(Static)…Back again? Their fate will be decided…(static)

As far as Sonic could tell, the room was empty, but he needed that antidote. Feeling the walls, he found nothing. Then, when he didn't think it could get any worse, he collapsed to the ground, his vision having blurred to the point where he was legally blind. Still, he refused to give up. Weakly groping around on the floor, he felt something.

'The keyhole!' He reached into his glove, put the key into the opening, and opened the hidden compartment. Sure enough, the antidote was there. He picked it up and was about to inject himself, when everything went black…

Amy searched frantically for the rest of the pieces, many of which were under carpets or taped to the bottom of desk drawers. Never the less, she found them all and went about assembling them. Looking at the underside of one piece, she found that each of them contained a section of a circuit board. When it was finally finished, it portrayed the face of a disturbing ventriloquist's puppet, framed by the outline of a puzzle piece. The eyes glowed, and one of the drawers that she had left open extended further from the desk, revealing a hidden compartment with a syringe and an envelope with her name written on it. Injecting herself with the syringe, the weakness she felt from the nerve gas quickly subsided. Then, she opened the envelope, which contained a note and a keychain.

Amy, now that you have received the antidote, you have one final task. One of the keys will open the door, but choose carefully. You only have until the antidote wears off.

Courtesy,

Instead of a signature, it had a piece from a Jigsaw puzzle printed on it. Wasting no time, she ran to the door and tried a key. It remained locked. She tried another one. It didn't work either. Two more keys turned out to be failures. Flipping through the chain, she found one that looked like the signature on the note.

'Could it really be that simple?' she thought. Realizing that her time was running out, she rammed the key into the lock, turned it, and squealed in delight as the door opened. After running out and closing the door behind her, she collapsed, exhausted, and thought about what she had just been through. Her thoughts were cut short however, when a monitor in the wall turned on, revealing the puppet that she had just seen on the puzzle. It then spoke to her.

"Congratulations, Amy…you are still alive…most people are so ungrateful to be alive…but not you…not anymore…"

Shadow looked at the lights and wondered what the correct order was. Then he realized that the colors matched the Chaos emeralds. Thinking back to his last adventure, when he had helped Sonic to defeat Metal Madness, he remembered the order in which the Chaos emeralds were found.

"I hope this works, green, blue, yellow, white, light blue, purple, red." The lock opened. Inside, there was an object that resembled a puzzle box that Maria had once given him, only with far fewer moving parts. The moment he picked it up, a timer started counting down from three minutes. Shadow quickly set about twisting and turning the different sections. With one second left on the timer, he solved it. The timer stopped and the walls of the compartment briefly lit up with the pictures that were on the sides of the cube; a pig mask, a ventriloquist's puppet, a girl with a rusty metal contraption clamped onto her head, a key, a syringe, and a tape recorder. Positioning the cube so that the pictures corresponded with the sides of the lock, he placed it in. The compartment then slammed shut and the door opened. Avoiding the trip wire on the other side, Shadow looked around for his captor.

"Alright, I survived! Show yourself, you coward!" Then, a speaker in the wall answered him with the same voice from the tape.

"Calm yourself, Shadow…you'll see me in due time…for now, why not have a look around? I'm sure your so-called friends are dying to see you again…"

"What? What have you done with them?" He shouted. Receiving no answer, he sped down the hall. Stopping at a door, he went inside, and saw Rouge…

(Static)…and so the story is fast approaching its end…Read and Review…(static)