Chapter 137: Interlude XXIV – Omens
TL;DR
Looker immediately starts planning a cover story for Red — after hearing Bill barely alive on the radio and learning Rowan is likely dead, he orders stand-ins May and Sue to be ready in Red’s uniform and tells Perry to craft a “simple and boring” narrative for how Red’s day ends.
Red’s mind is depicted as a catastrophic memory flood, not a normal coma — Jason describes merging with him as swimming through contradictory identities and tainted memories, with only tiny gains like a peak slowing from 30 seconds to nearly a minute and no guarantee that means recovery rather than degradation.
Jason’s psychic treatment is less medicine than constant triage against ‘cannibalistic’ memory corruption — he cuts loose unstable memories, watches Red and Rowan’s fragments grotesquely fuse into hybrid scenes, and tries to model mental states Red’s subconscious can copy to purge the remaining alien taint.
Professor Oak uses the ruins of Pallet Lab to make a global political argument — in a major press conference he confirms 244 deaths, names Rowan Dunkirk and the Glitchmon threat, and publicly reverses himself to call for a moratorium on live Unown research.
Oak frames Glitchmon as a civilization-level infrastructure threat — unlike Ditto or ordinary outbreaks, these entities can’t be safely stored in Poké Balls, can corrupt devices and travel digitally, and could force regions to silo DexNet if any one region acts recklessly.
The chapter ends by escalating to a new crisis around Master Ball tech and Mewtwo — after Lance announces Indigo will resume Unown study and accelerate Silph’s Master Ball program with anti-telekinesis specs, Mewtwo decides ‘I have hidden long enough’ and implies direct intervention.
The Breakdown
Looker’s War Room Panic
The chapter opens in pure emergency mode: Looker gripping a microphone, waiting through dead air, trying to figure out whether Red is alive while Bill sounds “drunk or dying” over the radio. The key shift comes when Bill asks for Sabrina and Agatha because he needs his “brain back,” and Looker instantly pivots from fear to logistics, even planning decoys and media cover because Red’s involvement is already too visible to hide cleanly.
Inside Red’s Broken Mind
Red’s condition is rendered as a terrifying psychic experience rather than simple unconsciousness: a river of clashing memories, identities, and noise, ending in a “roaring drop into oblivion.” Jason merges with him, comes back shaken, and has to use his bead ritual to re-stabilize himself before admitting to Laura and Dr. Jang that Red is still responsive, but whatever’s happening may be painfully damaging him in ways no one fully understands.
Tiny Clinical Progress, Huge Emotional Cost
The hospital scenes land because they’re so intimate: Laura holding Red’s hand, stroking his hair, asking whether a 3-second improvement means anything, and Jason trying not to cry while saying only, “He would do the same for me.” Dr. Jang offers the brutal truth that the slowdown could mean slow recovery or broader degradation, and Jason quietly starts fearing that everyone may just be healing Red so the world can hurt him again.
Jason’s Psychic Cleanup Operation
The most vivid section is Jason’s attempt to actually work on Red’s mind, where memories don’t just blur — they eat each other. A childhood memory of home fuses with a forest flight and turns into a surreal alien house-world, then gets absorbed by a memory of hard laughter, forcing Jason to yank himself out before Red internalizes something even stranger; it’s gross, eerie, and very clearly not normal trauma.
A Nurse, Some Music, and a Way to Keep Going
After that psychic strain, the chapter gives Jason one of its few soft landings: nurse Marin offering him juice, speaking to him like a colleague, and helping him shape the room into something less sterile and deadening. Her kindness matters because it lets him step back into a more grounded identity — healer, explorer, guide — before he goes back under with music playing and Red’s hand in his.
Oak Turns a Ruined Lab into a Stage
Then the story jumps to journalist Zoe Palmer at Professor Oak’s press conference, where the wreckage of Pallet Lab is very deliberately left visible, right down to the twisted metal splitting the word “welcome.” Oak is tired, somber, and politically sharp: he names the dead, including Dr. Amara Singh, says the total toll is 244, insists knowledge can be rediscovered but lost time cannot, and uses personal grief without losing command of the room.
The Public Story of Rowan, Glitchmon, and the Moratorium
Oak finally says the quiet part out loud: Rowan Dunkirk likely primed the Unown for hostility, Glitchmon are real, Bill used a government-authorized emergency shutdown, and Oak destroyed his own lab because the Pokédex servers had become a vector. Then he fully reverses his earlier stance and calls for a temporary halt to live Unown research, arguing that one reckless region could threaten the entire interconnected knowledge system.
Zoe Hunts the Red Varys Angle, and Mewtwo Decides to Act
Zoe’s big question is the one everyone is dodging: what exactly was Red Varys doing at the center of all this? She leaves convinced Interpol is hiding something about Red’s role, while elsewhere Fuji and Mewtwo watch Lance announce that Indigo will resume Unown research anyway and fast-track Silph’s Master Ball tech as a containment answer — at which point Mewtwo, hearing it was partly designed for minds like his, decides the time for hiding is over.