Stage Eight: Space Gadget

With a pop and a sickening, cold feeling, the ship was gone and the stars were around me. Cold, uneven metal floated under my feet, and a planet as cool and blue as I was moved miles underneath that.

He was there, waiting for me. Of course.

"What is this place?"

"This is the ARK. Don't you remember it, Shadow?" I held out my arms, looking around. The platforms floated everywhere, held in place by some kind of magnetic field… Long patches of metal roads the scientists would arrange to drive out into the debris field to harvest materials. Long yellow spires, still functioning after fifty years, stuck out of the platforms, lighting our way. Everywhere around us debris sparkled as it started to descend into the atmosphere, burning up."We raced here last time, you and I. If you could call it a race."

"Last time?"

"When you tried to destroy the earth. When you tried to kill everybody."

He put his hands on his hips, raising an eyebrow. "Everybody?"

"Everybody. The whole damn planet. Come on, chase me. See if you remember."

I took off running, valulting to the next platform.

"This is pointless! What are we racing for?"

"The last emerald!" I shouted back, turning my head to look as I hit a gravity switch. I immediately regretted it. Gravity switched on me, turning my stomach; it took everything I had to keep myself together. I twisted in the air, moving my feet so I would land on them, upside down. Shadow landed after me. Of course.

"Why are you telling me where it is?" he snarled, leaping ahead of me. He wouldn't get far. I knew where I was going, and I was pretty sure he didn't.

"'Cause it's not a race if there isn't a prize!"

I had to stay in control of the situation. I had to string him along. Get him where I wanted him. I had to seem like I had no idea…

"You're a fool if you think I won't take it!"

"You'll have to beat the fastest thing alive there!"

I jumped from platform to platform, triggering switch after switch, confusing him. I remembered them better than he did. He struggled to keep up, always a step behind me, and all I wanted to do was beat him. The most elaborate route, the best trick, the quickest movements. Keep thinking five steps ahead. Never stop to think about why, never pause. Notice everything else first. Play The Game. The cool purple light in the shielded protection tunnels, there for when the colony moved through a patch of debris. The feeling of the etched metal underneath my feet with every step. There were GUN robots there, looking for us, shooting at us, unable to differentiate between Shadow and me; I dodged them deftly; he took shots at them, but none landed. Good.

I could hear Doom there, whispering to Shadow… an uninvited eavesdropper. Just what was Doom anyway? I could feel him urging Shadow on to destroy, but I was too great a distraction, turning flips in the air, rotating with every turn of the gravity, regretting everything I'd ever eaten in the last week. I let the pounding in my head coarse through my veins, truly felt it, embracing it, anything to keep but thinking about where I wanted to be, where I wanted him to be, what I planned to do. We ran through corridors inside the ARK, through the same hallway where I'd given myself up to the artificial chaos in my nightmare. I could almost see her there, watching us, hand over her chest. We ran through the power systems, lasers singeing my spines. There were black aliens everywhere but I paid them no mind. They weren't my problem; they weren't my demons.

It had taken him nearly five minutes to reach the point I wanted him. He stood there, at the end of a walkway, no road or spring or obvious way out in sight. The Black Comet burned in the starry sky above us, red; the earth glowed in the sky below us, blue. The earth was me and the comet was him; how could such a little thing…

"Where the hell is it, Sonic?" Shadow demanded of me, baring his teeth.

I laughed. Threw back my head and laughed, so hard I wanted to brace myself on my knees. I had to stay positive, had to stay laughing. What was coming was going to be a trip. "There was no emerald, Shadow. I just wanted you to race me."

"You… you have the emerald! On you!"

"Sure do."

"Why here? Why race you all the way out here?" He put his head to his hand. "I don't understand you.. how could you trick me? You won't even use a gun…"

I walked up to him, face to face, nose to nose. I couldn't feel his breath. "I'm surprised you couldn't figure it out, Shad. I brought you out here becuase if you average out the place the ship was and the place the others expect me to go, this is the furthest safe point from there." I smiled, grinned, a wicked grin; I wondered how much I looked like Eggman.

Shadow took a step back. "Why would you move me away from your friends?"

"Because you're a danger to them. Because you're not stable enough to be around them. How do I know you're not going to try and kill them, like you tried the whole world?"

He snarled at me, getting up in my face, poking at my chest. "I don't just kill things, Sonic! I have no reason to hurt Tails!"

"Why Tails?" I taunted him. "Why not Amy?"

"I wouldn't hurt her either unless she gave me reason!"

I turned my back to him, laughing. "Why can't you see what's so obvious? I've been humoring you for so long…"

"Sonic, I don't give a damn about my word, but I promise you: your friends would have to do something to me for me to kill them. If you're going to fight me, fight me for yourself."

Well, that was an odd insight coming from him. Things were murkier than I thought they were. Lines were blurring. Good thing I ran with the worst case scenario.

I chuckled. "Of course I'm doing this for myself. Everyone does everything for themselves. I want to be able to look myself in the mirror every day, knowing I put my friends first."

"That's your way. Mine is to be in control. If you hand me the emerald, we don't have to fight."

I didn't respond with words; I charged at him arms out, trying to grab him. He caught my arms in his and pushed back, pushing me backward, roaring, his gun clattering to the ground. Every beat of his heart, ever thump of his pulse in his thumb on the knuckle of my finger, made my head hurt more. I pushed back, holding my ground, until I thought I could hold no more, until I thought I would lose it in his face.

Then I whispered, in my softest voice, "Shadow, please."

His eyebrows shot up, but he pushed back, still.

"Shadow, please…" I whispered, reaching up as high as my voice could take me, feeling my throat strain, "I need your help… "

"Maria," he whispered, his arms relaxing.

I threw his hands off and wrapped my arms around his waist, running as fast as I could. The air exploded around me with nowhere near the force I was used to, and I hoped Tails and the others wouldn't hear the Sonic boom as I leapt off the platform into nothing. I closed my eyes and held onto him tightly, trying to hold a shadow, waiting for it to be over, for the fall to stop or the burning to begin.

"Sonic!" I heard a voice cry.

I looked, suddenly, and Tails was there, on the platform I'd just left, hands reaching out to me, tails spinning behind him. He knew he couldn't fly in this thin atmosphere. He knew there was nothing he could do. I could almost see the tears forming in his blue eyes. But then a black and white shape came up next to him, smiling.

"Rouge!" Shadow called to her. Or was I the one screaming? I couldn't tell.

She started laughing, giggling, bringing that slender hand up to her mouth. Tails turned to her, standing on his tiptoes to get up in her face, nose to nose, teeth bared. But then she pointed just past me and her lips moved. He followed her fingers with his eyes, which widened, until his his shoulders slumped, relieved.

I wondered how he could relax, given what I'd just done.

Then gravity shifted again, violently, more strongly than I ever expected, more dramatically than the gravity devices ever did. Of course. How could I forget. Knuckles had told me about it. The far reaches of the Meteor Herd. Mad Space… What I'd leapt toward wasn't the Black comet at all; it was one of the ARK's mining operations with its own gravitational field. I wasn't going to fly up in space, or burn up on re-entry. I was going to crash. Apparently, if Tails was relaxing, I was going to survive it, too.

I tried to right myself, but it was too late. Wrangling with Shadow, wrangling with my thoughts, the suddenness of it all, a sudden need to change the plan. I couldn't move my feet fast enough. The ground hit me.