scizor. He bounded onto its back swiftly.

“It’s been fun!” he grinned through savage yellow teeth, before the Scizor flew in an agile, evasive zig-zag pattern, up toward the top of the cone and toward the star-encrusted sky.

“NO!”

Lisa’s father hurled an Ultra Ball into the air, leaping onto the regal Charizard that emerged from it and yelling, “Charizard, chase him!”

In a matter of seconds, the Scizor and Charizard were soaring into the moonlight, leaving two stunned, seething armies in the cone below.

A potent cocktail of emotions bubbled in Lisa’s chest, the strongest of which were rage, grief and terror. Without even thinking about what she was doing, she launched herself at the Steelix’s side, however her hands slid off the steel pokémon’s chunky segments as though they were slick with oil; she lost her balance and slid unceremoniously to the rocky ground, grazing her face.

“Ooof!”

“Lisa …” came Lauren’s voice.

Adrenaline still buoying her, Lisa pressed herself up and clawed at Steelix’s side once more, but it was impossible to grasp the metallic segments.

“What the HELL is wrong with these Steelixes?!” someone screamed nearby; clearly Lisa wasn’t the only one struggling to circumvent the odd, inflexible barrier the steel pokémon had created; indeed, incensed and frustrated cries were going up all across the chamber.

Lisa looked at Lauren desperately; the thought of her father battling alone against Sterling gnawed at her as the seconds pressed on. The older woman’s eyes glinted and she grabbed a Great Ball from her belt, hurling it to the ground with gusto. A Pidgeotto emerged from the ensuing radiance.

Lauren leapt aboard the Pidgeotto’s back and immediately rose into the air, making a break for it by flying over Steelix’s body; however, a hovering Magneton appeared seemingly out of nowhere and delivered a sharp thunderbolt to Pidgeotto; both the bird and it’s rider were thrown back to the ground roughly.

“What the …” Lisa muttered angrily; why were Lance’s pokémon preventing them from doing anything? “COME ON!”

Just as she thought she might explode from the force of her restrained anger, a soft, bell-like sound rang out in the hollow cone, and in an instant, the chamber was awash with the vibrant glow of a hundred-odd pokémon being mystically recalled to their erstwhile homes; the Steelixes evaporated into enormous globules of cinnabar light.

Lisa didn’t care how it had happened; she roared with detached triumph and, without wondering if Lauren’s Pidgeotto would obey her, she pounced upon its back, clung to the caramel feathers and cried, “FLY UP HIGH, PIDGEOTTO!”

Lauren, still recovering from the fall, shouted something warningly to Lisa, but Lisa’s ears were suddenly filled with the rush of wind as Pidgeotto took flight, rising high into the centre of the cone and zooming skyward.

I have to help Dad … I have to …

Lisa took a fleeting glance at the arena below, only to realise with a sinking feeling that she hadn’t been the only one to take to the skies: below her, Union and Guard agents alike were throwing pokéballs to the ground and releasing their winged companions; battle cries were reverberating across the volcanic cone.

Biting her lip against the tide of terror in her gut, Lisa delivered a hearty slap to Lauren’s Pidgeotto’s back and set her sights on the star-studded sky above – and the two airborne shapes locked in battle directly above her.

“Okay, Pidgeotto – LET’S DO THIS!”