Prologue

What the Hell... what the Hell?!

His lungs began to flame, starved of breath, struggling to expand. His ribs spread, mouth gaped, nostrils flared, but still he could pull no air into his burning lungs.

I can't... I can't!!

His whole body writhed with panic and desperation- feet kicked, fist pounded, nails scraped. His heart raced, beating against it's airless cage, threating to break free and producing all the pains of such an escape. An inferno had erupted in his lungs, a jackhammer in his chest, and he could do nothing- nothing- about it, and it was at this realization that the hedgehog thought two words he had always been too proud to utter:

Help me...

His eyes and vision turned inward from the room and floorboards he hadn't even noticed; his head buzzed as every neuron fired off in death writhes of their own. Where was everyone? He couldn't even remember what he had been doing. His mind jumped to the blond-haired, blue-eyed Maria- no, things had happened since then. Sonic, a jungle- no, that was the past, too. Doom's eye circled- no. Club Rouge- no!

Not a flicker of his most recent actions came to mind- nothing. He couldn't even remember waking up to witness his own death- and surely his body was dead, now. Somewhere he had heard of people staying conscious after their own decapitation- brain cells had enough energy to last a few seconds without oxygen, or so that was the theory. He took a quiet moment to confirm that he was in fact, dead; the scuffling and panic had stopped; He wasn't breathing; his heart had ceased all pumping...

It was taking a long time for him to lose consciousness.

It was getting ridiculous.

What the Hell.

Shadow's eyes flicked from under their half closed lids, adjusting to the pitch black room. He could only determine the fuzzy grain of the wood floor he was supposed to be decomposing on.

Oh, how morbid, the obsidian hedgehog mused to himself. With little effort and much enthusiasm he pushed himself off of the floorboards, pausing to acknowledge the act; he hadn't died, and at that realization he let out a shaky sigh of relief.

He fell right back into a world of panic; something wasn't right. His chest heaved, and there was no rush of air past his teeth or down his throat. He closed his mouth and tried again- not a sniff tickled his long nose. For a moment, he sat there, completely still, shocked beyond action, and it was in this complete inanimateness that a second something became not right. Trembling, he pulled his arm to his chest, pressed its palm against his fur, and felt not even a flutter of a heartbeat.

Before he had a chance to rationalize his own state of being, movement stirred his furry ears, and the hedgehog spun toward its source. There, leaning against the plain wall, seeming perfectly small and meek, was a girl. She was dressed for the occasion: black shoes, a black dress, and a black bucket hat which hid half her face. She stood, pressed against the wall on the otherwise empty far side of the room, arms locked behind her. Caring hardly for her identity and wholly for the situation, Shadow dropped all formality in favor of enlightenment.

"Wh... What's... what's happened to me?"

She seemed to shrink. Lowering her head as if to mutter, the girl swallowed before opening her mouth, closing it, and tightening her crossed arms as if to brace herself.

"You died. Right there. And.. You're here- standing, here- now. Because- you're not dead anymore. Because... you're... undead."

A moment of silence followed. Shadow's eye twitched as he took a step toward her.

"I'm-"

"Undead," She hurriedly interjected as if to halt her audience's advance. "You were bitten- and now you're dead- undead, I mean."

The hero took a second to realize that his heart was supposed to skip at that juncture and that it hadn't. The girl turned her bucket-hatted head to look at the second blank wall, whispering off-handedly, trying very hard to ignore her own words.

"You... were... bitten... by- another vampire."