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[Warning: This story is based on real events. You have been warned.]

Before I start, you should know one thing about me: I LOVE Pokemon. Ever since I first saw it as a kid, to my mother’s horror, I have been borderline obsessed. The last thing I’d want to do would be to scare people away from something I truly love, and in most instances I don’t think this sort of scenario would cause a problem. But in this case, the evidence is piling up too high to be a coincidence. I think I know what’s causing it now, but I’m not sure how or why…or how to stop it…
Let me start from the beginning. I am currently a sophomore in college. My roommate, the same year as me, has only recently gotten into pokemon. She loves the new games, but never had the chance to play the originals like red and blue. I started from yellow, so of course I insisted that she get her hands on a copy, even if she had to download an emulator, just to have that experience! She kept putting it off; classes and her job monitoring the computer lab took up too much time. However, it was because of her job that she found her ticket in.
She came back from work buzzing one night, a flash drive gripped in her hand. Someone had left it in the computer lab, and it had been sitting in the lost and found for almost a month, meaning it was fair game. She wanted to check out the files on it with me, technically to look for clues about its owner, but mostly to see what the flash drive contained.
We crowded in front of her computer and, after updating her anti-virus, plugged in the flash drive. Our eyes widened and sparkled. Emulators. Pokemon emulators. Including the original Red version.
I was vibrating with excitement. Now my roommate could see for herself what launched a series so successful it’s now a permanent cultural icon! I begged her to click on it, which she did without hesitation. Nostalgia came flooding back as we went through the opening scenes. My roommate named the main character after herself, even though it was a guy, and started to play, with me pushing her to explore everything and talk to every NPC along the way.
Soon, it was time to choose a starter. I would have chosen Charmander, but instead my roommate chose Squirtle. Then we were given the option to give Squirtle a nickname.
My roommate’s eyes sparkled. She got up suddenly. “I’ll be right back!” she said, then dashed out of the room. I followed her.
As soon as I stepped into the hallway, I understood her idea. Every room had two nametags outside their door, one for each occupant. Usually the nametags were all decorated with a semesterly theme. This year our RA’s were AWESOME and had chosen Pokemon. As I had suspected, when I finally caught up to my roommate, she was standing outside her friend Sarah’s door. Sarah’s nametag had a Squirtle on it.
“I knew it!” she cried. “I know what I’m going to name my Squirtle now!” We dashed back and input the name, continuing the game.
Soon my roommate was catching her own pokemon, building up a team. She got a pidgey and a ratatta. We combed the floors to see if anyone had those pokemon next to their nametag, found them, and named our new teammates James and Emily accordingly.
I had to go to bed then. I had an 8AM class the next day. But my roommate was hooked; she wanted to keep playing, and her classes weren’t until 12, so she did. I fell asleep to the sounds of her clicking keys.
The next morning I found she’d fallen asleep at her desk. Smiling, I closed her computer before I rushed out for the day.
Classes progressed as usual. There was one lecture that both Sarah and I were in, but I didn’t’ see her that day. It was a mild observation; we didn’t sit together or anything. I was busy with classes and homework until after sunset, when I finally made it back to the room.
My roommate was sitting on the bed, sullen-eyed. The computer in front of her cast her face into an eerie glow, making the bags under her eyes look deeper. She clicked every once in a while, and I knew from the music that she was playing pokemon.
“A hard gym battle?” I joked. Figuring out how to beat Brock for the first time had always gotten me stuck.
She shook her head. “Water beats rock easily.” She didn’t turn to me, but her eyes seemed less distant now. ‘It’s…” She shuddered. “…there’s something wrong with Sarah. I hope she’s okay, but there’s nothing I can-…” She went silent again.
Well, that explained why Sarah wasn’t in lecture. I tried to pry more information out of my roommate, but she had shut herself off from the world again. Must have been something terrible, to cause a reaction this bad.
Worried, I went down the hall to Sarah’s room. The door was open and her roommate Rachel was there, cleaning furiously.
“She wouldn’t wake up this morning,” Rachel explained when I asked her. Despite her rapid movements and crisp tone, her eyes looked just as distant as my roommate’s. “Her alarm had been going off for hours. She still wouldn’t respond after I came back from class. So I called an ambulance. They think she’s in a coma…” Her words softened to a mumble. “…no idea how or why…” She left it at that.
My roommate hadn’t moved when I returned. She was still clicking, but half-heartedly, as if she weren’t interested in anything anymore.
I hopped up on the bed and snuggled up next to her, trying to cheer her up. I looped an arm over her shoulders. “I’m sure Sarah will be fine!” I said. “She’s got a crack medical team to help her, after all! We can visit her tomorrow if you’d like, if we can catch a ride. But you’re right, there’s not much we can do about it tonight. Let’s just hope for the best and try to have fun anyway, okay?” She was silent. “…hey, let’s explore the next cave!” I said, finally. “Maybe it will take your mind off things.”
So we went into Mt. Moon. I always hated the caves, but through puzzle solving and commiseration my roommate seemed to cheer up a little. We even caught two new pokemon: a zubat and a geodude. I ran outside to check for their names. We got Erin and Matt. After we caught them, the entire cave became overrun by Golbats! It was a struggle to progress, but we leveled up a lot! Finally we made it out of the caves, just in time for bed. We went to sleep, smiling but still worried; her about Sarah and me about her.
The next day started normally. I was out of class earlier, so I headed back to the dorms around 2PM. What greeted me sent my heart jumping into my throat. Sirens blared and echoed around the quad, ambulances, police, and even fire trucks were packed outside my building. As I watched, a team of EMT’s rushed a stretcher out of the building and into one of the waiting ambulances. The girl on the stretcher looked vaguely familiar to me. She was completely limp.
A crowd of students was standing around outside, watching the chaos. They clutched books and computers and clothes bags. It looked like they were all prepared for a sleepover, but the mood was too tense.
I navigated through the living labyrinth until I found a familiar face.
“Trisha!” I said. “What the hell’s going on here?!”
She turned to me, worry stretched into every line of her face. “You heard what happened to Sarah, right?”
I nodded.
“Well, it’s gotten worse. Four more students have been found comatose. The school is actually starting to get concerned. They’re going to analyze all the rooms and air vents for noxious fumes or anything neurotoxic. Rachel and the other surviving roommates have been placed under quarantine, to be monitored at the hospital.” She looked down at her bags. “The rest of us are being evicted from the building. They’re cordoning the whole place off until they find out exactly what’s causing this!”
“Evicted?!” My heart pounded heavily in my throat. “Where are we going to go? Where will we sleep? And we’ve got midterms in two weeks, and all of my stuff is in there, my text books, my notes, my clothes-“ I almost started hyperventilating.
Trisha put a hand on my shoulder. “Calm down! They’re not leaving us on the street. They’re going to put us in the lounges of some of the other dorms. Bathrooms will be tight, but that’s to be expected. The firemen have been going in with a few students at a time, all wearing gas masks, so they can pick up what they’ll need. ONLY what they’ll need.” She sighed. “They’ve assured us that this should all be cleared up in a few days, a week tops, but I’m certain it’s going to take longer than that.”
I looked towards the dorm door and saw the firemen escorting another group of students out of the building. One of them was my roommate. She was hugging her computer tightly to her chest, as if her life depended on it.

***

A week passed. Me and my roommate were boarded in the next building over with some other students from our floor. My roommate mostly sulked in her corner, clacking away on her computer. I couldn’t tell if she was studying or playing pokemon, but I was too busy studying myself to take much notice. Everyone in our room was silent but for the rustling of pages, scratching of pencils, or clacking of keys. Midterms were immanent, and despite the disadvantageous move and the concerns for our health, we had to be ready to take them.
But stronger even than our drive to succeed was the needs of our own bodies. They could not be quelled. And so, groups would occasionally pop off to the cafeteria for some fruit or a quick bite. Many brought food back with them and kept working while they refueled. I never saw my roommate eat anything, never saw her leave her spot, never even saw her take her eyes off the computer screen.
On Saturday I started getting concerned, so I brought some fruit back with me from breakfast. She didn’t glance up when I came over and offered her an apple. Finally, I cleared my throat.
“You should probably eat something,” I said. “It’s hard to think on an empty stomach.”
She glanced up briefly but didn’t reply.
I sat down next to her, intending to provide encouragement. She was playing pokemon.
“Well, at least you’re taking breaks,” I said, but it came out very accusingly. I checked myself. Yes I’d been studying my butt off this whole time, but it wasn’t fair to assume she’d been playing pokemon instead. She might have just turned it on for all I knew. “Whatcha looking for?” I asked by way of apology.
“Another Abra,” she said. Her voice sounded slightly hoarse, like she hadn’t used it in a while. “I caught one, want another one.”
“Well that should be fun!” I said. “There’s plenty in that patch, but they teleport so fast they’re hard to catch.”
She shook her head slowly. “I’ve been looking for five minutes, and not a single Abra’s appeared since I caught the first one! I’m starting to think this game is broken.”
“What did you name it?”
“I didn’t.”
“I thought you were nicknaming all your pokemon after our floormates?”
“Yeah, but I can’t remember who had which pokemon!” she snapped.”It’s not like I paid that much attention!” She sighed. “Well, I can’t change their names now…”
I stared at her. “Name-Rater.”
She paused, then looked at me. “They had him this far back in the series?”
“They’ve had him since the first game!”
For a second, a smile crossed her face. Then it vanished, and she stared blankly at the screen again. “Even so, we’re probably not getting back into our dorm until next month, and I’ll have finished the game by then…”
“Midterms…” I warned.
“If only I had written those names down before!” she mused. “A list or something…”
I shut her laptop. She made to protest, but I snatched it out of her lap. “Are you even listening to me? Mid. Terms. In one week. ONE. You’ll be studying, you won’t have time to play anyway. After Midterms, we’ll know where we stand on the whole room thing. You can wait one week, can’t you?”
Her glare bored through me. “My class notes are also on there,” she growled.
I hesitated, but slowly gave her back the computer. She snatched it back, rose, and started walking towards the door.
“Hey!” I called after her. “Why are you so worked up about this? You can nickname your pokemon anything you want at any time!”
She stopped. Her hand fell towards her chest as her shoulders slumped. “It’s just…with all that’s happening…I don’t know who’s going to be next…”
My heart froze. “…next?” What could she mean by that?
She shifted her foot. “My best friend’s in a coma now, with no known cause or cure. Four other students have fallen too, and the rest of us could also be infected. It might just be a matter of time-“
“That sounds way too sci-fi,” I interrupted. My paranoia agreed with her concerns, but we didn’t have any evidence to back them.
She whirled around. “That’s why it’s so scary!” As if catching herself, she turned away again. “It’s like…my friends are all leaving me, only worse.” Her voice turned warmer, more distant. “But when I play with my Squirtle, I feel like Sara is with me again. It’s almost like she never left.” She straightened. “So I’d like to keep doing it this way, as a memento, in case things get worse. Now, if you’ll excuse me.” She walked out.
Something in the very final way she said that tickled my danger radar. I called after her again. “Just promise me you won’t do anything stupid, okay?”
She didn’t respond.

***

The next morning, I was awoken by a scream. I bolted up from my notes. A few of my classmates did the same. They looked with mild confusion towards the direction of the bathrooms, but I was already sprinting towards them. I knew that voice.
The bathroom door slammed open as I rushed through, heading for the furthest stall, a handicapped stall. Its door was open. I skidded to a halt. There was my roommate, curled up in the farthest corner of the oversized stall. Her computer lay open on the ground next to her, the happy melody of a pokemon center playing. My roommate was shaking and sniffling.
Cautiously, I reached out and touched her shoulder. She turned with a sudden start, eyes streaming tears, face a soaked, reddened mess. Her eyes darted frantically, but as if she couldn’t see what she was looking at.
“What happened?” I demanded, trying to keep my voice firm and calm. The happy music didn’t match the mood, in eerie dissonance.
Her eyes focused on me. She was still shaking worse than a crack addict in withdrawal. Her lips parted. “S-…S-…S-…”
“Spit it out,” I said. “Slowly.”
“S-Sarah!” Her eyes completely filled with water. “S-she’s gone!”
I frowned. “She’s in the hospital. Or…do you mean someone else?”
My roommate frantically shook her head. “M-my Sarah, my Sarah…my Squirtle!”
I relaxed a little. “Did you accidently release her?” That was bad luck, to release a starter. After all, if you wanted to replace it, you’d have to restart the game.
She was shaking her head, harder now. “N-NO! No…” Her voice became choked. “She’s dead.”
A chill ran down my spine. “Dead?” That was impossible. “What do you mean, ‘dead’?”
It took her a couple of tries to regain enough voice to speak. “I-I was going back into the caves, trying to find some stupid extra items, a-and I…th-there were too many Golbats. Sarah fainted.” She sobbed but pressed on hurriedly, before the floodgates burst again. “I rushed out of there and got her to a pokemon center as fast as I could, b-but…when I l-looked in my p-party afterwards…Sarah w-was gone!”
My brow furrowed. That couldn’t be right. That wasn’t what was supposed to happen. “Maybe there was a bug and she got lost in the programming?” I offered. It was an emulated game after all; she might have hit on an obscure bug or hiccup. “But why do you say she’s ‘dead’ and not ‘missing’?”
“I don’t know,” she rambled, “I don’t know how, but I just…I just KNOW, okay?” She hugged her arms tightly to herself. “I-I can’t feel her anymore…for the first time, I feel truly alone…oh, Sarah!” She grabbed me into a soaking, sobby hug. I rubbed her back until the sobs turned into hiccups.
“Why don’t we go visit Sarah in the hospital tomorrow?” I said finally. “Maybe that will make you feel better. And who knows? Maybe Squirtle Sarah is in the Pokemon Tower in Lavender Town! Maybe you’ll see her there. Won’t that be nice?”
My roommate nodded into my shoulder. “W-won’t let…happen…again…” I thought I heard her say through the muffling of my shirt.

***

That night, we made arrangements with one of our friends to drive us to the hospital the next day. I figured that seeing her friend being taken care of would calm my roommate down. Maybe it would help to dispel my fears as well. I’d be lying if I said this whole experience hadn’t unnerved me.
Much as I tried to persuade her to go to bed, my roommate refused to get off her computer. Eventually I gave up and went to bed myself.
Sometime around 6AM, a loud noise woke me up again. I was exhausted, so by the time my brain woke up enough to identify the noise or its source, it was over. I rolled over and glanced at my roommate’s sleeping area. Her computer was miraculously closed, but she was gone. Well at least she didn’t take it to the bathroom with her this time, I thought.
Twenty minutes passed, and I couldn’t get back to sleep. Neither had my roommate returned. Maybe she had fallen asleep in the bathroom?
Curious and a little guilty, I shuffled over to her computer and opened it up. Had she been playing pokemon this whole time?
When her screen lit to life, the only thing on it was an email from the University President.
“On behalf of the University, we wish to express our condolences on the death of Sarah Parker. She died at 7AM yesterday morning of unknown complications. Her wake will be-…”
I bolted out of the room, grabbing my coat, not bothering to close the computer. Shit, Shit, SHIT! I thought. No wonder my roommate had been gone for so long! And if this was the news that caused her to leave…Shit! Was she doing something really stupid right now?! I blinked tears out of my eyes as I ran, trying to convince myself that she was all right.
I nearly tripped town the stairs as I burst out of the dorm into the cool, moonlit air. I was facing down the hill towards my old dorm, now surrounded by caution tape. I tried to determine where to go next, which buildings had the highest roofs or where easiest to get onto the roof of – when I noticed there was a beam of light on the second floor of my old dorm. It moved here and there, sometimes disappearing completely, headed for the staircase downwards.
Why would someone break into a quarantined building?
My first thought was burglars, but then a faint memory stirred. Something my roommate had said. I found that my cell phone was still in my jacket pocket and decided to call her. That would clear up at least one of my questions.
The phone rang for a few seconds. Then a faint “Hello?”
I sighed with relief. She was still alive. “Hi, it’s me,” I said. “Your roommate buddy? Where are you? It’s the middle of the night, and you’ve been gone for a while.”
“I’m fine…” came the almost dreamy reply. “I’m fine…”
“Where. Are. You?” I pressed.
“I’m fine…fine…” Click.
A chill ran down my spine. What on earth did she mean by “fine”? She didn’t sound “fine”.
The beam of light was moving again. I headed towards it, towards the dorm. With no definite leads on my roommate, it was the only thing I could think to do for now.
By the time I got to the caution tape outside the building, the light had disappeared again. I hesitated. What if I was wrong? What if whoever was actually in there was armed? And was it really worth risking contamination to find out? Or, at the very least, getting in trouble with the school right before exams?
Before I could come to a decision, the main door opened and out stepped my roommate, carrying a flashlight in one hand and a notebook in the other. She walked to me, calmly ducking under the caution tape. I stared at her, dumbfounded, completely unsure what to do. I had hoped to be right, that she was the one sneaking around in our old dorm, but wasn’t sure what it meant.
She held up the notebook and smiled. “I got them!” she said. It was like she’d picked up milk from the grocery store, not just stepped out of a potentially deadly contaminated building.
I shook my head slowly. “I cannot believe you,” I said. Then what she’d said sunk in. “…wait, what did you get?” I had a sneaking suspicion.
“The names,” she said. “I got the names.” Her eyes glazed over. “Before it happens again…”
“It?” I balked as the pieces finally clicked. “Oh god, this CANNOT be because of Sarah-“
Her eyes flashed. “Don’t talk about her in that tone of voice!” She calmed back into that eerie stare. “She’ll be fine…fine…we’ll all be fine…”
This was madness. I reached for the notebook, but she snatched it back to herself as if it were a precious baby.
“What are you doing?!” she cried in alarm.
“No, what are YOU doing?!” I shot back. “You could have signed your own death warrant just now! And I was afraid you were off trying to fall off of the highest building on campus or something! But this is about some minor customization feature of Pokemon?! Roomie, this isn’t WORTH that!”
“YES IT IS WHEN IT TELLS YOU IF YOUR FRIENDS ARE GOING TO DIE!!!” The sudden lucidity and wave of anger she threw at me were nothing compared to the shocking revelations of that statement.
I staggered back, feeling physically struck. “What?”
She waved her notebook at me, like bashing the information into my skull from afar would help me understand better. “THINK about it!” She said. “I named my squirtle after Sarah! And Squirtle Sarah disappeared early yesterday morning!” She was suddenly inches from my face, her stale breath and washing over me, voice a hoarse whisper. “The EXACT. Same. Time. As Sarah died in the hospital. That cannot be a coincidence.”
I couldn’t have helped my head from shaking “no”. “But what else could it be?” I whispered back, as if whispering were contagious. “Pokemon is just a video game; and even at that, pokemon aren’t supposed to disappear in-game unless you release them! There is NO way…it doesn’t make any sense!”
“It makes PERFECT sense!” Her whisper was all steam now, eyes shimmering with anger. She stood back and struck an attitude. All I could think of was a mad scientist genius that had just been scorned. “The pokemon in my game are linked to our classmates who got sent to the hospital. I know it! That’s why it felt like Sarah never left…because in a way, she hadn’t!” She flipped through the notebook and pointed urgently to a page. The writing was too far away for me to see. “Look, here’s James! He has a pidgey next to his name. Well, I have a pidgey named James! And James was sent to the hospital! So if we want to know how our James is doing in the hospital, we have Pidgey James we can look to as our ‘canary in the coal mine’, or something like that.” She started flipping through pages and pages of notes, what I can only assume were our dorm mates names and their associated pokemon. “If we can catch all of these pokemon and name them after the right classmates, the next time this sickness hits us, we’ll be able to keep track of their progress instantly!”
I wanted to tell her that it was all wishful thinking. I wanted to tell her that the only equipment that would help us with news of our friends’ health was at the hospital. I wanted to warn her that one of our dormmates had a Mew next to their name, which would be nigh impossible to catch without cheating. But when I opened my mouth, all that came out was: “Will that make them get better?”
She paused, and it was as if she had shattered. Her eyes stared blankly at the notebook, unmoving, longer than was comfortable. Before I could think of something else to say, anything, probably an apology, she spoke in that far-away voice.
“It will be enough. Knowing will be enough. …it has to be…”
I felt anger bubbling up within me, from some deep well I’d tried to ignore. “It won’t be.” Like most college students, I’d lived long enough to see loved ones torn away from me. Sometimes I had had warning, sometimes I hadn’t, but knowing hadn’t stopped the pain; it had only dragged it out for months and months of worrying. And here my roommate was, applying the same b.s. principles of astrology or psychics to a freaking VIDEO GAME, claiming it could warn us if our FREAKING FRIENDS DIED, but ONLY a FEW HOURS before the UNIVERSITY told us, putting SO much faith into her theory that she risked her OWN LIFE AND the lives of EVERYONE AROUND HER to go into a building that could be FULL of SOME DEADLY NEUROTOXIC…THING!!!! She was so worried about being the FIRST to know the gruesome gossip about who was dead and who wasn’t, she may have just sentenced us ALL to death!
I lunged for that stupid notebook again. She leaned back, half startled and half fearful, just enough to get out of my range. Her back stretched out the caution tape behind her.
“L-let me have this!” she pleaded, clutching the notebook tightly to her chest, as if somehow she could absorb it into her body. “Just let me have this. Please.”
I couldn’t catch my breath, I was so angry. Tears pricked at the corners of my vision. The ‘please’ cut through. “I’m not angry about the notebook,” I growled. “I’m angry that you might have exposed us ALL to the virus to get it.” As hard as I tried to stop it, my voice wobbled. “Do we only mean something to you if we’re in danger of dying? Do you care so little for those of us who are still alive?!?”
Absolute understanding and horror engulfed her face. Slowly, she raised a hand to her mouth, shaking her head, tears streaming. “No, n-no no nononononononononono, that’s not what I wanted at all!!” She reached out as if to hug me, then stopped herself. “The virus…” she whispered. “I don’t want you to get the virus. But…now I might…” She swore softly, notebook almost forgotten. “What have I done?”
If I were honest with myself, I felt as lost as she looked. But there was only one thing to be done. “Roomie, we need to get you to the infirmary. They can monitor you there, get you help if you need it, figure out if you have the virus or not, keep you from spreading it.” I went to hold her hand, but stopped myself, and my hand fell limply to my side. “I’ll walk over with you and bring anything you need from the dorm, ok? Then we can figure out what to do about your homework and classes and such. I’m sure the administration has some plan on how to handle this.”
She nodded. Her eyes pierced me, but as if coming from a long distance away. “And you’ll bring my computer over too, right?”
I gave a half-hearted chuckle. “Of course.” At least now she could enact her pokemon ouiji trick without hurting anyone.

* * *

While the nurses (and the school) were upset that my roommate had broken into a restricted part of campus, my roommate didn’t get in too much trouble. Honestly, I think administration was more afraid that her parents would file a lawsuit for not providing enough security around such a potentially dangerous area/potential hazard. Regardless, they looked after her health with the most caring of bedside manners.
I brought her computer a few hours later. Unable to hug me, she settled for making a heart with her hands She was already back to playing Pokemon by the time I left. At least she’d have something to do while an alternative lesson plan was being drafted.
The sun was rising by the time I got back to the dorm, so there was no point in going back to sleep. Exhausted with a busy day ahead, I made a beeline for the cafeteria and their bittersweet coffee.
The staff was putting out the first fresh trough of scrambled eggs when I walked in. The smell, combined with those of pancakes, syrup, and coffee, was invigorating, and it roused my mind as well as my appetite. I grabbed a heaping tray of all available options and went to sit down.
A few bedraggled or already over-caffeinated heads were hunched over the other tables. One of them I recognized, but the shock almost made me drop my tray. I rushed over and sat with him, almost violently smashing into the seat.
“Matt?! What are you doing here? Why aren’t you in quarantine at the hospital?!” I exclaimed. The image of his roommate (James?) being carted away on a stretcher that fateful night was burning behind my eyelids.
Surprised by my initial outburst, Matt quickly returned to his trademark grin. “Oh, you mean that weird virus? I missed it entirely; I’ve been home the past couple of weeks, I just got back to campus to find that I didn’t have a dorm anymore! Crazy, right?”
“Yeah…crazy…” I watched him dig into his eggs. He really had no idea, the horrors we’d been through on top of midterms, the horrors I’d been through watching my roommate destabilize. Though, to be fair, no one else knew about that last part. “S-so, where did they put you up?” I tried to make casual conversation.
He swallowed before answering. “There was an empty room slot up on the north end of campus. They stuck me there with some guy who’d already claimed the whole room for himself. He was pissed when it turned out he’d be getting a roommate after all and had to move all his stuff!”
“Why didn’t they put you in the lounges with the rest of us?”
He shrugged. “Beats me!”
Preventing further contamination, I thought.
“Anyway,” Matt continued, “I’m really sad about the change. My new dorm is SO lame, even besides the roommate thing! Did you know they have Fruit next to their nameplates? Freaking FRUIT!! Why, I ask you?!”
“Yeah, our RA’s were awesome!” I said with a sad smile. “Although anyone who chooses Pokemon as their floor theme is automatically awesome in my book!”
Matt laughed. “Yeah, I guess so! I was never really into the series, but I loved the little bird guy they put next to my name! (He had such a cute but tough design.)”
A bird? “Pidgey?”
He shook his head. “Don’t think it was that one…James(?) had that one…” His face fell. “How is James doing, anyway? Any news?”
I stared into my coffee cup. “None. Sarah’s the only one to die from this so far. I was going to ride up to the hospital with someone to check on everyone else.” I looked up at him. “Would you like to come with?”
He nodded. “Yeah…that would be good, thanks.”
As concerned as I was, I needed to keep a hopeful attitude, for their sakes. I forced a smile and changed the subject again. “So, how was your time at home?”
Matt brightened instantly. “Oh, it was awesome! My brother’s wedding was so much fun! And there was sooo much good food!!”
I laughed. “How was the dancing?”
“Oh, the dancing was-“ He stopped, eyes glazing over. “…spearrow…?” His head lolled and flopped into his scrambled eggs. He didn’t move.
I stared.
His head stayed down.
I quickly pulled his head up. Death by drowning in scrambled eggs may not seem like the worst way to go, but it still involved “going”.
But it was too late. Or, rather, he’d been out before his head even hit the plate. His breaths were shallow and slow.
My hand was shaking. “Help…” I croaked. Then louder. “H-HELP!”

* * *

I shivered under the blanket I’d been given. Matt was being rolled down to the ambulance on a stretcher now. I watched another paralyzed friend disappear behind those doors, be rushed off to the hospital with sirens blaring.
I was shocked and scared, but I was thinking. Matt hadn’t been on campus the past few weeks. He’d never been exposed to the virus. So why did he get sick?
A nurse came up to me with baggy eyes. “Come along, we’ll have to put you in quarantine so we can monitor your vitals.”
Could I be a carrier? No; I’d been around my roommate and our peers since Day 1 of the outbreak, and the people I’d spent the most time with were perfectly healthy. I’d even eaten with them. And yet, after five minutes of talking with Matt, not sharing food or utensils, he drops unconscious in his eggs. Why?
“Sweetie?” The nurse sounded a long way off. “Are you all right?”
And what had Matt said right before he passed out? “Spearrow?” Was that the Pokemon that had been next to his name? But he hadn’t known what it was called, he wasn’t even familiar with the series, and I hadn’t told him. And that wasn’t even considering how non-sequitor the comment had been; why say that before passing out?
The nurse’s cell phone rang. They answered it. “Hello?” A frantic chattering on the other end of the line. “What do you mean, more of them?!”
I looked up. Did that mean other people were getting sick?!
There was girl from my floor looking in on the scene. I caught her eyes. She was from my floor, I didn’t know her name, but she had the same fear in her eyes. Then her eyes went blank. Her lips read “Cleffairy?” before she dropped to the floor like a rag doll.
The nurse whirled towards her. “Oh, Christ!”
I bolted. The surprised cries of the nurse didn’t even reach my ears. The gurneys carrying more unconscious students flew past my eyes unseen. I bolted towards the one connection in all of this I could think of: my old dorm.
I tore through the caution tape, causing some excited yells. As I pushed through the double doors, suddenly it all made sense. Why only people from my floor were getting sick, even if they hadn’t been exposed to the building. Why they were acting so strangely before they went comatose, why they went comatose at all. Why the first one affected was Sarah.
I ran past the room doors, flashes of fallen friends passing by. (example) (example) Finally, I found what I had been looking for.
I stopped dead.
Next to the door were two name plates. The top one, James’, had a picture of a pidgey.
The bottom one had a Spearrow and belonged to Matt.
My knees shook. No one would have remembered this extraneous detail, no one else had even been in this building since the first incident. Except one person. One person for whom this meant the difference between life and death, one person who had a use for these name relations, one person who’d been in here just before this second outbreak with a notebook full of names.
My roommate.
She wasn’t monitoring people’s health through her Pokemon, she was causing them to go comatose.
My hand flew to my mouth as I thought of what happened to Sarah. She was killing them. She was killing them, and she didn’t even know it.

* * *

That’s why I’m running now. Running past the ghosts of my classmates, most of them probably comatose by now. I’m wracking my brain over the nearest exit, the quickest route to the infirmary, where the Name Rater is located in the first game and how far along my roommate was last time I saw her. She must be there by now, and with that notebook full of everyone’s names…
Lights and sirens are drowning out my thoughts, save the instinct that drives me to warn her, to stop her before she renders me helpless. I just hope there’s enough

Description
[Warning: This story is based on real events. You have been warned.]

Before I start, you should know one thing about me: I LOVE Pokemon. Ever since I first saw it as a kid, to my mother’s horror, I have been borderline obsessed. The last thing I’d want to do would be to scare people away from something I truly love, and in most instances I don’t think this sort of scenario would cause a problem. But in this case, the evidence is piling up too high to be a coincidence. I think I know what’s causing it now, but I’m not sure how or why…or how to stop it…
Let me start from the beginning. I am currently a sophomore in college. My roommate, the same year as me, has only recently gotten into pokemon. She loves the new games, but never had the chance to play the originals like red and blue. I started from yellow, so of course I insisted that she get her hands on a copy, even if she had to download an emulator, just to have that experience! She kept putting it off; classes and her job monitoring the computer lab took up too much time. However, it was because of her job that she found her ticket in.
She came back from work buzzing one night, a flash drive gripped in her hand. Someone had left it in the computer lab, and it had been sitting in the lost and found for almost a month, meaning it was fair game. She wanted to check out the files on it with me, technically to look for clues about its owner, but mostly to see what the flash drive contained.
We crowded in front of her computer and, after updating her anti-virus, plugged in the flash drive. Our eyes widened and sparkled. Emulators. Pokemon emulators. Including the original Red version.
I was vibrating with excitement. Now my roommate could see for herself what launched a series so successful it’s now a permanent cultural icon! I begged her to click on it, which she did without hesitation. Nostalgia came flooding back as we went through the opening scenes. My roommate named the main character after herself, even though it was a guy, and started to play, with me pushing her to explore everything and talk to every NPC along the way.
Soon, it was time to choose a starter. I would have chosen Charmander, but instead my roommate chose Squirtle. Then we were given the option to give Squirtle a nickname.
My roommate’s eyes sparkled. She got up suddenly. “I’ll be right back!” she said, then dashed out of the room. I followed her.
As soon as I stepped into the hallway, I understood her idea. Every room had two nametags outside their door, one for each occupant. Usually the nametags were all decorated with a semesterly theme. This year our RA’s were AWESOME and had chosen Pokemon. As I had suspected, when I finally caught up to my roommate, she was standing outside her friend Sarah’s door. Sarah’s nametag had a Squirtle on it.
“I knew it!” she cried. “I know what I’m going to name my Squirtle now!” We dashed back and input the name, continuing the game.
Soon my roommate was catching her own pokemon, building up a team. She got a pidgey and a ratatta. We combed the floors to see if anyone had those pokemon next to their nametag, found them, and named our new teammates James and Emily accordingly.
I had to go to bed then. I had an 8AM class the next day. But my roommate was hooked; she wanted to keep playing, and her classes weren’t until 12, so she did. I fell asleep to the sounds of her clicking keys.
The next morning I found she’d fallen asleep at her desk. Smiling, I closed her computer before I rushed out for the day.
Classes progressed as usual. There was one lecture that both Sarah and I were in, but I didn’t’ see her that day. It was a mild observation; we didn’t sit together or anything. I was busy with classes and homework until after sunset, when I finally made it back to the room.
My roommate was sitting on the bed, sullen-eyed. The computer in front of her cast her face into an eerie glow, making the bags under her eyes look deeper. She clicked every once in a while, and I knew from the music that she was playing pokemon.
“A hard gym battle?” I joked. Figuring out how to beat Brock for the first time had always gotten me stuck.
She shook her head. “Water beats rock easily.” She didn’t turn to me, but her eyes seemed less distant now. ‘It’s…” She shuddered. “…there’s something wrong with Sarah. I hope she’s okay, but there’s nothing I can-…” She went silent again.
Well, that explained why Sarah wasn’t in lecture. I tried to pry more information out of my roommate, but she had shut herself off from the world again. Must have been something terrible, to cause a reaction this bad.
Worried, I went down the hall to Sarah’s room. The door was open and her roommate Rachel was there, cleaning furiously.
“She wouldn’t wake up this morning,” Rachel explained when I asked her. Despite her rapid movements and crisp tone, her eyes looked just as distant as my roommate’s. “Her alarm had been going off for hours. She still wouldn’t respond after I came back from class. So I called an ambulance. They think she’s in a coma…” Her words softened to a mumble. “…no idea how or why…” She left it at that.
My roommate hadn’t moved when I returned. She was still clicking, but half-heartedly, as if she weren’t interested in anything anymore.
I hopped up on the bed and snuggled up next to her, trying to cheer her up. I looped an arm over her shoulders. “I’m sure Sarah will be fine!” I said. “She’s got a crack medical team to help her, after all! We can visit her tomorrow if you’d like, if we can catch a ride. But you’re right, there’s not much we can do about it tonight. Let’s just hope for the best and try to have fun anyway, okay?” She was silent. “…hey, let’s explore the next cave!” I said, finally. “Maybe it will take your mind off things.”
So we went into Mt. Moon. I always hated the caves, but through puzzle solving and commiseration my roommate seemed to cheer up a little. We even caught two new pokemon: a zubat and a geodude. I ran outside to check for their names. We got Erin and Matt. After we caught them, the entire cave became overrun by Golbats! It was a struggle to progress, but we leveled up a lot! Finally we made it out of the caves, just in time for bed. We went to sleep, smiling but still worried; her about Sarah and me about her.
The next day started normally. I was out of class earlier, so I headed back to the dorms around 2PM. What greeted me sent my heart jumping into my throat. Sirens blared and echoed around the quad, ambulances, police, and even fire trucks were packed outside my building. As I watched, a team of EMT’s rushed a stretcher out of the building and into one of the waiting ambulances. The girl on the stretcher looked vaguely familiar to me. She was completely limp.
A crowd of students was standing around outside, watching the chaos. They clutched books and computers and clothes bags. It looked like they were all prepared for a sleepover, but the mood was too tense.
I navigated through the living labyrinth until I found a familiar face.
“Trisha!” I said. “What the hell’s going on here?!”
She turned to me, worry stretched into every line of her face. “You heard what happened to Sarah, right?”
I nodded.
“Well, it’s gotten worse. Four more students have been found comatose. The school is actually starting to get concerned. They’re going to analyze all the rooms and air vents for noxious fumes or anything neurotoxic. Rachel and the other surviving roommates have been placed under quarantine, to be monitored at the hospital.” She looked down at her bags. “The rest of us are being evicted from the building. They’re cordoning the whole place off until they find out exactly what’s causing this!”
“Evicted?!” My heart pounded heavily in my throat. “Where are we going to go? Where will we sleep? And we’ve got midterms in two weeks, and all of my stuff is in there, my text books, my notes, my clothes-“ I almost started hyperventilating.
Trisha put a hand on my shoulder. “Calm down! They’re not leaving us on the street. They’re going to put us in the lounges of some of the other dorms. Bathrooms will be tight, but that’s to be expected. The firemen have been going in with a few students at a time, all wearing gas masks, so they can pick up what they’ll need. ONLY what they’ll need.” She sighed. “They’ve assured us that this should all be cleared up in a few days, a week tops, but I’m certain it’s going to take longer than that.”
I looked towards the dorm door and saw the firemen escorting another group of students out of the building. One of them was my roommate. She was hugging her computer tightly to her chest, as if her life depended on it.

***

A week passed. Me and my roommate were boarded in the next building over with some other students from our floor. My roommate mostly sulked in her corner, clacking away on her computer. I couldn’t tell if she was studying or playing pokemon, but I was too busy studying myself to take much notice. Everyone in our room was silent but for the rustling of pages, scratching of pencils, or clacking of keys. Midterms were immanent, and despite the disadvantageous move and the concerns for our health, we had to be ready to take them.
But stronger even than our drive to succeed was the needs of our own bodies. They could not be quelled. And so, groups would occasionally pop off to the cafeteria for some fruit or a quick bite. Many brought food back with them and kept working while they refueled. I never saw my roommate eat anything, never saw her leave her spot, never even saw her take her eyes off the computer screen.
On Saturday I started getting concerned, so I brought some fruit back with me from breakfast. She didn’t glance up when I came over and offered her an apple. Finally, I cleared my throat.
“You should probably eat something,” I said. “It’s hard to think on an empty stomach.”
She glanced up briefly but didn’t reply.
I sat down next to her, intending to provide encouragement. She was playing pokemon.
“Well, at least you’re taking breaks,” I said, but it came out very accusingly. I checked myself. Yes I’d been studying my butt off this whole time, but it wasn’t fair to assume she’d been playing pokemon instead. She might have just turned it on for all I knew. “Whatcha looking for?” I asked by way of apology.
“Another Abra,” she said. Her voice sounded slightly hoarse, like she hadn’t used it in a while. “I caught one, want another one.”
“Well that should be fun!” I said. “There’s plenty in that patch, but they teleport so fast they’re hard to catch.”
She shook her head slowly. “I’ve been looking for five minutes, and not a single Abra’s appeared since I caught the first one! I’m starting to think this game is broken.”
“What did you name it?”
“I didn’t.”
“I thought you were nicknaming all your pokemon after our floormates?”
“Yeah, but I can’t remember who had which pokemon!” she snapped.”It’s not like I paid that much attention!” She sighed. “Well, I can’t change their names now…”
I stared at her. “Name-Rater.”
She paused, then looked at me. “They had him this far back in the series?”
“They’ve had him since the first game!”
For a second, a smile crossed her face. Then it vanished, and she stared blankly at the screen again. “Even so, we’re probably not getting back into our dorm until next month, and I’ll have finished the game by then…”
“Midterms…” I warned.
“If only I had written those names down before!” she mused. “A list or something…”
I shut her laptop. She made to protest, but I snatched it out of her lap. “Are you even listening to me? Mid. Terms. In one week. ONE. You’ll be studying, you won’t have time to play anyway. After Midterms, we’ll know where we stand on the whole room thing. You can wait one week, can’t you?”
Her glare bored through me. “My class notes are also on there,” she growled.
I hesitated, but slowly gave her back the computer. She snatched it back, rose, and started walking towards the door.
“Hey!” I called after her. “Why are you so worked up about this? You can nickname your pokemon anything you want at any time!”
She stopped. Her hand fell towards her chest as her shoulders slumped. “It’s just…with all that’s happening…I don’t know who’s going to be next…”
My heart froze. “…next?” What could she mean by that?
She shifted her foot. “My best friend’s in a coma now, with no known cause or cure. Four other students have fallen too, and the rest of us could also be infected. It might just be a matter of time-“
“That sounds way too sci-fi,” I interrupted. My paranoia agreed with her concerns, but we didn’t have any evidence to back them.
She whirled around. “That’s why it’s so scary!” As if catching herself, she turned away again. “It’s like…my friends are all leaving me, only worse.” Her voice turned warmer, more distant. “But when I play with my Squirtle, I feel like Sara is with me again. It’s almost like she never left.” She straightened. “So I’d like to keep doing it this way, as a memento, in case things get worse. Now, if you’ll excuse me.” She walked out.
Something in the very final way she said that tickled my danger radar. I called after her again. “Just promise me you won’t do anything stupid, okay?”
She didn’t respond.

***

The next morning, I was awoken by a scream. I bolted up from my notes. A few of my classmates did the same. They looked with mild confusion towards the direction of the bathrooms, but I was already sprinting towards them. I knew that voice.
The bathroom door slammed open as I rushed through, heading for the furthest stall, a handicapped stall. Its door was open. I skidded to a halt. There was my roommate, curled up in the farthest corner of the oversized stall. Her computer lay open on the ground next to her, the happy melody of a pokemon center playing. My roommate was shaking and sniffling.
Cautiously, I reached out and touched her shoulder. She turned with a sudden start, eyes streaming tears, face a soaked, reddened mess. Her eyes darted frantically, but as if she couldn’t see what she was looking at.
“What happened?” I demanded, trying to keep my voice firm and calm. The happy music didn’t match the mood, in eerie dissonance.
Her eyes focused on me. She was still shaking worse than a crack addict in withdrawal. Her lips parted. “S-…S-…S-…”
“Spit it out,” I said. “Slowly.”
“S-Sarah!” Her eyes completely filled with water. “S-she’s gone!”
I frowned. “She’s in the hospital. Or…do you mean someone else?”
My roommate frantically shook her head. “M-my Sarah, my Sarah…my Squirtle!”
I relaxed a little. “Did you accidently release her?” That was bad luck, to release a starter. After all, if you wanted to replace it, you’d have to restart the game.
She was shaking her head, harder now. “N-NO! No…” Her voice became choked. “She’s dead.”
A chill ran down my spine. “Dead?” That was impossible. “What do you mean, ‘dead’?”
It took her a couple of tries to regain enough voice to speak. “I-I was going back into the caves, trying to find some stupid extra items, a-and I…th-there were too many Golbats. Sarah fainted.” She sobbed but pressed on hurriedly, before the floodgates burst again. “I rushed out of there and got her to a pokemon center as fast as I could, b-but…when I l-looked in my p-party afterwards…Sarah w-was gone!”
My brow furrowed. That couldn’t be right. That wasn’t what was supposed to happen. “Maybe there was a bug and she got lost in the programming?” I offered. It was an emulated game after all; she might have hit on an obscure bug or hiccup. “But why do you say she’s ‘dead’ and not ‘missing’?”
“I don’t know,” she rambled, “I don’t know how, but I just…I just KNOW, okay?” She hugged her arms tightly to herself. “I-I can’t feel her anymore…for the first time, I feel truly alone…oh, Sarah!” She grabbed me into a soaking, sobby hug. I rubbed her back until the sobs turned into hiccups.
“Why don’t we go visit Sarah in the hospital tomorrow?” I said finally. “Maybe that will make you feel better. And who knows? Maybe Squirtle Sarah is in the Pokemon Tower in Lavender Town! Maybe you’ll see her there. Won’t that be nice?”
My roommate nodded into my shoulder. “W-won’t let…happen…again…” I thought I heard her say through the muffling of my shirt.

***

That night, we made arrangements with one of our friends to drive us to the hospital the next day. I figured that seeing her friend being taken care of would calm my roommate down. Maybe it would help to dispel my fears as well. I’d be lying if I said this whole experience hadn’t unnerved me.
Much as I tried to persuade her to go to bed, my roommate refused to get off her computer. Eventually I gave up and went to bed myself.
Sometime around 6AM, a loud noise woke me up again. I was exhausted, so by the time my brain woke up enough to identify the noise or its source, it was over. I rolled over and glanced at my roommate’s sleeping area. Her computer was miraculously closed, but she was gone. Well at least she didn’t take it to the bathroom with her this time, I thought.
Twenty minutes passed, and I couldn’t get back to sleep. Neither had my roommate returned. Maybe she had fallen asleep in the bathroom?
Curious and a little guilty, I shuffled over to her computer and opened it up. Had she been playing pokemon this whole time?
When her screen lit to life, the only thing on it was an email from the University President.
“On behalf of the University, we wish to express our condolences on the death of Sarah Parker. She died at 7AM yesterday morning of unknown complications. Her wake will be-…”
I bolted out of the room, grabbing my coat, not bothering to close the computer. Shit, Shit, SHIT! I thought. No wonder my roommate had been gone for so long! And if this was the news that caused her to leave…Shit! Was she doing something really stupid right now?! I blinked tears out of my eyes as I ran, trying to convince myself that she was all right.
I nearly tripped town the stairs as I burst out of the dorm into the cool, moonlit air. I was facing down the hill towards my old dorm, now surrounded by caution tape. I tried to determine where to go next, which buildings had the highest roofs or where easiest to get onto the roof of – when I noticed there was a beam of light on the second floor of my old dorm. It moved here and there, sometimes disappearing completely, headed for the staircase downwards.
Why would someone break into a quarantined building?
My first thought was burglars, but then a faint memory stirred. Something my roommate had said. I found that my cell phone was still in my jacket pocket and decided to call her. That would clear up at least one of my questions.
The phone rang for a few seconds. Then a faint “Hello?”
I sighed with relief. She was still alive. “Hi, it’s me,” I said. “Your roommate buddy? Where are you? It’s the middle of the night, and you’ve been gone for a while.”
“I’m fine…” came the almost dreamy reply. “I’m fine…”
“Where. Are. You?” I pressed.
“I’m fine…fine…” Click.
A chill ran down my spine. What on earth did she mean by “fine”? She didn’t sound “fine”.
The beam of light was moving again. I headed towards it, towards the dorm. With no definite leads on my roommate, it was the only thing I could think to do for now.
By the time I got to the caution tape outside the building, the light had disappeared again. I hesitated. What if I was wrong? What if whoever was actually in there was armed? And was it really worth risking contamination to find out? Or, at the very least, getting in trouble with the school right before exams?
Before I could come to a decision, the main door opened and out stepped my roommate, carrying a flashlight in one hand and a notebook in the other. She walked to me, calmly ducking under the caution tape. I stared at her, dumbfounded, completely unsure what to do. I had hoped to be right, that she was the one sneaking around in our old dorm, but wasn’t sure what it meant.
She held up the notebook and smiled. “I got them!” she said. It was like she’d picked up milk from the grocery store, not just stepped out of a potentially deadly contaminated building.
I shook my head slowly. “I cannot believe you,” I said. Then what she’d said sunk in. “…wait, what did you get?” I had a sneaking suspicion.
“The names,” she said. “I got the names.” Her eyes glazed over. “Before it happens again…”
“It?” I balked as the pieces finally clicked. “Oh god, this CANNOT be because of Sarah-“
Her eyes flashed. “Don’t talk about her in that tone of voice!” She calmed back into that eerie stare. “She’ll be fine…fine…we’ll all be fine…”
This was madness. I reached for the notebook, but she snatched it back to herself as if it were a precious baby.
“What are you doing?!” she cried in alarm.
“No, what are YOU doing?!” I shot back. “You could have signed your own death warrant just now! And I was afraid you were off trying to fall off of the highest building on campus or something! But this is about some minor customization feature of Pokemon?! Roomie, this isn’t WORTH that!”
“YES IT IS WHEN IT TELLS YOU IF YOUR FRIENDS ARE GOING TO DIE!!!” The sudden lucidity and wave of anger she threw at me were nothing compared to the shocking revelations of that statement.
I staggered back, feeling physically struck. “What?”
She waved her notebook at me, like bashing the information into my skull from afar would help me understand better. “THINK about it!” She said. “I named my squirtle after Sarah! And Squirtle Sarah disappeared early yesterday morning!” She was suddenly inches from my face, her stale breath and washing over me, voice a hoarse whisper. “The EXACT. Same. Time. As Sarah died in the hospital. That cannot be a coincidence.”
I couldn’t have helped my head from shaking “no”. “But what else could it be?” I whispered back, as if whispering were contagious. “Pokemon is just a video game; and even at that, pokemon aren’t supposed to disappear in-game unless you release them! There is NO way…it doesn’t make any sense!”
“It makes PERFECT sense!” Her whisper was all steam now, eyes shimmering with anger. She stood back and struck an attitude. All I could think of was a mad scientist genius that had just been scorned. “The pokemon in my game are linked to our classmates who got sent to the hospital. I know it! That’s why it felt like Sarah never left…because in a way, she hadn’t!” She flipped through the notebook and pointed urgently to a page. The writing was too far away for me to see. “Look, here’s James! He has a pidgey next to his name. Well, I have a pidgey named James! And James was sent to the hospital! So if we want to know how our James is doing in the hospital, we have Pidgey James we can look to as our ‘canary in the coal mine’, or something like that.” She started flipping through pages and pages of notes, what I can only assume were our dorm mates names and their associated pokemon. “If we can catch all of these pokemon and name them after the right classmates, the next time this sickness hits us, we’ll be able to keep track of their progress instantly!”
I wanted to tell her that it was all wishful thinking. I wanted to tell her that the only equipment that would help us with news of our friends’ health was at the hospital. I wanted to warn her that one of our dormmates had a Mew next to their name, which would be nigh impossible to catch without cheating. But when I opened my mouth, all that came out was: “Will that make them get better?”
She paused, and it was as if she had shattered. Her eyes stared blankly at the notebook, unmoving, longer than was comfortable. Before I could think of something else to say, anything, probably an apology, she spoke in that far-away voice.
“It will be enough. Knowing will be enough. …it has to be…”
I felt anger bubbling up within me, from some deep well I’d tried to ignore. “It won’t be.” Like most college students, I’d lived long enough to see loved ones torn away from me. Sometimes I had had warning, sometimes I hadn’t, but knowing hadn’t stopped the pain; it had only dragged it out for months and months of worrying. And here my roommate was, applying the same b.s. principles of astrology or psychics to a freaking VIDEO GAME, claiming it could warn us if our FREAKING FRIENDS DIED, but ONLY a FEW HOURS before the UNIVERSITY told us, putting SO much faith into her theory that she risked her OWN LIFE AND the lives of EVERYONE AROUND HER to go into a building that could be FULL of SOME DEADLY NEUROTOXIC…THING!!!! She was so worried about being the FIRST to know the gruesome gossip about who was dead and who wasn’t, she may have just sentenced us ALL to death!
I lunged for that stupid notebook again. She leaned back, half startled and half fearful, just enough to get out of my range. Her back stretched out the caution tape behind her.
“L-let me have this!” she pleaded, clutching the notebook tightly to her chest, as if somehow she could absorb it into her body. “Just let me have this. Please.”
I couldn’t catch my breath, I was so angry. Tears pricked at the corners of my vision. The ‘please’ cut through. “I’m not angry about the notebook,” I growled. “I’m angry that you might have exposed us ALL to the virus to get it.” As hard as I tried to stop it, my voice wobbled. “Do we only mean something to you if we’re in danger of dying? Do you care so little for those of us who are still alive?!?”
Absolute understanding and horror engulfed her face. Slowly, she raised a hand to her mouth, shaking her head, tears streaming. “No, n-no no nononononononononono, that’s not what I wanted at all!!” She reached out as if to hug me, then stopped herself. “The virus…” she whispered. “I don’t want you to get the virus. But…now I might…” She swore softly, notebook almost forgotten. “What have I done?”
If I were honest with myself, I felt as lost as she looked. But there was only one thing to be done. “Roomie, we need to get you to the infirmary. They can monitor you there, get you help if you need it, figure out if you have the virus or not, keep you from spreading it.” I went to hold her hand, but stopped myself, and my hand fell limply to my side. “I’ll walk over with you and bring anything you need from the dorm, ok? Then we can figure out what to do about your homework and classes and such. I’m sure the administration has some plan on how to handle this.”
She nodded. Her eyes pierced me, but as if coming from a long distance away. “And you’ll bring my computer over too, right?”
I gave a half-hearted chuckle. “Of course.” At least now she could enact her pokemon ouiji trick without hurting anyone.

* * *

While the nurses (and the school) were upset that my roommate had broken into a restricted part of campus, my roommate didn’t get in too much trouble. Honestly, I think administration was more afraid that her parents would file a lawsuit for not providing enough security around such a potentially dangerous area/potential hazard. Regardless, they looked after her health with the most caring of bedside manners.
I brought her computer a few hours later. Unable to hug me, she settled for making a heart with her hands She was already back to playing Pokemon by the time I left. At least she’d have something to do while an alternative lesson plan was being drafted.
The sun was rising by the time I got back to the dorm, so there was no point in going back to sleep. Exhausted with a busy day ahead, I made a beeline for the cafeteria and their bittersweet coffee.
The staff was putting out the first fresh trough of scrambled eggs when I walked in. The smell, combined with those of pancakes, syrup, and coffee, was invigorating, and it roused my mind as well as my appetite. I grabbed a heaping tray of all available options and went to sit down.
A few bedraggled or already over-caffeinated heads were hunched over the other tables. One of them I recognized, but the shock almost made me drop my tray. I rushed over and sat with him, almost violently smashing into the seat.
“Matt?! What are you doing here? Why aren’t you in quarantine at the hospital?!” I exclaimed. The image of his roommate (James?) being carted away on a stretcher that fateful night was burning behind my eyelids.
Surprised by my initial outburst, Matt quickly returned to his trademark grin. “Oh, you mean that weird virus? I missed it entirely; I’ve been home the past couple of weeks, I just got back to campus to find that I didn’t have a dorm anymore! Crazy, right?”
“Yeah…crazy…” I watched him dig into his eggs. He really had no idea, the horrors we’d been through on top of midterms, the horrors I’d been through watching my roommate destabilize. Though, to be fair, no one else knew about that last part. “S-so, where did they put you up?” I tried to make casual conversation.
He swallowed before answering. “There was an empty room slot up on the north end of campus. They stuck me there with some guy who’d already claimed the whole room for himself. He was pissed when it turned out he’d be getting a roommate after all and had to move all his stuff!”
“Why didn’t they put you in the lounges with the rest of us?”
He shrugged. “Beats me!”
Preventing further contamination, I thought.
“Anyway,” Matt continued, “I’m really sad about the change. My new dorm is SO lame, even besides the roommate thing! Did you know they have Fruit next to their nameplates? Freaking FRUIT!! Why, I ask you?!”
“Yeah, our RA’s were awesome!” I said with a sad smile. “Although anyone who chooses Pokemon as their floor theme is automatically awesome in my book!”
Matt laughed. “Yeah, I guess so! I was never really into the series, but I loved the little bird guy they put next to my name! (He had such a cute but tough design.)”
A bird? “Pidgey?”
He shook his head. “Don’t think it was that one…James(?) had that one…” His face fell. “How is James doing, anyway? Any news?”
I stared into my coffee cup. “None. Sarah’s the only one to die from this so far. I was going to ride up to the hospital with someone to check on everyone else.” I looked up at him. “Would you like to come with?”
He nodded. “Yeah…that would be good, thanks.”
As concerned as I was, I needed to keep a hopeful attitude, for their sakes. I forced a smile and changed the subject again. “So, how was your time at home?”
Matt brightened instantly. “Oh, it was awesome! My brother’s wedding was so much fun! And there was sooo much good food!!”
I laughed. “How was the dancing?”
“Oh, the dancing was-“ He stopped, eyes glazing over. “…spearrow…?” His head lolled and flopped into his scrambled eggs. He didn’t move.
I stared.
His head stayed down.
I quickly pulled his head up. Death by drowning in scrambled eggs may not seem like the worst way to go, but it still involved “going”.
But it was too late. Or, rather, he’d been out before his head even hit the plate. His breaths were shallow and slow.
My hand was shaking. “Help…” I croaked. Then louder. “H-HELP!”

* * *

I shivered under the blanket I’d been given. Matt was being rolled down to the ambulance on a stretcher now. I watched another paralyzed friend disappear behind those doors, be rushed off to the hospital with sirens blaring.
I was shocked and scared, but I was thinking. Matt hadn’t been on campus the past few weeks. He’d never been exposed to the virus. So why did he get sick?
A nurse came up to me with baggy eyes. “Come along, we’ll have to put you in quarantine so we can monitor your vitals.”
Could I be a carrier? No; I’d been around my roommate and our peers since Day 1 of the outbreak, and the people I’d spent the most time with were perfectly healthy. I’d even eaten with them. And yet, after five minutes of talking with Matt, not sharing food or utensils, he drops unconscious in his eggs. Why?
“Sweetie?” The nurse sounded a long way off. “Are you all right?”
And what had Matt said right before he passed out? “Spearrow?” Was that the Pokemon that had been next to his name? But he hadn’t known what it was called, he wasn’t even familiar with the series, and I hadn’t told him. And that wasn’t even considering how non-sequitor the comment had been; why say that before passing out?
The nurse’s cell phone rang. They answered it. “Hello?” A frantic chattering on the other end of the line. “What do you mean, more of them?!”
I looked up. Did that mean other people were getting sick?!
There was girl from my floor looking in on the scene. I caught her eyes. She was from my floor, I didn’t know her name, but she had the same fear in her eyes. Then her eyes went blank. Her lips read “Cleffairy?” before she dropped to the floor like a rag doll.
The nurse whirled towards her. “Oh, Christ!”
I bolted. The surprised cries of the nurse didn’t even reach my ears. The gurneys carrying more unconscious students flew past my eyes unseen. I bolted towards the one connection in all of this I could think of: my old dorm.
I tore through the caution tape, causing some excited yells. As I pushed through the double doors, suddenly it all made sense. Why only people from my floor were getting sick, even if they hadn’t been exposed to the building. Why they were acting so strangely before they went comatose, why they went comatose at all. Why the first one affected was Sarah.
I ran past the room doors, flashes of fallen friends passing by. (example) (example) Finally, I found what I had been looking for.
I stopped dead.
Next to the door were two name plates. The top one, James’, had a picture of a pidgey.
The bottom one had a Spearrow and belonged to Matt.
My knees shook. No one would have remembered this extraneous detail, no one else had even been in this building since the first incident. Except one person. One person for whom this meant the difference between life and death, one person who had a use for these name relations, one person who’d been in here just before this second outbreak with a notebook full of names.
My roommate.
She wasn’t monitoring people’s health through her Pokemon, she was causing them to go comatose.
My hand flew to my mouth as I thought of what happened to Sarah. She was killing them. She was killing them, and she didn’t even know it.

* * *

That’s why I’m running now. Running past the ghosts of my classmates, most of them probably comatose by now. I’m wracking my brain over the nearest exit, the quickest route to the infirmary, where the Name Rater is located in the first game and how far along my roommate was last time I saw her. She must be there by now, and with that notebook full of everyone’s names…
Lights and sirens are drowning out my thoughts, save the instinct that drives me to warn her, to stop her before she renders me helpless. I just hope there’s enough