Dr. Elara Frost had been staring at the same genetic sequence for the past three hours when the alarms started.
A soft chime from the primary terminal, accompanied by numbers on the central display screen beginning to fluctuate wildly.
She looked up from her microscope, blinking away the eye strain from examining Bulbasaur cell samples, and turned her attention to the main screen mounted on the laboratory wall.
What she saw startled her.
The biome stability meter, which typically displayed steady green readings across all terrarium sections, was spiking into yellow. Then orange. Then a violent, pulsing red.
"What in the world?" she muttered, rolling her chair across the lab floor to get closer to the display.
The meter resembled a seismograph, with lines tracking environmental stability across various zones.
Most showed the expected flat lines of controlled habitats. But one section, the eastern underground network, was going absolutely haywire.
The readings jumped and fluctuated like an earthquake scale during a major tremor, except this wasn't measuring ground movement.
This was measuring anomalies.
Elara's fingers flew across the keyboard, pulling up detailed sensor data.
Temperature: stable.
Humidity: normal.
Oxygen levels: within acceptable parameters.
However, the genetic variance scanner, which monitored for unusual Pokémon mutations or evolutionary anomalies, was registering readings that shouldn't have been possible.
The numbers kept climbing. Whatever was happening down there was causing a genetic shift so profound that the sensors were struggling to quantify it.
"Professor Oak!" she called out, not taking her eyes off the screen. "Professor, you need to see this!"
Heavy footsteps approached from the research wing, and Professor Oak appeared beside her, still holding a half-eaten sandwich.
His expression shifted from mild curiosity to sharp focus the moment he saw the display.
"Elara, what am I looking at?"
"I don't know," she admitted, her voice tight with a mixture of excitement and concern. "The genetic variance scanner started going off about thirty seconds ago. The readings are coming from the eastern underground tunnels, the restricted section where you keep the aggressive specimens."
Oak set his sandwich down on a nearby table, forgotten, and leaned in to study the screen more closely.
The red line continued its erratic dance, occasionally spiking so high it threatened to go off the chart entirely.
"This pattern," he said slowly, his weathered face creasing with thought. "It looks like a transformation. But the magnitude is far beyond anything I've ever documented. Even rare evolutions don't generate readings this intense."
Elara nodded, her mind already racing through possibilities. She'd spent six years studying Pokémon genetics, had written her entire thesis on regional variants and evolutionary divergence, and she'd never seen data like this.
It was as if someone had rewritten a Pokémon's entire genetic code in real-time.
"Could it be a natural mega evolution?" she suggested. "Some species can achieve temporary transformations under extreme stress that alter their genetic signature."
"Not this dramatically," Oak replied, shaking his head. "And we don't have any Pokémon in that section capable of mega evolution. Just standard Pokémon that showed aggression issues in the main terrarium."
The readings began to stabilize slightly, the violent red spikes settling into a consistent elevated orange level. Whatever had happened was complete, but the aftermath was still registering as abnormal.
Elara's fingers moved across the keyboard again, pulling up the section's inventory list. "According to the database, the eastern tunnels currently house four Gible, two Aron, a Larvitar, and a Sneasel. All of them are juvenile specimens with behavioral issues."
"Gible," Oak said, his eyes narrowing. "I told Samael to stay away from that section."
Elara's head snapped toward him. "Samael is down there?"
Oak's expression changed. A look of worry sat upon his face.
"I assigned him to spend time in the terrarium this morning. But I specifically told him the eastern tunnels were off-limits."
"Of course you did," Elara said, unable to keep a small smile from her face. "Which naturally means that's exactly where he went."
She'd been working under Professor Oak for six months now, long enough to learn about his grandson through countless stories and occasional glimpses.
Samael Oak, the prodigy. The seventeen-year-old who'd published three academic papers on Pokémon breeding compatibility that had professors twice his age scrambling to revise their own research.
The quiet genius who spent more time with books and data than people.
The young man whose voice she'd heard this morning when she'd called him down to the lab, though he'd never actually seen her before leaving for the terrarium.
The young man she'd been secretly hoping to work with for months now, ever since Professor Oak had mentioned his grandson would be starting his journey soon.
"We need to pull up the camera feeds," Oak said, moving toward a secondary terminal. "See what's going on down there."
"There are no cameras in the tunnels," Elara reminded him, already pulling up the terrarium surveillance system. "Security concerns. You didn't want footage of the aggressive specimens that could be stolen or misused. But we have full coverage of the main terrarium area."
The screen split into multiple camera angles, showing different sections of the underground nature preserve. Elara's eyes scanned each feed systematically, searching for any sign of Samael or unusual activity.
"There," Oak pointed at the feed covering the eastern terrarium boundary, where rough terrain transitioned into the tunnel network.
Elara's fingers flew across the keyboard, enlarging the image. The camera showed a figure sitting on a flat rock near the restricted tunnel entrance.
Samael.
And beside him, clearly visible despite the distance, was a Pokémon that made Elara's breath stop in her throat entirely.
"Is that a Gible?" she whispered, leaning closer to the screen.
But even as she said it, she knew that description was inadequate. Yes, it had the basic body structure of a Gible: a stocky build, an oversized head, and a distinctive fin. But everything else was different.
The coloring was completely off. Instead of the typical blue-gray scales, this Gible was a deep, brilliant crimson.
Its scales caught the terrarium's light with a metallic sheen. The composition is far denser than normal Dragon-type hide.
Even from the camera angle, Elara could see that its build was more robust, more defined than a standard Gible should be at that size.
"That's not possible," she said, her scientific mind immediately rejecting what her eyes were showing her. "Gible are blue-gray. Even shiny variants are only slightly lighter in color. That deep red coloration doesn't exist in the species' genetic range."
Oak had gone very still beside her, his expression unreadable. "Zoom in on the Pokémon. I need to see it more clearly."
Elara adjusted the camera's focus, bringing the crimson Gible into sharper detail. From this closer angle, she could see Samael holding something out to the Pokémon. Three red berries with visible purple flesh where they'd been bitten into.
"Haban berries," she identified immediately. "Common Dragon-type preference. The bush near the eastern entrance grows them naturally as part of the habitat enrichment program."
They watched as the Gible devoured the berries with evident enthusiasm, its entire body language radiating joy. Then, to Elara's surprise, it jumped straight up into the air in what could only be described as pure happiness.
"Look at its movement," Oak said quietly. "The power in that jump, the way it lands without any sign of the lethargy that was documented in the file. That's not the same Gible we had in those tunnels."
Elara pulled up her personal tablet to access the facility's Pokémon database. She found the file for the four Gible specimens in the eastern tunnels, scanning through the behavioral notes and genetic profiles.
A/N: The cover picture is Elara Frost