(5,000 views! So happy! Thanks guys!
Yaaay, I'm starting piano lessons soon! But that means even less time for me to be able to write. BLEH. Suckish.
Last time on In the Dark…
Shadow, Silver, Blaze, and Sally have taken a final stand against Mephiles. A brutal battle broke out in the streets of the ruined metropolis. Blaze, Sally, and Shadow all found themselves unable to fight, so they left the battle to their only hope; Silver, who because of his fading, was able to attack and avoid attacks without a problem. In the end, Mephiles had been vanquished, leaving the group with the Dark Emerald. With it, after their goodbyes, Shadow and Sally were able to open a portal back home. But what will they find there, with Dark in control?)
I landed softly on dead grass and looked up. The city was in worse shape than before and possibly even worse than the future city we had been in. As Shadow and I traveled to the former GUN headquarters, I saw that the amount of blood staining the streets and buildings had significantly increased, and gory bodies of anthros and humans lay everywhere; speared on a light post, on awnings of stores, some under cars, and just slumped against the walls. As usual, it gave me the creeps. Were there anyone left in Mobotropolis? Or have they all been murdered by Dark's hands? I started thinking about what Sonic would think, if and when we get him back. Does he know what's going on? Is he aware of what his alter ego is doing? Surely, the guilt would be insufferable. I felt terrible for him, and I wondered where he was now, and what he was doing…
Before long, we reached the area where the GUN base was…or should be. All that stood there now was a pile of cement, glass, and rubble. Hung over the collapsed barbed-wire fence that was leaning against the wreck was a dirty banner, and a message was written in crimson letters:
"IF YoU'RE ALIVE, nONe HAVE SUrVIVEd."
A handprint served as the period. I'd worry about the banner later. At the moment, I was in shock that the only true safe place that I knew of had been destroyed. We no longer had a home. I glanced up at Shadow. He looked placid, and walked up to the wreckage. I reached out to him, about to stop him, but decided against it and dropped my hand. He started searching through the rubble, and only then did I realize that there was a surprising lack of Exes and shadows. My ear twitched at a sound, and I saw a faint light coming from a window in a building nearby. I cautiously walked up to the window and jumped up onto a dumpster to see inside.
(It occurred to me in the middle of the paragraph that you NEVER hear about shipping Shadally. But I looked it up and saw quite a bit for it, especially pictures. So I'm wondering if there's any Shadally fans out there? I don't support it, I support Shadria for Shadow and Sonally for Sally. Sorry guys.)
Inside a dark, seemingly abandoned room, there was a TV was on. Through bouts of static, I could see a broadcast. It seemed to be going live. The screen showed a very bleak-looking room, with literal pools of blood and paths of some kind of white stone – no, bones. At the foot of an alter was a guillotine, (It's a beheading thing, had to look it up. It was used in France.) ready for an execution. Standing on an alter was Dark, with Sonic Exe looking very bored in his throne of skulls behind him. I strained my ears to hear what the TV was saying.
"Welcome minions, lost souls, Exes, and those watching at home!" Dark addressed the audience. "Last week, we saw the execution of Rotor the Walrus, the flabby mechanic and friend of the former Sonic. This week is extra special because today, we will be executing the one who created me, and who I should be thanking, but we all know I'm not gonna do that." The crowd roared with laughter, which sounded more like nails against a chalkboard. "Guards, bring out the prisoner, Ivo "Eggman" Robotnik!" The camera panned to a set of wrought iron gates, which flung open. Two zombie Exes dragged a very blood-stained, beat, and chained-up Eggman to the guillotine. The crowd booed. As they secured him to the ominous-looking device, Dark kept talking.
"This man is the reason I'm here. Because of a malfunctioning mind control ray, I am here. Or was it because of him and the ray? Nah. The ray did nothing. Sonic Exe here just thought of it as a good chance to let me go. But I should thank him for the perfect opportunity. And what do we do to people that have influenced me or had any major connection to my goody-two-shoes counterpart?"
"Execute!" the crowd roared.
"Exactly!" Dark cried. "Now, do you want him to live, and be turned into an Exe like some of you, or shall we execute him?"
"Execute!"
The camera panned to Eggman's terrified face.
"You want him gone?"
"Execute!"
"Who are your rulers?"
"The almighty Dark and gory-ous Sonic Exe!"
Dark smirked. "That's right." He lifted his hand, and the blade on the guillotine lifted to the peak of the machine. "As my counterpart says," Dark stated, and then said in a mocking tone, "do it to it." He let his hand fall as the crowd laughed and cheered, and the blade dropped down onto Eggman's neck, and his egg-shaped head was chopped clean off. Dark picked it up, and after examining it, held it up to show the crowd, which cheered madly. Blood still dripped from where his neck had been.
All of a sudden, an ugly, grotesque face appeared at the window, letting out a horrible scream that could be heard through the window. I shrieked and fell off the dumpster, cutting myself on the rubble. I clamped a hand over my mouth and tried to regulate my breathing, staring at the face that was still pressed against the window. It was a particularly disgusting Exe, with no eyes, blood dripping from the eye sockets, a decomposing, sunken face, a large split in its head, and its mouth open wide in a scream, revealing missing and black teeth and a forked tongue, which flicked over its stretched lips. Suddenly, it disappeared, and I saw something in the dumpster move. A rotting hand was draped over the side, and the lid was was being bumped. I scuttled backwards, then stumbled to my feet and ran back to the ruined base.
"Shadow, we have to go!" I cried, stumbling on a chunk of concrete. An ear-piercing shriek sounded behind me.
He looked up, something glowing in his hand. His eyes shifted to the area behind me, then his eyes widened, and he suddenly skated toward me. I looked back to see the first Exe that had scared me limping after us, shrieking, and the other Exe was dragging what half of its body it had out of the dumpster after it. In the distance, I could see more Exes coming out of houses that should be abandoned. There were dozens. Possibly hundreds…
(Walking Deeeaaaad… :3)
Shadow suddenly grabbed my hand.
"Chaos Control!" He shouted, and we disappeared.
We appeared in a dark, musty room. In the dim light provided by the crimson sky through a rickety wood ceiling, I could see dust covering what few things were in the room; a cart with metal shelves full of cans and jars of assorted objects, a sink, and an old, patched couch.
"Where are we?" I whispered.
"A storage cellar that was behind the base," Shadow replied. "It should provide temporary shelter."
I nodded, then grabbed a flashlight from the bottom shelf, and slapped the side of it to get it to flicker to life, and then set it on the ground so it'd shine on the ground in front of me. Something about the banner that had been on the rubble of the base was bothering me. In the dust on the ground, I wrote out what it had said.
"IF YoU'RE ALIVE, nONe HAVE SUrVIVE."
Why were some letters lower case and some uppercase? Could it be a code? I started with writing the capital letters first.
"IF YURE ALIVE, ON HAVE SUVIVE."
That meant nothing. I tried unscrambling it in as many different ways as possible before I decided that must not be it. The dust around me was now etched out in many different nonsense words. I was just about to start on the lowercase when Shadow, who had been scoping out the room, walked up to me and set something beside me.
"For protection."
I glanced at it. It was a handgun, fully loaded. I looked up at him.
"I found it in the wreck," he said simply. "As well as this." He then took out a glowing blue Emerald. (I looked back at previous chapters, and we have a red, white, and blue Emerald. :3 AMERICAAAAAA!)
I smiled. "That's perfect," I said. "Now we have three."
I caught a hint of a smile on his face.
I went back to my decoding. When I wrote out the lowercase letters, I saw the beginning of something.
"One r"
One…One R? It didn't sound familiar. Shadow looked over my shoulder.
"There's a lowercase D at the end," he advised, then went back to looking around.
I added the D at the end.
"One rd."
That looked better, and familiar. I changed it a little.
"One Rd."
Which changed to…
"One Road."
I didn't know a One Road, but I knew a First Road. I wondered if there was something there…
"Shadow, we should check out –"
"First Road?"
"Yeah."
"That's only a few blocks away; we could make it there easy."
"Can you teleport us there? So we don't have to deal with Exes?"
"Of course."
I grabbed my gun and put it in a sack strapped around my ankle, usually used for carrying my handheld computer, Nicole. Shadow grabbed my arm and pulled me to my feet, and we disappeared.
When we appeared, we were on the corner of First Road and Decent Avenue. I looked up at the sign. Painted in red on it was a number:
"55212"
That must be an address. Shadow and I followed the street down, looking at the addresses. 55206…55208…55210…55212. We walked up the steps to a building. I noticed an engraving on the door:
"Knock the number."
I knocked five times, paused, then another five times, paused, two times, paused, once, paused, twice, and then stopped.
A minute passed. I was getting paranoid, constantly looking over my shoulder. Then, I heard someone by the door. A second later, I heard them unlocking it. There were a lot of locks. The door opened, but the person was running away.
"Hey, wait!" I cried, and ran after them, Shadow on my heals. The person ran down hallways, through rooms, and even into the next apartment. We kept following them. Then we reached a hallway that only had one door. When we opened it, it was a supply closet. But it looked like some of the stuff had been moved. Peeking out from under an apron that had fallen off a hanger was a trap door. I kneeled down and moved it aside, revealing the door. I grabbed the iron handle and heaved it open. About ten feet below us was a room, with a large pillow underneath the trap door. I swung my feet over the edge of the opening and dropped down onto the pillow. The landing was soft, and I got to my feet. I heard a whoomph, and Shadow had dropped down into the pillow. Then I looked around the room.
The main room was large and made out of cement, with several adjoining rooms. They were all labeled; a bathroom, nursery, storage, safe, kitchen, supplies, etc. Cots were set up all across the room. Milling around the room were dozens of people. Anthros and humans, women and men, elderly and children. I was amazed. In the bleak times we're going through, these people have found a way past the Exes, past the shadows, and past Dark. They are trying to make it through the storm.
We have found the survivors.
(This chapter wasn't as long as I'd hoped. Oh well. Hope you enjoyed this; I don't really have anything to say. See you next time.)
~SonicTheHedgehog-Nerd