You know it!
Don't own it!
Enjoy!
Shadow dove, rolling once on the street, picking up a fallen rifle as he came into reach. In a smooth motion, he got his finger on the trigger and aimed at a flying alien as it harassed the local law enforcement. He squeezed the trigger, the alien fell out of the sky and Shadow winced at the feel of it dying. It was like a tiny piece of himself had just been ripped away. Every single one he'd killed had felt the same way. Nothing like this had ever happened before, and he was sure it had something to do with the headache.
Whatever had happened to him had somehow linked him to these creatures. He could feel their murderous intent as if it were his own, and he felt every single death whether it was by his own hand or not. He also knew they had only come here to kill, steal and destroy, and even as their bloodlust called him like a siren song to join them, the part of him that was Shadow the Hedgehog stood in firm refusal. No matter how much it tore at him, he would send these murderous beings back to whatever hell they'd escaped from.
A sick pressure washed through his mind to turn his gun on the police officers and paint their blood on the squad cars they were using as shelter. Shadow staggered and shook his head, desperately reaching for memories of Maria's kind blue eyes as she laughed with him, or the gentle concern that shone from her heart as she tended to even the smallest of his hurts.
"Hey, I saw you take that shot," someone said loudly enough to be heard over the roaring in his mind. "You saved our buts back there! Are you okay? You're Shadow the Hedgehog, right?"
Shadow opened his eyes and looked up at the policeman. He had warm brown eyes that instantly made him think of Maria's kindness.
The man held out a hand, leaning out of cover to reach for him. "Come on!" he said. "Fighting these things is hard work! You look like you need a minute!"
Shadow took his hand and let himself be pulled into the triangle of cars. The man pressed a bottle of water into his hands and he gratefully uncapped it and gulped down half in one go. His mind felt clearer. "What's your name?" Shadow asked him.
"I'm officer Sage," he said. "That's, officer Keener and that's officer Baldwin, but we just call him Brick."
"But only if you want your teeth punched in!" Brick countered. "I'll make an exception for you since you pulled our assets out of the fire."
"You're pretty badly cut off from the others," Shadow said. "If you want to try to get back, I'll cover you."
The officers exchanged a look. They knew this was their chance. One of the squad cars wasn't starting any more, but they managed to drive two of them out. Shadow cleared the way for them using any weapon that came to hand. There was some cheering as the three wayward officers made it back to the main defense line. Shadow gave them a brief salute and ran back into the fight.
It was easy to figure out which door code Abraham meant. It was the door code to the main observation deck. Back then, it was easiest to find her there since it looked out on the stars and occasionally the planet if they were facing the right direction. She'd even managed to hide Shadow in there a few times, though she'd be surprised if Towers knew about that.
Once in, several files became available to her. A simple document was titled 'Read Me First.'
Frowning, Maria opened it wondering what his argument was. This is what she read:
To my dear friend Maria,
I hope this finds you well, I have not forgotten the struggles you faced when we were children. I suppose it goes without saying how puzzled I am to have found you alive and the same age you were when you supposedly died. I'm not sure how you did it, but my relief and gratitude far outweigh my astonishment. I missed you terribly and I am disappointed that you did not seek me out to share the good news.
All pleasantries aside, it seems the divide in our opinions on your grandfather's experiment has only grown. The other files on this drive are all the notes on Project Shadow that Professor Robotnik never shared with anyone. It took years to crack his encryptions on these notes and recordings, but the more I learned, the more justified I felt in distrusting that creature. I'm sorry Maria, but your grandfather made a deal with a demon in Shadow's creation. The files will speak for themselves, I only hope that I am not too late. The day of reckoning for his actions may already be upon us by the time you are reading my letter.
Stay safe and if you contact me, I will do whatever it takes to rescue you!
Your best friend, Abraham Towers.
He had included his personal cell phone number beneath his name. Maria sat back, letting the tone of the letter wash over her as she compared it to her interactions with the man. His attempt at emotional manipulation was clear to her, but what worried her was the fact that he fully believed this new information on Shadow would be enough to damage or even destroy her faith in her brother. More puzzling was the fact that he seemed to know that the alien invasion was going to happen. Why hadn't he warned anyone? Why keep that secret when so many lives could have been saved? She shook her head. Still, he may have just given her exactly what she needed in order to help Shadow.
The next file was a video clip. Maria decided to open it.
It was her grandfather's personal lab. Large windows along the exterior of the Ark's hull looked out on space. Mobius was visible, the usually vibrant colors of the planet dimmed by the poor video quality. Professor Gerald Robotnik stood near a pod with a plain black hedgehog in it which was hooked up to all kinds of life support systems. The only remarkable thing about the dark hedgehog was the white tuft of fur on his chest.
Maria paused the video right there. That was Shadow! He might not have had his unusual red markings yet, but she knew his face better than her own. The panel to the side was measuring his brain activity and Maria cringed. All four levels were flat. He was brain dead. She knew her grandfather. He'd have considered it a project failure.
She took a breath and started the clip again.
The professor sighed, the set of his shoulders slumping in defeat. "Continuing the audio and video log of the ultimate life form project. This will be my sixth entry for UL-2-23, on March fourteenth of the year xxxx. Unit UL-2-23 has reached full maturity without any debilitating mutations. The subject is simply… not alive. If taken off life support, there will be nothing to keep its heart beating and cell death will begin in less than four minutes. In such a condition my ability to run tests on its immune system will be limited at best. As the most successful of the second line of the ultimate life form project the conclusion I am reaching is that the secret of life has eluded me once again. It is clear that this line of-."
Maria frowned looking closer as her grandfather's body language tensed with alarm. The man took two steps back, arms coming up defensively as he stared at what Maria had first thought was just a distortion. The fact that her grandfather was reacting to it meant it wasn't a recording error or a degradation of the video.
The patch deepened in intensity and a very strange being materialized there. The three red eyes in its face burned like embers and two large horns sprouted from its head, jutting out to the sides and the sharp tips looked coated in fresh blood. It had no legs, but that didn't seem to be a problem. The Ark's artificial gravity had no effect on it and it floated there staring her grandfather down.
"Wh-what is this?" Gerald stammered. "What- who are you? How did you get in here?"
"Professor Robotnik," the creature said, its voice was what Maria would have imagined if a mountain could speak. "I am aware of your struggles with your granddaughter's health. You desire… continuance. You want a viable heir."
Maria shivered. It was talking about her.
"How do you know that?" Gerald demanded.
"Are you truly in a position to question my knowledge when I have the solution to your problem?" the being asked.
Gerald crossed his arms. "Perhaps I don't trust strange beings who intrude upon my private lab spaces," he said. "You haven't even told me your name!"
The creature's laughter sent chills down Maria's spine.
"You have spirit," it said. "This is why I have chosen you, professor. I also have a desire that can be met in this being you are attempting to bring to life. My name does not translate well into your language, the closest I can say is Black Destiny or Fate or Doom if you will."
"Black Doom then," Gerald said. "If you are anything like me, you do not hand out favors for free. Suppose for a moment that I am willing to sacrifice anything for my granddaughter's life. What do you want with my project, and be honest! I will not enter into any bargain unless I know all the details."
Black Doom laughed again. "Very well," he said. "My children are sleeping for now, but when they wake, they will be hungry, and this being will have knowledge of life on this planet by the time we return. We are also interested in the chaos emeralds as a source of power. He could get them for us."
"I see, I see," Gerald said, nodding and fiddling with the end of one side of his mustache. "So your motivations are purely selfish. You will grant my petty little wish in return for the key to this planet's destruction. When will your children awaken?"
"In fifty of your planet's cycles around its star, the Black Comet will make another pass," Black Doom said. "Your form is frail, its time is limited. You will not see it happen."
Gerald frowned. "And what would it take to bring this project to life?" he asked.
"My own blood," Doom said, producing a black vial from his tattered robes. He held it out to Gerald who took it with a little hesitance.
"What do I do with it?" Gerald asked turning the vial this way and that, and Maria was now able to see that the vial itself wasn't black, the liquid inside it was.
"When my blood runs in his veins, his very nature will change and that will give him the spark of life you are looking for," Doom said. "His superior nature may be the key to your granddaughter's salvation, but that will be up to you to discover."
"So it may not even work," Gerald said, crossing his arms.
"And how have your other lines of research been going?" Doom asked.
Gerald sighed and moved over to his work table. Taking an empty syringe, he fit the vial into place.
Maria cringed. The needle he was using was meant to go straight into the heart.
Gerald opened the pod next and stabbed the needle deep into Shadow's body. The hedgehog didn't even twitch. With steady pressure, the professor depressed the plunger until the vial was empty. Then he closed the pod and looked up, but Doom had already vanished.
Gerald held up the needle revealing that he'd held back just a tiny amount of Doom's blood. Her grandfather muttered something bad temperedly and raised his voice at the end enough to be heard. "...and don't call me old!"
He took the sample to his desk with the clear intent to begin studying it. He set down the syringe just as several alarms went off on Shadow's pod. Shadow's body began to jerk and thrash as if he were reacting to some terrible pain. Gerald hurried over and punched a button that would administer a painkiller, but it didn't seem to have an effect. The hedgehog continued to writhe until his struggles weakened to nothing. The heart monitor which had been showing a dangerously elevated heart rate turned to a flat line.
Gerald stared at his project. Five seconds passed, and he turned away, shoulders once more slumped in defeat.
There was a green flash in the window.
Maria frowned and paused the video again, taking it back a few seconds. She slowed the play back so she could watch it frame by frame. Had that been a lens flare?
As the images ticked by, Maria focused on the windows and her mouth dropped open in shock as an intense green light flared to life on the planet's surface. Could that have been the Master Emerald?
She pulled the video back and resumed it at normal speed.
After the flash, the life support sensors announced that Shadow had a heart beat. The hedgehog gasped, pulling air hard against the ventilator as he tried to breathe on his own. Gerald dropped everything again and hurried to the pod, opening it to pull the breathing tube and several other now unnecessary wires and needles.
Maria already knew what happened next, but she kept watching anyway.
An eight year old version of herself walked into the frame. "Grandfather, grandfather!" the girl said. "Who is that?"
Gerald gave a guilty start, but seemed to relax immediately, though he closed Shadow back into the pod to give the black and red hedgehog a chance to recover from his rude awakening. "Maria, this is UL-2-23," he said. "I have just created him. I'm hoping he will help us find your cure."
"What kind of a name is that?" little Maria asked as older Maria mouthed the words along with her. "I think we should call him… Shadow!"
Gerald shrugged a little helplessly.
Little Maria approached the pod, pressing her hands to the glass as she leaned in close. "Hello, Shadow!"
The clip ended.
Maria giggled a little wetly as she used her sleeves to wipe away her tears. Black Doom aside, it had been an emotional experience to see Shadow's first moments again, and most certainly not in the way Towers had intended. Her faith in her brother was unshaken. Like her, Shadow had not been given any choice in his relatives.
She sat back in her chair, mind buzzing with all the new information, and the questions she now knew to ask. One thought suddenly had her heart turning over and her fingers going cold. It didn't matter to her of course, but how was she going to tell Shadow?
A proximity alarm sounded and Maria set the laptop aside in a hurry, fingers flying across the bridge controls as she tried to figure out what was approaching. Fortunately some of the cameras had been replaced at that point and she could put it on the viewscreen. It was the Tornado. Maria relaxed. Sonic would be happy. Tails was safe.
She stood up to go let the others know about the fox's arrival, the laptop tucked safely under her arm.
Sally came to with a start, but she stayed still keeping her eyes closed as she attempted to figure out what was going on. She remembered ducking into a building to hide from a group of SWATbots. That's right, there had been that strange red and black rock creature. It hit her and then…
Well. Her hands and legs were free, and the space around her was dark and quiet. Opening her eyes, she discovered that either she'd gone blind, or it was so dark that she might as well have been. "Nicole," she whispered. "Lights."
Her wrist console lit up. It was a bit feeble but it was still better than nothing.
It looked like she was in an elevator. The doors were open leading out to a hallway perhaps?
"Nicole?" Sally asked. "What happened? How did I get here?"
"You are not as displaced as you think," Nicole said. "When the creature struck you, you flew approximately seven feet and hit the controls for this elevator which descended before the creature could find you. You got lucky."
"I thought you said you didn't believe in luck," Sally said, grunting a little as she sat up to examine her new lumps.
"I do now," Nicole said.
"What is this place anyway?" Sally asked after she determined she was alright.
"It is the basement of the building you are in," Nicole said.
"You are so helpful," Sally said sarcastically.
"Any time," Nicole replied.
Sally stood up and held her wrist before her as she peered into the dark hallway. The place was worryingly clean. Eggman didn't care about the rest of the city, but the area's he frequented stayed free of debris. She took a step out of the elevator and jumped out of her fur when the lights came on.
"Nicole?" Sally said, heart thumping in her chest.
"No alerts detected," Nicole said. "I believe the lights respond to motion only."
Sally let out a breath. "This is definitely one of Eggman's hidey holes," she said.
"Judging by the layer of dust on the floor, I'd say he hasn't used it in some time," Nicole said. "This may be an opportunity."
"Bunny's gonna kill me when I get back," Sally said. "Let's get any information we can find and get out of here."
"A wise course of action," Nicole confirmed.
Sally made her way cautiously down the hall. It opened up into a larger room and only a brief glance told her it was a lab. The details, however, were a bit more sinister. An exam table dominated one end of the room. It was equipped with a full set of restraints. There were several IV stands and she identified a centrifuge on one counter. There was more equipment she couldn't identify. Still, whatever happened here was painful for somebody.
An entire wall of the lab was dedicated to cages. Morbid curiosity drove her closer. They were too small for a full sized overlander, but they were about perfect for an average sized Mobian. Sally shuddered and was about to turn away when something caught her eye. There was a blanket in one of the cages. Poking out of the folds of cloth was something brown. A twig?
Sally reached in and pulled it out, holding it up to examine it. She dropped it like a hot rock when she realized what it was. It was a hedgehog quill, and it was disturbingly close in color to the friend who'd gone missing so long ago.
"Nicole, I want every last byte of data you can dig up," Sally said. "We're not leaving until we have all of it!"