Author's Notes:

-Thanks to sth2006 for the favorite and follow and to WriteAndRead for the review.

-Sorry this chapter is out late, but Christmas happened and as we've covered before, my time management isn't the best. Hopefully you'll enjoy the chapter anyway, and I'll try to get back on schedule for Chapter Seven. Thanks for sticking around!

Chapter Six: Some Things Never Change

When enough of Silver's consciousness returned so that he could comprehend the world around him, he was in so much pain that he almost wished he hadn't.

Even though he could tell he was back in his apartment, slumped in one of the chairs he'd had ever since he'd settled here, that did little to mitigate the pain. It wasn't just unpleasant, either; he'd felt like someone had tried to chop him to pieces with a meat cleaver. The dried blood splattered across his arms and chest didn't do much to help that, as it added waves of nausea on top of the waves of agony.

He heard voices coming from close by. Although his ears weren't at 100% yet, he could tell that one of them was Sonic's. However, he couldn't place the other until he turned his head with a groan, and when he did, he would have jumped up and started running if he'd been even close to the condition he'd need to do that.

Shadow casually leaned against the wall across from Sonic, the two of them acting like Shadow hadn't nearly murdered Silver only hours ago. The atmosphere seemed calm at the moment, but Silver kept his guard up. The last thing he needed right now was to be blindsided.

Sonic was the first to notice that Silver was awake. "Hey, Silver's conscious again. You planning on doing the thing?"

"Just say what it is like a normal person," Shadow responded. "Yes, if he's conscious, I can heal him."

"You can do that now?" Silver tried to remember the things he'd known Shadow for, and healing didn't come up on that list.

"Look, I can explain everything later," Shadow said. "Right now, let's focus on getting three fighters on the playing field in case there's another surprise attack around the corner."

Without another word, Shadow strode over to where Silver was seated, grabbing him by the arms. If he wasn't in so much pain, Silver might have squirmed to try and get away, especially after the burning sensation started. He let out a pitiful cry that stopped a few seconds later once he realized that as the heat increased, everything else diminished by comparison.

It didn't stay for long. In what felt like an instant, Shadow was done, and by then, the agony he'd gone through felt like nothing more than a distant memory.

Silver calmly stood up, feeling better than he had in quite some time. "That's amazing, Shadow. When did you learn that trick?"

"That's going to tie into everything else, so I'll save it for later," Shadow said. "Right now, the best thing I can do is tell you what I know so we can put a stop to all this."

"Well, okay then," Sonic said. "Take it away, Shadow."

Shadow cleared his throat and then started talking once more. "I doubt either of you will be surprised by this, but just like the usual, this is mostly Eggman's fault. All the monsters you've been fighting are his creations. Unfortunately, I played a role in that as well."

Silver felt noticeably sick to his stomach, but noticed that Sonic looked like he was a kid being told a bedtime story, at least for now. Meanwhile, Shadow drew in a long breath, then began."

"About a month before the world went to pieces, Eggman caught me spying on his base to try and catch wind of his new plans before he could act on them. I fought hard and destroyed a lot of his robots, but the bastard hit me with a tranquilizer dart before I could get away. You'd think it'd take more than that to stop the Ultimate Life Form, but you'd also be wrong."

Silver searched his fading memories for anything he had regarding an incident like that, but found nothing. Somehow, the story appeared to have never leaked to the media.

"When I came to, I was strapped to a chair. You know, typical mad scientist stuff. Eggman did a lot of cackling like a banshee and generally sounded just like his usual self at the time. However, he'd accounted for my ace in the hole that time, which was that I'd swallowed a Chaos Emerald about two decades ago to keep it safe during a particularly bad stretch."

Sonic did a double take at that last part. "Wait, which one?"

"The red one," Shadow said. "And as far as I can tell, it's still inside me, since I haven't had to worry about power drain ever since."

"Wow, and I thought chewing gum took forever to digest," Sonic replied. "Continue."

"I'd been locked in a room outfitted with some new technology Eggman created just for me, which continually drained my energy at the rate everything in my body replenished it. This meant that I couldn't teleport out or use any of my Chaos-powered abilities to escape. Furthermore, he kept me restrained at all times, so it wasn't like I could have bolted out when my meals got delivered, either. And I do mean at all times, I was never released. Not to sleep, not to use the bathroom, nope, nothing, nada."

"That must have been horrifying," Silver said, "but how did no one notice you were missing?"

"In case you couldn't tell that about me already, I'm a bit of a recluse," Shadow explained. "Back then, I made statements on my own terms and the media had to work to get anything out of me. Eggman was willing to talk his mouth off to anyone who would listen, but that's not me and it's never been me. Thus, long stretches of silence were normal at the time, although by the time everything ended, they were probably at the point where everyone was starting to get nervous."

"That's definitely true," Silver said. "In the week or so leading up to… this, everyone was really on edge. I remember that."

"Well, now I know," Shadow said, "but back to the subject at hand. What Eggman did to me didn't start off too bad. He collected samples of everything: skin samples, quill samples, blood samples, urine samples, everything. He never told me what he was doing with any of them, but it became clear about a week into my stay. One second, everything was quiet, and the next, some kind of alarm was going off and the lights were flashing like there was no tomorrow."

Sonic looked far more serious than Silver had ever seen him already, but his expression solidified even further once he heard that. "Bad?"

"Very," Shadow confirmed. "I could hear a lot of crashing for a while, but then the cause for alarm broke into my room, and at that point, I thought I knew what was going on."

He took a deep breath here, looking like he needed to spit this next part out now or he'd explode. "The thing looked like me, except it didn't. From what I could tell, the shape was pretty accurate, but the colors didn't match at all. It was only in there for a few seconds and didn't bother with me, so I didn't get a close look at it. All I knew about what happened after that was that the alarm stopped about an hour later, so clearly Eggman managed to catch it before it could escape, if not before it caused damage."

"Hold up," Sonic said, "I think I'm putting together the pieces myself. Was he trying to use you to create… well… more of you?"

"Close enough," Shadow said. "I didn't need to wonder about what his goal was for much longer, because the day after that Eggman came in and explained exactly what he was doing. His plan was to use the samples he'd collected to create an army of creatures just like me; unstoppable super-soldiers with limitless potential. However, he planned to twist their minds to make them all obedient to him. I believe the term he used there was 'built to serve their master.'"

Silver shuddered. "That's… that's just wrong."

"No duh," Sonic replied. "Even for Eggman, that feels a bit over-the-top. What prompted him to try that route?"

"He never explained that to me, but I have some theories," Shadow said. "My guess is that he realized that I unbalanced the playing field quite a bit, and thus, he decided to try and rebalance it in his direction, no matter what it took."

"That seems reasonable," Silver said. "Sounds like nothing more than simple logic. Horrifying, but simple."

"Agreed," Shadow said. "Let's skip ahead a bit here, because the only part left that matters came at the end. I remember Eggman dragging some kind of gadget into my room while smirking like a lunatic. He turned it on and left, and while I had no clue what his goal was, I knew it couldn't be anything good, since it was showing about a dozen different news programs side by side."

"I'm assuming he wanted a captive audience for the massacre he unleashed," Silver said.

"Makes sense," Shadow said. "They all cut to the disaster at almost the exact same time, and none of the footage they had to show was pretty. In at least two of the programs, their reporters were killed while the cameras were still running. There was another one where one of the clones took a camera and brought it with him, which showed all kinds of blood and murder until the camera mercifully broke." Shadow began to tremble a bit, probably not taking too well to having to relive that part of his life again. "There was a lot more, but I think you get the picture."

"I was in that picture," Silver said. "Of course I get it."

"Most of what I said there was for Sonic's benefit," Shadow said. "I'm not even sure how you're here, since by all accounts you should have been dead decades ago. However, we'll have to figure that mystery out later."

"I'm as clueless as you are on that, so the sooner we get to that, the better," Sonic said.

"We'll get to it when we get to it," Shadow said. "Now, let's get to the big reveal. Everything I said before was just for context, this is the important part. Eggman is still making more of these things using factories he either built or repurposed. Each of them needs a Chaos Emerald to run, so that means there can be a maximum of six in existence. If we can destroy the factories and take their Chaos Emeralds, Eggman won't have any way to make more soldiers and we'll be able to end this."

Silver finally cracked a smile. "Pinch me, I must be dreaming."

Sonic promptly complied, causing Silver to yelp with surprise before half-heartedly swatting at him. "Did you have to take that literally?"

"Not really," Sonic said. "I did anyway."

"Let's move on from that," Shadow said. "So, now that I've told you everything you need to know, Sonic, it's your turn to spill. Why are you here?"

"Again, I don't know," Sonic said. "Tails had made a new invention for me that allowed me to go even faster than my usual top speed with the help of a Chaos Emerald, and I volunteered to test it for him. I remember starting to run, but everything that happened after that was a blur. Next thing I knew, I was waking up in a field and everything hurt."

Shadow gained a look of intense concentration for about fifteen seconds, but then Silver could almost see the lightbulb that went off in his head. "Well, why couldn't you tell me that at the beginning? Now it makes perfect sense."

Sonic shook his head. "Wait, how?"

"I know I just dumped a history lesson on you, but I've got to give you another one now," Shadow said. "About twenty years ago, a fairly unknown company ran an experiment with a drone-like device a group of top scientists had invented known by the codename Whirlwind. Whirlwind was known for two things; one being its top speed of nearly Mach 6, and the other being its size, roughly a quarter of that of a standard drone. Naturally, as soon as the company was cleared to run tests on it, the first thing it did was test out its top speed. To say the least, it didn't go well."

Now Silver was confused. "Wait, I don't remember seeing that. What happened?"

"A plane came out of seemingly nowhere and Whirlwind crashed into it, and at that point, the camera filming the test broke and the video was nothing but static. Furthermore, attempts to find it so that they could fix it for a second test was unsuccessful, and after that incident no one was willing to fund a new one. The video was studied frame by frame to try and figure out what happened, and while nobody was able to come to a conclusion on how it happened, we know what did. One frame, the space in front of Whirlwind is clear, the next, there's a plane there." Shadow took a deep breath, sounding like he'd been talking as fast as possible through this part.

"I had no idea about any of that," Silver said. "I know it happened before I was born, but how did nothing about it make it online or something?"

"The government worked to erase any evidence of it from the world's collective memory as much as possible," Shadow said. "After the initial burst of publicity from the video, all copies of it were taken down and destroyed, at least as far as I knew, and over time, so few remembered the existence of it that the implications of the video were never considered. But I remember. So I know how to use that now."

He paused for a second here, probably for dramatic effect, and then continued. "My personal belief is that Whirlwind focused so much energy on such a small space that it punched a hole in the space-time continuum. That explains the appearance of the plane that hadn't existed before and why the device was never found. For all we know, it could have been sent five years ahead of time or five years earlier, but we'll probably never know that."

"You're starting to sound like Tails," Sonic said. "So you're saying I broke the laws of time and space somehow? Okay, but then why did I get sent here, of all places?"

"As stupid as that sounds, that was probably nothing more than pure chance," Shadow said. "And even if it wasn't, I'd have no idea why you were sent to this specific time and place as opposed to anywhere else on the continuum. Very few, if any, public studies have ever been run on the space-time continuum, because many a brilliant man has driven himself to an early grave trying to wrap his head around how it works or why it's there. Most just understand that it exists and move on, very few seek answers any more complex than that."

"Don't worry too much about it, then," Sonic said. "At least I know how I got here now. I'm sticking around, because I want to see this to a conclusion, but at least I have a gridwork as to how I'm supposed to get back home."

Silver stood up, making a motion for the window. "What are we waiting for? Where's the closest monster factory, Shadow?"

"It's in a city a few hundred miles to the east from here," Shadow said, "and I'll know it when I see it. Come on, let's get whatever we need and go. I want to put a stop to this just as much as you do."

So, the three of them packed everything they felt like they'd need- food, fresh water, a box of matches, the remnants of a first-aid kit. Silver didn't have any bags to pack everything in, so they had to search some of the empty apartments for something they could use. Even with that, they only found two, so Silver had to improvise further by taking one of his unused cabinets off the wall and converting it into a storage container. Furthermore, everyone agreed to take turns carrying that. (Sure, Silver could simply make it float over him, but when he ventured that idea, Shadow rejected it, saying they didn't want him to expend any more energy than necessary.)

They needed no further prompting, all of them charging for the open window and leaping out, landing just as gracefully as the last time. In what felt like seconds, they'd cleared the city limits, leaving dust in their wake.

For Silver, this whole idea was new, but for the others, it was so commonplace that it felt like just another day.

It was time to take down Eggman's operation.