The containment room is dark, save for the sickly purple glow emanating from the reinforced glass. Inside the unit, Zapdos hangs suspended in a lattice of electromagnetic force, its jagged yellow plumage barely visible through the shimmer of the dampening field. Cables snake from its body to a central converter, siphoning energy in steady, rhythmic pulses.
Valeria's damaged gauntlet flickers as she tries to scan the unit. Static crawls across the screen. She adjusts the angle. The readings come back fragmented — energy output, containment frequency, structural integrity — but nothing she can use. Not yet.
"Can we get it out?" May's voice is quiet. She's standing close to the glass, Joltik on her shoulder. The tiny Pokémon's body sparks bright, then dim. Bright, then dim. A mirror of the containment field's pulse.
May can feel it through Joltik. The distress. The compressed energy being forced into a shape it doesn't want to hold. It's not a thought she can articulate. It's a frequency, a vibration that makes her teeth ache and her Spider-Sense hum at a low, constant frequency she's never felt before.
Valeria doesn't look up from the gauntlet. "The electromagnetic locks are layered. Manual override is on the far side of the unit. I can bypass it, but I need time."
"How much time?"
"Ten minutes. Maybe fifteen."
Batgirl is at the sealed door, her hand pressed flat against the surface. Through the reinforced steel, she can hear the guards working on the lock. The scrape of metal on metal. The hiss of a cutting tool. They're not trying to be quiet anymore. They know the intruders are trapped.
Batgirl pulls back. Her cowl's tactical overlay maps the room in pale blue lines. One exit. Reinforced door. No vents large enough to crawl through. The walls are concrete, three feet thick. The ceiling is the same.
"We don't have fifteen minutes," Batgirl says.
The words are still in the air when the rumble hits.
It starts low, a vibration that May feels in her bones before she hears it. Then the sound catches up — a deep, grinding roar that shakes the floor and sends dust cascading from the ceiling. The purple glow of the containment unit stutters. The lights flicker.
Then the power dies.
Total darkness.
Batgirl's cowl lights snap on, cutting twin beams through the black. Valeria's gauntlet sparks, its screen flaring white before settling into a dim, emergency-mode glow. Joltik's body provides the only other light — faint yellow sparks that pulse like a heartbeat in the dark.
"What was that?" May asks.
Her Spider-Sense flares. Not the low hum from Zapdos. Something new. Something close. She turns toward the sealed door, her hand instinctively moving to Joltik.
"There's someone out there," she says. "Multiple someones. Moving fast."
Batgirl presses her ear to the door. The scraping has stopped. In its place: a high-frequency hum, barely audible, a sound that grates on May's teeth. It's not mechanical. It's not human. It's something else entirely.
Joltik's ears flatten against its head. The tiny Pokémon chirps once — sharp, urgent.
JOLTIK: "JOLT! JOL TIKK!"
Valeria's gauntlet sparks back to life with a fragmented reading. She angles it at the door. The screen crawls with interference, but a waveform cuts through the noise — a powerful, localized jamming signal targeting the containment unit's electromagnetic field.
"Someone's broadcasting a jamming frequency," Valeria says. Her voice is tight. "It's targeting Zapdos's containment directly. If the field destabilizes while the power's out—"
The hum intensifies. The containment unit's purple glow flickers again, stuttering like a dying lightbulb. Through the glass, Zapdos's eyes snap open. White. Blazing. Fixed on something beyond the walls.
Batgirl steps back from the door. Her tactical overlay is red with warnings. "The bunker's under attack. Both inside and out. I'm reading impacts from above — heavy ones. Explosions."
"The others," May says. "They're hitting the bunker."
"That's the distraction team," Batgirl confirms. "But something's wrong. The jamming signal isn't coming from outside. It's coming from inside the bunker. Someone's coordinating this."
The ceiling groans. A sound like the mountain itself is being torn apart. Dust rains down in thick sheets. A crack appears in the concrete above them, spreading in a jagged line from one wall to the other.
Then the voice comes.
It's calm. Emotionless. Synthesized through a hidden speaker with the precision of a machine reading a technical manual.
"Containment integrity at forty-seven percent and declining. Emergency extraction protocol initiated."
Zola.
May's jaw tightens. She knows that voice from Batgirl's briefing. The mind in metal. The man who built the cage.
"The Richards children are to be secured for transport." Zola's tone doesn't change. No threat. No malice. Just a statement of fact, like he's reading a grocery list. "Their intellectual profiles warrant direct acquisition."
"He's not just after Zapdos," Batgirl says. "He wants you two as well."
Valeria's hands are steady on the gauntlet, but May can see the tension in her shoulders. "He's going to crush us. The containment room is the kill box. If he activates a magnetic field at this frequency—"
The hum shifts. Deepens. The air pressure changes. May's ears pop. Joltik sparks violently, its tiny body convulsing as the electromagnetic field in the room intensifies. The purple glow of the containment unit surges, then begins to dim as the jamming signal overwhelms its frequency.
Through the glass, Zapdos thrashes. Its wings beat against the field. Electricity arcs from its body to the walls. The cables attached to it strain, then begin to snap one by one.
"It's breaking free," May says.
"It's being extracted," Valeria corrects. "Look."
The containment unit is moving. Rising. The ceiling above it splits open — not from damage, but by design. A shaft of blue light pours down from above as the unit ascends through a pre-built channel, carrying Zapdos up and out of the room.
The hunt isn't over. It's just moving.
Batgirl's eyes track the unit's ascent. "We need to follow it. Now."
"The door's sealed," Valeria says.
"Forget the door." Batgirl turns to the ceiling. To the crack. To the dust still raining down from the forces tearing the bunker apart above them. "May. Joltik. How much voltage can that little guy put out?"
May looks at Joltik. The tiny Pokémon is still sparking, but its eyes are bright. Focused. It chirps once, defiant.
JOLTIK: "TIK JOLT! JOL JOL!"
"Enough," May says. "What do you need?"
Valeria's eyes widen as she reads the gauntlet. "The structural conduit. There's a main power line running through the ceiling. If Joltik can overload it—"
"It'll blow a hole," Batgirl finishes. "Big enough for us to follow."
May doesn't hesitate. She lifts Joltik from her shoulder and sets the Pokémon on the ground. "You heard them. Hit that conduit with everything you've got."
Joltik looks up at the ceiling. At the crack. At the conduit running through the concrete like a vein. Its body sparks bright — brighter than May has ever seen.
JOLTIK: "JOLTIK!"
Thunder Shock lances upward. The conduit explodes in a shower of sparks and molten metal. The ceiling groans, then tears open completely. A hole wide enough for a person yawns above them, revealing the ascending containment unit — a cylinder of electromagnetic force carrying Zapdos up through the guts of the bunker.
Batgirl fires her grappling line. "Go. Both of you. Now."
May grabs Valeria's arm and pulls. They swing up through the hole, into the chaos above. The bunker is coming apart. Walls crumble. Pipes burst. And somewhere in the destruction, Zapdos is rising, still caged, still trapped, still fighting.
The true hunt begins.
***
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