Cyrus stood in the center of the main control room, the scarlet glow of the screens falling across his black coat. Neither his subordinates' defeat outside nor the destruction of his weapons had made him so much as frown.
May's fingers had already closed around the Poké Ball at her waist. Cyrus turned to look at them. "There's something I want to ask you. Why did you come?"
Lin Hao looked around. Dense black conduits crisscrossed toward the central console, above which a deep blue Palkia scale floated. Beneath it, fragments of the Red Chain gave off an eerie red glow.
"I'm just an ordinary guy who wants to get off work early, but instead I have to clean up your mess." Lin Hao sighed.
"This is no mess. It's an operating table for cutting out the rot at the heart of the world." Cyrus ran his fingers along the edge of the console. "Human desire and the League's hypocrisy have rotted this world to its core."
May tightened her grip on her Poké Ball. "And experimenting on Legendary Pokémon is your idea of surgery?"
"The weak have no right to choose. Sacrifices are inevitable." Cyrus pressed the red button on the edge of the console.
A piercing alarm suddenly blared, and the images on the wall screens shook violently. The rift at Spear Pillar had become a swirling vortex of deep blue and dark purple. An enormous blue claw tore through the spatial barrier, thrusting halfway out.
May stared at the soaring readings on the terminal and said in a trembling voice, "The spatial fluctuations are overloading. This is far more than simple resonance from a scale. Palkia itself has arrived!"
"To be precise, I invited both of them." As soon as Cyrus finished speaking, the Red Chain fragments