Chapter 7
Where's the navigator of your destiny?
Where is the dealer of this hand?
Who can explain life and its brevity?
For there is nothing here that I can understand...
--Hello, Goodbye, Michael W. Smith
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We went back to the grove of trees above the aura of poison that hung over Diamonda, and opened a package of rations for lunch. I ate my portion, feeling as if a part of me was watching everything from a wary distance. Knuckles and Sonic played with Chimera, stroked him, and gave him the tastiest bits of their lunches. Chimera pretended to resent the attention, and gobbled down the food as if starved. He snapped at Sonic, but I noticed he never offered to bite Knuckles. I guess he remembered the slap he had received the one and only time he had bitten his master.
I might have been a million miles away from them. I made no attempt to fondle Chimera and ate mechanically, my eyes fixed on the horizon. Somewhere out there lurked a devastating amount of grief over Zinc. I would rather not think at all, and focused on the immediate problem of finishing my meal.
Jazz appeared as we were finishing lunch, and flopped in the shade nearby, mopping his forehead-fur with his red bandanna.
"Where were you?" asked Sonic. "We got back one of our chao, see?" He glanced in my direction and looked away.
Knuckles, too, avoided my eyes. "His name is Chimera, and he bites."
"That's okay," said Jazz. "I'm not interested in the small and cute. I've been looking for Devan Shell."
"Find him?" asked Sonic.
"Yup," said Jazz, fondling his gun. I knew what he preferred instead of the small and cute. "He's in the green clump over there." He waved a hand toward a patch of green in the distance. "I've been looking in all the wrong colors. His elite guards are there, so he's got to be there."
"Elite guards?" said Sonic. "Sounds paranoid."
"He is," said Jazz. "They saw me and locked down the area, so it's no use going back now."
"Why not outrun their bullets and try anyway?" said Sonic.
"They're too smart for that," said Jazz, annoyed. "They switched to pulse lasers a long time ago."
"Lasers only move as fast as their transmitters can turn," said Sonic, fidgeting. He took an implication that his speed was inferior as a challenge. So did Jazz.
"If you'd ever studied physics, Sonic--"
"Lasers can't hit you if you don't let them," snapped Sonic.
"Have you ever had a laser burn?" said Jazz, his self-control slipping. "Light moves faster than sound, SONIC."
"Are you telling me to shut up?" snarled Sonic, jumping to his feet.
"Of course not," said Jazz, laying back his ears and smiling. "I know you don't listen to advice."
Sonic moved as though to tackle him, but the rabbit whipped his gun to his shoulder. "Stop right there."
Knuckles rose to his feet. "Are you going to kill each other over this?"
"He insulted me!" yelped Sonic.
"If your head wasn't so thick--" Jazz began, and the three began talking all at once.
I got up and walked away. Raised voices were too much for me to handle. I walked until I could no longer hear them, and stood gazing across Diamonda's glittering expanse. It was beautiful beyond description, but the depravity beneath the surface was as putrid as the soil itself. Human slavery, eating sentient species ... and that was the tip of the iceberg. Who knows what other heinous acts the Shellizaas were committing within their glittering home. And the two Mobians who stood the greatest chance of stopping their evil ways were busy fighting each other. It made me want to go back and knock their heads together. Instead I kept walking along the rocky valley rim.
After a while I noticed I was moving toward the smooth cliff that Sonic said was a dam. I had never seen a dam before. Back on my homeworld, the only water came from springs in the caves. I focused on simple curiosity and forced back the paralyzing emotions that were brewing in my subconscious.
I walked for a long time, wondering if the boys were over their argument or if it had come to blows. Knuckles was as blockheaded as the rest--even more so, because he liked fighting more than Sonic did. Then I corrected myself. I was being unfair to them both--Sonic put his heart and soul into everything he did, and Knuckles was steady as a rock most of the time. But they both had tempers. With a blush I let my thoughts slip back to that private moment when Knuckles had proposed to me. Even now I wondered if I should have turned him down. He had not mentioned it since, and had spent his time entirely on the Floating Island. I wondered if he had changed his mind.
Which brought me by degrees to the present. His attitude toward me had been casual, but that was easily chalked up to worry about Chimera. And Zinc. Oh Zinc, my baby chao, you're gone and I can't get you back ... My vision blurred and ran together. I wiped away the tears before they could touch my metal. Why was life so unfair? Why did I have to be so helpless and useless?
I kept moving, not caring where I went, wiping my face. I was so afraid ... What am I afraid of? I wondered. The Shellizaas, the crystals--the beautiful mask that evil wore. The dragon's overwhelming presence had torn the mask and revealed the hideousness beneath.
My feet clinked on rocks, and I had to stop. Looking up, I saw a rocky ridge rose before me. There was a gap in the ridge to my right, and filling this gap was a smooth, buttressed wall. The dam.
I wanted to see the lake that Sonic had spoke of. I began climbing the rocky hillside, using the exercise as an excuse to forget my grief. Zinc wouldn't have wanted to see his mistress make a fool of herself, not after the last time. "You let him die," a voice in my head whispered. "You betrayed him once to Robo Knux, and you betrayed him again to the Chao Company."
That particular thought was nagging me when I reached the top of the ridge and looked down at Sonic's lake. It was purest blue, and so clear I could see boulders twenty feet down. The far shore was lost in the distance, and I could feel heat rising from the tranquil surface.
I walked out onto the top of the dam. It was smooth and level, and as wide as an airport runway. I walked along it, gazing at the lake on one side and Diamonda on the other. From here I could see that the valley was almost a mile deep. At the far end there was a wide channel where a river had once flowed. Who had dammed this river and discovered the crystals at the bottom? It must have been done years ago.
I glimpsed something flitting along the valley rim, and watched as a blue object streaked up the hill and out onto the dam. I threw up an arm, and Sonic skidded to a halt a few feet away. He was laughing. "Zeff, this is the second time! I'm not going to hit you!"
"It's reflex," I said, dropping my arm. "Are you over your fight?"
He scowled. "For now. I really don't like Jazz, he thinks he knows everything. What do you think of this view?"
"The view is nice," I muttered.
"Bet this whole area is a volcanic hotspot," said Sonic, hands on his hips. "I wish it'd blow sky high and take the Shellizaas with it." As I watched, he floated an inch off the ground and glowed faintly.
"So why don't you bust the dam?" I asked.
He looked down at it. "Maybe if I was hyper, but it'd take a while. One hedgehog isn't much against a hunk of cement this size." He walked off, peering over the edge and whistling though his teeth. I gazed at the sun sparkling on the lake, and wished Zinc could see it.
Sonic reappeared at my side. "Hey Zeff, want to leave now?" His eyes were wide, ears flattened.
"Why, what's wrong?" I asked in alarm.
He looked around at the dam. "Oh, I don't like it here anymore. Here, let's go." He grabbed my arms and fled off the dam. He was so fast I felt as if my internal organs were imploding, and I didn't breathe until he stopped halfway back to camp. He dropped me on my face, and when my lungs started working I gasped, "Why did you do that?"
He was pacing in a circle. "Didn't you notice the top of the dam was painted?"
"No." I climbed to my feet. "With what? Missile crosshairs?"
Sonic faced me. "Zephyer, the top of that dam is a runway."
"A runway?" I had noticed the dam was wide, but ... "How do you know? I didn't see any planes."
Sonic looked thoughtful. "I'll bet there's a lift. They probably keep them inside there." He sprinted off, and two minutes later was back. He looked even more worried. "There's four lifts. And the painted lines are made of crushed crystals, I'll bet they glow at night."
"So what?" I said. "It's kind of clever if you ask me."
"For one thing, I wouldn't want a Shellizaa to catch us up there," said Sonic. "Let's go back. I want to ask Jazz what kind of planes use that place. It might be where the Ghosts come from."
"I thought you were sick of Jazz," I said, rubbing my chest, which had no effect through my metal shell.
Sonic smiled. "Oh, he comes in handy sometimes." He whisked off, and I trudged after him, wishing I could run as fast as he could.
As I neared the grove of trees, I saw Jazz Jackrabbit flash past me in a blur of green. He was headed for the dam. Knuckles was standing with Chimera in one hand, and Sonic was pacing back and forth with his hands clasped behind his back. Knuckles was speaking as I walked up.
"What we ought to do is go back to Sapphire City and tell the humans that their young are being kidnapped and enslaved. Then an army could take care of this place."
Sonic snorted. "Oh sure, and cause the Second Great War. Once you rile up humans, there's no stopping them. I think us Mobians better deal with this."
"So let's get a Mobian army," said Knuckles. "There's only four of us, Sonic. We can't take down a whole city."
"But it's a small city," muttered Sonic, pacing. "If only we could break out that dragon. He'd do the job, I bet. Hey Zeff, did you happen to pack any plastic explosives?"
"No, they weren't on my list," I said. "How about you? You bring any Chaos Emeralds? If Chimera got one..."
Knuckles gave me a horrified look, and I remembered what Chimera had done the last time he had had an emerald.
"...Or not," I concluded.
"We're fresh out of emeralds," said Sonic. He scanned the eastern sky. I noticed the gesture and thought of his mischievous whispering with Tails before we left. So, he WAS plotting to meet him later.
"Thinking of home?" I asked.
"Tails," Sonic admitted. "He'd probably notice a structural weakness in the dam, put a rocket in a crack and blow up the whole shebang."
"I can do that," said Knuckles. He glanced at the dam in the distance. "Nope, no weaknesses."
"Oh come on," said Sonic. "It's got airplanes in it, so it must be hollow."
"You're right," said Knuckles, stroking Chimera absently. The chao closed his eyes in bliss.
Jazz reappeared and screeched to a halt with less grace than Sonic. "They're in there, all right," he said. "You guys probably didn't notice, but there's machinery running in there."
Sonic glanced at Jazz's ears and smirked, but said nothing.
Jazz paid him no attention. "I've been looking for their airbase for weeks, I never thought to check the dam! It's just like Shell. We'll sneak in there tonight."
"Why wait until tonight?" I asked.
Jazz looked at me and smiled. "Because Ghosts always come out at night."