v. Dark and Deep
"Grandfather!" Maria dashed across the room to hug him, then guided him to a seat on her bed - the only chair in the room being currently occupied by Shadow. "Are you all right? You look exhausted!"
"I'm just tired, love. And annoyed with myself that I didn't see this coming." He accepted a glass of lemonade from her. "It was right there in front of me. It was the Gizoid that triggered her outbreaks of rage, every time I took him down there, she had afit - and I never connected the two! How could I not see it?" He was clearly furious with himself, his voice rising with each phrase until he was yelling.
"No, sir," said Shadow suddenly. Startled out of his self-condemnation, Gerald looked over at the black hedgehog. "Or at least, not exactly. Professor, all the Chaos energies were unbalanced today, not only the Biolizard and her life support, but the Artificial Chaos' Drives as well...even the Chaos lizards and rats in the research lab were affected - that's why the Artificial Chaos attacked it, I think...they smashed the cages and killed all the Chaos-altered creatures but left the normal ones alone. I think it may have been the Chaos Emerald that actually caused the problem, not the Gizoid itself."
Maria placed her small hands comfortingly on top of her grandfather's as Gerald stared at the Shadow. "You mean to say you can see Chaos energy?"
"Not see, exactly, sir. It's more like...like..." Shadow groped about for a way to describe it. He was surprised to realize that the subject had never come up before. "I can feel the Emerald over there," he waved towards where the Emerald was lying on top of Maria's desk, "like...well, you can feel something that's very hot, without actually having to touch it. The emerald's like a piece of the sun, like matter heated to plasma state - I can tell its location clearly and far off without having to see or touch it. The Biolizard - she's a BIG heat source but not nearly as hot, and the Artificial Chaos - really it's the Drives I sense - they're similar intensity but a lot smaller. The Chaos rats and the other Chaos lizards I could sense faintly, but only if I knew where they were.
"Today...I could tell that the Chaos energies were upset, disorganized. When the Gizoid got back here the Emerald power was flaring like, like the sun does, and affecting the Chaos Drives - and the Biolizard, I think - the way solar flares disrupt telecommunications here and on Earth, if things aren't shielded correctly. It wasn't like that this morning before we went skating, and I don't know what happened after that.
"But right after the alarms started there was this...sort of surge of energy, powerful enough to make me dizzy for a moment. I don't know what caused it, or really what it was, even. Although I think that may have been when the Chaos Drives went strange." Finishing his speech - a fairly long one for him - Shadow dropped his gaze to his hands, wondering if he could have done anything different.
"Hmmmm." Gerald considered this information, his face giving no clue to his thoughts.
Maria perched herself on the bed next to her grandfather. "So what happened to the Biolizard? Is she dead?"
"What? No," said Gerald, startled out of his thoughts. "Although something very odd has happened. You'd probably better come see what I've done...and what she has." He was looking at Shadow as he spoke, but Maria of course jumped up and came with them. Gerald didn't object, so Shadow assumed it was alright for her to come along.
The trio avoided the main passages, where various rescue and repair groups were hard at work repairing the Biolizard's damage; moving along the restricted or secret passageways of the research area where they still had to dodge repairs from the Artificial Chaos' rampage. Shadow was not surprised when they arrived at a door he'd never seen on the map, that led into the heart of the asteroid; it was in this region that he had located the Gizoid and the Professor three years ago, when he'd first learned about NIDS, and they had often been in the area in the following months. The door was locked both electronically and physically, with the usual warnings of dire results if unauthorized persons intruded. Gerald entered several codes, and wielded two different keys, then pushed the door open into another passage. A lift at the end of the short hallway required yet another key. They descended deeper yet, then the doors slid open onto a blackness that gave the impression of a vast space.
Gerald stepped calmly out into the darkness and immediately lights came up. The space was, indeed, enormous. To one end glimmered a force field of some sort, and amber streams of energy liquid gleamed fluidly as they tracked across the floor. At the other end...Shadow powered up his hover shoes without really thinking and glided across towards the strange construction. Three concentric levels, largest at the bottom, a flight of stairs up to the top - Shadow skated up the sloped "railing" at the edge of the steps - and, hmm, a sort of altar in the center of the top-most level. A half-dozen pillars ringed the whole thing. Why does this feel familiar? he wondered. Not familiar as in something he'd seen, but something he'd heard or read about. Or knew from his sleep-training. Wait, it's not a half-dozen, is it. Not six pillars,but... A quick count confirmed his suspicion. There were seven pillars in the ring. He looked down, where Gerald and Maria were arriving at the foot of the stairs. "It's the Knuckles' shrine," he said. "Why did you build a copy of the Knuckles' shrine here, Professor?"