I keep it casual, noncommittal. “I can learn fast,” I say, letting him fill in the blanks.

  He laughs again, though it sounds more like he’s choking on the punchline. “That’s what I like. No ego.”

  He leads me into a room with the kind of darkness you can only get from decades of ignoring the sun. The blinds are down, duct-taped at the seams, every surface dusted with the kind of grey that settles only when hope is extinct. The next surprise is the man in the rolling chair, large enough to warp the mesh, feet up on a desk, and surrounded by a corona of monitors. I count twelve screens—each with its own migraine of news splashes, scrolling police bands, surveillance feeds, and several that just look like chat windows in a language I can’t parse. He’s got a headset on, one earpiece tucked behind a cauliflowered lobe, and his eyes flick between screens with a sleepless energy that reminds me of Beldum after a mineral binge.

  The real show, though, is under the desk: an Umbreon, curled tight around the base of the man’s foot, tail beating a lazy rhythm that matches the slow drift of cigarette smoke in the air. The Umbreon looks up when we enter, eyes glassy and red, then flicks an ear and goes back to pretending it’s a shadow.

  My escort drops into the nearest creaking chair, cocks his head at me, and gestures toward the only other seat in the room. “That’s Slooker,” he says, thumb-jerking at the man in the chair, “and I’m Slooker.” The man grins, then tugs a cigarette from a packet with two fingers and points it at me like a wand.

  “Sit,” he says, “or stand. I’m easy.” His voice has a smoker’s polish but none of the charm. I take the seat, warily, and try not to inhale too hard.

  The other guy—tech, I’m assuming—doesn’t even look up from the rolling chaos of feeds. He just says, “Hey,” and starts typing with all ten fingers, hands moving so fast I’m not sure he’s even hitting keys.

  The Umbreon clocks me with a deep, unblinking stare, then glides up onto Slooker’s lap, the battered vinyl of the chair creaking under added weight. The man’s hand goes to its ears reflexively, working the soft black fur between two nicotine-stained fingers. “She’s the real brains,” he says, and the Umbreon huffs through her nose like she’s heard this one a thousand times. “And now that you’re here, we’re up to full staff.”

  I’m still not sure if he’s joking or if the Umbreon is actually on payroll. The tech guy doesn’t seem to notice either way—he’s too busy whispering instructions to himself, toggling from a grainy bank camera feed to a RangerNet bounty list and back again. The screens in front of him flicker through a hundred stories per minute: missing Pokemon, insurance scams, a rash of carjackings that seem to involve a a gang of Scraggy.

  Slooker leans back, lit cigarette poised between his thumb and the edge of the desk. “Here’s how it works,” he says. “We pull jobs off the public networks: RangerNet, city police, sometimes the League boards if we’re desperate. Missing persons, lost Pokémon, bounty skips, spouse stuff. You want ethical, go work for the Rangers. You want paid, do what I tell you.”

  A quick glance at the wall tells me everything I need about office culture: the only decoration is a laminated sheet that says “ALL SALES FINAL—NO REFUNDS” taped next to a calendar from a year that’s already forgotten itself.

  “You get cash on job completion,” Slooker continues. “Not before. If you get hurt, tough luck. If you get caught, we don’t know you, so don’t.” He pauses, lifts his chin, and fixes me with a look that says he’s already decided I’m going to screw this up at least once.

  I nod, but keep my mouth shut. There’s a tempo to this pitch and I don’t want to throw it off.

  “It’s not all glamour, obviously,” he says. “I mean, most of it is shit work. Ninety percent of the time, it’s insurance fraud. Some wife says her husband’s been nabbed for ransom, but really he’s just shacking up at a Motel 6 with a prostitute and a minibar. Or you get some retiree who ‘loses’ their Persian every week for the photo op.” He pets the Umbreon’s head, the motion more fidget than affection. “We take the jobs the League won’t or can’t. Pay’s better, but the risk—” He waggles his hand. Umbreon’s tail thumps, slow and rhythmic.

  I point at the screens, at the blur of open cases. “You just pick one?”

  Slooker makes a noise in his throat, halfway between a cough and a laugh. “We assign. But if you got a preference, say so now.” He tilts his head at the tech, who’s already dragging a window into the centre monitor and blowing it up to full screen. It’s a ranger poster, the kind they staple to utility poles: missing, kid with a flat face and a haircut ten years out of style, name printed at the bottom in bold. “We get a lot of these,” Slooker says, “but this one’s hot. RangerNet put it up less than an hour ago.”

  I lean in. The print is cheap, but the details are clear: the missing Pokémon is a Houndour, last seen near the river, probably stolen, maybe just lost. The family is offering a reward that’s decent, not desperate, but the League’s kicked in an extra for “swift resolution.” The kid looks like he’s already given up hope. There’s no date on the poster, just a time-stamp that might as well be a countdown.

  “Turnaround?” I ask.

  Slooker shrugs. “You want quick, this is quick. Nobody’s got leads, but the parents put up cash, so it’s a race.” He taps his cigarette against a mug that’s never seen coffee, then points to the folder the tech slides across the desk. “Everything you need is in there. Last known, case notes, contact info. Just bring back the Houndour and get paid.” He makes it sound like a dare.

  I flip open the folder, scan the intake: Houndour, male, two years old, chipped and tagged, last pinged near a stretch of river that’s basically an open-air landfill. “You got a map?” I ask.

  Tech flips one onto the leftmost monitor—a clean GPS tracking line along the riverbank, timestamped. It shows a rapid, steady progression, then nothing. The line leads straight toward the city core, then cuts out entirely.

  I say, “Looks like it hit the fence and vanished.”

  “Or got snagged,” Slooker grunts. “That’s how it usually goes. Either someone in the city’s running a side gig, or it’s in the wind.”

  I look at the map, at the streets between the last two pings. If the Houndour’s smart, it’s hiding. If it’s tagged, someone’s blocking the signal. Either way, it’s not going to be lounging in a park until the Rangers show up.

  “I don’t work with Rangers,” I say, watching for a reaction.

  Slooker grins, showing all the missing teeth at once. “Perfect. They hate us, too. But they’ll pay if you bring the goods.”

  “I don’t do handoffs with Rangers,” I tell him, flat, before he can get any ideas about meet-and-greets or joint stakeouts. “If they’re waiting at the pay window, I turn around.”

  Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

  Slooker’s lips curl, more respect than annoyance. “Fine by me.” He leans forward, eyebrows raised. “I take a cut for the find, you get the rest. We’re the middleman. Rangers drop the money through us, you grab it clean. You want an envelope name, though.”

  He holds my gaze, waiting. I let the silence fill the room, see if he’ll blink.

  Tech glances up, face half in shadow. He cracks his knuckles, the sound sharp in the quiet room.

  I feel a sudden, jarring mental pressure at my hip—a cold, focused presence from the containment of Beldum’s Pokéball. It’s communication is a sharp, silent spike, pushing a name into my mind: Kuro.

  “Kuro,” I say, cutting through the silence. It’s as good a name as any, and it’s not like the city will run out of ghosts to blame once I’m done here.

  Slooker scribbles the name down in the margin of a clipboard, his face impassive. He tilts his head at me, the clipboard a stark white rectangle in the gloom, his tone gone business-like. “Number for the file?”

  I dig out the burner, flip it open, and read the string off the pawn slip. Tech enters it with a flourish, then starts shooting packets of data to my address before I even finish. First it’s the Houndour’s collar ping, then a bundle of maps, then a dump of every “probable” sighting from RangerNet in the last four hours. The phone vibrates in my hand, each new file another nail in the coffin of anyone who thought this would be simple.

  Slooker grunts, slides a business card across the desk—no logo, just a number and the word “SL.” I pocket it, already feeling the weight of the job settle into the space behind my eyes. The Umbreon watches, unblinking, as I stand.

  “Get started, Kuro,” Slooker says, all business now. “If you turn up something good, call the number. Otherwise, don’t.” He ashes his cigarette into the mug, never looking away from the screens.

  I nod, push out of the chair, and walk past the tech, who gives a two-fingered salute without looking up from his code. The door closes behind me on a wave of static and low voices, and the stairs down to the street feel steeper than before. Maybe it’s the air—or maybe the sense that, for the first time in weeks, I’ve got a direction that isn’t just away.

  The sunlight outside is blinding, full of glass and grit. I head east, skirting the edge of the stadium lot and letting my boots find the rhythm of the sidewalk. The new name clings to me like an unwashed shirt: Kuro, Kuro, Kuro. I roll it inside my head, trying to see if it fits anywhere in the tangle of old monikers. Maybe it does.

  I check the burner for the first ping. The last Houndour signal is flagged in red, a GPS dot shivering just off the river near Piers 46-48, an industrial crescent sandwiched between a pill factory and the city’s oldest wastewater plant. I’ve seen the area; it’s nothing but skeleton warehouses and the kind of narrow alleys you could lose a patrol car in if you tried.

  Before I go, I duck into an alley behind the vape shop and let Beldum out. The ball releases with a click and a whir, and Beldum materializes an inch off the ground, magnets twitching like it’s already reading the thermal signature of the neighbourhood.

  “Got a job,” I tell them, keeping my tone neutral. “Missing Houndour, last pinged near the river. You up for it?”

  Beldum vibrates, not with excitement, but with a quiet, mathematical certainty. The response doesn’t come as words, but as a prioritized list: analyse, locate, retrieve. It’s the same order I would have used.

  I recall Beldum, feel the snap of magnetic feedback as the ball closes, then head for the river on foot. The city’s pulse is steady, but the riverbank is a different world: the silence here is industrial, broken only by the distant groan of machinery and the slow, choking rush of water past the piers. The sky is cloudless, hard blue, and the sun cuts through the glass towers, razor sharp. I keep my hands in my pockets to ward the chill.

  The last ping floats up on my burner as I close in—under the Sixth Street overpass, near a spray of broken cement and half-buried shopping carts. I walk slow, head down, watching for the kind of evidence that gets missed by people in a hurry. By the time I’m under the bridge, I see it: the black scorch marks on the concrete, the weird, almost geometric splatter of soot where a fire burned too hot for too short a time.

  Houndour, or something playing with one.

  I crouch, swipe two fingers through the ash, rub it between thumb and forefinger. The grit is fine, not enough residue to be burnt plastic— the signature of a flash fire from a Pokémon with a bad attitude and worse luck. A few feet from the burn, there’s a spray of tiny, glimmering fragments peppered into the sand. Teeth, maybe, or bone, but the wrong colour for organic. Closer to the river, there’s a chunk of concrete melted into glass, the edges warped and pooled. I touch it, careful, and it’s cold to the bone.

  So it happened hours ago, maybe last night.

  There’s something else—the stench of it, so sour and sharp it makes my teeth itch. Not just the chemical memory of a fire. It’s the kind of stink that follows a Dark type when it’s cornered: old blood, old coal, a taste in the back of the throat that feels like biting into a battery. I don’t have to see the Houndour to know it’s here, or was.

  I circle the scene. There are no footprints, not a one, but up on the slant of riverbank there’s a gouge, a series of paired divots like something was dragged or limped away. I follow it, boots sinking into the soft mud, and after a few steps I find the collar. Half-melted, but the tag’s still readable; the metal warped but the address stamped deep enough for even a lazy cop to run it. The tag hangs on by a thread of nylon, the rest of the collar spattered with dried blood and sludgy, black stuff that looks like burnt oil.

  The Houndour didn’t lose the collar. Someone—or something—took it off.

  I pocket the tag, then make my way down the edge of the embankment. The bridge’s foundation is a honeycomb of maintenance hatches and welded-up crawlspaces, most of them “sealed” with the kind of padlock you could open with a sneeze and a bad attitude. The drag marks go right up to a storm grate, the kind that should only be open if you worked for the city. I kneel, check the lock—half rust, all bluff. One twist and it’s open. I prop it just wide enough to slip through, then duck into the darkness, shoes scraping over the lip of the frame.

  Inside, it’s pitch except for the pale spill of daylight and the blue bug-zap of my burner as I thumb it for a flashlight. The first thing that hits me is the smell: sweet, alkaline, and layered under that is the slow rot of things that don’t belong here. The trickle of water is louder than expected—everything echoes, the concrete alive with its own pulse.

  I brush my hand against the Beldum’s ball at my belt. Out of habit, maybe, or because the place feels hungrier than I want to admit. For half a second nothing, then a burst: Acknowledge. Then—let me out.

  I cock an eyebrow. That’s the second time today. Either I’m losing it, or Beldum just figured out how to ping me through containment again. The containment field is meant to be absolute. I should have expected this, though. I wonder if the device in my skull is what allowed it to bypass the Poké Ball's magnetic fields?

  I step into a pocket of dry concrete and thumb the release. Beldum materializes mid-air, eye already peeled and scanning for threats. There’s a whine in my eardrum—only a hint of it escapes, but I know Beldum is using every sense it’s got. For a second, it’s just me and Beldum and the hush, the only light the cold-blue corona off its shell.

  “So what’s next?” I ask, my voice too loud for the tunnel. “The Houndour was here, and it had friends?”

  Beldum’s field twitches, the feedback almost a tickle—Struggle. I can’t tell if they mean literal, or the broader, existential kind. “Yeah,” I say, “feels about right.”

  The main channel widens, then splits—a Y in the concrete, one branch running deeper under the city, the other back toward the open pipes under the pill factory. I let Beldum lead, its body humming as it floats a pace ahead, magnets angling to catch every bit of metal in the rebar or the whisper of a current down the line.

  At the fork, it stops cold.

  There’s a sound: faint, a rasp like claws on old tin, then a splash. I kill the burner light, let my eyes go dark. Down the left tunnel, something sighs—a long, animal exhale, too heavy for a Patrat, too light for a person. I shift to the wall, pressing my palm flat to the cool, damp brick. There’s a presence here, something not quite visible, but definite.

  Beldum slides forward, inch by inch. I follow, boots leaving prints in the moss.

  The tunnel bends hard, and on the far side, I see the glow: first orange, then a weird, unclassifiable blue. As my eyes adjust, the shapes resolve. Two figures—one man, one Pokemon. One of the figures is an old man, thin and layered in so much second-hand insulation he looks padded, face mapped over in a beard so white it could have been painted on with chalk. The other is a Lampent, floating a couple feet off the ground, its glassy headlamp burning with a cold, blue fire. The man sits on a folding camp chair beside an oil drum, hands outstretched to the flames, the Lampent orbiting around him as if tethered there by some invisible leash.

  I approach. The Lampent clocks me first. It swivels, and the blue of its fire sharpens, then softens. The man doesn’t look up—just says, “You with the city?” His voice is sandpaper dragged over a rusted pipe.

  I shake my head, stop a few paces out of arm’s reach. “Just passing through.”

  He grins, the beard parting to reveal a smile so neat and earnest it nearly derails the homeless effect. “Come warm your hands, then. No law against fire below the river.” The Lampent drifts closer, the temperature dropping the way it always does when a ghost wants your attention. Beldum floats at my side, magnets bristling, but the Lampent only gives it a passing glance, like it’s seen stranger things down here.

  I step up to the drum, put my hands out. The heat is patchy, uneven, but real. The man’s eyes dance between me and Beldum, then settle on my jacket, the dust still fresh on the sleeves.

  “You work for the Rangers?” he asks again, softer, like maybe the right answer could fix something.

  I shake my head. “Private sector. Looking for a Houndour.”

  He nods, as if this explains everything. “Not a lot of those left in the city,” he says. “Used to see packs, whole litters running the alleys at night. Now it’s just the strays, and the ones that bite back.” He pulls a dented thermos from under the chair, unscrews the cap, pours two fingers of something that smells like battery acid and liquorice into the lid. Offers it to me.

  I don’t take it, just nod toward the Lampent. “Yours?”

  He laughs—really laughs, a sound that bounces around the tunnel like a pinball. “Nobody really owns a Lampent. She just keeps me warm.” He leans back, sips from the thermos, then wipes his mouth with the sleeve. “Name’s Zed. You want to trade names, or you want to stay a ghost?”

  I make a show of weighing it, then say, “Kuro. Just Kuro.” It sounds wrong coming out of my mouth, but Zed just nods, as if he expected I’d have three or four more names tucked away for emergencies.

  He gestures at the tunnel’s mouth with the thermos cap. “You’re not the only one hunting today. There’s an underground down here. Not the city, but the kind that doesn’t care who gets caught in the middle.” He looks at my Beldum, then at the lamp. “They’ll be starting soon”

  I pull my hands away from the drum, the heat instantly receding. "Starting what?," I reply, pulling my jacket tighter around me.