Chapter 11: Midnight Adventures, Part I

Through the eternal night aboard the ARK two figures were rushing, their steps clattering against the metal floorboard, silhouettes sharply outlined against the white starlight filtering in throught the window. A casual observer might even have thought of them as ghosts, haunting the deserted corridors of the space station when everyone else had gone to sleep...

Except ghosts don´t giggle, of course.

"Mmmf", managed Maria, her shoulders trembling with suppressed laughter as she finally let go of Shadow´s hand and stopped. For the last – rather hectic- 200 metres the girl had been trailing the hedgehog behind, ocassionally having to yank him back into balance when her friend had been in danger of stumbling again.

"Wheew, that was a close one, wasn´t it?"

"You bet." Shadow grinned, running one gloved hand through his quills. He wasn´t nearly as out of breath as the blonde girl but still enjoyed the pause.

They spent mostly every night now exploring the colony, or just playing or talking in Maria´s room. Earlier the girl had visited Shadow only during the day but they soon found out that other people also had an interest in the hedgehog, taking him away for yet another test of reflexes or scanning. During the night, however, they were all alone...

X--X

"That sounds…suggestive."

"May I remind you that this is K-rated?"

X--X

Maria had taken to sleeping during the days for the last few months (Gerald believed she might be having a growing phase and didn´t worry) while Shadow…the hedgehog seemed to be burning with an inner energy, never tired out no matter how few hours of rest he got.

The scientists didn´t know about this of course and Maria didn´t plan on telling them. So far, the experiments had never been painful or stressing for her friend and she didn´t much like the thought of them pushing him to his limits just to see how far he could actually go.

That was also why they usually kept their nocturnal expeditions a secret. Their strategy worked out fine; Shadow was nearly undetectable with his black fur, so he could peek around corners in advance. His soft, bare feet made no sound whatsoever when he moved slowly and his sharp hearing warned them if any other humans were close by. If they ever happened to nearly run into somebody despite all that, Maria would just grab his hand and take off at her top speed.

Just now had been such a situation.

Vincent´s father, General Graves, kept such odd hours! Didn´t he ever sleep? A few corridors away from where he had suddenly stepped out of his office they seemed to be safe, though.

"Ready to continue?"

"Sure…" Shadow hesitated. "But I don´t know this part of the colony at all."

"Well, neither do I." His friend winked at him "But hey, that´s what makes it fun. Let´s pretend we´re 'Raiders of the lost ARK', okay?"

The hedgehog, on whom any references to earth movies were lost, merely cast her a blank look.

"Doesn´t matter. Come, on, catch me!"

The ultimate lifeform beamed, then took of after her. Maria´s happy-go-lucky, carefree personality was infectous and he found himself going along with it ever more often, enjoying her presence.

ooo

A sudden sting at this description of Maria made Sonic look rapidly away. 'Happy-go-lucky, carefree personality'? Once he had been like that, too…
It seemed like a lifetime ago now. And the time of a life can sometimes be so short…

The blue hedgehog walked quickly over to the window and looked out into the night whose dark sky seemed to mirror the infinite blackness seen from the ARK. There was a strange hurt in his chest and he felt as if something long-forgotten there was trying to extract itself from underneath a pile of rubble…

"Uhm, hello? I´m not talking to a back of quills, just so you know."

"Just…keep going, okay? I´ll hear you." Sonic answered without turning around.

ooo

They were walking again, squinting now in the dim half-light of the small fluorescent stripes on the walls. Being the only source of illumination around this part, it was barely enough to discern any doors leading away from the main corridor, let alone reading the signs on the sides.

"Hey, this one looks interesting! What do you think?"

Shadow stared at the metal frame. "I don´t know. Doesn´t seem different from any of the other doors to me. What´s so special about it?"

Maria flashed him a smile, the shadows on her face giving her a far more sinister look.

"Well, it´s got a lock."

The hedgehog rolled his eyes. Typical Maria.

"Hmm, you need a password to get in here…well, if this is a lab of my grandfather…" Slim fingers speedily typed in her own name. A green light flashed across the key pad and an audible click let them both know she had succeeded.

"Huh. Trust granddad never to change his passwords. Bet he will be using 'Maria' still in fifty years!" The girl was about to say more but the view which greeted both of them upon entering silenced her at once.

The laboratoy before them was huge. Rows and rows of pods and tubes lined the wall, glistening in the rays of weak light falling in from the door. All of them were filled with liquid and some of them also contained…things…Maria hastily looked away when her gaze had fallen upon one of the creatures inside. It seemed to consist of some kind of fluid itself, only slightly more dense than its surroundings and light blue in its colour – and it kept changing, contracting into a ball then stretching out again, sickening the girl when she so much as glanced at it. Apart from two dark greenish blotches at eye height and a sort of long-stretched metallic skull, reminiscent of the head of a goat stripped of its skin, the creature had no discernible features, making it look disturbingly alien.

The room, however, was obviously much more than just a zoologist´s (or horror-movie director´s) paradise: A massive inner chamber with glass walls dominated the centre of the lab, connected to a console from where someone could seemingly operate the force-field generators embedded in the floor of the glass dome. The blonde girl was immediately interested and scanned the buttons on its surface with raised eyebrows, trying to find out just what kind of properties this particular force-field would have.

Shadow, meanwhile, was on a discovery trip on his own. He had found what he percieved as a giant Jell-O standing up, a tall, thin column of translucent blue slime. It had the same kind of green "eyes" as the ones in the tubes but seemed far more developed and menacing. The hedgehog, oblivious to any threat but curious, experimentally stuck a hand in it started wriggling it around.

It was only his fast reflexes that saved him when the dull emerald eye-blotches suddenly flared neon-green and a tentacle shot out to punch the spot he´d just been standing in. As he landed on his hands and knees a few metres away, the strange creature had already reverted to its dormant state again. Shadow, never having learned to be afraid before, shrugged, a little bit shaken but unharmed nonetheless.

The hedgehog made a mental note to tell Maria about this later. He continued his tour through the lab, but this time the Ultimate Lifeform tip-toed cautiously around the liquid creature in a wide arc. The corridors of screens, tubes and panels with exposed wires stretched out into the darkness...

Suddenly, he felt strange. There was something close-by, calling him, and although he couldn´t hear anything it was like magnetism, pulling him towards the end of the row of pods he was walking along. He started to hurry, although was careful not to run (no need for another bruised knee here) and finally reached what seemed like an over-sized fridge.

Somehow, Shadow felt a little bit disappointed.

Nevertheless, his hand closed around the handle of the door and pulled, revealing…

Candy?

No, Shadow blinked and looked again, this wasn´t candy, but…he reached for one of the fluorescent small glass cylinders in there and felt a tingle rushing up his arm. Energy of some sort? He thought he could hear his spines bristling. The things seemed to come in four different colours, red, yellow, green and purple. For some reason, green appealed to him most and he took one of those too, dropping the other one on the floor where it rolled under some piece of machinery.

Ooooh, shiny…he wanted to get at that crystal.

Going for the most obvious solution, Shadow took a firm hold of the ends with both of his hands and broke it in half.

ooo

"These cylinders…are they Chaos Drives?" Sonic asked, one eye-brow raised.

"Yes" Shadow replied, "I´m quite sure that they seemed so attractive to me because of the Chaos energy they radiate. But as far as I know, only Chao and some machines are able to use them. And green, of course, gives you the energy of speed."

Sonic nodded. He had once helped Amy to raise a Chao and positively stuffed the poor creature with the green Drives. It had been some time before the little thing was actually able to control his speed and until then there had been some interesting impressions in the surrounding walls…

To be continued..


Done:)

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