Confusion

Keily and I were so dumbfounded walking across the Eggcarrier deck with Shadow. He had finally put us down when we reached the ships surface. He knew we wouldn't be stupid enough to jump from this height. I was kind of thinking about it though. Keily noticed me looking down and nudged me, saying with her eyes, don't be stupid. I shrugged and just continued walking. If I knew we'd survive the jump, I'd grab Keily and jump if I had to. Why was I feeling so reckless all of a sudden? Shadow herded Keily and I over to a door and it slid open for us to enter. The room was full of gadgets and complicated looking devices that blinked and changed color. Off against the far wall were many large clear empty capsule pods and across the room hung a huge computer monitor with a key board underneath.

"Where are we?" I asked, looking back at Shadow who had shut and locked the door behind him. I had a very uneasy feeling now, much more then I had before. Something wasn't right in the slightest.

"This looks like a high-tech observatory." Keily pointed out while walking deeper into the room to have a better look.

"An observatory? You mean for studying?" I looked at Shadow again who was walking over to me. He reached out to grab my arm and I flinched away from his touch. "What are you doing?" I asked jerking away, out of his reach. This gave me a bad feeling. I backed up and right into his trap. I had stupidly walked right under one of the open capsule pods and it dropped down, imprisoning me in glass. "What?"

"That was much simpler than I thought it would be." He chuckled and walked over to Keily. She backed up against the other wall, trying to get away from him, but it was meaningless. He grabbed her arm and swung her around so she was in front of him. With one swift movement of his wrist, he pushed her so she was completely under the other capsule as its walls slid down to seal her in. She looked as surprised as I had felt. Shadow really was as strong and as amazing as the videogames and TV shows had said. Maybe even stronger and even more amazing, if that was even possible. "If you'll excuse me ladies," he said turning to face the door again, "I'll only be a second. Please, make yourselves at home." I could hear the smile in his voice as he left.

"He just, he just forced me into this capsule." Keily stood still amazed at what had just happened.

"Well at least he didn't trick you into walking right into it." I stated as I paced the small container floor in circles.

"What do we do Sami?" Keily sat down and tilted her head to look in my direction, "What do you think they're going to do with us?" Her crystal blue eyes reflected fear and worry into mine. I could feel my brow wrinkle and my green eyes focus on nothing as I thought of an answer to her question.

"I honestly don't know." I whispered thinking of all the bad possibilities I just couldn't say to her. The last thing I wanted was to panic her any further. Our attention was taken once the door opened again. Shadow walked in, followed by the inhabitant and creator of this vessel, the evil Dr. Eggman.

"Greetings girls," He chuckled his annoying laugh, "It is such a pleasure to make your acquaintance."

"I wish we felt the same." The words just seemed to blurt out of my mouth. He looked over to me then and smiled evilly. He spoke as he approached my pod.

"You must be the Sami girl I've heard so much about." I leaned my shoulder against the glass with a smile of my own.

"And if I am?" Where was all my cockiness coming from? He laughed again and continued.

"You are exactly right for this project." He turned to his computer and started typing.

"Excuse me?" I felt my face fall, "What project are you talking about?"

"Shadow," Eggman called and Shadow was next to him in a flash, "Who is this other girl you have brought me?" Shadow looked in Keily's direction and sighed. I could see Keily's red hair stand on end as he answered.

"I had a problem obtaining the girl and mistakenly left a mark on the red head as well."

"You what?" Eggman turned to face Shadow who held his ground calm and collected.

"The task was more difficult than we had suspected."

"How could capturing a little girl be difficult!"

"Because we both know for a fact that this 'little girl' is not normal." Shadow's face was hard and ruthless with his answer. The Dr. simply nodded and sighed.

"Hey!" I called pressing my hands against the glass, "Can you guys just tell us what the heck you're even talking about?" They both looked over at Keily and I. Eggman cleared his throat.

"Perhaps it's time you learnt of your purpose." He was talking directly to me. "You see Samantha, for years I have fought and lost to a curtain blue hedgehog. Whatever my plan, no matter how close I was to success, he would foil my scheme every time!" I still didn't understand where he was coming from.

"But what does that have to do with me?"

"I'm getting to that." He was pacing the floor as he continued, "One day, I was so fed up with it all, that I came up with a brilliant plan! A plan to harness that hedgehogs power and shoot it back at him tenfold! I asked myself what machine I could possibly make to do just that, but then it dawned on me, one of my glorious machines just wouldn't do the trick. Not this time." His glasses flashed up to me as he paced, "Sonic always had a way to destroy all my robots, but when it came to fighting a living creature, he never could bring himself to destroy the other. I only needed a living specimen that wouldn't die so easily. So I consulted with Shadow about the idea and he told me of this dimension and how it was full of humans, the perfect candidates for the experiments I wished to conduct."

"So you're responsible for all the people who have gone missing mysteriously!" Keily interrupted, "You're the reason so many people have suffered the loss of their children!" Eggman nodded.

"Unfortunately they weren't what we were looking for in the slightest." Eggman remarked.

"They didn't even make it past the DNA Infusion Process." Shadow smirked. I just looked at him with the most confused face I could conger up and he just replied with a smile while tapping his wrist with one finger. My wrist? Is that what he meant? I looked down at my arm and pulled the blue sleeve out of the way. A blue mark was beginning to shine on the burn Shadow had caused. I felt my eyes grow wide as I looked back up to meet Shadow's gloating glare. He was happy with what he had done. I took a few deep breaths, trying to find my voice before I could talk.

"How… how is this," I shoved my hand at them and was caught by glass instead, "going to create me into Sonic's death trap?" My voice was beginning to become hysterical as panic finally started setting in.

"I suppose your training will have to commence once your transformation is complete." Eggman turned and walked out the door with an evil, hardy laugh. Shadow stopped to take one look back.

"I have to be honest," He strolled over to my container again, "I'm highly curious to see how or if your power will match mine." Our eyes shared a glare for a moment before I looked away.

"Shadow!" Eggman called and Shadow was at the door again.

"Goodbye girls." He smirked that famous smile again and walked out the door. Ooooo, I really hate him!

Keily and I sat in our pods for the longest time. We were trying to wake up from this bad dream, but no matter what we did, it just wouldn't change our situation.

"Sami I can't believe that I'm not even suppose to be here." Keily finally spoke, breaking the awkward silence left lingering in the room when the door shut. She was looking down at the floor, "I can't help thinking of what would have happened if I just let you go into the field by yourself. It's a scary thought to think."

"FRICK!" I slammed my hands against the glass, "This is my entire fault! I can't fight it anymore! If I would have left my ragging curiosity alone, then we wouldn't be in this mess!" I pounded my fists against the glass again and again. Keily just looked at me, completely helpless as I choked out tears of torturing pain.

"Sami…" She trailed off and looked at the ground again. A mind shattering sound rattled the room then, as Keily and I both stood wide-eyed at the event that had just taken place. The glass around me had shattered into millions of sparkling pieces that fell to the floor. Had I just done that? I looked at my hands slowly as I recapped all the episodes of Sonic X I'd ever watched. Sonic was never able to break out of one of these things by himself. He either had help from a chaos emerald or an outside source, like Tails. So why was I able to break it by just getting angry? "Sami! Wake up!" Keily called, as I snapped back to reality. I hadn't even noticed, but red lights were flashing and alarms were going off. I looked over at Keily who had frantic eyes. She glanced at the door every three seconds waiting for it to open and for Shadow to do us in. I only had one thing I could do. My feet scraped against the floor as I trudged through the broken glass and over to Keily.

"Stand back." I ordered and she did just that. I didn't know how I was going to do this, but I had to try. I punched the glass and bounced back, leaving the container without a scratch. I attacked several times, but had no luck. Now I was pissed.

"Come on Sami! Shadows going to be here any second!" Keily cheered from inside the pod. I snorted, some encouragement that was. This was a lot harder then getting out of my own pod. "Kick it or something!" Keily yelped and I did just that. My foot shot straight through the glass as it shattered, leaving the raw sand all across the floor.

"Come on!" I grabbed Keily's arm and yanked her out the door.

Robots were running in every direction, but I didn't care, we had to get out of here!

"Sami let go!" Keily yanked at my grip as I dragged her down the hallway, "I can run myself! I don't need you dragging me the whole way." I looked back at her 5'3" figure and stuck out my tongue. I warily released my grip and continued to run, looking back every so often to check she was still behind me. With each step I seemed to take, my speed seemed to grow faster and faster, and before I knew it, the world was blurry. I couldn't see a thing, not even my hand in front of my face. Was this an effect of the mark on my rist? What was happening to me? The hallway stretched from, what felt like, each tip of the carrier. I wondered when it would stop and soon enough, I had found my answer. My barreling feet sent me straight into the emergency door at the hallways end. I guess that was one way to stop. A thought crossed my mind then. How could I have forgotten?

"Keily?" I called turning around, but she was nowhere in sight. I looked down the winding hallway as far as I could see and passed every corner, but I still saw no sign of her. I had two choices, go back and look for her, or selfishly walk out this door right now and leave her all alone. I guess that narrowed my choices down, but first I had to make sure this was a safe exit. If I was going to save my friend, I needed an escape route. I cranked the handle on the door and its alarm blared in my ear at first. It slowly mixed into the background noise, along with the alarms that were already going off. The door swung open as the wind forced itself into the hallway, almost knocking me off my feet. I had forgotten that we were already flying in the air. This escape route was out, unless I could find a parachute for Keily and myself. This was not good.

"Sami!" I heard a scream come into range. I turned to see Keily running straight at me. It made me feel both panicked and relived. Relived that she was fine, but panicked when I saw why she was screaming. Shadow was running right behind her, hot on her heels and gaining speed. He had caught us, we were so dead. I braced myself for the worst and was unexpectedly granted so much more. Keily ran straight into me, causing us both to fall out the door and into open air. I griped onto her hand desperately as another scream escaped my lips. We were going to die. I was absolutely positive of it. My body was out of control as I spun down toward the world below. I took a peek back up at the Eggcarrier to see Shadow standing at the door, the wind rushing through his black and red spikes and his hands folded in fists across his chest. Even now, as far down as I was, he made perfect eye contact and I could tell that this wouldn't be the last time we would meet, well, that is if we survived this fall. Hey, at least when I reached the pearly gates of heaven I could say I out smarted a major badass. Yeah, I think that would be worth it. I wonder if you get extra points for something like that…

"You ready Keily!" I looked at her and we both nodded. No matter what happened now, we would be friends for life and beyond. I was sure of it. We both let go of each others hand then and let what wanted to happen, happen. There was no use fighting this fate that was thrown at us. I would surely miss this place. Miss my little sister, my family, my friends, everyone who ever mattered to me. Keily and I would watch over them now. I just wished I had a chance to say that I loved them one last time. Just once more and I could die happy. The ocean below us grew closer and closer with each passing second. Before I knew it, I was lost in its icy waves and I couldn't tell what direction was up. This is it, was all that passed through my mind. This is how it ends.