The next morning, Shadow got up extra-early and left his backpack on his bed. Powering up his jet-skates, he headed down to Amy's house. Stupid of him, maybe, but he kind of felt he should say goodbye properly . . .

The "Come Right In" sign was still up, but the house was quiet. Knuckles was snoozing on the couch, and Sonic was peacefully asleep on the windowsill. He slept anywhere. Amy seemed to be the only one up, quietly washing dishes in the kitchen. Shadow stepped in heavily so as not to startle her.

"Hi," she said coolly, glancing over her shoulder and going back to work.

Shadow shifted from foot to foot, calculating possible lines.

"Is Maria up yet?"

"Maybe. She hasn't been downstairs yet, but she's an early riser," said Amy, not looking up.

Shadow was still calculating his next line when Amy spoke up again.

"Don't you worry about her," she said calmly, soaping up a plate. "She didn't cry last night. Much."

It was a wonder the amount of bitterness in her voice didn't break that plate. Shadow closed his eyes.

"But then again, I'm wasting my breath," continued Amy, her voice biting. "You wouldn't care anyway, would you?" She threw down the sponge in a fit of wrath and turned to glare at Shadow. He was now regarding her quietly, with a light in his eyes that would normally have made Amy cower in an instant. Not now, though.

"Well, what are you standing here for?" she scowled, her small fists clenching at her sides. "Come to make it worse for her? Get out of here! If you don't care, at least don't come around here to prove it!"

Shadow surveyed this small and wrathful pink creature. Heaven knew what kind of thoughts he may have entertained, but he didn't act on any of them. Shrugging, he turned around and headed back out the door. Sonic, just waking up and massaging one eye drowsily, glanced up in surprise. Then, jumping to his feet, he whisked upstairs in a flash of blue.

Barely had Shadow walked forty paces away from Amy's house before there was a distant cry of "Wait!" For a moment he considered taking off, but in the end he stopped and turned around. Maria came dashing up, still struggling into her coat.

"Wait Shadow," she panted, sliding to a halt and fumbling in her pockets. "Are you leaving?"

Shadow nodded silently.

"Do they have aurora up in Holoska?" asked Maria. "Aurora borealis?"

"I think so."

"Could you record one, please?" Maria held out a small tape recorder. "I read once that the aurora can sing and make sounds, and I always wanted to hear one . . . could you?"

"If I hear one, I'll record it," said Shadow quietly, taking the recorder. There was a silence; he couldn't bring himself to look into Maria's eyes.

"I'd call," he said tersely. "But there's no cell phone service in Holoska. Not even G.U.N. cell phones."

"I understand."

More silence.

"Shadow," she whispered suddenly, and threw her arms around him. He felt himself going stiff, and pulled away slightly. She must have sensed it, because she let go, resigned.

"Come back soon," she murmured, and turned quietly to head back to Amy's house. Shadow watched her for a moment; then he shook his head and struck out for HQ.

. . .

Picking up his backpack from his room, Shadow strode out the door. The minute he stepped out into the snow, he ran into his teammates. What, had they been lurking in wait for him or something? He gave them a cold glance.

"So," said Rouge.

"So," retorted Shadow, inclining his head in sarcastic agreement.

"You're really going through with it, aren't you?" said Rouge.

"Looks like it, doesn't it?" Shadow rocked back on his heels. "Was there ever any doubt?"

"I can't believe you," said Rouge bitterly. "You'd really do that to Maria? And everyone else? You don't even care that you're missing Christmas?"

"It doesn't bother me," Shadow shrugged, turning away. "I don't really care about Christmas per se. I don't have the patience for any of you, or for your sickly-sweet traditions; I never understood them anyway."

"Oh, I guess that works, then," said Rouge thoughtfully. "So you'll be glad to get away from it all, huh?"

"Yes, actually. I assume you enjoy it, but for me it's nothing special. Fact is, I feel more alone in the middle of your giddy gatherings than I do when I'm actually alone."

"Oh," said Rouge. "Well then, I guess you'll do fine."

"Yes. Don't worry about me." Shadow tightened the straps on his backpack and prepared to head out.

"But we'll think about you, now and then," ventured Rouge.

"That's nice of you."

"Maybe you could think of us?" Rouge continued, her eyes fixed on the toe of her boot as it scuffed from side to side before her. "Just once, you know? When you're gnawing on a bit of year-old pot-roast in some ratty diner, all alone . . ."

Shadow looked at her for a minute, then rolled his eyes eloquently and started walking.

"Or maybe when you're holed up in some freezing cold alley," continued Rouge, raising her voice slightly so he could still hear her. "And there's a guy a few trash cans down who looks like he might wanna mug you, but you're too tired to do anythin' about him anyway and you don't have anything for him to take."

Shadow kept walking, unmoved.

"But hey, at least you'll be happy!" Rouge persisted. "You're lucky. If things get rough, if the frostbite starts getting you down, you can just think of us, all snug and together and having Christmas dinner, and then thank your lucky stars that you aren't stuck in the middle of that!"

"Desist," interrupted Omega sharply. "You are hurting him."

"You gosh darned bet I'm hurting him," snapped Rouge, her facade of cool innocence entirely discarded by now. Cupping her hands around her mouth, she shouted after Shadow's retreating form.

"Don't worry, we'll even get rid of all the decorations and food before you come back so you won't even have to think about it!"

She snatched up a handful of snow and hurled it after him, but it fell short without any attempt on his part. He kept right on walking without once turning back; only, one hand swung up to his forehead, two fingers extended, and arced outwards in a sarcastic salute. Rouge muttered a string of highly unflattering terms.


By jet-skate it was about two hours to Shadow's assigned post. He had started out in the blinding white glare of eight o'clock in the morning, yet two hours later he arrived to find Holoska dark. Holoska was always dark, this time of year. The tilt of the planet dictated it would be so.

It wasn't quite the middle of nowhere, not really. There was a little hamlet, just barely clinging to its own existence, pretty much the farthest north that any town would ever be built. It was quite the ritz, for Holoska; it even had electricity, and a road leading to it. No gas station, though. There was a little tavern, a little convenience store whose wares were fifty percent alcohol, a little motel. Maybe ten or eleven houses, choked in snow, and a research station, standing out like a horse in a bin full of kittens. It sprawled the entire length of the town, looming in concrete-walled pomp, bristling with antennas and sensors. Presumably, that was where most of the complaints of electrical disturbances were coming from.

Shadow booked into a room at the motel and dropped off his backpack. Not surprisingly, he was the only guest; it baffled him why they'd even build a motel in this frozen wasteland. Maybe the researchers at that station had family or extra members come to visit, sometimes.

He went down to the research station first, showed them his credentials, asked them for a description of the disturbances. Then he went from house to house, asking the residents for their take on the matter as well.

Evidently, the story went like this: A few weeks ago, there had been an earthquake in the area. Nothing serious, but it had shifted the ground around a bit, creating some new cliffs and crags in the normally flat landscape. Wouldn't have been a problem, but ever since then, there'd been constant issues with anything electric or magnetic. The instruments at the research station utterly refused to work. People's appliances turned on and off randomly. Sometimes the lights even turned on and off randomly. Most bizarre of all, the town had started picking up way more radio stations than it used to, and now even picked up TV channels for the first time in its history. Nobody could explain just what was going on, not even the scientists at the research station.

After making the rounds, Shadow fetched some of the instruments he'd brought and began testing various areas. It was a tedious, mind-numbing job; what with the bitter cold, it was pretty numbing on the extremities, too.

Hours and hours later, he deduced that the disturbances seemed to be coming from a point west of the town. Striking out in that direction, he came to the top of a large stone cliff. The howling wind swept it clean of snow, and the rocks were sharp-edged and smooth; this must be one of the new cliffs that formed after the earthquake. Getting down on one knee, he ran his fingers over the cold surface of the clifftop. It felt strange, somehow.

He pulled out his instruments to try running another electrical test, only to find that they were completely non-functional. Wow. G.U.N. had designed them to be entirely resistant to electrical interference, it would take a huge disturbance even to make them falter. That was suspicious . . .

Perhaps the scientists back at the research station would know what kind of rock this was. It would pay to bring them a sample. Shadow flexed his fingers, shaking the cold stiffness out of them, before muttering "Chaos Spear!"

Nothing. He looked at his hand, surprised, and tried again. Still nothing. Oh, now this was just fine.

Getting up, he skated away from the cliff, until he was almost back in the hamlet.

"Chaos Spear!"

A bolt of green energy flew from his hand, sending up an explosion of snow and leaving a steaming crater in the smooth white surface. Now Shadow was really getting suspicious.

He asked at the laboratory, but the scientists knew nothing about what type of rocks those might be. They focused more on weather patterns and such, since that was their field of study. Still, this was something G.U.N. should know about. Pulling out his cell phone, Shadow skated southwards until he got service, which was almost an hour.

"Agent Shadow, reporting," he said, as soon as someone picked up. "I may be getting a lead on the electrical disturbances. There's a cliff about four miles west of the town that formed after a recent earthquake, and the instruments you gave me go completely dead when I'm near it. It seems to have a strange effect on my Chaos powers, too. Either something in the region of that cliff is creating the disturbances, or the rocks themselves are doing so."

"Duly noted, Agent Shadow," said the dispatcher. "Interesting development. See if you can't scout around that cliff, check for some other possible cause. Check especially that there isn't something under or behind the cliff itself; this sounds a lot like something Eggman might try. Maybe a side effect of one of his schemes?"

"Possible, but not likely. He's ill right now. Still, I'll check."

"Roger. Good luck, Agent Shadow. Stay warm."

Shadow nodded wearily and hung up. For a minute he looked at the cell phone in silence. He got service here . . . he could call home, technically. Maybe not now—it was only the evening of the first day—but maybe tomorrow, on Christmas Eve, he would call. Maybe. He didn't really relish the thought of it. Come to think, even thinking about home was a mistake; he'd been able to forget about it well enough while doing his research, but now he kept trying to guess what the others were doing now. Ah, to heck with them. At least out here it was peaceful, with nobody stepping on your toes or yelling in your ear.

Skating back to the little outpost in Holoska, he glanced up at the sky and halted. Immediately above him, a shimmering curtain of blue light was twisting and flapping majestically through the sky. The aurora borealis. He stood watching, his ears swiveling back and forth, but heard nothing. At last the light faded, diminished, and vanished, without having made so much as a sound. So, they didn't sing after all.

Tossing the various instruments into his backpack at the motel, Shadow declared himself officially on break. He'd continue his assignment, but first he had some dinner to get and some misery to drown.