Chapter 4 - Shadows in the dark

"Where...where am I?" Shadow muttered sitting himself up. Shadow panicked when he noticed his hands were in shackles made of fire! But he forced himself to calm down when he noticed that they weren't actually burning him. His head was pounding and he could feel something warm trickling down his face. Shadow touched his head and winced, he looked down at his hand which now had a few drops of blood on it.

"Oh, great" he said to himself. "Wait a second, where's Tails?" Shadow looked around. The small room was made of solid metal and Shadow somehow knew that it was incredibly thick. There wasn't even a door. There was a small room in the corner, which Shadow guessed was the toilet. The main light came from a tiny window, which was incredibly high up and had bars made from fire. Shadow realised that he was on the top of a bunk bed. He carefully climbed down and saw Tails lying on the bottom bunk.

"Tails," Shadows breathed. Beginning to climb down to him, he stopped as he heard an evil laugh. "Who are you? Show yourself," Shadow demanded. Looking around the room frantically with clenched fists. The front wall suddenly disappeared revealing the bars of a cage. Stood in front of the bars was the same Komodo Dragon that had threatened Tails earlier.

"I said, Who are you? And what do you want?" Shadow growled, rapidly losing his patience.
"My name is Karn, and I came to give you this," He said throwing a roll of bandage at Shadow, who caught it with his sharp reflexes. Shadow knew this wasn't the real reason that Karn had come and that it was probably to check they hadn't escaped, but Shadow kept quiet. He had more important things to deal with, like Tails.

Shadow turned and ignored the Dragon. He was the reason Tails needed a bandage on the first place, so he didn't see any reason why he should grateful.
"Worthless," Karn sneered. Shadows anger began to rise, but as his anger rose so did the temperature of the shackles. Shadow had to force himself to calm down and focus on helping Tails.
"It is you that is worthless, not me. I've got friends that care. All I see are men that fear you," Shadow said boldly. The metal wall quickly returned as if Karn had nothing to say in reply. Shadow smirked and crouched down beside Tails to look at his side.

"Tails.. Can you hear me?" Shadow said gently shaking his shoulder. Tails began to come round.
"Shadow... Ouch, It really hurts," Tails managed weakly.
"I know Tails, I know," Shadow said gently. "Your lucky, it's just a flesh wound and nothing too serious," Shadow explained. Shadow helped Tails sit up and began to bandage his wound. Shadow was forced to leave the old bit of bandage on, as it may have caused the bleeding to stop, removing it would just reopen the wound and put Tails in more danger.

"What happened to you?" Shadow asked.

"Two guys came into the workshop. They started talking about making an immortal army and getting the Emeralds. When they threatened Knuckles, I was about to leave but I made a bit of a racket. Then they came to get me. But I fell on some glass as I was fighting," Tails slowly explained.

Tails lay back down and began to fall asleep again but Shadow made sure Tails slept on his good side to slow the bleeding down. Poor Tails couldn't stay awake. Shadow knew that he probably felt ill from losing a fair amount of blood and the stress and fear didn't exactly help to rest , but Shadow understood and left him to sleep.

Shadow noticed four blankets at the bottom of the bed. He managed to roll one of the blankets up and put it under Tails's head to serve as a pillow and put the other one over him, to serve as a blanket.
Shadow kept the other two blankets for himself, and lay on his bed in the darkness, hoping that help would come soon. They needed it...