Chapter Twenty: In Which Bees Hate You
'Combee (Frendomelissa dimorphus), like Miltank, is a tricky creature to keep. It seems that the danger posed by Pokémon increases in time with its usefulness to humanity, for Combee are both producers of the world's best honey and the greatest misogynist threat the world has ever seen. If you live in Sinnoh, it is likely you already know what I mean; if not, I shall explain. Female Combee eventually evolve to the hive organism and aerial honey-factory Vespiquen, which occupies a place of particular power in the Sinnish ecosystem; male Combee do not evolve, and leave the hives as soon as they are born to join swarms of other males. These swarms are driven by a unifying hatred for females and the power they wield, and roam the land in an attempt to kill every female organism on the planet.'
—Coriolanus Rowland, Coriolanus Rowland's Guide to Pokémon Husbandry
"Male Combee," said Ashley, stepping in front of me with his eyes fixed on the vent. "Stay out of sight, Pearl; we may be able to avoid confrontation."
"What do you mean?" I asked, panic rising in me. "Ashley, what do you—"
"Ssh!" he said sharply. "Male Combee are resentful of females, because female Combee evolve into Vespiquen and they don't. If they see any female organism at all, they'll kill them – but as long as they don't notice you, they won't attack."
The bees spread out across the ceiling; they were each like fragments of honeycomb, with multiple faces and intimidatingly large stings. Their wings thrummed and their mouthparts clicked, and each of them bore three identical creepy little smiles.
"It was a clever plan," Ashley admitted. "Lure us here by letting Maylene find out about the warehouse, then send in bees – you're a woman, so they'll attack, I'll defend you and so they kill me too."
"I'm not being reassured!" I hissed in his ear. "Ashley, reassure me!"
The bees kept on coming; it seemed like most of the warehouse was a solid mess of sticky honeycomb and insectoid legs. Their relentless buzzing vibrated right through me, setting my teeth humming in their sockets and my stomach jumping, and I knew that in a moment, they would notice I was a woman and go on the offensive.
"Neither of us will die," Ashley said calmly. "The only difficulty is that I daren't break down the door, since that will release them, and in all honesty I'd rather keep them contained so that as few people get hurt as—"
"Ashley!"
I'd seen it. Just one Combee, that happened to fly a little closer than the others; one Combee, that caught a glimpse of something blue behind Ashley's shoulder; one Combee, that saw a pale heart-shaped face and had a bolt of red lightning shoot through its head. I saw its tiny smiling faces each suddenly turn sour, its little eyes pop with rage, and its mouths open in three hideous snarls.
The next moment, the bees were on us.
They flew forward in a great curl, spiralling like a hunting Fearow, those inch-long stings all zooming towards my face in one great blood-curdling rush of terror—
—and then something pushed me to the floor and I heard a series of soft thumps as the Combee thudded harmlessly into something that definitely
wasn't my head. I opened my eyes cautiously and found my field of vision blocked by what appeared to be a shield made of paper.
"What the hell?" I murmured, halfway between stunned and amazed, and was about to sit up when a strong hand pressed me back down.
"Stay there," said Ashley – and his voice was, while not as distorted as it usually was when he released, slightly different; it was as if someone were doing an impression of him that was just half an accent off. "Don't move."
The papery shield whipped away from me, and I saw that it wasn't paper, it was skin, and it was attached to Ashley's shoulder where his arm usually was, exploding through the sleeve of his shirt and his coat and spreading out into a huge, flat blade. The Combee wheeled away from us, buzzing in alarm at this new and alien threat; a few of them flew towards Ashley, stings out, but he whipped his shield between him and them so fast that my eyes could barely catch the movement. The ensuing gust of air blew half of them away, and the rest embedded their stings harmlessly in what had once been his arm.
"Damn!" he cried. "I can't stop their stings if they hit dead-on... How much venom is that?"
"What the hell!" I shrieked, staring at him as he turned and swept away another attacking cloud of bees; these hit his shield at an angle, and ricocheted away to crash into each other and the floor. Where they impacted, they cracked and let out streams of honey, gluing themselves to the floor.
"Shut up, I'm busy saving your life!" roared Ashley, eyes burning yellow; bees whirled around him, and his right arm shot out and expanded into a second shield-blade. One half of the swarm crashed into the left arm, and the other into the right; he flexed his shoulders, and the bees fell away in waves. Honey splattered across the concrete and over my jeans; so deep in shock was I that I didn't even notice the stains. Ashley was shifting shape in order to do battle with a swarm of three-headed bees right in front of me. That kind of took precedence over everything else.
Deciding Ashley was too strong, the Combee darted past him and towards me instead – but he turned and slammed his two shield-blades into the wall and floor either side of me, curling over the edges to enclose me completely within a shell of pale, flawless skin.
Damn, I thought distractedly.
Wish my skin was as good as his.
No sooner had I thought this than the two shields tore away from me, leaving deep grooves in the walls where their edges had struck home; mashed wings and honey flew away to either side and spattered across the floor.
"Come on!" shouted Ashley, staring around at the bees with a wild look in his eyes. "You want me, not her!"
The Combee were not in agreement, and they dived towards me again, stings outstretched – but they thumped harmlessly into the flesh of Ashley's arm as it blurred back into position to cover my face.
"Ugh. This toxin appears to be
powerfully psychotropic," he muttered, which would have made me look up in surprise if I hadn't been staring rigidly ahead and wondering what in God's name was happening around me.
Ashley withdrew, his shields liberally studded with snapped-off stingers and bespattered with honey, and so did the bees; after losing about four thousand of their number in less than five minutes, they appeared to be reconsidering the wisdom of the attack.
"Hell's teeth," said Ashley, one of his arms shrinking and reforming back into a human one,the stings popping out of the fluid flesh as it did so. "This is inordinately painful." He shook it and it expanded into a shield again, then repeated the process with the other arm. Things were getting more surreal by the second, I noted vaguely.
The Combee, apparently deciding that they might as well try and kill me before Ashley repaid the favour, buzzed forth once more for another assault; again, Ashley blocked them, but this time they came in such quantities that they flowed over and around him, zooming past and heading straight for me—
—and suddenly I snapped back to reality, my self-preservation instinct kicking in and making me roll over and to the right. Five hundred bees, unable to stop themselves in time, crashed into the wall and broke into a delicious, toxic mess of honey and stingers; a thousand more saw the error of their predecessors and turned at the last moment to follow me—
—only for something to grab my ankle and drag me out of their way, allowing Ashley's shield-blade to sweep the Combee as one into the corner of the warehouse and crush them against the wall.
"Get up and keep moving," said Ashley, letting go of my leg and reforming his arm into a shield. "If one manages to sting you, the others will go into an attacking frenzy."
"OK," I said, adrenaline rushing through my system and telling me to survive now and ask questions later. I jumped to my feet (which was pretty impressive, if I do say so myself) and stood behind him, eyes on the bees; we were at the centre of a column of clear air defined by the wary distance the Combee kept from Ashley.
"I'm not sure how many stings I can take before I pass out," muttered Ashley to me. "I think I must have been stung about four thousand times now, and I'm starting to feel dizzy."
"Are you trying to make me even more scared?"
"No, I am merely telling you the facts. It's common courtesy in a life-or-death situation."
"Well, I have to say I'm pretty new to those – oh,
cal!"
The Combee surged towards me again, and Ashley angled his shield so as to bounce most of them away; even so, a good four hundred ended up embedded in his arm, and I watched him wince through worried eyes. I had no idea what was happening, or how he was able to shift his shape like this, but what I did know was that if he slipped up even once I was going to very rapidly become dead, and that was something I really didn't want.
I ducked the lone survivor of the bee crash, and it hit the back of Ashley's head, sting first. Ooh. That had to hurt.
Ashley turned and swept at another swarm of bees, but the gust of air he generated simply blew them out of his reach; he couldn't attack them like this, only defend – and watching, I had to wonder how long he could do that. His breath seemed laboured now, and though his eyes still blazed yellow, his movements were definitely slowing down. I had the horrible feeling that I wasn't going to get out of this warehouse alive, and I didn't like it one bit.
---
Liza put down the phone, thought for a moment, and went to find Tristan; since he was in his room watching TV with his Croagunk, it turned out not to be a long search.
"Come on, you two," she said. "The boss called. It's time to head out."
"Really?" asked Tristan. "Can't, say, you go on ahead and I'll stay here?"
"You don't have a choice," Liza told him. "Get up and get your things ready. Stravinsky's waiting in front of the hotel with our tickets."
"Tickets?" Tristan paused, puzzled. "Where on earth are we going?"
"Pastoria," replied Liza. "We're the explosives team, remember? And we've got a bomb to set."
"A bomb?" Tristan seemed to be a few steps behind in his understanding of the situation. "What? Why are we putting a bomb in Pastoria?"
Liza wondered whether she ought to tell him or not, decided that it didn't matter, and walked out, calling over her shoulder.
"Come on," she said. "I'll tell you on the way. Our flight leaves in fifty minutes."
"
What?" Tristan leaped to his feet. "Whose idea was it to book a flight so ridiculously soon – ah, it was yours, wasn't it?" he said, as Liza stopped and gave him a look. "And what a
very fine idea it was, there's no doubt about that—"
"Shut up, get your stuff together and meet me in the car," Liza snapped. "And in future, when you open your mouth, try
not to put your foot in it."
She stormed off down the stairs, and Tristan stared after her for a moment.
"Well," he said, turning to his Croagunk. "That went as well as could be as expected, don't you think?"
"Gurrp," replied the Croagunk, without apparently understanding what he had said, and hopped off the bed.
"Come on, then," said Tristan. He tucked his oversized frog under his arm and walked out; he hadn't actually brought any luggage, since their food and accommodation were paid for by a credit card given to Liza by the higher-ups of the Team, and it wasn't necessary for him to bring anything but himself and his Croagunk. There was some unpleasantness at the front desk where Tristan explained he was checking out and the receptionist asked him to pay; however, Liza turned up with the card in the end and rescued him. A few minutes later, Tristan was in the back of Stravinsky's car and heading off to the airport.
"Get your Croagunk off me," Liza told him, pushing the unfortunate amphibian off her lap and onto the floor. "Ugh. Nasty creature... what's its name anyway?"
"Jackie," replied Tristan.
"How typically uninspired of you," said Liza. "Name your Fighting-type after Jackie Chan. Huh."
"Oh, he's not named after Jackie Chan," Tristan told her cheerily.
"What? Who's he named after, then?"
"Jackie Gleason," said Tristan, which left Liza very confused and made Stravinsky burst out laughing. For once, it seemed, he'd won – if only with his idiocy.
---
I was getting desperate now.
Ashley was struggling to stay conscious, I could see. His skin was black with crushed stings and the yellow fire in his eyes had dimmed; whatever arcane energies fuelled his strange morphing abilities, they were running low. He must have been stung several thousand more times by then, and I imagine that there must have been more venom than blood in his veins.
For their part, the Combee were wary. They could see that their opponent was tiring, but he
had killed half the swarm now, and they had no desire to be completely exterminated. Wings humming, mouths clicking, they circled us; occasionally, a few would dart forwards and Ashley would block their path, but for the most part, we existed in a horribly tense stalemate, bees on all sides and safety on none.
It might have gone on forever had Ashley not stumbled and almost fallen; immediately, a cloud of Combee broke away from the rest of the swarm and swirled towards us. I threw myself flat on the floor, felt the wind of their wings pass over my back and—
—watched the bees slam sting-first into Ashley's side, driving deep and sticking like arrows. He brushed them away lethargically, crushing them into crumbs, and shielded me as another group of Combee buzzed towards us.
"Pearl," he said softly, through the din, "I'm going to pass out soon."
"Don't you dare!" I replied, which came out much less sympathetic than I'd intended it to.
"I love you too," he said dryly, a bee bouncing off his forehead. "Look, these bees can't kill me, but they can knock me unconscious with enough poison – watch out!"
I curled up tight, pressing myself against him as the bees aiming for my head glanced off his shield; he stood up, setting me back on my feet, and continued, keeping a wary eye out for further bee attacks.
"Don't worry," he repeated breathlessly, and fell over.
"
Cal!"
Immediately, I dropped to his side, slapping his face and hoping against hope that he'd open his eyes—
He didn't.
I looked up at the bees, which were staring at him in disbelief. They held a hurried, buzzing debate, came to the consensus that they should attack me, and swooped down in a great giddy spiral, their tiny eyes locked on mine...
I saw the bees approach in glorious slow motion. They seemed to drift toward me as if time had become treacle, and they rippled through it languidly, without fear of my escape. There was nowhere for me to go, after all, and I was far slower than them. My mind shrank to a tiny point deep inside me, where it wouldn't trouble me with such things as fear or anguish; a sense of extreme clarity overcame me, and for one beautiful second I could see every vein in every bee's wings, every mote of dust in the air; I saw the honey on the floor shining like divine fire in the palm of God, and the pillars of sunlight that illuminated them glowing softly like Ampharos. The world was opened up to me in all its beauty, and I couldn't do anything except stare.
Then the moment passed, and I returned to mad screaming terror as the Combee bore down upon me like a tidal wave of demon honey—
WHOOSH!
The explosion came first, to be honest, but I didn't really hear it over the cacophony; what I did hear was the tornado-like roar of the purple-tinted wind that followed. It shredded the Combee in midair, tearing their wings asunder and fracturing their brittle bodies; bits of insect fell everywhere, bouncing off the far wall and pattering against the floor.
And then suddenly it was over, and everything was quiet once more. After the all-consuming drone of the bees, the silence hit me like a fist; I crouched there by Ashley with my hands still held over my face, incapable of moving or even full rational thought. I couldn't handle it. Too many impossible things had happened in too short a time: a swarm of Combee had tried to kill me, Ashley had shifted shape to protect me, Ashley had been
beaten... The list went on and on, and terminated in the final, awful reality that I had come within three inches of death.
"Ashley?" cried a child's voice. "Are you OK? Ashley!"
Maylene, I thought, and took a deep breath. My mind revolved slowly on its axis and became something approximating normal, and I stood up on shaky legs.
Maylene was already over here, kneeling by Ashley's side in concern; in the doorway stood my saviour, a lithe figure that was slightly too short and too canine to be human. Its sharp snout and pointed ears gave the Lucario the look of Anubis, and, judging from what it had done to the Combee, it had something like the same power. Behind it were an assortment of martial arts masters, little men with onion-shaped heads and officious-looking bureaucrats; behind
them was a titanic wall of flesh in blue trousers and a luchador's mask – Crasher Wake had come along too, it seemed.
"Dan!" shouted Maylene, turning around sharply. "Help me!"
Without a word, the closest martial artist rushed over and scooped Ashley up off the floor; his eyes widened as he saw the vast, flat blades that drooped from his shoulders, but he still said nothing.
"Someone call Cynthia!" yelled Iago from out of sight. "She'll be even more pissed if she hears this second-hand!"
A whirl of confusion and noise and people rushing to and fro ensued; someone was kind enough to escort me from the building and into a car, and before I knew it we were at the Pokémon Centre, and someone was speaking into my ear.
---
The discerning reader will, of course, already know what must have happened for the timely intervention of Maylene and company to take place. It does not take the detective skills of the Diamond to work
that much out.
However, purely in case you perhaps want to confirm your suspicions, the causes are laid out here; they begin with a faint and peculiar noise, the suspicious nature of which was first picked up by our moustachioed antihero.
"Do you hear that?" asked Iago.
"Hear what?" replied Looker, listening.
"
That." One of Iago's ears stood up, like that of a dog that has heard an ultrasonic whistle. "It's..."
He walked over to the warehouse door and pressed his ear against it.
"Pretty thick," he said, "but I think I hear... ah,
cal!"
Iago whirled away from the door and grabbed Looker by the lapels.
"Have you got a mobile phone?" he asked urgently.
"Pardon? If you could speak a little slower, monsieur Kadabra—"
"I'm not monsieur sodding Kadabra, my name's Iago! And I want to know if. You. Have. A. Sodding. Mobile. Phone!"
Iago's voice increased in volume as the sentence went on, and by the end he was practically screaming into Looker's face – or as close to his face as he could get given his height, which was his neck.
"I have one right here," said Looker timidly, producing it from his pocket.
"
Thank you," cried Iago, snatching it off him. He dialled swiftly, muttering in a very specific and highly crude way about the inadequacies of the French, and set the phone to his ear. "Hello? I need to speak to Maylene. She's busy is she? Crasher Wake, eh? Well, how about you tell her that her favourite state secret is in the process of being murdered by a swarm of angry
bees!"
It wasn't really a question by the end. Iago had once again got louder as he spoke, and was shrieking by the word 'bees'.
"I— oh, for Christ's sake! I – fine, I'll hold." Iago glanced at Looker. "Damn receptionists," he said confidingly. "I always get the stupid ones."
"Ah," said Looker, backing away from him with rather less subtlety than one might have expected from an elite agent of the International Police. "Is that so, mon ami?"
"Yeah. It's not like I care about Ashley or anything," Iago said with sudden eagerness. "It's just that if he
does end up dead, I can probably expect to be arrested within twenty-four hours."
"Naturally," agreed Looker. "I do not doubt that you have the heart of lead, as they say."
"Heart of
stone," corrected Iago. "Or heart of gold, I guess, but that's pretty unlikely since I'm about as kindly as a bucket of battery acid – oh, hey," he said, as the phone twittered in his ear. "That made her listen, did it? Yeah, I thought it might. She knows where we are; get her here with that Lucario of hers
now. Now sod off and do as you're told."
Iago thumbed the button on the phone and handed it back to Looker.
"There."
"What exactly is it that is happening?" enquired the French detective. "I confess, I am a little confused."
Iago waved at the door.
"Put your ear to that and listen," he said, and Looker did; a moment later, his eyes widened and he drew his head back sharply.
"Ah, this plot," he said. "She is so fiendish... It can only be the work of Mademoiselle Radley!"
And he began to stride around in circles, gesturing wildly and pontificating in French, all of which was greeted with a quizzical eye and stony silence by Iago.
---
Cyrus looked at the computer monitor pensively. Things had panned out just as he'd expected, which was good; with any luck, he'd keep the Diamond busy for another half a week at least.
"That went well," observed the Desk Sitter, but since Cyrus had company, he chose not to answer.
"Sir?" asked Saturn. "Shall I send someone for the girl?"
"No," replied Cyrus, which made all three of the others look up nervously. Was the plan being changed again? It was a stressful business, this Galactic commander work; they were all worked off their feet as it was. Charon had his research team to deal with (and they were lamentably slow-witted), Mars had the mess from the Eterna and Windworks incidents to finish cleaning up, and Saturn was the second-in-command, which essentially meant he did the things that Cyrus didn't want to. (It will be noted that Jupiter was not present; she was at home with her boyfriend and a large bottle of wine, drowning her post-traumatic stress disorder in cheap alcohol.) "No, I don't want you to send someone," continued Cyrus. "I want you to go yourself."
"Me?" asked Saturn, pointing to himself. "As in,
me, sir?"
"No, the other you," replied Cyrus irritably. "Yes, of course I mean you, you cretin." He waved a hand in the direction of the other commanders. "Take Mars with you too," he said.
"Two Galactic commanders? For a simple kidnapping? Isn't that a bit... excessive?"
"I can assure you it isn't," Cyrus informed him. "Both of you need to requisition Golbat from the storerooms, by the way. I expect you'll need them."
"We have Pokémon of our own—"
"A Toxicroak and a Purugly are admirable enough, but you
will need the Golbat," said Cyrus patiently. "Believe me."
"Yes sir."
Saturn and Mars retreated from the room.
"Honestly," said Cyrus to the Desk Sitter, "it's so much harder to get decent higher administration than I thought it was. I have the greatest respect for the Aqua and Magma leaders now – if they had to go through
half the effort I have with these people then it was a miracle they ever summoned anything."
"Ehehehe," laughed Charon nervously, and Cyrus turned to glare at him.
"What are you doing here?" he demanded to know. "You're meant to have left!"
"Oh, sorry," said Charon, making no attempt to leave. "I assumed that it was just those two leaving – the
lesser commanders, you know. After all—"
"Get out," said Cyrus flatly.
"—you surely wouldn't treat
me, the genius even you—"
"Get out."
"—recognise, in such a way—"
"Charon, if you don't leave right now I'm going to repurpose this Newton's Cradle in a very inventive and extremely painful sort of way," said Cyrus, picking it up off his desk. "Now get out."
"Right," said the scientist, getting up and going to the door. "Of course. We geniuses need our alone time, right sir?"
He winked and stepped out, shutting the door behind him.
Cyrus and the Desk Sitter stared at each other.
"That man," proclaimed Cyrus in a low, strained voice, "is the very worst substitute for a human being that I have
ever had to work with."
"He seems to stimulate emotion in you," remarked the Desk Sitter. "That isn't desirable, is it?"
"He's more than undesirable," muttered Cyrus darkly, and turned back to the video on the screen. Lacrimére was gone now, and all that remained were a couple of Gym Trainers, poking around at the sticky mess of bee corpses and making sure there were none still alive; if they escaped into the city, they could have a serious issue on their hands. "Well, I suppose we can't do anything more than wait now," he sighed, eyes fixed on the grainy image. "The rest is down to the Diamond." He picked up a phone (a cheap, disposable one; he wasn't stupid) and began to dial. "Now," he said, a sudden smile spreading across his face. "Let's get this little game started..."
---
I know exactly where I was when I got the call. I was in the Pokémon Centre, in the hospital room where Ashley was being treated; there were burly Gym Trainers standing guard at the door, and no one was allowed in except for a certain doctor, who was, it seemed, on the payroll of the League. Maylene was there, and Iago and Looker – but not Crasher; he had been refused entry to the hospital area on the grounds that he would disturb the patients.
Ashley himself was all right, it seemed. He hadn't lied – the Combee venom had done no more than knock him out, though the doctor said there was enough of it to kill a bull elephant in his system. Given twelve hours or so, he would shrug off the effects on his own, but the hospital care, I was told, would have him back up in a quarter of that.
I was mostly OK now; Looker and one of the Gym Trainers (who, being male and not blind, seemed to have become infatuated with me) had, between them, managed to calm me down. After what I'd seen and experienced, I had a thousand questions – but I knew that I couldn't ask them of anyone except Ashley, and he was currently unconscious. Hell, I had no idea if even he'd answer; he was so fond of being cryptic that I sometimes think it's a wonder I ever even learned his name.
It was at that moment that Ashley's mobile phone started to vibrate across the bedside table.
Instantly, everyone fell silent – that is to say, everyone else fell silent and I, sensing that something was wrong here, followed suit.
"Is... is that Cynthia?" asked Maylene anxiously.
"We already called her," replied one of her Trainers – the adulterous one who'd been watching the door, in fact. "She wouldn't be calling back on
that phone."
"What's the matter?" I asked, for once not pretending to know what was going on.
"No one apart from Cynthia has the number of that phone," replied Iago slowly. "That's the phone that only rings in emergencies, Pearl – when Sinnoh needs a weapon."
"Oh." I stared at it. "Is someone going to answer it?"
Everyone looked at each other and shuffled their feet. The phone kept vibrating.
"Anyone at all?" I asked. "It's probably important."
"Allow me," said Looker, stepping forward with a flourish. "As an elite of—"
"No, I'll do it," decided Iago, and snatched up the phone a moment before Looker's hand touched the table. "Hello?"
The tension was so thick that you'd have struggled to cut it even with a knife; this was the sort of tension you'd need a bandsaw to deal with.
"Who is this?" asked Iago. "No, I asked you first. I said, I asked you first – well, what the hell do you want to talk to her for? Oh,
fine. Talk to her then."
He held out the phone.
"It's for you," he said. "No clue who this is – but it's a man's voice, quite deep, probably a good singer."
"For me?"
"Yes, my little blonde parrot, it's for you," said Iago sardonically. "Now take the damn phone."
With some trepidation, I did, and a curiously familiar voice met my ears:
"Hello, Pearl."
"Who is this?" I asked immediately.
"Not yet. I have a message for you that's in your best interests to hear. If you'll guarantee me that you won't interrupt, I'll tell you."
"I won't interrupt," I said impatiently. "What is it?"
"By now you will have stepped into and survived my honeytrap," the voice said. "Although I can't claim all the credit for that – the idea came from an associate of mine. But I digress. The point is that this is only the beginning of what I have in store for you." He paused. "You may speak now, if you wish. This is the interval."
"What? What do you mean, this is only the beginning?"
He chuckled, and it was kind of sinister.
"Somewhere in Pastoria is a bomb, Pearl. A bomb that has the power to destroy at least a quarter of the city, and probably more."
A sudden chill ran through my body; it travelled by way of the veins, and froze each muscle as it passed.
"And when does it go off?"
"Oh, you interrupted," said the voice despairingly. "And you were doing so well. I'll have to have the time put forward an hour."
"When does it go off?" I demanded.
"I'll put it forward another hour if you're not quiet," he snapped, and I fell silent. "That's better. Now, you have two days, six hours, forty-two minutes and twelve seconds until this bomb explodes – in other words, Pearl, it will go off at midnight on Friday."
"I've got one more question," I asked, suddenly realising who this man must be. "Why are you telling me this,
Maragos?"
Around the room, eyes widened.
"Finally," said Maragos despairingly. "I thought you'd never get it. The reason I'm telling you this is that this bomb is extremely well-concealed. You know as well as I the efficacy of the police; this case is out of their league. I'm afraid to say that only one man in Sinnoh has any chance of finding and defusing it before the timer reaches zero – and that man, if I'm not very much mistaken, is currently lying before you in an unconscious stupor." I could almost hear his smile down the telephone. "That'll be all, Pearl," he said. "I'll see you later, I'm sure."
The line went dead, and I lowered the phone, staring at Ashley and willing him to wake up.
"What did he say?" asked Iago. "It was Maragos, right?"
"Yeah," I replied. "It was. Basically..." I thought about it. "Basically, it's business as usual."
"Ah,
crap."
"Yeah," I said thoughtfully. "Yeah, that pretty much sums it up."