Interlude XXVIII - Null Reference

Artem is abruptly awakened by a call from his colleague Lian at the Cinnabar unown lab, informing him that the unown are displaying novel activity. He rushes to the facility in the early morning winter cold, fueled by his long-standing desire to stand at the edge of the truly unknown—a drive cemented during his terrifying but empowering experience in Lavender Tower. Upon reaching the central chamber, Artem is astonished to see the usually chaotic unown cloud moving in highly ordered, almost-predictable strings and clusters. The shift in behavior has resulted in spontaneous pokegenesis, reviving several ancient fossils, including an aerodactyl, omanyte, and kabuto, which caused minor damage before being captured.

As Artem reviews the telemetry data in his office, Red calls to confirm if Artem is at the lab. Before Artem can fully process the implications, Red appears at his office door in full tactical Hunter gear, having teleported directly inside with his abra. Red urgently requests a meeting with Director Tai. In the director's office, Red demands to know the emergency release protocol for the unown, revealing that a catastrophic incident has just occurred at an unown lab in Rustboro, Hoenn, resulting in multiple casualties. Convinced the events are connected and the start of a massive threat, Red urges Tai to release the Cinnabar cloud into the open air immediately. Tai, constrained by bureaucracy and the immense sunk cost of the research, refuses to release the invaluable specimens without a direct order from the League or clear evidence of imminent danger. Frustrated but forced to compromise, Red decides his only option is to isolate a subset of the unown and merge his mind with them to investigate the anomaly directly, waiting for Elite Agatha's imminent arrival to assist him.

While Red prepares, Artem privately messages his contacts at other regional unown labs and receives chilling confirmation: similar anomalous activity is happening simultaneously across Kanto. Just as Elite Agatha arrives to oversee Red's dangerous mental dive, the situation escalates violently. The entire unown cloud suddenly freezes in midair before resuming motion—but this time, they begin indiscriminately attacking the researchers and the facility. Artem releases his magneton and uses Thunderbolt to defend himself as the chamber devolves into chaos.

Amidst the destruction, the unown spawn something completely incomprehensible—a bizarre, glitch-like entity that resembles a smashed-together collection of objects clipping through each other. Looking at it directly spikes Artem's brain with a painful sense of wrongness. Drawing on his Lavender Tower experience, he forces himself into a state of detached calm, equips a pair of Silph Goggles to filter the visual corruption, and manages to capture the skeletal, kabutops-like entity in an ultra ball. Despite fighting back with his claydol, the sheer number of unown overwhelms the defenders. Artem and the surviving staff manage to manually retract the facility's roof, hoping the unown will disperse into the sky, but the cloud remains inside, continuing its rampage.

The slaughter is halted only by the arrival of Elite Agatha. Surveying the chaos, she releases her gengar, haunter, gastly, and mismagius. With a single, quiet command to "Feast," her ghosts tear through the chamber like sharpedo, systematically massacring the unown cloud and saving the surviving researchers.

In the aftermath, Artem registers his captured glitch-pokemon in his pokedex to gather data. The perspective shifts to Bill, who is interrupted in his lab when his AI, Eva, detects a massive network alert. A catastrophic null pointer corruption is rapidly spreading through the Kanto Pokedex Network, originating specifically from the bizarre referent Artem just scanned. Recognizing the apocalyptic speed of the digital worm, Bill immediately initiates "Code Usurper," isolating all Indigo networks and severing his lab's power. By pulling the physical levers, he essentially executes Eva to contain the contagion. Standing in the dark emergency lighting, Bill mourns the loss of his AI and begins the grueling process of physically restoring his lab from analog backups, his grief quickly solidifying into a furious desire for vengeance against whoever orchestrated the attack.