Shadow's First Life

Chapter III

Isolation

A.N. This is the start of Shadow's life as seen through his eyes. In first person, if you want to be technical about it.

It was a while before my fifth birthday. I had developed an inseparable bond with Maria, who was my sister. Even if my parents had not adopted me, I loved Maria too much to consider her a friend. I loved Maria, Mom, and Dad just the same, adopted by them or not. I was not simple enough to ignore that I looked so different from them, but I never dwelled on that fact. At least I did not worry about it after I asked Mom about it. I do not remember asking her myself, but she told me about it later in my life.

Maria was not acting like herself. She acted tired, as if she was a bucket of life and the bucket leaked; her joy fell out this leak into nothing. Her blue eyes did not glimmer as they had before and she stayed in her room. One morning I was being dressed in my room. My room was not very big, but it was not small either.

I had a twin bed in a corner next to a window that offered a view of empty space beyond and the blue Earth underneath. A nightstand was on the other side of my bed, and it had a lamp on it. All of the living quarters were on the bottom of the colony, stacked like a deck of cards in structures that look like skyscrapers. The base of the colony was closest to the Earth, which appeared to be below it from inside the colony.

My father managed to get me in underpants and pair of personal blue jeans. My underwear and pants had a hole under the waistband so my tail could hang freely. I prefer my pants that way. 'Why,' you might ask? Why not? It is more comfortable than having something stuck in your underwear all day! It is far better than having your tail stuck in your underwear all day!

Dad held a shirt over me as he instructed me to raise both of my arms. I watched him curiously. "Daddy?" Dad sighed. "Not now, kiddo. Can you hold your arms up for me?" I stuck my arms up and he pulled my shirt on. Now I was fully dressed. "Daddy?" I called hopefully, as I stared up at him. My father's hazel eyes focused on my own crimson eyes. "Yes, buddy?"

"Why we wear clothes?" I asked. "Because..." Dad paused as he smirked. He suddenly grabbed me and picked me up, tickling my belly as he held me over his shoulder. I exploded in laughter as I felt his fingers poking my stomach with rapid movements. Dad chuckled at my reaction. After I caught my breath, he patted my back. "We wear clothes because it is rude to show your butt." He patted his hand against my bottom in gesture to his answer. I considered the new information with a giggle, and asked, "But why we wear shirts?" "Shirts match with the pants you are wearing," Dad answered as he lowered me to the ground and set me on my feet. He ruffled my quills lovingly before going somewhere else in the house.

Our home floor plan was simple. A door from the hallway outside entered into the living room. A sofa and two chairs were against a wall opposite of the door to fill the room. To the right of the door was another doorway, and it was to the family room. Not much to say about it; it had two sofas and an armchair surrounding a coffee table. At the front of that room was a simple black and white TV that only had six channels and rested on a cabinet. A kitchen was at the back of the family room and a dining room off to the side. In the back corner of the kitchen, a hall led to the bedrooms, bathroom, and guestroom of the house. The hallway followed behind the family room and living room.

Maria had to go to school, but that day my eager eyes saw her still in her room. I was thrilled! I did not know why she left me for half of the day so frequently, but I was glad she was still home. My new discovery excited me. I rushed down the hallway to tell Mom.

Mom had a steel kettle of boiling water and filled it with coffee grounds after placing a filter inside the kettle. She then placed a lid on it and pushed it away from the front of the counter. I stood to the side of the hallway and called her from there. "Mommy?" Mom placed toast in a toaster and pulled the toast down to start it, and then she got butter from a cabinet and pulled orange juice out of the refrigerator. "Yes, dear," she answered back.

My heart lifted with joy as I told my great discovery. "Mawia still here!" "Yes, honey. She does not feel too good, so she will stay home today until she feels good again." "Why?" I asked. Mom faced me with her brown eyes. "Your sister's head has a boo-boo. Maria is very tired and needs to sleep."

Dad walked in from behind me and was dressed for the day. Mom prepared his toast and gave him a cup of orange juice and coffee as he sat at the table in the kitchen. He gave her a thank you and ate. I ran up and sat next to him. I was just tall enough to reach the table without trouble. "Mommy, I am hungy. May I pwease have food?" Mom's work on my manners seemed to pay off; I was remembering to say 'please.' Mom and Dad both smiled at me. Mom fixed a bowl of cereal for me and gave me the bowl and a hug as well. At the thought of her hug, a thought came to me.

I have realized that I often embrace others to express my love for them. I always had a thirst for love and I always will. The thirst I have is for something that is a real requirement and a need, not just a shallow yearning. I at least know that much through enduring horrible times of despair.

Dad finished his breakfast when I was done with my cereal. As he stood up to leave, he kissed Mom goodbye. "Bye, Shadow," he said as he hurried and picked up a briefcase to leave. I replied, "Love you, Daddy!" "Mommy?" I asked. "Whaty?" She said back as she sat with me. Her response caused me to laugh. "Daddy sure does work a whole lot," I continued. "Sure." She started eating her own toast. "I know you work a whole lot, too, Mommy." She paused and faced me. "You always work hard to take care of Daddy, Mawia, and me and keep the house fixed. You and Daddy both work lots," I finished.

"You are a sweet boy, Shadow. I love you," Mom replied as she tousled fur on my head. "I love you, Mommy," I said back honestly. Looking back at that moment, I am glad I spoke about her hard work. My little comment seemed to place a smile upon her face and a content mood that lasted all day.

Although Maria was home, that day was not remarkable in too many ways. She stayed in her room and I interacted with her very little. As Mom put me to bed after reading me a story, I asked her why Maria was sick. "Why does Mawia have an owie, Mommy?" Mom's shadow seemed to throw itself onto the wall of the room and dance with the light from the lamp on my nightstand. She shifted, and the shadow leaped across the room before she settled down. My eyes followed her movement.

"Maria has a cold, Shadow. I am going to take her to the doctor tomorrow." "What is a cold?" I asked as always, forever curious. "A cold is when you get a virus." "What is a viwus?" Mom paused to decide on an explanation. "Viruses are super tiny things that harm you. Some viruses, like the cold virus, have a very easy time spreading from sick people to healthy people. Then the cold makes you feel tired, your nose run, and your head hurt for days."

Mom paused for an unnerving moment. I grew uneasy and asked, "Mommy, are you alwight?" She sighed. "I need to take Maria to the doctor." "Why?" I asked nervously. "Maria gets sick very bad. She gets sick worse than you or I do." I flopped onto my pillow for the night.

That getting 'sick very bad' was my sister's neuro-immunodeficiency syndrome. Maria got ill from things that most other people can thankfully shrug off because of the immune systems in their bodies. My adoptive grandfather was strict about microbes on the colony in order to protect Maria. If Maria had no immune system at all, doctors would have locked her away in a clean room, never to touch anything or anyone.

Her immune system was only half as effective at fighting sickness as most people. Considering that she had an immune system, I find that to be a blessing compared to no immunity at all. I did not know that my own immune system is twice as efficient as that of a healthy person. Maria's immune system had one fifth of the strength of my own. I have an advantage in that way, but poor Maria had a burden.

The ARK is a very repetitive place. There are two types of hallways. The first kind is more inviting than the other kind. The first type had hallways of painted drywall, with pictures on the walls, and benches and tables with lamps. The outer hallways of the ARK that followed the ARK's circumference had windows for anyone to gaze out at space and the moon. The second types of hallways were spaced between every three levels of the nicer hallways.

The outermost of these also had windows, but there were no chairs, no furniture, no paintings, and no homey walls. Panels of metal were along the walkways, and numerous pipes and wires ran behind the panels. Doors of the hallways were no better to look at. Any doors there are simple metal doors that remind me of a prison. Some other hallways on these levels were secondary hallways and massive airlocks generally kept them separate. Those hallways lead to countless pipelines and storage rooms, filled with food, water, medical supplies, and other items the inhabitants of the colony used.

In the center of the colony were fifty levels that the government kept secret form everyone except the scientists and engineers that worked there. The levels were laboratories and storage for laboratory equipment and experiments. Every level was a storage level, three living levels, another storage level, three more living levels, and so on. Emergency stairwells are evenly spaced along the levels in case of an accident or danger, and there were emergency ramps for those who were stuck in wheelchairs.

Anyone could easily get lost in the massive colony, so the officials chose to have a map of the entire colony and a floor plan of each level throughout the halls to show passerby where they were. The maps solved the problem for the most part. Each level had four quadrants, which officials called "Block-A, Block-B, Block-C," or "Block-D," to make locating places somewhat easier. Monorails are throughout the colony to compensate for its size that took passengers to any of the four quadrants on each level. Elevators took passengers to most of the levels as well.

The next day is one that will forever haunt me. That day started out as one would have expected it to. I was awake and dressed by Mom, who already got Maria out of bed and dressed. After the three of us ate a breakfast of bacon and eggs with toast, we set out for the hallway outside our home. After a while, we stopped at the monorail station, which we used often.

Thankfully, a hospital was two quadrants of a level and another above the first two and we lived on one of those levels. I lost interest in standing for a train and struggled to keep myself still. The sound of a sneeze startled me and I turned around to find Maria with her head down and a pained expression on her face. She followed the sneeze with sniffing. Mom handed her a tissue from her purse and instructed her. "Cover your mouth when you sneeze, please. We will get you feeling better, okay, honey?" Maria nodded sluggishly. A train rushed in and slowed to a stop. The doors opened after a recording blabbered about giving room to other people. We then boarded.

We settled at the front of the train. Wanting to comfort her, I reached my short arms up to Maria and clutched her head firmly after the train sped up and showed no sign of slowing down for a while. She glanced at me in response, but I ignored it and pressed my thumbs against the back of her head, causing her to sigh. I rolled my thumbs and fingers across the back of her neck, which managed to make her moan softly. Whenever I got my head bumped, rubbing it usually caused it to feel better. The only pain of the head I knew of was head bruising, so I treated her headache as one. My massage actually managed to kill her pain for the moment, even though I thought her pain was different.

Later, after we got to the hospital and were finished waiting in the waiting room, the nurse sent us to another room to wait even more, as if I wanted the waiting to be eternal. I sat in a chair next to mom this time and Maria was lying on the plastic bed. Doctor Stevens made an entrance then and noticed Maria's lack of life. Maria asked if she could go use the restroom, so Mom told me to stay in the room and wait. That was when my day fell apart.

Moments went by in the empty room. Without warning two white men opened the door and closed it behind them, keeping their eyes on me. I was naive and just watched them silently. One of them had a suitcase, and both of them wore the same GUN uniforms. Suddenly, the both of them rushed at me and pinned me violently to the wall. I tried to scream, but one of them placed his gloved hand securely over my mouth before I could. My heart raced and I panicked. What are they going to do to me? I thought about Mom and Maria. Will Mom and Maria come back?

One of the men then pulled out a syringe and forcefully jabbed my arm and filled my muscle with drugs. My vision blurred, and I do not know if fear, the force of the men, or the drug they used on me caused it. It did not matter, because then they threw me into a solid suitcase. My head crashed against the solid material and my arm and head ached ceaselessly. Tears fled from my eyes as they closed my prison shut. The last things I saw were their cold stares that remained unmoved by my crying...

When I woke up, nothing seemed to have changed. I was in darkness and my body protested harshly to me with aches and stiffness. I had no idea whatsoever of where I was. I tried to stand up and get familiar with my surroundings. After a minute, my eyes adjusted to the darkness and I could determine shapes in the almost nonexistent light. The vision did little to soothe my fears, however.

A room of steel trapped me that had only one door, so I approached it to find an escape. Ignoring the dull ache of my head, I reached at the door, discovering there was no doorknob. I then searched for a lever to pull, and after a minute, I found one. The thick door of metal pulled up slowly and I peered out of the gloomy room.

I saw a hallway of steel walls and pipes, and large screens of red light showed diagrams of extensive jargon I did not understand; letters and numbers with images glowed on their faces. They were the only lights in the room except for large panels of glowing, red glass. They were of no use to me, so I wandered out and determined that my room was at the back of a hallway. Only finding one way to travel, I reluctantly followed it. My stomach grew uneasy and my heart felt heavy. My shadow flowed away from the light of the screens and wavered behind me eerily.

The hallway took a right turn and opened to a room with an enormous pool of strange liquid that glowed orange at the right side of the room. I looked to the left and saw a walkway and a railing about one meter above the pool. My mind insisted that something was hiding in the pool...

Steps echoed against the hard metal of a hall in front of me, and I froze as a silent gasp escaped my throat. Two men in white laboratory coats, one was a white man and the other was a brown fox, walked up to me. "What is the project doing out here?" the white man asked his coworker. "Whatever he is doing out here, it matters little. The fact he is out here is worthy of our orders. We must take him to the colonel," the brown fox answered back.

The both of them grabbed me by my shoulders and pulled me firmly where I was going in the first place: down the hallway. My head filled with wonder, but that did not matter. The two captors led me to a room that had computers and screens galore, which cast a blue light throughout the room.

A tall white man that appeared to be in his late twenties wore an elaborate uniform. Many medals were on his coat, which I noticed when he turned my way after they addressed him. "Sir, we have found the project wandering about. What shall we do with him?" The colonel glared at me, filling my heart with fear. He had neatly cut jet-black hair and harsh blue eyes.

"Put the project back where it belongs! Keep an eye on it for assurance that it will not escape from its cell again. If it does, I will not be pleasant!" Both scientists answered him with a "Yes, sir!" and pulled me back to the very room from which I had escaped minutes earlier. Along the way, the brown fox commented to his partner. "That guy sure is a young colonel." The other person agreed and they started talking about locking the door with a computer to keep me there.

Before I knew what had happened, I was back in the dark room. I had no idea how far from safety I was, or where I was in the first place. I did not know how long I was unconscious at all. I stared absently at the wall as my head continued to ache and my arm remained sore after two men had stabbed me with a needle...

I heard a faint hiss that grew gradually louder and opened my eyes. I was still in my prison. I must have fallen asleep, but the rest was lacking in quality. I felt even worse than I did before. I was sore, tired, and plagued by thirst. The bothersome hiss was coming from a vent at the back wall of the room. Its constant whisper inspired me to approach it. The vent was a rectangular shaft that went back away from the wall a meter and then appeared to go straight up. A thick metal grating covered it. Desiring a way to escape, I pulled on the cover, only to discover that it would not budge even slightly.

I grew discouraged and sat down the only place I could. I slowly sat on the cold, hard, metal floor and let bitter tears run out of my eyes. The only sounds I heard were my breathing, the whisper of the air vent, and the occasional drip of warm salty tears falling off my cheeks and onto the lifeless metal floor. I was to stay there alone for a long time, waiting for something to happen. After lasting through what made my wait in a hospital days earlier seem like nothing at all, something did happen.

I heard mumbling through the door at the front of the room and approached it silently. People were talking and I could not hear them clearly, so I got as close to the wall as I could. One source of the talking scared me and sent chills down my spine. I recognized one of the voices was the colonel that was so harsh to me. I stood back as a mechanical groan reverberated from the wall and the door slowly opened. The colonel's body cast a tall outline upon my eyes, and the light burned my vision as I waited, trapped in the dim room.

"Project: Shadow!" The colonel barked harshly, causing me to flinch. "Do you understand why you are here?" I was shocked and could not answer. "This thing is stupid. It will not talk," the colonel said to an officer who stood beside him. "Sir, he does not feel like talking. He is frightened and needs to recover-" The colonel's angry voice cut off the speaker, who was a rather gentle looking woman raccoon. "Why do you speak of such nonsense? The Project is only a thing! We have funded a weapon with countless millions of dollars! We shall do with it as I please!" The young raccoon remained silent. I felt heavy waves of confusion engulf my mind as the colonel continued.

"I know you understand me, Project. Let me tell you something. You belong to me." The colonel gestured by pointing at me and then to himself. "If you ever try to escape from here, I will punish you. I will not use little time out time, though. I will hurt you." My heart became a cold and heavy stone. I felt it sink into my stomach and its weight pulling on my chest. "Do not ever escape," he finished his sentence with ominous certainty. After that, the door locked me in a darkness that seemed threatening. I sat down against the wall until my instincts urged me to place my ear against the wall. I quickly found out why, because I could hear sounds outside with clarity.

The colonel told the two people following him to take a shift the next day. He than said that "No assistants are needed in this sector, since that thing is locked away in there." I was appalled when something in my mind clicked into place and revealed something I do not appreciate at all. I am the thing. I am it. I am Project: Shadow...

I managed to wake up in exhaustion the next day. I pressed my ear against the wall again and listened for any strange sounds. I listened and listened. I felt like I listened, at least. After hearing nothing, I decided I was going to get out of there. I was only five years old, but I had the blood of a survivor flowing though my body.

I took a deep breath and searched for the lever I had pulled previously to open the large hatch. My fingers rubbed among the cold solid metal until they felt a protrusion. I pulled on it and watched from the darkness. Nothing happened. I never was certain it would open the sealed door in the first place. My chest heaved a lengthy sigh. I then remembered that the door locked.

Losing hope, I crawled into a corner and cried. Being so young, I had cried many a time before, but never had I sobbed so hard. Never had I let so many tears from my eyes. Never before did I yell for such a long time. Before I finished, my ears pricked up at the sound of a heavy sliding door. I faced the bright light as it hurt my eyes.

After my view focused, I saw a silhouette that made me stop yelling all together. I still sobbed quietly as the figure approached me. The door closed and then the figure walked up to me and pulled me into her warm arms. I clung to the young raccoon woman with a whimper and all of my terrified might.

She hushed me by stroking my head gently and putting my mind at ease. "Shadow," she called me with her gentle voice. "Listen to me closely. That mean guy is not here. I am going to let you out of here, but you must promise me that you will tell Professor Gerald that the mean guy locked you up, and bring him with you down here. But you need to do it without any people in uniforms seeing you escape. If one of them sees you, you need to come back here to me so I will hide you and they cannot hurt you." She held me by my shoulders and kneeled down to look me in the eyes. "Do you understand?" I nodded in response.

"Hide yourself under tables and in the shadows when someone is near you. To get out of here, you need to go out this hall and past the orange pool to a room. From where you are then, you need to go to the hallway that is on this side," she held her hand up in gesture to the right side. "When you get to another door, it will be thick and red. Hide in the shadows until someone opens it and run out of the door when they are not looking. Go this way down the hall." She gestured again to the left, so I nodded.

"There will be a wooden door with a glass window on it that is hard to see through. Go in there. There Professor Gerald will be in his room. Stay with him, tell him that you were locked up, and bring him back to the red door with you. Do you understand?" I nodded.

"I will close this door behind you and lock it so they can't see you are missing. If you come back in the first room that is inside the red door, I will be there." "What is your name, miss?" I asked her. "Megan," was her reply. I replayed her plan in my mind several times. The woman opened the door and told me to get out quickly. I did not hesitate, but I did stop an instant to hug her and ran on my way.

I never noticed I could run so fast. The red panels were blurs of red light and the pool was an orange flash as wind rushed over me. After a brief moment, I had gotten to the room and hid around the hall I was in at the corner. I then made a desperate rush to the hall on the other side of the room noticing that not one person was there. I almost ran into a thick door that was a bright shade of orange, but in the dim light, it looked red.

Minutes passed as I waited at the side of the door when it opened. Just after a scientist walked meters beyond me, I rushed through the door and concealed myself behind some pipes in a corridor that joined the main hall. The next thing that happened convinced me that I was dreaming. I saw Maria walk by me and down the main hall!

I went into the light to get her attention and quickly realized I had made a mistake. A soldier was about twenty meters beyond her, and when she noticed me, the soldier noticed her moving as well. Maria curiously went towards me and I knew the soldier was watching her.

With perfect timing, the orange door opened up, so I rushed inside as my sister followed closely behind. I ran through the main hallway until I got to the main room and found Megan. I heard Maria call from behind me. "Wait! Where are you going?" I then heard a man shouting after her. It was the soldier.

Megan and I rushed back into the hallway where the colonel held me. She told me to stay back near the room where I was imprisoned. I heard more shouting from many men as the daring raccoon girl calmly went back up the hallway.

Maria caught up to me and was about to ask me something, but I immediately placed my hand over her mouth and led her back to the orange pool near my room. We listened to Megan confront the group of men and stayed silent.

"Excuse me, but did you happen to see a little girl run through here?" one man asked. "A girl? No sir, I have not seen anybody run though here. I have been in her for the past three hours." Another man objected. "But, sir! I saw a little blonde girl run in here! She came just a minute ago!" That man obviously got others to join him and find us.

The man to whom the other spoke replied incredulously. "You are seeing things. When did you last get some rest?" Silence followed. "I have been through a night shift." "Really? No wonder you are so jumpy, corporal!" The other men laughed. "I reward you with a break. Go get some rest so you will be ready for your job tomorrow." All seemed well.

Unfortunately, the pool of orange liquid bubbled and stirred at the worst time. A gigantic red lizard creature rose above the pool and opened its large mouth enough to swallow Maria and me for lunch. Maria screamed. As it reared its head, I pushed her out of the room and barely managed to get out. The lizard creature submerged into the orange fluid.

We both landed on the floor of the hall as the soldiers ran up to us and pried me away from Maria. "Get off of her!" Two of them held onto me as a third used a stun gun to shock me. I lost control of my body under terrible pain and fell limp. They shocked me again. Tears left my eyes as I smelled smoke rise from my burnt fur.

Maria and Megan both screamed at them. "Don't do that! He saved me from that giant! Stop it!" Maria cried. "Why are you hurting him? He is just a boy!" Megan screamed at them. They stopped shocking me and picked my limp body up. Ignoring that they had tied me with a cable, my eyes watered and tears fell from my face onto the floor. The men carried me back in the hallway toward the cell, but a roar rumbled through the waters of the nearby pool and bubbles exploded with orange liquid. The men panicked with confused yelling and orders.

Four of them stayed at the pool while the two others carried me back to the cell. A deep rumble resounded so violently that the floor shook and I could feel my chest vibrate! One man pulled a switch on the wall next to my prison that opened and drew a gust of air over my face. I swayed as my captors set me down in the back of the room, yet I could see the pool from there.

They then left there with the door open. I saw the hideous lizard lift its enormous head out of the pool. All of the men drew their weapons and fired at the lizard. I heard ricochets as the copper slugs of the guns bounced off the lizard and instead landed in the pool with splashes or bounced against the walls. An alarm blared. As the monster lifted its head to swallow a man alive, a thick metal door with a glass window closed over the monster and caused a massive splash that knocked one of the men down. The lizard caused a deep dull thud as its head crashed into the reinforced metal, and then it was quiet.

One man staggered back to my cell and closed the door. The sealed door muffled the siren, but still it sounded distinctive against the almost silent background. My muscles ached no longer; they burned. They hurt worse. I sat against the wall and tried my best to sleep after the alarm silenced.

Thoughts of despair kept me awake. I drowned in despair. I was sure I would die in that place. I was sure I would die slowly, my body fading from the lack of food and water. I felt something wet land on my leg. I would have cried, but I was too exhausted to make an effort. Tears that slipped away from my eyes dropped onto my fur...

The door opened once more. I decided to close my eyes. "SHADOW!" I heard Maria's voice. "Grandpa, They hurt him!" I felt her arms embrace me. I looked up at her and tried to speak, but Maria put a finger to my lips. "Shhh. You need to rest." I smiled softly to her as she picked me up and she and my granddad carried me out of hell itself...