Chapter 4
"I don't care what we did Professor, those Emeralds in storage are for legitimate research only."
"Dammit, this is legitimate research! I'm trying to restore a life as well as work on your stupid weapon! If you'll just prolong my time a few more days I can successfully re-educate Shadow and work on a charging system for 'The Cannon'."
"This isn't negotiable...We all know the Ultimate Life-form project is a bust with humans and the one subject that lived through the process is too unpredictable. We had to throw the hedgehog in cryo, he's too dangerous in a normal jail cell."
"That's because of what you did to 'her', if not for her benefit I would never have undertaken the U.L. project in the first place. Right now I have no reason to go on, besides the guns you plant at the side of my head as I work."
"...Oh, sorry Gerald. Where you waiting for me to give a damn?"
"No. I suppose not. Therefore I cease to 'give a damn', as you put it. I'm putting the finishing touches on the Lazarus project and then you can let Scorpion troop do what they want to this data or me, because I want nothing more to do with you or GUN or anything else on this planet!"
"Good. You've just saved me eight hours of paper-work, Professor. Since the data is complete, I suppose that you are no longer needed and our loyal scientists can begin the real work at hand."
"I don't care. Just know, General that I will have my revenge."
"Whatever, old man. Any last words for the camera?"
"Yes..."
The recording stops there. The last research file having anything to do with the chaos emeralds was that half scrambled image and audio file. It was made five minutes before Prof. Gerald was executed. The screen once again fills with his face as he repeats the death threat on Earth. The Professor had used the chaos emeralds to create space transporters that utilized the energy of a world within a data stream to transfer a person to any location on Mobius or as the Overlanders call it, Earth.
The screen cuts off and the orange hacker stands in front of the monitor in tears. She can't explain why though. Gerald created the research that gave her life and even helped in the construction of ARK. Unlike Shadow and Biolizard she had never met her 'father', but still Hazard feels a great pain in seeing those images pass before her eyes as he excepts death. Unbelievable as it may be to her the tears stream freely from her eyes as she walks away from the computer console.
She walks out toward the observation deck and looks out of one of the windows surrounding the room. The massive crescent of the dark-side of Earth fills the view, the Great forest is outlined by the light of the moon against the Great continent and it's ocean. She gazes out with tears still lining her eyelids, blurring the image.
'GUN will pay for what they've done.' Hazard slashes her right claw against the glass, seeming to put a gash in Mobius' surface from the way the window looks. 'And I know just the way, too.'
=================================================
The lights dimmed again. A distinct 'ping, ping' sound could be heard as Rob plucked his light-bulb. Every couple of days there would be an execution. Rob, two of his cellmates and Shadow felt a charge, as if someone had put a live wire on their spines for just a few seconds, then it stopped just as suddenly. Shadow had since explained that a floor up the generator that supplied energy to the automatic locks on their cells and the machine that fed energy to the implants that suppressed their powers flickered for a few seconds whenever they fired up a machine known only as the U.A.
Rob knocked on the bars next to his cell. No answer. He rang on them with his knuckles. Still no response.
"Sonic is the fastest thing that ever lived..."
"THAT'S A DAMN LIE!!!"
Shadow peered into the dark cell next door with his nostrils flared and his quills sticking out. Breathing heavily he slammed his fists into the bars. Slowly, but surely he came to his senses.
"What do you want," the hedgehog asked, obviously a little peeved. "It's 3 AM!"
"Shh," Rob said. "Do you here that?"
"No. What?"
"Someone screaming or something."
Shadow listened to the rustling and yelling in the hallway. "Yeah. Probably Ernest. He killed some big guy in the shower for reasons I won't go into."
"They're gonna execute him...that gives me an idea."
Shadow put his head into his hands and closed his eyes. "Oh no! You're not actually going to try that hair-brained scheme you were talking about yesterday?"
"It beats sitting around here for a couple more years right? GUN is more liable to execute you before they let you walk away!"
The hedgehog got a solemn look on his face as he finally acknowledged the truth. He sighed and ran his hand into his black and red quills and plucked one of the sharpest he had growing there. He then shoved the quill into the bars and said," The implant should be on your frontal lobe. Don't go any deeper than to puncture the device just as the lights dim, you should get your powers back."
Rob shakily took the sharp spine and lined it up with his forehead. "God help me if the reboot function doesn't work. I'll be some kind of rampaging beast." He looks over toward his friend's cell. "Just promise that you'll kill me if I do, man."
Shadow nods and says," I hope it never comes to that."
Rob steadies his right hand, says a small prayer to a God two worlds away and plunges the spine through his skull. He can feel the sharp edge slice through the bone and almost poke his brain. The blood from the 1/4 inch wound pours into and stings his eye. Rob's hand begins to twitch and convulse, the first signs of trauma. His other eye begins to blur, almost becoming dark as the other eye goes red with the leaking of the hole in his skull. The world starts to swirl about him, the darkness is swallowing him whole. The light is even starting to go away. a little at a time. On. Off. On. Off.
Wait, it's flickering.
Rob stabs the spine in further and there's a crunch. He pulls the black spine from his head and wraps his shirt around his head to stop some of the bleeding. the implant is gone, yet the world still seems to be going dark.
Oh God. I'm dying.
Shadow continuously bangs on the bars in his cell. He can already see that his friend has gotten rid of his implant, but at a terrible cost. He can see that Rob is on his side breathing shallowly, hyperventilating. He'd seen this before, caused this before. Rob had bled too much, punctured too quickly or something else...many things that could have gone wrong. Shadow backed away from the all and ripped away his bunk. It was 9 inches of concrete between him and his dying friend, but to Shadow it might as well of been tissue paper.
He backed up against the other wall just as the lights went out, yet it still didn't matter. The prison around him shook with explosions and the sound like thunder. Shadow folded his fists in front of him, and rolled into the wall. He felt grinding and a horrible pain as his Spin Dash created sparks against the wires in the wall, but it didn't matter. Shadow unrolled and back-flipped three feet away. Shadow concentrated all his energy, all his emotions; all of his hate, love, anger, anxiety, bravery, and held out his hand at what was left of the wall.
A golden aura surrounded him as the spines on his back stood out and shot lightning toward the wall. The Chaos Spear technique from his military training. Under the assault of the electric needles the wall gave way in an explosion of heat and smoke. Shadow stepped through the hole expecting to find the friend he'd made in the few days he'd been there.
"Rob!" Shadow called into the darkness." Are you in here? Are you okay?"
"Activation Code: Rob Cross-Digivolve to..."
The darkness gave way to a red light surrounding his human friend. As it passed over him a grid seemed to appear on his skin. All other color on his body ceased to exist as the red grid made his body a changing wire frame. A great flash momentarily blinded Shadow. When he regained his vision the red grid had gone, replaced with a neon glowing creature that seemed to have a sword for a right arm, black wings protruding from it's back, six twitching antennae, no mouth and cold violet eyes. The monster that Rob had become declared it's presence by finishing the activation code.
"...DELMON!"
"I don't care what we did Professor, those Emeralds in storage are for legitimate research only."
"Dammit, this is legitimate research! I'm trying to restore a life as well as work on your stupid weapon! If you'll just prolong my time a few more days I can successfully re-educate Shadow and work on a charging system for 'The Cannon'."
"This isn't negotiable...We all know the Ultimate Life-form project is a bust with humans and the one subject that lived through the process is too unpredictable. We had to throw the hedgehog in cryo, he's too dangerous in a normal jail cell."
"That's because of what you did to 'her', if not for her benefit I would never have undertaken the U.L. project in the first place. Right now I have no reason to go on, besides the guns you plant at the side of my head as I work."
"...Oh, sorry Gerald. Where you waiting for me to give a damn?"
"No. I suppose not. Therefore I cease to 'give a damn', as you put it. I'm putting the finishing touches on the Lazarus project and then you can let Scorpion troop do what they want to this data or me, because I want nothing more to do with you or GUN or anything else on this planet!"
"Good. You've just saved me eight hours of paper-work, Professor. Since the data is complete, I suppose that you are no longer needed and our loyal scientists can begin the real work at hand."
"I don't care. Just know, General that I will have my revenge."
"Whatever, old man. Any last words for the camera?"
"Yes..."
The recording stops there. The last research file having anything to do with the chaos emeralds was that half scrambled image and audio file. It was made five minutes before Prof. Gerald was executed. The screen once again fills with his face as he repeats the death threat on Earth. The Professor had used the chaos emeralds to create space transporters that utilized the energy of a world within a data stream to transfer a person to any location on Mobius or as the Overlanders call it, Earth.
The screen cuts off and the orange hacker stands in front of the monitor in tears. She can't explain why though. Gerald created the research that gave her life and even helped in the construction of ARK. Unlike Shadow and Biolizard she had never met her 'father', but still Hazard feels a great pain in seeing those images pass before her eyes as he excepts death. Unbelievable as it may be to her the tears stream freely from her eyes as she walks away from the computer console.
She walks out toward the observation deck and looks out of one of the windows surrounding the room. The massive crescent of the dark-side of Earth fills the view, the Great forest is outlined by the light of the moon against the Great continent and it's ocean. She gazes out with tears still lining her eyelids, blurring the image.
'GUN will pay for what they've done.' Hazard slashes her right claw against the glass, seeming to put a gash in Mobius' surface from the way the window looks. 'And I know just the way, too.'
=================================================
The lights dimmed again. A distinct 'ping, ping' sound could be heard as Rob plucked his light-bulb. Every couple of days there would be an execution. Rob, two of his cellmates and Shadow felt a charge, as if someone had put a live wire on their spines for just a few seconds, then it stopped just as suddenly. Shadow had since explained that a floor up the generator that supplied energy to the automatic locks on their cells and the machine that fed energy to the implants that suppressed their powers flickered for a few seconds whenever they fired up a machine known only as the U.A.
Rob knocked on the bars next to his cell. No answer. He rang on them with his knuckles. Still no response.
"Sonic is the fastest thing that ever lived..."
"THAT'S A DAMN LIE!!!"
Shadow peered into the dark cell next door with his nostrils flared and his quills sticking out. Breathing heavily he slammed his fists into the bars. Slowly, but surely he came to his senses.
"What do you want," the hedgehog asked, obviously a little peeved. "It's 3 AM!"
"Shh," Rob said. "Do you here that?"
"No. What?"
"Someone screaming or something."
Shadow listened to the rustling and yelling in the hallway. "Yeah. Probably Ernest. He killed some big guy in the shower for reasons I won't go into."
"They're gonna execute him...that gives me an idea."
Shadow put his head into his hands and closed his eyes. "Oh no! You're not actually going to try that hair-brained scheme you were talking about yesterday?"
"It beats sitting around here for a couple more years right? GUN is more liable to execute you before they let you walk away!"
The hedgehog got a solemn look on his face as he finally acknowledged the truth. He sighed and ran his hand into his black and red quills and plucked one of the sharpest he had growing there. He then shoved the quill into the bars and said," The implant should be on your frontal lobe. Don't go any deeper than to puncture the device just as the lights dim, you should get your powers back."
Rob shakily took the sharp spine and lined it up with his forehead. "God help me if the reboot function doesn't work. I'll be some kind of rampaging beast." He looks over toward his friend's cell. "Just promise that you'll kill me if I do, man."
Shadow nods and says," I hope it never comes to that."
Rob steadies his right hand, says a small prayer to a God two worlds away and plunges the spine through his skull. He can feel the sharp edge slice through the bone and almost poke his brain. The blood from the 1/4 inch wound pours into and stings his eye. Rob's hand begins to twitch and convulse, the first signs of trauma. His other eye begins to blur, almost becoming dark as the other eye goes red with the leaking of the hole in his skull. The world starts to swirl about him, the darkness is swallowing him whole. The light is even starting to go away. a little at a time. On. Off. On. Off.
Wait, it's flickering.
Rob stabs the spine in further and there's a crunch. He pulls the black spine from his head and wraps his shirt around his head to stop some of the bleeding. the implant is gone, yet the world still seems to be going dark.
Oh God. I'm dying.
Shadow continuously bangs on the bars in his cell. He can already see that his friend has gotten rid of his implant, but at a terrible cost. He can see that Rob is on his side breathing shallowly, hyperventilating. He'd seen this before, caused this before. Rob had bled too much, punctured too quickly or something else...many things that could have gone wrong. Shadow backed away from the all and ripped away his bunk. It was 9 inches of concrete between him and his dying friend, but to Shadow it might as well of been tissue paper.
He backed up against the other wall just as the lights went out, yet it still didn't matter. The prison around him shook with explosions and the sound like thunder. Shadow folded his fists in front of him, and rolled into the wall. He felt grinding and a horrible pain as his Spin Dash created sparks against the wires in the wall, but it didn't matter. Shadow unrolled and back-flipped three feet away. Shadow concentrated all his energy, all his emotions; all of his hate, love, anger, anxiety, bravery, and held out his hand at what was left of the wall.
A golden aura surrounded him as the spines on his back stood out and shot lightning toward the wall. The Chaos Spear technique from his military training. Under the assault of the electric needles the wall gave way in an explosion of heat and smoke. Shadow stepped through the hole expecting to find the friend he'd made in the few days he'd been there.
"Rob!" Shadow called into the darkness." Are you in here? Are you okay?"
"Activation Code: Rob Cross-Digivolve to..."
The darkness gave way to a red light surrounding his human friend. As it passed over him a grid seemed to appear on his skin. All other color on his body ceased to exist as the red grid made his body a changing wire frame. A great flash momentarily blinded Shadow. When he regained his vision the red grid had gone, replaced with a neon glowing creature that seemed to have a sword for a right arm, black wings protruding from it's back, six twitching antennae, no mouth and cold violet eyes. The monster that Rob had become declared it's presence by finishing the activation code.
"...DELMON!"