You know it! Don't Own it! Enjoy!
A window popped up on the screen with the words 'Door Code Required' along with a field by which to enter the password.
Tails frowned and turned to Rouge. "Does this mean anything to you?"
Rouge frowned. So Towers had been clever enough to encrypt the data on the drive he'd given her. Since it was for Maria it would most certainly mean something to her. It might even be something as simple as the girl's bedroom door code aboard the Ark. Unfortunately, Rouge could only guess what that might have been.
"Is there a way to get around it?" Rouge said.
Tails turned back to the computer and pulled some kind of voodoo that she had no hope of understanding despite her own level of computer literacy. "Well," the fox said. "I can set a program to decrypt it, but it could take some time."
"How much time?" Rouge asked.
Tails cringed. "It could be anywhere from a couple of hours to days depending on the complexity of the encryption," he said. "Where'd you get it anyway?"
Rouge pursed her lips. She wasn't sure how much information would be safe to divulge. In a situation like this it would have to be all or nothing if she wanted to avoid a breach of trust, but at the same time, it meant anything truly harmful could hit its mark before she could stop it. Although, Maria was pretty tough. Shadow's descriptions of her had not even begun to reveal the steel in that girl's spine. The question was, would Shadow forgive her if it was something that hurt his sister?
Despite that, it was looking more and more likely that full disclosure was the best way to go.
"Go ahead and pull it for now," Rouge said.
Tails closed it all and gave the drive back to her. "Is this another one of those things you're never going to bring up again?" he asked.
The bat shook her head. Unfortunately this one could still bite them if she did that. "Someone else is going to have to be the judge of whether this becomes common knowledge with our group or not," Rouge said. "That does mean secrecy for now."
"Can we really afford to be keeping so many secrets from each other?" Tails asked somewhat petulantly. "I think our group has enough of those already."
"You have a point," Rouge said sympathetically. "This kinda thing can lead to some pretty nasty surprises. We will just have to trust that they'll handle it the right way before that happens."
"Yeah, I guess so," Tails said, then straightened up a little, the happy sparkle coming back to his eyes. "In the meanwhile, Sonic and Shadow are both recovering nicely. We're having a bit of a quiet day. Maria has a ton of movies to catch up on! Wanna join us?"
Rouge knew she had more things she had to do that day, but those pleading blue eyes were difficult to resist. It was only a few hours, why not? "I can't stay long," she said.
"Yes!" Tails crowed jumping and punching the air. "You go settle in with the others, I'm gonna get the popcorn popper going!"
To her relief the yellow fox headed in the direction of the kitchen rather than his workshop. Rouge shook her head and decided to go ahead and find the others. Honestly, she really wanted a moment to check in with Shadow after everything that had happened. She knew something was wrong the second she opened the door to the TV room.
Sonic looked seconds away from standing up despite the bulky boot on his leg and Shadow, ears pinned down hard, had his eyes clamped shut and was holding his head while Maria stood by clearly trying to figure out what was wrong.
"It feels like… someone is going through my memories," Shadow said haltingly, his voice strained. "I can't shut them out! I don't want to see that! Get out!"
Well that was new…
Rouge stood frozen in the doorway. This was something she had no experience with.
Maria was the one who seemed to break out of shock first. "Shadow!" she said, putting a gentle hand on his cheek and tilting his face so he would look at her. "Sometimes a good defense is a good offense. Is there a way for you to counter attack?"
Shadow never opened his eyes, and his grip on his head tightened. "I can try… I can try," he said. "I said… GET OUT!" His eyes flew open and he gasped, then stood there looking wildly around the room breathing hard.
"Did it work?" Maria asked.
"I…" Shadow started to speak, but it was like his voice dried up inside his throat. His gaze traveled over each one of them, eyes wide with concern. At last he spoke again. "Grab as much food and water as you can and go to the Ark. Stay on the inner levels and don't turn on the lights. I… I have to go."
The darker hedgehog bolted. Maria and Rouge ran after him, but he was out of the house before either of them could lay a finger on him. In the open, there was no hope of catching him. The glow of his shoes was already fading, though they sputtered a few times before they lost sight of him. The sky overhead had turned dark with threatening red clouds.
"Guys, I think you need to come look at this," Sonic said from behind them.
He was standing, resting his bad leg on the floor but putting no weight on it. The expression on his face was grim.
Maria wordlessly picked Sonic up and carried him back to the TV room where the news had taken a drastic turn.
"Reports are coming in," Soar was saying. "Seven major cities are seeing the same thing." An image of red clouds popped up on the screen with a menacing red vortex centered over a city.
"That's Westopolis," Rouge said quietly.
As they watched objects rained from the swirling hole in the clouds.
"As you can see," Soar continued grimly. "We are under attack. Several nations have declared a state of emergency and are urging people to stay in their homes, or find shelter where they are. Teams are going into the hottest areas in an effort to evacuate civilians. All attempts at communication with the alien forces have failed. We can only assume they intend to wipe us out. Many people are starting to ask. Where… is Sonic the hedgehog?"
Tails dove for the clicker and turned off the TV but Sonic was already reaching for the straps on the boot. Maria reached in and took his hands. "Not this time Sonic," she said softly. "Shadow is out there."
"But his inhibitors-!"
"I know!" Maria said a bit sharply. "I know. The best thing we can do is follow Shadow's instructions."
Sonic and Tails both looked like they wanted to speak.
"And!" Maria continued. "And, we'll use the Ark as a base of operations as we support him. It's more important than ever that we get what we need for his new inhibitor rings."
"Did you see the clouds over the house?" Rouge asked. "I don't think we have a lot of time."
"I'm good to use chaos control," Sonic said, sounding extremely subdued. "Get what you need, I'll get us there."
"What about the Tornado?" Tails asked. "I don't want to leave it here for them to find!"
"You could fly it there," Rouge said. "It's small, and their efforts seem to be focused on the planet. As long as you don't draw attention to yourself, I think you could do it."
"Rouge he's-!" Sonic started to say but the bat cut him off.
"He's more capable than you think," Rouge said. "And I wouldn't have suggested it if I didn't think we'd need it."
Tails nodded. "I can pack even more food this way too," he said.
"Right," Rouge said. "We've got a lot to do and very little time to do it. Let's get to work, people!"
They scrambled through the house packing anything and everything they thought they would possibly need. The Tornado was stuffed with as much weight as the faithful plane could carry and still be able to reach escape velocity. The rest went on a heap on the kitchen floor, some in storage bins and other items thrown loose on top. They all looked up when the first of Tails' proximity sensors triggered an alarm.
"We're out of time," Tails said. "I have to take off now."
Sonic grabbed his little brother in a fierce hug. "You be careful!" he said. "Don't take any chances you don't have to!"
"I know Sonic," Tails said. "I will be okay, I promise! I will see you there!"
The little fox pulled away and ran for the hangar.
"Can we stay to make sure he takes off?" Sonic asked the others and Maria found herself nodding.
Rouge shrugged and took it as an opportunity to dump a few more things of canned food on the pile. Once Tails was away safely, Sonic glanced at the pile with some trepidation. Rouge walked up to him with the green chaos emerald in her hand.
"Oh, hey, we have three now, nice," Sonic said, taking it from her.
"I found it after the confrontation with Towers," Rouge said.
"That should help," Sonic said. "Okay, everybody hold onto something. Chaos… Control!"
They stood staring at the steel walls of the Ark hallway for about five seconds before bursting into action again. There was a cafe near the heart of the space colony. It hadn't been very popular because of the lack of windows, but it would come in handy now. Sonic was sitting in the middle of the pile, doing his best to sort out blankets and things from tools and food. Rouge was putting the pantry items on the shelves while Maria worked at seeing if they could safely power up the large refrigerator units for their spoilables, but after a point she had to admit to herself that this kind of thing was more Tails' speed.
What they really needed was some way to see what was going on. There was an emergency bridge near the heart of the colony that would have a view screen and some other things. She didn't have a lot of hope that the exterior cameras had survived fifty years of meteor showers.
"What are you thinking about?" Rouge said. "If you bite your lip any harder you're going to draw blood."
Maria opened her teeth and put a hand to her mouth. At least that old habit wasn't quite so dangerous to her health anymore. "I'm gonna go see what systems are still operational," she said. "We may have a bit of a repair list for Tails."
"In hindsight, it kind of feels like we should have done this from the beginning," Rouge said.
"I didn't want to come back," Maria said with a hard edge in her tone. The fact that they'd had to use it as an emergency base was leaving her feeling disappointed and bitter. "Now we have no choice. We'll have to make the best of it."
Rouge's gaze slid down and to the side in a rare show of guilt. The bat put a hand into her pocket. "Maria," she said quietly. "I had some unfinished business with Towers. We met at a park and had a conversation, but he wanted you to have this." She held out a nondescript USB drive.
It wouldn't work on the Ark, but she'd managed to grab Tail's laptop. Maria took the tiny storage device.
"If I had to guess, it probably has something to do with Shadow," Rouge said. "I'm not sure why else he'd want you to have it."
"I'm sorry I didn't tell you that I'd run into him," Maria said. "I should have told everyone right away."
"You clearly needed time to process," Rouge said. "And we weren't exactly expecting the alien invasion, but I get the feeling that every bit of information is going to help."
"Have you looked at it yet?" Maria asked.
Rouge smiled guiltily. "I knew you'd catch on to my ways quickly," she said. "I tried, but it's passworded. I think you'll understand when you see it."
Maria quietly took Tails' laptop with her on the way to the bridge.
Most of the systems were dormant apart from life support. The station was running cold as well, working the heaters just enough to keep the electronics from icing over and shorting out. After running some diagnostics Maria set the rooms they'd be using to a higher temperature. An alert came in that several of the exterior corridors had suffered hull breaches and had been sealed off.
Maria had dispatched a handful of repair droids before it occurred to her that they might not even be functional. She glanced over at the lights that indicated their status. Six were showing yellow which meant busy and almost all the rest were green for ready and waiting. Only a small group were showing red. With a shrug she sent two more to repair the other droids. The station was her grandfather's design. She supposed it shouldn't really surprise her that the station was in as good a condition as it was.
She turned to the viewscreen next. That turned out to be less promising. Almost all the cameras that received direct sunlight had burned out. None of the remaining ones were pointed at Mobius. She dispatched half of the remaining droids. It was a risk to have that much activity going all at once, but so was flying blind.
It was at that point that she discovered there was nothing more to do than wait. She put a hand on her pocket, feeling the USB drive inside. Well, at least she still had something to do.
Sally Acorn came to an abrupt halt, raising a closed fist as a signal for the rest of her party to do the same. Up ahead, she'd just heard a noise, and judging by the set of Bunny's ears, she'd heard it too. Telling them silently to stay put, she crept further up the hall, dropping to the filthy floor to peek around the corner.
'Well these are new,' she thought, looking at the red and black beings that were grunting and growling in the hallway. Some were a smooth black flying type, but the two big ones almost looked like they'd grown out of rock. It wasn't Eggman's usual style. The bigger problem was that they were heading her way. Pulling herself back from the corner, she booked it back to her team and directed them the other way. There was another exit, but it was facing toward the heart of Robotropolis. It wasn't ideal, but it was better than getting discovered in close quarters.
The other exit turned out to be clear, so she directed them out onto the abandoned street. Staying close to the building as much as they could with the piles of metal debris everywhere, they made it back into the more sheltered alley ways, moving swiftly and silently back towards no man's land and Knothole beyond that. For a fairly routine mission some things had already been going wrong and she could tell her away team was getting spooked. The SWATbots waiting for them at the end of the alley was the last straw. They hadn't been spotted yet.
Sally shrugged off her pack that had some of their stolen/salvaged goods inside and handed it to Bunny with a firm look. Bunny did not look happy about it, but she took the pack and shoved her arms through the straps. Sally tapped her watch twice, held up five fingers, then pumped her fist twice rapidly.
Bunny's expression went even more sour, but she saluted. She understood.
Sally was going to draw off the bots. The rest of them were to wait five seconds and then high tail it out of there. This close to no man's land, they'd make it just fine. She could look forward to Bunny's strong talk about recklessness and self preservation when she also got back.
Squaring up, Sally snuck away from her Freedom Fighters until she was sure they wouldn't be noticed. Putting her fingers into her mouth, she whistled sharply. Then waved and shouted. "Hello boys! Looking for me? Well why don't you try to catch me!"
"Priority One Squirrel!" the bots began to shout.
"I'm still a chipmunk!" Sally shouted as she took off, leading them back into the heart of Robotropolis and away from her team. It took her the better part of fifteen minutes to ditch the bots, and the chase had led her uncomfortably close to some of Eggman's main manufacturing plants. Still, it would be much easier to get only herself out of the city rather than an entire group.
Progress would be slow, and she knew Bunny was going to have her head when she got back, but she still stopped to rest when she got to a relatively safe place. It was a narrow alley heaped high on either end with industrial type garbage. Making sure to watch for anything sharp she climbed over one of the heaps. Hidden on all four sides, she sat down on a safer looking chunk of metal and let herself breathe. Staring up at the sky it struck her that the usual haze of pollution was looking particularly red that day. Maybe it would be a good idea to get some air samples to make sure Eggman wasn't trying to gas them again.
Sitting still made her aware of her other needs. She was thirsty, but her water bottle had been in the pack she gave to Bunny. It was a good incentive to get moving again. Safe water was hard to find within the boundaries of the ruined city, so she would have to wait until she got to Knothole. Well, she had half a city to cross, best get started.
SWATbots patrolled the streets in regular patterns this close to the middle. Sally knew their behavior pretty well, so she knew when to duck into a building and hide for a few minutes. On her own as she was, progress was swift, but a larger patrol was coming so she chose a door and ducked inside. It was not one of her usual hidey-holes and she was interested to look around a bit. She turned a corner and her heart flew into her mouth. Standing right in front of her was one of the strange rock beings she'd just about run into before with her team.
The creature batted her to the side with a stunning blow. Sally flew across the room and struck the wall in a deeply shadowed corner and disappeared. It looked around in confusion, searching the darkness for its prey, but the chipmunk was gone as if she'd burst into sand or the wall had swallowed her. Disappointment had the creature turning away. It would have to find dinner elsewhere.