Part 3 - Maria

XXI

Gerald stood in front of a full-length mirror, adjusting his coat. He resettled his glasses on his nose, then picked up his briefcase from the desk and turned to leave the room. Maria waited in the doorway, flanked (as always) by Shadow. She looked disappointed. Gerald couldn't judge the hedgehog's expression as well, but it seemed the same as hers.

"Are you certain you absolutely must leave now?" Maria asked.

"I'm afraid so," Gerald told her reluctantly. "Shuttle rides from the ARK back to Earth always take so long, and they requested I join them tomorrow. I'll have to depart immediately if I'm to make it on time." He ushered both of them out of the room, and all three continued down a long hallway. "You two go on without me. I'm sure Shadow can think of more to show me by the time I return, in any case." The hedgehog chuckled, pleased by the comment.

"All right, then," Maria sighed, resignedly. "Take care, Grandfather. See you soon!"

"I hope you enjoy the meeting, Professor."

"Goodbye, Maria, Shadow. Have fun." The girl smiled, then reached toward Shadow, who took her hand and led her down a side hall. She waved back at him, then the two turned a corner and disappeared.

XXII

Gerald drummed his fingers against the briefcase on his lap, watching the stars flit by his window. He wondered idly what Maria and Shadow were doing. The hedgehog had learned the use of his new shoes with his usual speed and wanted to show Maria some of the things he could now do with them. He had asked Gerald if he wanted to see, too, but unfortunately the scientist had other matters to tend to. Business before pleasure.

Soon after he had sent in his final report on Project Shadow, Gerald had received a summons to a meeting back on Earth. This didn't surprise him. Some things were better understood when explained in person. His briefcase contained copies of the data his team had gathered about Shadow in the first few weeks of testing, and he had printed excerpts from his own notes detailing Shadow's abilities. Although he didn't know if he would need them, he also had a few photographs of Shadow, in case the others were curious about exactly what he looked like.

Outside, the blackness of outer space lightened to hazy gray-white, then pale blue. "We're almost there, sir," the pilot called. "Please prepare to disembark."

"Alright. Thank you." The scientist closed his window, checked once more that his briefcase had everything it should, then settled back into his seat to wait for the landing.

Several minutes later, the shuttled had maneuvered into a docking bay and come to a stop. Gerald freed himself from the safety harness, picked up his case, and exited the spacecraft. He made it as far as the terminal door before he stopped abruptly, confused and slightly alarmed.

He would have expected someone there to pick him up and perhaps ferry him to wherever he would be staying until he had to return to the ARK. He might have guessed some of the other attendees of the meeting might also be waiting to receive him. Instead, he saw the dark-suited man, his hands in his pockets, standing before a semicircle of armed GUN soldiers.

GUN? What's GUN doing here?

"Professor Gerald Robotnik." The dark-suited man's greeting was anything but welcoming. "We would like for you to come with us." As the scientist gaped at him, uncomprehending, he continued flatly, "You are under arrest for breaking your agreement with the government and creating weapons of mass destruction. You will be put under armed guard and escorted to Prison Island. You shall await your sentence there." He removed one hand from his pocket, gestured. The soldiers moved forward.

He stood completely still as they confiscated his briefcase and snapped cuffs around his wrists. He was entirely compliant when they led him to the car and directed him to the back seat. He remained totally mute as they drove, transferred him to an equally guarded ship, then left him in a small cell. He stared blankly around him, seeing but not seeing the narrow desk, the small chair, the barred window high up on the wall, the empty computer monitor perched on the desk.

Then he started thinking again. He sat in the chair, heavily, and stared at the door that he knew would be locked. Why? he wondered, over and over. Why why why? And then, unbidden, panic. He scrambled back to his feet and lurched toward the door, searching frantically for something. He eventually found a small speaker and pressed the button next to it. "Excuse me," he called, speaking rapidly. He tried not to let his voice shake. "Excuse me, excuse me."

"Yes?" the speaker crackled back. "We can hear you."

"What- Why am I here?"

"The government says you've been going back on your word and manufacturing weapons. Your official charge is treason." The answer was dull, dry, unconcerned. "They've sent people to the space colony. They're shutting it down. Everyone will be rounded up and returned to Earth. Your subordinates will be joining you here soon."

Gerald stared at the speaker, his mind on one thing. Maria.

XXIII

Shadow circled the room, gradually increasing his speed. Maria was seated in a chair by the door, her hands in her lap, watching him.

He had realized very quickly that the hover skates (his own term for them) responded so well they might have just been part of his body. Using them was purely instinctual; he didn't have to think about it as he did with Chaos Control or Chaos Spear. He had indeed managed to use them to hover off the ground, against the Professor's advice, and learned that long, gliding strides worked better than actually running. If, that is, he planned to use the jet nozzles rather than treat his shoes as normal footwear.

Finally, as he began finishing a circuit of the room in less than ten seconds, he judged he was going fast enough. He glanced over at Maria, who smiled encouragingly (but a little nervously). Smiling back at her, he broke out of his circular path and headed straight for a wall. He heard Maria gasp.

Carefully-or as carefully as he could manage at that speed-he timed his strides in order to have one foot free the moment he reached the wall. The next thing either of them knew, he was running right up the wall, then continued onto the ceiling. He slowed down a little too much when he was nearly across it and dropped back to the floor. He hurriedly flipped himself in midair and landed on his feet, then straightened and dipped in a shallow bow.

Maria laughed, clapping. "Goodness, I didn't know you would try that," she giggled. "I don't know if you'd want to show Grandpa, though. He might-"

A buzzer alarm went off, cutting her short. They stared at each other, Maria with apprehension, Shadow with confusion. "What's going on?" he asked.

"It's an assembly call," she answered, getting out of her chair. He walked over to her. "When it sounds, it means something's wrong, and everyone has to go to the Colony's shuttle port in case we need to leave." She looked slightly frightened. Shadow took her hand and squeezed it gently, reassuring her.

"Well then, let's see what's going on," he suggested, leading her from the room. They hadn't gone far when the alarm turned off. They shared another brief glance, both confused this time. Then they heard the screams.

"Don't move!" one voice barked sharply. "Hands in the air!"

"Stop shrieking, woman," commanded another, impatient. "We won't shoot you if you don't resist." The screams subsided into quiet, terrified sobs. Doors banged open, somewhere out of sight, and more voices were raised in fear and alarm. Maria flinched. Another door was flung open, and suddenly they were there, spilling into the hallway, around six of them, helmeted and visored and armed with rifles

GUN soldiers.

The two of them froze, not sure what to do. One spotted them, turned to his fellows, said something. "That's it!" exclaimed a different soldier, pointing at Shadow. "That's the experiment, the so-called Ultimate Life Form."

"Capture it!" the tallest one ordered. "Preferably alive, although I don't mind dead." They advanced.

Shadow took two slow steps back, then turned and fled, bringing Maria with him.

XXIV

The two of them ran down the hallway, back the way they came, the hedgehog leading the girl by the hand. Behind them, in hot pursuit, were the GUN soldiers. The hallway was suddenly a corridor, with rounded walls. The entire left side of the corridor was transparent, showing stars and the Earth, looming blue white and green in the foreground.

Shadow was thinking hard as he ran. Ran, because Maria would never be able to keep up with him if he used his hover skates. So he ran, as though he wasn't wearing them.

He was debating whether to risk using Chaos Spear on the soldiers to delay them. For obvious reasons, the Professor had not tested the effects of Chaos Spear on living creatures. Not after seeing what it did to inanimate objects. Shadow knew that he could very will kill the soldiers if he attacked them.

He took a brief glance behind him. Maria was doing her best to keep up, gasping a little for breath. He frowned, worried, and considered slowing down just a little, but she caught his concerned gaze and shook her head. He returned his attention to the corridor in front of him. No, he wouldn't use Chaos Spear. Maria would not want that, would not want him hurting people that way, and he personally didn't feel like blowing people into pieces with her present.

Chaos Control, then? No, not that either. He'd never tried bringing anything with him, aside from what he was wearing. He didn't want to make Maria his first attempt.

Maria squeezed his hand. He looked at her again. She nodded at a door in the right wall, toward the end of the corridor that they were fast approaching. He altered their direction immediately. Cries went up from the soldiers behind them as they realized what they were doing. He stopped running, let go of Maria's hand, and faced them.

The soldiers froze, mid-stride, two yards from where he stood. Maria paused, unnerved. "Come on," Shadow beckoned to her, punching the entry code into the number pad next to the door. "Get in."

"What did you-?"

"I froze time around them. It's not going to hold for long." He tugged her toward the doors as they slid slowly open. "Get in." She hurried through the doorway. Shadow positioned himself before it, then flicked his hand at the number pad. A golden lancet struck it and exploded, sending a shower of sparks into the air. The doors beeped and began sliding closed. The hedgehog slipped quickly through them before they shut all the way. The moment they did, he heard the soldiers outside swear and begin hammering on the door.

Now there was no way into the room short of breaking the door down or hauling it open manually.

He looked around. Maria was leaning against some sort of control panel, catching her breath. They were in one of several emergency escape ports. The control panel in the middle of the room hummed gently, lights from dozens of buttons winking at him. The wall directly across from them was also glass, with the curve of Earth centered at the bottom edge. He wandered over to it and gazed out for a moment, then turned around.

"What now?" he asked. "If and when they get in here, we won't have anywhere to go." Maria straightened up, sighing.

"I don't know," she confessed. They stood in silence for a few seconds, both looking at Earth. A loud metallic clang made Maria jump and look back at the door.

"They're trying to break in," Shadow muttered, leaving his spot by the wall. As he walked behind Maria, he spotted her return her attention to the control panel and quickly jab something on it. A glass cylinder descended almost instantaneously, trapping him within it. He stopped walking before he ran into it, then looked down in alarm. He was standing at the edge of a large white circle, one of several that marked the locations of the escape pods around the room. "What are you doing?" he yelled, banging on the smooth inside surface with his fists.

Maria smiled faintly. "Those soldiers are coming after you," she reminded him, turning to face the pod. Her voice was muffled by the thick glass. "You have to get away."

"I'm not leaving you behind!" He backed up, calculating. Using a Chaos Spear at this range would probably injure him badly. It would also possibly send shards across the room. With Maria there, he wasn't willing to take any risks whatsoever.

"Don't worry about me, I'll be fine," Maria assured him. More sounds from the direction of the door. "You heard what they said earlier, to the others. As long as we don't resist, they won't hurt us."

"But..." He couldn't really think of an argument. Couldn't think very much at all, in fact.

She met his eyes and held them, suddenly serious. "Please, in my place, for all the people living on that planet-"

"Maria?"

Maria was still saying something, but the GUN soldiers outside had resumed their efforts at getting the door open. Over the clangs and banging, combined with the glass barrier between them, Shadow couldn't hear her. Instead, he kicked at the glass, cursing its resilience. The same toughness that enabled its occupants to survive in outer space also prevented him from breaking it.

"Maria, I'm telling you, I'm not going to-"

The door burst open.

XXV

Maria whirled around as the GUN soldiers filed rapidly into the room, adopting a tight semicircle in front of the doorway. She was standing between them and Shadow's escape pod. From within, he watched helplessly, his hands pressed to the glass as though he could somehow fall through it.

"Step away from the control panel, little girl," one of the soldiers ordered. He was the tallest one, the one seemingly in charge. "We don't want to hurt you. We just have some...business with the creature behind you."

"Hands in the air," another soldier added. The entire group had their rifles aimed at the two of them.

Maria looked at the soldiers, then resolutely turned to the control panel and reached for the release lever. "Don't do it!" Shadow pleaded, pounding his escape pod's walls. At the same time, the soldiers shouted warnings: "Don't mess with us, girl!" "Step away from there, now!" "We're not playing around here! Stop now or we'll shoot!" Maria ignored them all.

One soldier took a step forward, brandishing his weapon. "I'm warning you, girl-" There was a sharp crack, a crisp sound that sliced through the air and brought stifling silence in its wake. Maria cried out and jerked backward like something had struck her, clutching her waist.

Someone was screaming her name in a hysterical voice. It took Shadow a moment to realize it was himself.

The soldiers all stood stock still, stunned. Then they rounded on the bewildered man in front, berating him for firing on an innocent. "It was an accident," he protested wildly, his eyes huge. "I only meant to startle her-"

Shadow was staring in horror at Maria, who was holding onto the release lever with one bloodstained hand. The other was pressed over her stomach, where a crimson stain was slowly spreading. She looked up at him, forced a smile through her pain, and spoke one last time, strangely clear over the soldiers' clamor.

"Goodbye, Shadow the Hedgehog."

She yanked the lever down and collapsed. Shadow saw the soldiers start and run toward him, carefully avoiding Maria's prone form on the ground, but it was too late. He shot down into the darkness of space, surrounded by all sides by the carelessly winking stars.

He felt his legs give way, and he sank to his knees, staring blankly at his hands. Nothing. He had done nothing, nothing to save her, nothing to stop her from doing what she did. He hadn't even thought to Chaos Control out of the escape pod, and even if he had, he wouldn't have managed it. His mind was much too far gone in shock. The necessary focus, the concentration he still needed to use his power...he had lost it all the moment the escape pod's walls encased him, lost it to the fear he'd felt for Maria.

He raised his head, watching the ARK spiral away from him. Maria...

She was gone.