CHAPTER 2

"What happened?"

Shadow jumped at Tails' voice. He turned to see the small fox at the base of the stairs, his eyes wide as he pointed to Shadow's ankle. "Did you cut yourself? What happened?"

"Nothing." Shadow stalked off to the kitchen, where he stripped his shoe and sock off and started washing the blood away with a paper towel. "Go back to bed. It's only three in the morning."

"I thought I heard gunshots. They didn't see you, did they?"

"Obviously not. This blood isn't mine."

"Then who's is it?"

Shadow didn't say anything. He began wiping the blood off the side of his shoe.

"Did anyone die?"

"Go away, Tails!" Shadow hissed.

The fox hesitated for a few seconds, and then turned and climbed the stairs. Shadow knew he wouldn't let this matter drop, as soon as morning came he would be back and demanding to know.

Shadow eventually made his way upstairs and collapsed in his bed, somehow finding his way into a dream where GUN soldiers were coming after him, blood dripping from their mouths and multiple wounds. He tried to kill them with whatever he could find, but they would deflect the blows as though they didn't feel anything. They finally tightened their bloodstained fingers around his neck and shoved him against the wall, smiling evilly as he struggled to breathe. Shadow actually felt his lungs give out and the would went white…

Shadow sat up suddenly and stared around the brightened room, relieved it was just a dream. He had slept longer than he had thought, it was almost nine thirty.

After finding a pair of non-bloodstained socks and gloves, he made his way downstairs, where the smell of pancakes greeted him. Amy was at the stove and Sonic was trying to make a second batch of batter, but from the dark gray look of what was in the bowl…he wasn't doing very well.

"This is why women work in the kitchen…" Sonic muttered, dropping the flour on the floor, sending a white cloud rising in the air.

"Hey, remember that knives are kept here." Amy said.

Tails came running into the kitchen, holding some sort of device and looking extremely proud of himself. "Look at this! It can detect any traces of energy in an area! I figured we could use it to find Chaos Emeralds."

"Can you make something that can make pancake batter?" Sonic growled, cleaning up the last of the flour. He threw the paper towel at the sink and missed, hitting the flour again and sending it crashing to the ground again in a flash of white.

"No. Sorry," Tails laughed.

Shadow snickered, earning himself a very dangerous glance from Sonic. "Watch it, man, or Amy'll have you making the next batch."

"To tell you the truth, I don't trust Shadow at all." Amy said. "No offence."

"None taken."

Tails put the device on the table and went to help Sonic clean up the flour for the second time. "Something happened last night." He said.

"Like what?" Amy asked.

"Shadow came into the house last night after I heard gunshots. His ankle was covered in blood that wasn't his."

"There were soldiers," Shadow sighed. "I watched them prowl through the woods nearby when someone attacked them. They finally brought their attacker down…but not before whoever it was passed some sort of disease on to the soldiers. They…changed. Their eyes were dark and they didn't seem to feel pain."

Silence covered the kitchen.

"Could that be why there's so many soldiers around here?" Sonic asked.

"That's probably the only reason." Amy turned her attention back on the stove, where small wisps of smoke were beginning to curl out from under a neglected pancake.

"Sounds like whatever disease this guy had is really bad." Tails finished cleaning up the flour and picked up his invention again. "Maybe we should be worried."

"Yet another thing GUN has 'completely under control'." Shadow muttered. "I bet they started this in the first place as some sort of weapon."

"I think we should do something." Sonic said at last.

"Like what? Join GUN? I think not."

"No, I'm thinking of warning everyone. I bet you GUN hasn't told anyone about what's been happening, as usual. They have a right to know if they encounter a murderous, bloodthirsty madman in the middle of the night."

"On the other hand this could cause mass hysteria." Shadow pointed out. "So warning them will just cause another probablem."

"I'm just trying to help!" Sonic said loudly.

"I don't think 'help' will do anything here."

"Listen, I'll tell a soldier about what happened last night and leave you completely out of it, ok Shadow? I'll tell him to try to warn others and be on the lookout for anyone suspicious. Now for the time being, let's eat." Amy brought a tall pile of pancakes over to the table and the four of them dug in.

"Best food ever," Tails announced after three minuets of complete silence as everyone stuffed their faces.

"Thank you." Amy muttered before the silence resumed.

XxXxXxXx

The Commander stepped into the lab to be greeted by the skinny scientist who had originally told him the news of the virus.

"Seven infected, one dead." The scientist announced, his expression never changing. "We have all of them and are running tests right now."

"What have you got?" The Commander asked.

"This way, sir,"

They walked further into the lab until they came to a pristine white table lined with papers, microscopes, and test tubes. Three scientists looked up momentarily and then resumed work. The scientist leading the Commander went to the last station and slid a slide onto the microscope's stage.

"Take a look, sir."

Small green dots were clustering around a single red blood cell, morphing it into a spiked prism and then moving on to more cells. Each spiked cell began to emit long strands of something so darkly purple it almost appeared black. The strands began to weave in and out of the infected cells until it reached the end of the microscope, where it disappeared.

"We can't have this uncontained even in the lab. It's making a gaseous form of itself and slowly mixing in with the air. With the soldiers in there…the virus is literally coming out of their pores and contaminating the air. Breathe in too much of it, and it can turn you into what they've become." The scientist explained grimly.

"Where are the soldiers now?" The Commander asked, stepping away from the microscope so the scientist could get rid of the specimen.

"This way, sir,

The Commander followed him until they came to a locked door that demanded identification. After flashing it by a scanner, the door opened and they proceeded into a small room divided by thick glass. A few men and women glanced up from their clipboards but then went back to their work.

Behind the glass and shackled firmly to the wall were the infected men. The dead Mobian lay in the corner of the room, unmoving. All the prisoners of the disease seemed to be screaming, but the glass was too thick to make out any words.

"Even if we could save them from this disease, they wouldn't remember who they were…or anything at all. It has some sort of effect on the brain, wiping it completely clean and replacing everything with thoughts of murder, even worse than we had anticipated."

The Commander nodded, staring at each of the soldiers in turn. His gaze settled on one. "He was my finest officer." He sighed at last. "These were some of my finest men."

"I'm truly sorry, Commander, but at the moment there's nothing we can do." The scientist said.

"Do you have a lead on anything?"

"Yes, sir, actually…we believe the first step to killing this virus off is with water. If the bloodstream is diluted enough, we may be able to slow the spread of the disease and work from there."

"Use that theory and get to work. We have a world to save."

XxXxXxXx

Shadow was once again on the rooftops, staring out over the miniature lights glistening in the houses down the street. He was watching for anything that seemed to be suspicious, anything at all. So far nothing out of the ordinary had arisen.

They had the professor. They no doubt wanted information on everything he was working on. I knew that he was the last person alive that I could protect. I located GUN's base within the day and set out to find them. The professor must live.

Shadow tore himself out of the memory and stared up at the sky, where small lights that matched the houses were glowing. Somewhere up there…the ARK was still orbiting. Somewhere…

Getting past security wasn't a probablem. Getting past the roadblocks wasn't a probablem. The probablem would be getting the soldiers to release the professor without harming him. I knew I would have to fight.

Why did this all have to happen? Even if the professor survived the ordeal at the base, he would still be dead by now.

"Make a move and he dies." A soldier shouted, jamming a pistol into the professor's temple. The old man didn't make any sound, but I could tell he was terrified. He looked awful, having lost everything important to him within three hours. I held my pistol at my side; the pistol that had killed Maria.

Shadow glanced to his side, where the same pistol lay. All these years it had been kept, as if it was waiting for him to return. Like it never wanted him to forget.

I walked slowly into the room. I knew the soldier was bluffing. He needed the professor alive to access the codes up on the ARK. I lifted my gun and aimed it at his head, saying, "Now drop you gun and I don't shoot."

The soldier hesitated; that was all I needed. In one smooth move I lunged at him and knocked him out of the way, grabbing his gun as he fell. I aimed both weapons at him and said, "This is for everyone." Before shooting.

Shadow could see the images as they unfolded again in his mind. Every sight, sound, touch. Everything… like it had happened minuets ago. Why did this have to happen?

I freed the professor before they came. Twenty guards entered the room, armed with every type of weapon I could name. they began shooting at me, narrowly missing the professor. I moved away from him so he would be less in danger and returned fire, downing at least five before the soldier I had shot earlier managed to dig a knife into the back of my leg. I went down and they attacked.

He still had the scar. The scars. Well hidden but still there. Never to fade, like the memory.

Knives and guns drawn, they mercilessly stabbed at or pistol-whipped me. I tried in vain to fight them off, but the sheer number of them was overwhelming. Both guns dropped from my hands but they didn't stop with their torture. I could hear the professor trying to drag them away from me, but the soldiers were too strong. Gashes appeared on my back, my sides, my arms, my chest…everywhere. Someone drove the heel of his boot into my ribs. Something cracked inside of me, making breathing difficult and nearly impossible.

Shadow could recall the pain that still haunted him in his dreams. The pain of both losing everything and the pain inflicted by the soldiers. He tried to stop the memories from coming, but they wouldn't stop. Not even in his dreams.

When I was barely hanging onto consciousness the beating stopped. I peered out from one eye, the other swollen and blood-filled. I barely made out the professor as he was held back by soldiers. I reached out one shaking and bloodstained arm in his direction and tried to threaten the soldiers into letting him go. Instead blood welled up in my throat and I began to cough, staining the ground around me an even deeper red. Someone roughly dragged me across the ground and threw me into a small, metal cage. My back hit the wall and I lay there, unmoving, drifting in and out of consciousness as the cage bumped back and fourth, sometimes sending me crashing into the opposite wall.

At last the door opened and two figures swam into view, one dressed in a soldiers' uniform and the other dressed in white. "I thought I told you not to harm him!" The whitecoat said firmly.

"Couldn't be helped." The soldier dragged me out of the cage and threw me onto a nearby table. He locked my arms and legs in place with metal and then went on addressing my wounds with a stinging substance that burned worse than the original pain. My broken ribs couldn't be treated at the moment, but the whitecoat seemed to take notice of my pain.

The last thing I remembered for fifty years was his face above me as he injected something into my arm.

It was true. Maria's death hadn't been five months ago…it had been fifty years. Shadow glanced down at the dim outline of the gun lying next to him and the image of her collapsing dead on the ground filled his sight, only to vanish just as quickly as it had come. Time couldn't heal some wounds.

"Hey, Shadow?"

Shadow jumped about a foot in the air and grabbed his pistol, only to realize that Sonic had climbed out the window after him. He hissed in annoyance. "What do you want?"

"Nothing really. I just can't sleep. What's up?"

"None of your business."

"I think it's my business if you're sitting out here with a gun. I thought you got over the suicidal thoughts a few months ago." Sonic leaned against the chimney.

"It's not like that." Shadow growled.

"Then why are you sitting out here with a gun?"

"I'll tell you if you answer my question." Shadow retorted.

"All right. What is it?" Sonic asked.

"Why are you, Amy and Tails all sharing a home? I mean, you're not married, and I sure hope to hell that Tails isn't your kid."

"Uh…long story."

"I have time."

"Tails doesn't have parents. Well…parents that are alive, anyway. I honestly can't remember how he met me, but he's been tagging along ever since. Without him, I would probably be dead." Sonic said. "And as for Amy…"

"I'm not so sure I want to hear this part."

"Not cool, man," Sonic slugged Shadow. "it's not like that! I can't stand to be around her sometimes! It's just I can't find a place to stay and she offered me a few rooms in the house."

"I was expecting a lot worse." Shadow snickered.

"Shut up,"

There was a short pause in which Shadow began laughing. Sonic shot him a dirty look, but it went unseen in the dark. So he said, "Now why are you sitting out here with a gun?"

Shadow's laugh died almost immeadentally. He hesitated for a few seconds and then said bluntly, "After what happened last night I think I should watch over the forest."

"There's more to it, isn't there?"

Shadow flung the pistol at Sonic. "This gun killed Maria."

"Why do you still have it?" Sonic caught it awkwardly and it fell from his grasp onto the roof.

"Because it can also take the lives of the people that killed her."

Silence. The only sound was a siren in the distance. Sonic said softly, "I thought Maria was killed by some sort of disease. Why did you lie to us?"

"So you, Amy and Tails wouldn't get caught up in all this hell like I was." Shadow muttered, staring back up at the sky.

Sonic picked up the pistol again and looked at it in the dim light for a short time. "This is an older gun…I don't think I've ever seen this kind before. And as far as I know…GUN doesn't use this sort."

Shadow didn't say anything.

"This is confusing. So Maria was killed by GUN, who somehow had this sort of old-fashioned pistol, and now you have it and are planning to murder everyone who killed her. Right? And if…" Sonic trailed off for a second. "Why are you staring up at the sky?"

Shadow still didn't say anything.

Sonic followed his gaze to see a tiny pinprick of light making its way across the heavens, slowly crossing the sky until it vanished behind some trees.

"Do you know what that was?" Sonic asked. "Because I'm pretty sure that was the ARK. It was shut down fifty years ago after some incident and a lot of people were killed…"

Realization clicked.

"But…that was fifty years ago!" Sonic shouted, mostly to himself. Shadow clapped a hand over his mouth.

"Dammit, do you want every GUN soldier in the neighborhood surrounding the house?"

"You have some major explaining to do." Sonic muttered.

Shadow backed off and stared at the sky again, where the small star-like light had vanished. "Professor Gerald Robotnik. Ever heard of him?"

"Once or twice." Sonic said.

"How about the Ultimate Life Form?"

Sonic's eyes widened and he said slowly, "How do I know this has to do with you?"

"Call it intuition."

"Right…Oh, this is stupid. I'm putting all these random thoughts together and I'm coming up with you're the Ultimate Life Form." Sonic facepalmed. "I sort of didn't get enough sleep last night, so-"

"You're right." Shadow said darkly.

"Wait…what?"

"Do you know what my first and only instructions were once I was awakened? I was to destroy the whole of GUN. If I didn't meet Maria first…I probably would have gone off and done that. But once she was killed I wanted to go back to the instructions and bring it a step further…killing all the humans except for my creator. I was brought down trying to rescue the professor and locked in suspended animation for fifty…damn…years." Shadow hissed angrily.

"How'd you escape?"

"The professor's grandson freed me from the prison."

"You can't be serious." Sonic started laughing, taking Shadow a bit by surprise. "Eggman? No way…"

Shadow sat back, crossed his arms, and if looks could kill…Sonic would be dead.

"On the other hand…that's sort of bad." Sonic said, talking more to himself than the hedgehog in front of him. "I mean, he doesn't really have any good morals or anything…"

"I eventually sent him on a wild goose chase and ended up meeting you at some point and renting out that apartment. Everything clear now?" Shadow hissed.

"For the most part…" Sonic said thoughtfully. "And now GUN knows you're free and they're after you?"

"I think their main concern is the strange virus that changed the soldiers. I haven't caused anyone harm yet, but as soon as I do…they'll find me," Shadow glanced towards the forest. "but for now I think I'm safe."

A scratching sound caught their attention. Shadow carefully crawled around the rooftop to the opposite side they were on and glanced down to see someone at the door. But this person seemed to have difficulty with doors and could only scratch at them with overlong, bloody nails…

"Sonic, get me my gun!" Shadow hissed. "Now! There's one of them at the door!"

Sonic quickly joined Shadow at the other side and handed him his pistol. Shadow took brief aim and shot the diseased soldier directly in the top of the head. He collapsed and didn't move as a small puddle of blood blossomed underneath him. Shadow jumped down and landed silently behind the corpse, nudging it with his shoe.

"Is he dead?" Sonic asked.

"At last." Shadow confirmed. "Whatever this disease does, it seemed to make them mindless."

Footsteps were heard coming down the street. A wailing siren joined the noise and Shadow ducked into the bushes before a strong searchlight was trained on the dead soldier on the doorstep. Sonic backed up and lay flat on the roof, which concealed him enough so he wouldn't be spotted.

"There was a gunshot!" A soldier was shouting. "And then this!"

"Another infected," A calmer voice said. "I wonder who knew to take him out."

"We'll worry about that later, sir. We have to get his body out of here before the disease takes completely to the air."

Shadow held his breath and watched as two soldiers picked up the dead one and carried him off. Another soldier came and washed the front step off with the same strong smelling liquid that was used to clean the trees a few nights earlier. Shadow barely managed to keep from sneezing.

"Let's go." A soldier said.

"Not yet. Look at the door, it wasn't opened. Someone shot from the outside." The calm voice said. "So they might still be around here."

Shadow risked moving slowly back further into the bush. A few soldiers began to spread out and one passed directly in front of Shadow's sight. If he had glanced to the right…The Ultimate Life Form might have been forced to silence him forever.

He didn't dare move in case there were still soldiers gathered around their vehicle. If any one of them saw him and managed to survive and get the word out, he would be forced to run.

"Any news on Squadron Six?" someone asked.

"They're doing fine. No trouble for the past week. They've got it good." Another voice responded. "I envy them."

"What about the others?"

"I think they've run into as much trouble as we have. At least this disease hasn't found a way to spread very quickly."

"No, I was wondering about the others that have the assignment of bringing down the professor's project."

Shadow strained his ears for anything else. He might be able to find out some valuable information.

"Oh, them," The second voice chuckled. "they've got nothing to worry about. That advanced weaponry of theirs is incredible. No one could escape that."

"What if it gets the disease?" The first voice asked nervously.

"Even if it does, it won't be able to get through the defenses."

"What if it does what it did earlier…we have it surrounded and then it just…vanishes?"

"We simply track the power source. The only reason we haven't found it yet is because someone didn't have the device up and running. Damn recruits, they never do anything right."

"What'll happen to it once we capture it?"

"That's up to the scientists, but I think I heard that they plan to dissect it. Alive and conscious."

XxXxXxXx

The groups of soldiers reunited and left with hardly a trace. The only clue of them ever being there was the wet pavement on the front doorstep. Shadow must have waited an hour in case they came back before he moved out of the bushes and made his way back onto the roof.

"I heard every word they said." Sonic said solemnly. "For a moment I thought they actually got you when you didn't come back up here. Don't do that again."

"It's my life at stake." Shadow growled. "Do you think I'm going to be careless?"

"I don't know, you have this weird way of doing things." Sonic made his way back to the window. "I'm going in. It's sort of cold out here."

The sky was beginning to light up with the early morning's sunlight. Shadow just nodded and took up watching the forest and streets again, his thoughts clouded with GUN and their plans.

XxXxXxXx

Wow, talk about a lot of flashbacks. Anyway, this chapter was mostly for what happened in the past, and there should be no more flashbacks later on. Reviews are welcomed! NO FLAMES! FLAME ME AND I RELEASE IBLIS!

Oh, yeah, updates every Saturday…or Sunday…just at some point over the weekend, all right?

Hasta la Vista, Readers.

Lordoftheghostking28