We step through, smoke swirling behind us, alarms still shrieking as the whole block collapses into chaos. For a moment I lean against the doorframe, out of breath, sweat freezing on my skin. Beldum hovers at eye level, just a foot away, watching me with its one unblinking eye. It’s waiting for something—recognition, or maybe just a plan.

  I reach out and put my hand on its hull again. This time, it’s neither cold nor hot. Just right. I squeeze, and it lets me.

  “Thanks,” I whisper.

  And Beldum, perfectly silent, floating just behind, follows me as fresh alarms begin to pound the air. Every corridor is blue-lit now—ultraviolet strobes cut through the haze and turn every bloodstain electric. It’s impossible to tell which alarms mean fire, breach, or “something unnatural just ripped the AI hub out of the wall,” but I figure there isn’t much difference at this point.

  At the end of the hall, a chamber looms like a bank vault, its armored iris already half-dialled open, as if it was never meant to keep anything in. Whoever designed this place didn’t account for the magnetic force I’m dragging behind me breaking free: the security field ripples, blue arcs flickering along the threshold. Beldum glides effortlessly through the opening, its hull humming in protest. I slip in after, feeling the field bite at my exposed skin, slamming shoulder-first into a world built for containment—but clearly designed with an easy exit in mind.

  The chamber is three stories high and maybe half a football field across, no windows, just rows and rows of stacked cages welded into the walls. The lowest tier is floor-level, cages set into the deck like graves. Each box is the size of a shipping crate, but instead of cardboard and tape, these are plated in matte titanium, fronted by grates that shimmer under the emergency lighting. Some cages are empty, doors wide open or hanging by twisted hinges. Most are not.

  They’re full of Beldum. More than I can count, each frozen in perfect vertical alignment, heads canted forward, eyes dark and dormant. There’s no motion. No sound. It’s like a dead hardware store, except every piece of inventory is a bomb waiting for the right charge.

  I stagger to a halt at the nearest occupied cell. The two Beldum inside are identical to the one at my side: same cobalt hulls, same red eyes, the same impossible quiet. I reach for the latch, hesitate, and turn to “my” Beldum. It hovers close, eye fixed on the cage. I can’t read its expression—there is no face to read—but there’s a current running from it into me, a question that’s all tension and no words.

  “Do it?” I whisper.

  The Beldum does not reply, just tilts its head a fraction of a degree. A yes, the feeling pulsing through the device in my skull.

  I slide the crate latch with both hands. It's heavier than it looks—my fingers slip on the cold steel, but I grit my teeth and yank until the catch gives, slamming the lever into the unlocked position. The door shudders outward with a metallic groan and swings open, revealing the dark interior.

  Nothing happens for a heartbeat. Then, with the fluid inevitability of a piston, the Beldum inside lifts its head and glides out. The other Beldum falls in behind, silent as a ghost. Neither one even glances at me. They turn to the next cage.

  The logic is obvious. I run ahead, popping latches as fast as I can. My hands bleed from the sharp edges, but after the first five cages, the swarm takes over. Each freed Beldum opens the next, and the next, until the rhythm of it is like a factory line, efficiency ramping up with every step. The air starts to vibrate with their presence; I can feel the hum in my jawbone and in the fillings of my teeth.

  At first it’s just a handful of them moving together. Then it’s a dozen, two dozen, and the hum goes seismic. The titanium bars on the upper tiers start to rattle, the bolts shaking in their mounts. One by one, the cages burst open, sometimes without a hand on the latch. Some Beldum rip through the mesh with their claws, others simply warp the bars apart like putty, twisting metal with the precision of a vice. Every second, more join the wave.

  The blue light in the chamber bends and flickers as the EM field builds. I’m no longer leading anything—just running to keep ahead of the tide. The roar of the swarm is physical now, a pressure that threatens to pop my ears. The Beldum fill the air in perfect formation, wheeling and pivoting in coordinated clusters, never colliding, always flowing as if controlled by a hidden conductor. There’s no noise from the Beldum themselves—no voices, no war cries, just the mechanical sound of their hulls slicing the air and the psychic hum that makes my spine feel like it’s about to short out.

  Then, without warning, the swarm pivots. There’s a change in the magnetic pulse—a sudden surge, like the world skipping a beat. I’m swept off my feet, hoisted up bodily by a force that isn’t gravity or wind, but something denser and more absolute. A shudder goes up my spine as every cell in my body locks into place, then floats. I can’t move, but I’m not scared. My own Beldum hovers just beneath me, its claws angled, the red dot of its eye trained on my face. I recognize the question from before, but this time there’s no need to answer. We are going.

  Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

  The swarm inverts itself, forming a loose spiral with me at the axis. Beldum after Beldum slots into the helix, a living screw threading right through the chamber’s vertical core. The collective power is so intense the lights overhead flicker and die, one after another, leaving only the bioluminescent hell-glow of a thousand red eyes. The air is so thick with metal and ozone I taste it in the back of my throat.

  We rise fast. The cages blur past, the tiers whirring by in a dizzying, perfect sequence. Beldum lift me higher and higher, magnets overlapping in a synchronized ballet. Above, a catwalk runs the circumference, bisecting the chamber with its heavy mesh and reinforced rails. Security doors ring the level, but every one of them is sealed tight; the only way out is up.

  A cluster of guards tries to hold their ground on the catwalk as I’m swept past. They’re geared up like a military force—helmets, body armour, the works, all with the same blue insignia. Poké Balls fly. A few Pokémon squeeze onto the grate, some airborne, some wedged in tight. The guards bark out orders, but with all the sirens screaming, it’s just noise and panic. A Braviary flaps up, claws out, blowing blades of air with one one hard beat. A Salazzle slithers forward and spits acid; it sizzles as it eats into the cages above. A Machamp cracks its knuckles so loud I feel it in my teeth and charges in a blur of muscle, picking up and throwing anything it can reach. Attacks come from every direction—fire jets, arcs of lightning, clouds of poison. It’s chaos, but none of it sticks. The Beldum take all of it head-on; each blow just scatters against a shifting psychic barrier that flickers back to life before the next hit lands, all their willpower pooled into one shield.

  The defending Pokémon last only moments. Braviary’s wings are clipped by a triangulated tackle from three Beldum converging at lethal speed. The Machamp, arms raised, clawing its face in confusion, throws itself from the catwalk, dropping to the floor with the sound of wet cement splattering. Salazzle tries to vanish into a haze of venom, but the haze itself is ionized and swept away by the pulse of electromagnetic force. All three are neutralized in seconds, not even the time it would take to blink. The guards reach frantically for their Pokeballs, attempting to recall their Pokemon—but none of it matters. A dozen Beldum arc up from the floor, spinning so fast their forms blur, and smash through the catwalk’s railing like a battering ram. The guards and their remaining Pokémon tumble down, some caught in the air by the Beldum and thrown sideways, some simply hitting the ground and lying very still.

  We clear the catwalk in a single, blinding surge. Up here, the air is so thick with ozone I could chew it, every inhale burning like dry ice. A dozen Beldum peel off from the helix, battering the security doors in synchronized waves—each hit folding steel, fracturing glass, until nothing stands. The platform at the top is a chaos of toppled desks, spilled monitors, paper curling in the heat, and scattering human shapes clawing for cover.

  My Beldum pulls me free from the spiral, slows me down, and sets me—gently, almost reverently—on the main landing. I crumple to my knees, stomach still spinning from the ascent. My hands hit rough concrete slicked with a fine dust of glass and metal. I look up. The other Beldum are already at work, fanning out in coordinated squadrons. Between the blinding pulses of psychic force, I catch glimpses of security teams firing off net launchers, the projectiles yanked out of the air and returned at lethal speed. Each time a human face appears, it’s either streaked in fear or vacant with shock.

  The first line of defense goes down so fast I almost miss it. The guards are knocked flat, armour plates ringing on the deck, helmets spinning away like kicked cans. Some are just unconscious, others pile up, limbs twitching from the neural whiplash. Their Pokémon are ejected, then immediately neutralized—their Poké Balls fused shut or pulverized in the grip of a Beldum’s claws. Above it all, the alarm klaxons cut out for a split second, replaced by a sound I realize is structural steel screaming under too much load. I’m half-expecting the whole place to come down around us.

  But the swarm isn’t here to destroy everything. They move in targeted bursts, disabling the security response with surgical precision. I watch as clusters of Beldum target the CCTV domes—stripping out every lens, scrambling the inputs, then moving on. The PA system goes dead. A moment later, the emergency lights flicker off for good. Only the punchcard-red of Beldum eyes and the strobes from malfunctioning consoles light the way.

  I spot Colress behind the shattered glass on the upper deck, still upright and somehow immaculate—white lab coat untouched by the mess around him. He isn’t looking at me; his focus is all on the Beldum, expression pinched somewhere between pride and disbelief. He almost gives a salute—classic move—but before I can blink, the Beldum beside me rockets straight at him. It hits so hard it shreds the window, sends glass and steel everywhere, and Colress just disappears in the wreckage. For half a second I think he’s actually been vaporized, but then I catch a glimpse—a hatch swinging open, a motion through the dust—and he’s gone.

  Nowhere left but forward.

  The lead Beldum swivels midair and aims its claw at the exit. The rest fall into line behind it, sharp as an arrowhead. I hurry after them with my own Beldum glued to my side, pushing through wreckage and bodies and the relentless scream of alarms.

  The main doors are serious overkill: six inches thick, rigged for biometric scans, pressure plating—the whole fortress setup. Doesn’t matter. The swarm takes less than a second to turn them inside out. They smash in from three directions at once, bending metal until it buckles, then pour through before the debris stops moving. The Beldum sweep me along behind them like a riptide.

  I stumble after, lungs burning and skin buzzing, dizzy with static. I risk one last look back—just wrecked cages, blue light flickering over destruction, nothing left of what was supposed to keep us caged. Then I force myself forward, legs heavy and brain blank but for one sharp certainty: we are not done yet.

  There’s one barrier left.

  It’s nothing fancy—just old concrete covered in grime and mineral stains from decades of leaks. At the end of the tunnel are two battered blast doors, half-welded shut and scarred from past disasters. Only emergency bulbs pulse overhead, turning every Beldum into a shifting shadow.

  Nobody slows down. The swarm surges ahead to form a steel-tipped spearpoint. My own Beldum takes point beside them, eye fixed dead ahead. The air drops colder with every step; each inhale stings of dust and something else, colder. The first blast door barely slows them—they bunch up three deep and plough through, flattening their hulls together for an instant before bursting forward unharmed. The door pops off like it was never there—metal shards flying as the swarm pushes through.

  The second door hangs on longer—but they’re ready this time: half wedge in while the others pull from behind until something snaps and it kicks outward in a rush of wind that almost knocks me over. Daylight spills through—blindingly bright after all this time underground—filtering past the drifting dust.

  Doesn’t matter how it looks outside.

  Stepping out means stepping straight into blizzard winds and swirling snow—cold enough to slap me fully awake.