The room was dark.
This was the second thing she noticed. The first thing was that she was lying on the floor there, and the third was that her head hurt.
She tried to push herself up and fell. She couldn't seem to tell which way was up, and her head was throbbing, so strong she couldn't feel herself, where her arms and legs were. She touched her left hand to her head and felt something dry, hard, crumbling under her fingers. That explained why her head hurt, but not why she couldn't get up or what was wrong with her eyes.
The floor was cold, neither rough nor smooth. She felt around and found her pokeballs were missing. After a while she managed to sit up.
She waited.
Time passed and the door opened. Two figures stood there, looking like twin poles. One was taller than the other. The light behind them was bright and painful, but the child thought that might have only been because of her eyes. She narrowed her eyes to slits and tried to bring them into focus, but failed. She stared past them at the wall, and found she could see them best that way.
"You're coming with us," one said. A girl, thirteen or so, tense. On the right side.
Obediently the child stepped forward. The other one tried to grab her but she dodged, the hand's motion making it clearer to her for a moment.
They walked with her between them, the girl who had spoken in the back. The child didn't like having someone behind her, especially when she was already feeling trapped in the corridor. There was nothing she could do though, so she waited.
The one in front stopped by a wall, pushed it open to reveal a darker square, and then stood aside. The girl behind shoved her forward. "In."
The child stumbled. It was harder to keep her balance when she couldn't see properly and felt so strange, like she couldn't feel down. The door shut, the sound making her think it was metal. Had the child been given to such things, she might have compared the resounding clang to the closing of a tomb. She was not. Instead she tried to decipher the room.
There was another person, about half a foot taller than her. Its breathing was low and based on that and how thick of a column she saw, she decided it was probably a larger adult, sitting. There was something between them, something brown and rectangular she realized was a desk.
"Well," he said. From his voice the child thought his face might have had the sort of feigned half-smile of someone about to kick something because it was smaller. The child felt better. It would be okay if someone like that hit her, they didn't do real damage.
"You're the property of Team Rocket now," he told her.
This wasn't true. She didn't belong to them. She waited.
"Any attempt to –" he started, and his voice didn't sound at all important.
"Where are my pokemon?" the child interrupted.
"That's not your concern."
"I want my pokemon."
"You'll get pokemon assigned to you once you prove your loyalty."
Loy-al-ty. Loya-lty. Lo-yalty. Loyalty. The child echoed the word in her head. She hadn't heard it before. How did one...? But she dropped the tangent, deciding it wasn't important.
"I want my pokemon," she repeated.
There was a smashing sound and blurry motion. He'd hit the desk, the child decided. He might have expected her to flinch. She couldn't tell; it was hard when she couldn't see his face or posture. "You won't be getting them," he told her, his voice irritated and angry. "They'll be given to someone else."
