The roots opened like a mouth.
Ivy guided them down through a tunnel that shouldn't have existed, carved through soil and stone by things that had been growing since before Hydra had a name. The walls were tight. The air was damp. Franklin went first, dropping into darkness with Ralts floating beside him, its psychic glow casting just enough light to see the floor before he hit it.
He landed in a crouch. The sublevel smelled like concrete and ozone and something else. Something wrong.
Ralts pressed against his chest. The psychic pulse that came through their bond wasn't words. It was feeling. Raw, unfiltered, a frequency of suffering that made Franklin's teeth ache.
"They're here," he said. His voice came out rough. "All of them."
Harley dropped next, landing with a thud and a muttered curse. Kamala came down after her, then Doreen, then Tippy-Toe, then Houndour, who shook itself and growled low at the darkness.
Ivy was last. She descended slowly, her feet barely touching the root-bridge before she stepped off into the corridor. She stood very still for a moment. Her eyes were closed.
When she opened them, the green glow was faint but steady.
"This way," she said.
The corridor was narrow. Industrial. Pipes ran along the ceiling, and the fluorescent lights overhead flickered in a rhythm that matched the hum Franklin felt in his bones. They moved in a line. Franklin at the front. Harley behind him, mallet resting on her shoulder. Kamala and Doreen in the middle. Ivy at the back, one hand trailing along the wall, feeling through the stone.
The reinforced door at the end of the corridor was steel. No window. No handle. Just a card reader and a camera mounted above it.
Harley looked at the camera. Looked at Franklin. "So. Who's got a card?"
Franklin raised his hand. A small cosmic beam lanced out and vaporized the camera housing. Sparks rained down.
"That works too," Harley said.
Ivy stepped forward. She pressed her palms against the door's surface. For nothing happened. Then the steel groaned. Hairline cracks appeared around the card reader. Vines threaded through the gaps, finding the locking mechanism inside, feeling for the bolts, the pins, the tumblers.
The door opened inward with a shriek of metal.
The room beyond was worse than any of them had imagined.
Rows of cages. Floor to ceiling. Each one small. Each one occupied. Pokémon pressed against the bars, eyes wide, bodies fitted with collars that pulsed with a faint red light. The hum Franklin had been feeling wasn't machinery. It was them. Dozens of voices, all crying out on a frequency only Ralts could translate.
Ralts made a sound Franklin had never heard before. A low, broken keen.
Franklin's hands started sparking. Not the controlled glow of his cosmic power. Something wilder. Something that crackled across his knuckles and made the air taste like copper.
Ivy walked into the room. She didn't speak. She didn't need to. Her expression had gone cold in a way that had nothing to do with temperature. It was the look of someone who had found a wound in the world that she was going to close, one way or another.
Harley's grip on her mallet tightened until her knuckles went white. She looked at a Luxio in the nearest cage. The Electric-type was pressed into the far corner, its star-shaped tail dim, its eyes tracking the humans with something between fear and desperate hope.
"Those collars," Harley said. Her voice was flat. "Those are shock collars."
"I know," Ivy said.
"On Pokémon."
"I know."
Harley's jaw worked. She set the mallet down gently. Carefully. The way you set down something you were about to use very hard.
Ivy knelt at the first cage. Her fingers found the lock. Roots thinner than thread slipped into the mechanism. She felt for the collar's power source. Found it. A small battery pack welded to the underside, connected to two contact points against the Pokémon's neck.
"Don't touch the collars directly," Ivy said. "They're rigged to discharge if tampered with wrong."
"So we tamper with them right," Harley said.
Ivy almost smiled. Almost.
The first lock clicked. The cage door swung open. The Pokémon inside, a Poochyena, didn't move. It stared at Ivy with red eyes that had seen too much.
"Hey," Ivy said softly. "You're okay. Come on."
The Poochyena crept forward. Ivy reached in slowly and worked the collar's clasp with a root-tip. The device fell away. The Poochyena shook itself, then bolted for the corridor.
One down.
Ivy moved to the next cage. And the next. Her roots worked faster now, finding the pattern in the locks, the rhythm of the mechanisms. Click. Click. Click. Pokémon slipped free. A Zigzagoon. A Bidoof. A Shinx whose fur was matted and dull.
Franklin stood in the center of the room, watching. His hands were still sparking. Ralts floated beside him, and through their bond, Franklin could feel every Pokémon that Ivy freed. The fear. The confusion. The fragile, tentative relief.
"We need to move faster," he said.
"I'm going as fast as I can," Ivy said.
"Then let me help."
Franklin raised his hands. Cosmic energy gathered at his fingertips. Not a beam. A field. A gentle, shimmering wave that washed over the nearest row of cages. The locks didn't break. They unlocked. Every tumbler turning at once, every bolt retracting, every door swinging open on its own.
Ivy looked at him. "That works too."
They worked in tandem after that. Ivy's roots on one side of the room. Franklin's energy on the other. Cages opened in waves. Pokémon poured into the corridor. Some ran. Some limped. Some stood frozen, unable to process that the bars were gone.
Harley moved among them, speaking in a voice Franklin had never heard her use. Low. Steady. Sure.
"Come on, sweethearts. This way. Yeah, you. You're doing great. Move your fuzzy butt."
Kamala guided a cluster of smaller Pokémon toward the root-tunnel. Doreen and Tippy-Toe herded a group of Bidoof who seemed more interested in chewing the pipes than escaping.
Then a guard rounded the corner.
He was big. Tactical gear. Rifle slung across his chest. He took one look at the open cages and the freed Pokémon and the teenagers standing in the middle of it all, and his hand went to his radio.
The alarm triggered.
A klaxon split the air. Red lights began strobing along the ceiling. Somewhere above them, boots started moving.
"Time's up," Harley said.
Everything shifted.
The guard raised his rifle. Harley was faster. She closed the distance in two steps and swung her mallet in a clean arc that connected with his chest plate. The impact lifted him off his feet and sent him sliding down the corridor, his armor dented, his radio skittering away across the concrete.
More guards came. Three of them, rounding the same corner, weapons up.
Kamala's fist enlarged. Not all the way. Just enough. She stepped forward and threw a punch that caught the lead guard square in the sternum and launched him into his two companions. All three went down in a tangle of limbs and equipment.
"Corridor's clear," Kamala said, shaking out her hand. "For now."
Doreen pointed at the control panel on the wall. "Tippy-Toe. Go."
Tippy-Toe launched herself at the panel. Behind her, a dozen squirrels materialized from the root-tunnel, chittering with purpose. They swarmed the control panel, chewing through wires, shorting circuits, pulling connectors. Every cage lock in the room disengaged simultaneously. The overhead lights died. The klaxon cut out.
In the sudden silence, the sound of Pokémon moving was deafening.
Franklin turned toward the corridor that led deeper into the bunker. He could feel them coming. More guards. A lot more. He raised both hands and fired a cosmic beam at the support column to his left. The column cracked. The ceiling sagged. Concrete dust rained down. The corridor filled with rubble.
"That'll slow them down," he said.
Ivy pressed her palms to the floor. The concrete buckled. Roots erupted through the surface, punching upward through the sublevel's ceiling, through the floor above, through every layer of concrete and steel between them and the mountain above. They tore through the bunker's infrastructure like fingers through wet paper.
A path opened. A vertical shaft of torn earth and twisted metal, leading up toward daylight.
"Go," Ivy said. "All of them. Now."
The Pokémon didn't need to be told twice. They surged toward the opening. Climbing. Scrambling. Pulling each other up with teeth and claws and tails. Houndour ran alongside them, herding the stragglers, nipping at the slow ones to keep them moving.
But not all of them fled.
The Luxio stepped forward. Its tail blazed bright yellow. It looked at the guards who were picking themselves up from Kamala's punch, and it let out a snarl that crackled with static.
A Poochyena joined it. Then a Zigzagoon. Then three Bidoof, who lined up side by side and bared their teeth with surprising menace.
"Oh," Harley said, watching the Pokémon turn on their captors. "Oh, that's beautiful."
The Luxio unleashed a Spark that caught a guard square in the chest. The Poochyena lunged for an ankle. The Bidoof charged in a wedge formation that would have made a football coach weep with pride.
Houndour barked once. Sharp. Commanding. The freed Pokémon moved with it, a coordinated assault that drove the remaining guards back down the corridor, away from the escape route, away from the opening that led to the sky.
Franklin watched for a moment. Then he turned to the others.
"We need to keep moving. Valeria's still in there."
Harley picked up her mallet. "Then let's go crash her party."
They fought upward through the collapsing sublevel. Every corridor they cleared, more Pokémon poured toward Ivy's root-network and the freedom above. The bunker groaned around them. Pipes burst. Walls cracked. The mountain itself seemed to be rejecting the structure that had been built inside it.
They emerged into daylight gasping, covered in dust and concrete powder, squinting against the late afternoon sun. Behind them, the bunker shuddered. A sound like thunder rolled up from below.
The freed Pokémon scattered into the forest. Some paused at the tree line to look back. The Luxio. The Poochyena. A Shinx whose fur was already starting to regain its shine.
Then they were gone, disappearing into Aurawood like they'd always belonged there.
Harley planted her mallet in the dirt and put her hands on her knees. "Ivy. Remind me never to make you actually angry."
Ivy was pale. Her hands were trembling. But she was smiling.
Kamala looked back at the bunker. "Valeria's still in there."
Franklin's hands were still sparking. He stared at the structure. Through the stone and steel, he could feel it. Zapdos. Trapped. Draining. And somewhere inside, his sister, fighting.
"The distraction worked," he said. "Now comes the hard part."
Somewhere deep in the bunker, something exploded. The ground shook. A plume of dust erupted from a ventilation shaft on the mountain's far side.
Harley straightened up. She readjusted her grip on her mallet.
"So," she said. "Who's going in after them?"
Franklin was already walking toward the bunker's north entrance. Ralts floated at his shoulder, glowing brighter than before.
"I am," he said.
The others followed.
***
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Advance chapters in P@T0n Najicablitz.