Cold World

I came in quietly, trying not to wake Sabrina. But while I was trying to bandage myself in the bathroom she came in. I had little doubt that it was something in my emotions that had disturbed her but she never admits that to me.

"Koga... Please tell me you didn't get shot again?"

I shook my head. "No gun. First security guard I ever saw throw a knife. Got me on the way out, but he didn't even chase me when I didn't stop."

"You took a knife in the arm? That's what the Boss has doctors for, you know."

"It barely grazed me." I didn't look at her.

"You mean you didn't want anyone at Headquarters to find out I wasn't there."

"Sabrina, you couldn't have gone with that headache. I got the Eevees, they went in Pokeballs to headquarters. It's over."

"Well, stop trying to do this yourself!" She pushed my hand out of the way and grabbed the bandages.

Her hands were shaking so much she did almost as bad a job as I had.

"The headaches aren't going away at all, are they?" I asked.

"Don't worry about me," she muttered. "I'm going to try to go back to sleep, if my head will let up a little."

I went in and rubbed her neck for a while. If I had asked, she would have told me not to bother. But she can barely sleep these days, and the Rocket doctors won't give her many painkillers. Eventually she relaxed and lay down with her eyes closed. Hoping she wasn't faking again, I went into the living room.

Normally at this hour I would have practiced martial arts, but I didn't want to do that until my arm got better. In the old days I would probably have called upon Ninja discipline and done it anyway. But I had already failed my Ninja discipline by joining Team Rocket.

Somehow that had seemed attractive, even compelling. Confiscating Pokemon from weakling trainers. Being the dark undercurrent of the gym world. Then I found out at least half the other gym leaders were in too. And then people had started to die.

I could have tried to get out. But I had already met Sabrina.

The Boss had assigned us together for a mission to steal Pokemon right out of a center. Sabrina had marched in and caused unconsciousness in two Nurse Joys while I had loaded the Pokeballs in the transporter. We had then destroyed the transporter and left.

It had been a clean, quick job and I should have taken a certain pride in it, but I was already getting bitter. I found myself expressing that to my partner. I thought at first I shouldn't have said anything, but she just nodded and began talking herself.

"I was a gym leader, like you... It wasn't always very rewarding, and my powers well outstripped what I needed to battle trainers. They kept telling me that Team Rocket was the best way to use my psychic abilities. But at best I'm shuffling Pokemon from one shady owner to another, and at worst... I'm hurting people. I've never killed anyone, I couldn't do it with my mind and I don't think I could at all. But what's next?"

I remember that moment very well. I put my arms around her and she cried on my shoulder. How did she know she could trust me? Was it psychic abilities or just luck? There was a closeness between us after that, and we asked to be assigned permanently as partners.

I found myself seriously in love for the first time in my life. I moved into Sabrina's gym. My sister had already taken over most of my gym work. She thought the whole thing was related to a love affair, not crime. Eventually she started to suspect I was in Team Rocket, but never knew for certain.

That was about when things started to get even worse. Sabrina discovered that using psychic powers for true violence caused serious emotional and physical consequences.

It only got worse when she saw a colleague kill an Officer Jenny in cold blood. Even the Boss would have disapproved, but it gave Sabrina weeks of incapacitating headaches on top of her emotional reaction.

Then a friend died at our feet in when a guard interrupted a raid on another Pokemon center . Sabrina managed to psychically throw the woman's gun out of her hand and we escaped. But Sabrina never forgot what she had seen. Some days she could barely function.

I had tried to persuade the Boss to let Sabrina out. He seemed ready to do it, but Sabrina didn't want to leave without me. I had encouraged her to leave me before, but these days I wasn't sure she could take care of herself.

The Boss hadn't given up on me yet. He knew I would never be the killing machine he had originally envisioned. If that had been my only choice I'd have left no matter the consequences. But I was an efficient thief. Often he would say that some assignment "might be the last job" if done well, but the last job had never come.

Finally I went to main gym and called out Venomoth. I put him through his attacks, which he executed as well as usual. I wondered if should finally send him and some of the others to Aya. I had much more use for weapons than Pokemon.

Finally I went into bed, lying down gently next to Sabrina. I couldn't remember the last time we had made love; that took a positive energy neither of us possessed now. But she hated to sleep alone, especially when she had nightmares. I carefully put my injured arm around her and finally fell asleep myself.

The Boss called us very early the next morning. "I have an important assignment for you. Come in immediately, both of you. Don't leave her at home again."

I hung up cursing him and went to wake Sabrina. She refused to admit that she was suffering, but she could barely fasten her clothes. Finally I made her take a painkiller. She calmed down, still pale but a bit more like her old self.

When we got to Headquarters the Boss saw us right away. He looked cynically at us as we stood in front of his desk.

"Not doing very well, are you, Sabrina?" He laughed.

I pulled out a chair and Sabrina sat down in it. This was an act of arrogance in the Boss's own office, but he stared at me for a moment and decided not to pursue it.

"The Pokemon League has been doing some experimental breeding. I want the pokemon and as many of the records as possible. And I want the lab destroyed. It's your job."

"It will take more than the two of us to do that," I stated calmly.

"It's a small place. And I have such confidence in you, Koga," he said sarcastically. "You and your lovely partner."

It was true; I couldn't leave Sabrina behind for this and still succeed.

"Sabrina's out after this job, you understand?"

She looked up then. "Stop talking about me like I'm not here!"

I felt ashamed. I had become so used to taking care of her I had forgotten the spirit and drive she had. "I'm sorry," I murmured.

"We'll do the job," said Sabrina. And she walked out. I followed her.

"Forgive me..." I began.

She shrugged. "We have other things to worry about. We're going to need to do this right away, before your arm even heals completely."

I nodded. "Maybe I should take the gun."

Sabrina winced. She knew the Boss had realized I would never become an assassin, and I had never killed in a fight either. We were just as guilty as if we had, since the organization had done it. All the same, we didn't want to be brought to that point. But neither did I want to die on a Team Rocket job.

The laboratory gave us explosives, claiming they were simple to set up. The rest was up to us.

We spied on the place for a couple of days and discovered that the only people there at night were a security guard and a Nurse Joy. We decided that the next night we would act.

Sabrina stood outside the front door. For this to work most efficiently, she had to use her psychic abilities to knock the guard out while we were still on the outside of the door. This cost her a lot of effort, and she knelt clutching her head while it was done.

Then she stood up and said, "Come on, we've got to get the door open before Nurse Joy sees the guard."

"Do you think you can take care of her?"

Sabrina nodded. "I'll hit her in the head if I have to."

I wasn't sure how serious she was being... but meanwhile I had a lock to pick, which fortunately didn't take long.

The guard was slumped in his chair in front of several video monitors. Most showed Pokemon or lab equipment, with one showing a Nurse Joy who was evidently taking a coffee break. I made a mental note to destroy this equipment, in case there were tapes being made. Meanwhile I watched as Sabrina moved down a hallway and the Nurse Joy fell unconscious.

I went to join Sabrina and we began putting Pokemon in pokeballs and transporting them to Headquarters. They were evidently used to different personnel handling them; none objected to going into the pokeballs. None of them looked unusual to me, but maybe the Boss would find something useful. I took all the computer disks I could find and transported them in empty Pokeballs too. Finally I began laying the explosive charges and setting the timer.

"There's enough here to collapse this building," I said. "We'll have to do something about the personnel..."

"We have to get them out, Koga!" snapped Sabrina. I felt strange inside, that she had thought I was considering otherwise.

"Can you wake the guards and Joy up halfway or something?" I asked her. "So they can walk out but won't struggle or remember us?"

Sabrina shook her head. "I can't do anything like that, but we have plenty of time to get them out, when did you set the timer fo-" she broke off suddenly and began to stare at the timer, her eyes glowing.

"There's something wrong with the timer, Koga. We only have a few minutes."

"What?" I asked. Then I realized this wasn't the time for questions, and pulled Sabrina by the hand and began running.

She stopped me. "You get the guard out and I'll get Nurse Joy out."

"We could die trying," I said.

"I don't care," she replied. "I'm not far gone enough to leave them to die."

For a split second I considered hitting Sabrina over the head and dragging her out. Then I realized that she was right; there was no way we could leave these people. I nodded and ran toward the front desk.

I put the security guard over my shoulders and carried him out the door, running down a long path and sinking down with him on the sidewalk. I got up to run back in the building to see if Sabrina needed help with Nurse Joy. I knew all three of us might die if the explosives went off now but like Sabrina I wasn't sure I cared.

Suddenly, Sabrina appeared a few feet from of the building with Nurse Joy on her back. They both fell, Sabrina muttering, "Teleported..."

"We're far enough away now," I said, kneeling down to help her stand up. We heard a huge explosion then, and watched as the building collapsed on itself.

"We've got to get out of here before the whole neighborhood shows up," I said. It hit me that were really going to be caught this time; there was no way we would be fast enough. Then Sabrina put her arms around me. Suddenly we were somewhere else and Sabrina had collapsed on the ground again.

"I can't believe I did that..." she murmured. "God, it hurt..." She began to sit up.

"Do you know where we are?" I asked.

She nodded. "I had to aim for somewhere... this should be near the bus station."

"Convenient," I said. "But I'm not going back to headquarters again. I think the Boss wanted us to die in that explosion."

I went to the telephone and called him. He could trace the call, I knew, but we probably couldn't hide from him long anyway.

"How did the job go?" he asked me. He didn't sound too surprised to hear from me, but he was a good actor.

"There was a little problem and we almost got blown up. Do you know anything about that?"

He laughed. "If I wanted to kill you you'd be dead already... the lab must have made a mistake."

I would never know the truth, I realized.

"If I die, my sister will kill you with her bare hands. And if she dies, someone else will come to avenge her. It's a large family," I said. I wasn't really sure I wanted to see my family become that bloodthirsty, but he didn't have to know that.

The Boss laughed again, and said nothing.

"We're never coming back to work for you again, do you understand?" I asked him.

"Fine," said the Boss. "I've gotten all I can out of you two anyway."

And he hung up.

We took a bus to a small town and stayed in a motel for a few weeks. Sabrina spent most of her time resting and battling headaches, and I considered different possibilities for our future.

While there we got the news that Team Rocket had suffered some serious defeats and many agents had been captured. Whether the Boss had ever wanted us dead or not, he had other worries now, and we could consider ourselves safe. From the law we were already safe, the police had never managed to get a name or description for the two of us.

Sabrina and I live now in a small town in a remote set of islands and run an off-league gym. Her headaches are few now, though her powers are still weak. She still has nightmares, but at least she still allows me to comfort her.

We became lovers again, and even managed a private wedding. There are many things I am certain we can never have... children, innocence, happiness untouched by our regrets. But we have love and a certain contentment, and we continue.