Pokémon Mars

Chapter 59: The Prisoners

In the frozen hills south of New Mauville was a vast underground complex of offices, labs and dormitories. It was Cipher's headquarters. Roland spent most of his time there, as did Luke while New Mauville was built. Nessie assumed she would live there with Banks. She already had their room painted pink and decorated with fluffy furniture. She even demanded an ice-cream parlour. Now Banks was dead and Nessie was stuck in a police station cell with Rudolph.

Rudolph insisted he had nothing to do with Banks' death. Nessie was sure he was protecting himself. Then again, why would Rudolph kill one of Cipher's hit men? Banks was only out there to investigate the Heatran footprints that non-Cipher astronauts reported. He killed those explorers himself, with Rudolph's permission, so Cipher could hijack their findings and cover them up if necessary.

'I'm telling you!' Rudolph snapped, 'It was Team Genesis!'

'I so don't believe you.'

'Read my diaries! Belville was so invincible that we all thought he'd defected and even I was annoyed! I needed him to kill other people! He was the best hit man we had. Who do you even think I used to get rid of him?! It was Team Genesis! They've got Hera, for Arceus' sake!'

The Team Genesis guard was sick of listening to their arguments. He turned with a scowl.

'We did not kill that man. With all your infighting – you don't even care that two people died in that assault – they probably killed each other.'

'Um, no. They were so killed by the same person. Their helmets were smashed and someone slashed their spacesuits.'

'That's how you killed Joshua Pickett. You tried to pin it on others – including Sonnet – but you know you did it. It was one of your own. Accept it.'

'Anyway, why would we care about that Znider woman? She wasn't in Cipher. She was just some Ares security guard. A so very useless one, since she couldn't protect Banks. We only let her go so the expedition looked legit. You don't care about my sweet little Banks, so why should I care about some Bodybuilder who so wasn't even in Cipher?'

'Whatever... just shut up...'

Cipher had one other facility outside of Ironville. The Shadow Pokémon Lab was under the ground beyond Ironville Cemetery. Kekili Kukui was alone in one of its filthy cells that usually contained disobedient Pokémon. Cipher's other captives were moved to their HQ long ago.

Those cells were almost as filthy after 21 years of holding prisoners. Seiza and her colleagues were trapped there, with nothing to do but stare at the red rock walls, for five years. Others had been there since they were built. Some arrived alive, but died in the atrocious conditions. The only consolation to Seiza was that two of the people she shared her cell with were her best friends, Nile Rawle and Sibusisiwe Luvaro. They grew up on Mars and went to Earth as exchange students together.

For over a year, their memories of their brief time on Earth sustained their will to survive. Nile no longer remembered Earth. Cipher left him one souvenir of the outside world, a photo of his parents at his graduation, but he stopped looking at it after three years in the cell. He barely remembered Mars. That included his family. The photo meant nothing to him anymore.

Sibusisiwe had an Absol plush from her father and a Scorbunny keyring from her mother. She always took them on expeditions. They were useless to Cipher. They let her keep them. She still remembered Earth. The plushies reminded her of the family she met on their visit as well as her parents. She desperately wanted to see them again, but most of all, to feel the Earth's gravity on her shoulders and know she would never set foot on that wretched red dot in the night sky again. It had to happen. She believed in fate. She was still alive for a reason.