Chapter 7: Death Race
'Tis thy suffering, thy pain
the bliss that's giving me rebirth
Your defiance all in vain
and all your tears reviving rain
that with graceful desperation
at the world's hallucination
shall leave so moribund a stain.
'Tis thy suffering, thy pain
the reason i find no rebirth
Cause your suffering's mine,
and so is your pain.
The only absolution I can gain
is a vivid bloody stain
and the melancholic rain
that with graceful desperation
as though in hallucination
shall accompany your death.
A prolonged silence prevailed after the end of the narration.
Tears were slowly flooding the Sphinx' eyes, breath unrythmical, hands shaky. It took great deal of minutes for police agent Serena Black to realise that the younger female had stopped talking; appalled, with the blank expression of a terrified person, she confined herself to staring motionless at her mysterious interlocutor.
"...He is the world's greatest hero...", she mumbled distractedly. "And he is...he was...I mean, the reason of his existence...Oh, Jesus. Sweet Jesus."
The Sphinx simply nodded in agreement, an unspeakably ominous expression imprinted on her face traits. For some strange reason, she found herself feeling compassion towards the police agent, something she had sworn she would no more allow herself to do. And yet here she was, indentifying with Serena, not only because she could recognise the etiquette of an amorous woman, but mainly because that specific amorous woman was bound to be deprived of every small beauty of life; and all of it was her fault.
Before she could even control herself, she had hugged the older female with all of the strenth that was still burning in the desert of her heart.
"Take care of yourself", she breathed.
Serena nodded affirmatively, the tranquilizing way a doctor reassures a mad person. And, like that, she left the apartment, found her way through the city, processing the shocking new information, ignorantly walking towards her death.
Exiting his office, Mark Andrews made a discovery.
It was just after the middle-aged cop had closed the door behind him, when it fell on the floor, right before his feet, after a small dance with the humid winter air. Nothing seemed substantially different about it; it was small, white and rectangular.
The message, though, was clear. It made his blood freeze.
Stop searching or your heart stops beating.
Andrews took a deep breath, letting the air fill his diaphragm and lungs and then letting it out slowly. Okay, there was no reason to panic. As a rational and responsible adult, he had chosen his path. He was conscious of the risk he was taking. That specific outcome had been a perspective since the beginning, after all.
At least, the man thought to himself, Now we know for sure there's something amiss about this case. Something indeed special is hidden behind it, and the cobalt hedgie has to do with at least half of it-
"Officer."
The voice, calm, smooth, yet with an underlying sharpness in it, made Andrews gasp in surprise. Fearing the worst, he slowly turned his petrified face, only to meet with the familiar ebony figure of that erratic fellow he'd had a talk with the other day. A chuckle of relief escaped his lips.
"Excuse me, I was a little distracted." he half-heartedly murmured the line. For some reason the guy would get him nervous, but the male would bet it was because of the exceptionally peculiar eye color: Ruby red, with an unexplainable gleam somewhere in it that gave the weird impression the guy could effortlessly delve into your darkest thoughts.
Shadow laughed, in a light-hearted way that didn't sound like him.
"Well, I would be too, if my life were openly in peril."
The piece of paper slipped from the officer's fingers and tumbled carefreely to the floor. For an insane second, every possibility marched in front of his eyes. Then he managed to stammer faintly a mere six words.
"How long have you been here?"
The Ultimate Life Form shrugged.
"A while, I guess."
"And what did you see?"
"I am afraid I saw just the paper attached on your door", Shadow rolled his eyes, still trying to figure out the man standing before him. There was a strange quality about the old guy he found pretty likeable; other than that Mark Andrews was a fairly simple person. His eyes would always betray his thoughts, in that they constantly changed expression so as to be in compliance with them. The hybrid shrugged.
"But in any case I think we could help each other very much.", he said confidently. The older male raised an eyebrow; smug guys weren't exactly his favorite type of acquaiantance, but for some reason the officer had decided to like that specific one.
"In what sense?"
Shadow smiled.
"Well, for starters, you don't die, at least not when I 'm around and thus capable of protecting you."
Andrews remembered the reason why he avoided chit-chatting with complacent people. Feeling his nerves a little more tense than he would usually allow them to be, he confined himself to grunting: "I can take care of myself."
His words were immediately followed by some kind of blade flying happily towards him. Mark's reflexes had worked of their own accord before he could even realise it, and the metallic object was soon on the floor with a small, melancholic clank.
The cop was now looking at his right hand, eyes gawking in awe. It had pulled the gun out of his pocket on time, not to mention it had had the guts to shoot at the thing before it could chop his neck. Slowly, his brain regained connection with the outer world, therefore realising the ebony hedgehog was intriguedly staring at him.
"I believe you.", Shadow commented simply, regaining composure the second after. There were humans that could prove themselves worth knowing and trusting, after all. "But still, I can tell you everything I know about Sonic and his life."
"And in exchange?"
"In exchange, you tell me about all the things you've found."
It was Andrews' turn to laugh.
"How can you be sure that I indeed have found something useful?"
He was expecting that the hybrid would burst into laughter, or that he would make some sarcastic comment. Instead, Shadow only gave him a serious look.
"Because you dodged the blade."
Mark Andrews pondered on the situation for a while. All this could prove itself vital for both of them; after all, Sonic himself had the smallest of intentions to cooperate with him, and there was something about Shadow that caught his attention. Hopefully, the cop would find the time to figure out what it was.
"Let's go someplace else", was his answer.
The poky, dimly lit corridor outside Mark Andrews' office stayed silent for a mangy six minutes and fourty five seconds.
That's how long it took for a badly hurt, terribly bleeding Serena to literally crawl up the small staircase, combined with the time it took for Mark and Shadow to leave without noticing her dying figure.
There had been a trap set for her some blocks ahead of the girl's apartment. Serena had somehow managed to escape, but still, they had already managed to shoot at her.
Her life didn't pass before her eyes; no cry of desperation escaped her lips; she simply propped her back against Mark's door, so as to feel less pain, but the physical pain was nothing compared to the emotional one the woman had to deal with.
Pallid, wan, hands trembling, Serena did the last thing possible to protect him. She slipped a small scrap of paper under the door. The solution to the maze was there, all it took now for her partner to figure it out was a close look.
Tears were slowly tumbling down her cheeks, but somehow her lips managed to sustain a peaceful smile, so as not to show Mark she was sad, so as to cause him the smallest worry possible. It only took another fourty five seconds for the corridor to turn silent again.
In the local police department, there was a corridor. In that corridor, there were three successive offices. If you got close to the second office, you'd see the corpse of a young woman blocking the door, smiling eerily in the pool of her own blood. If you opened the door, you'd find a piece of paper. If you raised the piece of paper, you would read:
Sonic/Shadow
-Same height, weight, stature
-Incredible speed, similar abilities, capability of using Chaos Energy
-Connection to two different scientists from the Robotnik family
-Strangely strong attatchment to two different human females
-The secret is in the blue color
PS. I have always loved you.