The first thing I notice is how the walls sweat. Down here, the air is so heavy with solvent and old Trubbish it’s like the building’s trying to ferment me alive. I thumb Luna’s Poké Ball and she pops out next to my ankle, blinking twice in the low light before pressing into my shin hard enough to leave a bruise. I reach down and ruffle her ears, but she’s already scanning the dark, nose wrinkled, ready for anything but probably wishing it was last week and we were still in the mountains.

  I leave Muse in his ball. No way he’d make it five steps without choking on the fumes; he’s built for better ecosystems than this. I scrape my boot along the filthy concrete and find the nearest wheelie bin—the city-issue blue kind, stickered with a long-dead recycling logo and patched with duct tape where the old one split. I get a grip on the handle (sticky, never a good sign) and drag it behind me, wheels shrieking in protest. The echo is immediate: every Trubbish within a hundred yards must hear it, and the whole place comes alive with the slap of plastic and the wet shuffle of rubbery limbs.

  The job is simple: catch, crate, repeat. I don’t like easy work, but this is the closest thing to a plan I’ve had all week. I edge into the main corridor, letting my eyes adjust to the patchwork of shadow and yellow-tinted bulbs overhead. Beldum floats at my shoulder, running a silent sweep of the room, never blinking, never showing a hint of fear or even disgust. I envy it.

  The Trubbish horde is worse than I’d hoped. They’re not even pretending to be wild animals—just a mass of garbage, limbs poking out at impossible angles. In a corner, two Trubbish are locked in a death spiral over a single banana peel, which is so black it might predate the factory itself. For a second, I think about where all this garbage comes from, remembering the city above and its endless exhale of waste. Then I’m jolted back by the sound of a Trubbish slamming into the wheel of my bin, teeth gnashing as it tries to chomp my ankle through the cuff of my pants.

  I kick it off, gently as I can—no need to anger the whole swarm—and look at Beldum. “Priority is live capture,” I say, half to myself but loud enough to cut through the din. “Can you do it?”

  Beldum answers by inverting itself, magnets twitching, and sends out a pulse so sharp it makes the fillings in my teeth tingle. The nearest Trubbish shudders, eyes glazing for a beat, then floats up off the floor and dangles mid-air, limbs cycling uselessly. Beldum swings it around so it’s perfectly vertical, then drops it with surgical precision into the mouth of the bin. The Trubbish blinks, realizes it’s been had, and lets out a wail that echoes up the chute, but it’s too late—Beldum’s already targeting the next one. It’s unsettling how efficient the process is: Trubbish after Trubbish, yanked up screaming and slotted into the bin like the world’s saddest claw game.

  I let Beldum handle bulk capture and turn to Luna. “Show me your move,” I say, pointing at a cluster of Trubbish that have stacked themselves into a crude barricade of milk crates and broken desk chairs. Luna stares, sizing up the odds, then snorts in a way that tells me exactly what she thinks of my leadership skills. She pads forward, scans the floor, and pounces on a handful of bottle caps—old, bent, sharp-edged. She picks them up one by one, arranges them in her paw, then flicks her wrist with a practiced snap.

  The first cap goes wide, but the second and third find their marks, slicing through the top layer of the barricade and pinging off the foreheads of two Trubbish like they’re born for it. The bottle caps don’t just fly; they cut through the air on a ripple of darkness that isn’t normal at all. I see it shimmer—this oily afterglow that clings to the caps as they embed in the Trubbish bags, leaving little spiderwebs of black energy that pulse once before dissolving.

  One Trubbish sags, the banana peel tumbling from its grip. Another spins in a slow, woozy circle, then sits down hard, eyes rolling. Luna cocks her head, collects the missed cap, and lines up the next shot. Even Beldum stops for half a beat to marvel at the efficiency. I give the move a name because it feels right: “Fling.” If Luna could smirk, I think she would.

  It’s not all smooth, though. The Trubbish are learning—faster than I’d like. The next wave comes from above, two of them dropping from a busted light fixture, aiming for Luna’s back. She hears them at the last second—dives clear, but the first one lands on her tail, grabbing hold with a desperate, wet suction. Luna yowls, spinning around, and tries to shake it loose, but Trubbish is nothing if not persistent. The second one latches onto her leg, biting down with rubbery conviction.

  I lunge in, kicking at the pile, but they’re all teeth and plastic now, hissing and burping up clouds of chemical stink. I grab Luna by the scruff, yank her free, and swat the Trubbish off with the bin’s lid. Beldum immediately hoists the pair with a flick of psychic force and dunks them into their cage, but not before they let off a cloud of something that burns my eyes and fuses the hair on my arm into crisp, black curls.

  Luna shakes herself, scowls, but doesn’t back down. She’s got a streak of trash juice running down her back, and her nose is wrinkled in permanent snarl. I wipe the worst of it with the sleeve of my jumper, and she shakes her fur so hard that droplets of Trubbish sweat streak my cheek. “One more round,” I say. “Only the smart ones left.” Luna narrows her eyes, then stalks ahead, every muscle coiled tight, as if she’s daring the trash to try something new.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

  It takes maybe five minutes to fill the bin. Beldum’s psychic field is humming so hard it makes the lights shudder every time it lifts a Trubbish; after a dozen more, it starts to get creative—stacking the limp ones in a perfect spiral, slotting the heavier ones to fill gaps, even pulling the handles on their heads to make sure none can clamber out. When I ask if it’s showing off, Beldum just zaps me with a light flicker: “Optimum density.” I try not to smile. Beldum is a weirdo, but it’s my weirdo.

  The next move is the worst: getting the loaded bin up the stairs, which are now so slick with Trubbish slime that it’s basically a frictionless death ramp. I grab the handle, wedge my boots against the risers, and heave. Of course, the bin is now double its rated weight, and the first step nearly topples me backwards. Luna circles, looking up at me like she’s already picturing the obituary.

  I grunt, brace, and try again—Beldum slips behind, setting its magnets to “assist” and nudging the bin with steady, invisible force. Suddenly it’s weirdly light, and I almost pitch forward at the top, bin and all. We crest the landing, and the air up here is so much cleaner that my eyes start to water in reverse. At the staging area, the two workers from before—Beanie and Broken Nose—are waiting, both with clipboards and the thousand-yard stare of men who’ve seen too much garbage.

  Beanie checks the haul with a quick sweep, then whistles. “That’s a load, alright.” Broken Nose doesn’t say anything—just jots a number, grabs the bin, and hauls it off to the sorting table. I hear the awful squelch as they dump the Trubbish into a bigger container, see the arms and legs flop in perfect, miserable unison.

  The supervisor appears, all business, and does a rapid count, fingers never pausing between scores. “Thirty-seven, two dead, one missing an arm. Good haul.” She peels off a wad of bills from a clip, counts it (twice), and hands it over without a word. I pocket the cash. “You want another bin?” she asks, and I nod, because it’s the only answer that makes sense.

  The next two rounds are the same, but faster. I learn the tricks: how to bait them out with the promise of sugar packets, how to keep Luna on crowd control so she doesn’t get mobbed, how to avoid the worst of the slime, how to seal the bin with half a strip of duct tape so nothing escapes. On the third run, Luna and I are both so covered in Trubbish gunk that, if I tripped and fell into the bin, I’d probably get counted as part of a haul by mistake.

  The haul is better each time; Beldum’s picked up some new trick, a way of compressing the trash into these tight, Tetris-perfect columns, which the supervisors start commenting on in low voices. At the end of the third trip, I’m about to head for the stairs when my radio crackles to life.

  The voice is high and choked with panic: “Help—down here. There’s something in the storage tunnels. It’s not Trubbish—it’s—" The rest is static, then the unmistakable sound of something human sized crashing to the floor.

  A second later, the supervisor’s voice cuts in, sharp and furious: “Who the hell told you to go off map? Channel Five, respond!” There’s nothing but a faint, wet gurgle on the other end.

  Luna freezes, one paw lifted mid-step, ears flat to her skull. Her eyes are locked on the stairwell, and for once she’s not hunting for food or showing off. She knows real trouble when she hears it. I thumb the radio, but before I can say anything, the supervisor comes back: “Whoever’s on five, get your ass to sublevel three. And don’t get brave—just mark the spot and get out.”

  I look at Luna, then at Beldum. "You heard the boss," I say, but the words taste like ash in my mouth. My hand finds Luna's scruff—not to comfort her, but to ground myself—and we hustle down the stairs together, Luna silent at my heel.

  The deeper I go, the worse the air gets. The lights overhead are flickering now, half of them dead, the other half leaking this weird, blue-shifted haze that makes the shadows look alive. The Trubbish are sparser here—not because there’s less food, but because something else is hunting. Even Beldum slows, eye on full alert.

  Near the bottom, I catch it—a dragging scrape, something heavy grinding across the floor. Luna’s glued to my leg, claws digging in, but I keep going. There’s a hallway to the side I swear wasn’t on the map, door wedged half-open and bent out of shape. I slip through, and the sound cranks up—wet and sucking now, crawling right under my skin. Then behind us comes a groan of metal—the door we just used distorts, hinges shrieking as something shoves from the other side. The frame pinches shut and that’s it: our one exit is gone, locked tight and so is any chance of bailing out.

  Down the hall, the emergency lights strobe red and white, throwing everything into stop-motion. There’s a trainer slumped against the wall—one of the city hires, maybe eighteen, hair matted to his forehead and face so pale he looks colourized. His hands are shaking, clutching a Poké Ball like it’s a crucifix.

  I kneel next to him, scanning for injuries. “You good?” I say, and he grins—a wild, terrified thing. He’s shaking so hard the ball rattles in his grip. I crouch lower, keep my hands visible. “Talk to me. What’s down here?”

  He just shakes his head, eyes darting to the hallway behind me, then back up. “Wasn’t supposed to go this deep,” he whispers. “Boss said to stage at sublevel one, clear the tunnels, but—” His voice cracks, and he tries to swallow, but his mouth’s so dry he can’t. “It heard us. Followed. I lost the others.” He looks down, and that’s when I see the stain creeping up his pantleg, a black-green blotch eating through the fabric in irregular, wet-edged holes. At first I think it’s Trubbish slime, but the smell’s wrong: sharper, like burnt plastic and something that wants to be alive.

  “What did this?” I ask, even though I already know.

  He whimpers and tries to stand, but the leg won’t obey. “Get out,” he says, “or it’ll do the same to you.”

  Beldum pulses a warning—something big is coming. Luna's hackles are up so high she looks twice her size, tail vibrating like a livewire. I grab the kid under one arm, ignoring the way his pant leg sticks to my hand, and drag him upright. His knee buckles, but I haul him anyway—he's lighter than I thought, all bird bones and terror.

  We tear down the corridor, the kid hopping on his good leg, wheezing with every step. Behind us, something scrapes, then thuds. The air fills with a dense, chemical humidity, and the lights overhead go from flicker to full seizure. I don't wait to see what's behind, just haul ass for what I hope is an exit, counting on Luna and Beldum to cover our six.

  The corridor dead-ends into a maintenance room—pipes, valves, and no other way out. Shit. We double back, the scraping sound growing louder, closer. There's another passage branching off to the left that I missed in our mad dash. We take it hard, the kid's breath coming in ragged gasps.

  We burst into the main hallway, and that's when I see it.

  The Garbodor blocks the passage ahead, wall to wall, a living landfill with stubby arms and a torso crammed with every possible kind of city waste. Its whole body pulses, the surface heaving like a nightmare in slow motion. At the edges, Trubbish cling to it like barnacles, some half-absorbed already. The smell is immediate and total—ten times worse than anything before, like an old dump caught fire and decided to keep burning forever.