The first light of dawn was a liar. It spilled pale gold over the canopy of Greenvale Forest, promising a clean, new day, but down on the forest floor, the truth was rot. The air, usually thick with the scent of damp earth and chlorophyll, was sharp with an acrid tang, like ozone and decay. I felt it in my sinuses, a sterile sharpness that had no place here.
Beside me, Beast Boy moved with a tense quiet that was more unnerving than any sound. He wasn't tracking with his eyes, but with something deeper.
"Anything?" I whispered, my voice swallowed by the oppressive silence.
He shook his head, his gaze distant. "It's empty, Lila. Not just quiet. Empty."
He was right. There were no chittering Rattata in the undergrowth, no Pidgey flitting between branches. It was a vacuum where life should have been thriving. The trees themselves seemed sick, their roots blackened and brittle as if dipped in tar.
I sent Butterfree ahead, her delicate wings a splash of color against the grim palette of the woods. She flew in hesitant, jerky patterns, not her usual graceful dance. A moment later, she came fluttering back, landing on my shoulder with a distressed whir of her wings. Her antennae trembled, and I could feel her agitation, a silent shriek of wrongness that echoed Beast Boy's sentiment.
That's when I felt it—a low, rhythmic vibration through the soles of my boots. It wasn't the thrum of the earth, but something manufactured. A hum. Metallic, steady, almost like a colossal heartbeat buried just beneath the soil. It grew stronger as we pushed forward, a siren song of dread pulling us deeper into the forest's corrupted heart.
The hum led us to a cliffside, a sheer wall of granite choked with ancient moss and vines. Built into it, half-swallowed by the rock, was a structure of crumbling concrete and rusted steel—an old power station, according to my Pokégear's map. A relic from when Greenvale Town was first established decades ago. But this was no relic.
Fresh steel reinforcements bolted the old concrete. New antennae, thin and black as spider legs, bristled from the roof, disappearing into the canopy. I spotted the glint of a lens high in the branches—a hidden security camera, its red eye a malevolent blink in the shadows. A section of the wall had been scrubbed clean, but the ghost of a logo remained: a stylized red 'S' inside a circle. "Silph Energy Division – Decommissioned."
Decommissioned was another lie. This place was very much alive.
Beast Boy stopped dead, his head cocked. His eyes, usually so full of life and easy warmth, narrowed into slits. A pained grimace twisted his features.
"What is it?" I asked, my hand drifting to the Poké Balls on my belt.
He didn't look at me. His focus was entirely on the cold, hard face of the facility. "The hum… it's not just machinery." He took a shallow breath, his hand rising to his temple as if warding off a migraine. "It's pain. Raw, emotional echoes. They're trapped in there." He finally turned to me, his expression harder than I'd ever seen it.
"They're crying," he said, his voice a low, dangerous whisper.
My blood ran cold.
Getting in wasn't a matter of if, but how. The main entrance was a reinforced blast door, but decades of neglect had left other weaknesses. Beast Boy, with his innate connection to the wild, found it first: a broken ventilation shaft hidden behind a curtain of overgrown ivy, just wide enough for us to squeeze through. He coaxed the thick vines to part for us, their movements seeming to obey a silent command.
We slipped inside, dropping into a corridor that was a grotesque fusion of nature and industry. Thick, ancient roots had burst through the concrete floor, twisting around humming power cables like constrictors. A fluorescent green fluid, the same substance that left the residue, oozed from a cracked pipe, sizzling as it dripped into the soil below. The air was thick with the smell of mildew and charged particles.
We moved like ghosts down the dimly lit hallway, the hum now a palpable thrum that resonated in my chest. From an adjacent room, we heard voices—clinical, detached.
"…the Phase Adaptors are showing a ninety-three percent efficiency rating," one voice said. "But the cellular resonance amplification is causing synaptic degradation in the test subjects."
"Acceptable losses," a second, colder voice replied. "Dr. Vile's prototype core nearly overloaded last week. We need stable bio-conduits, and we need them now. Stop complaining and recalibrate the surge protectors."
"And what if someone finds this place?" the first voice whined. "If the League gets wind of this, we'll be erased."
"Let me worry about the League. You worry about your paycheck."
I held my Pokégear up, its tiny lens capturing the audio. Dr. Vile. The name felt like a shard of ice in my gut. This was bigger than some rogue grunts. This was organized. Sanctioned, maybe. Or something so unsanctioned that even the darkest elements of the world wanted it buried.
We followed the hum to its source: a large, circular chamber. My breath hitched. The room was lined with floor-to-ceiling glass cells. Inside each, a Pokémon was suspended in a shimmering containment field, held immobile. Wires and tubes snaked from the walls, piercing their bodies.
It was a gallery of horrors. A Pikachu, its fur matted and dull, had metallic veins grafted onto its legs, glowing with a sickly green light. A small Rattata twitched in violent spasms as arcs of energy surged through a metal collar locked around its neck. And in the central cell, a Growlithe was strapped to a metal table, its beautiful orange fur scorched black where wires were embedded deep in its skin. It wasn't defiant or angry; it was just trembling, its eyes wide with a terror so profound it felt like a physical blow.
The wave of agony hit Beast Boy like a punch to the soul. He let out a choked gasp and collapsed, his knees buckling as he fell against the wall. He clutched his chest, his face pale and slick with sweat.
"It hurts…" he whispered, his voice cracking. "Lila, it hurts so much… they're scared… they think they're going to die…"
I rushed to his side, grabbing his arm to steady him. The sight of the Pokémon was horrifying, but seeing him—my strong, vibrant friend—so utterly broken by their suffering terrified me on a different level. I was a researcher. I was trained to observe, to analyze. But there was no science here. Only cruelty.
"We have to get them out," I said, my voice shaking but firm. "We get the recording, we get out, and we bring hell down on this place."
But Beast Boy wasn't listening to reason. He was operating on pure, undiluted instinct. He pushed himself to his feet, his eyes locked on the trembling Growlithe. The raw, empathic torment had burned away his caution, leaving only a core of righteous fury.
"I won't leave them," he growled. He took a step toward the central console, a complex panel of blinking lights and switches that controlled the containment fields. He reached out a hand, not toward the controls, but toward the glass cell.
"It's okay," he murmured, his voice now a soothing balm directed at the terrified fire-pup. "You're safe now. I promise."
"Beast Boy, no! It's too risky! It's a trap!" I hissed, grabbing for his arm.
He ignored me. With a roar of frustration and rage, he slammed his fist into the control console. Sparks flew. The glass screen shattered. For a heart-stopping second, nothing happened. Then, every alarm in the facility blared to life. Red lights strobed across the room, painting the horrific scene in shades of blood. The shimmering containment fields flickered and died.
With metallic groans, blast doors slammed shut, sealing the exits. We were trapped.
The freed Pokémon reacted not with gratitude, but with panic. The Pikachu scrambled blindly, its modified legs sparking erratically. The Rattata collapsed in a heap, its tiny body finally succumbing to exhaustion. Several others fled into the dark recesses of the facility. The Growlithe, however, just lay on the table, too weak and terrified to move.
Our time was up. From panels in the ceiling, sleek, insect-like drones descended, their multifaceted lenses glowing red. They were silent, efficient, and they opened fire immediately, launching bolts of crackling blue energy.
"Eevee, Quick Attack!" I yelled. My Pokémon was a brown blur, darting between the drones, drawing their fire. "Butterfree, Sleep Powder!"
Butterfree took to the air, her wings beating furiously, releasing a cloud of glittering, soporific dust. The air filled with shimmering motes, and one of the drones sputtered, its lights flickering as it drifted aimlessly into a wall.
Beast Boy didn't hesitate. He rushed to the Growlithe, gently scooping the injured Pokémon into his arms. The pup whimpered, but didn't struggle, as if sensing the fierce protectiveness radiating from its rescuer.
"This way!" I shouted, spotting a service corridor the blast doors had missed.
We ran. The facility was coming apart around us. Panels sparked and exploded from the walls. The floor trembled violently, and the deep hum we had followed began to rise in pitch to an unbearable shriek. The prototype core was going critical.
A drone zipped around the corner, its stun bolt hitting the wall beside my head. Eevee leaped onto its back, sinking her teeth into a bundle of wires. The drone convulsed and crashed. We kept running, shielding the Growlithe as debris rained down from the ceiling.
Ahead, I saw it—a large window in what must have been an observation deck, already cracked from the tremors. "There!"
We didn't slow down. We were meters away when a blinding green light erupted from the chamber behind us. The core had breached.
"JUMP!" Beast Boy yelled.
We dove through the window in a shower of glass just as the world behind us dissolved into white heat and emerald fire. The shockwave hit us like a physical fist, throwing us through the air. We landed hard in the soft, loamy soil of the forest, tumbling in a heap of tangled limbs and flying dirt.
The explosion was a deafening roar, followed by the splintering crack of ancient trees. When I could finally push myself up, my ears ringing, I saw a column of black smoke and green energy clawing at the sky. The forest around the ruin was on fire, but strangely, the flames seemed to stop at an invisible line, refusing to encroach on the part of the forest dominated by the ancient Great Tree. Its domain was pushing back against the corruption.
Beast Boy was already kneeling, his attention focused on the whimpering Growlithe. Smoke rose from the fresh scorch marks on its fur. He pulled a small, luminescent healing seed from his pack and crushed it into a paste, gently applying it to the worst of the wounds before wrapping them with a strip of cloth from his own shirt.
I knelt beside him, the adrenaline draining away to leave me shaken and cold. My hands trembled as I watched him work, his touch so gentle, so full of a compassion that this world rarely deserved.
"Whatever this Vile is doing…" I managed, my voice rough. "It's not just science. It's cruelty. It's a violation of everything we stand for."
Beast Boy finished bandaging the Growlithe's leg and looked up, not at me, but at the plume of smoke tainting the dawn sky. The reflection of the firelight danced in his eyes, hardening them into chips of obsidian.
"He's not experimenting on Pokémon, Lila," he said, his voice terrifyingly calm. "He's building them."
————————————————————————————————————
In a dim control room hundreds of miles away, a shadowed figure watched the explosion on a primary monitor before it cut to static.
He adjusted his glasses, the faintest hint of a smile touching his lips. He ignored the data on the destroyed generator and zoomed in on the life signs of the protector.
"So… the anomaly intervenes. Fascinating."
On his screen, a new file blinked into existence: biometric scans of the green shapeshifter—marked with a single, crucial line of text.
Subject: Beast Boy. Status: Active. Note: Non-native DNA signature detected.
The figure leaned back, the smile widening. The experiment had just yielded a far more interesting variable.