Prologue.
Guess what I've built?
Under the fluctuating neon glow of seven overworked portals, his smile can almost be mistaken for friendly. To the casual observer, the unrestrained glee shining through his expression speaks to the free and sudden amicability of one whose wishes are about to come true.
Go on. Guess!
Standing center stage in an orbiting ring of radiant hoops, the ringmaster.
At the apex of each ring sits a Chaos Emerald. She's heard it said that the gifts of life reside within them. When their purpose is honored and their fires ignited, they effuse freedom, justice, loyalty, hope, kindness, joy, and love.
When their power is abused, and their light extinguished, their essences corrupt into darker counterparts: oppression, cruelty, betrayal, despair, anger, selfishness, and fear. But these, too, she's given to understand, are part of the Emeralds' gifts.
Whoever wields all seven contains the world, his to do with as he pleases. To shape or destroy.
Maria Robotnik's voice has become very small.
It's a teleidoscope.
Not just any teleidoscope. Ivo leaps off the bier and slings a heavy arm around her aching shoulders as if they're the oldest of friends. Cruel irony being, perhaps they are. Stare into my vortex, he says, pointing at the bright swirl of light churning several feet above the central platform. Don't get hypnotized, now!
Harsh laughter streams dazzling white clouds from his mouth. The very particles they breathe dance and shimmer.
It maps the binding of antibodies in your blood cells. Very soon now, the model will take hold and become self-perpetuating.
He 'rewards' her patience with a finger snap. Instantly, the indiscernible mandala switches to a view of the ruined temple, whose afterimage burns behinds her eyelids.
The forest surrounding the shrine transforms. Imposing firs gnarl into unnatural knots, their bark creaking heinous squawks as a parasitic metallic exoskeleton woven underneath bursts free and stretches toward itself.
The ground heaves. Grass crystallizes into spikes. A slow steel wave creeps up, consuming its host. Soon nothing remains except a glossy silvered landscape. From this foundation, buildings latticed in garish neon spring up. Towers bearing a familiar grinning face yearn for the sky. Roots drained of water become hollow glass tubes for magma-red fuel to circulate.
This is the process Gerald developed on your behalf. Every so often, your old tissues die and are replaced by newer fare, equipped with the information necessary to sustain itself.
You see, Maria: I don't need to destroy the world to make it mine. I just need to rewrite its faulty DNA.
This is the world you want? It's…
Magnificent? He supplies her adjectives. Sublime? Breathtaking? Awe-inspiring?
Pitiful.
He shoves her aside. Bah, what do you know? You wouldn't recognize greatness if it blew you down.
Discarded, Maria grips the mechanism's frame for support.
The first Emerald dips toward her in a smooth glide. She lunges forth and grabs it, holding the ring in place. A dangerous whirring protests as the internal gears grind resistance. Overloaded circuitry threatens to burn her fingers while she bangs the heel of her palm against the greedy receptacle in vain hopes of smashing the gem loose—
By all means! Yank out those worthless stones. Fat lot of good it'll do you: my machine's already sucked them dry.
He stands smiling, merely observing her feeble resistance. He doesn't lift a finger to stop her.
The first escapes. Weakened by the fall, its six sisters follow. She gathers them in her arms, and he doesn't do a damn thing to prevent her.
Maria stops.
There is only one exit. One way in, one way out.
Going somewhere? Ivo asks, fingertips steepled.
Let me go.
Hasn't anyone ever told you to stop and smell the roses? He matches her sidestep. What's the matter, old woman? Hmm? Do I make a better door than a window?
Chuckling, he retreats a sweeping step, making a show of it, body bent and arm extended as if to say, After you.
Eager for escape, she bolts into the dark corridor. What other choice does she have? Sonic and Shadow won't find them here. She'll have to come to them.
She ignores the cold lurch in her gut to push past him. Some part of her doubts she can put enough distance between them to make a difference. All he really would have to do is reach out and reel her back in. You're not going anywhere.
Unlike their old games, Ivo is not chasing her.
He's giving her a head start.
She refuses to dwell on the implications, instead darting left at the first fork. It would be idiotic to flee toward the corridor full of cameras and incandescent lights; if there's any sort of deity looking out for her, the maintenance tunnel will provide brief pockets of shelter.
Her hopes quickly vanish when she collides with a bare concrete wall. The Emeralds tumble out of her grip, scattering in a haphazard ring around her feet.
Panic swells inside her as she probes every seam and crevice of her new enclosure. No, no, no, corridors don't just end like this for no rhyme or reason—even the ARK's endlessly spiraling corridors led to an eventual destination. This must be a trap, she reasons, there has to be some kind of door, a hidden compartment—
She whirls around to the heavy clang of a metal door bolting shut. Electrified, she smashes her palms against cold, flat iron.
Beyond the glass-covered rectangular aperture, the architect rounds the corner in a lazy saunter. The dense click of heels on corrugated metal floors echo throughout the complex.
Ma-ri-aaa, he singsongs, come out, come out, wherever you are! Who said the good times have to come to an end? I know you're just dying to hear about the brand-spanking new game I've come up with. Never fear: I'll dumb down the rules for you.
Reaching into thin air, he pinches a slim band of light and pulls down a holographic interface. The rectangular green panel hosts a keypad with nine buttons. Toward the bottom, a long crimson rectangle bears his logo, labeled 'EJECT.' He rubs his hands together.
You see, the object of the game is to keep my finger— pointer raised stoutly in the air —from pressing this teeny, tiny little button on the console here—sinking lower, lower. But, uh-oh! Oh, no! This rascally finger can't keep still— an angry crimson bleed staining his glove —it might just slip and send you hurtling out the airlock. Ain't those the pits?
Her corneas water. Over the course of the next few blinks her vision begins to swim, separating his rotund figure into sliding, murky duplicates. She banishes them with a firm head shake, chasing them back toward their owner.
Maria wills her clenched lungs to relax. Reason must prevail over instinct; it's her last hope of making it out of here alive. She's got to calm down, think. Ration her breaths. Oxygen may already be seeping from this tiny enclosure. She wouldn't put it past him to smoke her out.
He circles around, turning back the way he came, then breaks into raucous laughter at the strangled gasp she makes when he feigns lurching for the button. Ha, you should see your face! You'd think no one's pulled your leg before. Come on, buck up! It's just a joke.
He pretends his finger's a train about to crash, a trick plane vaulting somersaults, a bomber jet carrying missiles. Sadistic games amuse him until he slaps his own wrist, chastising it.
Bad finger. Naughty finger! You'll suck the air out of the room! You'll pop her precious eyeballs right out of their sockets!
She holds the bargaining chips. If he wanted her dead, he'd have opened the airlock the instant she ran in here. The Emeralds must still hold some value to him.
You're only delaying getting what you want, she says, making it a point to shift the bundle of extinguished gems in her arms. Let's have an adult conversation for once.
How I wish I could, Maria dear, but unfortunately, this wayward finger of mine seems to possess a mind of its own! Oh, well, we've got our methods of sorting that out, don't we? Eenie, meenie, miney, mo—
Stop.
—catch a nuisance by the toe—
Please—
—if she hollers…
She screws her eyes shut as he punches a button. The lights flick off. A stream of giggles punctuates her hard, rapid breaths.
You're sick. Completely and truly.
Oh, I'm the sick one, you say? Ho, ho! How rich.
You don't have to do this.
Don't I? he asks. Why are we kicking up a fuss, old woman? I'm only carrying on his research. Isn't that what you wanted? Isn't that what you've wasted your breath blowing out every birthday candle for the past forty years for? For me to follow in Gerald's footsteps? And now, after all this time, you've decided you'd rather turn your back on that wish. I'm hurt, ye of little faith. Really.
Is that what you think? He'd be ashamed of you.
Stubborn old goat can rot in his grave for all I care. He smiles as he says this, with the cheeriest inflection in his voice, as though he's praising blue skies and sunshine. Cold perspiration beads her nape. I don't need anyone, you hear? Not him, not my father, not Sonic—least of all two sanctimonious idiots who spend their pathetic lives weeping over some imaginary little boy.
Maria gathers the Emeralds in her arms, cradling them close. Appealing to his ego won't prevent him from hitting the button with peals of mocking laughter. She has to dig a little deeper.
I think we can agree it's important to make our peace, she says. I remember when our lives veered off-course. I remember it like it was yesterday. (Hugs the Emeralds tighter.) Yet I wouldn't trade it for anything. I found what I was looking for. But you—
Hairless brows raised, he places a hand over his heart in a façade of innocence. Moi? he mouths.
—you're stumbling blind, aren't you? The answers are standing right in front of you. Throw them away and you'll surrender your power.
Such horrible silence dwells in the widening of his smirk.
Memory is a treacherous place, Grandfather used to say, full of pitfalls. Tread lightly when you go.
She can easily predict her cousin's response should she request his account. Without a doubt he'd laugh in her face, deem the gaps in hers an obvious symptom of encroaching senility.
For him it's simply not convenient to remember. Why mourn what isn't lost? Gerald never died. At least, not the parts that matter. His salt's worth is safe and sound right here, he'd brag, emphasizing his point by tapping a finger to his ruddy temple.
She must approach with caution, or else he'll snatch the memory from her, dismantle and bend and crush her most valuable possession until the pieces lie broken at his feet.
Part of her understands his reasons. After all, he experienced the same events through much different eyes. The decades since measure interminable ages and just a single blink ago; who knows how many times he's spun them in the centrifuge of his high-powered mind? How can the end result possibly hope to retain its original shape?
If you want your answers, Ivo, you're going to have to listen. She never claimed sole ownership over the truth. She knows only what she recalls, nothing more.
Slowly, he retreats from the console. His abrupt stop raises the pound of blood in her ears. When he finally turns to face her, grin unfurling tooth by white tooth, she suffers a deep shiver.
One last story before you hit the bricks, eh? Well, then, old woman, I'm all ears. Dazzle me.
The icy cloak in which memory swaddles her is there to protect her from the past. Years after the fact, she realizes its purpose.
Raising her chin, she digests a practiced swallow.
You were eleven, she begins, and I was seventeen.