Author's Notes:

-Thanks to Kuronon for the follow and favorite, and thanks to WriteAndRead for the review.

-Sorry for putting this story into a long and unexplained hiatus. Due to a nasty combination of writer's block, lack of motivation, and my unfortunately short attention span, it took quite some time for me to finish this chapter. However, now it's done, and I'll try to get back on a reasonable schedule. So just sit back, relax, and enjoy the show!

Chapter Eight: Buried Treasure

Coming back forced Shadow to recall a slew of horrible memories about this place.

Once the clones stealing his likeness had been unleashed on Mobius, he'd been moved to this factory, where he'd spent most of his time chained to a table as Eggman examined him and occasionally collected samples of something from him. What little time that remained had been spent outside, taking out whatever Eggman saw as a threat. The month prior, there'd been rumors of a group of former soldiers working to clear out an abandoned city with high-powered military weapons, so Shadow had been sent to eliminate them. And he'd succeeded.

But then he'd been sent to eliminate Silver, and everything had changed. In theory, anyway.

Now he was fighting the same creatures he'd been used to create. So far, it wasn't too hard, as they were clumped too tightly together to do anything more complicated than claw and slash at him. Most of them just kept missing, and it was easy to dodge anyone who started to land hits on him, not to mention that each one had so little impact Shadow barely even registered them.

However, that wasn't going to be enough to win the day. They needed to get that Chaos Emerald if they wanted to shut down the factory. However, getting it was a lot harder than it looked. The ceiling was so lofty that neither he nor Sonic could jump that high, and while it appeared Silver could float high enough to grab it, his ascent was so slow he kept getting knocked back to the ground before he'd even gotten started.

"Silver! Stop wasting time with fancy acrobatics and just grab it!"

"I can't," Silver shouted back. "If I tried pulling that, I'd pull its energy along with me. I don't know my resilience to that yet, it could kill me if I try!"

Shadow cursed under his breath. "Sonic! Focus on keeping them off Silver so he can get the hell up there and take the Chaos Emerald!"

"Kind of busy," Sonic yelled from across the room, taking out half a dozen monsters at once even as they were swiftly replaced.

"Well, figure something out," Shadow said, knocking several monsters away from him and sending them flying across the room. A dozen more took their places, causing Shadow to leap out of their way as they slashed at him. The room was getting dangerously close to carrying capacity; they needed to get out of here, and soon, before they had no means left of fighting these things.

Suddenly, a lightbulb came to his head. "Silver! Remember that thing you did the first time we met?"

"Hold on a second," Silver yelled, a crackle of energy following as several more of the creatures swung past Shadow at an impossible arc, surrounded by Silver's signature teal glow. "The propulsion thing?"

"Yes, that," Shadow said. "Let's do it again!"

Maybe he shouldn't have announced that out loud. His knockoffs appeared to at least comprehend what he had said, for they almost left Sonic alone entirely to swarm him and Silver. Sonic charged into the fray to help, Shadow knocking back everything that came at him for a few seconds before one of them got lucky and made solid contact, nearly clawing out Shadow's eye in the process. Sonic appeared to notice that, for that specific clone soon came face to face with a brutal Spin Dash, sending it almost crashing into the ceiling, the attack had been so forceful.

Then, in between one attack and the next, a horn started blaring: a loud, obnoxious noise that made Shadow's ears want to shrivel up and die. Sonic and Silver kept fighting, hardly even bothered at the sudden noise, but Shadow did otherwise. He recognized that noise from his time here, and it had no good meanings.

Bashing another group out of the way, he managed to shout to the others, "Crap! Eggman knows something's up!"

Before the others could react to that statement, a loud slam echoed through the room, causing both friend and foe alike to pause for a second. It didn't take Shadow long to find the source, and it made him curse aloud several times.

Now, a metal slab that had not been there when they'd entered blocked the entrance. Sure, that meant the clones had no way out either, but they were trapped in there unless Silver could wrench the door out of place or something like that. And with the number of bodies filling the room, eventually they'd run out of places to stand. They'd make a mistake and something would kill them. It was only a matter of time.

Then came the voice, one he knew and despised, and hoped the others did as well.

"Well, hello there, Banes of My Existence One, Two, and Three? I should have known not even death would stop that blue hedge-rat and his friends from trying to stop my plans. But, I can say I've let this charade go on far enough. So long, and enjoy the bane of your existence!"

Shadow didn't have too much time to think about what that was, but he found out on his own in an instant. Before he had time to react, he felt the unwelcome sensation of water soaking through his shoes. Leaping to the top of one of the clone creation machines to buy a few seconds revealed the horrifying truth: several enormous pipes jutting out of the ceiling, formerly obscured by the dim light and the pulsing of the Chaos Emerald, now spouted water at an unbelievable rate. Tails probably could have spit out a calculation as to how long they had before the room filled to capacity in an instant, but Shadow didn't have that brainpower, so he just shouted, "Eggman's flooding the room!"

Silver still looked calm, but Sonic appeared to be starting to panic. His attacks came faster, lost coordination, and seemed to always end with him slamming into the barrier Eggman had created without so much as making a dent in it. The room kept filling alarmingly fast, maybe twenty seconds later the water level was already up to Shadow's waist. Before long, the room would be filled, the consequences of that obvious to anyone who couldn't breathe water.

The only benefit was that it was slowing down the clones a lot, too. A good chunk of them leapt to the top of the machines that had birthed them to try and leap on them from above, but the rest sloshed through the water with just as much difficulty as he was having, clawing and hacking and attempting to slam into him. He dodged what he could, blocked what he couldn't, took a hit to the side when neither seemed to help. A few more seconds, and most of them appeared stationary, as if the water had transformed into the thickest molasses in existence. Now was their chance.

"Silver, go," Shadow said.

"Going," Silver responded, dodging a handful of sloppy attacks in the process. Shadow leapt from machine to machine to stay above the rapidly-climbing water line, passing Sonic along the way. Then, just as had happened before, Shadow slammed into Silver from below, sending him rocketing upward.

It seemed like a great idea until Silver bounced off one of the pipes. In the open air where he'd been hit last time, at least there'd been precious few things he could hit and injure himself on. This place proved itself the exact opposite. With several violent crunches, Silver bounced between one hard object and the next like a pinball, coming to a stop in a precarious position on the top of a horizontal pipe, not very visible but probably looking like he'd been run over by a large vehicle.

Shadow looked away there, better to make sure nothing snuck up on him. A few more attackers came this way, he batted them off and fought his way to Sonic, who had begun shaking hard enough that he looked blurry, like a low-quality image on a television screen.

"We have to get out of here," he heard Sonic say, his voice quavery and scared.

"No shit, Sherlock," Shadow retorted, watching as the water sloshed over their shoes once more, even though the machines had to be at least ten feet tall. The flooding appeared to be affecting the clones as well, for some of them began to act like they were drowning. They stopped reaching for Sonic and Shadow and started clawing at each other, pulling each other under as they tried to stay afloat. Shadow didn't feel much of anything towards them, but even if they had been trying to murder them a few short minutes ago, it was hard not to feel at least a little bit sorry for them.

Silver shouted from somewhere in the distance, "I've got the Chaos Emerald!"

"Then take it and let's find a way out of here," Sonic responded, still shaking as the water reached past his waist.

Shadow looked up. Silver ripped the Chaos Emerald out of the slot it'd been held in.

A second of silence. A breath in. A breath out.

Then, like a million flutes playing the highest, screechiest chord possible, an ungodly noise blasted through the room as all the machines began shooting sparks. With the emerald no longer supplying them with its vast quantity of energy, something appeared to have gone horribly wrong inside. Pulses of heat began erupting from the one Sonic and Shadow stood on, and even with his limited knowledge about advanced technology, Shadow knew no device like that was ever supposed to get that hot. A part came loose from one, then another, as Sonic and Shadow both bent their knees, preparing to jump in an attempt to avoid whatever fate the machines wanted to drag them into.

Before they did, though, Silver thrust both his hands out, lifting Sonic and Shadow out of range as all of the machines exploded at once. A smoking rain of metal, wire, computer parts, and glass flew everywhere with reckless abandon, crashing into the walls and ceiling in a cacophony of sound and pain. Sonic and Shadow both got hit a few times, and even Silver, taking cover behind a pipe, almost got his forehead ripped wide open by a rogue shard of glass. And during it all, the clones below them forming a hideous barrier above it, the water waited patiently for the others to succumb to its depths, still rising closer and closer to the room's ceiling as the pipes kept doing their jobs with blissful ignorance of the situation.

"Crazy plan time," Sonic said, now sweating buckets. "We have a few minutes at best, I'm down for anything."

"I'd wait until the door is fully under, then break it," Silver said. "The more pressure helping me push it open, the better."

Sonic wasn't having that, crashing into the door over and over again, but it wouldn't budge an inch. Shadow tried helping him, but that did nothing either, and he couldn't risk a Chaos Blast with Sonic and Silver in such close range, lest the force it created rip them apart at the seams. Silver had the Chaos Emerald, but his angle from here was horrible; there were too many things in the way. The only way to fix that was to descend.

The water, choked with bodies, lapped at the base of the pipe they were resting on, still rising. They were out of room. Regardless of how much they were going to hate this, underwater was the only way to go.

"We have to be quick," Shadow said. "Take a deep breath, it's time to go!"

Sonic complied, even though now it looked like he was about to be sick from pure fear. Silver seemed as stoic as ever, and Shadow knew that if he was going to go down, he'd go down fighting.

"Three, two, one-"

At zero, Shadow hit the water, propelling himself downward as fast as possible, Silver following his lead (still clutching the Chaos Emerald) and Sonic lagging behind. Shadow remained vigilant, for even once they got past the mess on the surface, the water was still littered with harmful debris and burned like fire, probably from all the electricity the machines had injected into it not five minutes ago. Silver had a clear shot, though, and that was all he needed.

With a loud, strained grunt, Silver appeared to force all his energy into opening the door.

A slight groaning noise, but nothing more.

Sonic started panicking once more, hopelessly thrashing and beginning to waste what little air he did have. Silver tried to bring down the door a second time, cheeks beginning to turn blue from lack of air. The groan was louder, the door moved an infinitesimal amount, but the structure still stood strong.

Silver's eyes fluttered. He made a hacking noise, clearly out of both oxygen and ideas. Sonic was starting to do the same. Shadow prepared a Chaos Blast, even though he knew it would probably kill them, not wanting to die to a trap Eggman had made if it was the last thing he did.

Then, right as Silver appeared to lose consciousness, a rush of energy blasted out of him. Maybe he'd managed to fire something off right before he went under, maybe it was a jolt of adrenaline caused by his fevered brain trying to save itself. Either way, though the result was the same. The door moved just slightly, groaning once more…

Before it broke open in its entirety, revealing a different corridor than the one they'd entered from.

One which led straight down.

With no air to say anything (and in Silver's case, without even the capacity to say anything to begin with) the three of them, along with the Chaos Emerald and everything else in the room, were sucked into the newly-revealed hole, all senses fading as they tumbled into the pitch-black shaft below.