Fall of the Ark
The fall of the ARK was the turning point in his life, the end to everything he cared about, and the occurrence of everything he had dreaded. Along with all who died, his happiness died with them, and the worst moment of it all haunted him for the rest of his life.
The terror began when Shadow and Maria were summoned into the radio transmission room by Dr. Robotnik. Although they had never been called into that room before, they didn't suspect that such a terrible thing awaited them. The two of them entered, where Dr. Robotnik and a few other men stood behind rows of radios and control panels that were filled with buttons, screens, and lights. One of the men had a phone up to his ear, and was waiting for someone to answer the phone on the other end, and Dr. Robotnik was sitting in a desk chair, hunched worriedly over a typed message on one of the screens.
He stood up urgently once he saw Shadow and Maria enter. Shadow could see the anxiety in his face, which made him feel uncomfortably nervous. The three of them stood in the middle of the radio room, with Dr. Robotnik fearful, Shadow uneasy, and Maria confused.
Dr. Robotnik wiped his sweaty brow and said troublesomely, "I have some terribly upsetting news that I'll have to be completely honest about with both of you."
"Someone has leaked out information about Project:Shadow," Dr. Robotnik announced. "We don't know who it is, but he's given away more than is safe for anyone." Shadow felt his heart drop and his breathing become unsteady. Someone had made his existence known , and now he was in extreme danger. Dr. Robotnik had always warned that other people couldn't handle the knowledge that an Ultimate Life Form existed, and they'd do terrible things with that knowledge.
Maria became frightened. "But grandfather! Why would anyone do such a thing?" she exclaimed. She, too, had been warned by Dr. Robotnik. "Who did they tell about Shadow?"
Dr. Robotnik replied hopelessly, "G.U.N."
Maria gasped and threw her arms around Shadow in terror to hug him. G.U.N. was the Guardian Unit of Nations, the army of the United Nations, and they had the power to destroy. Shadow was already feeling more and more imperiled, and he tried to speak his fear, but nothing would come out.
The professor further explained, "G.U.N. has been told about your strong powers, Shadow, and they believe your power is a threat. Then they learned how I made you immortal, how I had put us all in danger by consorting with wicked aliens."
"Aliens?" Maria asked, expressing the same confusion as Shadow.
Dr. Robotnik nodded in admittance. "I made Shadow immortal by using the blood of the alien Black Doom, who is an evil soul notorious for invading other planets, and now G.U.N. believes that because of me, Black Doom will now come and attack Earth next." He sighed and glanced back at the message once again. "So now, they said, they must take action against us."
Shadow felt as if his exposure was choking his neck, and he felt as if he were surrounded by it, with no escape from inevitable doom. The fact that he had the blood of the wicked Black Doom didn't wasn't on his mind as he worried over this, but he managed to ask, "What will happen, professor? Is everything going to be okay?"
"I'm not exactly sure," Dr. Robotnik fretted. "The message isn't exactly clear, but the entire Space Colony ARK is in danger. I'm afraid they'll shut the whole place down." He shook his head, overwhelmed by the truth, and he had to sit down in his chair again.
The man at the phone had finally received an answer on the other end and had been listening during the conversation, but now he was shouting frantically. "Just let me talk to G.U.N.!" he shouted impatiently. "What do you mean you won't let me?...Get me someone from G.U.N.! Anybody from G.U.N.!" he yelled with more and more panic. "You can't do this to us! You can't let them come! Stop them!" The phone beeped as they hung up on him and he slammed the phone back.
Maria's arms were trembling around Shadow and he could feel his own knees shaking as the man explained with a quivering voice, "G.U.N. is already on its way here." Shadow could feel his head explode as everything in him felt as if it were torn apart instantly.
Dr. Robotnik had his face buried in his hands, muttering to himself with anguish, "This is all my fault. If I hadn't brought the Black Aliens here…" He shook his head ruefully.
But he made himself stand up through the regrets and told the man, "We have to prepare and get everyone to safety."
The man shook his head in despair. "It's too late."
The sound of gunshots blasted in the distance, mixed with screams of agony and panic. A new worsened fear rose in all of them as they heard their friends being slaughtered by G.U.N.
"No…this can't be happening," Shadow whispered. This was the worst thing that could happen. Everything was about to end.
"Shadow," Maria whispered, still hugging him through the repeating sounds of gunshots. "I'm scared."
Suddenly the door was blown off its hinges and G.U.N. soldiers charged in. Maria screamed and everyone dropped to the ground as the uniformed soldiers fired rapidly at the walls to destroy any machinery in sight. Shadow bent over Maria to shield her from gunfire and they cringed with fear for their lives as booming gunshots glared and flew over their head onto exploding radios.
The firing ceased and one soldier shouted, "There they are! Capture them!"
Shadow and Maria stood up, but Shadow didn't have time to fight back. Just as he caught sight of the G.U.N. soldiers, with their visor-ed helmets and heavy gear, metallic cords were shot at him. They hit him in the chest and wrapped around his and Maria's bodies. The cables were quickly coiled around and around their bodies from the speed they were shot at and Shadow and Maria toppled to the ground, losing their balance from being squeezed together. Shadow fell hard onto his side and he felt the hard cords lock into place, trapping his arms at his sides.
"No!" Shadow cried out. He twisted and squirmed to escape the imprisoning bands, but the strange technology in it kept the cords locked tight around him and Maria. The people of the ARK needed his help; they were dying and Shadow was restrained from coming to the rescue. He had to save everyone but he was trapped.
Dr. Robotnik fell to the ground beside them with the imprisoning bands wrapped around him. He looked up in pain and they exchanged glances in fear.
G.U.N. soldiers lifted the three of them up and dragged them toward the door by their shoulders despite Shadow's violent kicking and struggling. Maria struggled weakly beside him as she started to cry and Dr. Robotnik was desperately shouting, "Please! Don't do this! You can't kill all of my scientists! Please, they're innocent! This is inhumane!"
The G.U.N. soldiers coldly ignored him and the commanding soldier ordered, "We'll have to keep the girl with the Ultimate Life Form! Now finish off the rest of them!"
Dr. Robotnik yelled, "No!" as the soldiers fired. Shadow and Maria froze in appalled shock as they witnessed the other three men being murdered. The men had no time to run, and as the sparking bullets exploded from the guns, the men collapsed instantly, with blood spilling from their chests and foreheads.
Maria cried out in horror at their dead bodies and the scene was drawn away when they were dragged out of the room over the broken door. They were dragged to the wide hallway, which was on the exterior of the ARK so it had large windows on the walls showing outer space. It was a commotion in the hall and rows and rows of G.U.N. soldiers rushed by with their heavy boots stomping the ground and their guns in hand. The size of the G.U.N. army seemed twice as large as it actually was with the reflection of the soldiers dashing along the windows. Shadow's hope was dying when he saw the enormous army of G.U.N. soldiers; G.U.N. was her to shut the ARK down for good. They really were here to kill of the entire populace of the Space Colony ARK.
The end of the line of soldiers quickly drew near and a small motorized vehicle speedily approached. A G.U.N. soldier drove the vehicle form an attached seat and wheel in front of a flatbed and it jerked to a halt in front of them. Shadow, Maria, and the professor were shoved onto the flatbed and they were slammed against the machines that were piled on the back.
The commanding soldier ordered, "Take them to the third gate!"
The driver nodded and he sped off again. Shadow and Maria slid on their sides at the sudden start with Shadow facing the interior wall and Maria facing Dr. Robotnik beside her. Riding in the vehicle alongside the long line of soldiers, Shadow strained and pulled his arms outward more in frantic attempts to break the bands and Dr. Robotnik was trying to calm Maria.
The agonizing guilt inside of Shadow was increasing knowing that more and more scientists were being slaughtered by G.U.N. that instant and he was failing in his duty to protect them; he was letting them down.
Then the vehicle slammed to a stop again in front of another door, causing Shadow to look up. His heart seemed to faint when he saw what was happening inside of the large room. G.U.N. soldiers had just charged in and they were seizing all of the innocent people there, dragging them out from their cover, yanking them away from their hiding places among the machines, and beating people to the ground who were scrambling to escape, where other soldiers proceeded to murder them with their deadly guns. Shadow was beginning to die on the inside from seeing familiar faces being shot to their death among the havoc of destruction, blood, and corruption. The sounds of guns and screams were overwhelming and the smell of the exploding machines' smoky fumes and the blood was nauseating. The G.U.N. soldiers didn't even seem to be morally afflicted that they were cruelly shooting unsuspecting people and they just continued to hunt mercilessly for every victim and to shoot them hard until they were dead for sure.
One woman was making a mad dash toward the door to escape, but G.U.N. soldiers were soon upon her and they dragged and shoved her to the ground as she cringed at their forcefulness. One of the soldiers pinned her to the ground with his foot on her back and the gun in his hand, pointed at her head, and the woman looked up at Shadow before her death. Her eyes stared pleadingly and despairingly, that seemed to say "If only you were there to save us," in hopelessness and grief of all that was lost, and the life she was about to lose; it tortured Shadow and it made his heart weep in misery. Then the soldier pulled the trigger with a boom and the woman's head immediately fell to the ground with blood and hair falling onto her face.
The G.U.N. soldiers next to Shadow were just finishing loading valuable machines onto the vehicle and Maria was trembling from hearing the massacre behind her, but Shadow wasn't paying attention to that. As he stared at the scene, where the soldiers were beginning to file out of, a new feeling was rising up inside of him. The deadly scene of blood, battered bodies, and destruction was swelling into a mixture of increasing guilt, dramatic desperation, and enraged despair.
The vehicle jerked into motion once more and the new feeling that engulfed Shadow built up into infuriated strength. Emotions of fury for the lives being lost and anger that he had done nothing fed the anger inside of him. Shadow pulled against the bands around him harder and harder with more strength building in his arms.
Maria felt the cords' grip being loosened around her body. "Shadow!" she exclaimed in enthusiastic hope when she saw that Shadow was stretching the bands.
Shadow tugged at the cords with great strength and determination. He could feel a power stirring within him from his strength and emotions; it was the chaos power that lay within him, being energized, and brought forth until, with an intense shout, Shadow released the power. It was the Chaos Spear, shooting out from Shadow's body with a radiant yellow light in the form of an arrow, which penetrated through the hard metal bands and split it apart.
Shadow and Maria were released from the bands and the force of the Chaos Spear threw them off the vehicle. Maria tumbled off the vehicle with surprise, but Shadow found himself levitating in the air. The power of the chaos energy put Shadow into the air and he discovered his ability to fly along with Chaos Spear.
Shadow immediately attacked the vehicle upon his escape. In flight, he summoned the power again by shouting, "Chaos Spear!" and threw a wave of shocking light toward the vehicle, hitting the driver and the front of the vehicle. The front exploded and the soldier was killed from the Chaos Spear, then the vehicle swerved out of control and crashed with force onto the wall of the hall, taking out three G.U.N. soldiers in its path.
The end of the line of G.U.N. soldiers stopped and turned to see Shadow and the crash while the rest of the line continued on, oblivious to Shadow's escape.
Shadow clenched his hands into fists and crossed them into an X, bringing them in towards his body, gathering energy. Then he swung his arms open to launch a huge Chaos Spear at the soldiers. It rushed down to the ground and landed with an explosion of static energy on five G.U.N. soldiers. The other fifteen soldiers who were scattered about saw the five soldiers paralyzed, burnt, and dead on the ground so they pointed their guns to the ceiling and fired away at Shadow.
Shadow maneuvered skillfully in the air around shooting bullets and hurled Chaos Spears at the soldiers firing at him. He wrathfully threw the bolts down at them, desperate to kill the soldiers, and once his spears ceased the firing, Shadow furiously and wildly shot bolts everywhere, throwing his arms this way and that to kill every single soldier there.
"Shadow!" Maria shouted through the blasts of the spears. "Stop!"
Shadow immediately halted in his attack at Maria's voice, and broken from his violent trance, Shadow pivoted in the air to where Maria was. She was standing by the crashed vehicle that was smoking and damaged with her hair rumpled and with scratches on her face from falling off the vehicle along with burns on her dress from Shadow's Chaos Spear. Shadow guiltily sank to the ground when he saw that he had hurt Maria.
"Shadow!" she was shouting pleadingly. "Don't kill them! I don't want any more people to die!"
Shadow looked at all the soldiers around him, sprawled on their faces and motionless in death with guns on the floor. He had killed them, he had taken someone's life away, but he had to, he had to save everyone.
"I have to do this Maria!" Shadow shouted back urgently. "It's the only way to save everyone!"
"But you hurt Grandfather!" Maria pointed to the vehicle right beside her where machines had fallen on top of Gerald Robotnik.
Shadow gasped. "Professor!" He rushed over to Dr. Robotnik, whose legs and waist were trapped underneath a long machine and he couldn't do anything with the bands around his arms. Shadow jumped onto the vehicle and got his hands under until it tumbled off the other side of the vehicle.
Dr. Robotnik was still wincing from the pain in his legs and Shadow anxiously apologized, "I'm so sorry, professor, I didn't mean to. I can get you out of there!"
Shadow knelt down and started tugging at the bands around Gerald Robotnik, but the professor refused, "Shadow, it's no use. You'll only hurt me if you try." He let go and Dr. Robotnik twisted and managed to get himself in a sitting position against a machine.
Maria urgently ran to her grandfather's side. "But grandfather, we have to get you out!" she exclaimed with tears. "You have to get out before more soldiers come!"
Shadow knew he couldn't just leave him there. "Please professor!" he shouted. "I can free you!"
"No," Gerald Robotnik shook his head hopelessly. "Only your Chaos Spear can penetrate through these bands and that could kill me." He looked down at his legs. "Besides, I'm not sure I'd be able to walk."
Shadow felt stressed that he couldn't save the professor. What was he going to do with him? Dr. Robotnik was defenseless.
Shadow jumped down from the vehicle and announced, "Then I have to go save everyone else, professor. I have to do something." If he couldn't help Dr. Robotnik, he had to help the others. He could still hear gunshots booming in the distance; the others still needed his help.
Maria grabbed his arm before he could run away. "Shadow!" she shouted with fright. "You can't kill more people!"
Shadow was about to argue but Dr. Robotnik said to him, "Shadow, I'm afraid it's too late." His old voice was frail as he told Shadow, "Anything you do now won't help most of our friends, for most of them are already dead, and it's just a matter of time before the rest are killed."
"No," Shadow couldn't accept it in his mind that everyone was dead. "No, I have to go." His head was spinning and he glared at Maria holding his arm and Dr. Robotnik. "They can't be dead! I need to fight G.U.N. and save them!"
"Shadow," Dr. Robotnik said. "I'm so sorry this all happened. It's just that there's nothing we can do anymore. Once G.U.N. has realized that we've been left behind, they'll come looking for us. You must run while you still can. You have to get yourself and Maria out of here."
"Grandfather, no!" Maria cried out desperately as she ran up to him and put her hands on his hand to show her fright for him. "We can't leave you here! I don't want to go without you!" Tears were running down her cheeks as she looked up at him.
Dr. Robotnik was in pain when he saw Maria's tears. "I'm so sorry, but it's too late even for me." He looked at Shadow. "I don't want you two to end up like everyone else. Shadow, you have to take Maria and yourself to the escape pods, she knows how to operate them, and you must go down to earth to safety. You must escape before G.U.N. can get you. Do not let me down, Shadow, with my last request."
Even Shadow felt his eyes watering and he couldn't hold it back. He looked down to hide it, but he couldn't conceal the grief that had overcome him. The realization that he'd never again see Dr. Robotnik, who had been almost a father figure to him, made him woeful. He was overcome by realizations that this was the end of the ARK, he'd never see anyone or anything here again, and his life would be changed forever from this.
Look at me, Shadow," Dr. Robotnik said. "And Maria." They looked up at him as he said solemnly, "I want you both to know that I love you dearly and I truly am sorry this happened. You two are the joy in my life and I ask you that you always stay together and keep that happiness that I love to see between you. Please take care of each other for me, and Shadow, always remember that I believe in you, and I believe that you can achieve great things."
Shadow saw the bittersweet emotions in his deep words that cried in departing with his beloved children, but at the same time embraced them with love and hope.
Maria felt grieved so she climbed up onto the vehicle and hugged her grandfather. Shadow felt the same grief that he saw in Maria, whose blonde hair fell on Dr. Robotnik's shoulder as she held him tight in despair of having to depart.
"Goodbye, grandfather," she whispered.
"Goodbye, Maria," he whispered.
Maria let go slowly and reluctantly stepped down as Shadow's eyes gazed at Dr. Robotnik one last time; a look which delivered his goodbye without having to say a word.