"Agent Shadow, come in," said the voice in his gold bracelet gracing his black arm in front of his white gloved hands.
He opened his eyes. He had been meditating quietly in this park, listening to nature. It had been a time of peace. He raised his bracelet up to level with his mouth.
"Shadow here," said the black hedgehog calmly if slightly smug.
"I thought we might have lost you. The base is under attack, Shadow. We need you to…," the GUN Commander's voice was cut off.
"Commander?" said Shadow one more time into his bracelet. There was only static. There was only one thing to do. He had to leave this peaceful park and head back to the GUN headquarters bunker underneath Central City. It was fortunate that he was not further out of town. A steady skate would get him to the GUN base quickly.
In a little under ten minutes, Shadow reached the entrance to the base. Normally it would look like an unoffending building a couple of blocks from the President's House labelled Department of Agriculture. On the top it was a five story skyscraper, but the real guts of the building were underground.
Today though it was engulfed in flame as robots were engaged in shootouts with GUN forces trying to break through the siege. They were a strange mix of units. There were Egg Pawns but many of the robots were old Meteotech models that Shadow did not recognize. There were also motobugs, katerkillers, and other Badniks.
What was the Doctor up to? Why would he stage a direct assault on GUN HQ and not the President's residence just down the road? Why attack GUN at all? The Doctor usually was not so blunt with objectives.
Shadow made his way to a line of tanks. The tank commander recognized him and signaled to come up on the GUN tank.
"Agent Shadow, go to see you. The enemy have already infiltrated the base. We are trying to breakthrough to the commander below," said the tank officer.
"Have they made any demands?" asked Shadow.
"No. However they are keeping us back. If you could cut a path for us, we could send in some mech troops and clear them out," said the tank officer.
"Accepted," said Shadow. Without a chaos emerald, he could not activate his most devastating attacks. Yet he could still stomp a few Badniks. He jumped down from the tank onto an Egg Pawn, breaking it open to release an animal. He began to charge a spin dash and took down a row of motobugs. This put him behind a row of Meteotech mechs.
Shadow jumped into the first one and then while still airborne hit the next five in succession. That broke down the resistence as the GUN tanks now had the advatange. Shadow used the confusion in the firefight to get to the front door. It was barricaded.
Shadow frowned, but then unleashed a huge chop to the door and got through. The inside of the building was designed like an old hotel. There were five levels of rooms visible from the open center atrium. There were the offices of the agriculture department sure enough. The place Shadow wanted to go was down not up.
He had expected a lot of resistance in the atrium. That was based on the fighting outside, but there did not seem to be any units to back up the fighters outside. That was poor planning, but Shadow thought little more about it as he found the service elevator on the first floor just on the other side of the atrium. He hit the button and the door opened to reveal a small platform and a giant robot arm.
Shadow ignored the giant robot arm, which was essentially a crane to lower the president's smaller plane to a secret launch area or bring the president in to the safety of the GUN base. Shadow looked at the passage back up since there was no roof. Some unmemorable music was being played. There was piano to it and only served to remind Shadow that this elevator was slow.
It was also marvelously contained. Shadow could not even hear the battle going on outside. He also wondered why there were no mechs in the elevator to stop him. The Doctor must have lost his touch. The elevator finally stopped and Shadow exited.
To his left was a secure hallway and to his right was a path to the parking garage. The visible vehicles in the garage looked trashed. Transport had evidently been important to these Eggman robots. Destroying cars, barring the doors, and keeping a fighting force outside. The mechs were not trying to keep GUN out, they were trying to keep something IN. What could that be?
Shadow entered the hallway and immediately a hail of bullets came at him. He backed out and closed the big white door behind him. There were mechs in that hallway. That hallway had many branches, but the most important one led to the nerve center of GUN, home to the GUN supercomputer. The presence of the enemy suggested that might be their objective.
Shadow looked around him and noted an HVAC vent above him. It was connected to a pipe that went over the hallway. Shadow may not be able to use it to completely bypass the enemy, but he could use it to get the intel on whoever was in the hall.
He decided the foes in the hall were not going to pursue him since they had not banged against the door or its bulletproof glass. Shadow jumped and hugged the HVAC pipe from below. He established a good grip and released the vent cover to open a hole. The turned on his hover shoes to help him propel into the hole. Once inside things went black except for the little shards of light denoting other vents ahead.
Shadow crawled down the shaft on all fours. He came to the first vent opening. He looked down. Sure enough there were motobugs and slicers guarding the hallway. There was a good number of them too. Shadow determined his plan of action and then crawled to the next vent.
Using his limited chaos control powers, Shadow materialized in the hall next to a slicer. Shadow kicked it into the wall and then homing attacked a ring of motobugs. This gave him access to the door at the end of the hall. Shadow opened it, exited, slammed it to jam it, and took a breath. He could hear the sounds of motobugs bouncing into the door. They could try if they wanted too.
Shadow now saw a short hallway with two doors. One led direct to the GUN supercomputer and the situation room. The other cut through some offices. Shadow decided to opt for the latter. He entered the first office and as he thought there was no one there. He skated past the work desk to get to the next door which also revealed an empty office.
Shadow also bypassed this office into the third. At the side of the third office was a closet marked janitor in big bold text. Shadow entered this door and it looked like a closet. There was a mop and some cleaning supplies including bleach and a water bucket. Shadow took the mop and noted that it was dry. He dipped it in the bucket of water and mixed a little bleach.
He let go of the staff end of the mop and began to observe the wall. He found a small block slightly dislodged. He pulled it and the wall disappeared in front of him revealing the innards of the situation room. It was dark as always and no one noticed the panel opening. Shadow noted the room was flooded with Egg Pawns and that the GUN Commander was the only GUN soldier conscious in the room.
Shadow grabbed the mop and warped next an Egg Pawn and drove the handle into his body. As the flicky hopped away, Shadow slung the mop handle with its water covered brush end to short out another Egg Pawn. This Pawn dropped an Eggman gun, which Shadow swept up. He then began to clear out another group of the Pawns with the oversized shooter.
Shadow causally threw a gun to the Commander. The two then proceeded to wipe out the remaining Pawns, who seemed more concerned with the computer than Shadow and the Commander. When the dust cleared, the ground was covered in flickies, but Shadow and the Commander were fine.
"Bout time you got here, Shadow," said the Commander, turning to the supercomputer.
"What happened here, Commander?" asked Shadow as he turned toward the massive computer monitor.
"I have no idea. Eggman robot activity increased and so we sent Agent Rouge to investigate. She has not reported in. What did they do to this computer?" yelled the Commander as none of his key imputs seemed to be doing anything.
"Rouge?" asked Shadow.
"Yes. I was hoping we could get online and contact her, but the last message that we sent was to you before they hacked the system. Looks like some kind of virus. Maybe I can get to the antivirus software…" mumbled the Commander.
"Na na na, you didn't say the magic word," taunted the GUN supercomputer.
"I don't have time for this," the GUN Commander slammed his fist on the panel. "Do you have any ideas?"
"I know of two people who fix this. One of them is the Doctor. The other one is…" started Shadow.
"Don't tell me! They might have bugged this thing. Just go get them. I can't offer you much in way of transport, not with everything down like this. Make do with what you can. We need to stop Eggman before he tries to build another amusement park," said the GUN Commander.
"Yes, Commander," said Shadow.