A deathly silence hung over the campsite. All available lamps and flashlights had been lit, and the kids' tent had been opened as wide as it could. Down the back of the tent, where there should have been a canvas wall, was a long jagged gash in the fabric.
The children were still in their sleeping bags, seemingly asleep, but Tails was frozen in an odd position, as if he had tried to climb out and fallen asleep in the midst of doing so. Blaze was still seated, but bent over, one hand on her heart and the other pressed over her mouth, her eyes tightly shut. Amy was shaking Cream gently, but the little rabbit made no move.
"I already tried," said Silver desperately. "Nothing wakes them! It's like living death!"
"But they are not asleep," said Espio, crouching at Charmy's side. "Their bodies are not relaxed, but incredibly tense. They are paralyzed."
"Paralyzed—but—but—why?"
"I do not know. Perhaps shock, perhaps venom, perhaps even a nerve-pressure attack."
There was another chilling silence.
"Something's got to wake them!" blurted Knuckles. "They're alive, they're breathing, there are no marks on them—something's got to wake them up!"
"We could try," said Espio, his face troubled. "But don't go to extreme lengths; we still do not know their condition fully."
"Just—just shake them, just try a little harder," pleaded Silver, kneeling by Marine's side.
Espio bit his lip and bowed his head silently, giving his permission to try. The others looked on as Silver shook Marine's shoulder, first gently, then harder, becoming more and more desperate.
"Wake up, wake up!" he cried, hoisting the little raccoon upright and pinching hard on her ear, shaking her violently now.
Suddenly, ever so slightly, Marine's eyelids twitched. Then she twitched all over, and ever so slowly opened her eyes.
Then she started to scream.
It was horrifying to watch; Marine's eyes were wild and unseeing, locked straight ahead, her whole body shook, her arms and legs flailed violently, as if she was fighting off the creatures of her nightmares. She beat furiously to get away from Silver's grasp, struck him backwards, threw herself to the ground and rolled over, still screaming and wrestling with some invisible demon, clawing at the air and the ground.
At last, her eyes slid shut again, her screams tapered off to whimpers, her body shook violently one last time and fell still again. The onlookers stood, petrified.
"God," said Shadow at last.
Normally someone would have told him to watch it, but at this moment they felt there was nothing else to say. Silver, still flung back onto his hands where Marine had thrown him, looked ready to cry.
"Fear," said Espio, his jaw tight. "They're paralyzed with fear."
"But what?" demanded Amy, biting back tears. "What could scare them li-ike . . . l-like . . . "
"Whatever it was," said Espio quietly, "it was intelligent."
Mutely the others looked at him. He waved towards the slit canvas at the back of the tent.
"It knew to slice the back rather than disturb Blaze by coming through the front," he said. "And I have already tried to track it. All I can find is signs that it covered its tracks upon retreating. That's intelligence on our level."
"What is it?" whispered Amy. "What is it?"
"It couldn't have gone far," said Rouge suddenly. Everyone turned to look at her.
"I was up at around three in the morning," she said, and nobody bothered to ask her why. "Everything was normal then."
"I woke up at five," said Silver. "That's still two hours."
"All the same, whatever it was, it probably lives in the woods here," said Espio, standing up. "We must find it."
"And do what? Look what it did to them! To Blaze!" Knuckles gestured. "They became paralyzed with fear just by looking at it, what kind of a creature is it?"
"It doesn't matter," said Sonic, his eyes uncharacteristically haunted as he gazed at Tails' frozen expression. "Espio's right, we have to find it."
The faintest murmur of consent ran among the Mobians, laced with determination and hints of anger. Whatever this creature was, it had messed with the wrong crew. Shadow stayed behind for a moment as the others drifted away, and glanced one last time at the rigid forms of the four children and their chaperone.
Selfish as it felt, he was eternally grateful that Maria hadn't come along.
As the slightest hints of gray began to show in the eastern sky, the chilly air of the campsite suddenly babbled with tense activity. Rouge paced back and forth, trying to place a call through the G.U.N. cell phone she'd brought and cursing the limited service out here in the wilds. Omega's fear-proof presence would be useful; he'd have to break his way through the forest pretty violently, but that was irrelevant just now. He set out as quickly as he could, and notified the rest of G.U.N. that a situation in need of broader attention may possibly arise soon.
As soon as Rouge was done with the phone, Espio called Vector about Charmy, and Vanilla about Cream. He hung up looking like he'd just been drained of all will to live. Meanwhile Shadow tersely organized the search. Knuckles was to stay behind and guard the children and Blaze, in case the creature came back. Everyone else was to head out into the woods; it would have been better if they could stay in pairs, but there was just too much ground to cover. They were all warned to exercise extreme caution—this creature evidently inspired some pretty intense fear in those who saw it. The searchers' only defense, hopefully, was that they expected it. They all set out from the point where Espio could no longer follow the covered tracks.
Shadow, Espio, and Rouge regrouped half an hour later at the campsite. Knuckles was curled up on the ground, an expression of rigid horror on his face. Those still standing surveyed him silently, too grim for words. To scare Knuckles into shock—that wasn't even imaginable.
Silver returned to the campsite shortly after, having found nothing. Then, two minutes later, Sonic came stumbling out of the woods carrying Amy's unconscious body. Even in paralytic shock, she was still huddling against him, her breath coming in soft whimpers as if she was having the worst of nightmares.
"I found her like this," Sonic whispered, swaying, his eyes glassy. "Just . . . just frozen like this. Something got her, and—and I—"
"Shhh," said Rouge gently, helping Sonic set Amy down. "It's not your fault, Blue."
"It's still out there," said Shadow, glancing darkly out at the woods. "It's trying to pick us off, one by one. We can't just leave the unconscious here unguarded, but any guard we leave will get attacked. We've got to get out of here."
The others nodded numbly. Espio laid a hand on Sonic's shoulder as he was getting up.
"Sonic—did you see any tracks, any signs of struggle, anything, around the area where you found Amy?"
Sonic shook his head.
"I can't remember. I wasn't exactly checking, you know."
Espio nodded in understanding.
"Do you think you could lead me to the place, though? If I can find the creature's footprints or some other evidence, perhaps we could identify it or better track it. That would be the first step to curing the others."
Sonic nodded eagerly, turning back towards the woods.
"Sure, I can take you there. Come on, we've gotta go quickly."
"We'll get the others ready for carrying back home," said Rouge, pulling down one of the tents and ripping the fabric to start forming a sling.
Sonic and Espio loped off into the forest. Shadow, Rouge, and Silver worked silently, bundling up the fallen, trying to figure out ways to make carrying all of them possible. They were done with the job, and Espio and Sonic still hadn't returned.
The three of them said nothing, but met each other's eyes silently.
At last they left Silver behind to guard, perched high in a tree, and set out to find Sonic and Espio. Rouge went one way, Shadow the other.
Shadow at last found Espio slumped against a tree, one hand grasping for the shurikens in his wrist protector, the other frozen in front of him as if to fend something off. He was shaking all over in terror, while a gash on his palm dribbled a thin sheet of coagulating blood. Sonic was nowhere to be found.
"Dammit," whispered Shadow, and crouched to examine the ground. There were signs of struggle, and it looked like something had been dragged off.
Cursing under his breath, Shadow hoisted the trembling Espio up and carried him back to the campsite. Silver was still all in one piece; he watched with dull eyes as Shadow tossed Espio down alongside the ever-growing group of paralyzed Mobians.
"It's just you, me, and Rouge now," said Shadow quietly. "It's got Sonic."
"Y-you mean he's . . . " Silver faltered.
"I don't know," said Shadow. "It seems probable though, doesn't it?"
Silver raked a hand through his quills silently, his eyes roving over his friends, all trapped in deathlike sleep.
"This is a nightmare, isn't it?" he said dully. "We'll wake up in a minute and wonder what brought that on, and by tomorrow we'll have forgotten it. Right?"
"No."
In the lifeless silence that followed, the G.U.N. cell phone rang loud and sharp. Shadow snatched it up, expecting a call from Rouge. His eyebrows twitched upwards slightly when he saw the call was from Omega's built-in communicator instead.
"Omega?" he called, flipping the phone open. "Where are you?"
"I am approaching the coordinates you gave me," replied Omega. "I found it necessary to stop, however, as I found Rouge."
Silver's eyes lifted from the ground and met Shadow's hopelessly, both of them knowing what was to follow.
"Stay here, guard them," said Shadow, and took off into the woods.
"Don't move her," he ordered over the cell phone. "I'm coming over."
"Haste would be appreciated," said Omega, his robotic voice oddly strained. "She seems to be losing fluid."
"Losing fluid," scoffed Shadow, snappish with despair. "For all that tells me, she could have a runny nose."
"I had assumed you had the mental capacity to understand," retorted Omega tightly, equally tense. Shadow drew a deep breath and pawed at his forehead.
"I know. I know. Is it bad?"
"It appears to be. I have attempted everything I can, and she will not stop crying."
Shadow nearly crashed into a tree.
"For the love of all things—I thought she was bleeding, you—"
A silence on the other end of the line. Shadow leaned against the tree he'd nearly hit and ran a mental diagnostic on his circulatory system.
"My apologies," said Omega at last.
"Yeah, yeah. Sure." Pushing himself upright, Shadow set off full-speed again.
When he finally found Omega, the robot was leaning over Rouge, who was huddled underneath a tree. Like all others before her, her eyes were squeezed shut, and her body was tense with fear. Tears were seeping steadily from under her eyelids, while her wings wrapped instinctively around her shoulders and her hands clenched around the red Chaos Emerald. Apparently her three AM excursion had not been in vain, and apparently, even in the depths of terror, her instinct was to seek comfort from jewels.
But then again, reflected Shadow, there hadn't been anything or anyone else to turn to.
"Is she damaged?" asked Omega, his red eyes glowing anxiously as he watched Shadow crouch next to the shivering bat.
"No more than any of the others," said Shadow grimly. He tried to gently pry the Chaos Emerald from Rouge's grip, but her fingers refused to loosen from the gem. When Shadow tried with a little more force, she began to twitch and shift slightly in her sleep. He stopped immediately, not wanting to re-experience what had happened to Marine.
"There's nothing for it," he sighed at last, looking up at Omega. "Take her back to the campsite, all right? I want to do some searching around here for a minute."
"Is there a method to undo this condition?"
Shadow spread his hands silently. Omega said nothing for a moment.
"This is all very wrong," he said heavily at last.
Shadow nodded. As far as he knew, Omega was not physically capable of registering fear, but that didn't mean he was immune to situations like these. Being a robot, he had very fixated sense of what was logical, and a burning dislike for anything that violated this sense of logic. He'd probably never gain a sense of humor; even the lighthearted illogic of jokes made him uneasy and irritable. This kind of thing . . . well, it was a wonder he wasn't having a system meltdown.
Then again, Shadow wondered why they weren't all insane by now. What in the world had happened? Twelve hours ago, everything had been normal, even excessively giddy, what with all the fuss over Tails's birthday. Then the world had suddenly come toppling down in pieces around their ears, and one by one they fell with it, each loss sinking them deeper into the darkness of fear. Silver was right; this was a living nightmare.
He wondered briefly if Silver had succumbed yet. As little affection as he harbored for the younger hedgehog, he hoped that the kid was still unharmed. Not that he needed company or anything, just . . . this soon? Already? . . .
Shadow shook himself from his thoughts to find Omega cautiously waving his hand in Rouge's general vicinity.
"What's the matter now?"
"It will not harm her to pick her up?" asked Omega, somehow plaintively lost. Shadow sighed and got to his feet. Stepping over, he carefully scooped Rouge up and turned to Omega.
"Go on, hold out your arm." He transferred Rouge gingerly to crook of the robot's elbow. "There. Now take her to the campsite, and radio me if something's happened to Silver. If he's still fine, help him guard the others. I'll be over in a minute. Just keep it together, all right? We're going to get G.U.N. involved if we have to, we're going to track down this creature, and we're going to figure out how to wake the others up again. No problem, you know?"
Omega gave him a look that let him know he was an ineffective liar. Still, he didn't complain out loud. Optimism was not something one took lightly, coming from Shadow. He was doing his best.
As Omega turned to plow doggedly off through the underbrush towards the campsite, Shadow stepped back to the area where the ground was scuffed and trampled. He wished Espio was still on his own two feet; he'd probably be able to glance at this mess and tell how many creatures there'd been, how many feet they walked on, their shoe size, height, gender, and what they had for breakfast in the morning. All Shadow could discern were Omega's deep-set tridactyl footprints, and then a welter of disturbed pine needles.
Suddenly in the distance, there came a rapid thudding of footsteps, muffled on the peaty forest floor, but unmistakable. Shadow's head shot up, his eyes wide—only Sonic ran that fast.
He barely had time to register this thought before Sonic himself came flashing past, weaving skillfully through the trees. Apparently he noticed Shadow as he passed, because he suddenly hit the brakes and came skittering back.
"Shads!" he called, wild-eyed. "What the heck is going on?!"
"I could ask you the same thing," said Shadow. He got to his feet and looked Sonic up and down disbelievingly. "Where were you?"
"I have no freaking clue," said Sonic, tugging at his quills. "All I know is, I was out with Espio, looking for the place where I found Amy, and suddenly something conks me on the head. Then I wake up somewhere in the woods just a little while ago, and I've been running around trying to find out where I am for ages now!" His face grew grimmer. "Is Espio okay? What about everyone else?"
"Everyone else is gone," said Shadow flatly. "Only Silver and I are still standing. Omega's arrived, if that's any consolation. We need to get the unconscious out of the woods and back home."
Sonic nodded absently, raking a hand through his quills. He was clearly trying not to look too broken up.
"All of them?" he asked, as if he wasn't sure he'd heard right. "All gone?"
"All attacked, by whatever it is," said Shadow. "Come on, unless you can make sense of these tracks, we'd better get back and start carrying everyone out of here."
Jerking his head to indicate which way to follow, he set out towards the campsite. Sonic swung into step behind him.
"But what if you don't make it back?" he asked thickly.
"What kind of a question is—" Shadow drew in his breath sharply as a searing pain shot through his shoulder. He wheeled around, irate. "What the hell are you—"
The rest of his sentence went entirely forgotten.