Chapter 6 – Instinct
Ryan was still looking at the door.
Rowan was talking about the list, about timing, about tomorrow morning being the deadline and Ryan was hearing it, nodding in the right places, but something at the back of his neck had gone quiet and alert in a way he recognised.
That feeling again.
The same one from the path to Sandgem last night. The same one from the clearing after the Ursaring. Faint and directionless, like something nearby was paying very close attention to him without announcing itself.
He'd let it go both times before. He tried to let it go now.
He couldn't quite manage it.
"Ryan."
He looked at Rowan.
"The list," Rowan said, patient but pointed. "Have you had a chance to consider it?"
"I'm still thinking," Ryan said. He looked back down at the paper. Shinx. Geodude. Zubat. Starly. Buizel.
The feeling didn't go away.
He thought about the clearing after the Ursaring standing in the dark with his heart still hammering, Mara's voice behind him, and that sense of something watching from the treeline that he'd written off as nerves. He thought about the walk to Sandgem this morning, the brief flicker of it between one step and the next.
Three times now. Same feeling. Same quality to it.
He 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 in that threshold like the decision was still being made in real time.
Ryan went completely still.
He knew what he was looking at.Deino, the pieces connecting. 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 him.
He didn't say that out loud. He just sat with it for a second, turning it over, and looked at the small trembling Pokemon 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 a growl exactly, something younger and rawer. The researcher went rigid.
"Still," Rowan said quietly. "Everyone."
Nobody moved.
Deino's head turned slowly back. Swept the room. Stopped.
Pointed at Ryan.
The noise faded. The trembling didn't stop but it changed something in the quality of it shifting, like a held breath that hadn't quite become an exhale. Deino stood in the doorway with his face turned toward Ryan and didn't move in either direction.
Ryan looked at him.
He thought about the clearing again. That feeling of being watched from the treeline. He'd assumed it was just nerves, just the forest, just his 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 at all was standing in the doorway trembling and pointing his face at Ryan like he'd walked across a forest specifically to find him.
Maybe he had.
Ryan exhaled slowly. Deino's ear twitched at the sound.
Behind him Mara had appeared silently in the doorway from the main lab. Ryan hadn't heard her move. She stood very still, watching, saying nothing.
Ryan pushed his chair back carefully, slowly, no sudden sounds and lowered himself 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 Ryan.
Ryan stayed where he was. He didn't reach out. Didn't speak. He just looked at this small terrified Pokemon 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 Ryan not words, just the sound of someone recalculating something they thought they understood. He looked between Deino and Ryan once, slow and careful.
He didn't say what he was thinking.
Ryan looked back at Deino.
Still trembling. Still not sure.
Ryan wasn't sure either. He didn't know what this meant or how it worked or what came next. He just knew that the feeling that had been following him since the forest that faint directionless sense of something nearby was gone now.
And Deino was here.