After finishing her shower, Jessie went to get James' sheets from the HQ laundry mat and found the place bustling with activity. Apparently a Rocket named Agatha had brought her partner's dead body to Headquarters earlier in the afternoon and every Rocket from the Dan'in to the Elite was talking about it. Although greatly interested in their conversation, Jessie knew that the rest of Team Rocket HQ was supposed to think she and James were gone, so she quickly retrieved his bedclothes and left. It was obvious no one had noticed her, she had watched one person dump almost an entire of box of detergent in a washing machine while listening to the Rockets in the middle of the room exchange gossip about "poor Aggie."
"Poor woman," Jessie thought as she walked back to her and James' quarters. "If I were her, I wouldn't be able stand it. I don't think I could live if James... No, I can't think like that, James is going to be fine, he'll be FINE! He has to be..."
She checked on James one more time before going to bed. He looked so peaceful in his sleep... so innocent. She could hardly believe that this was the same person who had nearly strangled both her and Meowth a few days ago. She had never stopped to consider that her gentle, easy going partner could have a dark side just like everyone else. But then, that wasn't really HIM, was it? It was the effect of a terrible substance running through his veins.
As she caressed his face, she felt a powerful emotion sweep through her, almost alarming in it's intensity. A mixture of love, adoration, and fierce protectiveness that overwhelmed her senses, engulfing the very core of her existence and threatening to choke the rest of her out. But somehow it wasn't a NEW feeling... New in it's intensity, yes, but not in the emotion itself. She had always felt protective of her partner, although she had never wanted admitted it, even to herself, before this situation had occurred.
"Why?" she wondered. The love she felt for this man was so... so precious. It was more than an emotion, it was like a new power inside of her, a new confidence. Why had it taken such a terrible thing happening to him for her to realize this? Did all lessons of such value come at such a terrible cost?
"I love you," she whispered, running her fingers through his hair.
Her sleeping partner offered no response, but smiled at the sound of her voice.
"And I'll spend the rest of my life protecting you," Jessie continued. "I'll never let anyone hurt you again."
James sighed contentedly and rolled over in his sleep. Jessie tucked him in and kissed him, before going to her own bed to sleep.
"Everything will be all right now," she told herself, desperately wanting to believe it as the image of James' peaceful expression lulled her to sleep. "James is going to get better now... and everything... will be just... fine..."
_
Safe... He was safe... He didn't know where he was, or how he had gotten there, but James knew that much. He was warm and safe. He knew nothing more, and at the moment he didn't care to. His dream-self only wished to be left in peace, away from suffering... away from pain... But it was not to be...
He felt something on his skin. He tried to wipe whatever it was away, but the strange tingling feeling only surfaced somewhere else. The sensation intensified, it felt like something crawling on him...
He opened his eyes and screamed. Little black bugs were crawling all over his body, biting him underneath his clothes. He torn away his shirt, trying to get them out, but he could do nothing but scream helplessly...
_
"Jessie!!! Oh god, Jessie help me, please!!!"
It was just past four in the morning when Jessie again fell out of bed, awakened by the sound of James' screaming.
"James, what's the matter with you?!" she cried, panic-stricken as she ran to his side.
"Get them off me!!!"
Jessie turned on the lamp. James had ripped his pajama top off, and was thrashing about like mad, trying to get something off of his skin.
"James, what is it?!" Jessie cried, trying to push his hands away so she could see what he was clawing at. "I don't see anything!"
Her partner continued to cry as he scratched himself, tearing at his arms and chest, causing himself to bleed.
"James, stop it!!!" Jessie shouted, grabbing his wrists. "You're hurting yourself!"
"Jessie, get them off!" he pleaded, tears streaming down his face.
Jessie examined him, unable to find whatever it was that he was desperately trying to remove.
"Get WHAT off?" she asked, trying to hold back her still-thrashing partner.
"They're crawling all over me!" he screamed, still trying to break away from her hold. "Let go me, Jessie! Get them off me!"
"James, there's nothing on you!" she yelled, trying to hold back her panic driven tears. "Please, stop it!"
James, unable to release himself from Jessie's hold, bit her hand, causing her to cry out in pain. She released his right hand as she inspected her wound, which allowed James to claw at himself with his free hand.
"James, stop this!" she pleaded, trying to get hold of him again. "There's nothing on you! You're seeing something that's not there!"
"I FEEL them!" he cried, drawing more blood as he continued to scratch and tear at his body. "They're biting me! Jessie, make them stop!"
Jessie ran to the closet, digging though their costumes and disguises until she found what she was looking for; the two sets of handcuffs from their Officer Jenny costumes. She ran back to her partner and proceeded to handcuff one of his wrists and then the other to the bed posts.
He howled like an enraged animal, screaming incoherently as he began trying to scratch his legs with his feet.
"James, I'm sorry!" Jessie cried. "I can't let you hurt yourself, I don't know what else to do!"
He continued thrashing wildly, cutting his wrists on the handcuffs. Jessie knew she had to calm him down before he did himself serious harm, but she was at loss as to what to do.
"Lana... I should call Lana..."
She ran to the phone, but before she could find the number he suddenly stopped and began struggling to breath. She dropped the phone and ran to him. He stared at her with a terrified expression as if silently begging her to somehow help him. Jessie quickly released him from the handcuffs and helped him to sit up. He sounded like he was having an asthma attack, but as far as she knew James didn't have asthma, or any other type of breathing problem.
"A panic attack," Jessie's brain finally kicked in. "He's having a panic attack..."
James, calm down!" Jessie cried, franticly trying to think of some way to help him. "Please calm down, everything going to be fine..."
When her words had no affect on the situation, she grabbed the bag of tranquilizers on the table and prepared one.
"James forgive me, I don't know what else to do!"
She injected it into him and he slowly calmed down as he lost consciousness. She quickly checked to make sure he was still breathing. When she was sure that he was all right, she went to the bathroom to get the first-aid kit.
She tended to her own wound first, holding her hand over the sink as she poured on the disinfectant. James had bitten the base of her left hand, between her thumb and her wrist. She could not move her thumb without considerable pain, so she bound it to the rest of her hand as she wrapped the wound. She then carried the kit to the bedroom and began cleaning her partner up.
_
It was enough to make her cry. His beautiful body was covered with bleeding sores and scratches. He had picked and scratched to the point that his skin was raw in some places, and blood trickled from the open sores. His wrists had red rings around them from where he had tried to break out of the handcuffs, blood oozing from his right wrist where the metal had cut into his skin.
"James, I'm so sorry!" Jessie told her unconscious partner as she cleaned his wounds. "I don't know what happened... I didn't know what to do..."
The red scratch marks on the left side of his face brought tears to her eyes. God, this man was so beautiful! What had happened to make him do this to himself?
She treated his wrists last, hoping they would look better by the time she got to them. They did not, and as she inspected his wrists she found that the red rings were becoming purple bruises, and the area where the metal had cut into his skin on his right wrist was turning green. She cleaned each one gently, before kissing them both and laying his hands on top of his chest.
She picked his pajama top off the floor and debated rather or not to put it back on him. Finally she decided against it. The last thing he need was something rubbing against his skin and aggravating his wounds. She examined the garment, finding that he had literally ripped it off his body, tearing all the buttons off.
"He thought something was crawling on him..." Jessie thought, as she picked the buttons up and laid them and the pajama top on a chair. "What did he feel that had him so freaked out? He was more than hysterical, he was TERRIFIED! He threw himself into a full-blown panic attack... God, what the hell happened?"
She laid down on James' bed, trying not to touch his wounds as she held him, and cried herself back to sleep.
_
Ring ring ring! Ring ring ring! Phone call! Phone call!
Ring ring ring! Ring ring ring! Phone call! Phone call!
Jessie moaned in her sleep. "No... I don't wanna get up..."
Ring ring ring! Ring ring ring! Phone call! Phone call!
Ring ring ring! Ring ring ring! Phone call! Phone call!
Jessie opened her eyes. James lay still beside her, one side of his face twitching in his sleep. She sat up, gently moving his arm that was wrapped around her. The movement immediately awakened James, who began to cry.
"James, I'm sorry! Please don't cry!"
James opened his eyes. Pain... he could feel nothing but pain. The light sent intense pain to his head, and the rest of his body felt as though he had been hit by a truck.
"It hurts!" he sobbed.
"Where does it hurt?" Jessie asked.
"Everywhere!"
Ring ring ring! Ring ring ring! Phone call! Phone call!
Ring ring ring! Ring ring ring! Phone call! Phone call!
"I'm coming!" Jessie yelled, getting up to answer the phone.
James had closed his eyes, trying to keep the light out. He felt Jessie's weight on the bed shift, and then disappear completely. His own crying drowned out the sound of the phone, so he had no idea where she had gone. He extended his arm out, hoping to reach her and bring her back. When he failed to find her, he was suddenly struck with the fear that he had lost her. His Jessie... his only support left in the whole world, gone.
"Jessie... Jessie... don't leave me!"
"I'm just answering the phone, James," she said, picking up the receiver and pushing the "view" button.
The phone went dead. Either the person on the other end of the line had gotten tired of waiting and hung up, or it had been a crank call. Either way, both she and James were now fully awake, and the latter was in a great deal of pain. Pain which he could have been spared had the wretched phone not caused her to wake him up. Jessie slammed down the receiver.
"Jessie!" James continued cry for her.
"I'm right here," she sighed, going back over to the bed.
"My head hurts!" he sobbed. "My head... my stomach... EVERYTHING hurts!"
"I don't know if it's safe to give you an aspirin or something," she told him.
"Make it stop!" he pleaded, crying loudly as he gripped her nightgown and buried his face in her chest. "Jessie help me!"
"I don't know what to do!" she cried, trying to control the tears she felt welling in her eyes. "I don't know how to help you!"
"The light... make the light go away..."
"Does it hurt your eyes?" she asked him.
James whimpered in response. Jessie pried him off her and got up to turn off the lamp. She had forgotten to turn it off before and had fallen asleep with it on. She glanced at the clock before turning out the light. It was only eight-thirty? She felt like she had slept for days. Hell, she wished she could go back to sleep for another week or so.
"Jessie, come back!" James whined, reaching out for her.
"Just a minute," she said, going over to close the curtains. She was thankful now that Mondo had put them back up, she had never quite found the time to do it since James had torn them off the windows a few days ago.
When the light in the room had been reduced to a minimum, James slowly opened his eyes. He quickly scanned the room for Jessie, and was relieved to find her shadowy figure approaching him. He quickly latched onto her as she took him in her arms.
"Why does it hurt so much?" he asked her.
She didn't answer him, but began crying softly. "James, I'm sorry!" she finally said. "I'm just so sorry!"
"My body... aches all over... What happened to me?" he asked.
"Don't you remember?" she asked him.
"All I remember is... is..."
He never finished his sentence. He suddenly tightened his hold on her and began whimpering.
"Jessie?" he finally whispered.
"What is it?" she responded.
"Did you here that?" he asked.
"Here what?"
"The whip... Jessiebelle's whip..."
"James, Jessiebelle's far away..."
"No, I hear her!" he insisted. "She's coming to get me!"
"NOBODY'S coming to get you!" Jessie said firmly. "Jessiebelle is miles and miles away, and she doesn't even know where you are!"
"She's coming to get me!" he wailed, his fingers digging into her arms as he clutched her hysterically. "She's getting closer and closer! Jessie help me!!!"
"James, LISTEN to me! Whatever you're seeing or hearing, it isn't real! You're being controlled by nightmares, you've got to wake up!"
"N-nightmares?"
"James, what you're hearing isn't real! You're hallucinating, it's no different than a waking nightmare. You've got to snap out of it!"
But her hysterical partner was no longer listening to her, he just continued to wail despairingly.
"I can't keep giving him tranquilizers, or he'll get hooked on them. But what can I do?"
Suddenly an idea struck her. She grabbed the blanket off his bed and pulled it over both their heads.
"James, I want you to listen to me," she said, firmly but gently as she cuddled her sobbing partner under the covers. "We're going to hide out so that Jessiebelle doesn't find us, but we've got to be very quiet, okay? We don't want her to find us."
As if by magic, his crying stopped. Rather amazed that her tactic had worked, she gently rocked him back and forth, hoping to calm him down a bit. Every muscle in his body was tense, and he was still whimpering in fear.
"She's so close, Jessie..." he whispered, choking back his tears. "I'm so scared..."
"Shhh... We'll be safe in here," Jessie whispered. "This is the safest place in the world, she'll never find us."
"The safest place in the world," James repeated, his body beginning to relax against hers. "The safest place in the world..."
"That's right," Jessie said, amazed at how much influence the power of suggestion seemed to have over him. "No matter how close she gets, she can't get in here because this is the safest place in the world."
"The safest place in the world..." he continued to murmur. "Jessie is... the safest place in the world."
Jessie smiled inwardly at this. "That's right," she whispered, running her fingers through his hair.
She didn't know if going along with his delusion was the right thing to do, but at least he was calm at the moment. Although his hallucinations were caused by the withdrawal, a physical element, the affect they were having was largely psychological. She wondered if she could somehow tap into his psyche and learn how to make him feel safe. Although she had no idea how she might accomplish this, she decided to keep the idea in the back of her mind, and watch for an opportunity to do so. She suddenly felt James shift uncomfortably.
"How do you feel?" she whispered.
"I hurt... a lot," he replied in a small voice.
"Where does it hurt?" she asked.
"My stomach hurts... and my head... and my wrists, too..."
"My poor sweetheart," she whispered in his ear. "I'm so sorry..."
Two weeks ago she would never have dreamed of saying such things. The idea of showing such affection not only seemed weak to her, but it had also scared the hell out of her. The idea of being so close to someone frightened her terribly, despite how much she had desperately wanted it. Clinging to a childhood fear that had plagued her since her mother's death, she feared that if she loved someone, they would leave her and never come back.
As she grew older, she disguised the feeling, even from herself, by associating it with something else that she despised, weakness. She hated the idea of being weak. But as she held her partner close to her she realized that loving him was her greatest strength in the world. She felt as though she could do anything, anything at all, if it were necessary to protect the one she loved. She had heard stories of mothers finding strength they never knew they had to lift heavy cars that their children were trapped underneath. And of course males of every known species were known for fighting, even to their own death, for their mates. Only now did she understand where that power came from, a strength that was truly the most precious thing in the world. She would never be embarrassed to show her love for him again, and never again would she make the mistake of associating such a sacred and infinitely powerful thing with weakness.
Suddenly a knocking sound was heard, interrupting Jessie's thoughts and sending James into a state of hysteria.
"It's Jessiebelle! She's found us!" he cried, trying to run off the bed and getting tangled up in the blanket instead. He fell to the floor with a thump and started bawling.
Jessie turned on the lamp, which only made him cry harder.
"Jessie, are you all right in there?" a woman's voice called.
Suddenly Jessie's brain kicked in and she realized that the sound had been someone knocking on the door.
"Just a minute!" she called, running to the door.
She opened the door to reveal Lana, carrying two large bags.
"Jessie, are you all right?" Lana asked, concerned. "You don't look well."
"Thank god you're here!" Jessie exclaimed, nearly dragging the poor woman in the door. "I don't know what to do anymore! Please help him!"
Lana walked into the bedroom, where James was still on the floor sobbing. She set the bags on the floor and pulled a syringe out of one of them. She walked over to James and motioned for Jessie to help her.
"I just gave him a tranquilizer a while ago..." Jessie told her.
"Nevermind the tranquilizers, I've brought something better," Lana said, trying to get hold of James' arm.
James caught sight of the needle and started screaming.
"James, it's all right," Jessie said, trying to calm him down. "This is Lana, she's going to help you."
Despite the influence her words had had on him a few minutes ago, they were having no effect now. Nevertheless, Lana still managed to inject him with the fluid a few seconds later.
"Help me get him on the bed," she instructed Jessie, and together they managed to get the still-struggling James onto his bed.
Unlike the tranquilizers, which had taken affect almost immediately, whatever Lana had just given him seemed to have no affect at all.
"Will this make him sleep?" Jessie asked.
"No, but he'll be pretty out of it once the drug takes affect," Lana responded, "I was so worried when you didn't answer the phone, so I came up straight away."
"That was you on the phone earlier?" Jessie asked.
Lana nodded and handed Jessie a bottle of pills. "These are going to help him endure the withdrawal symptoms. We really need to get an IV in him, but I helped Meowth pack the equipment on your balloon yesterday, so we'll have to wait until they find you a place to live."
"You saw Meowth?" Jessie asked.
"The night before last," Lana said, pulling a little machine out of one of the bags and setting it on the nightstand.
"So that's where he was the night Mondo and I couldn't find him!"
"That's right," Lana said, plugging the machine into the wall. "We made some arrangements and I helped him load some medical supplies for James onto your balloon. He and Mondo will set them up when they find somewhere for you to live so they'll be ready for James when he arrives. We're going to make every effort to save your partner."
"What's that?" Jessie asked, referring to the machine Lana had just plugged in.
"A vaporizer," Lana explained, pouring a strong but pleasant smelling liquid into it. "This is just an herbal mixture to help him relax."
"I thought that's what the injection was for?"
"No, that's for the pain," Lana replied. "But it's very strong and he'll be pretty much out of it after a while. We need to keep his environment as calm and soothing as possible. I'm going to make sure he gets all the medical attention he needs, but he's going to need your love and support most of all."
"Jessie!" James whined. "It hurts!"
"Where does it hurt?" Lana asked him.
"Here," he said, pointing to his knee. "I fell down..." He seemed to have forgotten that less than two minutes ago he had been afraid of her.
"How did he fall?" Lana asked, removing the bottom half of his pajamas to examine his knee.
"He fell off the bed wh-" Jessie stopped, suddenly realizing that James had nothing on UNDER the pajama pants. He lay completely nude on the bed, and didn't seem to care in the least. In fact, he hardly seemed aware of it.
"Bend your knee," Lana told him.
James did as she instructed.
"It's all right, Sweetie," Lana told him after a moment. "It's just a little bruise, you're going to be fine."
Jessie frowned, finding that she wasn't too thrilled with some other woman calling James "Sweetie," especially when he didn't have any clothes on.
"Has he got a pair of boxer shorts?" Lana asked, examining the rest of him.
Jessie nodded, getting a pair out of his dresser. When she brought them over, Lana took them from her and put them on him, which again irked Jessie. She certainly didn't want anyone dressing James but herself, but what especially annoyed her was his lack of protest.
"Stop it!" she chided herself. "This woman's trying to help you, and he's too sick to know what's going on, you're being ridiculous!"
Lana examined the wounds on his arms and chest, before noticing his wrists.
"How in the world did this happen?" she asked, holding up his right wrist, which was still very green.
Jessie explained the situation as Lana examined the area.
"It hurts and it's itchy!" James told her.
"Itchy?" Jessie asked.
"Where did you get the handcuffs from?" Lana asked.
"We stole them from a costume shop a while back," Jessie said, uncuffing them from his bed posts.
"Let me see."
Jessie handed them to her.
"This isn't serious," Lana said finally.
"But it's GREEN!" Jessie protested.
"These handcuffs are made of cheap metal, and his skin had an allergic reaction. The police use stainless steel, but a lot of costume and novelty shops use something cheaper. He'll be all right."
"You have NO idea how glad I am you're here!" Jessie sighed, relieved that another load had been taken off her mind.
"I meant to come yesterday, but I couldn't get out of the lab," Lana said, pulling a stethoscope out of her bag.
"How's the Raticate?" Jessie asked.
"Dead," Lana replied.
Jessie bit her bottom lip silently as Lana listened to his heartbeat. "What, are you a doctor or something?" she asked when Lana had finished.
"Five years of medical training," Lana replied.
"I thought medical school was seven years?" Jessie asked.
"It is," she replied. "But I didn't say school. I said training, as in Team Rocket training. Anyway, is there a place where we can talk alone?"
"What about James?" Jessie asked. "We can't just leave him alone."
"I need to talk to you about some things," Lana responded. "Things he doesn't need to hear..."
_
"Let me have a look at that," Lana said, taking Jessie's bandaged hand as they sat down at the kitchen table.
Jessie had poured herself a glass of water and was sipping it slowly as she held the glass with her free hand. "So what's this about?" she asked as Lana unwrapped her hand.
"Did he BITE you?" Lana asked, examining her wound.
Jessie nodded.
Lana sighed. "I diagnosed one of the pills that Giovanni gave to Mondo."
"How did you get those?" Jessie asked.
"Meowth brought them to me the other night and I took a few. It seems that the pills contain several times the dosage than the liquid form of the drug we tested on Pokémon. Quite frankly, I'm surprised that your partner is still alive."
Jessie choked on the water she was drinking and spewed it across the room.
"I'm afraid it gets worse," Lana continued. "I also learned yesterday that James and Mondo aren't the only people Giovanni ordered to take the drug. Apparently he tested it on three others, and all three of them are now dead."
A gasp escaped Jessie's throat. She stared at Lana as though the woman had physically slapped her. "What about James?" she asked in a small voice.
"I'm not even sure how he's still alive," Lana replied simply. "I'm going to do everything that I can, but it's very possible that we could lose him, without warning."
Jessie felt a pain in her hand, and realized that she had squeezed the glass so hard that she had shattered it, cutting herself and spilling the water all over the table. Lana moved to help her, but Jessie yelled, "Nevermind that! The others, the ones who died, what happened to them?!"
Lana sat back down. "The last one died simply because his body wasn't able to handle the withdrawal. He lost his pills nearly a week ago on a field mission, and his partner brought his body back to HQ yesterday in tears. She had no idea what was wrong with him, and didn't think to connect it with lost pills. At first she thought he had gone crazy, then later believed that he had contracted some strange virus."
"That's the person they were talking about in the laundry room yesterday," Jessie thought.
"Poor Agatha," Lana continued. "I feel so sorry for her. Giovanni gave me the pleasure of explaining to her what had really happened to him, and that was after I had found out about the other two."
"Yes, what about the other two?" Jessie asked.
"One was killed by his own partner when he tried to rape her, and the other shot himself when he realized that he had just killed five people, including his wife and their child. Giovanni himself handled the situation and covered it up."
Jessie stared at the broken glass on the table. "All of those horrible things... could have happened to James... ...Hey wait!" she said suddenly, looking at Lana. "You said the boss himself covered it up? When? When did all this happen?!"
Lana braced herself, knowing Jessie wasn't going to be rational after hearing the answer. "According to the person who told me yesterday, this all happened about three weeks ago."
Jessie was livid.
"He KNEW!!!!" she shouted, standing up so fast that her chair fell backwards. "That rotten bastard KNEW!!! He gave James those pills two weeks later, knowing that SIX PEOPLE were already dead because of them!!!"
Jessie completely lost control. Possessed by an uncontrollable rage, she stormed through the kitchen, screaming and cursing as she grabbed a neatly stacked pile of plates and sent the entire pile shattering into the kitchen floor. The dishes in the cabinet were next. She knock the bottom shelf empty with a swipe of her hand and sent half a dozen cups and glasses flying, then proceeded to start flinging bowls and saucers at the wall.
In all that time, the stream of profanity had not ceased, and it could safely be assured, as Lana mentally noted, that if words could kill, Giovanni would have undoubtedly been a dead man. But Giovanni was not the one who could hear her, and it was not HIM that her words could damage...
"Jessie, please!" Lana pleaded. "You're going to upset James, he can here you!"
Jessie stopped, letting the dish she was about to throw slide from her hand and crash into the floor. The frightened sobbing of her partner could be heard in the next room. Jessie fell to her knees, crying bitterly.
Lana quickly took charge of the situation and helped move Jessie, who had been kneeling on a floor littered with broken glass, and get her into the living room and onto the sofa. She then attended to the hysterical man in the bedroom, who had begun hyperventilating when he believed that Jessie was being attacked.
_
"Is he all right?" Jessie asked, when Lana had come out of the bedroom.
Lana nodded. "You've got to stay calm, Jessie. You have to keep your temper under control. He was terrified, he thought someone was attacking you."
Jessie burst into tears. "He can't die, Lana! He just can't!"
"Jessie, lower your voice," Lana whispered. "You've GOT to try not to panic. If he sees that you're afraid, it'll only make the situation worse."
Jessie curled up on the sofa and tried to calm herself.
"Now listen to me, we're going to do everything we can to help him. He has a much higher chance of survival now that he'll be receiving the proper medical care..."
"Don't let him die, Lana," Jessie whispered. "Please don't let him die..."
Lana stared into the young woman's eyes, eyes that were filled with misery and suffering, just like pain-filled green ones that reflected the same thing in the next room. Suffering... all Team Rocket had ever done was bring suffering, from the animals in the labs, to the unfortunate people used as human guinea pigs like the angelic-looking blue-haired man in the next room.
"Giovanni... he tried to murder him... He tried to murder James," Jessie whispered. "I want him to die... I want to make him die..."
"No, Jessie..." Lana whispered. "Giovanni isn't important now, your partner is. He needs you. Your place is with James. Others will take care of Giovanni."
"Others?" Jessie asked. "What others?"
"Nevermind," Lana said, thinking back on a not-so long ago conversation she had with a certain cat-type Pokémon. She fingered a keychain in the pocket of her lab coat, which had once had twenty numbered keys on it. Now there was only one. One key that would mean vengeance or death. Or maybe both.
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