Chapter 6 – Instinct
I was still looking at the door.
Rowan was talking about the list, about timing, about tomorrow morning being the deadline and I was hearing it, nodding in the right places, but something at the back of my neck had gone quiet and alert in a way I recognized.
That feeling again.
Same one from the path to Sandgem last night. Same one from the clearing after the Ursaring. Faint and directionless, like something nearby was paying very close attention without announcing itself.
I'd let it go both times. I tried to let it go now.
I couldn't quite manage it.
"Ryan."
I looked at Rowan.
"The list," he said, patient but pointed. "Have you had a chance to consider it?"
"I'm still thinking." I looked back down at the paper. Shinx. Geodude. Zubat. Starly. Buizel.
The feeling didn't go away.
I thought about the clearing after the Ursaring standing in the dark with my heart still hammering, and that sense of something watching from the treeline that I'd written off as nerves. The brief flicker of it on the walk to Sandgem this morning. Three times now. Same feeling. Same quality to it.
I looked up at the door.
It moved.
Slowly nudged open a few centimeters from the outside and then stopped. A pause. Then a few centimeters more. Like whatever was on the other side was having an argument with itself about whether to continue.
The gap widened.
A small dark shape appeared in it and stopped.
Half in, half out. Head raised, nostrils working, trembling visibly even from across the room. It stood in the doorway and didn't come through and didn't leave just held itself at that threshold like the decision was still being made in real time.
I went completely still.
I knew what I was looking at. Deino. The feeling in the clearing. The feeling on the path. The feeling right now, stronger than it had ever been, coming from the direction of the door.
It had been following me.
I didn't say that out loud. I just sat with it for a second, turning it over, and looked at the small trembling Pokémon in the doorway who absolutely should not exist anywhere near Sinnoh.
"What on earth " the researcher behind Deino started.
Rowan raised a hand. The researcher stopped.
Deino's head snapped toward the sound, low and fast. A noise built in his throat not quite a growl, something younger and rawer than that. The researcher went rigid.
"Still," Rowan said quietly. "Everyone."
Nobody moved.
Deino's head turned slowly back. Swept the room. Stopped.
Pointed at me.
The noise faded. The trembling didn't stop but something in the quality of it shifted like a held breath that hadn't quite become an exhale. He stood in the doorway with his face turned toward me and didn't move in either direction.
I looked at him.
I thought about the clearing again. I'd assumed it was nerves, just my brain running too hot after everything that had happened. But it had been there on the path too. And now here, in a lab in Sandgem, a Deino that shouldn't be in Sinnoh was standing in the doorway trembling and pointing his face at me like he'd walked across a forest specifically to find me.
Maybe he had.
I exhaled slowly. Deino's ear twitched at the sound.
Behind him Mara had appeared silently in the doorway from the main lab. I hadn't heard her move. She stood very still, watching, saying nothing.
I pushed my chair back carefully slowly, no sudden sounds and lowered myself down onto one knee on the floor. Same level as Deino. No closer. Just down and still and quiet.
Deino flinched at the scrape of the chair.
Then his head came back to me.
I stayed where I was. Didn't reach out. Didn't speak. Just looked at this small terrified Pokémon who had walked through a town and into a building full of strangers and was still here, still trembling, still not leaving.
Deino took one step forward.
Stopped immediately. Like he'd used everything he had in that one movement and needed a moment to find more.
But he was inside.
Rowan made a quiet sound beside me not words, just the sound of someone recalculating something they thought they understood. He looked between Deino and me once, slow and careful.
He didn't say what he was thinking.
I looked back at Deino.
Still trembling. Still not sure.
I wasn't sure either. I didn't know what this meant or how it worked or what came next. I just knew that the feeling that had been following me since the forest was gone now.
And Deino was here.