Chapter 12: Pretence

Faux forest. A small dozy woodland with no protection from the rain.

And no comfort from the torment they had to flee from. Flee from with their lives.

It was like having a nightmare.

Tails was still clinging to her like a newborn. He looked so pitiful, his fur caked in ash, coughing occasionally from the smoke that had got into his lungs. He hadn't stopped sobbing since it had all begun. Since the nightmare had descended over them like a black cloud of smoke.

Animals were screaming out orders. Others had collapsed, wailing hysterically. They had only just made it to Faux forest, with more causalities on the way. The chance of pursuit was likely.

"It's okay, Tails." She whispered, coddling him because she didn't know what else to do but hold him and tell him lies. "It's going to be okay. We're safe now. Safe…"

The calamity around them proved otherwise. Nothing had survived that attack. No food. No water. And the families… most dead or separated.

Sally looked upwards, and though the rain blurred her vision, she wanted to see the dragon. She wanted to see Dulcy. Had the freedom fighter seen Sonic? Had she delivered her message?

Waiting had become a little too painful.

Sally didn't think she could exist without Sonic. That seemed ridiculous, really and she would have chuckled, but the pain wouldn't allow it. Sally, princess of a destroyed Knothole, was dependent on a hedgehog.

She had never known before how much of her existence lay with Sonic. He was her friend, her love. He was the other half of her, completing her.

Without any food or water to sustain them, Sonic knew they wouldn't be able to go very far soon. Wayland had to hold Robotnik somewhere. It was their only hope.

The way forward dipped into a ledge and Sonic sat down on it to get his breath back. He could also see how far they had ascended.

Sonic could see the whole world.

While the wind attacked his fur and made his eyes water, he looked out at the overwhelming sky and the ground below. To the far west where they had journeyed from, he could make out a tiny woodland where the river began and lining the north was a whole forest of mountains looking cold and bleak against the solemnity of the sun's rays. The whole view made his aching heart lift. But still, he thought of Sally. He missed his homeland, one that he may never be able to go back to, and he missed the freedom fighters, the clumsy mini adventures they had, and the picnics he had with Tails near Nutley.

Shadow struggled up the edge of the ledge and climbed over, limbs shaking horribly. His fur was coated in thick, smelly sweat.

"Hey, Shads." Sonic moved over, allowing some space for him to rest. The ledge was small, and could only accommodate the two of them.

Knuckles was next, but didn't choose to knuckle it down and catch a breath like the hedgehogs. "Come on, guys." He said softly, but it was still an order, not a request. "We have to keep moving."

Sonic started climbing again, but almost fell when a rock crumbled, causing a heavy stone to fall onto Shadow's head.

The dark hedgehog growled wretchedly. Sonic mildly smiled before trying again.

Behind them, further down, came the distinct smell of oil. It was opulent and powerful, and Knuckles at once grunted and tried to see past all the rocks cropping his vision.

Sonic slipped on a foothold and almost crashed into Shadow. His side was killing him. He didn't know how much further he could climb.

"Guys…" Knuckles' voice drifted up to the two hedgehogs in a sullen echo. "I think we need to climb faster."

"Any reason?" Shadow asked, swallowing hard. His eyes were weeping from the dust and cold wind.

Knuckles kept his eyes pinned downward; both his claws nailed to the side of the steep slope they were currently climbing. He tested the air, and smelt that rich, ugly scent of oil again. "Move."

Sonic heard the tension in the echidna's voice. It spelt doom. "Knux!" He cried out, "we can't go any faster! Please!"

"Are you fucking deaf?" Knuckles shouted back, his throat howling with anger, "move!"

Sonic turned, faced his latest adversary, the slope, and began.

Knuckles hastily drew up right behind Shadow, chanting only the words; "Move, move, move!"

What had got Knuckles so worried?

Sonic rarely panicked. He was always level-headed, kept his cool and remained sometimes impassive to huge calamities. It was also the first thing you were taught as a freedom fighter. To keep calm in the face of danger.

But pure fear was sometimes harder to control than what one could prepare for. And despite trying his best to contain all manner of confusion and stress, Sonic slipped again and again. Little rocks and sometimes stones as large as a fist propelled themselves down at Shadow. The ultimate life form got bombarded by debris, making his fur turn dull with sand.

"Sonic!" He choked, "what are you doing?"

Sonic didn't bother replying. Step after step he rose up, but still Knuckles was ordering them from behind to fucking hurry.

"Knux…" Sonic heaved himself up, felt more rocks come loose under his sneakers, "what's the problem?"

The echidna faintly called up, "badniks. Two of em' right on our tail!"

Sonic's eyes widened. Badniks? On pursuit?

"What a bad day." Shadow joked darkly, his lungs wheezing again like yesterday.

The blue hero temporarily stopped, and allowed Shadow to overtake him. He judged the risks about tackling robots on a mountain cliff. It all depended on what type of robot they were. If they were designed to scale mountains, Sonic would have the disadvantage. However…

Knuckles crawled upward smoothly, like he was some kind of mountain lion and this was all in a day's work. "Sonic, why have you stopped? Keep going or I'll bite your fucking tail!"

Sonic shook his head and a slither of dizzy vertigo struck him. "If you're sure we're being pursued, we've got to stop the badniks."

"If they get close to us, I'll do the honors." The echidna spat. "You'll only fall if you attack one of those things."

"Have you seen them?"

"No." Knuckles shoved Sonic on with his paw. "Come on! The top can't be much further."

Sonic looked up and saw Shadow already a tree's distance from them. He was doing rather well.

Side by side, Sonic and Knuckles went up. A few rocks tumbled and fell down, alerting their presence to anything behind them.

Some sharp ledges stuck out from the side, too small to be of any use to them and they often had to change their course to go around them.

Shadow lent down some hope. He stopped way ahead of them, and Knuckles thought that the climb had been too much for the ailing hedgehog. But Shadow looked down and called in the wind.

"There's something here. I think it's a door."

"What the hell is he going on about?" Sonic mumbled, while kicking his feet into the earth to get some grip.

"I think he's found something." Knuckles helped him climb up to Shadow, who was shakily pointing to his right. The wind lapped at his spines, causing them to sway backwards and forwards.

"There." Shadow said, "can't you see it?"

Knuckles climbed up a little further, breath low and shallow. Just as Shadow had said, a metal thick door resided deep in a cavern dug into the cliff face. The narrow corridor of rock was dark with shadow, almost making it invisible from detection.

Knuckles clawed onto the edge of a ledge and crawled into the tight space that led to the door. Jagged stone cut into his fur and lack of light made his eyes radically adjust to the darkness.

He reached the door and tapped it with a knuckle. Solid metal. And ancient old dust clung to the surface like powder.

He could hear Sonic breathing noisily behind him. "Well? Is it any good?"

The echidna pushed his question aside and smeared the dust away with his gloved paw.

As the dust fell away, it revealed a sign on the top of the door. It was in numbers.

'DX009.'

Sonic scrambled in the tight space and pressed himself behind Knuckles as he looked over his shoulder. "DX009?" He said, mystified, "isn't that a human way of expressing words?"

"It must be."

"Do you think there's a way in?"

Knuckles pressed a paw on the door's large ugly cobalt surface and pushed. Nothing. "It must be locked." Yet there was no keyhole.

Sonic couldn't help but sound puzzled and excited at the same time. "Is it old?"

"Decades old at least." Knuckles pounded a fist against it, well aware that they were running out of time. The smell of oil was becoming more pungent and disgusting.

The metal frame reverberated, signaling that the door contained a hollow room from within.

"Can you break it open?" Sonic asked.

"I can see them, hurry." Shadow snapped from somewhere outside.

Knuckles became swooned in desperation and terror. In here, if the badniks came suddenly, they were trapped like moles stuck in a hole.

"Sonic, get clear."

Knuckles rose a fist, swallowed and thrust his weight against the door.

Shadow was watching the badniks called 'the hunters.' They shifted and moved unnaturally in sudden motion like something supernatural. The frame of the robots was long and stalwart, that stood on two legs for speed. But, at the present time, the robots were down on all fours, scaling the hefty slope like beetles. Their faces were masked with human features, complete with eyes, mouth and nose. The rest was metal, twisted and grotesquely designed only to kill and destroy. When standing erect, they could reach eight feet, which towered over any animal.

Shadow started climbing again, facing the cruel, white sky with a flat floor of rock at his fingers.

He reached the narrow cleft of rock that Sonic and Knuckles had squeezed into, where there was barely room to turn and go back.

Ahead, Knuckles was banging at the door with his fists. The center began to cave in. A tender crack, like an open sore, began to form down the middle. Bits of metal flew out whenever Knuckles hammered it with his paws.

"Faster!" Sonic breathed down his back.

The middle bent inwards. Knuckles gave an extra burst of exhilarated strength and the door collapsed in on itself. Heavy dust and splutters of metal blew at them like an exhale from a robot's breath.

They were through.

Knuckles, knowing that he did not have time to check the place out for danger, went straight through without any sign of hesitation. Sonic was right behind, with Shadow taking up the rear.

What they found inside was both awe aspiring and downright abhorrent.

It was like they had walked straight into the intestines of Robotnik's lair.

Metal corridors. Dark dungeon-like ceilings with high inexorable walls and gratings for floors.

"So… so unnatural…" Knuckles said frostily, sweeping his head back and fro, absorbing the place with his eyes, ears and nose. The stench of oil here reeked thick and strong. So much so, Sonic could almost feel it being absorbed into his fur, making him feel dirty and disgusting.

It was a wonder how such a small, carefully concealed door had been hiding a bloody palace of evil! At least that was what Knuckles thought.

"We have to go in. However far it goes." Sonic took the lead again naturally, preparing to meet any objections. For he wouldn't be tolerant of time-wasters. "The badniks are still moving towards us."

They moved along as quickly as Sonic could manage. All that rock climbing had put a cramp in his maimed rib and thigh muscles. He just wanted to get as far away from the hunters as he could.

However, he paused when he faced a swirl of corridors, all jetting out into unknown places. Perhaps more rooms? Or to the very human himself?

"Sonic?"

"Hang on a mondo sec. Which path do we take?"

Shadow looked up, eyes shimmering with pained tears. "That way." He pointed to the middle corridor.

"Why that one?" Knuckles growled. From his view, the dark necklace of corridors looked confusing and frightening. And they all looked the same.

"I know. I can feel it."

Knuckles wasn't willing to put his life in the hands of Shadow. "That's not good enough. Why not that one? Or that one?"

Their pause in their escape, and the confidence they had once assumed now falling away like autumn leaves before them, enabled the pursuit to close in. The hunters, like preying owls at night, were silent. Only their bright red eyes pierced the dim light of the gnarled metal chamber.

"Shoot!" Sonic flung himself down the center corridor.

The hunters came round the corner they had passed a few moments earlier.

A gun opened on its sleek metal shoulder, sending out lazer spray.

It missed Shadow by two feet over his head, and the beam struck the side wall, sending it at once into pink, angry flame.

The three animals were bathed in crimson light as they ran madly down the long corridor with nothing but fear to guide them.

"We're bound to come across a dead end sometime." Sonic said as Knuckles strode easily beside him.

"I'll deal with those badniks." The echidna confirmed confidently, "we just need a plan."

"I'm all ears."

They came across a bend that was straight and perfectly shaped as everything else in the complex, so they continued down, hoping for an exit.

There were metallic black stenciled words on yellow displays on the walls, all in human speech.

Everywhere smelt strange and alien. The complex shone in belligerent prudence. The shadows whispered danger and turmoil. The gratings and ceiling seemed to close in around them, flaring up more panic and fear.

There were no colors here. Only greys, blacks and frost whites.

The human seemed to have expanded his evil, and turned the once, natural mountainous walls into hard, cold steel and turned the lifeblood of the environment into oil. Oil was Robotnik's lifeblood. It gave birth to these machines… enabled him to design more… and build a fucking hidden location in the mountains of Wayland.

Shadow faced the badniks as if they were nothing more than rats. No fear bubbled deep below. No fear or confusion thwarted his senses. Only wild instinct took over, angry and without limit.

His fur glowed a hot red. Crimson waves rolled up and down his body like he was being enveloped by the setting sun.

As if trapped in a smooth somnolence, broken only by the lapping of red waves and rising power, Shadow raised his own fist, opened it and a scarlet flash of irresolute blood red bathed the corridor. Knuckles and Sonic cringed as far as they could into the floor, hands up over their heads. All they could see was red against their eyelids.

But nothing happened to them.

No pain.

Only the feeling of immense pressure rolling over them like a thundercloud baying or a waterfall just about to cascade over them.

It was Knuckles who opened his eyes first, always one to take the initiative.

The corridor was dimming back to its drab greys. The red receded like a sickness wilting away after a bad episode.

Shadow stood in the center, sweaty and shivering. The hunters lay decimated on the floor from where they had been standing moments before as if some great force had simply pushed them all over.

"Shadow, what did you do?"

Sonic nervously opened one eye, checked that it was safe, then opened the other.

"I… I've used the last of my power…" Shadow said blithely between spits of foam dripping at his mouth, "there may be more coming."

"Last of your power?" Knuckles asked curiously. "What do you mean?"

Shadow looked at them, and Sonic saw wild fever in his eyes. "I… I have to tell you something… but it won't be long before they…"

"Yes, yes, I know." Knuckles stepped closer, sweat starting to bead under his own fur. "I wasn't exactly expecting cups of tea when I came in here. What do you want us to know?"

Shadow walked over to the wall and leaned against it, chest swelling as he tried to gain some breath back. "I'm sick."

"No shit." Knuckles looked him over as if he were evaluating some common insect that had crawled out from the ground.

"The Doctor… did something to me…"

Sonic cursed under his breath. "And you're telling us now?"

"All right…. All right…" Knuckles acted a little too calmly for Sonic's liking. "Let's get to the bottom of this, but we'd better be quick. Shadow; tell us everything, all right. No secrets from here on."

"I was taken from the Ark. Taken!" He coughed in lament. "It was probably two full moons ago. I didn't want to believe it at first. I hoped it had all been another one of my nightmares. But what I did know deep down, was that the Doctor took me from my home, put me in a lab and injected me with some shit or other. I woke up back in the Ark." Shadow shuddered to continue, sweat and phlegm dripping from his chin. "That almost convinced me it had been a dream… until I started getting ill. I don't get ill." As if to literally show them the proof of it all, and his explanation wasn't enough, Shadow carpeted the floor at his feet with hot, steamy vomit.

Sonic covered his mouth and took a few steps back. The stench made him feel like vomiting too.

"Doctor… no… Prof… Professor Gerald made me immortal and immune to illness. But the evil Doctor somehow bypassed that with what had to be Sargus." His voice was shading into a sepulchral echo. "That was how I knew. So I had to find him. I had to come here. It… it would have made no difference to you if I told you ten days ago or when we're in the Doctor's presence. We're all here for some reason, aren't we?" He glanced up at them. He was almost down to his knees.

Knuckles was slowly shaking his head, making his long, magnificent dreadlocks swish together like vines in a jungle. "You stupid hedgehog." He said at last.

"Why did Robotnik poison you then?" Sonic inquired, hand still held up over his mouth and doing all his best to keep from looking down at the vomit, "it must have taken some nerve and a lot of planning to capture you up in that Ark."

"He did it because he hates us. All of us. I betrayed him, didn't I? I made a mockery of his plans when I decided to help you before that great fucking battle that cost me a kidney. But he also did it for another reason. He wanted me to kill you. Kill you and take the emerald and give it to him."

Sonic lapsed into a still, rigid state, eyes wide and glazed.

Shadow impelled himself to continue. He still kept his frenzied gaze at the floor vilified with spit and sick. "I didn't. I didn't do as he asked, even when he promised me the cure for my sickness if I did. I had lots of chances to do as he wished, Sonic. My best chance was when that robot was finished with you at the temple on Angle Island. I could have killed you then and there and made it look like the robot won anyway and I was the hero who brought the body back to Knothole for everyone to pay their respects."

"Why didn't you?" Knuckles asked, sounding a lot more savage and cross.

Now Shadow set his mad red eyes on them. "I'm not like that anymore. I fight for Mobius. I fight because Maria would have wanted it. And I owed Sonic. He saved me from death that day on the battlefield and I shan't forget that."

"So you'd rather throw your own life away? Just like that?"

Shadow nodded. "I would never take someone's life away. Not when they have a life to lead. A family to protect. If I took Sonic away from his partner, what would I have become? I'd only be repeating what had happened to Maria on that fateful day several years ago. So I saved you, Sonic. And for that I owe you no more favors."

"Suits me." Sonic replied stonily.

"So that's why you came." Knuckles said, eyes glittering menacingly. "You came to destroy Sargus, if it's even here. Am I right?"

Shadow nodded again.

Sonic seemed least effected by Shadow's short speech. "We need to get on. More badniks with come and I don't want to be around when they do. Let's go."

"Where? Further on?" Knuckles shook his head angrily. "We need to find the Master Emerald. I can only sense it if I'm close enough to it."

Sonic said the unpredictable. "Then we're splitting up."

"What?" Shadow choked from his corner of the floor.

"Sonic! What are you thinking in that big head of yours?" Knuckles pointed a paw at him; "we need to stick together if we're going to stand any chance of surviving this hellish maze. If it wasn't for Shadow those hunters could have hurt or even killed us. Splitting up? I'd rather face Robotnik right now, and damn the consequences!"

Sonic fixed Knuckles a cold, emerald stare. "Does it look like I'm negotiating?" The echidna backed down slightly. "I'm just after Robotnik. You are after the Master Emerald and Shadow is out for Sargus. We each have our own paths."

"You're insane. We've got to stay close or…"

Sonic pushed Knuckles back on his shoulders with his hands. "I'm going on alone! Knothole is in tatters! A village is just a village, right? Full of memories, wooden partitions and an old well, and it's the animals that lived in that village, Knux! Animals with their own families, their own lives to lead! Adventures to be had! But that's all ruined now, thanks to me! I have a dept to pay!"

"It wasn't your fault… You weren't to know…"

The blue hedgehog was already gone. Using speed Knuckles didn't know he could manage with that damaged side, had left them in the corridor, rather alone in a forsaken place.