The blocks past their own sector looked worse the further they walked, not better. A bus lay on its side across an intersection, windows blown out, nobody inside that Kamala could see. Storefronts stood open and dark, alarms long since burned through their batteries. Doreen kept close, Emolga riding low on her shoulder instead of darting ahead the way she usually did.
Neither of them said much. Not much was left to say that hadn't already been said back on that curb.
A patrol found them two streets later, three drones moving in loose formation low over a parking structure, sweeping the way the others had, methodical, uninterested in anything specific. Kamala's arm was already stretching before she'd finished registering them.
Eevee hit the ground running, Shadow Ball catching the lead drone mid-turn, and Emolga peeled off Doreen's shoulder with a spark already building. It wasn't clean. Kamala's reach came in a half-second slower than it should have, and the second drone clipped her across the ribs before Eevee tore into its undercarriage from below. Doreen's Thunder Wave went wide, Emolga overcorrecting on a landing that would've been easy three hours ago, and the third drone got close enough that Kamala had to grab it bare-handed and crush it before it finished lining up a shot.
It went down. All three of them, eventually. Kamala's side ached where the clip had landed, a deep bruise already forming under her suit, and Emolga sat stunned on the pavement for a few seconds before shaking herself out and climbing back up Doreen's arm.
Doreen was already moving again. "You good?"
"Yeah." Kamala pressed a hand to her ribs, breath catching once before evening out. "Let's just keep going."
They kept going. Neither of them mentioned the fight again.
The fence came into view before the building did, chain-link buckled inward at one stretch, patched with wire that wasn't going to hold much longer than it already had. Beyond it, the lot inside was full of movement, not chaos, movement with purpose, people carrying things, Pokémon working in pairs. One of them, a Zygarde Forme, crossed the yard at a stiff, uneven gait, favoring its left side, the kind of limp that comes from getting hurt once already tonight and getting back up anyway.
This wasn't the picture the rumor had painted. Home hadn't come through clean. It had come through, and that wasn't the same thing.
They stopped a short distance from the gate. Kamala had walked through it a dozen times, for Poké Ball restocks and tournament brackets and one very loud party, and never once wondered whether anybody would be on the other side. She wondered now. The lot was busy, but busy wasn't the same as run, and nobody stood where Orion usually stood.
A Forme peeled off from near the entrance and crossed toward them, unhurried. Its eyes went to Eevee first and stayed there, head tilting a fraction, the way a dog tilts its head at a voice it knows.
Then it stepped aside.
Somebody was still running Home, then. That turned out to be enough.
Inside, the scale of it actually landed. Kamala knew Home as a shop: a counter, a wall of Poké Balls behind glass, a lobby big enough to hold a tournament crowd yelling over a battle. What she got now was closer to a small town mid-evacuation, kids asleep against duffel bags, someone handing out water bottles from a folding table, three different Pokémon species moving through the crowd like this was a routine they'd built instead of a crisis that had only started tonight.
Orion crossed the lot toward them before Kamala had finished taking it in, cane tapping an even rhythm against the pavement, Pikachu riding his shoulder and Latias a half step behind him in her human form. Kamala had never once seen his tailcoat anything but pressed. It hung open now, one sleeve scorched black to the elbow, and mud caked his trousers to the knee.
He stopped short a few feet away. "Kamala. Doreen." His shoulders came down an inch, like he'd been holding them up for hours and only now noticed. "You're both in one piece."
"Mostly." Kamala's hand went to her ribs before she could stop it.
Doreen lifted a hand in a wave that didn't quite land, exhaustion flattening the usual bounce out of it. "Hey, Orion. Hey, Latias. Nice fence."
Latias inclined her head, gold eyes steady. "It was nicer yesterday."
Orion's eyes went from Eevee to Emolga and back to Kamala's face, and stayed there a second longer than a greeting needed. Whatever he was thinking, he kept it to himself.
"We didn't exactly have anywhere else to go." Doreen's voice had lost its usual lift entirely now that they'd actually stopped moving. "Comms are dead. Have been for a while. We tried everything before we started walking."
Kamala didn't dress it up past what it was. There wasn't time to, and Orion had always been the kind of man who'd rather have the flat version than a softened one. "People were being grabbed. Not killed. Taken. We stopped two of them, missed a few more than that."
He took that in without flinching, though something behind his eyes went a shade heavier. "That matches what people are telling us when they get here."
Kamala caught on the words. "So it's not just Jersey City."
"No." That was all he gave it, and it was enough.
Nobody said anything for a moment. Around them the lot kept moving, someone calling a name near the far fence, a Pokémon crying out in answer, the whole place running on momentum instead of any plan that had time to be a plan yet.
Kamala let her shoulders drop, slightly, the first time all night she'd let them. Eevee pressed against her leg, and for one full breath, she let herself settle, close to safe if not all the way there. Her side still ached, her hands hadn't fully stopped their tremor, and somewhere out past that fence there were people still being taken who weren't going to walk in here the way she and Doreen had. But it counted.
Doreen had gone quiet beside her, watching Emolga groom a scorch mark off her own wing with a kind of stillness that didn't look like Doreen at all, tired in a way that had nothing left over for jokes.
Near the entrance, a Forme's posture snapped upright, urgent enough to catch on its own. Latias went rigid a beat before Orion even turned to look.
"East line again."
Orion's whole posture changed before he'd taken a single step, whatever had briefly settled in his face already gone. "Get some water. Find a spot that isn't near the fence." He was already moving, cane no longer tapping so much as driving him forward. "We'll talk more when I can."
He didn't wait for an answer.
Latias lingered half a second longer, eyes on both of them, unreadable behind the gold. Her voice, when it came, sat quiet enough to land less like information and more like a warning. "More people are still coming in. Tonight isn't finished with any of us yet."
Then she was gone too, and Kamala stood there in the middle of a lot full of strangers who weren't strangers to each other, Eevee at her side, Doreen breathing slow next to her, and the fence somewhere behind them still holding, for now, on nothing but whatever was left in it.
***
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