By the time Zed finishes the first pour from his thermos, I’ve already traded five possible escape routes against the odds of a Lampent getting bored enough to try and burn a hole through my jacket. The blue fire in its lantern-head is bright but not cheerful—it shivers and gutters with every word out of Zed’s mouth, as if his stories are the tinder and the ghost-type is just here to see how fast they’ll burn.

  Zed leans forward, hand close enough to the fire that the hair on his knuckles should be catching. “People don’t realize,” he says, voice dropping to a register just above whisper, “but the real city’s underneath. The rest is just paint on concrete.” He grins, his teeth the colour of earwax and city dust, then cocks his head at me. “You ever seen a fight down here?”

  I shake my head and keep my hands in my pockets. Beldum floats between me and the Lampent, not so much a shield as a mutual-assured-destruction pact. I can feel its field tickling the metal buckle in my belt, the way it always does when it’s nervous.

  Zed swigs from the thermos again, wipes his mouth. “Vault matches, they call ‘em. Started out as Patrats and scrap, now it’s big money—League exiles, criminals, anyone who needs fast cash and doesn’t mind getting their teeth kicked in.” He pulls a tattered flyer from the inside of his jacket and flicks it onto the oil drum. The ink’s bled out from the damp, but the message is clear: POKéMON FIGHTS—NO RULES, NO REFUNDS, NO JUDGES.

  Lampent circles the drum, torchlight pooling in the cracks. Its fire dims, then pulses, then flickers as if reacting to some joke only it gets. Zed eyes the Beldum, then me, then the concrete stretch stretching behind us, as if expecting more company.

  “Every week, more show up. Winners get paid, losers get dumped in the old runoff.” He leans in, pupils so wide I can see my own silhouette in the black. “The Market is further down, a few kilometres into the core. You can buy anything—stolen Poké Balls, League badges taken from dead kids, even custom items for the weirdos who want their partners to run hotter.”

  I look at the heavy, rusted doors sealing off the sub-levels. “And the police? They just let it happen?”

  Zed laughs, a wet, rattling sound. “The boys in blue? They know exactly where the air smells like blood and counterfeit potions. They’ve tried raiding it twice. First time, the lights went out and a dozen of their Growlithe ended up poisoned by ‘unknown’ needles in the dark. Second time, a structural support ‘accidentally’ gave way behind the lead squad. The syndicates run the infrastructure down here. They’ve got the blueprints, the overrides, and enough Electrode wired into the junctions to level a city block. The police don’t stay out because they’re lazy; they stay out because the basement is rigged to blow if the wrong person turns the key. Criminal interference is a hell of a deterrent when you’re worried about the street level collapsing.”

  “How do you get in?” I ask, voice low enough that only Beldum and the ghosts can hear it.

  Zed’s face creases up like he’s been waiting for me to care. “You want to watch, just hang around the maintenance corridors; you’ll see the heavies before you see the ring. But if you want to bet, fight, or buy, you need an in. The main access is a three-kilometre hike south—past the old utility vaults. There’s a crew called the Boldoors running the gates. If you don’t look right, or if you smell like League, they’ll launch their Pokémon first and ask questions after.”

  “And if I want to avoid getting jumped?”

  He shrugs, another grin like a trowel through wet cement. “That’s the trick, isn't it? Most of the old utility tunnels—the ones that run straight to the heart—have been sealed off with three feet of reinforced concrete to keep the 'rot' from spreading. Or so the city council says. They’re 'closed,' sure. But the market needs power, and power needs cooling. You find a seal that’s sweating oil—dark streaks running down the concrete like it’s crying grease—you’ve found a gap. It means the ventilation on the other side is pushing hot, dirty air through the cracks. It means the passage is still breathing.”

  Beldum pings so loud inside my skull it’s like an aneurysm trying to split the bone. “Noted,” I mutter, and Zed winks like he caught the subtext.

  I thank Zed for the fire and the tip, then stand. He clucks his tongue, settling back into the chair. “If you get lost,” he calls after me, “listen for the pipes. The city hums truer than any compass.”

  I nod, then angle up the main corridor, heading south. Beldum floats at my shoulder, silent and sharp as a linoleum knife. The further we go, the more the air changes—less the sweet rot of Lampent, more the acrid tang of scorched dust and the sharp, coppered edge of hot rebar. We pass a stretch of pipe that vibrates under its own tension, singing in a frequency I can feel in my teeth. I’m walking the path toward the Boldoor gates, the obvious route, but my eyes are scanning the baseboards for the tell-tale black stains.

  I ping Beldum, more habit than necessity: “Keep moving south. Let’s make it look like we’re heading for the gates, but keep your sensors on the walls. We're looking for a leak.”

  Beldum answers with a buzz of static that settles on my tongue, its magnetic eye pulsing as it sweeps the reinforced concrete. Understood.

  We keep walking, the sound of my boots echoing against the sealed vaults, two kilometres to go until the heavies, and counting. The walls narrow, and the gravel floor is gradually swallowed by poured concrete. The corridor dips—an engineered slope, just a few degrees but enough to make my calves ache. I let Beldum take the lead, its eye throwing off a red halo that picks out every microfissure in the wall.

  The feedback loop between us is a constant undercurrent of status updates—not words, but weights and pressures that land in my joints and the tiny break between heartbeats. Every twenty metres, Beldum flares its magnetics, a soft whump of force that stirs the dust and lights up the tunnel with the afterimage of old wiring. I match my step to it, feeling its presence in the iron of my blood—not a command, but a shared frequency ringing inside my bones.

  The first obstacle is a power surge, a sudden, throbbing static that rides the length of the corridor and makes my hair stand up. I freeze, but Beldum only floats closer, eye narrowing on a ceiling panel where the black paint has bubbled and split. There’s a shape up there. Small, metallic.

  I don’t have to tell Beldum—its ping is a warning, sharp enough to make my ears ring. I hold steady as the thing drops, landing with a dry clatter on the grey concrete. A Magnemite, all raw voltage and nervous energy, flits close to the wall and blinks its eye at me. It’s not hunting, not yet, but it’s hungry for the charge bleeding from the live wire arc above us.

  Beldum doesn’t threaten. It tilts its body just enough to bring the Magnemite into its own field, then modulates: a low, harmonic oscillation, like a lullaby played through a steel pipe. The Magnemite listens, its screws rotating in a lazy, accepting spin, then it lifts without a sound and disappears up a vent.

  I exhale, and Beldum lets out a pulse of something like warmth against my shoulder. Next.

  Another kilometre in, Beldum flares its eye, a red pulse illuminating a jagged seam in the wall. It’s sweating just like Zed said—a viscous, black weeping of oil that smells of burnt insulation and old machine heat. I stop, my heart hammering against my ribs, and press my shoulder against the concrete to check the seam. The gap is there—I can feel a faint, hot draught whistling through the crack—but the Council didn’t just use concrete to bury this place. They’ve reinforced the interior with high-tensile steel mesh, and the plates are bolted with industrial-grade pins. Even with Beldum’s magnetism, we’d have to vibrate the whole wall to dust to get through. It would sound like a drum solo in a tomb. I pull back, wiping the thick, bitter grease from my hand onto my trousers. The back way is dead. We have to take the gate.

  Love what you're reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on.

  We keep moving. The corridor narrows, then splays out into a junction. Foot traffic starts to surface as the corridor opens—at first it’s a couple of shapes in the cross-hatching of shadow, then a steady trickle, all headed the same way. Nobody talks. They just keep their heads down, hands in pockets, steps quick and birdlike, as if the whole premise of being down here is to pretend you’re somewhere else. Most are in the city’s unofficial uniform: work boots, banded hoodies, jackets with pockets stitched on at weird angles. Some have masks over their mouths, not for the air, but for the plausible deniability it gives their eyes.

  I count eight people in the first hundred metres, then lose track as the lighting changes—long, fluorescent tubes set into the wall, running on their own grid. The wiring is naked, a web of improvisation that tells me nobody’s paid an electrician in a decade. Down here, the only real current is the anticipation of getting past the next checkpoint alive.

  I spot the gate before I see the heavies: a slab of brushed steel, six inches thick, sunk into the curve of the tunnel with a badge-welded array of old signage over the arch. The letters have been stripped, but I can still see the ghost outlines—“UTILITY,” “AUTHORIZED,” “NO TRESPASS.” All lies now. In front of the gate, three men operate like a living barricade.

  The two on the flanks are heavyset with shaved heads, skin like cured leather. One has a Stoutland at heel and the other, a Boldore parked just behind, its crystals glowing with a dull, subterranean heat. The Stoutland has its fur trimmed into aggressive geometric patterns—stripes down the leg and a white blaze at the chest—and the handler’s heavy canvas jacket has been dyed in the exact same geometric patterns, making them look like a single, coordinated unit of muscle.

  The third guy, the one in the center, is smaller, sharper. He talks at people, never to them—just a constant stream of questions, then a hand held out for payment, then a snap of the fingers to wave the next one forward. I see a dozen people in line, each waiting with the posture of someone who’s already spent the bribe money in their head. The second I turn the corner, I catch a glimpse of Stoutland’s nose twitching in my direction.

  I duck into a side alcove forty metres back, the kind meant for a fire hose or emergency phone, and thumb Beldum’s ball and the beam absorbs it before anyone can clock its silhouette. The heavies don’t notice, but the guy in the centre does—his eyes flick sideways, just a tremor, then he’s back to the show. I pretend to check my laces, killing thirty seconds until the next break in the line.

  I wait, counting off breath cycles and letting my eyes get lazy. The crowd shuffles through—nobody in a hurry, every step measured for plausible deniability. Most hand over packs or toolbags for a cursory scan. The scanner’s just a rebranded League wand—specialized for wires, microchips, anything you could use to record or detonate from a distance. The lead heavy has taken up a post behind a battered office desk, with a tablet and a tray full of chargers. He watches the line with a look that says he’s not bored, just thinking about what kind of sandwich he’ll eat on his break.

  The process is simple. Every trainer hands over their Poké Balls. The heavy pops each one into a reader—some custom hack, metal casing held together with purple tape and a sticker of a fanged, smiling Gengar. The application spits out a readout on the tablet: species, condition, move history, threat index. You don’t get your Pokémon back until you pass the rest of the scan and, I guess, pay whatever cover charge the Boldoors are running today.

  It takes four trainers before something interesting happens. A woman in a grease-smeared cloak, face shadowed by a cowl, steps up to the desk. She holds her Poké Balls tight, knuckles white, and when the lead asks for them, nods, feigning shaky compliance, and hands over two Poké Balls. The lead heavy runs them through the scanner—first ball, a common Sandile, second ball, a battered-looking Blitzle. Both log in clean, no red tags, not even a notation for violence. The heavy glances at the woman, then waves her toward the inner door.

  But the Stoutland, which has been sniffing in slow, deliberate spirals, suddenly barks—sharp, assertive, not just noise but accusation. The sound freezes the line. The trainer on Stoutland’s leash steps up, grabs the woman by the elbow, and locks her in place. Surprised, she jerks, and a third Poké Ball pops loose from a hidden sleeve, hitting the concrete with a hollow, metallic echo.

  The lead heavy is on it in an instant. He snatches the ball, turns it over in his palm, then looks at the woman with a flat smile. He drops it into the scanner and, before the display even loads, I know she’s fucked. The reader blinks alive, then flashes red across the whole screen. The heavy cocks an eyebrow, waggles the tablet for the rest of the room, and says, “Oh, look at this—Boldoors repo. You’re already in the hole, and you try to walk in with a loaned Pokémon?” His tone is bored, professional, like this happens a few times a day.

  The woman pulls her hood lower, but she doesn’t plead. She just stands there, jaw locked. The Stoutland’s handler wrenches her arm higher, forcing her down until she’s eye-to-eye with the desk. The lead heavy leans in, thumb hovering over the recall on the Poké Ball. “You know the drill,” he says. “You can reclaim it, but not until you settle up. That's policy.”

  She spits, the glob landing inches from the edge of the desk. The heavy doesn’t flinch. “Nice,” he says, then presses the recall. The Poké Ball shrinks and he slides it into a drawer somewhere behind the desk, probably to a lockbox labelled "collateral."

  He waves the handler off. “Get her out,” he says, not loud but final. The Stoutland’s trainer manhandles her into a side corridor, and just like that, the next in line steps forward, pretending not to have seen any of it. The momentum of the crowd is absolute. Nobody wants to be the one who interrupts the machine.

  I let three more trainers cycle through, watching for patterns. Every person is scanned, every Pokémon logged, but the heavies don’t care about anything except flagged entries—debts, bounties, or marks from the League. One guy with a battered Herdier gets a handshake and a nod from the heavy, like they’re old friends. I kneel, pressing into the hollow, using my own body to shroud the red blink of Beldum’s release beam. The second the ball opens, I get a pop in the base of my neck—a sugary static as Beldum boots into consciousness and takes the full diagnostic of its surroundings.

  We work in tandem. I clock the geometry of the corridor: three metres of shadow, then a spill of light where the guards bring each case to the scanner. There’s another alcove opposite, maybe two metres from where the woman was hauled off. I ping Beldum: Option, side entry, distraction, then a visual of the scanner’s edge, circuitry wound tight and exposed in a hacked-together chassis. Beldum parses it in under a second, then hits me with a reply: Ready to disrupt.

  I keep my head down. The next mark in line is a scrawny bloke in a puffer jacket, face banded with old cigarette burns and the kind of jumpiness you only ever see in the chemically indebted. His hands twitch when he passes his balls over the desk, and his feet slap an uneven rhythm on the concrete. The lead heavy barely gives him a glance, just logs the Pokémon, then frowns as the reader glitches—a flicker, then a full reboot.

  Beldum is already up, invisible above the bulkhead. It floats, magnets whispering as it triangulates the scanner’s circuit, then hits it with a microburst tuned to the frequency of “fuck you.” The scanner whines, with a sad, electric fizzle. The readout flashes a final red, then goes dead. The heavy’s finger, mid-press, jerks back as the scanner pops and releases a choking puff of electrical smoke. He swears, real quiet, probably hoping the boss behind the steel won’t hear him lose control of a piece of contraband tech worth thousands of Pokedollars. “Shit,” he says, shaking the scanner like a toy. “Not again.”

  The Stoutland bellows—a deep, aggressive roar that cuts through the silence like a knife. The scanner in the lead heavy’s hand arcs, spits a filament of blue-white electricity, and drops to the floor. For a moment, nobody moves. Then the lighting overhead stutters twice, surges brighter than daylight, and dies in a whoosh that leaves only the afterburn in my retina.

  Beldum’s ping is already in my skull: follow.

  I’m moving before my conscious mind catches up, slipping from the alcove and hugging the wall as screams and shouts tumble into the vacuum left by the dead lights. The Stoutland, normally a wall of fur and muscle, yanks free of its handler’s grip and barrels down the corridor, barking at nothing. The rest of the crowd goes feral, some flattening themselves to the walls, others stampeding for the steel gate. The Boldoors heavies shout for order, but the only response is a hail of curses and the metallic clatter of Poké Balls hitting the deck as people fumble in the dark.

  Beldum cuts through the confusion, brushing my shoulder to guide me—no light, just the sense of movement, the echo of its field vibrating against my chest. I keep low and push for the service hall where the woman in the cloak was handed off.

  We slide down the corridor, hugging the right wall, and I feel the pressure wave of the Stoutland bolt past. I sidestep instinctively as it barrels by, catching the scent of panic and confusion, its nails scraping sparks as it ricochets down the unlit hall. I keep to the wall, trusting the afterimage of Beldum’s field more than my own vision, and breathe shallow to keep from coughing in the haze of burnt electricals.

  The hallway’s cold, a draft running over my skin like something alive. I keep moving—right, then left, ducking under a humming stretch of exposed conduit that’s still warm from the surge. Up ahead, a door light glows faint red with a battery-powered strip. There’s a digital pad and a solenoid lock, the kind the city upgraded to after too many trainers started using Magneton to cheat their way through old keypads. I don’t even slow: Beldum floats forward, eye narrowing, then emits a focused EMP that pops the panel with a satisfying click. The heavy steel rolls back, and we slip through into the next room.

  The transition is instant—a step through the portal, and the hush of the corridor is atomized by the roar of hundreds of bodies packed into a spiral, sweating amphitheater. The Vault Market. The air is sweat, smoke, and the hot thrill of money being spent faster than it’s made. I don’t know if the noise or the light hits harder; both are brutal, both engineered to keep you moving, keep you spending.

  The Market is a circuit—concrete bowl scooped from the city’s underbelly, bleachers hacked together from old guardrails, with every level stacked in on itself until the whole place feels ready to collapse. Every stall is fighting for space and attention: neon banners, makeshift glass cases, hawkers in patchwork uniforms shouting over one another and at the sea of buyers. It’s the only place I’ve ever seen where you could buy a litre of Oran-berry hooch, a set of black market Ultra Balls, and a custom Silph scope in the span of five metres.

  Time to find this Houndour.