Worthless
Part 2
by K.M. Hollar
Mecha was the first to awaken. He sat up with an explosive cough and realized his lungs were burning. There was no air! Coughing, he scrambled to his feet. As soon as he stood, he broke free of the ground-clinging fumes and inhaled oxygen. He stood there, gasping for breath and looking around.
He was on a rocky hillside under a burning sun. All around were jagged, black hills, cutting off the horizon, many with white smoke streaming from vents in their sides. One such vent was twenty feet away, uphill, its fumes creeping down upon him. As he looked around, he realized the hillside was strewn with bodies.
Shadow lay nearby, face up, his natural eye half open and glazed. Beside him lay Nox and Aleda, also unmoving. Further off was Nack, Rouge, Tails, Zephyer and the hedgehog. Zephyer was still clutching a thrall sphere.
Mecha had read the poem, and he knew what had happened to them. He accepted it and arranged his priorities accordingly. They were all in an unknown, hazardous location. Their chances of survival were greatest if they kept together, and that meant they all had to live through the next ten minutes. He had to get them out of this poisonous gas.
"Shadow!" he barked over the network, thankful that it still worked. "Mekion, status report!"
Mekion's red eye flashed on. "Shadow status 76. Mekion status 96."
"Awaken Shadow," said Mecha. He grabbed the black hedgehog and dragged him to his feet, lifting his head above the gas.
Shadow's natural eye blinked. "What? What happened?"
"Remain standing," said Mecha, his voice clipped. "A poison smoke is near the ground. I must rouse the others." Mecha stooped and picked up Nox and Aleda, thrusting them into Shadow's arms. He hesitated slightly to reassure himself that Aleda was breathing. Shadow stood there, coughing and shaking his head, as Mecha hurried across the hillside to Nack and Rouge.
Up the hill, Sonic groaned and sat up. He promptly doubled over, choking and gasping.
"Stand up!" Mecha called to him, secretly thinking that if the hedgehog died of gas inhalation, no one could blame Mecha. To his disappointment Sonic staggered to his feet and breathed the fresh air.
"Mecha," he called hoarsely, "where are we?"
"No time now," Mecha said. "Rouse everyone and get them on their feet before the gas kills them."
Sonic bent over Tails, and Mecha grabbed Rouge's arm and yanked her to her feet. She was limp and heavy, unresponsive. Mecha shook her violently, snarling, "If not for you, we wouldn't be here! Wake up and stand!"
Her eyes opened, and she began coughing as if rescued from drowning. When she could stand on her own, Mecha left her and repeated the process with Nack. The weasel awakened at once, and he fought off Mecha with a snarl. "Leave me alone, robot! I'm fine!"
Mecha stepped away from him and looked around. Sonic had awakened Tails, and both of them were hoisting Zephyer to her feet. Tails wrenched the thrall sphere out of her hands and set it on the rocks, and Zephyer shuddered and began gasping.
Mecha scanned the hillside. Everyone was up now, pale, shaky and alive. He had time to analyze his own status, and realized he was drained and dizzy. The memory of the chaos-induced pain in his head was still there, like the ghost of a headache, and breathing the gas had not helped matters.
"You guys," called Sonic to them all, "we've got to get out of here."
"Uphill," said Rouge, rubbing her chest. Her voice was low and scratchy. "This gas is heavier than air, it flows downhill. The air will be clean up above."
"You heard her," said Mecha. "Everyone, commence climbing."
The group staggered uphill, tripping over the rocks and trying not to fall into the layer of bad air near the ground. Mecha returned to Shadow and took Aleda from him. Aleda and Nox were awake, but their eyes had a shiny, sick look. "I feel like I'm gonna throw up," groaned Nox.
"Please don't," Shadow whispered.
Mecha carried Aleda in the crook of his arm. She was unnaturally limp, and her head lolled from side to side as if she lacked the strength to hold it up. It worried him, but there was nothing he could do for her right now.
The hill was not very high, and once they moved beyond the gas vent the going was easier. The rocks were smaller and firmer, and soon they reached the hilltop and stood inhaling the hot breeze. All around them, as far as the eye could see, were volcanic slag heaps streaming gas and smoke. There wasn't a speck of green in sight, and no water.
"So ... where are we?" asked Tails with a tremor in his voice.
"And how'd we get here?" added Nack, folding his arms. "Was that a teleporter accident or something?"
"No," growled Mecha. "You and Rouge activated a Master Emerald defense by attacking the Guardians."
"How do you know?" said Rouge, who was recovering her wits and developing a nasty mood. "In case you didn't notice, all of us are here, and I didn't notice YOU attacking the Guardians." She shot a dirty look at Zephyer, who was pale and quiet.
"Oh shut up," snarled Sonic. "If you didn't have a revenge-fixation--"
The bat raised a fist and advanced on him, but Mecha caught her wrist and twisted her arm backwards. "Stop," he said quietly, and released her. She backed away, glaring. He looked around at all of them. "I interpreted the inscription that explains this situation. Would you care to hear it?"
The group exchanged dark looks and nodded.
Mecha recited the poem, mildly enjoying the way the syllables rolled off his tongue. The group listened in silence, looking at the desolate landscape and avoiding each other's eyes. Their attention wasn't riveted until the final verses, when the echidnas threatened Miloth and were banished. Mecha finished with the warning and fell silent, looking at them. No one spoke for a long moment.
Finally Sonic blurted, "So the emerald banishes everyone but the Guardian's family? That sucks!"
"Way," agreed Tails. He looked around at the volcanos. "Does this mean this isn't Mobius?"
"It's not my world," said Zephyer softly.
"How do you know?" said Nack. "The robot just said the Master Emerald banishes everyone from the world."
Zephyer pointed at the sky. "Blue sky. On my world it's orange from the dust in the atmosphere. And the wind is never this calm at home, ever."
"Hey Mecha," said Tails, "see if you can reach any satellites."
Mecha nodded and turned in a slow circle, scanning. Shadow, who was standing a little apart from the rest, whispered, "It's no use, I already tried. There's nothing out there."
"So we're not on Zeff's homeworld," said Sonic, "but we might be on some other planet entirely. Great. Zeff, how come you came with us? You're a Guardian."
"I touched a thrall sphere," she murmured. "When I did, I put myself under the same punishment as you."
"Whatever," said Sonic, tapping a foot. "I don't know about you people, but I don't like standing in the sun this long. What say I go run around and scout some territory?"
"I'll go, too," whispered Shadow, and the hedgehogs glared at each other.
"Don't go out of sight," said Rouge. "In country like this, it'll be easy to get lost."
"Yeah, yeah," said Sonic. "I'll go this way, and Shads, you go that way." Sonic bolted off down the hill, jumping rocks and causing small avalanches of loose pebbles. Shadow darted in the other direction, his hoverskates lifting him high enough to coast over the rocks.
Nack poked Mecha's arm. "You're fast, aren't you? Why don't you go with them?"
Mecha turned his head and graced Nack with a sour look. "Two reasons. The first is that two scouts are more than enough. The second reason is that since we are cut off from civilization, I must conserve as much fuel as possible."
"We all should," muttered Zephyer, squinting after Sonic as he stopped on a distant hilltop and began to circle. "If we don't find water, we'll all die in a few days."
"Then finding water is priority," said Mecha.
Over the network, Shadow said to Mecha, "My reserves are already low. What is the status of yours?"
"Low," Mecha replied grimly. "Fuel levels are three-fourths, but the fuel for my nanite chambers are less than half. Perhaps I should have let you install that carbon-based power system after all."
Shadow didn't reply, for there was nothing more to say. Their situation was looking worse by the minute.
Sonic returned to the group first, sweaty and panting. "Nothing but this as far as I can see," he reported. "There's a really bad smell in the low places, so all the shade is probably poisoned." He noticed Tails gazing at him with silent fear in his eyes. Sonic ruffled the fox's headfur. "Don't worry little bro, we'll be okay."
Shadow reappeared, also panting, heat rippling from his metal half. "Nothing," he whispered. "However, there is a ravine just over that hill. It leads south. Perhaps if we follow it we will locate water."
"Sounds good to me," said Nack, pulling his hat lower over his eyes.
"Like you have any say in the matter," snapped Zephyer. "You shot my husband!"
Nack sneered. "The way things are looking, you're much, much worse off than he is."
Zephyer swung at him, eyes flaming, but Mecha intervened, catching her wrist and twisting her arm back the way he had done to Rouge. "Enough," he said. "We are in enough danger without inflicting damage on each other." He turned and walked down the hill, and the group followed him in silence, exchanging nasty looks.
The ravine was four feet deep, cut through layers of volcanic rock and ash by rain runoff. It was thick with fumes, so the group walked along its bank, scrambling over the rocks and trying not to break their ankles. It was hot, tough work, and the sun blazed down without mercy.
They stopped to catch their breaths, and Sonic said, "Hey guys, how about if I run down the ravine and see where it leads?"
They exchanged glances, but Mecha stared straight ahead, refusing to acknowledge Sonic's existence.
"Knock yourself out," said Nack, mopping his face. "Bring us back some iced beverages, will you?"
"Will do," said Sonic. He covered his nose and mouth with one hand, leaped into the ravine and shot away in a cloud of dust.
"He is wasting his energy," Shadow observed in a whisper. "He may run a hundred miles before he finds anything."
"At least he's trying," said Tails, standing up for his hero. "I don't see you trying to save us."
"I don't waste my efforts on futility," whispered Shadow, giving Tails a cool look.
Zephyer lifted her head. "You've given up already, huh? How come you two are still carrying your chao?"
Mecha and Shadow looked down at Aleda and Nox. The ground was too rough and poisonous to allow the chao to walk. Nox was panting, his tongue a bright pink against his black face, but in Mecha's arms Aleda was riding along limp, eyes closed, one paw hanging loose.
"Looks like yours is dying," said Rouge, motioning to Aleda.
Mecha looked at her, trying to keep his face blank. "Yes," he said. "Pity."
Zephyer and Tails looked at each other. They had grown accustomed to Mecha's personality over the last week, and heard the faintest of tremors in his voice.
Zephyer walked up to him and held out her hands. Mecha looked at her savagely and clutched Aleda to him, but Zephyer whispered, "Your metal is conducting heat. She's frying."
The android looked at the chao with a pained expression, then slowly handed her to Zephyer. Zephyer took the tiny limp body and laid the chao's head on her shoulder. The creature's pulse was weak and fluttery, its body damp with sweat. "What's his name?" Zephyer asked.
Mecha muttered under his breath.
Zephyer stepped closer and inclined her head, and this time heard him say, "HER name is Aleda."
"Aleda," murmured Zephyer, turning so her shadow fell over the chao. "Poor thing. We need water."
Nack sat down on a rock. "Eh, just club it in the head. It won't survive out here anyway."
Mecha moved so fast that no one had time to react. One second he was standing beside Zephyer, and the next second he lifted Nack off the ground by his throat. "I was kidding, I was kidding!" Nack gasped.
Mecha's eyes flamed. He tightened his grip until Nack began to strangle, kicking and twisting, then Mecha threw him on the ground. He glared around at the others, who were watching in shock. "Yes," he snarled, "I have a chao. If you want to prolong your existence, do not joke about it."
Knuckles lay on the sofa, eyes closed, as the doctor examined his leg. Sally stood nearby, anxiously chewing her lip and watching. Knuckles was pale and spoke little, suffering in silence. It wasn't only his wound that pained him, Sally was certain. The island was deserted. Something had happened, leaving Knuckles alone and hurt, and the trauma was worse than the injury itself.
The doctor was a collie named Shepherd. He was Knothole's resident physician, and had treated Zephyer during her recovery from derobotization. He knew Knuckles and Zephyer quite well, and now prodded Knuckles's leg with expert fingers, wiping away the blood to see the damage.
At last he said, "The bullet entered here and exited here. It missed the bone and the major arteries, thankfully. It'll take a while to knit."
Knuckles nodded. Shepherd reached into his bag and extracted a syringe and a bottle. "I'll apply some local anesthetic and sew it up."
Knuckles nodded again. He accepted the shot without a sound, then relaxed as the pain in his leg began to deaden.
Shepherd went to the kitchen to wash his hands, and Sally pulled up a chair and sat beside the sofa. "Knuckles," she said quietly, "what happened?"
He opened his eyes and looked at the squirrel. A smile flickered across his face--an ironic smile that Sally did not like. "There's a poem on a paper on the kitchen table," he told her, his voice slow and thick. "Read it."
Sally rose and entered the kitchen as Shepherd walked out, drying his hands. "What do you think?" she murmured to him.
The collie cast an appraising look at the motionless crimson shape on the sofa. "He was shot at point-blank range, and I'd say he's in shock. But he's a fighter, and he's in excellent physical condition. He'll pull through."
"I wish he'd tell us what happened," whispered Sally.
Shepherd nodded and walked over to attend to Knuckles, while Sally entered the kitchen. The kitchen table was covered in papers, books and photographs as if someone had dumped a box on the table and spread around its contents. On top of the pile was a sheet of paper covered in handwriting that looked like type. Sally stood and read it, wondering what echidnaen history had to do with this. Sonic had hinted that Knuckles and Zephyer were trying some emerald experiments, but ...
She reached the ending, then reread the last few verses. A sense of horror settled over her. This was a ballad about the echidna clan vanishing. All but the Guardian. But where was Zephyer?
She carried the paper back in the living room. Knuckles was gazing at the ceiling, trying not to look as Shepherd threaded a needle with heavy brown thread. Sally sat down in her chair and held out the paper. "What does this mean?"
He took it from her and his eyes flicked over it. Then he glanced at the doctor's gloved hands inserting the needle, and he quickly turned his head. Although he could not feel it due to the anesthetic, it was unnerving to see someone sewing up his leg like a piece of cloth.
"We were trying to open a portal to Zeff's homeworld," he muttered. "Might have worked, but Rouge and some weasel busted in right in the middle of it. Trying to steal the Master Emerald. There was ... a struggle. The weasel shot me and the Master went into protection mode. Banished everyone."
"Even Zephyer?"
He nodded. "She grabbed a thrall sphere just as the energy pulsed. They're all gone."
Sally sat back in her chair, feeling the same rush of disbelief and despair that had overtaken Knuckles. Sonic had been there. He was gone, too. And Tails. "Where did they go?" she asked, trying to keep her voice from breaking.
He shook his head. "No idea. Far away. You know in that poem it moved them to another planet."
Another planet. Sally's hands shook as she looked at the poem again. Sonic was as good as dead in that case, because she would never see him again. The rebellious Freedom Fighter rose in her, refusing to give up. There had to be something they could do. "You said the portal almost worked," she said. "What if we tried that?"
"Zephyer took the sphere with her," said Knuckles, looking at the doctor's work and jerking his eyes away. "The spiral's broken. It won't work now."
The squirrel stared down at the poem, rereading the end part. She noticed one verse ... it was meant not to harm, but to banish. But because the emotions were so high at the time, the Master banished the echidnas further than it should have. That was why it had been recorded.
"Knuckles," she said, "read this."
She pointed out the verse, and he read it. "What about it?"
"It's supposed to relocate within Mobius," she said. "This was an extreme case and that's why they wrote it down."
He stared at her as he thought this through. "Then ... then maybe we can track them," he whispered. "The Master might find Zephyer because she's a Guardian."
Shepherd cut the thread and began wrapping cotton and gauze around Knuckles's leg. "You're not going anywhere for a while, Knuckles. You have to stay off this leg for a few days or you'll damage it even worse."
Knuckles looked mutinous. "What about crutches?"
Shepherd glared. "On your back for three days. After that, crutches."
Knuckles didn't answer, and looked out the window. Shepherd looked at him a long moment, then reached into his bag, rummaged around and withdrew a bottle of tiny pills. He extracted two and held them out. "Antibiotics. Take one when I leave and one tomorrow. Do you want some painkiller?"
"Why not?" said Knuckles, easing into a sitting position. Shepherd handed him a bottle with a few more pills, then beckoned to Sally.
She followed him outside and down toward the teleporter. "He won't stay off that leg, doctor," she told him in a low voice. "And I can't make him."
"I know that," said Shepherd with a smile. "Those antibiotics are also a powerful sedative. He'll sleep for seventy-two hours without twitching."
Sally gave Shepherd a strange look. "You can do that?"
"I have to sedate active-lifestyle patients," he told her. "Otherwise they don't rest long enough to heal. But keep an eye on him."
"I will," said Sally with a sigh.
She returned to Knothole and retrieved her Chaos Emerald tracker from a locked drawer in her desk. The only one of its kind on Mobius, Tails and Rotor had built it, and it was kept a dead secret. Sally used it to track Sonic by his chaos aura, unnaturally strong from prolonged contact with emeralds, and observe him when he was away from home. If he was on Mobius, she would find him.
Sally took it through the teleporter and hurried up to the house. She found Knuckles had limped to his room and was lying down, having just downed one of the sedatives. Sally looking in and sighed. "I was hoping you hadn't taken it yet."
"What?" asked Knuckles.
She gestured to the remaining pill. "Enough sedative to knock you on your butt for a day and a half."
Knuckles sat up, eyes flaming. "What? That jerk, there's no time! I can't sleep that long ..." His words dissolved in a groan, and he sank back on the pillow. "Works fast," he mumbled, struggling to keep his eyes open. "Track Sonic, if not, track Zephyer, she's got the sphere. Tails has a strong aura, he's with them, maybe Shadow too ... Shepherd's gonna pay for this ..." And he was out like a light.
Sally closed the door and tiptoed out to set up the tracker.
The stranded Mobians rose to their feet. "We have to keep moving," said Mecha, striding forward along the bank of the gully. "The continued exposure to the sun will cut our changes of survival in half." They all knew he was worried about his chao, but no one said anything.
As they followed Mecha in single file, Tails said to Zephyer, "Hey, what'd you do with the sphere you had?"
"I left it where we landed," said Zephyer over her shoulder. She was carrying Aleda and stroking her constantly.
Tails looked back at the hilltop where they had started, and saw the sun gleaming off the crystal. "Wait a minute, I'm gonna go get it. We can't just leave it there."
"Yeah we can," muttered Zephyer, who now hated everything having to do with thrall spheres. Tails twisted his tails together, unfurled them with a snap, and rose into the air as they whirled like helicopter blades. He flew away overhead and back toward their starting point.
As they watched him, Rouge muttered, "Sonic will come back, won't he?"
"Yes," snapped Zephyer. "Like Shadow said, he might run a hundred miles before he finds anything."
"Unless he drops dead from the fumes," said Nack, "or falls in a volcano. We don't know what's out there."
Mecha's eyes glinted at the thought, but he said nothing.
Tails flew back to them, carrying the sphere, which had no glow in direct sunlight and looked like a ball of orange glass. He landed with a crunch on the rocks, panting and triumphant. Zephyer gave it a dirty look. "I'm not carrying that when you get tired."
"I know," said Tails. "I have gloves, so it's okay."
The group walked on, panting in the heat and listening in vain for some sound of Sonic returning. For a while there was no sound but the crunch of feet on loose rock, and the rattle of falling pebbles. The ravine wound aimlessly between the heaps of basalt and pumice, smoke and gas seeping out of the cones and making their eyes smart.
Tails found he was walking behind Mecha, and jogged forward to walk beside him. "Mecha," he said, "do you have any idea what world we're on, if it's not Mobius?"
"I have been pondering that," said Mecha, keeping his eyes on the ground to avoid stumbling. "I believe we are merely in an inhospitable region of a life-sustaining world. Notice the atmosphere. It is oxygen-based, and the pressure is equal to our own pressure two miles above sea level."
Tails had not thought of that. "Do you think we might still be on Mobius?"
Mecha cast him a glance. "Perhaps. In which case our situation is little better. Without access to navigational satellites, I cannot determine our location in relation to any settlements."
"But there's no way to tell?"
"No," said Mecha.
They walked in silence a moment, aware that the rest of the group was listening to them.
"Yes," said Mecha suddenly. "I carry volumes of information on Mobius's flora and fauna for research purposes. If we discover vegetation or wildlife, its identification, or lack thereof, will tell us if this is Mobius."
"We just have to find some flora or fauna," said Rouge. "If I see some, I'll let you know."
"Affirmative," said Mecha, ignoring her sarcasm.
At the rear of the group, Shadow cocked his head and gazed at the cloudless sky. "Zephyer," he whispered to the echidna, who was walking near him. She looked around at him, and he whispered, "Do you hear something?"
She shook her head.
He set Nox on his shoulder, then sprang out of line and shot to the top of the nearest rocky hill to scan the horizon. There it was again: a shrill, thin cry, drowned out by their feet on the rocks. To the south were three specks against the sky. He zoomed in his robot eye. Winged shapes--birds--circling and diving. They were pursuing something traveling north, and Shadow had an idea of who it was.
"Mecha," he said over the network, "birds are flying this way, and I think they are hunting Sonic. We may be in danger."
"What? Relay the image."
Shadow snapped a screenshot and relayed it to Mecha, who cursed quietly. Then he halted and informed the others, "Shadow has detected several bird-like creatures traveling in this direction. They seem hostile. Prepare to defend yourselves." He strode between them to Zephyer and said quietly, "Stay behind me. If any harm befalls Aleda, I will tear your face off."
"No need to make threats," said Zephyer. "I have a chao, too."
He held her eye for a second, then turned away and ordered everyone to pick up rocks. There was no shortage of this type of ammunition.
Shadow remained on the hilltop, watching the progress of the birds through the heat rippling off the ground. The hills hid their prey from view, but it was moving about as fast as Sonic would through the rough, twisting gully.
One of the birds broke off from the rest and flew toward Shadow. Its eyesight must be superb to pick out a black hedgehog standing on a black hill in the midst of black volcanic country. It was half a mile off, but approaching fast. Shadow watched it, trying to identify it, because he had heard what Mecha had said about telling if this was Mobius.
The other birds were drawing closer. Shadow turned and descended the hill to the others. "They are nearly here," he whispered, watching the sky. The group had picked up jagged rocks, and Nack and Rouge looked particularly bloodthirsty.
The first bird swept over and circled, looking at them. Its wings were long and narrow, like an albatross's, and its head was naked with a beak thicker and broader than its whole head, as if its diet consisted of bones and rocks.
It folded its wings and dove at Tails, sensing he was the weakest of the group. Tails heaved a rock and ducked out of the way, but the bird avoided the rock and raked at his head with its back feet. It was barraged with flying stones, some of which struck it hard enough to draw blood. It flew up in the air again with a hoarse squawk, then circled and dove at Tails again. They again beat it off with rocks, and Nack snarled, "If only I had my pistols, I'd teach him a lesson!"
Suddenly there were two birds circling, then three. The defenders heard footsteps and turned to see Sonic climb out of the gully, covered in dust and gasping for breath. There were bloody gashes across the top of his head and along his arms where the creatures had raked him. "Hi guys," he panted. "Sorry I led 'em back here, I thought they'd give up." He stooped and grabbed a rock as all three birds dove at once for Sonic, smelling blood.
Beside Zephyer, Mecha picked up a rock and tested its weight in one hand.
"Don't you have lasers or something?" Zephyer asked him, flinging a rock at the birds.
"No," said Mecha. "Not in this body design. All internal weapon systems were sacrificed for the sake of biological structure."
Sonic spindashed out from under the birds, and Shadow caught one by the leg in his robot hand. It shrieked and beat him around the head with its wings. Teeth bared and half-blinded, Shadow grabbed it by the neck and slammed it into the ground. The impact didn't seem to hurt it at all, and it flailed and screamed, trying to get up.
"Kill it!" Rouge shouted over the commotion.
Shadow hesitated--he didn't know how to kill something--and the bird's neck shot out, tearing at his eyes with its heavy beak. His robot eye took the brunt of the blow, but the beak scored across his muzzle and nose, and he recoiled with a whispering yell. Then Nack was there with a rock. He cracked it across the bird's head, and it went limp and lay still.
The other birds screeched and dove at Shadow and Nack. Ten feet away, Mecha took aim, calculated his trajectory, and threw his rock with all the power in his synthetic sinew. One of the birds took the rock right in the eye. The impact knocked it out of the air, and it flopped on the ground, stone dead.
The remaining bird saw its companions were dead, whirled and flew away over the rocky hills. A moment later they saw it again, a speck against the sky, circling higher and higher. "Report your status, all," said Mecha.
Sonic straightened up, wincing. "A few scratches. Nothing serious."
Shadow was wiping blood off his face and gingerly feeling his nose. "Mildly damaged," he whispered. "Annoying but not critical."
"I'm okay," said Tails, dusting off his fur. "You guys got 'em before they got me"
"And we're okay," said Rouge, dropping the rocks she was holding. "Aren't we, Nack?"
The weasel was watching the remaining bird circle. "Yeah," he muttered. "Man, if only I had my pistols ..."
Mecha walked up to look at the carcasses of the birds with Sonic.
"Hey Mecha," said Sonic, "that was some throw, there. This thing's head is caved in."
Mecha tried to ignore Sonic, but he was proud of the blow--he had never actually thrown a missile like that. "Yes," he said, stooping over his victim, "the stone left my hand at nearly five hundred miles an hour." He stretched out one crumpled wing and discovered that instead of feathers, the wing was thin skin stretched between bony fingers, covered with a layer of fine hair. It had no feathers on its entire body, for it was covered in fur like a bat, but the head was distinctly birdlike.
Rouge nudged the other with one toe. "I know these. These are jacaida."
Everyone stared at her. "How do you know?" asked Tails.
Rouge laid her ears back a second, then let them up again. "Jacaida are native to East Mobius. That's where I was born."
"Oh good, we're still on Mobius, then," said Tails. "Do you know how far from civilization we are?"
Rouge put her hands on her hips and looked around at the hills. "Not really. This is probably the Brimstone range on the southern continent, which covers a thousand square miles. There's no telling where we are in it."
"Well," said Sonic, "the smoke thins out a couple of miles down the gully, and there's some grass and stuff. That's why I turned back, because I figured once we're down there we can hunt water."
"And jacaida, too?" whispered Shadow. He was watching Sonic with jealousy--Sonic had sacrificed his own comfort to inject morale into the group, and everyone except Mecha was looking to him for hope.
Sonic shrugged. "The jacaida were flying around like that one guy is now. Like vultures or something."
"That's how they find food," said Rouge with a shrug. "They're pretty vicious. Can we go now?"
Everyone nodded and continued walking down the ravine's edge. Tails picked up the thrall sphere and walked beside Sonic, who was nursing his cuts and sucking them to stop the bleeding. "You okay, Sonic?" Tails asked.
The hedgehog nodded. "Takes more than a pterodactyl to hurt me. Were you guys okay while I was gone?"
"Mecha had to lay down the law," said Tails quietly, with a grin. "Don't tease him about his chao, he's very touchy about it."
"So that IS his chao?" Sonic muttered, looking over his shoulder. Mecha was walking with Zephyer, stroking the chao in her arms, and they were talking in low voices. Sonic did a quick headcount, came up one short, and realized Nox was missing. "Tails, where's Nox?"
Tails jerked his head at Shadow. "He's on Shadow's shoulder. You can hardly see him."
Sonic looked around and made out the chao's shape, hidden under Shadow's quills. "Okay then," Sonic muttered. "As long as we all make it out of here alive."
Nothing more happened for several hours. The group picked their way through the wasteland, growing thirsty and faint in the heat. They had already have a full day before the teleport, and being teleported to a different timezone meant that they were all having to stay awake eight hours longer than usual.
Zephyer, who had grown up in the desert, had them all select a pebble and hold it in their mouths. It kept everyone from breathing through their mouths and dehydrating so quickly.
The sun began to settle to their right, and the shadows grew on the sides of the hills. A breeze picked up, blowing dust and fumes into their faces, but also cooling their sweaty bodies, so they welcomed it.
In Zephyer's arms, Aleda had slipped into a sleep or coma, and did not respond to voices or handling. She had never been exposed to heat this extreme, and it was killing her. Mecha knew that if he carried her his hot external hull would kill her faster, so he stayed beside Zephyer where he could watch Aleda, even if he could do nothing for her.
Zephyer did not mind the heat--enjoyed it, in fact--but even a desert echidna could not tolerate hours of direct sunlight. She knew that if she was miserable, then the others must be suffering twice as much. Her arms ached from carrying Aleda, but she did not complain, for in the past few hours she had grown attached to the tiny chao. It also touched her to see Mecha's devotion. She had never thought he could feel affection.
They rounded a bend and saw that ahead of them the bleak stones were softened by patches of brown and green. They had reached Sonic's 'oasis'.
"Shadow," said Mecha through the network, "scan for possible water sources."
Shadow obeyed, looking for the densest vegetation, and Mecha did the same. A moment later Shadow whispered aloud, "Water is possibly further south. There is more vegetation."
"Good," said Rouge. "Come on, Tails, let's try for an aerial view." She opened her wings and fluttered aloft. Tails handed the thrall sphere to Sonic and followed her.
A day of walking in the sun had taken the edge off Rouge's attitude. She had been in survival situations before, and this group was holding together better than any she had ever seen. Probably because they were all afraid of Mecha.
She glided on the breeze, looking down on the wilderness. There was more green to the south, and she could even see some trees. Tails was higher than she was, hands cupped around his eyes. "Let's go that way!" he called, pointing toward the treetops.
On the ground, Sonic said, "I'll go check it out."
Shadow stepped forward. "No, I will."
The two studied each other for a moment. Shadow was doing this to annoy Sonic, but Sonic was tired and Shadow was not. "Fine, go," said Sonic.
The black hedgehog whirled and raced off, his hoverskates igniting and lifting him above the ground.
Nack grinned. "Looks like you two get along real well, don't you?"
Sonic glanced at the weasel. He didn't like his shifty eyes, or his oily voice, or his broken fang. Sonic shrugged. "He's the one with the problem."
"He's an android," said Nack, lowering his voice. "You can't trust androids. They'll slit your throat as soon as look at you. I know you and Mecha don't see eye to eye, either."
"Your point is?" said Sonic. He didn't like this conversation, and he was hurting and tired.
Nack leaned closer to him, eyeing the group. "We should kill the androids before they go after us."
"You're mental," growled Sonic. "You also shot Knuckles. You think I'm gonna listen to more of your bright ideas?"
Nack shrugged and turned away. Sonic shook his head, and stepped away to meet Tails as the fox parachuted to the ground.
Rouge descended in slow, lazy circles, finally landing and sitting down on a rock, wings open and sweeping back and forth, fanning her body. Nack walked up and sat beside her. "I don't like these people," he murmured. "Metal Sonic is bad enough. I've seen his kind in action. But that Shadow character ... how do we know his brain wasn't affected when he was split in two like that?"
"Shadow is perfectly sane," said Rouge, gazing off in the direction he had run. "He's saner now than I've ever seen him, in fact."
"But that's how they are just before they crack," whispered Nack. "You think they're all right, then wham! You wake up with your head screwed on backwards."
Rouge gave him a sidelong look. "Has he done anything to you?"
Nack avoided her eyes. "Not yet."
"Then don't stir up trouble," said Rouge through her teeth. "Not way out here."
Shadow reappeared in a cloud of dust, panting. "Water," he whispered. "It's foul-smelling and very hot, but it wells out of the ground half a mile that way."
"Lead the way!" said Zephyer.
Shadow turned, and the group jumped up and followed him, spirits rising at the prospect of water, any water.
The black hedgehog led them downhill, toward greener-looking grass and brush. Further on a few runty trees appeared, their roots twisted between the rocks. Then they came to a wide split in the land, as if the ground had ripped in two during some colossal earthquake. It had happened so long ago that the bottom, fifteen feet down, had filled with wind-blown dirt and was full of green grass and more trees. A hot spring bubbled out of the ground in a dozen holes, sending up wisps of steam. The water running from it had formed a stream that wound and trickled down into the grass, and there was damp marshy smell.
The group climbed, jumped or flew down into the canyon, and hurried to drink from some of the cooler pools away from the spring. As Shadow had said, the water was tainted with sulfur and tasted like rotten eggs, but none of them cared.
Zephyer and Mecha were last. Zephyer was very thirsty, but she was still carrying Aleda, and handed her to Mecha as she reached the floor of the canyon. Mecha gently took the chao, cradled her in his arms and stroked her face with one finger. It tore Zephyer's heart to see the once-murderous robot displaying such gentleness, especially because she knew deep down that Aleda wouldn't survive more than a few hours.
Mecha looked at her. "Slake your thirst. I will attend to her myself."
The echidna nodded and hurried to the stream. The water was muddy and probably crawling with bacteria, but when it hit Zephyer's throat it tasted better than a fine wine. She drank and splashed her face, and up and down the stream, everyone else was doing the same. Shadow and Sonic were bathing their scratches, Shadow carefully, so as not to wet his robot eye.
Mecha walked as far downstream as he could go, to where the water sank into the grass and reeds. He hesitated a moment, fighting with his hatred of water and the logical assertion that water could not harm his new body design. Then he stepped into the water, waded in up to his knees, and lowered in Aleda until her body was submerged. He carefully rubbed her face with a wet hand, then pried her mouth open and trickled in a few drops. She swallowed automatically, and he repeated the process, slowly and carefully.
He knew she had only a 10 change of survival, and cold logic assured him that his actions were futile. Her body was shutting down and could not process the water he was giving her, even with the stream pulling the excess heat out of her. She was too delicate for a climate as deadly as this, and she had entered it injured from the beating the Master Emerald had given them. He still felt the remnants of the pain behind his eyes, himself. But it was nothing to the pain in his heart. Here in his hands lay the only creature to ever love him of its own accord, now dying because of circumstances neither of them could help.
Upstream, the group was leaving the water one by one, shaking the water from their fur and sprawling on the grass in the shade. Zephyer had pulled off her shoes and was soaking her feet, watching Mecha. Sonic was bathing his cut arms and watching Mecha, too. Zephyer looked at Sonic, and they rose and walked down to the lone android and his chao.
Mecha lifted his head as they approached, but said nothing. Zephyer waded into the stream, and after a moment's hesitation, Sonic did, too. "Poor Aleda," said Zephyer, looking at the motionless chao. "I'm sorry, Mecha."
"She is not dead yet," growled Mecha. "There is no need for sorrow."
"Heatstroke is bad," said Sonic. "I've had it a few times. Make sure you keep her ears wet."
Mecha gave Sonic a scornful look. "You have no idea what you are talking about."
"I'm serious," said Sonic. "You lose a lot of heat through your ears, and it'll cool her off faster."
Mecha stared at him, trying to bridle his hatred and failing. It seemed whenever he was at a low point, the hedgehog appeared and tormented him. He could not understand why Sonic would want to help him, except to harm him in some devious way. Mecha knew how twisted the depths of his own mind were, and he assumed that everyone else--especially Sonic--operated the same way. After Sonic had defeated him, Sonic obviously wanted to crush him mentally as well as physically.
"Hedgehog," Mecha whispered through his teeth, "leave me alone or I shall be forced to defend myself."
Sonic shook his head in exasperation and splashed to the streambank.
Zephyer watched him go, and turned to Mecha with a scowl. "He's only trying to help. You ought to lighten up."
Mecha cast her a glare. "We have been enemies since I was constructed. He all but destroyed me at our last encounter. He means me nothing but harm, and having him here--now--with Aleda's lifesigns ebbing ..." He trailed off, words failing him.
Zephyer looked down at the chao too, and sighed. "I hope she gets better, I really do. But Sonic isn't as bad as you think he is. He's kind of tactless, but he'd help you if you'd let him."
"I do not need his help or his pity," Mecha growled. "Nor yours. It would be best if you left me alone as well."
Zephyer bristled. "I've helped you all day long, jerk. Fine, be that way!" She waded ashore, fuming, and Mecha watched her go. He didn't need anyone's help. Why was everyone so bent on helping him? He had done nothing for them. In fact, he had mauled all of them over the years. Perhaps their memories were faulty. A creature as foul as himself deserved no help, needed no help.
But he did wish that he could help Aleda.
He lifted her out of the water and carried her to the bank. He laid her on the grass and sat beside her, feeling the breeze drying his arms and legs. The sun was touching the tops of the hills to the west. It was 5:46 PM, local time.
Nox appeared, wading through the tall grass, his eyes bright and alert. Mecha hated him for his vitality; Aleda should be alive and playful the way Nox was. "Hi Mecha," said the black chao, bouncing up to him. "How's Aleda? Ohh ..." He trailed off, seeing her stretched out, senseless, under Mecha's gentle hand.
Nox hurried to her and bent over her, rubbing her face and eyelids with his paws. After a moment he looked up at Mecha, his eyes full of sadness. "She's down so deep I can't reach her."
Mecha lowered his head, letting his eyes close. Nox felt the surge of misery hit Mecha as if his own heart had been wounded. Nox was sad about Aleda, of course, but his grief was nothing compared to the scope of Mecha's.
Again, it was that emotion too vast for anger, too painful for violence. Mecha didn't know how to deal with it or express it, so he simply sat there, Nox's words ringing in his ears, and knowing that if Aleda died as an infant, she could not regress into an egg. She would merely die.
Nox felt Mecha's sorrow, but he didn't know that Mecha didn't understand it. Nox reached up and placed a paw on Mecha's arm. "Don't cry, Mecha," he said softly. "I'll try harder to reach her, okay?"
Mecha looked at him, eyes half-closed. "What did you say?"
"I'll try to reach her," Nox repeated, turning back to the baby chao on the grass. He sat down beside her and touched his forehead to hers.
"Why did you tell me not to cry?" said Mecha.
Without moving, Nox replied, "Because you're so sad. I can't stand it when people are sad. If you cry, it'll make me cry."
A revelation. This horrible feeling that was not anger was sadness. Mecha had no idea that the word 'grief' had anything to do with this overwhelming emotion that was threatening to swallow him. And one expressed it by crying. But he couldn't cry. He didn't know how.
As he watched Nox concentrate on Aleda, Shadow approached, surveyed the scene, then sat down beside Mecha. "Hello Master," he whispered.
"Hello Shadow," said Mecha quietly. "Status?" It was his way of asking, "How are you?"
"All systems operational," Shadow replied. "I'm no longer thirsty, but I'm hungry, and there is no food." There was a brief silence, then Shadow said, "How is your status?"
Mecha didn't want to know his status. He felt through the nerves and sensors throughout his body that his nanite fuel was too low, for he was tired and his muscles ached. Reluctantly he consulted his computer readout and winced. "The nano-fuel chambers are empty," he said over the network. "I have an estimated two hours left before the nanites absorb their reserves and begin consuming each other."
Shadow spun to face him, his natural eye wide in horror. "What? No!"
"Yes," said Mecha. "How ironic--it is now a race to see who will die first: the chao or her master."
Nox felt Shadow's burst of horror and grief like a bullet in the chest. Nox was much more sensitive to Shadow's moods than anyone else's, and for a moment the chao forgot he was trying to reach Aleda's mind; he was lost in the combined sea of Mecha's misery and Shadow's grief. It was too much for him to handle, and he doubled up and began crying as if his heart was breaking.
He had been so deep in Aleda's mind that the shock of what he felt penetrated deeper than he could have, himself. Aleda whimpered, stirred and opened her eyes, for a moment feeling everything Nox did. She, too, began to cry.
Mecha heard her voice and snatched her up with an odd gasp. He clutched her to him, stroking her and rocking her. Her sobs subsided to whimpers, and Mecha whispered that he was glad she was alive, and that everything was all right now. She crooned and purred, reaching up weakly to pat his lips and nose with a soft paw.
When he looked up again, he saw Shadow was holding Nox the same way, but Nox was still crying, unable to stop himself. As Mecha watched him, he felt a growing heat in his windpipe. "Shadow," he said over the network, "make him stop crying."
"I can't," Shadow replied via the network. "He's ... he's echoing me."
How convenient to have a chao who could cry for you. Mecha clenched a fist. "Shadow, make him stop! Now!" The longer Nox cried, the more he showed Mecha how it was done. Mecha didn't want to learn. Stupid, accursed emotions--they weren't supposed to have this much control over him. His eyes were growing hot, generating too much lubricant. Something inside of him was wilting, bending, softening--
He set Aleda beside him and rested his forehead on his knees, hoping to escape the notice of any onlookers. "Aleda," he whispered around the choking sensation in his throat, "this is all your fault."
Then he fell apart at the seams.
Shadow watched in astonishment as Mecha the expressionless, the emotionless, the calm and implacable, lost complete control and cried with his head buried in his arms. Mecha tried to smother his sobs and conceal his tears, but he couldn't; not when a lifetime of pent-up misery was sweeping through the floodgates. He beat one fist against the ground, hating this onslaught of emotional reaction, and he tried to keep his face covered with his other arm so Shadow couldn't see.
Aleda was distressed, for she had never seen Mecha cry before. She climbed into his lap and put her paws around his neck, talking and whimpering. "Stop it," he hissed as she reached up to touch the tears running down his muzzle. "You're making this worse." But she didn't, and he held her and hid his face against her fur.
The shame of it all! Emotions weren't worth the embarrassment they brought. And he couldn't seem to get ahold of himself, either. He was exhausted, defeated, and knew that in two hours he was going to die a death so painful it made being dipped in acid look pleasant. At the same time he was jubilant that Aleda was alive, and he wanted to laugh at the bitter irony that he was doomed while she would live. All of these jumbled emotions came out in tears.
Shadow reached over and awkwardly patted Mecha's shoulder. He, too, was distressed to see Mecha break down. In his arms, Nox groaned, "Oh no! I told him not to cry! He's so sad, Shadow. He's going to make me cry some more."
"No," choked Mecha, trying to sound fierce. "Nox, you brought me to this. Don't you dare cry any more, or I ..." Another sob overtook him, and he slammed his forehead into his knees in fury for not being able to control himself.
"He's going to die," whispered Shadow. "He's out of fuel, and he has to keep his nanite systems fueled at all times or it ... consumes itself."
"Then let's find him some fuel!" said Nox.
Mecha drew several deep, steadying breaths, wiping his eyes with the back of one hand. "There is no fuel out here," he said, his voice raspy but steadier. "It has to be a fluid high in proteins and certain amino acids. We have no supplies, and no way of processing the correct mixture if we did."
He turned his head and saw the rest of the group was watching from a distance, eyes wide in shock. They had seen everything. He groaned and turned away. "My humiliation is complete." He climbed to his feet, picked up Aleda, and walked toward the trees lining the canyon walls.
Shadow watched him go, then stared at the stream. Why should he be surprised? They would all starve to death out here, and Mecha was simply the first. Then his conscience smote him for being so cynical. He remembered the last few months of fighting Mecha to keep him alive. Mecha would have welcomed death then ... so why was fate so cruel as to condemn him now?
Shadow jumped up and began to pace. The truth was that although Shadow was sullen in the presence of enemies and rivals, he did not want Mecha to die. He was willing to do anything to save him, in fact. But what could he do? They had no food, no way of getting food, and it would do Mecha no good anyway. If only he had let Shadow install the upgrade to let him consume organic food! Stupid proud Mecha.
"Shadow," said Nox, watching the black hedgehog stalk back and forth, "why don't you tell the others? They might be able to think of something."
Shadow considered it. He had nothing to lose, and time was precious. He had read in Mecha's files of what happened when nanites cannibalized themselves, and he knew it was a horrible way to die. He couldn't let that happen, not after everything they had been through.
He walked toward the others, beckoning to them and cursing his whispering voice for the millionth time. Rouge and Nack regarded him suspiciously, then walked up, and Sonic, Tails and Zephyer did the same. Shadow told them that Mecha was basically starving to death, and would die in a few hours.
"Can't he shut down to conserve fuel?" said Zephyer.
"Not anymore," whispered Shadow. "Can you shut off your brain when you go to sleep? He operates much like an organism."
"Well, this is just dandy," said Sonic. "Here we're out in the middle of nowhere and he has to pull this. What's the fuel made of?"
"Proteins and amino acids," said Shadow. "Nutrients that the nanites feed on."
"Sorry, I left my amino acids at home," said Nack.
"He's not the only one who's starving," said Tails, holding his stomach.
Shadow nodded. "I know that. I'm hungry as well. But our bodies have fuel reserves enough for days more, and he has none."
The group gazed at each other in silence, then turned and looked at where Mecha was standing among the trees with his back to them, stroking Aleda.
"Well, he's done for, ain't he?" said Nack, pushing back his hat. "Too bad for him. Or not." He walked away down the stream, poking at its banks with a stick.
"Gosh, I hate him," whispered Zephyer.
"You would," muttered Rouge.
Zephyer shot her a nasty look and turned away.
Shadow shook his head, folded his arms and turned to watch Mecha. Sonic stepped up beside him, and the hedgehogs watched the android for a moment. Then Sonic looked at Shadow. "Why do you bother to put up with him, anyway? Look at what he did to you." He pointed at Shadow's robot half.
Shadow shrugged and didn't answer.
Sonic poked him. "Why not just ditch Mecha? Let him die and be rid of him. You wouldn't be a slave anymore."
Shadow gave Sonic a savage look, his ear pinned back. "You're so shallow. You think I remain with Mecha because he enslaved me? He programmed Mekion to be a slave, and Mekion isn't in control anymore."
Sonic studied him. "So why hang with him?"
Shadow turned to face Sonic, fists at his sides. Why did Sonic have to be so nosy? "There are two people in my life who ever showed me kindness. Only two. The first was Maria, and they killed her. I could have saved her, and that's haunted me my whole life. The second person ever to show me kindness was Mecha. He cared for me when I was helpless, which is more than I can say for any of you." Shadow had never articulated this to himself before now, but somehow saying the words made his conviction even stronger.
Sonic shook his head in disbelief and turned as if to walk away. Why didn't he understand? Shadow's eyes flamed. "Laughing at me, Sonic? Try laughing when it happens to you." He was trembling now, his fingernails digging into his palms. "I lost Maria. I'm not losing Mecha, too."
Sonic slowly turned back to him, ears laid back. "I'm sorry, Shadow, really. Um ... do we have any supplies at all?"
"No." Shadow turned his back, trying to calm down, shaking with the force of his emotion.
Sonic shook his head. "We just can't do much, Shadow. Sorry."
"Yes." Shadow opened his organic hand and looked at the nail-marks across his palm. He had nearly drawn blood, and made a mental note not to clench his fists so hard again ... then suddenly he looked toward Mecha. His eyes flicked between his hand and Mecha several times. Then he broke into a run, sprinting over the grass toward the blue android.
Mecha looked up languidly as Shadow approached. "Hello," he said. He was sitting on the ground with Aleda in his lap, gazing at the horizon and waiting for death. His red eyes were dim and defeated.
"Master," said Shadow, kneeling beside him, "I thought of something that could work as fuel. Would blood have the proper amount of protein?"
Mecha slowly turned his head and looked at Shadow. "Yes. But where will you acquire blood? No one around here will volunteer, I'm certain." His eyes shifted from Shadow to Sonic, who was walking up.
Sonic looked at them. "Something tells me Shads thought of something."
"Blood," whispered Shadow. "It contains the proper proteins."
"Not as many nutrients as I need," said Mecha slowly, "but it will keep me alive."
"Lovely," said Sonic. "Blood. Mecha, you're a vampire now, you know?"
"I am not drinking it," said Mecha, "and the nanites view it as nothing more than fuel. It is all the more imperative that we reach civilization after this."
"Shadow, wait," said Sonic, lifting a hand. "How are you going to get blood? We can't bandage any cuts, you know."
"I know," Shadow whispered. He extended his organic hand to Mecha. "Use your claws to slice my forefinger. Your claws are sharper than mine."
Mecha lifted a hand and stiffened his fingers, then hesitated. "Shadow ..."
"Do it," hissed Shadow, bracing his arm.
Mecha's hand trembled, and he dropped it to his side and looked down. "Shadow, I cannot harm you. Not again."
"Then do it to me," said Sonic unexpectedly, pulling off a glove.
Mecha and Shadow stared at him. "What?"
"I don't want Mecha to die," said Sonic. "It might be easier for him to hurt me. How about it, Mecha?"
Mecha's eyes narrowed, and he looked from hedgehog to hedgehog. "You are volunteering ... of your own free will? Do you know what you are asking, hedgehog?"
"Sure," said Sonic, still with his hand outstretched. "Do it, will you? Before I lose my nerve."
The opportunity was too good to pass up; the hedgehog ASKING Mecha to hurt him! Mecha reached out and sliced open the back of Sonic's hand with one claw.
Sonic gasped and recoiled, then held up his hand as blood welled up in the cut. "Dang, Mecha! Now what?"
"Come here," said Shadow, running his fingers over the biometal just below Mecha's left ear. The metal rippled aside to reveal a hole. "Let it fill that," said Shadow.
Sonic let his cut drip into the hole. "Barbaric," Sonic muttered. "I hope I bleed enough."
"I can cut you again," said Mecha with relish.
"No thanks," said Sonic. "You owe me for this."
"Yes, I'll share my blood with you," said Mecha, sneering.
Sonic bit his lips against the pain of his cut, wondering how long this ordeal would last. Shadow stooped over him, reading Mecha's signals over the network, his breath hot on Sonic's arm. Finally he said, "That's enough, Sonic."
Sonic withdrew his hand, which had almost stopped bleeding, and nursed it. "How often do you sharpen those claws, Mecha?"
"Once a week," said Mecha, flexing them. He said over the network to Shadow, so Sonic couldn't hear, "I have two fuel chambers, Shadow. He will not permit me to harm him again."
"I know," said Shadow silently. "I will handle it." He curled in his own robot claws and sliced open his organic hand. Teeth clenched, he opened the fuel tube on Mecha's chest and let his own blood fill the chamber.
Sonic turned and saw what had happened. "Shads, you really amaze me," he said, shaking his head.
"Why should it amaze you?" said Shadow. "I have been sacrificing my life to keep him alive for two and a half months. A small wound is no matter--my bloodstream has so many healing nanites in it that I will be recovered in a few hours."
"Lucky," Sonic muttered. "How about it, Mecha? Feeling better?"
"Vaguely," said Mecha. "My systems are not responding well. I will survive, but we must return to civilization as quickly as possible."
Sonic smirked. "That's kind of the idea, Mecha."
The Floating Island was silent and empty. The birds sang half-heartedly, as if some shadow of gloom hung over the island. One of the Guardians was gone, and the other was hurt and submerged in a drugged sleep.
Sally sat outside in the shade where the chaos energy tracker could make contact with local satellites. She had been scanning for hours, working continent by continent, searching for Sonic's unique signature. He could be anywhere in the world, and there were millions of Mobians with chaos signatures. She had located two chaos emeralds, and a laboratory in the human colonies where chaos drives were being manufactured, along with many other unidentifiable bright spots and patches.
She sighed and ran both hands through her hair. The fear that Sonic wasn't on Mobius at all kept eating at her. If he was gone forever, she didn't see how she could go on living. Sonic was her best friend, her right arm. Not to mention Tails was gone, too ... it was like losing her extended family.
With a pang she thought of Knuckles, temporarily removed from his loss as he was. He had lost Zephyer the way Sally had lost Sonic. If they couldn't locate the missing group, what would happen to Knuckles? She could easily see him losing his mind. She remembered him glowing green and coming to wreak havoc on the Freedom Fighters, and shook off the memory with a shudder. She couldn't lose hope so soon. Mobius was a big place, and she couldn't expect to scan the whole world in a few hours.
North Mobius came up nil. She zoomed out until the world map was displayed on her screen, and looked at it with her chin in one hand. She had eliminated West Mobius two hours ago, and North Mobius, the smallest continent, had been easy to clear because it had so few people. At least they weren't stranded on a glacier somewhere. Where to look next? Central, South and East Mobius remained, mocking her with their immense sizes. And she hadn't even begun searching the millions of islands.
She ran the poem through her mind again. The Master Emerald's goal was to move the offending parties as far from the island as possible. Hm. What was on the other side of the world from here?
Sally rose and hurried into Knuckles's silent house. The echidna was sleeping, chest rising and falling slowly, his face drained of all color. Sally didn't like the way he looked, but left him alone and combed the house for maps. Surely they had a globe in here?
She located a globe on a shelf in a closet, took it into the living room and examined it. The Floating Island was somewhere in the vicinity of Sapphire City, out in the Ausif Ocean. She placed a finger where she guessed they were, then rotated the globe to find the opposite side. Her other finger landed on a relief section of raised wrinkles on the globe's surface. East Mobius, Brimstone Mountain Range. There were towns along its outskirts, but none within the range itself.
She gazed at those little brown wrinkles for a long time. If the group had been dumped there, they were in a desolate region covering a thousand square miles along the length of East Mobius's east coast. It was a rift reduction zone in the tectonic plates, where one plate went under the other and bubbled up in volcanos and earthquakes. She set the globe aside, returned outside to her tracker, and set it to scan for Sonic's signature in the Brimstone range.
After a few minutes Nicole, the handheld computer plugged into the tracker, said, "Error, Sally. No satellites available in the vicinity."
"Will any satellites be in the area soon?" Sally asked.
"Affirmative," Nicole replied. "A communications satellite will travel over East Mobius at 2 AM tomorrow morning."
"Great," said Sally, feeling exhausted. "Schedule a scan for then."
"Affirmative, Sally."
Of course, no one was interested in looking at one of Mobius's most inhospitable spots. All she could do for now was wait.
On the other side of the world, night was settling in. The three factions within the group were leery of sleeping near the other, and they finally agreed to find places to sleep a good distance away from each other. Nack and Rouge, who got along with no one and each other least of all, each stalked off to sleep alone.
Sonic and Tails, who had slept out in the wild before, made themselves beds of leaves and grass, and Zephyer followed suit, feeling uncomfortable, but she didn't want to sleep alone on the ground with Rouge, Nack, Mecha and Shadow running around loose. Mecha was still sitting against the tree where they had left him, gazing at nothing with Aleda asleep in his arms. Shadow sat against the opposite side of the tree to keep watch, holding Nox.
"Those guys are scary," said Zephyer, watching the shapes of the red-eyed hedgehogs under the trees. "Sonic, what if they attack us during the night?"
Sonic flopped on his makeshift bed, lay there a moment, then got up and rearranged the leaves. "They won't bother us. I'm more worried about the jewel thieves."
"Can't trust them as far as you can throw them," said Tails. The fox was lying on his back, holding the glowing thrall sphere on his stomach. "One nice thing ... we have the only flashlight."
"I'd just as soon drop it in the spring," said Zephyer, resting her head on one arm and watching Sonic prod and poke his bed.
Finally he flopped on it and lay still. "Ahh," he sighed. "Perfect. Now all I need is a chilidog."
"Don't start," said Zephyer.
Tails looked at her--he was between Sonic and Zephyer--and said, "You can live for more than a month without food."
"That's nice to know," the echidna replied. "So if we don't die of thirst right away, we have plenty of time to starve to death."
"Eh, cheer up, Zeff," said Sonic. "We survived today. We'll probably survive tomorrow, too."
"But what about the day after that, and the day after that?" said Zephyer, rolling on her back and looking at the deepening blue dome of the sky. "What if we die out here?"
"What if we don't?" said Sonic. "What if we make it to a town tomorrow?"
"You don't know that."
"You don't know we're gonna die, either."
There was a long silence. Finally Zephyer muttered, "Okay, okay, I'm sorry for being a wet blanket."
"Naw, it's okay," said Sonic, folding his arms behind his head. "We need a realist on the team."
It grew darker as the sunset's afterglow faded, and the stars brightened. They were in strange constellations, and it underlined how far they were from home. Zephyer looked at them and felt a growing homesickness rise in her. She missed the Floating Island, and her home, and Knuckles ... especially Knuckles. She had time to think about how Nack had shot him, and she worried about whether he was all right. She couldn't find out, or even let him know she was alive. He would be frantic, and what if he thought they were on some other planet, because of that poem? It would kill him.
Through her thoughts ran homesickness like an ache in her bones. She had taken the Guardian's Oath and was bound to the Floating Island. Leaving it was pain and being banished was agony; she knew that tonight she would have nightmares about horrible things happening to the island. Was it possible for a banished Guardian to pine away and die, cut off from their intended home? With her luck, it was quite possible. And poor Knuckles, all alone and hurt, with no idea of what had happened! She felt hot tears sting her eyes, but kept quiet and still. She didn't need an audience for her tears the way Mecha had had.
Sonic gazed up at the stars, listening to the faint hum from Tails's thrall sphere, oblivious to Zephyer. His hand still throbbed, but it had already developed a scab over the cut. Even with his malicious words, Mecha had been careful to only break the skin--he could have cut Sonic's hand off. Sonic wondered what had driven him to help Mecha, for they had been enemies since forever. But he wanted to help and be kind. He remembered talking to Slasher, and smiled. He wanted to heap burning coals upon Mecha's head. Maybe being stranded out here was a good thing.
Oh, but it was tough playing leader! Sonic knew how Sally felt. She had spent years facing bleak situations and putting the best face on it, never letting on that she was tired, discouraged or afraid. Sonic now had to do the same, but found that it came naturally. He had been in worse situations before, and knew that not giving up was half the battle. He and Mecha were holding everyone together ... he really should tell Mecha some of this, see if they couldn't work together ... His thoughts were fading into sleep, and his eyes sneaked shut.
Beside him, Tails was playing with the thrall sphere, which was glowing a warm orange, like a campfire. If he rubbed it certain ways, he could change the pitch of its hum. It would probably work better if he took off his gloves, but he didn't want to become hypnotized like Zephyer had been.
Playing with the sphere kept him from thinking about their situation--lost in East Mobius somewhere. It scared him. No matter what Sonic said, this was the bleakest adventure they had ever had. They didn't even know where they were. He wished he had thought to grab a Chaos Emerald before the Master Emerald kicked them out, but it had been hurting his head so badly that he couldn't think of anything. Then Sonic could have just teleported them all home. If Shadow hadn't taken the emerald ... or if Rouge and Nack didn't go after it ... he imagined a free-for-all fight on that first rocky hillside, and figured it was probably better that he hadn't grabbed a Chaos Emerald.
Too bad he couldn't get this thrall sphere to do anything. It was power crystal, but its power was through sound and vibration. An entirely different wavelength from Chaos Emeralds. What did it do when it hypnotized you, anyway? Didn't you just go to sleep? That was no big deal, because he was supposed to be asleep, anyway.
Tails looked furtively at Sonic and Zephyer. Sonic was asleep, and Zephyer had her back turned, probably asleep, too. Tails pulled off his gloves and touched the sphere with his bare hands. At once its hum was conducted through his bones and muscles to his ears; a pleasant, musical note. He took his hands off the sphere, and the sound stopped. He replaced them and it returned. No wonder it hypnotized Zephyer--he was relaxing and growing sleepy, himself. He stroked the sphere, varying its vibration and the pitch of its hum. Sonic always said that you used the Chaos Emeralds by finding the frequencies in them, and Tails could never feel or hear the frequencies. But he could definitely hear this sphere. He pushed his chaos field at it, holding each note with his hands, trying to find a combination that did something.
Something opened in his head, and suddenly he could hear other things; voices talking, the faint rustle of leaves and grass in the night breeze, the uneasy rumble of the earth beneath him. He sat up, looking around. Had it enhanced his hearing? He looked at Sonic, and instantly heard Sonic's heart beating and his slow, deep breathing. It was as if Tails's hearing had jumped into the ultrasonic range. Zephyer, too, was quiet. He trained his attention on Shadow and Mecha, thirty feet away and invisible in the darkness. They were talking, but not with their voices. Tails fumbled with his ears and the sphere, trying to tune in, and struck a note of the right frequency.
Suddenly he heard the canned-sounding radio voices of the androids talking over their network. "...three more days," Metal Sonic was saying. "In this harsh environment they will all die, unless we happen upon more hotsprings. I doubt they occur very often in these mountains."
"Yes, I know," said Shadow, and Tails jumped. Shadow's mental voice was not a whisper, for it sounded the way he had back on the ARK. It seemed Mekion was programmed with voice synthesis. Shadow went on, "I have been thinking about it, and tonight, in the darkness, I can leave on my own and try to locate the edge of the range."
"You would lose yourself," said Mecha. "Without satellite access we cannot maintain radio contact, and in this wilderness your chances of locating us again are negligible."
"I have to try," said Shadow fiercely. "I can't stand by and watch everyone die slow lingering deaths. Do you think Aleda will survive another day?"
"No," said Mecha, and there was a long silence. Tails felt guilty about eavesdropping on them, especially since they were trying to think of a way to save the whole lot of them.
He turned his attention from them and looked up the canyon, listening for Rouge or Nack. He located them far apart. Rouge was roosting in a tree, and Nack was stretched out on a heap of boulders above the hotspring. Their breathing was slow and heavy, already asleep.
Tails set aside the sphere so he could think. He could hear anything, it seemed ... could he hear things far away, too? Like, could he stay in contact with Shadow through the sphere, even when he was out of range of Mecha? How far could Tails hear, anyway?
He seized the sphere again, tuned it until he felt his hearing sharpen, then concentrated on his hut in Knothole. He had a clock that ticked very loudly, and he would recognize it anywhere. The world around him seemed to fall silent. He pushed his chaos field at the sphere, wondering if it needed power, and suddenly he heard it--his clock ticking. It was so clear that Tails felt a lump in his throat. That was home, and he missed it terribly. He released the sphere, and the sounds of the world around him returned. Well, that proved his theory. He could hear anything if he tuned the sphere for it.
The fox rose and carried the sphere toward Shadow and Mecha. Their red eyes turned toward him as he approached. "Hi," he called softly. "Can I talk to you a minute?"
He rubbed his hands over the sphere and picked up their network chatter. Mecha was grumbling, "There is that bothersome fox with the sphere. Many is the time he aided the hedgehog in fighting me ..."
"Sue me," said Tails aloud.
Mecha and Shadow stiffened. Tails heard Mecha say over the network, "I did not speak aloud, did I? How did he hear me?"
"Coincidence, maybe," said Shadow, watching Tails. "He has no machinery with him. There is no way he could tap our frequency."
"It's the sphere," said Tails. "It lets me hear you."
Mecha and Shadow were silent, and exchanged looks. Mecha said aloud, "You know that if you continue spying on our frequency, I shall be forced to harm you."
"I know, I'm sorry," said Tails. "I didn't know I was doing it at first." He licked his lips. "I heard you talking about trying to scout for civilization, Shadow. I can use the sphere to hear anything, anywhere."
The androids looked at each other, and Shadow said over the network. "Master, if we can do that--"
"Silence, he can hear you," said Mecha. Aloud he said, "That is an admirable offer, Miles, but unfortunately it is no good. Shadow can speak to you, but you cannot speak to Shadow. You can't direct him."
Tails looked at the sphere, ears flattening. It seemed like such a good idea. The note that enabled him to hear the robots still sounded in his ears. Suddenly he wondered if, by pitching his voice to that note, he could communicate. He hummed, trying to match the note, and when he again felt that hypnotic sleepiness, he half-sang, "Can you hear me?"
Mecha and Shadow jumped. Tails's voice sounded across their network, clearer than any machinery could transmit it. He had tapped their frequency through the wavelength itself, matching the vibration of the radio waves. "Yes," said Mecha, "we can hear you. Unfortunately. Is it so easy to tap?"
"Sort of," said Tails, forgetting to pitch his voice and ceasing to resound through the network. "It's hard to do, but I could get better at it."
Mecha's eyes narrowed. "It is ... dangerous to wiretap a mecha-bot, did you know that?"
Tails felt ice flood his insides. "Wh ... what do you mean?"
"Under any other circumstances," said Mecha, "I would have to kill you immediately. You are a third party listening to classified information. You would not be the first nosey person I have destroyed for that very reason."
"I just wanted to help," mumbled Tails, feeling the impulse to tuck his tails between his legs and slink away.
"And help you shall," said Mecha. "Shadow, go run. Miles shall be your contact."
Shadow leaped from a sitting position to a dead run, flashed across the canyon bottom, scrambled up a low spot in its side and was gone. Tails could hear the sweeping whoosh of his hoverskates, even though Shadow was now out of range of normal hearing.
"I recommend sleeping for a while," said Mecha. "We have a thirty-mile contact range, and your assistance is unnecessary until he is beyond that."
"Okay," said Tails, unable to keep from trembling. "Will ... will you really kill me?"
Mecha considered. "Your actions at present are excusable in light of the situation. But once we reach safety, if you tap our frequency again, I shall hunt you down and torture you to death, beginning by destroying your inquisitive little ears."
After that, Tails found all desire to sleep had deserted him.
Far to the south, in a rocky valley between two volcanic cones, the other banished intruder from the Floating Island awakened. His eyes flickered on and he sat up, confused and bewildered. Location unknown, time unknown, local satellite unavailable. Not only that, but his memorybanks were addled by the blast of punishing chaos energy. He had awakened with the robotic equivalent of a pounding headache.
Robo Knux climbed to his feet, bracing himself against a stone. Half of his systems were still running diagnostics for repairs. Whatever had happened, it had fried him. He must have been shot down while flying over the Floating Island, and from the looks of things, it had been a blast of chaos energy. He had underestimated Knuckles. He looked around, his sensors sweeping the area. Rocky. Volcanic gas streaming from vents. Heat radiating from the ground. His internal temperature was unacceptably high, so he surmised that he had been lying in the sun for most of the day.
Well, he was damaged, but the damage was repairable. Had Rouge and Nack succeeded in stealing the Master Emerald? That might explain why the Floating Island had turned into this smoking wasteland. The idea amused him.
He opened the channel for Nack's communicator and said, "Yo, Nack, you there?" No response. The idiot probably had the com turned off for the night. Robo Knux scanned the sky. Where was that satellite? There was a geosyncronous satellite over Sapphire City, and he had been in contact with it earlier. Without it he didn't know his location, and his internal clock needed updating. It had been offline with the rest of his equipment, and informed him it was 4 PM.
His stabilizer systems were still repairing, so for the moment he could not fly. But he could walk. He began climbing the nearest hillside, thinking to orient himself by looking for the mountains in the Floating Island's center.
After a few minutes of hard, rapid climbing, the robot arrived on the hilltop. He activated his infrared vision and scanned the landscape, turning in a slow circle. Wait a minute. There were no mountains in sight; only more broken, rocky hills that weren't really mountains. It matched none of his maps. Either the Floating Island had been levelled, or this wasn't the Floating Island. How could that be? He had been flying in the air before his blackout. Had he been hit by a malfunctioning teleporter beam?
That was more likely. His alarm was replaced by cool calculation. He had been warped to the middle of nowhere. No problem--he would fly out once his instruments returned online. He had plenty of fuel, and his power core was functioning at optimum levels. He sat down on a rock to wait for his repairs to finish, and listened to the hiss of the gas vents around him.
Shadow was running in a straight line west, or as close to it as he could. He had selected a patch of stars as his guide, and used it to straighten himself out in the winding ravines and gullies between the hills and rocks. Running at night was enjoyable for him, almost relaxing. There was no sun to bake him or blind him, and the highly-sensitive night optics in his robot eye could come into play. So he skated where he could and ran where he had to, glorying in his speed and the darkness.
Every ten minutes Mecha pinged him, and Shadow was grateful for the contact. He was traveling so fast that in another fifteen minutes he would exceed their thirty-mile range, and then Shadow would have to rely on that fox and his hacker-sphere. And the fox couldn't use the sphere very well, either. Shadow didn't let himself dwell on what would happen if he couldn't find his way back to the oasis by dawn. It was too awful to contemplate.
He ran on, breath coming easily, weaving between hills and cutting over them when they barred his way. Gas vents opened before him, spouting fumes hot enough to scorch his fur off. He avoided them and kept running, using his infrared setting to detect them. Several times he saw orange threads of lava and felt the ground roll and groan beneath him, as if the earth itself was in torment, expelling its entrails on the surface.
Mecha's signal was growing faint. Shadow said over the network, "I am nearly out of range."
"Affirmative," said Mecha. "I will instruct Miles to track you."
"If this doesn't work," said Shadow, "I'm returning immediately."
"Negative," said Mecha, his voice suddenly harsh. "You are to continue until you locate civilization. Retrieve supplies and then seek to return. One of our party must survive this."
Shadow slowed to a halt and looked back across the barren hills. "Mecha, is this a clever ploy to destroy yourself once I am gone?"
"No," said Mecha. "I will die whether you are here or not. As will the others. Thus you must succeed."
Shadow turned, located the star cluster again and resumed running westward. He felt a cold anxiety settling over him. With every mile that passed under his feet, he was setting a longer and longer journey for his companions. Even if he could find a town out here, it might take weeks for the others to pick their way through this terrible country.
Ten minutes passed, and no more contact pings from Mecha arrived. He was out of range. Shadow set his teeth and kept running, alone and with a silent network. He had his orders and he would carry them out if it killed him, but it did not stop him from growing afraid. This country was so immense, so hostile, that even the ultimate lifeform was no match for it. He briefly thought of the torture that would begin once the sun rose, and brushed the thought aside. "Concentrate on speed, Mekion," he told himself. "That's all that matters now."
Mekion, the robot part of his mind, replied, "Shadow cannot keep up this pace all night."
"I know," Shadow replied. "I'll rest when I can't breathe properly anymore. How far can I travel tonight?"
Mekion ran the numbers through his databanks and replied, "At current speeds, we can travel up to three hundred miles before dawn."
Shadow nodded, even though he was responding to his own mental voice, and kept running.
"He's running," said Tails, eyes fixed on the horizon, the glowing sphere in his hands. "I can hear him."
"Reach the network frequency and let him hear you," said Mecha. "He is uneasy about your reliability."
Tails rubbed his hands slowly over the sphere's surface, ears swiveling this way and that as he listened. Then he hummed to match the note, and half-sang, "Hi Shadow, can you hear me?"
Mecha winced as the fox's voice rang in his head, and watched Tails's face.
After a moment Tails grinned, hearing a reply that Mecha could not. Tails half-sang again, "Keep going, I can hear you."
They were sitting under the trees, cloaked in darkness but for the orange glow of the sphere. Mecha was still leaning against a tree trunk, seated on the ground with Aleda asleep in his lap. When Shadow had left, Nox crept to Mecha's side and curled up as close as he could without actually touching Mecha. The chao was feigning sleep and listening to Tails and Mecha, reading their feelings and praying that Shadow was all right.
Tails looked at Mecha's glowing red eyes and said in a low voice, "This is new for me. I can't use Chaos Emeralds at all. Only Super Emeralds and thrall spheres."
Mecha nodded. "I, too, have never been able to manipulate Chaos Emeralds. Even after extensive training and upgrades, I cannot use them except in the most imprecise ways."
"But you can use your chaos field," said Tails. "I saw you do it on the Annihilator."
Mecha actually twitched. "Do not speak of that."
"Sorry," said Tails, looking down at the sphere. "I was just wondering--I mean, can you still do that? You know, change the weather?"
"No," said Mecha so quietly that Tails could hardly hear him. "My defeat and ensuing injuries have weakened me. I have tried using the field again, and it is difficult to the point of impossibility."
The note of depression and self-loathing in his voice startled Tails, and the fox fell silent and listened for Shadow.
After a while Mecha said, "It is understandable why you cannot manipulate Chaos Emeralds. You are a kitsune."
Tails looked up. "I'm a what?"
"A kitsune," Mecha repeated. "When I was first dispatched against the hedgehog, you were with him. A bi-tailed fox. I had no records of you, so I researched you to estimate your threat level."
"My threat level?" said Tails, grinning. "Am I dangerous, then?"
"Teamed with the hedgehog, you are," said Mecha. His voice was flat, but there was a hint of a smile about his eyes. "Kitsunes are a race of foxes with such strong chaos fields that it has mutated their bodies in odd ways. Those with two and three tails can fly like you. Those with more tails have fields so strong that they must live in isolation, much like Cream the Rabbit. They cause earthquakes, floods and power blackouts simply by walking down a street."
"Wow," said Tails, staring. He had never thought that his two tails were important, beyond making him a freak and letting him fly. "So why can't I use Chaos Emeralds?"
"The kitsune race exchanged the ability to use Chaos Emeralds for the power of the field," said Mecha. "Thousands of years ago they purged their race of all foxes with weak fields, who could nonetheless use Chaos Emeralds. Only those with strong fields, but who were out of resonance with the Chaos Emeralds, were allowed to reproduce. And here you are."
"But ... I used them when we fought you," said Tails, thinking.
"Yes," said Mecha. "You were powered by your companions' supercharged chaos fields. Super Emeralds resonate their power differently, which is why you can use them."
Tails was quiet for a while, thinking about this. "So," he said slowly, "I could summon storms and build giant machines like you did on the Annihilator?"
Mecha stiffened and closed his eyes. "Please," he whispered, "do not speak of that night. It was the height of my pride and folly, and the eve of my destruction."
"Sorry," said Tails again. "But could I?"
"With the correct training," muttered Mecha. "I spent many hours practicing before I could manage it."
"Could you teach me?" said Tails, eyes wide.
Mecha avoided the question. "Ping Shadow."
Tails obeyed, and heard Shadow's reply: "Affirmative. All is well, still en-route."
"He's okay," Tails reported. "Mecha, could you train me to use my chaos field?"
"No," said Mecha. "Why should one of my foes learn skills that he will later use against me?"
"We can be friends, and then you could teach me," said Tails. "Why can't you be friends with us? We're all on the same side right now."
"Because we all have a common enemy," said Mecha. "Our environment. When we return to civilization, we will go our separate ways, and my projects may conflict with your interests, putting us at odds."
"You don't have to build bad things," said Tails. "I build stuff all the time, and I don't use it to hurt people. If you didn't hurt anyone, nobody would care what you did."
"Yes they would," said Mecha. "For instance, my quest to upgrade a robot until its functions exactly mimic biological life. After Dr. Robotnik's affects on the robotics industry, my work is seen as quasi-terrorist and unethical."
He sounded so glum at this prospect that Tails, without meaning to, reached over and patted Mecha's arm. Mecha flinched and cringed away, and Tails withdrew.
"Mecha," he said softly, "are you supposed to be so hot?"
Mecha folded his arms as if to keep them out of Tails's reach. "No," he said. "My internal temperature is thirty degrees above normal. As I said earlier, my nano-structure is not responding well to blood as a fuel source."
"Are you sick?" Tails asked.
Mecha was silent a moment, then said, "In a way, yes. My systems are not performing at optimal levels, and it has forced my power core to generate excessive heat."
Tails hung his head. "And Sonic thought he was helping you."
"He did," said Mecha, grudgingly. "Had he not donated his blood, I would now be dead, or dying in the most painful fashion."
"Better sick than dead, huh?" said Tails with half a grin.
"Yes," said Mecha. "Ping Shadow."
Tails tuned into the network with his sphere and said, "Doing okay, Shadow?"
"Affirmative," Shadow replied. "En-route. There is a faint glow on the horizon westward, and I am traveling in its direction."
Tails looked at Mecha. "Shadow thinks he can see lights from a town. He's heading for them."
Mecha smiled, startling Tails. "Perhaps he will return before daylight. I do not like gambling, but this was a risk we had to take."
There was a long silence. Tails was growing sleepy, and was secretly marvelling that he was not afraid of Mecha. The robot had haunted his nightmares for years, and here he was carrying on a conversation with him. Tails found himself actually liking Mecha, for under Mecha's viciousness he and Tails had a lot in common: a passion for learning, and building things, and a certain insecurity. Tails supposed Mecha had had weaknesses before, but now his weaknesses were so much like Tails's own--hunger and fever among them--that Tails identified with him.
With this liking for the android came the desire to be his friend ... and to have Mecha share friendship with everyone else Tails loved. Like Sonic.
"Mecha," said Tails, "do you still hate Sonic?"
"Yes," said Mecha, as if Tails had asked, "Do birds fly?"
Tails frowned. "Why?"
"He is my enemy," growled Mecha. "He was the cause of my defeat and humiliation."
"Aside from that," said Tails. "If you had beat Sonic, would you still hate him?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
"Because ..." Mecha fumbled for words, trying to phrase to himself a logical reason for his hatred. His old arguments, which he used to run through his mind like a mantra, were obsolete now.
Sonic was faster. But Mecha had matched his speed.
Sonic could heal an injury. But Mecha could do that too.
Sonic was biological and Mecha was a robot, a cheap copy. But Mecha was almost completely biological now, although he was still in the process of weaning himself from his old robotic technology. And he differed from Sonic now in everything except race and name. He hated Sonic because he hated Sonic--irrationally, loathing everything about him.
"I just do," he spluttered.
Tails frowned. "Even after he gave you his blood? What does he have to do to make you not hate him anymore?"
"I--he--" Mecha stammered into silence. The idea of not hating Sonic was revolutionary. He loved hating Sonic. It was his primary pastime. But Tails was right, for not only had Sonic let Mecha hurt him, he had given his blood. The life of a creature was in its blood. Mecha knew what a sacred thing it was that Sonic and Shadow had done for him.
Mecha had appreciated Shadow's utter devotion to him, but he had not considered what it had meant that Sonic, too, had helped keep Mecha alive. How dare Sonic try to bridge the gap of enmity! Mecha suddenly hated him worse than ever, his hatred this time fueled by guilt. Guilt that Sonic was no longer acting like an enemy. Sonic was trying to make amends, and Mecha was in the wrong to go on hating him.
Just as it had been wrong for him to attack Shadow when Shadow came to him, begging forgiveness, on that night when Mecha's pride and folly had ruled supreme ... he recoiled at the memory. Hating Sonic was the definition of his life. But even as this thought crossed his mind, he knew it was feeble and shallow. His own development had been hindered by his hatred, and it wasn't until he learned to set it aside that he could concentrate on other things, like rebuilding himself. And now he was back where he had started.
He turned on Tails in fury. "This is none of your business, fox. You have no right to tell me what to think, and besides, the hedgehog probably put you up to this, didn't he?"
"No, sorry," said Tails, looking down. "I didn't mean to make you mad, I just--"
"Well, stop trying to help," snapped Mecha. "Because you are not helping at all."
A stoney silence followed. Mecha brooded with his chin on his chest, refusing to look at Tails. Tails kept his eyes on the thrall sphere, wishing he had gone to sleep like a good fox and left Mecha alone. After a while it occurred to him that he hadn't listened for Shadow in a while, so he tuned in.
Shadow was standing still, catching his breath, and Tails could hear his heart pounding. "You okay, Shadow?" said Tails.
"Yes and no," Shadow replied. "I have located a road and will proceed to follow it. But I ..." He trailed off.
"But what?" asked Tails, aware that Mecha was watching him.
"There is a third party on this frequency," Shadow whispered aloud.
Tails could hear him, for he could hear everything in Shadow's vicinity with the sphere. "Who is it?" he asked.
"I only detected the additional connection a moment ago," whispered Shadow, preferring not to speak over the open frequency. "It could only be Robo Knux."
"Robo Knux!" Tails exclaimed, and beside him Mecha inhaled sharply.
"Yes," said Shadow. "Have my Master shut down his network hardware, or the enemy will track him."
"Gotcha," said Tails. He turned to Mecha. "Shadow says turn off your network hardware. He's picking up Robo Knux on the network, and he's afraid he'll track you."
Mecha hesitated a moment, then said, "Affirmative."
Robo Knux stood up and cocked his head. A new connection to his internal network had been acquired. He pinpointed its location--eight miles to the north--and targeted its ID. Mecha-fusion: Unit Alpha.
Shadow.
If Robo Knux could have grinned evilly, he would have. "Greetings, Shadow," he said. "What's a nice cyborg like you doing in a place like this?"
Shadow didn't answer, and his coordinates were changing. He was running. Robo Knux checked his internal repairs. His jet controls were operation, but his stabilizers still had hours worth of work to go. He couldn't fly yet, but he could run and hover at high speeds.
He ignited his jets, each dreadlock spurting a blue flame from its end, and rocketed down the hill northward.
Shadow ran like the wind down a narrow dirt road. It was made of packed gravel, and in places was cracked and broken from the shifting of the ground. But it cut through hills and was graded for vehicles. Shadow had spotted it by accident when he stopped for breath, and it offered the perfect racetrack. He could really extend himself now and push his muscular body to its limits.
He checked his radar and saw Robo Knux was pursuing him, zigzagging through the hills. Shadow felt a burst of fear and consulted Mekion for advice. "Pace yourself," Mekion replied. "Do not allow him to frighten you or he has won already. Our current speed is 150 MPH, and we can maintain that speed for half an hour on an open road. Do not accelerate."
Shadow continued skating, sweeping along on a cushion of air, and watching Robo Knux gain on him.
Ahead, out of scan range but within sight, the horizon was lit by a yellow glow, slowly spreading out to dim the stars. Shadow was hoping it was a city, not a town. In cities there were lots of people, and food, and hiding places. If he could beat Robo Knux there ...
Robo Knux reached the road and swept up it in Shadow's wake, jets roaring. "So much for stealth," thought Shadow with a smile. Shadow ghosted along, a flicker of light from his hoverskates, a rush of air, and he was gone. Robo Knux screamed along like a low-flying jet, a cloud of dust in his wake, audible half a mile away.
Robo Knux's voice rang over the network. "Hello, Shadow! Not as fast as usual, are you? I thought you were in a hurry to get somewhere!"
"No," Shadow replied. "I was out for a moonlight stroll."
"On a moonless night through a volcanic waste at one hundred fifty miles an hour," said Robo Knux. "What are you doing here? Is Metal Sonic here?"
"I am avoiding you," said Shadow, checking his radar. Robo Knux was half a mile behind him and closing fast.
"You won't avoid me long," replied Robo Knux. "If Mecha is here, you're out of his range. No one will hear you scream for help."
"I don't plan to do any screaming," Shadow replied. "Mekion, should I accelerate?"
"No," Mekion replied. "He can maintain speeds up to Mach two for hours, which you cannot do. Remain at 150 MPH and he will match your speed. When the settlement is reached, then you will accelerate into a sprint and catch him off guard."
"I heard that!" said Robo Knux. "It's nice having a robot think for you, huh Shadow?"
A quarter of a mile separated them now. Shadow flashed over hills and around curves, holding his breath as he passed through noxious fumes wafting across the road. The light ahead was brighter. Suddenly, as he crested a hill, he glimpsed the lights like a golden starfield clustered against the blackness of the land. It was twenty miles away, but the sight gave Shadow hope, and he skated for it as his breath came harder and rougher.
The hills shrank, and the road sloped downhill more and more. Shadow smelled vegetation, a freshness in the air. He kept going. Robo Knux was three hundred feet behind him, a pair of green eyes in a ring of blue fire. "I've wanted to kill you since Mecha dragged you in," said Robo Knux over the network. "You were such a pitiful little rat, half-dead, crying over your miserable chao. Becoming Mekion hasn't made you any stronger."
Shadow didn't answer him. All of his energy was focused on the road, and he had no breath for insults. He watched his radar as Robo Knux closed to two hundred feet. One hundred feet. Fifty feet. Shadow glanced back and saw the robot had extended his arms, diamond-tipped claws held like javelins.
"Accelerate," said Mekion.
Shadow obeyed, forcing his tired muscles to work harder, shooting into a final downhill sprint toward the city lights. The gap between himself and his enemy widened to an eighth of a mile, and then Robo Knux, too, accelerated. "You're fast, but I have the stamina," jeered Robo Knux. "Let's see how long you can maintain three hundred miles an hour! You're sucking wind already."
Shadow was indeed tiring and had only made it so far because he had paced himself. But at his new speed the city was drawing closer and closer, and the road ran straight toward it, broad, clear and paved with asphalt. He forced himself to run faster, unhindered by friction, which meant he couldn't stop without shutting off his hoverskates. Robo Knux had the same problem because he wasn't touching the ground, and--
An idea came to Shadow. He pushed himself to 350, his breath tearing his lungs, muscles burning. Then he calculated Robo Knux's position as accurately as possible, set his feet and skidded to a halt with a screech of rubber and metal on pavement.
Robo Knux had not anticipated this, and his stabilizers, which acted as brakes, were not yet repaired. He swept past Shadow, his claws raking the air, his momentum carrying him a mile further. Shadow stood on the road, his hoverskates scraped and blackened, gasping deep, delicious breaths into his empty lungs.
He stood perfectly still, watching his enemy on radar. Mekion prodded Shadow, but Shadow ignored him and concentrated. This would be close. Robo Knux had stopped, turned around and was rocketing back, accelerating with his claws held in front of him. Shadow stood stock still, using every second left to rest and catch his breath. He was good at playing chicken. The trick wasn't to let yourself think about what would happen when it hit you; instead you had to calculate its speed against how long it took you to jump aside, and Shadow was excellent at instanious calculations.
It happened in a fraction of a second. Robo Knux's claws sliced through the air where Shadow's head had been, but Shadow was gone, shooting sideways in a spindash. As Robo Knux roared past with a stream of curses, Shadow landed on his feet and made for the city as fast as he could. His muscles were energized from their brief rest and fresh oxygen, and they propelled him to four and five hundred miles an hour, the wind slicking back his spines.
Streetlights. Buildings. Cars. Shadow entered civilization before he knew it, and suddenly there were obstacles everywhere that would kill him as effectively as Robo Knux could. He shut down his network hardware, skidded down the road and around a turn, his hoverskates taking even more damage. Now to find someplace dark and make himself invisible for a while. He spied an open window, leaped through it and found himself in the courtyard of a house, filled with potted plants and paved with cool stone.
Shadow dove into a corner behind a screen of shrubs and sat still, his breath noisy in the sudden hush. Robo Knux roared by in the distance, confused, for Shadow had vanished from radar.
Shadow smiled. Mecha would be proud.
Knuckles opened his eyes, and immediately closed them. His head felt like an overriped watermelon, ready to burst at the slightest movement. By the light shining in the window he knew it was early morning. The sedative had worked, all right, and now he had a hangover. Maybe that medication had been too strong.
He lifted his head and propped himself up on his elbows, blinking. The movement sent a sharp pain through his leg, and he remembered his wound and the events around it. Combined with how rotten he felt, it did nothing to improve his mood. Zephyer and the rest were still gone, and the island was silent around him; layers and layers of silence, like lying on the bottom of a still lake. He couldn't even hear any birds singing, which was odd for dawn. He grunted to assure himself that he hadn't gone deaf, and sat up, holding his head. He wasn't touching that other sedative pill no matter how bad his leg hurt.
The movement sent another pain through his leg, and he remembered he wasn't supposed to put his weight on it. He had some crutches around here somewhere, but Zephyer had stashed them away. He missed her with a pang deeper and sharper than any pain in his body. Zephyer, you idiot, why did you have to grab the sphere?
He stood on one foot and groped along the wall to the closet. There was one crutch in the corner. Hadn't there been two? He didn't remember, and there was no one to ask. He grabbed the single crutch and propped it under his arm. Then he hobbled out of his room, feeling thirsty and intending to visit Hidden Palace and try to locate Zephyer as soon as possible.
He entered the living room and saw Sally asleep on the couch, under a blanket. Oh yeah, he'd forgotten she was here. Nice of her to stay with him. Hadn't she said something about that chaos tracker? He looked around the living room for it, didn't see it, and entered the kitchen. The tracker was set up in the windowsill, its tiny satellite dish aimed at the sky. The square, black tracker was plugged into Nicole the palmtop computer. There was a map on the screen with several bright blips on it.
He lunged for the tracker. "Nicole!" he gasped. "What're those blips on the screen?"
"Hello Knuckles," said the computer. "Displayed on screen are images taken of Eastern Mobius's Brimstone Mountain range at 2 AM this morning."
Knuckles had to wet his lips before he could speak. "Have any of those blips been identified?"
"Yes," said Nicole, highlighting two. "Two of the recorded signatures match those of Sonic and Tails."
So they were still on Mobius! The relief hit him and he felt the backs of his eyes grow hot. But East Mobius-- He limped to a cabinet, opened it and took down his navigation maps. He unrolled one and squinted at the lines and tiny writing. His headache made reading it difficult, and his excitement made his head pound all the more. East Mobius was halfway around the world from the Floating Island's current position ... the Master Emerald probably did that on purpose ... his finger swept over the continent until he located the Brimstone Mountains. There were a lot of them.
He looked at Nicole's screen again. The group was on the western edge, it looked like ... how could he get there and pick them up before something happened to them? Mecha, Shadow, Nack and Rouge, all mixed up with Sonic, Tails and Zephyer? It couldn't end well.
Knuckles retrieved a glass of water and was sitting at the table, deep in thought, when Sally looked in. "Hello Knuckles," she said. "What're you doing up?"
"Drugs wore off," he said without taking his eyes from the map. "They're in East Mobius."
Sally went through the same motions he had; running to Nicole, identifying the blips, then spinning to check the map. Hope lit her face like a torch. "It found them! Oh, I'm so glad! Can we get down there?"
"I'm thinking about it," said Knuckles, frowning and massaging his forehead.
Sally looked at the map a moment. "Could we use a teleporter?"
"Too far," said Knuckles. "As Sonic found out a while back, you can only teleport so far before the power runs out, and it drops you somewhere you didn't mean to land. The Floating Island teleporters have a range of about two thousand miles." Talking made his head hurt, and he closed his eyes and took a drink of water.
Sally frowned and fidgeted, looking worried. "How long would it take to move the Floating Island that far?"
Knuckles pulled out another map and pointed to a spot on it. "We're here. A chunk of rock this big doesn't move very fast. It'd take about two months of steady travelling to get to East Mobius."
Sally chewed a nail, something Knuckles had never seen her do. "Do you know what East Mobius is like?"
"I've visited the northern part," said Knuckles.
Sally pointed to the Brimstone mountains. "I visited the southern continent as part of a delegation party once. It would be considered the largest desert on Mobius if it wasn't covered in active volcanos. They told me that if you get lost out there, your life expectancy is three days."
Knuckles said nothing. It figured that the Master Emerald would dump them in the most inhospitable spot on the planet. He rubbed his forehead again, feeling as if his brain was trying to burst through his skull. Maybe food would help break up this hangover--food and strong coffee.
He rose carefully from his chair, grasping his crutch and easing his hurt leg around the chair without jarring it. Sally jumped up. "Here, let me help you."
"No, I'm fine," he growled, making it to a standing position. He limped past Sally to the pantry and pulled out a bag of ground coffee. As he moved for the coffee pot, he held up the bag and said, "Real live Bersathan coffee. Hope you like it black, Princess."
"Where did you get that?" she asked, moving to the pantry and poking around inside.
"Bersatha," said Knuckles, filling the pot. "A Floating Island can go anywhere. And does." He missed Zephyer suddenly--it came in flashes and waves, as if he had had a limb amputated and kept remembering it was gone. Each time he remembered she was gone, a pain pierced through his heart like being stabbed over and over. She had been torn away from him and dumped in some volcanic desert where your life expectancy was three days. He had to DO something! But what could he possibly do? East Mobius was too far away ...
He had coffee and breakfast, deep in thought about supercharging a teleporter, or teleporting the island itself. Sally kept her thoughts to herself, but he knew from the way she kept looking at the tracker and the maps that she was thinking of rescue attempts, too.
Suddenly she turned to him and said, "We'll have to call someone down there and have them pick up the others."
Knuckles stared at her. This simple thought had not occurred to him. Leave it to Sally the politician to think of a people-oriented solution. "Like who?" he said, pouring himself a cup of coffee. Black as oil, just how he liked it.
Sally looked at the map again, running her finger along the mountain range. "The governor of their district, I think ... I'll have to look up his office. You mind if I run back to Knothole and make some calls?"
"Go ahead," he said. "I'll be in Hidden Palace when you come back."
"Right." She looked at his bandaged leg. "You're supposed to stay off your feet, you know ..."
"Sally," said Knuckles, glaring. "Can it."
She looked exasperated, turned and left.
Gosh, he missed Zephyer.
Hours passed. The globe turned, and as the day progressed on one side, the night deepened and grew old on the other side.
Tails narrated Shadow's race with Robo Knux for Mecha's benefit, and heard when Shadow hid in someplace that rustled. Then Mecha dismissed Tails, who was beginning to yawn, and the fox carried his sphere back to Sonic and Zephyer and curled up between them.
Mecha remained awake to keep watch. He was not tired, as a real organic creature would be, and it vaguely annoyed him, for there was too much robot about his makeup. But he could dream now. His nightmare about Robo Knux haunted him. Robo Knux was here somehow. Shadow had led him away, but when Shadow returned, what would prevent Robo Knux from trailing him?
Mecha was afraid, and stroked the sleeping Aleda to comfort himself. Then there was Tails's remark about hating Sonic ... it still filled Mecha with pointless rage. There was no reason now to hate Sonic, but he wanted to anyway.
So he sat there under his tree, staring into the darkness with a silent network, burning with fever and anger, and shivering with fear.
On the Floating Island, Knuckles limped to the teleporter on his crutch and beamed down to Hidden Palace. The quiet blue cavern felt empty and lonely after all the activity of the previous week, and all the gems looked dim and washed-out to him. Even the two thrall spheres were a sickly yellow instead of orange. Zephyer shouldn't have been banished, because she had taken all the color and zest of the island with her. Knuckles wasn't certain how he knew this; it simply weighed on his mind as he looked at the dim jewels.
"Well," he said to them, "it's your own stupid fault for kicking her along with the others."
He crossed the ring of Super Emeralds and went to the Master Emerald in the center. He noted with grim amusement that he had forgotten to clean up the spot where he had fallen after Nack shot him. Dried blood was caked on the marble pedestal and dais. Well, too bad, he wasn't bothering with that now. He laid a hand on the Master Emerald, which deepened in color as he touched it, and said, "Master Emerald, show me Zephyer."
The hues, highlights and shadows within the emerald shifted and rearranged themselves to form a tiny, bright hologram. Zephyer was curled up on the ground, asleep. Knuckles leaned close, his nose touching the emerald's side. She looked okay, a bit dusty, he thought. He watched her breathe, his heart aching with longing. He could watch her for hours ... days ... three days ... He might see her die. The thought knifed through him, leaving an emotional cut bleeding sorrow and horror. No, no, he and Sally would have the group rescued by then.
He limped around the Master, looking at the image from all sides. Tails and Sonic were just visible on the edge of the hologram, also sleeping. Tails had the third thrall sphere beside his head. Knuckles gazed at it for a long while, wondering if he could target that sphere and use it to bring them home. It was possible, but it would only teleport whoever was touching it at the time, and he wanted to rescue them all. If only he could communicate with them!
He returned to watching Zephyer, a million unlikely plans spinning through his head. He was still there an hour later when Sally used the teleporter and entered Hidden Palace.
She halted on the threshold, gazing in wonder at the majesty and beauty of the gems and marble floors. She had never visited this sacred place before. Knuckles was standing beside the Master Emerald, one hand resting on its top, staring into it. "Well?" he said without turning.
Sally was reluctant to move closer, especially after what had happened to the others. She stood in the archway and said, "I talked to the district governor's office. They're in the Sukatia district, and the representative I talked to said they'll send out search planes in the morning."
"Yeah, it's night there," Knuckles muttered. "It's, what, a sixteen-hour time difference?"
"Yes," said Sally. "Um ... everything that can be done is being done, so you should really rest."
Knuckles turned his head and looked at her, his eyes hard and dangerous.
"Or not," said Sally. "I'm ... going back to the surface." She retreated and teleported out, leaving the surly Guardian alone with his emeralds.
Shadow uncurled and lifted his head. Had he been asleep back in this corner behind the shrubs? He hadn't realized he was asleep until he awoke. He stretched his stiff limbs, careful not to let his metal arm and leg clank against the ground. He didn't want to rouse the occupants of the house across the courtyard. They might not be entirely friendly to a dirty black hedgehog with half his body made of metal.
He stood up and activated his low-frequency scanner. His other scanner had a wider range, but it operated off his network hardware, and would allow Robo Knux to track him. The low-frequency scanner covered a mile around him, and Robo Knux was not within range. There were plenty of buildings, vehicles and trees, though. And here and there a person moved about on late-night business.
Shadow analyzed his mission objectives. Priority one: find a settlement. Check.
Priority two: survive. Sort of check. He had escaped from his enemy for the moment, but his run had left him parched with thirst, and he was hungry. Once he had taken care of that, third priority was to get help for his Master and the others, and take them food before dawn.
He climbed through the courtyard window and went exploring, watching his scanner and keeping to the darkest shadows. The buildings here were strange to him, for some were built in tiers, and others had multiple roofs, one above the other. Some were built of great blocks of stone, and to his astonishment a pyramid reared up in the city's center.
Palm trees and jungle growth was everywhere, so they must have water. Shadow looked for it, listening and sniffing, and located a large yard being watered by sprinklers. He helped himself to one, letting the jet of water spray into his mouth until he had had enough to drink. Now he needed some food to carry back into the waste with him. Perhaps local law enforcement could help him ... as long as it wasn't GUN. His mouth twisted in an ironic smile. He didn't care much for law enforcement people, but he needed help from somewhere.
Shadow swiped a tropical fruit from a tree in someone's yard, ripped it open with his metal claws and ate its juicy flesh. He didn't care for the rich exotic flavor, but he was hungry and had no other way of acquiring food.
When the aching hole in his middle had been satisfied, Shadow went looking for a police station of some sort. He located one after a brief search; a thick-walled adobe building with a flat roof. To his amusement, there were three bats in green uniforms sitting on the roof in chairs, talking in low voices.
Shadow entered the building and found it was hot and stuffy inside. A sign on the front desk said, 'Upstairs' with an arrow pointing toward a wooden staircase. Shadow mounted them three at a time and emerged on the roof. A shade made of woven reeds was set up to one side, but the bats were sitting apart from it, watching the road from their chairs. One of them nodded to Shadow and beckoned to him, for they had seen him approach.
Shadow walked up, and one of the bats addressed him in a foreign language.
"I don't understand you," said Shadow.
"Ah, a westerner!" said the bat in perfect New Mobian. "Yes, of course. What seems to be the trouble? We don't see many cyborgs in Tukoto."
"I was in a teleporter accident," whispered Shadow, "along with several of my friends. We're stranded out in the desert, about a hundred miles east of here. I came here looking for help."
The bats spoke among themselves in their own language. They were bigger than Rouge, with black leathery wings and orange fur on their bodies. The one Shadow had addressed had patches of creamy white fur on his cheeks. "Species identification," Mekion told him. "Flying foxes, a type of fruit bat. Indigenous to East Mobius, their main exports are--" Shadow shut up his robot half as the leader bat turned to him.
"We had a call about you earlier. Is your name Shadow?"
He nodded.
The bat extended a wing, which had several fingers sprouting from the top wing joint, and Shadow shook 'hands'. "I'm corporal Kayota. We can't send out the rescue craft until morning. Would you be so kind as to show us where your party is located on a map?"
Shadow agreed and followed Kayota down into the stuffy building to look at maps. He wondered if he should tell them that Metal Sonic was with them, for surely his master's notorious fame was worldwide. Mecha was harmless now, but he didn't think these bats would believe that. But the bats needed an accurate headcount and weight estimate so they could send out the appropriate number of aircraft. It seemed the Brimstone range was so dangerous that they seldom let aircraft fly over it, except at high altitudes.
So Shadow did what the police asked, avoiding telling them Metal Sonic's name, and instead telling them there was a second android they called Mecha. It was a common enough title, and Kayota didn't comment. What did draw comment was when Shadow described Rouge.
Kayota stared at him. "Rouge the bat? She's with you?"
"Yes," said Shadow. "It was a widespread accident." It was the closest he had come to humor all night.
Rouge's name seemed to give the rescue priority. Kayota gave Shadow all the food he could carry, as well as a homing beacon to take back to the stranded group to allow the search planes to find them.
Then Shadow was on the road again, running east into the mountains with a knapsack slung across his back, and keeping a wary scan out for Robo Knux. He had not picked up his enemy's signal since losing him in Tukoto, and it worried him. Robo Knux was cunning and well-versed in combat strategy. It would be just like him to stalk Shadow from outside scan range.
But Shadow picked up nothing on his low-frequency scanner for the two hours it took him to pick his way back through the pathless hills to the oasis. When he guessed he was within thirty miles of it, he reactivated his network hardware for a look around. No sign of Robo Knux. "Master?" said Shadow tentatively.
"Shadow!" came Mecha's distant voice. "You are on the borders of scan range. Continue west."
Feeling as if he had sighted home on a dark night, Shadow broke into a smooth skating run. He noticed that a dim glow was brightening the eastern horizon, much like city lights. But this glow was the approaching sun, coming to scorch them.
With Mecha as a guide, Shadow located the shallow canyon and scrambled down its side. Then he paced to Mecha, unslinging the pack from his back. He laid it at Mecha's feet, dropped to his knees and bowed his head. "I have accomplished my objectives, Master."
Mecha shook his head and waved a hand. "No need for that, Shadow. Get up. You located a settlement?"
"Yes," said Shadow, and recounted his adventures as he opened his knapsack and pulled out a jug of fresh water, and a bottle of energy drink called Scarlet Dog. This he handed to Mecha, who read the label and listened to Shadow's account. Shadow concluded by pulling out the homing beacon, a little plastic cube with a button on the side. "At sunrise I will activate this, and the rescue craft will pick us up."
Mecha took the beacon and examined it, eyes narrowing. "Did you tell the police about Robo Knuckles?"
"No."
Mecha held up the beacon. "This is a simple device readable by any electronic scanner. It will draw Robo Knux to us like an iron filing to a magnet."
Shadow paled. Mecha handed the beacon back to him. "We will have to use it, of course, but only after everyone has been refueled and is on their guard." He held up the energy drink. "Perhaps you should drink some of this, yourself."
"It will work with your systems, won't it?" asked Shadow, unscrewing the lid.
Mecha sighed. "Perhaps better than blood did."
As Shadow 'fed' Mecha, the two chao stirred and opened their eyes. Aleda sat up in Mecha's lap and yawned, and Nox looked around anxiously, saw Shadow and relaxed with a smile. Then he saw the knapsack. "What's that?" asked Nox.
"I retrieved food supplies," whispered Shadow. "See that Aleda is fed. There are several fruits, and you may each have one."
Nox and Aleda pounced on the knapsack, pulled out two round yellow fruits as big as they were, and devoured them as if they were starving to death. Mecha watched Aleda for any sign of collapse, but she looked as if she had recovered from the previous day's episode.
Shadow finished fueling Mecha, looked at the half-empty bottle of energy drink, and took a drink. He made a face and swallowed. "This stuff is like ... like gasoline for organics!"
"Pure caffeine, among other things," said Mecha, rising to his feet and stretching. The fever in his body was already dropping, so the fluid must be slightly less hostile to his nanites. "It is a powerful stimulant. Rouse the others. We must have them ready."
The black hedgehog walked to Sonic, Tails and Zephyer, and prodded them each with a toe. Zephyer opened her eyes and made a sour face. Tails inhaled deeply and stretched, and Sonic leaped to his feet by reflex before his eyes were open. "Huh? What? Oh, hi Shadow."
Shadow jerked his head at his knapsack and the two chao. "Food."
"Food?" Sonic spun around. "Where'd you get food?"
Shadow ignored him and stalked off in search of Rouge and Nack, but he heard Tails say, "Last night Shadow went looking for a town or something, and I helped. Hey Sonic, I can use this sphere! Guess what it lets me do?"
Shadow nearly spun around and throttled the fox, but forced himself to keep walking. They were running out of time, and there was no point in causing a fight.
His scanner located Rouge hanging upside down from a tree branch, wings folded around her body. She was too high to reach, so Shadow tossed a pebble and hit her on the wing. Her eyes opened, and she glared at him. "What are you doing?"
"Get up, we have food," he whispered. He almost added something about their imminent danger, but decided against it. She would find out soon enough.
As she flipped down to the ground, Shadow walked off, scanning for Nack. He located the weasel curled in the rocks at the head of the hotspring. As Shadow circled them, trying to locate the easiest route up to them, he heard an odd buzzing sound and froze. A second later he saw Nack sit up and grope at his vest pocket. He pulled out a tiny communicator and flipped it on. "Eh?"
"Nack, you moron," snarled Robo Knux's voice, and Shadow instinctively ducked behind a boulder. Nack was in contact with Robo Knux? This situation was getting worse and worse!
Robo Knux was still speaking. "I told you not to turn this com off. What were you doing?"
"Sleeping," said Nack, taking off his hat and scratching his head. "I didn't know you got dumped out here, too."
"It seems we all did." Robo Knux's anger was ebbing away to be replaced by oily good humor. "It seems Metal Sonic and his pet Shadow are also stranded out here."
"Yeah." Nack looked around furtively, and Shadow ducked a little lower to avoid being seen. Nack said in a low voice, "That Metal Sonic has tried to kill me three or four times, and Shadow's insane, I know he is. I saw him talking to himself, and he acted like there were two people in his head."
"Technically there are," said Robo Knux, "but that's beside the point. I want to arrange a private encounter with myself and Mecha. A fatal encounter."
"Might be workable," said Nack. "What're you gonna do about the others?"
"What others?"
"Sonic, Tails, Rouge and some echidna chick are here, too."
Robo Knux was silent a moment, and when he spoke again, he sounded delighted. "All of them together! Has much blood been shed?"
"Not nearly enough," said Nack, smiling and baring his fang. "Oh yes, something else you might find interesting. Mecha has a chao of his own."
"What?" Robo Knux was astonished, but his astonishment quickly turned to evil glee. "Oh my, this keeps getting better. So the great Mecha has allowed himself not one, not two, but several weaknesses! I wonder how many of them I can exploit before he dies."
"What about me?" said Nack. "You'll kill all of them and leave me stranded out here?"
"There's a city called Tukoto a hundred miles to the east," said Robo Knux. "I'll fly you there after the fun is over. I need you to make sure Mecha is separated from the others, hopefully with his chao, too."
"Will do," said Nack. "I'll call you again once I figure out how."
Shadow felt sick at his stomach. Robo Knux was coming with death on his mind, and Nack was in league with him. "Mekion," he thought, "what should I do?"
"Don't let him know you overheard him," said Mekion. "Do not inform Mecha of this via the network. If Robo Knux is close enough to utilize a communicator, he is within network range. Speak to Mecha audibly."
Shadow remembered he had come to collect Nack and make sure he was fed. The thought sickened him--the traitor deserved to starve--but Shadow couldn't let on that he suspected anything.
The black hedgehog tiptoed a short distance away, then walked to the rocks as if he was just arriving. Nack looked at him sharply and stuffed his com back in his pocket. "Nack," whispered Shadow, "food. I was sent to notify you." He turned and walked off.
Nack called, "Food? What? Where'd that come from?"
Shadow ignored him. It galled him to think that this disgusting traitor was going to eat the food that Shadow had carried a hundred miles, but it couldn't be helped. Not now, anyway.
When he reached the others again, they were seated in a group on the rocky ground, eating the fruits and rations the police had given him, and talking cheerfully. Mecha had already informed them about being rescued, and morale was high. "Hey Shadow," Sonic called, "kudos for braving the desert! Good thing you can see in the dark, huh?"
Shadow's thoughts were focused completely on warning Mecha. He nodded at Sonic, stepped to Mecha and whispered, "I must speak with you a moment. He is already coming."
Mecha gave Shadow a startled look, and the two walked a short distance away from the others, into the cover of the scrubby trees. There Shadow recounted everything he had heard in a rapid-fire whisper, his robot fingers clenching and relaxing over and over.
Mecha turned his head and looked toward the eastern horizon, where an orange glow heralded the rising sun. "Using the beacon can do no harm now," he muttered. "Although this is not entirely unexpected. He is here because he was on the Floating Island during the experiment. I have long suspected he was in league with Rouge and Nack." He turned to Shadow, and his red eyes held a hint of sadness. "I know it is a violation of your first law, but you must not try to defend me when he arrives."
"But ... but Mecha...!"
"You are to take Aleda and run," Mecha continued, holding Shadow's gaze. "You and she are my weaknesses, and he knows that destroying you before my eyes will harm me worse than if he put his claws through my heart."
Shadow bowed his head, trying to think of a loophole that would allow him to remain with his Master. Robo Knux's attack was the thing they had both feared for so long, and now it was going to happen. Shadow lifted his head. "Let's ask Sonic for help. He's strong and fast, and he's not your weakness."
"No." Mecha's eyes glittered in hatred. "I will die before I ask him for help." He whirled and strode back to the others, and Shadow gazed after him. Mecha was too proud to appeal to Sonic, but Shadow had no such reservations. Although he disliked Sonic, Shadow was willing to do anything to save Mecha.
Mecha took the beacon out of the knapsack and activated it, placing it on a rock. "There," he announced. "This will guide our rescuers directly to us." His eyes shifted to Shadow--they could both hear the beacon as a pulsing siren through their network. So could Robo Knux.
Shadow walked through the group and tapped Sonic on the head as he passed. Sonic looked at him questioningly, and Shadow crooked a finger at him and walked on. A moment later Sonic rose and followed him. Shadow led him to the far side of a rock outcropping, out of Mecha's range of vision.
"Sup, Shads?" Sonic asked.
Shadow faced him. "We are in grave danger." And he again recounted Nack's conversation with Robo Knux.
Sonic stared at him, eyes beginning to smoulder. "So he's gonna let RK slaughter us?" he said as Shadow finished. "I knew I didn't like him! Thanks for telling me. I'm not afraid of RK. Remember the last time he showed up, and I ripped his arms off?" Sonic looked blissful at the memory.
Shadow nodded. "Since I am not allowed to protect Mecha, you must do it for me. Can you do that? Even if he tries to drive you away?"
"Mecha, fight me?" said Sonic with a hollow laugh. "Not gonna happen. But I'll look out for him. Heck, I've been trying to get on his good side this whole time."
"Yes," said Shadow, looking at Sonic's hand. He had seen the cut before Sonic put on his gloves, and it was swollen and red. By contrast, Shadow's cut had nearly healed. "Thank you," said Shadow, dropping his eyes. He hated having to ask Sonic for help like this, but he cared more about Mecha than their own petty rivalry.
He turned and walked back to the others, checking his scanner for Robo Knux. No sign of him yet.
The rising sun on East Mobius meant night had fallen on West Mobius and the Floating Island. Knuckles was still in Hidden Palace, a communicator lying beside him on the floor. He had spent the day beside the Master Emerald, watching Zephyer and the others, hoping to see them rescued. Sally gave him updates via the com every few hours, but nothing much had happened over there during the night. Knuckles allowed himself the luxury of a few naps, because once morning came over there, it would be night here.
He was watching when Shadow walked onto the image and awoke Zephyer, Sonic and Tails. He watched as Zephyer got up and moved around, bringing other people into focus. It looked like they were eating breakfast. The authorities in Tukoto had said Shadow had appeared, retrieved supplies and went back, and Knuckles saw it unfolding before his eyes. From what he could see, the whole group was still together.
When Knuckles wasn't observing Zephyer, he was re-reading the inscription from the inside of the Super Emerald's pedestal. He had discovered purely by chance that if he held the panel up to the light of a thrall sphere, additional writing appeared, as if written with invisible ink over the top of the engraving.
The secret writing told how to use a thrall sphere properly, and he wished he had read it before they charged ahead with their portal scheme. Spheres operated by sound frequencies. They resonated at certain notes like a tuning fork, but because of their chaos power they could manipulate the global chaos field and the Chaos Emeralds in unusual ways. He, in turn, could command the spheres with the Master Emerald.
A few hours ago, Knuckles had conducted an experiment to test one of the commands. He said, "Master Emerald, 'call' thrall spheres." The volume of the ensuing two notes knocked him down and shattered several of the blue crystals on the ceiling. When the echoes of the aural explosion had died away, Knuckles found that both spheres had fallen from their places and rolled to the foot of the Master Emerald's dais.
Knuckles had decided that when the group was back in civilization, he would call Zephyer and see if he could summon them all home with the thrall sphere. All he could do for now was watch.
The sun had climbed to 8 AM, and the volcanic desert was already baking as the temperatures soared. The Mobians had taken shelter under the trees, watching the sky hopefully for rescue aircraft. Shadow and Mecha kept a scan open for a flying creature of another kind, but there was no sign of him.
Sonic watched Nack and Rouge out of the corner of his eye, hating Nack with everything he had. That thief--that criminal--was looking for a way to let Robo Knux kill Mecha and Aleda. After everything Mecha had done to help them! If not for Mecha, they wouldn't be waiting for rescue, and Nack would have died out here with the rest of them ... and Nack was willing to hand Mecha over to be murdered! The more Sonic thought about it, the hotter his blood boiled.
Beside him, Tails looked up from playing with the thrall sphere. "Sonic," he said, "Mecha says the planes are in sight. Hey, are you okay?"
Sonic's expression was black. "I'm fine," he growled. After a second he brightened. "The planes are in sight? Where?" He jumped up and ran out into the sun, peering into the west.
"Actually," he heard Mecha tell the others, "they are helicopters, which means they can land here." Now Sonic could hear the distant thumping of three helicopters, which appeared as specks above the hilltops. "All right, we're outta here!" he yelled.
The helicopters circled overhead as the pilots looked for level places to land, then one by one they descended to touch down, the wind from their rotors kicking up a cloud of dust. They were boxy-looking Mobian craft with wings and engines as well as rotors, which allowed them to fly for long distances and land anywhere.
"Wow!" Tails exclaimed, hurrying out to Sonic and watching them land. "Those are Hummingbird-class D-197's! And we get to ride in them!" He was delighted.
As the rotors stopped spinning overhead, two medics jumped out of the lead helicopter and strode toward them. They were orange-furred bats with large round ears, wearing uniforms and goggles. "Any of your party injured?" one of them called to Sonic as they approached.
"Nope," Sonic called back. "We're in good shape." He beckoned to his companions, who were hurrying out of the trees, toward their rescuers.
Three more bats appeared, opening sliding side doors on the aircraft's sides. The bats divided the group by weight--Zephyer, Rouge and Shadow were in one craft, Nack, Tails and Mecha were in the second, and Sonic would take the two chao in the third.
As soon as Zephyer, Rouge and Shadow had boarded, the medics swung into the cockpit and the first helicopter lifted off, heading back toward town. Mecha gazed after it as he climbed into his own chopper--Shadow was clear. He helped Tails climb in with the thrall sphere, and glared at Nack as the weasel sat down and strapped himself in. Nack smirked at him.
Mecha turned to look out the door, watching Sonic carry the two chao, black and blue, toward the last helicopter. How had it turned out that Sonic was handling the chao? They should have gone with Shadow! Mecha watched Sonic closely, making sure he didn't hurt Aleda. Nox was talking, it looked like, and Sonic was nodding and telling him about the helicopters. There was too much noise for Mecha to hear what they were saying, but it looked as if Sonic was being gentle. He knew how to handle chao, at least. Mecha half-expected Sonic to pitch Aleda aside and run, just to spite him.
Suddenly, though the network, Mecha heard Shadow scream, "Master!" At the same time Mecha detected Robo Knux flying into the canyon at two hundred miles an hour, headed straight for the helicopter Sonic was boarding.
Robo Knux knew Sonic had the chao! The fiend! Mecha's efficient brain calculated trajectories at the speed of thought, and he knew that he could not leave his helicopter, which was lifting off the ground, with enough speed to either intercept Robo Knux or remove Aleda from his path. Sonic was fast enough to escape, but his back was to the robot, and he couldn't hear his engines over the helicopter noise.
Mecha knew he was capable of of shouting loudly enough to attract Sonic's attention--he recalled his self-testing on the Annihilator--but that meant he had to call the hedgehog's name. Mecha never spoke Sonic's name if he could help it, for to him, the name was as repulsive as the filthiest swearword. But if he did nothing, Robo Knux would hit the hedgehog from behind and kill him instantly, and both Nox and Aleda would die, too.
Mecha couldn't allow Aleda to die. His affection for her was a weakness, he saw that clearly. It forced him to do and say things he had never imagined he would do or say. Such as warning his worst enemy of impending doom. The hatred rose in him, battling with his feelings for his chao. What was more important, after all? His hatred of Sonic or his love for his chao? What would cause him the most pain; speaking the hedgehog's name, or seeing Aleda impaled on Robo Knux's diamond-tipped claws?
Time was running out. Mecha saw everything in sharp focus--Robo Knux flying with arms extended, jets roaring, a plume of dust behind him--Sonic stepping up into the waiting helicopter with the chao in his arms, oblivious--
Mecha's claws dug into the doorframe hard enough to bend the metal. He filled his lungs and cried, "Look out, Sonic!" The phrase ripped out of him, repulsive and vile, nearly choking him, and he followed it with a roar of disgust and fury at himself.
Sonic's head jerked up, then he looked over his shoulder. His eyes widened for a fraction of a second--then he bolted sideways, ducking into a spin and holding the chao against his body to shield them. Robo Knux flashed past him, lowering his head to protect his face. He punched through one wall of the helicopter and out the other, followed by a spurt of fire. Then the helicopter exploded in a ball of flame, debris flying like shrapnel and striking the other helicopter.
Mecha ducked back inside the doorway with a curse as shards of metal pelted the compartment. Tails and Nack ducked and shielded their faces as their craft spun sideways, trying to avoid flying debris and put as much distance between them and attack as possible.
There was Sonic, running toward them! Mecha checked his radar and saw Robo Knux was circling back, stalking Sonic at the speed of a drag racer. But Sonic was faster, Sonic had always been faster, that was why Mecha hated him so much--
The pilot saw Sonic and the helicopter dropped lower, swinging broadside. Sonic's eyes were bright with fear and excitement, and Mecha could see Sonic's strides shortening, gathering himself for a leap up into the helicopter. Mecha knew it would be easy--so easy--to strike Sonic in midair hard enough to knock him down, leave him behind for Robo Knux to maul. But Robo Knux didn't want Sonic, he wanted those chao. He wanted Mecha. For the moment Sonic was not the enemy, and Mecha knew that allowing his hate to dictate his actions would result in Aleda's death and perhaps his own.
Sonic jumped for the helicopter, freeing one arm to reach for the edge of the compartment. Mecha caught him by the wrist, and for an instant thought of another time when he had caught Sonic by the wrist. Almost their first encounter--and Mecha had mangled Sonic's arm.
Sonic looked up at him, and for an instant Mecha thought Sonic was thinking of the same memory. Then Mecha realized that he had grabbed Sonic by his injured hand, and the look in Sonic's eyes was pain. Sonic was only in pain because he had sacrificed his health to keep Mecha alive. Guilt and rage tore through Mecha, as well as sudden sorrow for hating Sonic so much.
He rose and lifted Sonic into the helicopter, surprised at how light the hedgehog seemed. Sonic landed on his feet and dove for the seats along the far wall. He banged on the door of the cockpit and yelled to the pilots, "Fly! Fly! Get us out of here!" He set the breathless chao in a seat and sat beside them, clinging to the handgrips on either side. Then he looked at Mecha, who was still standing beside the door and staring at Sonic with a dazed expression.
"Thanks," Sonic mouthed.
Mecha ducked his head in what might have been a nod and turned to pull the sliding door shut.
Nack the weasel rose from his seat and walked up behind Mecha, looking as if he was going to help with the door. Suddenly he spun and dealt Mecha a judo-kick in the back that should have sent him flying out of the helicopter. But Mecha was holding onto the door, and as he fell he twisted in midair and grabbed the door handle with both hands. The force of his fall put all his weight on the door, which slid shut on its track. All of its weight slammed on Mecha's hands.
Mecha instantly regretted being semi-organic. Pain flashed through his whole body, centered in his arms, and his synthetic muscles flexed and forced his fingers to open. He released the handle and fell thirty feet to a rocky hillside. He bounced, rolled, skidded and finally came to rest at the bottom of a hill, where the shock of injury overcame him and he lost consciousness.
As Mecha let go of the door and vanished, the helicopter pitched and the door rolled open again. Nack looked out, laughing and watching Mecha fall, and did not see Sonic until Sonic grabbed him by the neck and pinned him to the wall. Nack's shifty yellow eyes met Sonic's furious green ones, and Nack realized Sonic was strong enough to throttle him. Nack struggled, but Sonic bellowed, "Stop!" and slammed Nack into the metal wall.
"Touchy touchy," said Nack, sneering in Sonic's face.
Sonic slammed him into the wall hard enough to make Nack see stars. "You are a sick, twisted, disgusting weasel," Sonic hissed. "I should throw you out the way you did him."
"What's stopping you?" said Nack, struggling to keep his sneer in place.
Sonic never got the chance to answer, for two pairs of claws suddenly punched through the wall a foot from them, and a heavy thud made the whole helicopter shake. Sonic dropped Nack and backed away, staring, as one pair of claws began to tear downward, paring the side of the aircraft open like a can opener.
Behind Sonic, Nack laughed. "My friends are more powerful than your friends, spiky. Your friend skydives without a parachute, and mine takes apart stupid hedgehogs one piece at a time."
"Oh shut up!" Tails yelled, hurling his thrall sphere at Nack. It hit the weasel in the head and silenced him for several hours.
"Good shot, little bro," said Sonic without taking his eyes from those tearing claws. "Don't let him near the chao."
Tails jumped out of his seat, retrieved the thrall sphere and dove back to where Nox and Aleda were sitting, watching all this with round eyes.
Robo Knux's claws tore outward, ripping a chunk out of the helicopter's side, and he swung inside, dusty, smoke-stained and scratched, and his claws were gleaming and polished from so much use. His green eyes swept the compartment. "You have two doors now," he remarked. "Hello, morons. I want Mecha's chao before I go back to savage him. Sound reasonable?"
"I'll rip your head off first," said Sonic, balancing in the swaying compartment.
Robo Knux gave him a scornful glance. "There's no room for a fight in here, Sonic. You'll kill Tails and Nack before you hit me." He strode forward, grabbed Tails by the fur on top of his head and threw him aside, and snatched up Aleda in one thick-fingered hand.
Tails's eyes were watering from the pain of having his fur yanked, but he ran his hands over his sphere, finding Robo Knux's frequency. Then he chanted in tune with the sphere, "I can talk to you from here, Robo Knux. I can fry your brain."
Robo Knux laughed. "Nice trick, fox-boy! I don't have a brain, more's the pity. At least, not like Mecha's. Fry me and you fry everyone on this network." He turned to see Sonic crouching in preparation for a spindash, and Robo Knux held up Aleda. "Go ahead, kill her. I'm sure Mecha would be real pleased about that."
Sonic hesitated.
Robo Knux laughed again. "You're so predictable, Sonic! Too kind to shoot the hostage! Now, if you'll excuse me, I have an appointment I really can't miss." He whirled and leaped out the side door, his jets igniting with a coughing roar and filling the compartment with exhaust.
Sonic and Tails raced to the door and looked out. Robo Knux was flying out over the hills, searching for Mecha. "What do we do?" asked Tails.
"Call Shadow," said Sonic. "After that, see if you can cook RK with your sphere."
Mecha opened his eyes and found he was lying on his back, staring up at a cloudless blue sky. His body ached as if he had been beaten with a club, and he sat up, rubbing his head. Both his arms had a dent across them just above the wrist where the door had slammed, and his biometal was already repairing the crushed fibers. It sure hurt, though.
He climbed to his feet, feeling a sick dizziness rise in his head from shock, injury, or the energy drink--maybe all three. The helicopter was gone, and he was alone out here in this volcanic wasteland. If he was lucky.
He checked his scanner and saw with horror that both Shadow and Robo Knux were converging on him. "Shadow," he said over the network, "I told you to remain with the others!"
"I apologize, Master," replied Shadow, "but no you didn't. I have my instructions and will carry them out."
As Mecha frantically tried to remember what he had told Shadow, Robo Knux said, "Maybe I should get myself a slave, Mecha. He's certainly devoted, and I'd rather like having a minion to do my bidding."
Mecha ran up the hill to the top and scanned the horizon. Shadow was on foot, but Robo Knux was flying and approaching faster. Mecha could see the sun glinting on his back and arms.
"Oh yes," added Robo Knux, his voice casual and triumphant, "I have your precious little chao. Aleda, I believe her name is. She's alive. For the time being."
Cold, sick despair hit Mecha. Robo Knux had Aleda. It was all over, then. She was as good as dead, and Mecha would have the privilege of watching her die, if he knew Robo Knux. He stood there and waited, watching his enemy sweep toward him.
Far away on the Floating Island, Knuckles's communicator clicked. He picked it up and opened the channel. "Yeah?"
"Knuckles," said Sally's voice, "there's some sort of problem out there. I think the rescue team is being attacked."
"Yeah," said Knuckles, watching the image of Zephyer inside the Master Emerald. "Shadow just jumped out of the helicopter, and Zeff is freaking out."
"I'm on the line with their main office. I'll keep you posted."
Knuckles watched Zephyer and tried to guess what was happening beyond the hologram. He had tried to make the Master view the others, but it would only pick up Zephyer. Maybe he should start boosting the power of the thrall spheres ...
Robo Knux landed on the rocky hilltop near Mecha with a whoosh of hot air. He held up one fist, and Mecha saw Aleda's frightened little face peering through Robo Knux's claws. As soon as she saw Mecha, she smiled--if he was here, then nothing would happen to her now.
The trust in her eyes hurt Mecha even worse than having his hands slammed in a door. He looked at Robo Knux. "Is there any way I can persuade you not to kill her?"
"Hmm." Robo Knux stroked his chin and pretended to think. "Sure. I want all of your biomechanic data, the passcodes to the Egg Tower, the names and addresses of all your allies, and Mekion's allegiance."
"Even if I could give you all that, you would still kill the chao," said Mecha. His mind was working through every option and scenario, and Aleda died in all of them.
Robo Knux nodded. "Chao are a dime a dozen. You want another one, you can get one. But this one is sick and puny, and she has red eyes. You know I can't stand females with red eyes. Green is better."
"Since when do you have the capacity to care about anyone, much less a female?" snapped Mecha, feeling anger rise through his fear. Good--he would rather be angry.
"My capacity is bigger than you imagine," snarled Robo Knux. "Just because I don't have a bio-nano-brain doesn't mean that I lack emotion chips or retro-logic processors."
"Of course not," said Mecha. "They are all you use to operate." Thin ice, he thought.
Robo Knux waved Aleda back and forth. "Do you want me to beat her head in or what?"
"You are the one who mentioned your operating hardware," said Mecha. He had angered Robo Knux. When Robo Knux became angry, he made mistakes, and it seemed Mecha had found a weak spot. Robo Knux was jealous of him.
Mecha went on, "You would kill any creature if it happened to belong to me, simply because no creature in its right mind would ever care for you."
"That's not true!" Robo Knux bellowed. "Why should it matter to me if a vile organic lifeform cared if I existed? That's weakness, and I have no weaknesses! Now, you, on the other hand ..."
Mecha finished for him, "I have allowed myself the weaknesses you desire, and have found they are not so weak as I thought. Therefore you despise me."
Robo Knux twitched, turning one way, then the other, his mental discomfort so great that he could not keep still.
"Why don't we strike a bargain?" said Mecha, watching his enemy warily. "I could upgrade your systems the way I did my own in exchange for the chao."
Unfortunately, Robo Knux was beyond reason. "This is what I think of you and your slimy words, Mecha!" He brought his steel fist down on Aleda's soft head. Then he threw her crumpled body at Mecha, who caught her in his hands. He stared down at her in numb disbelief. Her head had been dented in, and her crimson eyes were lifeless. It appeared that she had died instantly.
Shock, grief, horror and fury overwhelmed him. Although Mecha had often threatened to kill Aleda, he had never imagined her dead. And now, seeing her lying limply in his hands, the once-happy face now blank and empty, ripped his soul straight down the middle. Robo Knux would die for this.
Before Mecha could move a step, Shadow flashed up the hill behind Robo Knux, silent as a ghost on his hoverskates, and struck Robo Knux in a spin. The red robot went flying, missing Mecha by an inch, and went tumbling down the hill. Shadow turned to Mecha and said, "Give her to me, and I'll take her away. And you should run, too."
"No," said Mecha, stroking Aleda's face with one finger. "He has murdered Aleda, and I will deconstruct him myself." He gently handed Shadow the tiny blue body, then plunged down the hill, allowing his killer instinct to take over. Aleda was dead. There was hell to pay.
Tails lifted his head, tears filling his eyes. "Sonic, he killed her."
"What?" Sonic spun around from where he was looking out the helicopter's door, the wind fanning his spines.
Tails's hands were positioned on the thrall sphere, tuned to the frequency of the mecha-bots. He had heard almost every word they said. That little blue chao had died! He thought of his own chao dying that way, and it moved him to tears.
"Tails, we gotta do something!" said Sonic, dancing from foot to foot in impatience. The helicopter was carrying him further and further from the battle, and Sonic knew that even if he bailed out and ran back, his chances of locating the androids in the crests and folds of this broken land were small.
"What can I do?" Tails wailed. "I can only talk to them! This sphere isn't meant for war like the Chaos Emeralds are!"
"There's got to be something that sphere can do," said Sonic. "Can't you turn it up really loud or something?"
"I don't know." Tails looked at the orange globe in his lap, and blinked back his tears. The sphere was changing from orange to a deep blood red. "Sonic!" he whispered.
Sonic saw it darken, and said, "Hey, that's what it did when Knux was funneling power through it! See if you can do something different now!"
In distant Hidden Palace, Knuckles was using another command to boost the power inside the thrall spheres. The two in the cavern with him had turned red, and their hum had pitched up to a shrill ringing note that was making him see stars. He covered his ears and decided to endure it for five minutes before shutting it off.
If his teeth didn't shatter before then.
In the helicopter, Tails turned his head and listened for battling robots through the ringing of the sphere. Then he heard the sphere's note in his head and began to sing, echoing the note, forcing his chaos field into that note to make it louder, more powerful, more stunning.
He ran out of breath and fell silent, but the note went on and on, resonating with the spheres in Hidden Palace, feeding off their power, focused by Tails into a keening vibration like a laser made of sound.
Mecha and Robo Knux stopped fighting, stumbled away from each other and held their heads in agony. Shadow, too, had to stop and hold his ears. The sphere's note reverberated through their network, maxing out their volume levels and becoming a hideous roar of sound.
Shadow had the presence of mind to shut off his network hardware, and was treated to sudden, wonderful silence. But Mecha and Robo Knux did not think to do this, and writhed in agony as the noise's volume increased, overloading the network with information, overheating their chips until at last the silicon melted.
The noise stopped. Mecha straightened up, blinking tears of pain from his eyes. Robo Knux was on his hands and knees, holding his head. Somewhere, beyond their hearing, that same note went on and on, until the local chaos field resonated with it. Mecha and Shadow could feel that note hammering at their bodies like silent thunder.
Sonic held his ears. "Tails, dang! I didn't mean turn it up that loud!"
Tails was holding his ears, too, but the sphere's music was inside of his head, even without touching the sphere. The helicopter was quivering with it. Tails noticed with a corner of his mind that this sort of chaos resonance seemed to affect machines the most.
He clenched his teeth and shut his eyes, trying to block out the sound. Were the robots hearing this, too? He couldn't pick them up anymore--not that it mattered, because in another minute he'd be deaf--
Knuckles winced. The spheres were so loud now that the floor trembled underfoot, and the crystals in the ceiling were cracking and plinking to the floor. The Master Emerald was picking up the note now, beginning to vibrate and hum in harmony with the two spheres. No ... there were three sphere notes, creating a chord beautiful in its harmony, but deadly in its volume. Knuckles knew he would black out if this kept up. He slapped a hand on the Master Emerald and yelled, "Master Emerald, call the thrall spheres!"
Time and space meant little to the field of chaos that surrounded Mobius like a bubble. If two parts of the field were sharing a reaction, it curved four-dimensional space to join the reactions and neutralize the power.
The Master Emerald held a large amount of influence over the balance of the global field, and three-dimensional space meant little to three thrall spheres that were resonating through the field itself.
As the spheres in Hidden Palace released their power, the sphere in Tails's lap did the same. Everyone Tails had touched with his field's resonance were enfolded in the spacial curve, and it seemed to Sonic as if the world had slowed to a crawl. His heartbeat slowed, his lungs struggled to inhale air that felt as thick as molasses--
Darkness clamped down, and the floor vanished from under Sonic's feet. He fell with a yelp and struck the ground hard, jarring his feet and bruising his knees. He lay in the pitch blackness, straining to see and figure out where he was. It was silent.
Nearby, someone stirred and groaned.
"Tails?" said Sonic, sitting up cautiously.
"Sonic?" said another voice. "Aw heck..."
A green light appeared in midair and slowly brightened, like an igniting floodlight. Sonic saw with astonishment that it was the Master Emerald, surrounded by Super Emeralds, each one dead and black. As he looked, each one slowly relit and added their glow to illuminate the cave.
Knuckles was sitting on the dais, just taking his hands off his ears and blinking in a daze. Tails still lay on the floor, eyes open and staring at nothing, the sphere clutched to his chest. The sphere had finally hypnotized him.
"Well!" said another voice. "That was the strangest thing that's happened to me all day." Sonic and Knuckles turned to see Robo Knux rising to his feet, green eyes sweeping the gems and pedestals.
"What're you doing here?" Knuckles asked, still addled by the bizarre pulse of sound energy.
"I'm not sure," said Robo Knux. "I don't mind, though. I can kill them just as easily here." He sprang for the far end of the cavern, pounced and held up Shadow and Mecha by their throats in either hand. Mecha's eyes were closed and he hung limp, but Shadow was struggling to open his eyes. He groped feebly at Robo Knux's claws around his neck, and Robo Knux laughed. "Seems that some of that chaos shielding I installed worked for once! Pity Shadow and Mecha don't have any."
Sonic jumped to his feet, staggered and dropped to his knees again. His head was still spinning after that weird teleport. He would be all right in a few minutes, but Robo Knux did not intend to wait that long.
"Knux, stop him!" Sonic hissed.
Knuckles gestured furiously to his bandaged leg and shook his head. Robo Knux could rip him apart with one hand tied behind his back.
Robo Knux looked from Shadow to Mecha and back, deciding who to shred first. Mecha was still unconscious and would give no sport at all, so Robo Knux dropped him and focused his attention on Shadow. "You know, Mekion," he said, holding the black hedgehog off the floor, "even though you're a grovelling slave, you do come in handy. What say you change your allegiance and serve me as your Master?"
Shadow's eyes blazed. "Never," he gasped. He braced his feet on Robo Knux's torso, then kicked off and twisted, trying to break free. Robo Knux's grip slipped and Shadow flipped to the floor. Then he dashed over to place himself between Mecha and Robo Knux, half-crouched and ready for anything.
"Okay," said Robo Knux, looking him up and down. "You've never really fought with me, have you?"
In the next forty seconds a lightning-quick battle ensued that bewildered Knuckles, and even Sonic had trouble following. Shadow exerted all of his speed and strength to smash his opponent, but Robo Knux blocked and countered nearly as fast as Shadow did. They fought with fists, flying kicks, spindashes and flips that might have been beautiful had it not been a fight to the death.
Shadow had a lithe grace and balance that allowed him to use many martial-arts moves that Sonic had never dreamed of trying. But Robo Knux had picked up some upgrades along his sordid lifetime, and although he was not as graceful as Shadow, he was nearly as fast. It seemed as if neither of them could survive a battle so swift and violent; one of them would misstep and the other would score a fatal hit. At their speeds, only one hit was needed.
Suddenly Shadow was down, and Sonic couldn't tell why. One of Robo Knux's lightning-quick jabs had struck home, and Shadow curled up on his side and lay still.
Sonic jumped up and ran at Robo Knux, not knowing what he planned to do, but he had to do something. Robo Knux saw him coming, and with one of those same super-quick motions he grabbed Shadow by the arm and flung him into Sonic. The two hedgehogs collided and rolled over and over before coming to a halt.
Sonic pushed Shadow off him and realized his own fur was wet with something hot and sticky. He looked down and saw two holes in Shadow's torso, just below the ribcage. Shadow's eyes opened and he looked at Sonic. "Ten minutes," he whispered. "You agreed to protect Mecha for me. Do it for ten minutes."
Sonic struggled to his feet and saw Robo Knux was standing over Mecha, kicking him. "Get up, swine. Get up and fight!"
Mecha's eyes opened, and he said, "Don't you have the decency to allow me to rise on my own?"
"If I had any decency, I wouldn't be here," sneered Robo Knux. "I've dispatched your chao and your slave, and now it's your turn."
"Leave him alone, jerk!" snarled Sonic.
Robo Knux glanced over his shoulder. "Stay out of this, moron. I'm not interested in killing you right now."
This small distraction gave Mecha enough time to climb to his feet, where he stood, weaving a little. He had the same desperate, hopeless expression he had worn after Sonic had beaten him on the Egg Fleet, and Sonic wanted to help him. "Mecha!" he called. "Remember how you fought me last time? Do that again!"
"I do not understand," droned Mecha.
How could he understand Sonic, anyway? Sonic was referring to Mecha's defeat. Was Sonic advising him to surrender? You couldn't surrender to Robo Knux--he would laugh and rip you into pieces. At least Sonic had accepted Mecha's surrender graciously, and didn't take Mecha's life then and there. Life? He had no life. He wasn't alive. Neither was his chao.
His eyes turned to the corner, where Shadow had dropped Aleda's body when Robo Knux had grabbed him. Nox was beside her, crouched and protective. Aleda was damaged beyond repair, as Mecha soon would be. He had tried fighting, and he couldn't win. Robo Knux was stronger. Sonic was faster. Mecha was only second-rate, second-best. He was doomed from the first. There was nothing to fight for anymore. His soul was still torn in two from watching Aleda die. With her gone, there was nothing left for him ... nothing ...
Robo Knux hit him in the face, his claws slicing across Mecha's muzzle. Mecha spun and fell to all fours, feeling his nano-blood trickle down his face. Defeat was easier the second time. Maybe it was something you grew accustomed to--you just gave up until the punishment was over. Of course, giving up in this case meant certain death, but maybe that was better than repeated defeat.
Robo Knux kicked him in the stomach. "Fight me, Mecha! What's wrong with you?"
Mecha fell flat and lay still, just wanting it to end quickly. Robo Knux stood over him, shaking his head in disbelief. "I killed your chao and your slave--you should be trying to rip me apart! What are you? Stupid? Get up!"
Mecha didn't respond or move.
Sonic couldn't stand to see Mecha suffer this again and he charged at Robo Knux, curling into a spiny ball. Robo Knux whirled and shielded himself with crossed arms, and Sonic bounced off. As Sonic spun to his feet, Robo Knux charged him with a roar, claws extended. Sonic sidestepped at ninety miles an hour, and Robo Knux swept by like a crazed whirlwind.
"Mecha!" Sonic yelled as Robo Knux skidded to a halt and whirled to face him, "you gotta get up! You didn't change your biometal, did you? Use it, use it!" He spun at Robo Knux, who again blocked the blow.
Mecha lifted his head. Use his biometal? Sonic had to be kidding. That didn't work in combat situations. He watched as Robo Knux collided with Sonic and slammed him into the rock wall. "I don't want to fight you, you useless hedgehog!" Robo Knux snarled, throwing Sonic at the marble floor with all his strength. Sonic hit the floor with a hollow thud and lay motionless, stunned or unconscious.
Robo Knux turned to Mecha. "What do I have to do to make you fight me?"
"I don't want to fight you," said Mecha quietly.
Robo Knux stared at him in shocked silence. Finally he spluttered, "Why? Are you afraid?"
"No," said Mecha. "It is a waste of time."
Robo Knux took that as a personal insult. "A waste of time? Oh yes, Mecha Overlord, we all know how important your time is! You'd rather lay on the floor than stick up for your chao and slave. Well, you know what you are? You're a coward! You know what I do to cowards? I dissect them to see the color of their blood. Usually it's yellow."
He stalked forward, grabbed Mecha by the arm and jerked him up. "On your feet, coward. I should knock your face in, but I have something better in mind." He dragged Mecha over to where Shadow still lay, blood staining his belly. Mecha noted in a detached sort of way that Shadow's wounds were already half-healed. Those nanites certainly worked fast.
"Before I put out your eyes," said Robo Knux, "I want to make sure you see Mekion die. Then, in the few minutes left of your life, you will remember that your cowardice caused the death of the ultimate lifeform."
Mecha wasn't submitting because he was a coward. He was submitting because there was no point in fighting. Because the resolve to fight inside of him was still broken. But Shadow was still alive, still loyal to the last. The black hedgehog opened his eyes and looked up at him, pleading silently for more time.
Sonic was down, Knuckles was down, Tails was down. There was no one left to intervene but Mecha. And he couldn't lose Shadow the way he had lost Aleda. Shadow was too important to him. Shadow was one of his weaknesses.
Mecha turned his eyes on his enemy. "Robo Knux," he said quietly. His enemy looked at him, green eyes burning. Mecha drew back his free arm, the biometal liquefying into a murky glistening quicksilver, and struck Robo Knux in the face.
The liquid metal fused into the contours of Robo Knux's head, and Mecha spun and smashed him into the marble floor, hearing the glass in Robo Knux's eyes crack.
Mecha released Robo Knux's head and stepped back, his arm resuming its original shape. Robo Knux scrambled to his feet. "So, you changed your mind, eh coward? How did you do that?"
Mecha shrugged. He stood still, hands at his sides, an easy target. Robo Knux lunged and double-slashed Mecha through the head in a cross-cross motion. His claws, instead of encountering a solid object, splashed through a melting lump of liquid metal that widened into a pool on the floor. Robo Knux found he was standing in it, and stepped back in revulsion. But the puddle moved with him, encircling his feet like a snare. Suddenly it jerked his feet out from under him. As he fell, the puddle heaped together in a growing mound of quicksilver until it formed into Mecha again, wearing a grim expression.
One of his hands remained liquid, and this liquid engulfed Robo Knux's feet. Robo Knux looked up at Mecha. "Very good, coward! But you still haven't fought me toe to toe."
"That can be arranged," said Mecha. He twisted and hurled Robo Knux across the cavern the way he had hurled the rock at the jacaida, and Robo Knux crashed into the cave wall.
As Robo Knux reeled to his feet, half-stunned and with his internal gyro wobbling, Mecha stalked across the cave toward him. As he passed Sonic, he saw Sonic raise his head and blink at the scene before him. Mecha winked at him and kept walking. It was a mild surprise to him that Robo Knux was not as heavy as he had expected. He remembered how easily he had lifted Sonic into the helicopter, and wondered why he had not tested his rebuilt body in combat situations. He had wanted speed, yes, and with speed came strength ... but how much?
Robo Knux raised his claws. "Toe to toe, coward. No liquid-metal this time."
"Perhaps," said Mecha.
Robo Knux jabbed like lightning, and Mecha dodged. They circled, two partners in a deadly dance, then Robo Knux charged. Mecha struck Robo Knux in the eye and jumped aside, avoiding the deadly claws. It was so different from his dream! In his dream he had been weak and powerless, and Robo Knux had been strong beyond belief. But in reality, the field was level; both were strong, both were adept at fighting, and both had taken damage.
Their fight accelerated. Mecha ducked, jumped, blocked and parried, those deadly diamond-tipped claws slicing within a fraction of an inch of his vitals. Robo Knux fought with the devastating speed that had felled Shadow, but Mecha found it pleasing, a mild challenge and nothing more. Sonic and Shadow were both faster. Faster reflexes, faster footwork, faster thinking. Robo Knux, for all of his speed, did not have the lightspeed reflexes of an organism. Mecha wondered how he had let this inferior creature terrorize him and destroy Aleda.
Aleda! The thought of her lent fury to his blows and increased his speed. Robo Knux the cruel, the heartless, the ruthless--he would pay for Aleda's life with his own. But then, Robo Knux wasn't alive, was he? Robo Knux could be rebuilt, but Aleda was lost forever. There would never be another chao like her. Mecha fought with his fists, his feet, and killer metal-edged spindashes, watching Robo Knux's arms dent, his jets begin to smoke, his engines begin to whine. It was a pity Robo Knux could not feel pain.
Robo Knux gave ground, backing up. He was outclassed and he knew it. He retreated to the wall of the cave, which he used to protect his back. Mecha followed him, breathing heavily, knowing that each breath recharged his muscles. "Am I still a coward?" he said softly.
"Yes," spat Robo Knux, his eyes flickering and damaged. "You will always be a coward to me, I don't care how well you fight."
"A compliment," said Mecha. "You think I fight well. It seems I've beaten some manners into your head."
"I'll beat some dents into yours," said Robo Knux. "Come on and fight!"
Mecha stood where he was and regarded his enemy. "No," he said. "I was going to destroy you, but then it occurred to me that your existence is as miserable as mine was. You have nothing to live for except your next battle, and when you are finally beaten, what is left?"
"Cut out the psychology," Robo Knux roared. "I bought this fight with blood!"
"Yes, you did," said Mecha, staring at him. "You want me to destroy you, don't you? You want me to end your misery in a glorious battle in which you harm me as much as possible."
Robo Knux didn't answer for once. He simply stared.
"In which case," said Mecha, half-closing his eyes, "I will let you go free with the knowledge that you were defeated. As I discovered, that is a fate far worse than death."
"You--you're sadistic!" Robo Knux exclaimed.
"No," said Mecha. "If I were sadistic, I would enjoy this."
"You don't?"
"No," said Mecha. "I pity you."
Robo Knux drew himself upright in fury. "Pity? I don't need your pity! I don't need your kindness, either! You're too weak to destroy me, and you're hiding behind your words!"
"On the contrary," said Mecha, his voice still softer, "if I were weak, I would have destroyed you already."
There was a long silence. The robot and the android stared at each other. Then Robo Knux said, "Letting me go is a mistake. I will receive repairs and hunt you down, no matter where you are. And I'll destroy everyone you are pathetic enough to care for."
"Go ahead," said Mecha. "I'll be waiting, and next time, I will not let you walk free."
Robo Knux strode past Mecha and across Hidden Palace. Mecha followed him to make sure he caused no further mischief, but Robo Knux went straight to the teleporter. Mecha followed him through the teleporter to the island's surface, where it was midnight and lit only by the crescent moon. Without a word Robo Knux ignited his engines and flew off westward, back toward the mainland. Mecha watched him on radar to make sure he did not circle back, then returned to the teleporter.
He paused beside it and sank down to sit on the edge of the stand. Mecha was exhausted, for his mind was tired and his body had reached its limits. Heavy-duty recharging was in order, the kind that came with sleep.
He rested his face in his hands. He had just done to Robo Knux what Sonic had done to him, perhaps for the same reasons. But it had cost him Aleda, poor Aleda. He tried to be philosophical about her death; she had been a valuable learning experience, and she had taught him many things that he did not know about chao.
But his feelings got in the way. Gone was the tiny creature who had never feared him, who had loved him despite his horrible attitude and actions. She had drawn out the good in him, and he had let her down. He could have stopped Robo Knux, he saw that now; but he had been too ignorant, blinded by self-pity and fear. But Aleda should not have had to pay the price for Mecha's stupidity. It wasn't her fault.
He realized that tears were running through his fingers, but he didn't care. They vented an emotion more powerful and devastating than anger--grief and sorrow--and besides, there was no one to see him this time. He was alone on an utterly uninhabited island.
So Mecha cried alone in the darkness, with no one to see him but the moon. He cried for his chao, and for Robo Knux's misery that Mecha knew so well, and for his useless hatred of Sonic that he couldn't seem to stop, and for himself; a wretched android-thing, lost somewhere between machine and life, able to sink so easily into despair. He had no hope, even now. No hope of anything better, or of transcending his boundaries. He was a failure, and all of his cleverness could not keep him from this hopeless mire of despair.
His tears subsided, but still he sat there, indescribably weary, unable to rise and step onto the teleporter. The moon began to slip toward the west, and he knew he must have been out here for two or three hours. He didn't check the time because he didn't care. There was nothing for him back down in Hidden Palace. Only semi-enemies who he could not let be his friends, because he had spent so many years hating them and trying to kill them.
The teleporter to his back fired up, illuminating the grass and trees for a hundred yards in all directions. Mecha sat there without moving or looking up. He could tell by the person's footsteps that it was Sonic. Just the hedgehog Mecha didn't want to see.
"Hi Mecha," said Sonic softly, walking up beside him.
Mecha didn't respond.
"Um, mind if I sit down?"
Mecha shrugged, and Sonic sat down beside him on the teleporter stand. There was a moment of silence. Mecha said hoarsely, "What are you doing out here?"
"I came to check on you," said Sonic. "We were worried when you didn't come back."
Mecha opened his mouth to cut Sonic down to size for this, and found he had no words. Sonic had been concerned about him. Why should Sonic care? Mecha felt the old hatred flicker to life. No, not now. Why couldn't he control himself?
When Mecha remained silent, Sonic said, "Shadow's gonna be okay. He and I got our Chaos Emeralds and teleported back to East Mobius. Kind of a long way, but we combined power and made it." He paused to let Mecha say something, and when Mecha did not, Sonic went on, "So I picked up Zephyer and left Rouge and Nack. Rouge and Nack weren't real happy about that. Nack's wanted for a bunch of crimes, and the police were all over him."
The corner of Mecha's mouth curled in the ghost of a smile.
"Turns out that Nox teleported back with us when Tails did the sphere thing," Sonic continued. "Shadow was awfully glad he was all right."
Mecha turned his head away from Sonic as more tears flooded his eyes. Curse these emotions--always catching him off guard.
Sonic went on, relentless. "Shadow brought Aleda during the teleport, too. Here she is."
Mecha spun to face Sonic, realizing he had not looked at the hedgehog once. Sonic's spines drooped with weariness, and a large ugly bloodstain marred the creamy fur on his chest and neck. In his arms was Aleda, eyes closed now, her face still blank and empty. The sight of her drew even more tears to the surface. Mecha lifted her from Sonic's arms and whispered brokenly, "Why did you do this? Did you really want to see me weep again?"
"No," said Sonic, averting his eyes. "Sorry, Mecha. But I had to bring her to you. She's yours."
"She is dead," said Mecha, struggling to control himself. No tears before the hedgehog.
"Yeah," said Sonic, "we all thought she was. But Nox knew she wasn't. He kept telling us she was alive, and we kept ignoring him. He finally threw a ring-eyed fit to get our attention."
Sonic's words fell on Mecha's ears and took a long time to reach his brain. Mecha had noticed that Aleda's body was warm, and she was not stiff the way dead creatures usually were.
Sonic pattered on, "If RK had clawed her, she would have died. But he only hit her in the head. Chao as young as her don't have hardened bones yet, and even though it knocked her out, the cartilage just popped back into place after a while. But she has a big bruise, see?"
Mecha saw the bruise and ran his fingers over Aleda's head. She was breathing. She was warm and alive. He had nearly lost her, but by almost a miracle she had returned to him. The joy that flooded him was just as overwhelming as his grief had been--perhaps moreso. Mecha set her head on his shoulder and stroked her, eyes tightly shut to hold back the tears. He wanted to laugh and cry and dance and shout, but he had his dignity to think of, and only sat there in silence, holding his sleeping chao and wishing Sonic would go away.
After a while Sonic said, "I wanted to thank you, too."
Mecha's throat was so tight he could barely whisper, "Why?" If he opened his mouth he was going to lose control. He silently cursed himself, but his feelings refused to listen to reason.
Sonic folded his hands and looked at them. "For everything you did out there in the desert. And for, you know, helping me get into the helicopter and stuff. You were really cool."
Curse Sonic for his kind words. They hurt Mecha deeply, right at the root of his hatred. "Please, don't say such things," hissed Mecha through clenched teeth. "My actions were calculated to ensure the survival of the entire group. It had nothing to do with you." Control was slipping--tears were running down his face. He hoped it was too dark for Sonic to see them.
"I was part of the group," said Sonic. "You kept me alive. So, you know, I kind of ... owe you one."
Mecha leaped to his feet and strode away into the darkness, the tears hitting fast and hard. He stopped twenty feet away, stood and sobbed, shoulders shaking, clutching Aleda like a lifeline. Curse Sonic for trying to mend their enmity! Mecha was reacting with grief instead of anger, which was progress of a sort, but it was far more humiliating.
As his self-control began to return and he gulped his sobs, he heard Sonic approaching, slowly and hesitantly. Mecha turned to face him, his vision blurred.
"Don't cry," said Sonic. "It makes me feel worse than I do already."
"Why should it affect you?" said Mecha thickly. "I was the one created to destroy you, not the other way around. And you are showing me kindness! Please, scream at me or accuse me or condemn me. I could stand that. But stop being kind."
Sonic looked at him, ears flattening. "Aw Mecha, can't you just deprogram hating me? I'd rather we were on the same side."
"Stop it!" snarled Mecha, clenching a fist. "I hate you. I've always hated you. You can't change that, no matter how kind you are!"
He turned his back, but Sonic's next words stopped him cold. "Lighten up, Mecha. You're not a robot anymore."
Slowly Mecha turned to look at Sonic. "I'm not a robot?" he said. "What makes you say that?"
"Robots don't cry," said Sonic. "They can't use chaos fields, either. And chao don't bond with robots. There's nothing inside a robot for a chao to bond with."
Mecha raised his free hand and spread his fingers. "Look at me, hedgehog. My skin is metal. My eyes are red diodes surrounding photo-optic cells. My heart is a nanotech-based duel-chamber pump. My brain is made of nanites. Machines. I am a robot comprised of robots." He spoke this with a certain measure of pride. A robot, yes, but the most advanced robot in history.
Sonic looked him in the eye. "I'm made of cells that work like machines. I may be made of different stuff chemically, but we both burn fuel and we both bleed."
"Your ignorance of biology is amusing," said Mecha. He was in control again. Debating and arguing was his favorite pastime.
Sonic drew a breath, remembering the point he was making. "What I was saying is that a person is more than the sum of his parts. If I was robotized, my mind would still be Sonic, even if the rest of me was metal. You're a person beyond what your body is made of. It's like you have a soul or something."
"Do not go into metaphysics," said Mecha. "I can argue rings around you in that topic. I can prove that souls exist, and I can prove that they do not exist just as easily."
"So are you a robot or not?" said Sonic, folding his arms.
Mecha opened his mouth and stopped. He didn't know anymore. He backpedaled. "I am not alive in the biological sense."
"Yeah you are," said Sonic. "Tails told me that a lifeform has to do three things in order to be scientifically alive. One, breathe. Two, eat. Three, reproduce."
Mecha sneered. "By your own admission I am two-thirds alive."
"Don't be such a nitwit," said Sonic, frowning. "If you can build things, isn't that a type of reproduction?"
"By that reasoning, Mekion is my son." said Mecha.
"Yeah," said Sonic. "That's how you treat him, isn't it?"
Mecha blinked. That was the third time in this conversation that Sonic had thrown him a mental curveball. He did treat Shadow like a son ... sometimes ... when he wasn't treating him like a slave.
"This is one reason why I hate you," he told Sonic. "Your arguments are so twisted I cannot make sense of them."
"Thank you," Sonic grinned. "We must be getting somewhere. I didn't even get into design copyrights."
"What would you know about design copyrights?" said Mecha, rolling his eyes.
"Plenty," said Sonic. "You've been copying the organic body with robot parts so you can be alive, right? Well, what if the guy who designed the original organic body doesn't like you copying his work?"
Mecha was silent for a long moment. This had never occurred to him. The organic body was so much more complex and intricate than his own that of course it must have had a designer. A Master Designer who outclassed every inventor Mecha had ever seen. He was also fully aware that inventors did not like other people copying their work without permission. Were willing to hunt down and hamstring thieves, in fact. He looked down at himself and thought of the years of research he had put into unlocking the secrets of organic life, and suddenly he was in awe and afraid ... the Master Designer would not be happy about Mecha's research at all, if he was anything like other designers.
Mecha closed down that avenue of thinking--it was too big for him to think about in his current drained state. He shook his head. "No Master Designer has yet contacted me about copyright fraud. I will concern myself with it later."
"Then let's go back to Hidden Palace," said Sonic. "Like I said, we were worried about you."
"Pointlessly so," said Mecha, striding back to the teleporter. "I am capable of handling myself."
They beamed down to Hidden Palace, which was ringing with talking voices. Before hunting for Mecha, Sonic had awakened Tails from his trance, and the fox was chattering to Knuckles about how he could use the thrall spheres. Knuckles was sitting on the Master Emerald dais, trying to listen, while Zephyer examined his leg. Shadow stood back in a dim corner, holding Nox, who was telling him about when Robo Knux had broken into the helicopter.
Mecha walked through the cavern to Shadow and Nox, who looked up as he approached. "It is high time we departed," he told Shadow. "I am at the end of my strength, you are injured, and Aleda is injured."
"Yes Mecha," said Shadow, picking up his orange chaos emerald from the floor. Without a word to anyone else, the two androids teleported away in a flash of light.
Zephyer and Rouge hadn't seen much of the battle, for their helicopter had been far in the lead and was not affected by any spherical resonance. The first they knew of any trouble was when Shadow's head snapped up, and without a word he ran to the side door, slid it open and leaped out.
Zephyer gasped and ran to the door, looking out. Shadow hit a hillside in a spin, bounced like a superball, landed on his feet and raced away.
"There must be trouble," breathed Rouge. They looked out the door for several minutes, but could see nothing but the blackened waste and billowing fumes, so they returned to their seats.
Zephyer had not minded sharing a helicopter with Rouge as long as Shadow was there. Rouge was distracted by him and ignored Zephyer. Zephyer thought it was funny to see Rouge make advances to an oblivious Shadow; he hardly even looked at her. This made Rouge all the more determined to attract his attention. But now Shadow was gone, and there was nothing to keep Rouge from nitpicking at Zephyer. The echidna clenched her fists in her lap. It was only a matter of time.
For a while Rouge was silent, lost in her own thoughts. Then she looked at Zephyer. Her eyes half-closed and she looked scornful and sarcastic at the same time, but she said nothing. She stared at Zephyer until Zephyer began to squirm, telling herself not to rise--Rouge was trying to get a reaction so she could tear Zephyer down--but after ten minutes Zephyer couldn't stand it anymore. "What?" she snapped.
"Oh, nothing," said Rouge, leaning back against the wall and smiling. "Just wondering how a homely little girl like you managed to land the Guardian of the Floating Island."
Zephyer tried to control her temper, and counted to ten before speaking. "I didn't. He pursued me."
"Oh, you must have done something," said Rouge. "You don't win hot guys by sitting around ignoring them."
"You'd know, wouldn't you?" said Zephyer through her teeth.
Rouge raised an eyebrow. "I really am curious. Tell me how you managed it."
Zephyer looked at the floor and refused to answer. She wasn't about to tell Rouge the details of her and Knuckles's rocky courtship.
Rouge was determined to dig it out of her. "He certainly didn't marry you for your looks. Look at you. Too thin, plain face, no figure to speak of. The hair is nice, but that's all."
Zephyer bristled. "A few guys out there notice personality, too."
"What makes yours so special?" drawled Rouge. "You're nasty and angry all the time. Maybe that's why--you're just like him."
"You don't know either of us very well, do you?" said Zephyer. Her face was burning, and she wanted to hit Rouge in the face, very hard.
"What's to know?" said Rouge. "I want to know what I did wrong. Here am I, great body, groomed to the nth, professional guy chaser, and he chooses you over me."
"Something you wouldn't know anything about," said Zephyer. "It's called love."
"Or merely bad judgement," said Rouge, fanning herself with her wings. "You'd been chasing him a long time before I came along, hadn't you?"
"No," said Zephyer. "He chased me and I ran from him. That's what I did different."
"Ah, the hunter and the hunted," said Rouge, nodding. "Some males are like that. The faster you run, the hotter their pursuit." She smirked at Zephyer. "I suppose that's the only thing I hadn't tried. But I don't run very well, dearie. I'd rather do the hunting."
"Good luck with Shadow," said Zephyer, allowing herself a scornful smile. "Looks like he's real interested in you."
"Ah, Shadow, the mystery man," said Rouge, not at all ruffled by the turn of conversation. "He intrigues me, this hedgehog in the iron mask. I'm trying to learn if there's room in his heart for anyone beside his master and his chao."
"If there is, I doubt it's you," said Zephyer. "He's so withdrawn I don't think he knows you exist."
"Who knows?" said Rouge. "He's a challenge. As much of a challenge as your little hubby."
"You stay away from him," said Zephyer softly.
Rouge laughed. "I don't date married men, dearie. Too many legal entanglements. Now, if you had an unfortunate accident and he came up for grabs, it might be a possibility."
"Is that a threat?" snarled Zephyer.
Rouge grinned. "Is it? Don't underestimate me, dearie. This attempt to ruin your life didn't work the way I'd planned, but it won't stop me from trying again. Hell hath no fury, you know."
"Get a life," said Zephyer. "Go marry one of those bats in these helicopters. They were falling over themselves to help you in here."
"They were?" said Rouge lazily. "I didn't notice."
The helicopter's engine pitch changed, and they began to descend. "Looks like we're here," said Rouge. "How lovely. Pity Nack got picked up. He'd have been better off out in the desert."
When Zephyer said nothing, Rouge added, "Nack assassinated the last governor of Tukoto to make some money. On his way out of the country, he robbed a bank and carried off more than two million septa in gold. I'd say his reception in Tukoto won't be exactly warm."
"Aren't you worried about him?" asked Zephyer. "He was your partner."
Rouge gave her a condescending look. "You don't think I ever meant to pay him, do you? The original plan was that you and your hubby would handle him while I escaped with the goods. But turning him over to the police works just as well."
The helicopter touched down with a bump, and the engines idled. Rouge stood up and stretched. Zephyer rose, too. "Aren't you afraid they'll arrest you?"
"Me?" Rouge batted her eyelashes. "My father is the wealthiest bat in East Mobius. They'll treat me like royalty."
The pilots slid the side door open and helped the girls deplane, paying special attention to Rouge. Zephyer stepped onto the tarmac, hating Rouge and everything about her. She followed the bats off the landing pad and toward the terminal buildings nearby, then stopped, turning her head. She felt a swell of chaos energy.
There was a flash of light, and Sonic and Shadow appeared ten feet away, arms linked and holding the orange and green Chaos Emeralds in their free hands. As soon as they touched down they released their hold and straightened, blinking and looking bewildered. Shadow pressed a hand to his stomach, gritting his teeth in pain, and Zephyer hurried up to them. "What're you guys doing here? Where'd you get Chaos Emeralds?"
Sonic shook his head to clear it. "We got warped to Hidden Palace in some kind of ... anomaly. RK thrashed Mecha, then Mecha thrashed RK. Shads and I came back to pick you up."
"How did Mecha do that?" asked Zephyer, staring.
Sonic looked grim. "RK busted Aleda in the head. Now let's get out of here before Rouge tries to stop us." Sonic took one of Zephyer's arms and Shadow took the other, and they simultaneously raised their emeralds and said, "Chaos relocate!"
Zephyer had used lots of teleporters, and was familiar with the blinding light, the second of floating, and abruptly finding her surroundings had changed. But she had never been in a teleport halfway around the world, and found it like travelling down an unexpectedly long drop in a rollercoaster. She felt the floating sensation and expected it to end, but it continued for second after second and she began to panic. It was too long! This wasn't right!
Then they touched down, and she gasped air into her petrified lungs. On either side, Sonic and Shadow were shaking their heads and swaying, trying to keep from falling over. The teleport, even with two Chaos Emeralds, was extremely draining.
Hidden Palace! Zephyer looked around with a warm sense of homecoming. The floor was scuffed and covered in shattered crystal, each fragment glowing blue. As she looked at each emerald and thrall sphere, the color returned to them as if her presence had returned vitality to the island.
Standing beside the Master Emerald, leaning on a crutch, was Knuckles. He was looking at her with unabashed love and tenderness, as if she was the only other person in the world. Oh, he was hurt! She had almost forgotten about that! She ran to him with a cry, but hesitated about hugging him, looking at his crutch and the bandage around his leg.
He grabbed her in a one-armed hug that nearly cracked her ribs. "Don't you ever leave me again," he whispered in her ear.
She clung to him, so glad to be in his arms again, so glad he was alive, so glad she was home. She was choking up. "You shouldn't be standing on that leg," she told him, helping him to sit on the dais
He snorted. "You women! It's not that bad. You get back from who knows where, and the first thing you do is nag me about my leg."
"I'm sorry, Knux," she said. "I had to get all the nagging out of the way, since I didn't think I'd ever get to do it again."
He set his crutch down and put both arms around her, touching her nose with his. "I'm serious," he murmured. "Don't ever leave me like that again."
Then they kissed for a long time.
Aleda awoke in pitch darkness. Not that she minded--she had hatched in near darkness, and it held no terrors for her. Her head hurt a lot. It made her eyes water, but there was something cold on the sore place on her head. She touched it--an ice pack. She pushed it off, and the throbbing in her head intensified.
She sat up, reaching out with her paws to figure out where she was. She was sitting on a soft surface, and beside her--ahh, beside her was the smooth, pliable metal skin of her red-eyes. She felt around and discovered that she was cradled between his arm and his side, and he was fast asleep, his breathing slow and even. Usually he lay on his cot with his eyes open, casting a faint light so she could see. It was like a nightlight, and she missed it.
Her head hurt worse and worse with every passing moment. She found the ice pack and put it back on her head, whimpering softly. She snuggled against Mecha's side for comfort, and lay there, wondering why she hurt so much and feeling hungry.
Above her, Mecha stirred and one of his hands came down and stroked her gently. She purred and looked up at him--his eyes were lit, looking down at her. He rolled on his side to face her and whispered, "You are awake. With a concussion as severe as yours, you should not have ever awakened."
She whimpered and touched her head, and he positioned the ice pack over her bruise. He rested his head on his arm and stroked her gently, soothing her and distracting her from her pain. "Your body mass is too small for me to risk giving you pain medication," he whispered. "Your best method of handling it is to sleep again, if possible."
But now that Aleda was awake, she couldn't sit still. She was hungry, and told Mecha so by whining and pointing to her mouth. He heaved a sigh, rose and carried her out of the room.
He took her to the storage room where their food was kept, and looked at the barren shelves. Tomorrow he was going to let Shadow install the carbon-based fuel system to allow Mecha to consume organic foods, and it occurred to Mecha that he might want something other than cold rations. Aleda might benefit from a more varied diet, as well.
As he opened a can of liquid nutri-rations and spooned them into her mouth, he reflected that Aleda, too, was a triumph of the Master Designer's. An organism that could adapt to any environment or person, with adaptations so extreme that it often meant altering the entire cell structure. Had only one person constructed all the lifeforms, or had there been several designers at work?
He pondered, comparing information on various creatures in his databanks. No, there must be only one designer, because he used the same design over and over. In mammals, all of them had similar skeletal structures, and the basics such as a spine and four limbs. Insects also followed a certain blueprint, diverse though they were.
So there must be a single designer, the Master Designer. And he probably held the copyright on all living things in this world. The idea made Mecha's insides crawl with fear, because a being so powerful as a Master Designer could probably give punishment beyond anything Mecha could conceive. But Mecha couldn't go back to being a mindless robot. He had come too far. Perhaps ... perhaps he could find this Designer, inform him that Mecha had violated his copyright, then explain why. Maybe the Designer could help Mecha complete his upgrades. Or he might destroy Mecha, as he deserved.
Not that Mecha cared much, really. He had been staring death in the face so long now that it was a familiar friend. If the Designer decided to destroy him, well, it was nothing Robo Knux couldn't have done. But if the Designer decided to help him, it was worth the risk of punishment, wasn't it?
Mecha fed Aleda and smiled to himself. It was nice to think about something other than despair for a change.
Mecha's network chip was still burned out, and he could not hear Shadow or detect his vital signs. Which was fine with Shadow. He lay on the other cot and watched Mecha baby Aleda, then rise and carry her from the room. Nox was curled up beside Shadow's head, fast asleep. No one knew that Shadow was speaking to Tails through the fox's thrall sphere.
"Yes, all is well with us," Shadow said through Mekion's network link. "Aleda just awoke, and she seems to be acting normally. How goes with you?"
"Pretty good," said Tails's singsong voice, echoing the network's note. "Sonic and I came home today, and Sally was so glad to see us that Sonic said he should have proposed on the spot." He laughed and drifted off the thrall sphere's note. A moment later he was back. "I can't wait to try this sphere on the Cyclone. It's like I can talk to machines!"
"You must be wary of contacting me again after this," said Shadow. "Mecha will have his chip repaired, and he was serious about killing you for spying on us."
"I know, I know. Do you think he'd mind if I kept an eye on Robo Knux, though? Sonic told me that he's gonna hunt you down."
"He has always been a threat to us, and always will be," Shadow replied. "Watch him if you like, but keep in mind that we, too, are watching him."
"Yeah ..." Tails was silent a moment, then said, "I guess that's all. Oh yeah, Knux and Zeff decided not to try the portal thing until they learn more about it. So they won't be calling you about that."
"Good," said Shadow. "There are too many variables that could go wrong."
"Yeah. So, I guess I'll see you later."
"Goodbye."
The network fell silent. Shadow shifted positions, curling into a spiny ball. He had not slept in over forty-eight hours, and it was time to get caught up while he had the chance.
The End