The November chill sweeps into the café every time someone opens the door. Although I’ve settled at the farthest table, the cool air clings to my bare legs. I should think about wearing tights with my uniform so I don’t freeze to death at some point. However, the thought always fades when other tasks overwhelm me.

  The week I spent waiting was filled with ideas and thoughts about what might have happened to me. After all, I lived here with my father before we moved to Alola. We spent our time here, probably an eternity if I remember the vague memory that washed over me when I was kidnapped. In the film that was playing in my head, I was just a little girl who had to be taken by the hand. Probably no older than eight or nine.

  I can think of countless adventures I might have had, and Alder will certainly tell me about one or two of them. At least the ones he knows about. If he is the friend my father told me about, then he will know why we ran away. Or better, he might tell me who we were running from exactly.

  A sigh escapes me as I lower my eyes to the cup of hot chocolate in my hands. Today is the first time since Plasma fell that I’ve made my way to a place alone. The Explorers’ safety precautions still call for travelling in pairs, but according to Amethio, I can handle this meeting alone. It’s not far to the base, and, if worse comes to worst, he’s programmed his number into my direct dialling button. The Rotom Phone will contact him immediately if I get myself into any trouble.

  “Hah, today’s one of those days when even a Snom would feel comfortable outside.”

  The sudden voice of a man makes me look up, and the first thing that catches my eye is orange hair, its vibrant red roots literally glowing in the soft, dark brown ambience of the café.

  “It’s cold, yes.” I don’t know what to say, so I simply gesture with one hand for him to sit down opposite me. Seeing him in sandals and worn trousers makes me feel colder than the weather outside. “Have you been ... travelling … sir?”

  He waves me off. “I’m Alder. No need for formalities that don’t bring us closer.” The smile on his lightly tanned face emphasises a few wrinkles around his eyes and mouth. It gives him an oddly friendly air. “And no. But I often wear these clothes here when I’m travelling. You get used to the changes in weather.”

  I can hardly imagine. In Alola, I occasionally felt like I was burning up, while wintertime in Unova numbs my fingertips and makes me secretly long for warmer days.

  Finally, I take a sip of my chocolate. It’s better to get to the point. “What happened?”

  “You like to skip ahead?” The smirk on his lips tells me nothing, and he doesn’t even bother to answer before the waitress arrives to take his order.

  All this just makes me shrug my shoulders. “I think my father has tried long enough to keep his secret. Answers would be nice.”

  “Roma’s never been much of a talker when it comes to you.” Alder’s understanding nod at least makes me feel like I’m not alone in facing endless questions. “He’s a good man and a very attentive father, I can tell you that. If he hasn’t spoken to you, it’s only to lull you into a sense of security. You need to know ... safety is a luxury you’ve somehow never been able to maintain. It’s because you can hear the Pokémon’s voices. At least some Pokémon’s.”

  “And he thought locking me up and not telling me anything would help maintain that safety?”

  A soundless snort escapes him. “He probably thought it would help protect your battered psyche.”

  I feel like protesting. There are a lot of things going through my mind, and there was a time when I just blocked them out, but since Amethio has been with me, I’ve made a lot of progress. I’m getting better at what I do, and I have the support of people I can trust.

  But it’s also true that I can only talk about my journey with the Explorers. I have no clue who I was before Alola.

  Alder lets me sit with these thoughts until his coffee arrives. Only then does he start again, ready to give me a deeper insight into the world he has come to know. “I can tell you I don’t know much about your circumstances. Your father and I are friends, but he has always kept a low profile. The fear in him ... some days he was so paranoid that his forehead was covered in sweat, and he scared people away from the Pokémon Center.”

  “I’ll take what I can get.”

  He gives a barely perceptible nod. “You were just eight when you arrived here in Unova. Your father quickly found a place in a nearby Pokémon Center, and that’s how we met. He often checked up on my team, and at some point, I told him about my life as a champion. What it’s like to go travelling. Who I lost and who joined me. I don’t know why. He seemed like a man who knew these things, too. And it was good to talk to someone. And then, one day, he told me he’d come here from Johto with his little daughter. He told me his wife had died and that he could no longer live there.”

  My lips press together. It shouldn’t affect me. It really shouldn’t. My mum wasn’t in Alola, and the little snippets of memory from Unova didn’t even bring her into the picture. Instead, there’s this hazy scene in my head where the house was on fire. Someone grabbed me and tried to drag me outside. I think I’ve torn myself free.

  I take a shaky breath. She probably died in the fire, that’s obvious. Still, my hands are sweating and my eyes are burning. I think a small part of me has suppressed this idea, hoping to see her again somewhere, sometime on my travels.

  “At some point, your father and I also met outside of work – always near your home,” Alder continues. “Everything seemed to go on as normal until one day you disappeared without a trace.” His eyelids droop. “He called me and begged me to help him look for you, and, of course, I agreed. You don’t leave a friend in need hanging!”

  “That ... was the day of the market, wasn’t it?”

  “You remember that?”

  “I know that someone pushed me into a car because I fell for a stupid trick. And I met a Pokémon that helped me. One that is now in Ghetsis’ possession, I think.”

  “So they’re coming back...”

  “Who?”

  “The days that were taken from you.”

  I have to blink a few times to place his words. “You know something about that?”

  “Less than I probably should,” he confesses. “We found you. You were all alone in the crowd. Roma and I took you home, and I stayed. He asked you what had happened, and you told him you had been carried away and that they wanted to take you to someone. You also told him you were talking to a Pokémon, and that was the first time your father laughed in front of me.”

  “He laughed?”

  “He was in despair. After he had put you to bed, he let me know what I needed to know. For one, that Team Plasma is after you. They ambushed you in Johto, killing your mother. Your father did everything he could to get you out of there, thinking it would be easiest to hide right under your enemies’ noses.”

  His plan more than obviously worked out worse than expected. I ended up running into them after all, and I can imagine there was a big game of running as a result.

  “He said they were after you because you can hear the voices of some Pokémon and talk to them. I have to admit, I doubted it at first, but he was so scared that I couldn’t imagine he was lying.”

  “My father ... is a terrible liar.” That’s why he eventually stopped deceiving me and blocked all my questions instead. “But I think it was enough to drag us all over Unova.”

  Alder’s laugh sounds muffled. “If only it were. After you were kidnapped, he asked me to help you. He wanted to resettle you in another region and make sure your memories didn’t come back. Before you came to Unova, he sealed these images in your head with the help of a Hypno. So that you could sleep.”

  The fact a Hypno is responsible for the missing memory of my Johto years is something I can believe. But there are a thousand other things that don’t fit together. There are a lot more gaps in my memory, and, according to Alder and my age back then, we never moved from Unova to Alola. There are a few years missing.

  “Where did we go?” He’ll be able to tell me, I’m sure.

  “I got you a place in the Harara region,” Alder replies slowly. “A place where there is a lot of desert. It seemed like the perfect place to hide.”

  What he reports doesn’t match up with what I know. “You can’t tell me what happened next, can you?”

  He shakes his head. “Contact was broken off after that. For a few years. The only thing I can tell you is that something terrible must have happened there. At some point, Roma contacted me again. The same old panic, the same begging as when you disappeared.”

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  “What did he want?”

  Alder’s sigh brings a brief silence in which we look at each other. There seems to be something behind his dark violet eyes that wants to tell me to stop asking questions. But we both know he’s already said too much. He can’t just pull back and pretend nothing happened.

  “He wanted my help to move. This time to Alola. Far away from Harara. He said you can’t stay another day and that things will get a lot worse if you don’t get out of there now.” He scratches the back of his head. “Besides, he wanted me to find a Beheeyem. I think ... it was that Pokémon that tampered with your memory.”

  Even worse. It took away the knowledge of an entire region. No matter how hard I try to remember it, there’s not a single spark – as if it’s been wiped out. As if we have never been there. In my head, we moved from Unova to Alola. In reality, there’s another stopover.

  “That’s all I know,” Alder finishes, and for a breath, I don’t know whether I should thank him for everything he’s said or whether silence would be more pleasant.

  With difficulty, I take a sip of my lukewarm chocolate and try to take a deep breath. The air trembles in my lungs. I would love to stand up and smash the cup on the floor. But that’s just a thought in my head. In reality, I don’t have the strength.

  All the information in front of me now doesn’t change a thing. I know more about my life now, but there’s still a gigantic gap, and the fact I can hardly remember anything of what Alder told me doesn’t help. The answers I’ve been searching for are within my grasp. Better still, I’m already holding some of them in my hands. But they don’t awaken anything in me. I can’t remember Harara, I can’t remember how my mother died, I can’t even remember how I got home after my abduction. What Alder has told me seems like a story in which I play the leading role.

  But it’s just that: the leading role in a story that, according to my heart, I didn’t experience.

  “You seem unhappy,” Alder adds in the middle of my thoughts, causing me to look at him briefly. His smile suddenly looks exhausted – dull and drained – so he empties his coffee in one go. “I can’t imagine what it must be like for you to have no memory of most of what happened. All I can tell you is that your father always wanted the best for you.”

  “I’m sure there would have been other ways,” I reply slowly. Instead of manipulating my memories, my father could have taken care of me. Sure, I was still very young, but we were in this situation together. “I’m sure if we’d worked together, we would have found some comfort in all of this.”

  “I’m sure you would have,” Alder confirms. “But ... sometimes you find yourself in a situation where you have to act. And all the stress that comes crashing down on you in those seconds can make you make the wrong decisions. Domino ... people aren’t perfect, and I’m sure you know that.”

  I want to hate him. With every fibre of my body so I can shake off his stupid words. However, I understand what he’s talking about. If I end up in a situation like this, my choices are probably far from “good” or “acceptable”. Judging by Amethio’s statements and actions, I fall somewhere between “insane” and “thoughtless”. A trait I probably inherited from my father.

  It’s hard to believe, not least because I never had the feeling that we had a connection. But we do have something in common. Something that makes me laugh soundlessly before I shake my head and turn my attention back to Alder.

  “Thank you for telling me about it.” It’s all I can give him, and he seems to realise in that very instant that the conversation between us has ended.

  He knows he’s just a passing point in my search, and when he finally gets up and puts the money for his coffee on the table, I can’t even bring myself to ask him for his number. It would be good to keep in touch, but my mouth is dry.

  “Take care of yourself, Domino. I’m sure your travels will throw a lot more obstacles in your way. But I’m confident that Team Plasma will no longer be a problem for you. We’ll find Ghetsis. Then the issue will be over.”

  I can’t tell him I hardly think about Ghetsis any more. Basically, this man is nothing more than a power-hungry monster who no longer has an organisation – or even a home. Natural has embarked on his journey. He’s out there somewhere, enjoying Unova like he never could before. There’s nothing left for me to worry about in that respect.

  Still, I nod at Alder with an awkward smile and watch him leave the café. Suddenly, I’m alone. No more people to talk to. No one who tries justifying anything. It’s just me here.

  For a few blinks, I think I can bear it. I do what Amethio has advised me to do. One thing at a time. Always take one step slowly before moving on to the next. But I can’t get the conversation with Alder out of my head. The tightness in my chest hurts, and everything in me wants nothing more than to forget what we discussed and push it to the back of my mind so that I never think about it again. Not least because it’s not the entire story, and I don’t find satisfaction in half solutions. Not in this case.

  But instead of sitting back and swallowing the unpleasant thoughts, I dig the Rotom Phone out of my skirt pocket. The snort on my lips seems strangely dry as I unlock my dad’s number and send him a message. A very simple sentence.

  I’ve spoken to Alder.

  There’s nothing he can do to change it, and I’m sure he’ll respond to my words. But even after five minutes, nothing happens, and the likelihood of him seeing my message in the next five decreases. So I pay for my order and push myself out from behind the table.

  My legs weigh like lead as I force myself outside, where the cold eats through my skin down to my bones. A pleasant contrast to my heated thoughts.

  If I return to headquarters now, I can confide in Amethio. He will listen to me. Then again, he probably has enough on his plate with the Rising Volt Tacklers and the whole mess in Hoenn, so he can’t take care of me as well. I shouldn’t ask more of him when he’s up to his neck in worries and tasks that I can’t help him with.

  Groaning, I put my hands at my sides. He’s not the type who likes to talk about what’s going on inside him. If he isn’t a little moody sometimes, I would almost think his life is wonderful. Or terrible. You can’t tell from his sometimes far too-rigid face.

  Sometimes I would like to be like him in this respect. A little more withdrawn, controlled and thoughtful and...

  I shake off the thought. Amethio has his own shadows. I shouldn’t try to be like someone who’s not one bit better off than me. Being like him probably only sounds so tempting because from the outside it’s hard to tell how he feels. Nobody can say what it looks like inside him.

  Rotom’s sudden ringing brings me back to reality, to the cold and the people wandering around who look like snow is about to fall. A glance at the display brings my father’s call into view.

  He has seen the message.

  And he knows he can’t run away any longer.

  With a swipe, I answer his call but avoid saying anything. The distance and our last argument have left me unsure of how to greet him now. So I listen to the other side, the irregular breathing and the voice that also fails to utter a greeting.

  “So you’ve met Alder...” He doesn’t sound thrilled. “And I assume he told you what he knows. He’s always been a man who does things differently than I do.”

  “Maybe you should take a leaf out of his book,” I reply dryly. “You could tell me about what happened in the Harara region.”

  “I’ll tell you whatever you want when you come home.”

  His desire makes me sigh. “No. Coming home isn’t an option. Not as long as I know you won’t let me leave again.”

  “Is that so wrong? Are you going to blame me for worrying about your safety?”

  “I want to blame you for tampering with my memory, and I wouldn’t put it past you to do it again.” No one promises me he won’t do it again. “Is it that hard for you to trust and believe in me? I’m not a little girl anymore.”

  “You’re seventeen. You’re nothing more than a little girl!” His voice grows raspy, making my breath catch. “What if they catch you?”

  “Oh, guess what, Team Plasma is scattered into pieces,” I mumble. But my words waver. I want to hang up and no longer remain vulnerable to this conversation. “The Explorers helped me with this. You may not believe it, but I’m in excellent hands here.”

  He’s silent for a moment before disbelief spreads. “Plasma doesn’t exist anymore?”

  “No. They’ve imprisoned most of them.”

  “Ghetsis too?”

  My tongue seems to stick to the roof of my mouth. I know what will happen if I tell him the truth. But if I lie to him, he’ll find out, and the bond between us will grow even thinner. “No. He got away.”

  “Then you’re not safe.” He exhales audibly. “Besides, you’re also in danger in the hands of the Explorers. This organisation ... I spent the months you were gone finding out everything I could about them. They’re not good for you.”

  “Why? Or can’t you tell me again because I can’t handle it?”

  “They’re dangerous,” he emphasises again. “The Explorers finance themselves by trading rare items, but they also have their fingers in many other pies.”

  “Like the Devon Corporation, for example.” It’s nothing new, and, above all, it’s not reprehensible that they work with other organisations.

  “Oh, not only that. They also have their own researchers.”

  “Hiding in the basement of the headquarters or on loan to the Devon Corporation.”

  Amused snorts come through the line. “No, dear. The Explorers are a branch organisation of Exceed. A scientific institute that tracks even the most abstruse ideas.”

  My mouth twists briefly. Exceed is one of those institutes dedicated to studying Pokémon, their attacks, their habitats and their uses outside of battles. You can read in some articles how they pursue rather unorthodox ideas, but I don’t see a problem with that. On the contrary. Knowing that Exceed is part of the Explorers, I can also see why Gibeon wants to support me as a professor. Maybe one day I’ll be able to find a place there among other scientists and pursue my desires and ideals.

  “What’s wrong with that?” I finally ask. “I’ll also become a professor and hopefully be able to make a difference.”

  “Or they’ll find out how useful your ability is and throw you on a dissection table!”

  “You worry too much.” My shoulders slump. “They already know about the voices, which is why I’m needed on our journeys. Nobody wants to hurt me here. And I trust Amethio and the others.”

  “Amethio?” A disdainful gasp comes through the line. “A boy?”

  “Doesn’t matter.” I don’t want to hear that I’m doing all this because of a boy. Amethio is just one reason I want to leave here even less than I already do.

  “Whatever.” All of a sudden, my father doesn’t sound like he wants to talk things out with me anymore. “This is your last chance, Domino. I want you to come home. Now. It’s safe here.”

  The same wish, the same harsh voice he always puts on when he wants to force something on me. It’s the same tone he used when I fought my battle against Popplio. Anger he holds back with all his might, and which I simply can’t understand because it shouldn’t be so hard to accept my wishes.

  “No,” I reply. This time I’m not going to make a deal that I have to break in the end. “If you want me to come home, then give me a proper explanation. Otherwise, I’ll stay with the Explorers.”

  “You won’t.” He doesn’t shout, doesn’t even raise his voice. There’s just a subliminal tremor, and I’m sure right now is one of those moments when he takes off his glasses to rub the bridge of his nose. “I’ve let this go long enough because I thought somewhere along your ego trip you’d realise you don’t have what it takes to go travelling alone. Those damn Explorers seem strong enough to look out for you, though – I’ll give them credit for that.” He sighs. “Enjoy the days you have left with them. I’ll make sure the Rising Volt Tacklers take care of you. This time, without chasing other nonsense on the side. They’ll bring you home.”

  They won’t, I’m sure of it. They don’t have the strength to take us all on. On top, I’m not a prize that’s just going to watch who wins. I can fight, and I won’t just let a group of people kidnap me if I can make their lives hell.

  Still, I can’t help but continue to question my father. “Why can’t you just let me go?”

  Shaky breathing reaches me through the line, and just when I think he’s going to shout at me this time, it’s a gentle, deep, even fragile voice that nestles against my ears and begs for understanding.

  “Because you’re all I have left.”