Two Months Later

Chapter Sixty

Two Months Later

Two months after Dracovish came home, Marcus discovered that reinforcing equipment against weather did not automatically make it resistant to stupidity.

Gray learned this at eight in the morning when he arrived at the southern pond and found Marcus standing ankle-deep in mud with one of the circulation housings open, a wrench in one hand and an expression suggesting he had recently lost an argument with something incapable of understanding language.

Dracovish was in the water several meters away, looking entirely too pleased with itself.

Gray stopped beside the bank and took in Marcus’s expression, the open circulation housing, and the cluster of enrichment rings stranded against the western reeds. “What happened?”

Marcus looked toward the pond. “Ask your Pokémon.”

Gray followed his gaze.

Dracovish immediately shoved its head underwater.

“That is not encouraging.”

“It figured out that if it hits the outlet cover at the right angle, the current throws the floating rings halfway across the pond.” Marcus pointed toward the western end, where three reinforced rings had collected against the reeds. “Then it decided the cover itself was part of the enrichment.”

Gray looked back at the exposed housing. “Did it break?”

“No.”

“Then the reinforcement worked.”

Marcus turned toward him slowly and lifted the wrench in one hand. “I reinforced it for weather.”

Gray considered that for a second. “You should have reinforced it for stupidity.”

A splash came from the pond.

Both of them looked over in time to see Dracovish surface beside one of the remaining rings and begin nudging it toward the outlet again.

Marcus pointed. “See?”

Gray cupped his hands around his mouth. “Leave that alone.”

Dracovish paused and looked directly at him for several seconds.

Then it shoved the ring into the current.

Marcus closed his eyes.

Gray sighed. “Progress remains uneven.”

That was not entirely fair.

Two months had changed Dracovish dramatically. The awkward, uncertain gait of its first days had mostly disappeared. It still moved better in water than on land, and nobody expected that to change, but it could now cross the ranch at a respectable pace without looking as though gravity had personally offended it. The early joint scans remained clean, muscle development had progressed normally, and the aquatic habitat expansion Marcus had overseen was nearly complete.

What had started as a temporary pond modification had become considerably less temporary. The western shelf had been widened and reinforced, the central channel deepened, and the circulation system expanded so flow could be adjusted through three separate zones instead of one. A heated section along the southern edge now let Dracovish choose warmer water on colder mornings, while the original access slope had been replaced entirely after Gray decided the grade was wrong.

It had then been replaced again after Marcus pointed out that Gray’s preferred redesign would redirect runoff toward the lower fence.

The drainage argument had lasted three days.

Marcus had won.

Gray still thought the first design had been better.

Dracovish cared about none of it. As far as Gray could tell, the Pokémon cared that the pond was larger, that food sometimes appeared near the eastern bank, that Bastiodon frequently rested within sight, and that an astonishing number of objects existed which had not yet been tested with its mouth.

“Dracovish.”

The Pokémon surfaced again.

Gray pointed toward the bank. “Out.”

Marcus looked at him. “Think it’ll listen?”

“Yes.”

Dracovish stared at Gray.

Gray waited.

The Pokémon looked toward the enrichment ring, then back at him, and very deliberately swam in the opposite direction.

Marcus folded his arms. “Impressive authority.”

“It knows what I said.”

“That is not the same as listening.”

“I am aware.”

Gray gave it another ten seconds before reaching into his coat pocket.

Dracovish saw the movement immediately.

Its direction changed just as fast.

Marcus laughed. “You have bribed it into obedience.”

“Food motivation is a training tool.”

“You have dried fish in your pocket.”

“In a sealed pouch.”

“That does not improve the sentence.”

Dracovish reached the shallows and climbed out with considerably more coordination than it would have managed two months earlier. Gray waited until all four feet were on stable ground before offering the reward.

“Good.”

Dracovish took the food with surprising delicacy.

That, at least, had improved.

The mouth remained the problem.

Gray had learned by now that Dracovish used it for nearly every category of investigation. Food went into the mouth. Unfamiliar objects went into the mouth. Familiar objects sometimes went into the mouth because apparently they required re-evaluation after enough time had passed. People were usually safe now, though Roark still checked his pockets whenever he visited.

Mudkip remained a sensitive topic.

Gray had successfully kept the story from spreading beyond the ranch staff, Roark, Bell, Priya, and, somehow, what sounded like half the Galar institute. He blamed Lyra. Lyra blamed what she called objective historical record. Neither had changed position.

By nine, Marcus had finished the pond repair and Gray moved Dracovish to the training field.

That had become part of the routine over the previous month. Gray had waited before introducing formal training because basic recall, stop commands, and handling tolerance mattered more than teaching combat techniques to a Pokémon that could not reliably stop moving when told. Once Dracovish had demonstrated that it could respond under moderate distraction, Gray began treating it the same way he treated any new member of a serious field team.

Not gently.

Carefully.

There was a difference.

Bastiodon waited near the edge of the field while Dracovish stood opposite Gray beside a reinforced target frame. Lyra had come outside with her tablet, and Roark was due sometime before lunch with a piece of testing equipment he had been talking about for the better part of a week.

Gray pointed toward the marker on the ground. “Stay.”

Dracovish looked at him, then at the target, then back at him.

“Stay.”

The Pokémon shifted its weight but held position. Gray walked backward ten paces without breaking eye contact, and Dracovish remained where it was. Six weeks earlier, that would have been nearly impossible.

He raised one hand. “Come.”

Dracovish launched forward.

Too fast.

Gray stepped aside just before the Pokémon could run straight into him, and Dracovish skidded past in a mess of dirt and momentum before turning back around.

Lyra looked up from the tablet. “Technically responsive.”

Gray brushed mud from one trouser leg. “We are working on deceleration.”

“You have been working on deceleration for three weeks.”

“It is improving.”

Dracovish came back and shoved its head into Gray’s side hard enough to make him brace himself.

Gray put one hand against its face. “This is not the same as stopping.”

The Pokémon looked pleased with itself anyway.

Bastiodon rumbled from the edge of the field, and Dracovish immediately turned toward him. Gray used the distraction before it could become one.

“Dracovish.”

Its head came back.

“Stay.”

He walked away again. This time the command held even when Chatot crossed overhead, and that mattered more than Gray let show.

Chatot had become one of Dracovish’s greatest distractions, largely because he had discovered several ways to manipulate it for his own entertainment.

“FOOD!” Chatot shouted from the roof of the equipment shed.

Dracovish’s entire body tensed.

Gray looked up. “Do not.”

“FOOD!”

Dracovish started looking around, clearly expecting the announcement to correspond with reality.

“Chatot.”

“FOOD! FOOD! FOOD!”

Dracovish took one step.

Gray’s voice sharpened. “Stay.”

It stopped.

That was the improvement he had been waiting for.

Chatot landed on the shed roof and leaned over the edge. “SUCKER.”

Gray pointed at him. “I will put you in a Ball.”

“PUT YOU IN A BALL!”

Lyra lowered the tablet. “You taught him that.”

“I taught him most of the things I regret.”

Chatot puffed his feathers. “REGRET!”

Gray decided the conversation had reached the point where continuing could only make things worse.

Dracovish was still holding position.

He crossed the field, gave the release command, and rewarded it.

Lyra checked the time. “Eight seconds with a food distraction.”

“Artificial food distraction.”

“Does that make it less annoying?”

“No.”

“That’s what I thought.”

The next phase was bite control.

Gray had introduced it cautiously because Dracovish’s jaw strength had already exceeded his expectations during the preliminary handling tests. The reinforced training block in front of them was rated for large fully evolved Pokémon and had survived repeated use by Aggron, which Gray considered a sufficiently reassuring benchmark.

Roark arrived just as they were fitting the pressure sensors.

He crossed the field carrying a hard equipment case and immediately stopped when Dracovish noticed him. The Pokémon’s attention locked onto his coat.

Roark put one hand protectively over the zipped pocket. “No.”

Gray glanced at him. “You learned.”

“I liked that glove.”

“You said it meant it liked you.”

“It can like me without stealing my clothes.”

Dracovish approached anyway, and Roark took one careful step back.

Gray nodded. “Growth.”

Roark frowned. “Mine or its?”

“Yours.”

“That’s rude.”

“It is also accurate.”

Roark set the equipment case down before Dracovish could decide it belonged in its mouth. He had brought a portable bite-force monitor adapted from Cranidos and Rampardos testing equipment, though Gray suspected Roark had modified enough of the internals that the word adapted was doing significant work.

“You calibrated this?” Gray asked.

“Twice.”

“To what range?”

Roark gave him the number.

Gray looked at the device, then at Dracovish. “Raise it.”

If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

Roark paused. “By how much?”

“Twenty percent.”

“You think it’ll exceed that?”

“I think I would prefer not to find out by breaking your equipment.”

Roark smiled. “Now I want to see it break.”

“That is why you are not running the test.”

They positioned the sensor block inside the reinforced target, and Gray gave Dracovish several minutes to inspect it before asking for anything. It sniffed the housing, tapped it once with the front of its mouth, and then looked toward Gray.

“Bite.”

Dracovish bit down.

The target assembly cracked.

Not the sensor.

The assembly itself.

A sound like breaking timber cut across the field as one of the reinforced supports failed near the base and the entire frame twisted sideways.

Everyone went still.

Dracovish released immediately and looked toward Gray.

Gray looked at the frame.

Roark looked at the frame.

Lyra checked the tablet.

Marcus, who had just arrived from the pond, stopped several meters away and stared at the damage.

“Was that supposed to happen?”

“No,” Gray said.

Roark crouched beside the broken support. “This is rated above Rampardos testing loads.”

“I know.”

“You told me to raise the range.”

“I know.”

Roark looked toward Dracovish, and the delight growing across his face was obvious enough that Gray disliked it on principle.

“Do not encourage it.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You are encouraging it with your face.”

“That’s not a thing.”

“It is with you.”

Dracovish walked toward the broken target and tried to pick up one of the pieces.

Gray intercepted it before the fragment disappeared between its jaws. “No.”

Roark laughed.

Gray crouched beside the damaged frame and pulled up the sensor output. The reading had peaked before the structural failure, which meant the number on the screen was not even a complete measurement.

He stared at it.

Lyra moved closer. “Bad?”

“No.”

Roark leaned over Gray’s shoulder.

Then he stopped smiling.

“Oh.”

Gray looked back toward Dracovish. The Pokémon was now trying to lick the unbroken side of the target as though nothing unusual had happened.

He stood. “We’re done with bite testing until Marcus rebuilds this.”

Marcus looked at him. “Why is that my problem?”

“Because you build things.”

“I maintain habitats.”

“You are better at building things than I am.”

Marcus considered the broken frame. “That is not a high bar.”

Dracovish bumped Gray’s arm.

Gray looked down at it. “You are absurdly strong.”

Dracovish opened its mouth.

Gray moved the tablet out of reach.

The rest of the morning became less destructive.

Gray worked through stop commands, direction changes, recall under distraction, and controlled transitions between water and land for the rest of the morning. Dracovish still had a tendency to commit too hard once it decided on a direction, but the difference from two months earlier was obvious. It could break attention from food now, could stop a run when Gray sharpened his tone, and could sometimes ignore Chatot for several consecutive seconds, which Gray considered an achievement bordering on miraculous.

More importantly, it had started to understand that not every command meant the same thing.

Gray found out exactly how well that lesson had taken when Aerodactyl decided to involve himself.

Aerodactyl had spent most of the morning perched on one of the higher structures near the ranch, maintaining the transparent fiction that he had no interest whatsoever in what was happening below. Gray knew better. Over the last several weeks, Aerodactyl had developed the habit of swooping low across the southern pond whenever Dracovish was swimming, apparently because Dracovish would launch itself out of the water after him and Aerodactyl found this endlessly entertaining.

Gray had forbidden the game repeatedly.

Neither Pokémon had shown much concern for his position.

Aerodactyl came across the training field fast and low enough that the rush of air reached them before the shadow did. Dracovish saw him and immediately compressed its rear legs in preparation to jump.

Gray reacted before it could launch. “STOP.”

Dracovish froze.

Aerodactyl swept overhead close enough to stir the hem of Gray’s coat and continued across the field without slowing. Dracovish remained exactly where it was, muscles still tense, eyes following him as he climbed back into the air.

Gray stared for a moment.

Lyra did too.

Aerodactyl circled once in the distance, looking considerably less impressed by the result.

Gray crossed the field and rested one hand against the side of Dracovish’s head. “Good.”

Dracovish leaned into him.

That mattered more than the number from the bite-force test. Strength was useful, and Dracovish had more of it than Gray had expected, but strength without control was only another hazard to manage. A Pokémon that could stop itself in the middle of an excited reaction because Gray told it to was a Pokémon he could eventually trust in the field.

Roark seemed to understand that too, because for once he did not make a joke.

By early afternoon, Gray called the session. Dracovish returned to the pond, dove into the deeper section, and surfaced beside Bastiodon a few seconds later. Bastiodon had spent most of the morning nearby without interfering, which was exactly why Gray liked having him there. Dracovish no longer shadowed him constantly, but whenever something genuinely unfamiliar happened, it still checked where Bastiodon was before deciding how worried it needed to be.

The rest of Gray’s team had settled into their own relationships with the newcomer as well. Cradily tolerated Dracovish resting near her on warm afternoons and had successfully taught it that tendrils were not food. Absol maintained a courteous distance but occasionally allowed Dracovish to follow him along the perimeter, provided the following remained quiet. Aerodactyl had become a terrible influence, Chatot had somehow become worse, and Aggron remained thrilled to have another large Pokémon around that he could shove against without immediately knocking it over.

Blissey was the irritating exception to every training principle Gray had spent weeks establishing.

Dracovish obeyed her almost immediately.

Gray had spent hours reinforcing commands, calibrating rewards, gradually increasing distraction, and working around the particular problems created by a Pokémon with an extremely powerful mouth and questionable impulse control. Blissey could simply look at Dracovish and produce compliance.

“You have no training credentials,” Gray had told her one afternoon after Dracovish abandoned a stolen feed scoop the moment she approached.

Blissey smiled at him.

Gray disliked that too.

Lunch happened outside near the pond. Roark stayed, Marcus returned to whatever repair had claimed him next, and Lyra reviewed the morning’s numbers while Gray ate and watched Dracovish attempt to balance one of the floating enrichment rings over its head.

It failed several times.

Gray chose not to record that.

He had become somewhat better at allowing things to happen without immediately converting them into data.

Somewhat.

The call came while Dracovish was attempting the maneuver again.

Gray’s phone vibrated against the table. He glanced at the screen and saw League routing attached to an unfamiliar contact before answering.

“Linden.”

A woman spoke almost immediately. “Professor Gray Linden?”

“Yes.”

“This is Candice. Snowpoint Gym.”

Gray sat a little straighter, and across the table Lyra noticed the movement.

He knew who Candice was, obviously. Anyone working professionally in Sinnoh did. Snowpoint’s Gym Leader had held the position long enough to develop a reputation for taking northern travel safety considerably more seriously than her public energy sometimes suggested, particularly where winter routes and mountain rescue were concerned.

Gray had never met her.

They had never spoken.

“We’ve never talked before,” he said.

“Nope.”

There was no awkwardness in the answer, only confirmation.

Gray waited.

“I got your number through League administration,” Candice continued. “They said if this had gotten to the point I thought it had, I should call you.”

“What point is that?”

“The point where nobody here can tell me what we’re dealing with.”

Gray set his food down.

Roark looked over at that.

Candice’s tone lost some of its lightness. “We’ve had attacks south of the city. Forest routes, lower travel trails, a few places that are usually quiet this time of year. Hikers first, then trainers. Rangers thought they had a likely answer after the first couple of incidents, but the evidence stopped cooperating.”

“How many?”

“Seven confirmed. Maybe nine if two older reports are connected.”

“Deaths?”

“No.”

“Serious injuries?”

“Three people hospitalized. Six Pokémon treated, two still under observation.”

Gray’s attention sharpened. “Same circumstances?”

“Similar enough that I’m not comfortable calling them separate.”

“How similar?”

“It comes out quickly, hits hard, and drives people off. Camps have been wrecked. Trainers who try to stand their ground usually get the worst of it. Once people leave the area, though, it stops following.”

Gray glanced toward Lyra and raised one finger when she started to ask something.

“Same location?” he asked.

“Broadly. Roughly twelve kilometers if you draw a boundary around everything, but most of it clusters around three connected trail systems.”

“Time of day?”

“Mostly late afternoon through night. A couple in the morning.”

“Weather?”

“Nothing consistent.”

“Tracks?”

“Some.”

“Useful?”

“Not as useful as I’d like.”

“Biological samples?”

“One hair sample. Lab hasn’t given us anything conclusive.”

Dracovish managed to get the ring halfway over its head.

Gray ignored it.

Candice continued. “I can send you the Ranger packet.”

“Do that.”

His tablet chimed less than a minute later.

Gray opened the file while Candice remained on the line. The first photograph showed a campsite in enough disarray that it took him a moment to reconstruct what had originally been where. A tent had been dragged several meters from its anchoring points, one support pole was bent nearly double, and a storage box had been crushed into the ground.

He enlarged the image. “Was anyone in the tent?”

“No.”

“Anything taken?”

“Not that they could tell.”

Gray moved to the next photograph. Snow, churned badly enough that several overlapping impressions had lost most of their detail. One print near the edge of the frame was clearer than the others, but not by much.

He enlarged it anyway.

“Surface frozen?”

“Partially.”

“Recent snowfall afterward?”

“Light.”

That explained some of the distortion.

The next image showed a damaged stretch of trail. Soil and frozen vegetation had been torn apart across several meters, with exposed roots and displaced stones scattered through the area.

Gray frowned. “What happened here?”

“One of the trainers said the ground moved during the attack.”

“Moved how?”

“She couldn’t describe it clearly.”

“Recognizable move?”

“Not according to her.”

Gray studied the damage longer than he had studied the tracks. There was too much disruption to determine much from a photograph, especially after Rangers and trainers had crossed the site afterward.

He moved on.

Another partial impression. A damaged tree. Torn fabric caught against bark. A shattered piece of camping equipment photographed beside a measuring scale.

None of it gave him a species.

That was increasingly interesting.

Candice let him work in silence for almost a minute before asking, “Anything familiar?”

“No.”

Roark glanced toward him.

Gray shook his head once.

Candice said, “Nothing?”

“I didn’t say nothing. I said I don’t recognize it.”

“What’s the difference?”

“The difference is that elimination is easier than identification. I can tell you things the evidence doesn’t fit. That doesn’t mean I can tell you what left it.”

“That’s still more than I had.”

“Give me another ten minutes.”

He continued through the packet.

The images became more useful individually but less coherent together. Different surfaces preserved different details, and even the cleaner measurements refused to settle into a single comfortable picture. Gray checked scale placement twice before opening the accompanying Ranger notes.

“How reliable are these measurements?”

“The Rangers took them.”

“That wasn’t what I asked.”

Candice paused, then laughed once. “Okay. I understand why League administration sounded relieved when I said I’d call you. The measurements are good. The surfaces are not.”

“Better.”

He opened the witness summaries.

Most contradicted one another.

That was normal.

Frightened people were bad at estimating size, worse at color under poor light, and almost useless at describing movement once adrenaline became involved. One person described the Pokémon as low to the ground. Another insisted it had risen above them. Several agreed it was large but disagreed by nearly a meter on how large. Descriptions of its coloration shifted depending on weather, distance, and whether the encounter happened before or after sunset.

Gray read all of them once.

Then he went back through the reports attached to the clearest attack sites and read those again.

Roark had stopped eating.

Lyra moved closer to see the tablet.

Dracovish finally succeeded in dropping the enrichment ring completely over its head and wandered into the shallows wearing it like an oversized collar.

Nobody noticed.

Candice said, “You’re quiet.”

“The descriptions are bad.”

“I know.”

“They aren’t useless.”

“That sounds better.”

“It isn’t. It means I have several partial pictures instead of one reliable one.”

Gray opened the medical summaries from the trainer encounters. The injuries were substantial but inconsistent: blunt impacts, falls, one suspected move-related injury that the attending staff had not been able to classify confidently. There were no recorded feeding attempts, no evidence that anyone had been dragged away, and no pursuit continuing far beyond the immediate encounter sites.

He went back to the campsite photographs.

“How much food was taken?”

Candice paused. “None.”

Gray looked up from the tablet.

Lyra caught the expression.

“None?” Gray repeated.

“We started checking after the third incident. Packs get ripped open. Supplies get scattered. Nothing significant seems to be eaten.”

“Missing equipment?”

“Some, but most of it turns up nearby.”

“Any evidence it’s targeting people specifically?”

“Not that we can prove.”

“Unusual wild Pokémon losses in the same area?”

“Rangers checked. Nothing obvious.”

Gray leaned back slightly.

That did not tell him what the Pokémon was.

It did tell him something about what it was doing.

He reopened the incident map and studied the locations again. The attack sites did not form a clean boundary, and Gray distrusted clean boundaries in wildlife reports anyway, but there was enough clustering to suggest that movement through certain parts of the forest mattered more than who was moving through them.

“Have the Rangers mapped where pursuit stops?”

“Yes.”

“Not just where the encounters happened. Where the Pokémon stopped following.”

Another pause. “Yes. We started tracking that after incident four.”

“Send me that version.”

“It’s in the second attachment.”

Gray opened it and overlaid the marked pursuit endpoints against the existing trail map. The result was imperfect, but imperfect data could still tell a story if enough of it leaned in the same direction.

Candice waited a few seconds before asking, “What are you thinking?”

Gray studied the map a little longer.

“That you probably don’t have a predator.”

Roark looked toward him.

Candice went quiet.

Gray continued, keeping his attention on the pattern rather than the individual incident markers. “At least, not one hunting people. It’s had multiple opportunities to pursue injured targets and hasn’t taken them. It wrecks camps without eating what’s there, escalates when Pokémon resist, and stops once people get out of the area.”

Candice took a second before answering. “So what are you saying?”

Gray enlarged the map on his tablet and traced the cluster of reports with one finger. The boundaries were messy, but not meaningless. “I’m saying I’m not convinced ‘attacks’ is the most useful way to think about what’s happening.”

Her tone sharpened immediately. “Tell that to the trainer with the broken arm.”

Gray glanced toward the medical summary again. “I’m not minimizing that.”

“Good.”

“What I’m saying is that motive matters. If this Pokémon is trying to kill people, that’s one problem. If it’s trying to force them out of somewhere, that’s a different one, and you don’t solve those the same way.”

There was a short silence on the line.

“You think it’s territorial,” Candice said.

Gray rubbed a thumb along the edge of the tablet. “Maybe.”

“That is an annoyingly cautious answer.”

“I haven’t seen the site.”

“Can you?”

Gray looked toward the pond.

Dracovish had discovered that running along the bank with the enrichment ring around its neck caused the foam to bounce against its chest, and apparently that was enough to occupy its entire mind. Bastiodon watched from nearby with the exhausted patience of someone who had accepted that this was simply what life looked like now.

Roark followed Gray’s gaze toward the pond. Lyra did not bother looking up. She already seemed to know what answer he was going to give.

Gray returned to the map. “When do you need me there?”

“As soon as possible.”

“How recent was the last incident?”

“Last night.”

That removed most of the remaining argument.

Gray stood, taking the tablet with him. “Then send me the full Ranger reports, not just the summaries. I want the original image files if you have them, medical reports wherever the trainers have consented to share them, the lab work on the hair sample, weather records for every confirmed incident, and any trail-camera footage from the broader area. I don’t care whether somebody has already decided the footage is useless.”

Candice was quiet for a moment. “You’re coming.”

“Yes.”

“Good.”

Gray started gathering the empty plates from his side of the table. “That does not mean I know what this is.”

“I know.”

“I may get there and find out half the evidence is too degraded to tell us anything useful.”

“You can tell me that in person.”

That got the smallest hint of a smile out of him. “Fine.”

Candice spent the next few minutes giving him the Snowpoint contact information, the Ranger staging point, and the name of the League liaison handling travel clearance. By the time the call ended, two additional files had already arrived on his tablet.

Gray remained standing beside the table, reading the new message headers while Roark watched him.

“Unknown Pokémon?” Roark asked.

“Apparently.”

“Near Snowpoint.”

“Yes.”

“And dangerous?”

Gray finally looked up. “Capable of putting people in the hospital, so I’m comfortable with dangerous.”

Roark studied his face for another second. “You look happy.”

Gray frowned. “People are injured.”

“I know.”

“That is generally considered a bad thing.”

“I meant the part where nobody knows what the Pokémon is.”

Gray looked back down at the photographs.

Roark was not entirely wrong.

That irritated him.

Lyra had already picked up her tablet and started opening travel information. “How soon are we leaving?”

“Tomorrow, assuming clearance comes through.”

She glanced up. “You’re going yourself.”

“Yes.”

“And me?”

Gray looked at her. “Do you want to stay here?”

“No.”

“Then yes.”

Roark’s attention shifted toward the pond.

Gray caught it immediately. “No.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You were about to ask whether Dracovish is going.”

“I was thinking it.”

“You have a very obvious thinking face.”

Roark ignored that. “Well?”

Gray looked toward Dracovish.

Two months earlier, there would not have been a question. Dracovish had barely understood its own balance, much less the demands of actual fieldwork. Now the answer was less obvious. The emergency stop that morning had been clean, recall remained reliable under moderate distraction, and every medical assessment showed healthy development.

Snowpoint complicated things. The cold was one issue; Gray had no intention of taking a recently restored Pokémon into an environment its body had never experienced without veterinary guidance. The terrain was another. More importantly, whatever was driving people out of those forests had already injured experienced trainers and their Pokémon badly enough that Gray was not interested in treating the trip as an extended training exercise.

While he considered that, Dracovish ran directly into the shallows.

The floating ring caught against the water and jerked backward around its neck, nearly stopping the Pokémon in place. Dracovish stumbled, recovered, backed out of the water, and stared at the ring as though it had violated a personal agreement.

Gray closed his eyes.

Roark laughed. “That answered that.”

“No, it did not.”

Dracovish freed itself and, after a brief moment of consideration, tried exactly the same thing again.

Gray watched it for several seconds. “Probably.”

Lyra smiled but wisely kept her opinion to herself.

Gray returned to the Ranger packet.

The final photograph was easily the worst image in the collection. It had been taken in poor light through falling snow, and whatever the camera had caught was mostly hidden by trees and motion blur. There was a Pokémon-shaped mass at the edge of the frame, but anything more specific than that would require Gray to start inventing details the image did not actually contain.

He enlarged it anyway.

The pixels got larger.

The information did not.

Roark came around the table and looked over Gray’s shoulder. “Anything?”

“No.”

“You stared at it for a while.”

“That does not improve the photograph.”

Gray zoomed back out and checked the metadata instead. Time, approximate location, camera model, weather conditions. Those were considerably more useful than trying to decide whether a pale smear between two trees belonged to the Pokémon or to snow caught by the flash.

He added the image location to the incident map.

Roark leaned in a little closer. “Anything now?”

Gray studied the distribution for several seconds. “Maybe.”

“What?”

“I don’t know yet.”

He closed the photograph and began working through the second packet. Somewhere nearby, Dracovish hit the pond again with a tremendous splash. Chatot shouted something obscene from the equipment shed, Marcus yelled back, and Aggron answered from farther down the ranch with a low rumble that carried across the property.

Gray barely registered any of it.

Something in the forests outside Snowpoint had injured trainers, driven hikers from their campsites, and left behind enough contradictory evidence that Rangers, Gym staff, and the League had reached the point of calling a Professor whose work frequently began where the modern record stopped being useful.

Gray looked over the incident map one more time.

Tomorrow, he intended to find out why.