Beldum drops with the blunt precision of a tool hitting concrete—sharp, no-nonsense, and all business. Its body bounces once, ringing out against the floor, and every magnetic joint shudders as it settles, fixing that hard red eye on me. It flicks its gaze from my face to the dead alarms and then right back, quick as if ticking through calculations I’ll never see. We freeze, sizing each other up in silence—just two reflections stuck in their own loop. I can’t tell if it even understands what I’ve done, let alone cares; maybe “hate” isn’t a thing it does. Maybe I’m just another problem to solve.

  The magnets in the floor shut off, and what's left is total silence—the kind you get after the power goes down or something catches fire and is suddenly put out. For the first time since waking up here, there’s not a sound. My heart pounds too fast and too loud in my chest, like it’s hoping someone will notice—but Beldum doesn’t so much as flinch. It gives off nothing at all. The chill rolling off its metal skin is almost painful, pulled so tight it nearly buzzes under my hand at its neck joint. I keep my grip; if I lose hold now, I doubt I’ll get another chance to control it.

  Ozone and metallic cleaner hang heavy in the air, undercut with that bitter flicker of burned copper and fried circuits. The taste on my tongue is all static and battery acid. Above us, rows of white LEDs blink overhead in a grid too flawless for human hands—but now they start cutting out one by one, glitching through warnings, leaving just enough glow for me to see how fast things are going downhill. Behind me is a warped glass wall, cracked into a perfect circle that hasn’t quite caved in yet. On the other side, up one step in an observation room, Colress peers through with both hands pressed flat to the glass. He watches with those wild yellow eyes—so wide they’re practically flashing warnings themselves—and his mouth twitches like he’s barely holding together from sheer anticipation, itching for whatever comes next like he might just explode if he has to wait any longer.

  Dragging Beldum to the maglock door feels like hauling a live wire—my whole arm is screaming and I just pray I’ll find a manual override before my luck gives out. The second I lean all my weight onto the crash bar, a voice blasts from the ceiling: flat, cold, no humanity at all. “SUBJECT ZERO DETECTED. SYSTEMS ESCALATION IN PROGRESS. INITIATING NEURAL SUPPRESSION PROTOCOL.” The announcement hits harder than anything physical. Deep down in the base something spools up—a rising whine that drowns everything else out. My skin prickles. I brace for everything to go wrong at once, but Beldum has zero interest in waiting around.

  Electricity zips up my arm—no pain, just raw power snapping awake. Beldum’s eye flares bright and suddenly the wall panel’s circuits start bursting with sharp little pops. With a horrible screech, the maglock finally gives way. The door slams open so hard it almost tears itself apart, spitting sparks all over the hall. I lurch forward, half dragging Beldum, both of us stumbling through the gap.

  The corridor outside is chaos pretending to be order; everything’s sturdy but barely hanging together now. “Analysis Wing,” says the wall sign. Centrifuges line up like aluminium tanks, polished so bright they hurt to look at—even under the emergency strobes spinning wild blue over everything, making it all flicker like a bad signal. Sample injectors hiss and snap as they shut down mid-cycle; plungers jerk back with sharp little bangs. The grated floor is slick with condensation and something oily; I nearly wipe out face-first into a rack of trembling test tubes that rattle like they’re seconds from shattering.

  Behind me, the door smashes shut with enough force to make me jump. A heartbeat later, the whole corridor wakes up mean: every other door locks down tight, indicator lights flipping from safe green to ugly pulsing red. Forward’s the only way left.

  Beldum floats along, its body weightless now, riding its own magnetic field with a kind of silent, inexorable grace. It’s following me, but the feeling is more that it’s following the solution, or the data trail; I’m just the most convenient means of locomotion. I half-jog, half-shoulder my way past a knot of researchers clustered at the next fire door. One of them—a middle-aged man with a nurse’s badge pinned to his collar—lunges at me, fingers digging into my wrist. His eyes flick from my face to Beldum, then back again, the realization freezing him mid-sentence. His hand goes limp. I yank free. “Don’t—” he tries to say, but his voice is lost to the shriek of alarms.

  We barely make it twenty metres before everything flips again. The ceiling vents spit out Halon gas—cold, choking white that scrapes heat from the walls and turns every surface slick with sweat. Sprinklers dump waves of icy vapor, blanketing the corridor in dangerous beauty. My lungs seize; my vision narrows down to a pinpoint. Beldum doesn’t even slow down—it moves straight through the fog, red eye narrowing as it aims at a diagnostics terminal built into the wall.

  Time seems to slow, and I see what’s about to happen: the main relay, the chaos of fiber optics, the thick diagnostic glass shielding the access panel. Beldum wants what’s inside. It’s not even a question.

  I try to choke out a warning—“Stop!” or maybe “Wait!”—but it just comes out as a rough cough in all the fumes. I reach for Beldum, but it’s already gone somewhere else entirely, not even hesitating. Its body hums as energy builds up fast, and then, without any showy sparks or flashes, it lets loose—just raw force. The glass bursts inward with a sharp crack, shards everywhere. Inside the panel, circuits flare white-hot and burn out instantly. Everything goes dark—the lights, the alarms—silent.

  All that’s left is the flicker of Beldum’s eye staring back at me for half a heartbeat before it veers away. Then I feel this cool pressure—it’s like the air clears around my face as Beldum pushes the gas aside. The chemical fog splits around us as it drags me through what’s left of the hall.

  If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  A shout comes from behind. I turn, and for the first time I see the collateral damage: a technician in white, slumped against the wall, his hands clamped over his chest. His glasses are fogged with condensation, but I can see his mouth working around a sound he can’t quite make. His face is terror-jammed, a mask of animal panic and helpless awe, and for some reason the sight of it cuts me harder than any pain so far. I want to say, “It’s okay,” but I know it isn’t, so I just keep moving.

  Beldum and I settle into a kind of grim sync, both of us running on whatever’s left in the tank. The next door’s already half off its hinges; I shove it aside with my foot and step straight into a corridor where the only light is a queasy green from busted chem-lights and the pulsing red glare from Beldum’s eye. The whole building is shifting around us—doors sealing, vents slamming shut, traps winding up just out of sight. It’s painfully clear this place is built to keep things in, not let them out.

  We keep moving. My hands are so numb I can’t tell if it’s the cold or if I just got zapped one too many times. There’s this nasty, metallic taste on my tongue. I spit and watch as blood hits the floor, dark and slick. The only thing lighting the way is a handful of scattered electrical fires and the steady glare from Beldum’s eye. Every few steps, I catch my reflection in cracked screens and broken glass—face streaked with sweat and halon, eyes wild and too bright.

  New noises cut through the wreckage: fire snapping sharp across the hall, but underneath it now is the steady stomp of boots landing in perfect rhythm. These aren’t the shuffling steps of lab coats—they’re the measured, heavy footfalls of security teams. Voices come next, clipped and carrying, barking orders that echo against the walls. Riot shields lock into place with a mechanical clack, and somewhere in the background, Poké Balls burst open with that unmistakable high-pitched whir. The whole thing sounds wrong—there’s no chaos here, just method. These people know exactly what they’re doing. They’ve done this drill before and failure isn’t an option.

  Beldum glides next to me, tracing the hallway’s edges like it’s double-checking the floor plan for weak spots. I yank us both into a side lab, practically folding over as my knees threaten to give out. We drop behind a steel table that’s seen better days—scorched, lined with busted glass, and littered with what used to be a lab notebook. Even through the burn marks and water stains, I can still make out half-erased names and test results nobody wanted to claim. My hands are trembling so badly I almost sweep the whole mess onto the ground. Beldum pauses to get its bearings, then nudges me steady with a pinpoint jolt—just enough so I remember I’m not completely on my own in here.

  .

  Above us, the PA system finally finds its voice, now stripped of all pretense of calm. “Subject Zero and its handler are at large. Containment breach in Analysis. All units: converge on Sector D.” The timbre is clinical, no hint of emotion, but I know that somewhere, Colress is listening, his pulse racing at the prospect of his experiment running past every fail-safe. I wonder if he’s proud, or if this is simply the fulfillment of a necessary hypothesis.

  I clamp my breath, flattening myself against the table’s shadow, counting the seconds through the tremor in my arms. Beldum, for the first time since we met, is perfectly still, its eye dimmed to a dark ember. I can sense its presence anyway, not in the way of heat or light, but as a pressure behind my eyes—a cool, mathematical awareness, parsing every vector of threat and possibility. I can’t tell if it feels fear, or if fear is simply another variable to be measured and set aside. But I know that if I move, it will move with me, and that’s all that matters.

  The squad comes into view, four abreast, faces hidden behind silvered visors, bodies cased in black and blue armour. Their movements are coordinated, almost mechanical—each step matched to the next, as if they’re moving on some invisible grid. The Pokémon they deploy are the same: two Magneton, a Houndoom low and sleek as a black knife, and a Medicham that vibrates with the taut, furious energy of a drawn bowstring. Their orders are clear: search and destroy. The corridor is instantly mapped by their sensors, every blind spot triangulated, every open space crosshatched by the soft, scanning beams of the Magneton. I freeze, willing myself to become less than nothing.

  The group pauses at the open threshold of the side lab, breaths fogging in the cold, gold-lit gloom. One of the Magneton twitches, its triple eyes flaring in a synchronized sweep. It senses the disruption, the electromagnetic static left in our wake. The lead security officer gestures, and the Medicham moves forward, arms raised, scanning. Its eyes flick once, twice, then glance right over us. I don’t dare blink. My heart pounds so loudly I’m sure they’ll hear it.

  But the fire alarm shrieks, sudden and bright, its sound hacking the air to pieces. In that instant, the squad is distracted. The Houndoom reels back, startled by a falling ceiling tile. Someone shouts—“Fall back! Fire suppression triggered!”—and the group pivots, abandoning the sweep to address the new priority. I breathe in, careful and shallow, not daring to move until the last echo of footsteps dies.

  The room is still again, except for the thin, drifting fog of halon and the glass-dust sparkle settling in the air. I realize I’ve been gripping the edge of the table hard enough to leave indentations in the skin of my palms. Little rivulets of blood bead up from where glass has bitten in. I flex my hands; they still work.

  Beldum nudges my shin with a softness completely at odds with its measured ruthlessness. I look at it and, for the first time, glimpse a rationale in its gaze: not just a tool, not just a weapon, but something alive, with priorities and contingencies all its own. I nod—an agreement between equals, sealed in silence.

  We slip out, careful and quiet. Every move is deliberate—no wasted motion, no unnecessary risks. The main hallways are a write-off; too many guards, too much surveillance. So I steer us through the back routes, weaving past a dead server room (all those little lights blinking for nobody), dodging past the genetics archive where the smell of chemicals and scorched samples hits almost as hard as the memory of what used to be stored there. Specimen jars roll underfoot, threatening to trip me up, but we keep going until we reach the lab exit: just one door between us and whatever counts as freedom in this maze.

  Figures. The blast door is basically an insult in steel—oversized, overbuilt, and radiating pure hostility. The biometric scanner glows at me, that ugly red, just waiting to deny access. I swipe my palm across it; the panel zaps me with a sting of static for my trouble. My brain scrambles for Colress’s passcode—no use, total blank, stress has wiped me clean. Never mind all those times I watched him punch it in while I was stuck behind glass. I glance at Beldum; it just stares back, perfectly unreadable. For a second, it really does feel like we’ve hit the end of the line.

  Then Beldum tilts in mid-air with all the calm of someone solving a crossword puzzle, lines itself up, and taps its claw to the scanner. There’s a beat—long enough to make me sweat—where I’m not sure if it’s calculating or just giving me time to let the dread set in. Then its eye lights up sharp. The scanner whines, freaks out, then fizzles with a sad little pop. Smoke leaks from the side of the panel as the lock gives up and disengages with one final thunk.

  I shove my shoulder into the door. It holds tight for a second, then grudgingly gives way, slow and stiff. Beyond it is nothing but darkness, lit up here and there by the last weak emergency lights—not an exit, but at least we’re not trapped in that lab anymore. I haul myself and Beldum through before the place can throw any more surprises at us. Beldum flashes its eye, and with a quiet clunk, the lock lets go for good—almost like even the machinery’s had enough.