3. An Emerald and Chaos

Shadow sat on a bench across the street watching people leave the bank. He toyed with a golden ring he'd picked up during his walk. The Professor had told him that they were made of solidified Chaos energy, but no one had quite figured out how they connected to the Chaos Emeralds themselves, although there had been none before the Professor's visit to Angel Island where he had acquired his Chaos Emerald. Soon afterwards the rings had begun appearing across the dokan lands, eventually spreading into the human-dominated portions of the Earth, and by the time Shadow was 'born' even into the ARK itself. Scattered around the city, he'd encountered several clusters and lines of the things, all hanging in the air about 6-12 inches off the ground.

The windows set high in the walls darkened or dimmed one by one. At last a final few humans came out, several dressed in uniforms that he did not recognize, but he knew the body language of 'guards' well enough. He noticed one of the uniformed men staring in his direction. As a bus pulled up and stopped nearby, Shadow got up and moved so it was between him and the bank, then moved back into the shadow of some bushes. When the bus pulled away again, the guards were no longer visible, although the two people who were not in uniforms were getting into a car.

A lot of lights around the building, Shadow noted. No place to hide. Guards on the inside. He closed his eyes and 'reached' for the Emerald. It was there, blazing like the sun to his sixth sense, the same as it had been when he'd first located the bank. There was a sign up in front of the building, offering a tour of some sort that included a close-up view of 'one of the gems that saved Station Square'. Shadow hadn't bothered, he suspected it cost money. A lot of things in this world seemed to cost money, and something that had been a vague abstraction on the ARK was suddenly very solid and real. He'd only gotten lunch because the woman standing behind him in the food line had paid for his food, telling him cheerfully that everyone forgot their wallets sometimes, and that he should pass the favor along to someone else later. He wasn't sure what a wallet was, he had thought that dollars and cents were the currency in this region.

He 'felt' the emerald, gauging the amount of power it was emitting. It didn't seem to be giving off as much as the one he remembered, although the power was unmistakably there in the gem. Maybe because the Gizoid was using it, he thought, maybe that triggered it to release more power. Now, if I just... He didn't dare try to teleport himself into the building - that would be extremely dangerous since he didn't know the layout. He wasn't certain what would happen if he teleported into a space occupied by something else, but he didn't really want to find out. However...

The walls of the lower stories of the building were almost solid stone, with glass panels on either side of the doors. The upper floors however had windows set into them. A decorative beam ran across the front of the building about 50 feet off the ground, right below a row of the windows. Shadow stood up, focused his concentration and...was there, standing on the beam instead of the sidewalk. He looked through the windows in front of him, noted an office with an open door and teleported himself into it.

Shadow looked around the dimly lit room. The office didn't seem too much different from Gerald's on the ARK, except that this one wasn't tacked on one side of a laboratory. A desk, a few chairs, with some writing instruments, stacks of papers and a computer on the desk. A couple of file cabinets and a telephone. Some things hadn't changed much in half a century, at least. Shadow listened to the silence out in the hall, then stepped onto the worn carpet. Picking a direction he followed the hall towards what he hoped would be a way down. Instead, he found himself on one side of a large open area filled with a maze of low walls - low in the sense that they didn't reach the ceiling; they were still several feet taller than he was. He heard a soft 'ding' and the sound of doors sliding open, followed by footsteps. Slipping through the closest gap in the low walls, he found himself in a small square area crowded by a desk, cabinet and chair. As the footsteps grew closer, he ducked under the desk, pressing as far into the shadows as he could. A guard passed by without even glancing into the area. At least, Shadow supposed by the uniform that he was a guard - he was severely overweight and didn't look like he could stop an angry goldfish, let alone an armed criminal. At any rate, the man moved on down the hall Shadow had come in by, and Shadow took the opportunity to leave his hiding place and trace back along the man's trail until he found the elevator.

The tour description said second floor. He pressed the button that read '2' and the elevator slid down the shaft. Something else that hasn't changed. Hmmph, I guess there's not much you can do with an elevator. The car stopped, the doors slid open, and he glided out fast in case anyone was around. The floor seemed deserted. Like the one he'd come in by, it was mostly open space, but in this case the 'maze' was of display containers and ropes. Unlike the previous floor, this one had no lights on at all, only what came though the windows... and the Emerald. Shadow didn't need to search for the jewel; it not only blazed like a bonfire to his sixth sense, but threw a green glow on nearby objects in the darkened room. I was right, it's not as active as the one on the ARK was. Well this part's easy enough. He skated into the room and lifted the lid on the case. Only it didn't lift. Frowning, he tugged at it again, then picked up one of the poles that supported the ropes and swung that at the clear box. The only result was a loud 'wham!' It took three more swings, putting all of his strength into them to crack, then shatter the box so that he could reach in and grasp the Chaos Emerald. He closed his eyes a moment, feeling the power welling up between his fingers as the Emerald came to life, enhancing his senses - and heard a humming from the far side of the room.

Shadow spun around, spotting a door he hadn't noticed when he came in. It swung open, revealing a set of uniform grey robots with a vaguely familiar look to them. He didn't waste time trying to identify them though, instead tapping the Emerald's power and teleporting himself back to the beam he had entered from. However the situation had changed dramatically since he had left it.

When he'd first stood on the beam, it had been dark, with just the moonlight and what light came from the dimly-lit windows or reflected up from passing cars. Now blinding spotlights played back and forth across the entire front of the building, highlighting his red stripes and the white patch of fur on his chest. A whooping siren - no several - could be heard approaching rapidly. He felt a sudden surge of nervousness at the noise, but it wasn't until the flashing red lights came in sight that something inside made him break and run.

Emerald in hand, he drew on its power without conscious thought and moved, dropping from the beam and landing amidst a swarm of guard robots, that he jump-curled or simply punched out of his way. The red flashing lights and sirens were closer now and as soon as he fought his way clear, he fled, downhill, away from the sirens, hearing a different set of alarms in his head.

Suddenly there was nothing in front of him, just a sharp drop to a dark irregular surface below. With no time to stop he teleported to the highest vantage point in sight, the top of a support for the Golden Span bridge. Shivering slightly in the chill wind, he looked down at the cars collecting on the bridge beneath him sirens still blaring as the red lights spun and flashed. "Hmmph, how pathetic," he muttered scornfully. The famous bridge was currently closed for repairs - whole sections of the road were out - so the cars would be unable to pursue him but he'd have no problem getting across. Not that they could have caught him anyway. But... those sirens...

He closed his eyes again, trying to clear his mind, but found scenes he never wanted to see again playing behind his eyelids: The halls of the ARK, alarms wailing and emergency lights flashing as he pounded down the corridor pulling Maria after him. A harsh voice in the background called "Don't let them escape!" and then Maria was leaning on the control panel while Shadow leaped for the escape capsule. "Maria!!", he cried, and "What?" as the clear alloy closed around him. "Shadow...I beg of you... Please–" the girl gasped for air, blood staining her arm and the console. "Maria!" cried Shadow again, but she went on, "–do it for me...for all the people...on that planet... Sayonara, Shadow the Hedgehog." The capsule dropped through the floor and freezing blackness swirled around Shadow, filling his heart with rage.

Glowering down at the humans and vehicles below, he answered his sister, now fifty years dead. "Maria...I still remember what I promised you... For all the people of this planet...I promise you...REVENGE!" Dimly he realized that something was wrong with that statement, or perhaps the memory itself, but rage and reawakened grief spurred him on, and he leapt from the top of the support to the nearest suspension cable, grinding down it, away from the police, like a skateboarder on a stair rail. In the distance a set of fighter jets roared towards the bridge like sleeked-down shuttles.